KTRH GardenLine | 5-21-23

Skip takes your calls all morning long!

Episode Transcript

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Ktr H Garden Line does not necessarilyendorse any of the products or services advertised
on this program. Welcome to KTRHGarden Line with Skip Rictor so just watch

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him as anything to club ticket,but not a sign. Well, good
Sunday morning. You are listening togarden Line. I'm your host, Skip

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Richter, and we we're here totalk to you about whatever you're interested in
regarding gardening. So let me giveyou a phone number. As always,
I tell you to keep a penand a paper hand because we'll be giving
out other kinds of information you justmight want to jot down. And our
phone number here is seven one threetwo one two fifty eight seventy four seven
one three two one two five eightseven four. Well, we've got some

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some pretty decent weather today. Youknow. I'm looking at different different weather
outlets and kind of get a mixof opinions on what's going to be going
on. But overall it's gonna bepretty good day. I was I was
thinking yesterday I was talking to somebodyabout weed control in the lawn and they
were they were asking how to getrid of some particular weeds and and so

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basically, you know, it's goingover the broad leaf post emergent options that
they would have, but just pointingout that when it gets hot, a
lot of those products, the hotterit gets stressed lawn more and more can
coust some issues. And of courseevery particular chemistry is a little different and
how it how it reacts. Butin general, if you're going to kill

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growing existing that is broad leaf weedsin your lawn, especially Saint Augustine lawn,
you want to get that done beforethe temperatures are mid to uper eighties
or above. So as you getin you know, eighty five eighty seven,
Yeah, it's kind of go aheadand get it done. And as
I look at the temperature, it'swe've got that for a few days.

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We're kind of bouncing right around inthat area, and then things are heading
up to the nineties. And soif you've been looking at weeds and you're
on thinking, yeah, I getto get around to that, well,
here's you're around to that. It'stime to get it done. Or you
know, there's there's options on weeds. Everybody has a has a different tolerance.
Some people it has to be perfect, as if you'd lay AstroTurf out

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there and that of course, isa higher level of weed control, for
sure, and it can be achieved. It's just some people don't want to
go to all that. Other peopleit's, well, the weeds are green,
grass is green. Let's keep amode to the same height. And
I'm happy and I and that's theother end of the spectrum, and that's
fine too. And there's a thousanddebates and arguments over all of these kinds

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of things. So I'm not goingto wait into all that today, but
I just gonna say that if you, if you are going to choose to
spray your broad leaf weeds to shutthem down before it gets hot, I
would say the next there or fourdays, just watch the weather. You
know. It's what I see doesn'tshow a lot of rain coming. Maybe
a storm today, but that's kindof iffy. Anyway. There's just a

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word for the wise. The reasonthe reason I talk about these things on
turf weed control is because a lotof times things we do to our grass
weaken the grass and you look atit and maybe you'll notice a little yellowing
or it doesn't look quite right fora little while, and then it bounces
back, or maybe you don't evenreally see it but if the grass is

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weakened, then opportunist diseases have achance to move in, and weeds have
a chance to proliferate because the grassis not filling in and becoming as dense
as it could be, And sowe try to avoid that. I compare
health to human health all the time, and I realize that's a stretch,
but there are some similarities, andhere's one of them. If you are

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tired, if you don't get goodsleep, if you don't eat right,
don't get any exercise, just basicallycouch potato status, well, the chances
of you getting sick are higher thansomeone who does all the above. That
doesn't mean someone that does all theabove is not going to get sick.
It just means you're predisposing your bodyto getting sick by not taking care of

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it. And the same thing canhappen with plants. Diseases like hypoxillan canker
that can attack oaks and other treesand take them out are out there in
nature. They're there right now.If you've got trees are on your yard,
there are hypoxillan spores in your yard, but they're not killing all your
trees. But when that tree getsstressed, the hypoxillan has the opportunity,

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if it's the right species that itcan attack, to move right in and
kill it. So how do youcontrol apoxilland canker? You don't. You
keep your trees healthy. That's that'show you avoid it and take all root
rot of Saint Augustine grass. Takeall root rot is pretty ubiquitous. It's
not like a spore landed in youryard but not your neighbors. It's out

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there, and so it moves inwhen the Saint Augustine gets weakened. And
now once we have take all rootrot, we're dealing with some significant efforts
to try to shut it down.And some of those efforts are a little
bit stressful of the grass as well, like kind of almost a chemotherapy thing
where the you know, we're goingafter the disease, but at the same

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time, it's a little bit hardon the patient, and so that's why
we try to avoid those things andgood cultural practices. I don't care what
you're growing. That is the firstfoundation. So if you're going to ask
me a disease question, if you'regoing to ask me how to have a
beautiful lawn or beautiful tree or whateverflowers productive vegetables. The answer always begins

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with cultural practices. That's where westart. Now. Doesn't mean that if
you do all the cultural right,there aren't any problems, of course,
but my goodness, why not taketen problems and maybe make them one or
two? Wouldn't that be a goodidea? I mean, it's like playing
think of it this way is aweird analogy. It's like playing Russian roulet,

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you know, and one bullet ispoor soil, and one bullet is
poor drainage, and another bullet.You know that it could be the nutrient
levels, or it could be youknow, you're stressing it with a certain
type of a chemical that stresses it. Are you get the idea? Well,
at some point the chance of spendingthat revolver and coming out with a

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good a good outcome gets slimmer andslimmer. Right, Well, that's kind
of what we do. That's whatwe do with our plants. So our
goal is basically to every empty,every possible bullet out of the chamber when
we're playing the horticultural or Russian roulette, if you will, out there in
the landscape. I don't know ifthat analogy works with you. But it
makes a little bit of sense tome. So there we go. H

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we're talking about taking carrier lawn andthe importance of things, you know,
looking good. One of the thingsI did this spring, uh to it
was part of in my front yard, right, I hadn't it hadn't done
some fertilizing. I put out somehas to grow twelve four eight. It's
a liquid lawn food. You attachit to a hose in sprinkler. It
takes about ten minutes to go overyour lawn and put it. Not just
the nutrients, but they also havethe Medina soil activator and humor, a

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liquid humus in it, and itwill give you a nice quick green up.
It's good stimulation for the soul's naturalmicrobes and materials that are in it.
Uh And it works well. Nowyou can. You can do it
about four times a year if youif if you're leaving your clippings on which
you should be, four times ayear is enough. But a Medina has
to grow. Twelve four eight Lawnfood is an excellent product by Medina that

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really helps. And I saw thegreen up in my own lawn and when
it was the first time I hadused this particular product by my medina in
it, I was very impressed.I thought it did it did really really
well. Well, we're bumping hereup on a break, so I'm going
to give you a phone number andif you want to get on the board
with Josh, we'll talk to youwhen we come back. That's seven one
three two one two five eight sevenfour. I hope we got a cup

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of coffee or hot tea or whateveryou used to wake up. You're listening
to Garden Line. We're looking forwardto talking to you. The number is
seven one three two one two fiftyeight seventy four. And I was heading
through Tomball the other day and Istopped in at D and D Feed that's

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about three miles west of Tomball ontwo forty nine. If you haven't been
out there, you need to checkit out now. As as Randy always
said on the on the station,you know we love our feed stores,
and that certainly is the case.And D and D is a good example
of why they've expanded their store justto have a whole new area where they
can even have more products. Theyalready carry all the things that we talk
about here on the show. Butthey also now have plants, lots of

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plants out front, flats of vegetablesand different kinds of roses, citrus trees
and things like that. You're gonnafind all those high end dog foods at
D and D that would include Origin, diamond, victor those kinds of things.
Certainly, it's a feed store,so livestock feed. But maybe you
got rodent problems or other kinds ofpests. There's a section for that.
They carry that mosquito dunk that weneed to put putting out now in any

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stagnant water. D and D feedjust outside of Tumball, three miles west
on Highway two forty nine. Ifyou haven't been there, you should.
You should check it out. Ithink you will be impressed. They do
an excellent job out there. Ialways like to go visit, and when
I go, my dogs always insistthat I bring them some kind of a
snack home, because they've got areally cool dog deli section as well.

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Well, let's do it. Let'shead out and we're gonna go to Cyprus
and talk to Charles this morning.Hello Charles, Hey, good morning,
Skiff, good morning. I'm oldenough to remember listening to Dewey Compton,
So I guess that tells you abouthow old I am. All right,
all right, we may be bornon the same day, but let's go

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let's keep going here. So liveout in Cyprus. Two years ago,
I ripped out everything out of myfront beds because it was all overgrown,
and went back in with Berfort Holly'sput in a dwarf magnolia, put in
two Japanese us. And I waslistening a few weeks back, and I

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believe you had a caller calling sayhe was having trouble with his japeus,
and I'm both of my plants andthey're in separate beds, but both of
them are having that where one ofthe growth stalks dies off brown and then
you know, I'll still get somegreen ones. But it seems like one

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plan is just about going to becompletely dead. And I started reading up
on it and it seemed to indicatethat there might be a root broad problem.
So I just will wanted to getyour okay, get your opinion.
Well, that's that's entirely possible.Japanese you is not super prone to root

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rots, but like almost all plants, it can get a root rotum.
What was the dieback. Has itbeen kind of progressive like this branch and
then a few weeks later that branchor or is it kind of like pretty
much all at once you're seeing it. No, it's definitely progressive. Okay,
Well, like I said, itstarted last year. Yeah, Well,

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I'd like to blame it on theDecember freeze at least in part,
because that caught a lot of ourplants. I'm prepared. I'm I'm still
surprised at how many crape myrtles I'mseeing that I have huge sections dead or
whatnot because because of that freeze.But that you would expect most of the
damage to show up at once,although when there's partial damage to let's say

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the stem of the plant, itmay go for a little while and be
okay, and then later it justkind of collapses and it's not able to
keep going. And so I wouldfollow the dead branches down, just examine
those limbs of shoots and see ifyou see splits in them further down,
that would be more of an indicationof cold damage. That primarily that would

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be a point toward cold damage.You may just see some sunken dead areas,
and that could be like a canker, and that would be impossible.
I would prune out anything that's deadin them. And when you prune,
get you some lysol or a similarproduct, and you make a cut.
You go below the dead and cutit out of there because it's not going
to come back to life, andthen spray your prunters with lysol that's a

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disinfectant, and then you go makeanother cut in that way. If it
is a canker type disease or somethingis active in there, you're not just
writing it as you make cuts throughthe plant. So just you know,
do that little routine. It's fastand easy and it's a good way to
do it. The only other thingthat you know, I would suggest is
if you have a bush that declinesto the point of you know it's not

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going to make it, but beforeit's fully dead, you could dig it
up, shake soil off the roots, and send at least a good part
of it, or drive it upto the plant clinic lab in college station.
They will take it into a lab, cultured out in a petri dish
and actually scientific, you know,look at what is the name of this

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disease rather than just a visual Yeah, that's a root rot and then give
you some recommendations now that would probablybe worth your money. If you've got
a bunch of them and you'd liketo set this down. If you're leaning
toward giving up on them already,well you know, you may not want
to go to that extra step,but that's the way I would suggest,
Charles, that you would get tothe very bottom of it. Great,

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okay, yes, thank you verymuch. All right, well, and
I hope it does well. Ihope they turn around. It's a it's
a decent plant for here. Weyou know, we often need things that
are the shape of a Japanese you, that are evergreen, and a lot
of the things that could be usedin other parts of the country don't do
well here, so we're kind ofglad to have Japanese you as an option.

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All right, well, thank youso much. All right, Charles,
you have a good day up therein Cyprus. Thank you you too.
Our phone number is seven one threetwo one two fifty eight seventy four.
Seven one three two one two fiftyeight seventy four. I've got a
hibiscus, the tropical hibiscus, youknow, the gaudy ones with oh my

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gosh, the color is just allover the place beautiful, and it's sitting
in a pot and I'm you know, they say the Cobbert's kids go barefoot.
Well, I need to get homeand actually pot that up. And
I was just thinking about about that, and I've got a big container that
I can put it in, andwhat I need to get a hold of

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some of the nitropost jungle land.Jungle Land is a very good mix for
potting up plants on your patio becauseit has it has good drainage, and
you know that's the key. Ifyou want a plant to grow well in
a pot, you want it todo two things. It seem opposite,
and one is drain well and theother one is hold water well. You
want the access to drain away soit's not water logged, but you want

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it to hold water so the soilstays moist, and jungle Land does that.
It's got a blend of peat.And I've talked about the four sources
of age material, the micro rhizalfungi. That's another that's another important thing
that's in it. There's an indoorversion with the water crystals. But what
I'm needing right now is that outdoorversion to finally get that thing potted.
I don't know, I probably needto get some help in here so I

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can finally get my own yard workdone. But potting up that hibiscus is
a good idea, and jungle landis something I think I'll plan on using
to get that knocked out and outof the way. I love hibiscus.
The hotter it gets, as longas they have moisture there is going to
keep looking good. I mean,they really just thrive in the heat,

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and we just have to watch thatthey don't dry out. That's it's a
number one thing with all our containerplants. They you know, it's it's
so easy to forget to you know, you watered and you got busy,
and then you went out and didsomething, and the next day something unexpected
happened, and all of a sudden, it's been three days and those plants

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are toasty turn into toast out there, and that can happen fast in a
container. So good quality mix isimportant, making sure they're good drainage holes
in your container is important. Butlarge container sizes. I always cringe when
I watch maybe a TV show filmedsome of the more northern part of the
country. Midwest, east coast California, and you see containers that here,

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that is not a big enough containerfor that plant. And if if temperatures
are milder, and I know itcan get up to a hundred degrees in
the Midwest, right but we're talkingabout hot all day all the time,
and then hot all night too.It puts a lot of demands on those
plants, and they have to pumpa lot of water for the evaporative cooling

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in their system to work to keepthem from overheating themselves. And so we
do need to keep them moist.And with a larger volume of soil,
then that plant has more water todraw from, you know, because every
cubic inch of soil is going toonly be able to hold a certain amount
of water. So how many youknow, how many cubic inches or how

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big of a container can you provide? That's the bank account. So you
want a little bank account, doyou want a big bank account? A
big bank account means you don't haveto water three times a day or twice
a day. It's going to beokay. And that's what we're aiming for.
And I mentioned that because you know, everybody intends on water in their
plants. I do, but Ican't tell you how many times I've come

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home and that tomato growing in acontainer is just wilted and it's like water
and it perks back up. Nowmost people would say, well, okay,
chrisis averted. No, not averted. You have ballooms on there that
are going to abort. You havefruit that's going to develop, blossom,
end rot now because you've taken itthrough that wet dry cycle. There's a

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lot of problems that happen. Eventhough we keep the plants alive, we
don't keep them productive and healthy,and so large containers are just important.
That's the easiest way. The otherthing that I've done before is as I
put a drip system in and youcan get these not difficult to put together
with a little timer on it.So there's little tubes running along on the

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ground, or maybe if it's hangingbaskets up on the arbor or something,
there's a tube and a little tubedrops down in your basket. And every
day, maybe once or twice aday, the little sprinkler comes on or
the dripper comes on, and itwets that pot and it's I don't want
to ever say, just plug itin and forget it, because things go

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wrong with anything we plug in,but just check it periodically. But it's
not up to you to remember everyday to take care of those plants.
And so the combination of a largecontainer and some type of a drip system,
it just makes it full proof andyou will see an amazing difference in
results as a result of that.Our phone number is seven one three two

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one two fifty eight seventy four.If you'd like to be on the air,
I would encourage you to give Josha call seven one three two one
two fifty eight seventy four and wewill take your call and see what it
is that we can do to helpyou have success in your garden. That
is why we're here. Charles wastalking about listening back to Dewey Compton days

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and somebody out when I was inSugarland at the Outdoor Living Show yesterday,
somebody was talking to me about youknow, they grew up. They were
a younger person, but they grewup listening when they were with their dad
in the car to Dewey Compton andBill Zac and John Burrows, and of
course the quarter century of Randy Lemon, and it is not lost on me

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the legacy of this show and justwhat this show has been to the greater
Houston community. And I say greaterHouston reaching all the way out to Interstate
thirty five in the Louisiana border ifyou if you want to listen that far
away. That's a long history ofgreat radio and good advice, local advice
for gardeners. And I consider that, I guess soberly thinking about the fact

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that how important that is, wantingto make sure that we continue that tradition
here with garden Line. And partof the tradition with garden Line is I
get to hand the baton to Nikkifor news every time, and here she
is. We're getting close to thetime, aren't we. Oh, we
definitely you are. All right,Well, I'm on the edge of my

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seat waiting to hear what has happenedin Houston, because it's always a surprise
and then sometimes not so much ofit. Well, this involves perhaps drinking
a little bit too much. That'sprobably first time that's happened. Well,

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good Sunday morning, on a goodday for gardening. You're listening to garden
Line. I'm your host, SkipRichter and here's our number. Write this
down, give us a call.Seven one three two one two five eight
seven four seven one three two twofifty eight seventy four. I like to
sort of nerd out on reading abouthorticultural things. It's just something I enjoy.

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I try to not, you know, be insufferable putting out all the
nerd facts that I find fascinating onthe air, But I think it makes
things a little more interesting when youkind of understand the background, and you
know, you go back in timeand you think about how do people deal
with pests before the era of chemicalcontrols. You know, if you go

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back to a round World War two, we got a whole lot of different
chemicals that came into the industry asa result of the chemicals research during the
World Wars, and we received alot of our chemicals at the time.
Some of the almost all the earlyones are now gone for good reasons.
But you go back before that andyou can get into the Middle Ages and
times where they were discovering the heavymetals like arsenic and other things that were

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used for controlling past. You cango all the way back to Egypt,
and sulfur was actually used back thenfungicide and a midacide at that point as
well. And one of the thingsI just ran across the other day is
that the Greeks and Romans used cedarfor repelling insects, and I thought,
well, that is interesting. Itreminded me that nature's creation has a bag

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of cedar repell that's what it's called. It's an insect repellent, and it's
really finally ground up. And thisis the cedar that you see around here,
the eastern red cedar. It's allover the place and it when you
chucked that up in a find willfind particles, so you can spread it
really easily. It really does repelinsects, so you have things like fleas

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and chiggers and mosquitoes and ants andother things. Just spread it out there
and do that. You get alittle a little pile of it around your
barrier. I think that's one ofthe ways they talk about is effective to
keep around your barrier, around yourfoundation, the perimeter maybe perimeter or the
patio or whatever. And insects aren'tit's likely to want to cross over that
crawling through and boy do they everlike to crawl inside our houses now year

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to find cedar repel. I knowour CW has it, plants for all
seasons, Wabash has it, MossFeed Quality Feed has it, and you'll
find it all the Houston garden centersas well. But you might want to
give Nature's creation cedar repel granules atry. I just thought that was an
interesting fact that Greeks and Romans goingback that far, they knew that this
tree had some interesting uses when itcomes to dealing with insects. So a

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little fun fact there for you ongarden Line this morning, our phone number
seven one three two one two fiftyeight seventy four seven one three two and
two fifty eight seventy four. Iwas taking care of some house plants yesterday,
and I have a number of differentones. I'm one of those plant

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collectors that just when there's a newplant I don't have somehow seem to need
to bring it home. And wehave some plants that are doing very well
and some that are not doing aswell. And I was checking the plants
out to see, you know,what's going on with these And when I
potted them up, I used differentpotting media, or they came with different

(24:37):
potting media. I think in mostcases, but the ones I potted up,
I always use a good quality mixfor because when when you are when
you're trying to have success with yourplants, you need to give them,
you know, the best soil thatyou can find for. I mean,
we talk about a number of goodquality potting soils here, but I thought
it was interesting that the one plantthat always is wilting first of all of

(25:00):
them is a potting mix. It'salmost all peat, almost all Pete,
and I know Randy talked about notcaring for Pete, and Pete has some
characteristics that I don't really like.One of them is a shrinks and swells
more and it'll pull away from thesides of the pot a little more than
some of our other options in ablend. But it just seems to wick

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and pump dry faster. And Ineed to take that plant and you know,
kind of with my fingers, scratchaway some of the exterior soil on
it, move it up to alittle bigger pot, and give it a
better mix, uh, and sothat it's a little more resilient, because
if it's dependent on me to rememberto water it more often than I'm doing
the others well, Eventually that's goingto catch up to me, because you

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know how that goes the best intentions, it don't always always get to happen.
But when when you're purchasing soils.A group was kind of grilling me
on some soils a few days agowhen I was giving a talk, and
and basically I could tell what theywere wanting me to say is what's the
cheapest, cheapest soil that I canplay? You know, use that's good.
And I was trying to say,if you've got something called potting soil

(26:08):
that has wood chips in it,that is not a good idea. That
is a cheap soil. It isIt is not, you know, inexpensive
and cheap, thinking of them astwo different words. Don't waste your money
on cheap stuff, by a qualitystuff, because these are these are plants
you want to enjoy. And youpaid for the plant, you paid for
the pot Why not pay a littlebit for the soil so you can have

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success? And that's really important.Well, I'm gonna quit droning on here.
We're gonna go and talk to Paulout in the Woodlands. Hello,
Paul, good morning, World's goodskip. I get a question about my
mignolia trees. I got a fewnice sized magnolia trees there, and from

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the ground up to where most ofthe foliages, I'm starting to get shoots,
which will we saw on them outof the trunk, and I'm just
swoggling. Should I be clipping thoseoff or should I be leaving those?
Yeah? These are the southern magnolia. That's an evergreen, not the one
that blooms on bare stems in thelight winter. Oh yes, the big

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dig evergreen. Okay, uh,well, that's just the tree, you
know, re sprouting, And Iwould I wouldn't work about clipping them off.
I'd let the tree do what it'sgonna do. Uh. Now,
if you wanted to have a trunkon it where you have no branches down
low, you could do that.But I think magnolias are beautiful when if
you will, the skirt goes allthe way to the ground. You know

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that that phono? Yeah, itwas just curious if it would help or
look better if those were well yeah, yeah, Paula, I can't see
the tree, so you know,if I saw it, a may go
oh I see. You know,maybe you'd do this or that, But
in general, Magnolia's just don't needa lot of pruning, and we don't
we don't want to get in amess with it too much if we don't

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have two Thanks for thank you,all right, thank you for the call.
I appreciate that. Our phone numberis seven one three two one two
fifty eight seventy four. Seven onethree two one two fifty eight seventy four.
You know, if you are lookingfor a one stop shop for all
kinds of things that you need forthe home and garden, that would be
Ace Hardware. And you can goto Ace Hardware dot com and find one

(28:25):
of the thirty nine locally owned andoperated Ace Hardware stores here in the Houston
area. And they're I mean they'reeverywhere. There's thirty nine of them.
Were crying out loud. Ace Hardwarecarries all the products we talk about here.
That's part of the deal with Ace. They care about what we're talking
about, and they make sure andget those in and so you can walk
in and have confidence that not justthe things I talk about, but a

(28:48):
whole lot of other products that wedon't have time to even get to,
you're going to find on the shelfthere at Ace Hardware and you're going to
find people that are trained, peoplethat are friendly, and people that are
let's say proactive, you know,walk up and ask you what do you
need? How can I help you? That is ACE Hardware, Ace hardware
dot Com find the store near you. I saw miles of jacks, all

(29:15):
the stars up in the sky.I saw mile mile Well, good morning
on a good Sunday morning to betalking about gardening and soon to be getting
outside here this afternoon, get alittle bit of gardening done. When you're
out there, you want to makesure if you haven't fertilize your lawn yet,

(29:36):
lawn yet, you need to getthat done. We've got a long
summer coming. And when you fertilize, you want to use something that's going
to release the nutrient gradually over timeto avoid that flush of growth and you
know, followed by a you knowthat you're you're mowing lot crazy because you've
overdone the nitrogen and then it kindof dies down again and you have to
fertilize again. You want to spreadthat out, even that out, and
one way you can do that iswith Microlife fertilizers. Microlife is is number

(30:00):
one or again excelling fertilizer here inthe Houston area and with Microlife, you
know, we talk about the sixtyfour bag, the green bag, that's
a main one you want to havethat's excellent for using on your lawn.
But it's not just that it hasthe three numbers nitrogen, phosphorus, and
potassium. We're talking to over onehundred minerals. When you apply Microlife,
you are applying all the micros andstuff that plants need to grow and to

(30:22):
live. And Microlife is available allover town. There's the you can go
go to Microlife Fertilizer dot com andif you go there you can find all
the locations for you. And whenyou buy the green bag, also at
this time of the year, goahead and buy the purple bag. That's
the humates plus concentrated compost in abag. Put those two on together for
that one two package. That willreally set your lawn up for a good

(30:47):
long summer of healthy growth and beauty, which is kind of why we have
our lawn so we can get outthere and enjoy those lawns. Our phone
number is seven one three two onetwo fifty eight seventy four seven one three
two one two fifty eight seventy four. Give us a call. We'll talk
about stuff that you are interested in. In the meantime, I'm gonna talk

(31:11):
about some things that I am interestedin. I have been wanting to get
a citrus tree and to get itplanted in the yard because I just I
love set personally. I like satsumas. Now it's cool to have you know,
the key lime or or you knowthe Mexican lime. It's cool to
have myer lemons. And I meanthere's a lots of different kinds of citrus

(31:33):
to plant. I'm just kind ofpartial towards satsumas. I love those.
Uh when I plan them up incollege station up there, you know,
you need something a little more coldhearty, and the satsuma accomplishes that.
But this last winter was kind ofhard on our on our citrus. I've
talked to a number of people whowho had a pretty severe killed back on
their on their citrus plants, andit's because December hit unexpectedly, unexpectedly,

(32:00):
let's say this, by the plantsthey were living the life O'Reilly. They
hadn't slowed the growth to the pointthey needed to to get as much heartiness
as that particular citrus could have andso December comes in with a hard freeze
and it just caught them unprepared andit did a lot of damage. And
some of you may may be alsowanting to get a citrus to restock.

(32:21):
I was looking the other day online. I always follow, you know,
our independent garden centers their Facebook pagesand Instagram pages, and you should too,
But I noticed that Buchanans is gettingin new citrus plants, or they
have gotten in new citrus. Ithink they've got They've got the dwarf lemon,
naval oranges, even Calamandan Persian limeand others like that, and they
will that if you don't delay andget over there, you can you can

(32:45):
get you one. No Buchanons,I know you guys are familiarhe it.
It's in the Heights on East eleventhStreet. But if if you just want
to check it out, go toBuchanans Plants dot com. You can find
out exactly where they're located, andyou can also sign up for their newsletter
and follow them on social media aswell. But Buchanans does have that citrus
in so now would be a goodtime to do that. And hey,

(33:07):
when you're there, why not justpick up a bag of Microlifes. They
have a citrus and fruit granular fertilizer. Just have a two one punch,
take it home and get your plantsset up for a good season. I'll
tell you what. When the fall, late fall and season comes and my
satsumas or a satsuma is ripening,there's nothing like it. And if you

(33:30):
if you're not grown citrus before,even if you don't care about the fruit,
the blooms are amazing. The fragranceon a citrus bloom, it's like
gardinia. It's one of those It'sone of those plants that just wafts through
the air and just a wonderful fragrance. I love I love citrus. Winth

(33:51):
that that in and of itself isenough reason to grow a citrus. Our
phone number seven one three two onetwo fifty eight seventy four, and let's
go out to League City and we'regoing to visit with Rick Well. Hello,
Rick Skip, thanks for taking mycall. I have a quick question.
I have a flower bed in mybackyard that is fairly fairly small,
but it's had foxtail ferns in itfor a number of years and I decided

(34:15):
I want to make a change,and so I have dug them out.
But in the soil there is allthose tubular roots and nodules that are still
in there. And is there anythingI can or should apply to that to
make sure those those foxtails will comeback up? Nothing to apply. A
lot of that will not reach sprout. Some of it is just storage and

(34:37):
it's not going to reach sprout something. You may get some more sprouts here
and there, but I think Iwould watch it and if you see some
things coming up, just dig themup because there's not going to be a
good Put this on the soil andit'll prevent them from coming up with a
foxtail fern. Okay, great,So so I can just get what I
can out and then replan and Ishould be okay, yeah, I think

(35:00):
so. You know the I actuallylike foxtails. It was at the cold
heartiness problem that's kind of making youwant to go in a different direction.
No, it was actually just timefor a change. I did replant them
in another another part of the yard, okay, but this particular area I
would like some color and it's adifferent color, and so I wanted it
to make a change. Yeah,that's a good that's a good idea,

(35:22):
a good reason. Well that hopefullythat'll get you going. I they're not
that hard to pop them up ifyou miss something, but you may find
that you got most of it whenyou've done. Okay, all right,
okay, great, Thanks very much, Hey Rick, thanks for the call.
Appreciate that our phone number seven onethree two one two fifty eight seventy

(35:42):
four two and two fifty eight seventyfour. We're gonna hit the break here
in a little bit for the hour, get the news and everything in here.
So if you'd like to give usa call and get on the board,
go ahead and do that. Ifyou are having trouble with your lawn,
maybe last summer's drought hit it,call patch is in it compaction issues
with the lawn, You need tocall Greenpro and have them come out and

(36:07):
do a core aeration. That meanspopping the plugs of soil out of the
soil and dropping them on the surface. That is the way to properly core
aerture lawn. Just to have somethingthat just squeezes a hole in the soils,
compacting the sides of the hole.No, you want a core aerator
that pops that hole out and afollow that with a quality leaf mold compost

(36:30):
stop dressing. And the folks atGreenpro they know how to get a finely
ground leaf mold compost top quality sothat it falls down in those aeration holes.
And now you've got oxygen for theplant roots. Now you've got organic
matter in their decomposing and the microbialactivity that goes along with that. Greenpro's
been in business for nearly fifteen years. They are the experts and getting it

(36:52):
done. You can go to greenProtexas dot com or just call them two
eight one three five one four seventhree three. This is a you know,
it's a time when we really needto be taking care of our lawns
and getting getting them ready for summer, and that's easy to do. I

(37:13):
was visiting the other day when wasout at Arburgate for an appearance I did
out there. I was visiting withthem about their one two three easy system,
and I love that combination it ismakes it makes it easy because they're
going to give you a food thatis essentially it's a fertilizer that feeds anything
with roots. They're going to giveyou a soil that fits any application,
and then they're going to give youa compost that is going to improve your

(37:34):
soil. Now you can go toArburgate dot com. If you've never been
there, you can find out howto get there. It's one and a
half miles west of two forty nineon twenty nine twenty out in Tomball.
But while you're there, check outthe plants, check out the art and
the garden. Check out the gifts. If you want to earthkine rows,
they carry fruit trees year round.It will be it would be a very
nice outing for this afternoon to stopby Arbourgate arburgate dot com. But ask

(37:58):
them about their one two three completelyeasy system. I think that is a
really novel creative way to kind ofput in one package pretty much everything that
you're going to need to have successwith your plants. Well, you're listening
to garden Line and I am yourhost, Skip Richter, and we're here
to talk to you about things thatyou're interested in. We're about to take
a little break here, but giveJosh a call at seven one three two

(38:21):
one two fifty eight seventy four.He will get you on the board and
we will talk about what you're interestedin talking about when we come back.
I just want to remind you nextSaturday, I'm going to be at Wilbird's
Unlimited in clear Lake from eleven thirtyto one thirty. Wilbird's Unlimited in clear
Lake. It's one of the miniWahbirds store here in the Greater Houston area.

(38:45):
This is one of the newer storesthat's opened up out there. I'll
be there for two hours to answeryour gardening questions. I love going to
a Wildbird. I love any excuseto go to Wildbirds because the products they
have it's just amazing. Even booksinteresting, you know, books about birds.
Maybe you just care about hummingbirds,or maybe you just want to bring

(39:06):
songbirds into the yard, or maybeyou're you know, looking at watering or
feeding birds. They got it all. See you next Saturday out there.
I hope KTRH Garden Line does notnecessarily endorse any of the products or services
advertised on this program. Welcome toKTRH Garden Line with Skip Rictord. Just

(39:34):
watch him as wood Well. Goodmorning, good Sunday morning, and a
good day to be learning about gardening, talking about gardening, and hopefully this
afternoon doing a little bit of gardening. You enjoy getting outside, I enjoying

(40:00):
the weather and just the I don'tknow, the fresh air. I've talked
about the brazilion benefits of gardening manytimes and will many times more. But
you know, it's it's even true. And I just find this to be
an amazing fact that there are microbesin the soil that affect our serotonin level.
Serotonin's all feel good chemical. Andso you know, those of you

(40:22):
who grew up playing in the dirt, well, that's why you're that's why
you're happy, I guess, oryou work back then at least as one
of the many reasons enjoying, enjoyingthat just experience of being out and being
out in nature, and it's it'sa nice time. You just gotta get
hot this summer, I know,but hey, there's a lot of gardening

(40:43):
to be done when it gets hottoo. So don't don't let that,
don't let that scare you away.If you live up in the Montgomery area
and you haven't been out to Aand A plants and produce, you you
really you really need to give thema try. They just had a little
hands on project as part of thechildren's workshop at the Garden Center. They're
in Montgomery, by the way,They're just on the east side of Montgomery
on one oh five, So everybodyup in the Lake Conro area, there

(41:05):
your backyard nursery right there. Butthey're gonna have another workshop, I believe,
in two more weeks. But lookingat the pictures of the little kids
that we're having fun, having funmaking seed balls. You know, it's
these little little soil balls that youpress seed into and so the kids can
just chunk them out there and havethings come up. That's kind of things
that they do out there. Imean, they've got a great selection.
You're going to find all the productsthat we talk about out at Ana.

(41:30):
They just you know, everything youcan imagine, and not just plants,
but all the products for your plantsand all the kind of bling you need
for your landscape. And by theway, they're open seven days a week,
nine to five. So that's agood trip for this afternoon out to
Ana Plants and Produce in Montgomery.We're gonna talk about I'm gonna talking a
little bit more about lawns this morning. But yesterday when I was out at

(41:57):
the hom and Garden show in Sugarland, Home and Outdoor Living show had a
number of folks, and thanks foreverybody that came out. By the way,
I really enjoyed visiting with you.Oh my gosh, you guys had
questions. I think I answered morequestions that day out at the Home and
Garden Show than I did in twomonths on the air here on a garden
line. These guys are filled withquestions. But a lot of people are

(42:20):
asking questions about the lawns and lawnweeds and dealing with lawn weeds and things
like that. And I mentioned earlierthat if you're going to do a broad
leaf weed control, you need toget that done because it is time.
It's going to get too hot.We're going to hit the mid eighties oper
eighties this week, probably hitting upto ninety before too many days ahead,
and so we don't want to waitany longer or you'll stress your grass out

(42:42):
with that broad leaf weed control application. But what you can do is you
can put down a pre emergent,and a pre emergent is one of the
most efficient ways to control weeds becauseit prevents them from ever coming up in
the first place and getting established.And barricade is that kind of product Nitrofoss
barricade. Nitrofoss's barricade is gonna stopgrassy weeds and broad leaf weeds that are

(43:07):
coming up from seed in your lawn. And one bag, a ten pound
bag is going to cover five thousandsquare feet, so it goes a long
way. And you know up ind D feeding tomball plants and things in
Brennam k and m A sutting kingwith those, those places all have barricade
products, as does plantation ace anduh you know there there's just there's just
so many opportunities. J and rsAce. By the way, importers another

(43:30):
good example. Barricade ahead of time, follow the label carefully, but before
the weeds are up, give getput that down and create that protective material
in the surface of the soil thatshuts down weeds as they try to get
started and you never see the weedto begin with. And that that's an
efficient way to get to get thatdone. I you know, I'm amazed.

(43:52):
I know we love our lawns,we love our trees and flowers and
vegetables, but we really are anation of lawn rangers. We love to
have a beautiful, beautiful, wellattended lawn and you know, the idea
of how do I make it thateven green carpet that just looks good all

(44:13):
the time. That's kind of whatwe're after, and that's what we talk
about here, and we give youyou'll hear me and I'll be a broken
record on this, but it startswith cultural meaning. You gotta water adequately
with a good deek soaking on aninfrequent basis. You want to mow regularly
with a sharp mower for Saint Augustine, don't cut it lower than three inches.

(44:34):
I keep mind at three and ahalf and sometimes in shade even a
little higher than that, because thosegrass blades are the solar panels, and
the shorter you cut it in shade, the less sun from that limited light
under the shade, the lust isas able to absorb and take in.
So a longer solar panel, longergrass plate is good. And then finally
fertilizing, you know, putting thenutrients out to give it the boost that

(44:57):
it needs to support healthy growth.That's that's pretty important in fact, talking
about lawns. That's a let's headout to Cyprus. We're gonna talk to
Sandy this morning. Good morning,Sandy, I skip, Thanks to talking
about lawns because it made me remembermy question. So I had some oak
treese in my point yard that wewere removed because it was keeping my yard

(45:17):
too shady and my grass was dying. And we removed about four oak trees
and we have four left in thefront yard. And um where they removed
it from, and they removed thestump out. It's dip. It dips
down like there, even though it'sgrass has grown over it. But what

(45:38):
can I do to um that thedips, you know, the little hilly
they're like and I can't tell whereit steeps down and where it goes up,
yeah, because until I step overit. Because it's okay, so
these are small ups and downs.This isn't like a ten foot wide low

(45:58):
spot. Um No, it's justfrom the removal of the cheese trunk,
okay, and where the branches inthe inside under the ground branched out of
these up cheets. Okay, Okay, Well what you just you just have
to figure out where the low spotsare. Maybe walking on it is one

(46:19):
way you tell. But I woulduse a soil a top soil quality mix
on that. Normally we top dresswith composts, but what we're not.
What we're trying to do is changethe soil level in the lawn so it's
even and so you can just spreada good qualities sandy loam top soiltop mix
out over your lawn in those lowareas. What I do, uh sandy

(46:40):
is I use a rake, thekind that you would rake soil with,
not a leaf rake, but thestiff times and turn it upside down so
the times you're pointing up and thenit's like you're playing shuffleboard on the lawn.
You have all these little piles ofsoil where you've dumped a little soil
here and there where you felt there'sa low spot, and you just use
a rake to smooth it out andit gets you a nice even finish,

(47:02):
and that'll settle in and maintain agood level. And then of course top
dressing is good later, but thattop dress is composting. It decomposes a
way, so if you're using thatto fill a hole, the hole's just
going to sink back down again.That's why I like the soil for the
situation you're asking about. Okay,okay, so good top soil, Yeah,
good quality top soil that ought toget you going. I appreciate you

(47:25):
giving us a call. Yeah verymuch our phone number seven one, three,
two and two fifty eight seventy four. Be with you right after break.
Well, good Sunday morning, goodday for talking about gardening, and

(47:51):
a good day for gardening. That'sa good day for shopping for gardening.
Two this afternoon, we are enjoyingourselves today talking about all kinds of things.
And we are now going to shifttopics a little bit. Head out
to League City and visit with JohnV. Hello John V. Good morning,
Good morning, Skip and everybody,and garden talk. I would like

(48:12):
to ask a question about mangoes.Okay, how can we growing them?
And yes, I'm growing them?What are their seasons? And um,
how to maintain? And I thinka lot of the things that you've just
told us about the citrus and Ilistened to so I wrote everything down in

(48:35):
my um in my notebook. Ohgood. Yeah, Well, mangoes are
a bit of a challenge because they'rea little more cold hearty, you know,
than than some of the citrus evenare. But you can people get
them to grow here. You justhave to go to great links. When
we're gonna have a real good coldspell. But I love, in fact,
mango. I think mango and peachare probably my two favorite fruits to

(48:55):
eat. But they the mango fruitit takes oh, I don't know,
maybe three to four or five monthsto fully develop it. You know,
from the time it blooms until thetime it harvests. Harvests. H They're
not that difficult to grow. It'sjust primarily it's going to be the cold

(49:16):
protecting them from the cold. Soin what you fertilize them with the things
you fertilize other fruit trees with.You give them good drainage like other fruit
trees, you give them good sunlightlike other fruit trees, and they do
really well. I thought, soundswonderful. I'm thinking about planning it in
the center of the backyard because mymother, I love her to pieces.

(49:37):
I call her the Maagnelia tree Murderbecause she chopped down on vagnelia tree.
No, oh, my gosh,she did, and I told her I
didn't want it. I didn't wantto let it go, and she let
it go. So I was like, well, we're gonna have to spot
to replacement. Yeah, yeah,that's right. Well, wherever you put
it, go ahead and start planningfor how you're going to protect it.
You know, maybe maybe maybe it'sa bunch of lar PVCs that are put

(50:00):
together into like a tinker toy boxthat you can cover and the kind of
heat you're gonna need to get underit, because the last thing you want
to do is go to all thattrouble and then have a coal take it
away from you. That's right.And then um, they get pretty tall,
have by these five ten I meanten twenty? Yeah, they well,
in time, they can, youknow, and if you go to

(50:22):
where they're not going to be frozendown and everything they are going to be,
they're gonna be um pretty large.But you can do some proning to
keep them a little smaller. Soa lot of people will plan them,
you know, within eight to tenfeet of the south side of a house,
for example. That's one thing.Are the booms of the mango Yeah,
that's a good question. I havenot had a mango tree in my

(50:45):
yard. I've seen people grown mangoes. Oh my gosh, I need to
check that out. Maybe someone elsecan call in that knows I've that is
I'm drawn a blank, I mean, but oh I'll look it up.
Don't you worry skips. Okay,thank you. You have a wonderful Sunday,
all of you. Yeah you two, John V. Thank you,

(51:07):
thank you very much for the call. I was talking about. Fertilized the
law and earlier. The folks atNelson Dean and they have put together the
turf Star line, which is justa group of a half dozen outstanding products
for your lawn. And my favoritefor this time of the year is Slow
and Easy, the twenty two twoten Slow and Easy. It's it's the

(51:30):
kind of thing that gradually feeds overthe summer, which is what we're talking
about being important. That avoids alot of the issues we have with shallow
rooting, of with having to mowtoo much, with the disease or insect
problems being exacerbated for the for thefancy word by excessive succulent growth rates,
and Slow and Easy will do justthat. Nelson's they have a number of

(51:52):
products. I always like the Brucesbrewis year round eighteen four nine. It's
a good a good fertilizer. Butmy number one recommendation for the summer would
be to either use a Slow andEasy which will gradually feed, or to
take a Bruis's brew and divide itup into two or three applications, spread
it out not the same, notthe full amount each time. But but

(52:12):
do you create a slower release byyou fertilizing in small amounts. That's a
lot of trouble. So I wouldjust say go with the slow and easy
twenty two two ten. And you'regoing to find nice fish products everywhere around
town. But if you're down let'ssay you're down in southwest part of town
near brass beIN State Park, seena plantation, Quell Valley, Manville,

(52:32):
Meridian, First Colony, all throughthat area, you need to go to
see on a mulch because they carryNelson's. They carry a wide variety of
products that we talk about here.But they also while you're there, you
can grab the molts, the bagsof molts, the bags that compost.
If you want it in bulk andit's nearby, they can deliver within an
area around there, and of coursethere's always a delivery fee when anybody producing

(52:57):
a moltch is going to bring itout to you. But that's a very
nice convenience and they have all thoseproducts that you need. Uh go to
Cienamals Dot com CNA malch si ENNA, cnamals dot com uh and they
are open Monday through Friday seven thirtyto five thirty, Saturday seven thirty to
two thirty. Close today, butthey'll be back open Monday morning. Either

(53:20):
swing by there and grab your productsor give them a call and have something
delivered. We um are going tohead out to the Spring Branch area now
and we're going to talk to HurtWell, good morning, Hurta. Are
you there. Well, we'll putyou back on hold and we'll see if

(53:40):
we can we can get hurt tolive back here again. When when we're
trying to when we're trying to achievethat state of the art landscape, the
landscape that is just you know,it's a show place. You're you're proud
for people to drive by and seeyour house. You love for people to

(54:00):
come visit and go sit in thebackyard with you and hang out. That
kind of landscape comes because people plan, They plan ahead. They choose their
plants that are going to do wellhere and be established here. They and
by the way, they go toa retail garden center that's going to sell
them stuff that does well here.Not one of these national chain places that

(54:23):
just ships plants to all over theplace, and in a lot of places
they should never be planted there.They just it's not a horticulturally driven decision.
It's a whole different world. Yougo to an independent garden center and
they're going to give you things thatour horticulturally sound advice are going to give
you horticulturally adapted plants for our region. And that's just important, and so

(54:47):
setting things up that way will helpyou have success. It always breaks my
heart to get a call or totalk to somebody with an email and they're
talking about this plan and they didit, and they put this on and
we're a couple of years in andI've just got to break the news that
look, just dig it up itis. You know, it is never
going to do well here. Iknow they told you that lilac would grow

(55:08):
further south than others, but notthis far south. For example, you
may love the yellow Forsythia blooms whereyou came from, but not here.
They're not going to make it here. So get plants that will do well
for you here. And that's whywe're always talking about our good mom and
pops all through the Greater Houston areathat provide that kind of thing. By

(55:29):
the way, it is with allthe rain we were having. Remember it
doesn't take mosquitoes very long to gothrough their life cycle, and here we
got a whole new crop. Sothat wonderful sitting out on the patio I
was talking about. Now you're swattingthings as they fly around, you're irritating,
you're trying to enjoy your time.Well, Mosquito dunks is a way
to get rid of that. Mosquitodunks there's still a small paige donut and

(55:52):
you just toss them out there.They float on the standing water. They
dissolve for about a month. You'regoing to get good control of your mosquito
in a very natural way. Bythe way, they're safe if your pets
go up and drink the water,if you've got birds that are coming up
and drinking the water, and soon. Mosquito dunks are organic product that
will last about thirty days and willcontrol any mosquito larva that hatch from eggs

(56:16):
in that little body of water.Now you're gonna find them. Of course,
our Ace hardware stores carrying mosquito dunks. Almost all the independent nurseries.
You're going to have them, andall those feed stores we love to talk
about, they're going to have them. But mosquito dunks is just the simplest
way to deal with a body ofwater. You can't drain that. You
don't want to raise a new cropof mosquitoes in. We're gonna go now

(56:37):
to spring branch. I think we'regoing to give another try here. Hey,
Hurda, do we have you back? Yes? You do, Thank
you, you beat. How canwe help? Well? I bought some
blue plumbago, and I want toknow all about planning them. I want
to do everything right, all right, right now I can plant now what

(57:04):
is it that you're wanting to plant? Blue plumbago? Three of them?
Yes, okay, you can plantthem now. Blue plumbago. You just
want to in the coming weeks.You want to give it small amounts of
water to keep that little rootball thatyou put in the ground, to keep
it moist. All right, it'sgonna get its roots spread out really well,

(57:25):
and it is amazingly drought tolerant onceit is well established. So give
it some TLC for a month ortwo here, and I think you're going
to be really pleased with that's agreat plant, okay, And I have
another question I have. I callit the parent azaa. They're about fi

(57:47):
stems at least half an inch indiameter, but the lead are brown on
one stem and they're kind of yarrowishon another. Um, What do I
do about that? And you saidit wasn't azalea, right, yeah,

(58:08):
okay, Uh, something's wrong inthe soil. Maybe it dried out a
little too much. Maybe the drainageisn't good and it's staying saggy at Maybe
you used a salt based fertilizer alittle too strong and it burned some roots.
That's probably the most unlikely of theoptions. But something's wrong underground,

(58:29):
and it's just that's why it's notlooking good above ground. So I would
just you know, reach down kindof feel the soil on that side of
the plants, see see what youfind there. Is it moist or not
watered accordingly? And then I wouldgive them a boost of a fertilizer for
acidic loving plants. We got agood number of plants like Camellias azalia's blueberries
that need an acid fertilizer, andI would give them a boost of that

(58:52):
and try to get some more vigorin those azalias. All right, all
right, oh, thank you somuch, Skip, Thank you well,
you're you're very kind. Thank youheard. I appreciate that call. Uh.
You know, I always talking aboutliking our feed stores. If you're
on the east side of town.We're talking about out in Mont Bellevue or
even down in Baytown because they're justminutes from Baytown. The Texas Feedstop is

(59:15):
that complete feed store. Brian andHope Rhodes have created that thing that you
would expect from the old time feedstore. They carry their bags out for
you that you know, they knowtheir customers. You're like family there.
They're on North Highway one forty sixin Mont Bellevue, just north of I
ten, just a little bit ofnorth of I ten Highway one forty six,

(59:37):
and you're going to find all theproducts there, all the fertilizers that
we talk about, the mosquito dunksI was just talking about, You're going
to find them there at Texas Feedstop. So go buy, say hello to
Brian and Hope there and just getto know them because, like I said,
your family out there, and that'show they treat their customers. And
that's what makes it such a pleasureto go back to and to u go

(01:00:00):
back again and again. You know, you kind of get to know somebody.
It's like you're an old friend.You can trust what they say,
you can trust with the products thatthey point you to. Texas feed Stop
is just I love it when Igo out there. Just a real pleasure
to be out in that area.Well, speaking of real pleasure, here
comes news with Nikki. Is thatright? News? Can we go there?

(01:00:21):
Nicks Network? That's the NNN jumpback. Well, good morning on

(01:00:46):
a good Sunday morning for gardening,for talking about gardening. This afternoon,
good time to get out and dosome gardening. You know, we talk
about a lot of different groups,organizations and things like that here on Garden
Line, but that there's one thatreally hits close to home for me and
that Star of Hope Mission. Decadesago, my wife and I volunteered at

(01:01:08):
Star Hope with the church we areat at the time, and it has
changed so much. I visited acouple of months ago, I believe at
the new facilities, some of thenew facilities they have, it is amazing.
I mean, they serve Harris FortBenbersoria, Montgomery Counties. It will
change, It will change the wayyou see homelessness. To understand the ministries

(01:01:31):
and outreach of Star of Hope.They have a Love and Action van that
goes to the streets to offer peopleprayer, shelter, recovery programs, a
chance at a brighter future. Theyhave a place where homeless men, women
and children can stay for up toa year while they focus on life changing
programs, getting educated, getting anemployment, learning how to get a job,

(01:01:53):
recovering from substance abuse, whatever they'redealing with. At that place,
it's a safe places place where theyget meals and clothing and training. Sure
there's rules that's necessary in order tooperate something successful like that, but an
amazing community that gives people that.You know, it's often been said where

(01:02:14):
many of us are like a paycheckor two away from being in a similar
spot. And that may not strikeyou, but I'll tell you this,
when you see the face of homelessness, it may be a mom that for
no fault of our own, isnow trying to stay alive, keeping her
living in a car with their kids. It would be someone who is wanting
was once successful and has fallen onhard times and is looking for a way

(01:02:36):
to get their feetback under them.That little hand out at the corner,
somebody holding the sign up. Idon't want to go into that too far,
but let me just say this,if you want to give a few
bucks and make a difference, thedifferences by putting that kind of money into
a place like Star of Hope,where we don't just hand them food for
a day, where we train them, where we set them off for a

(01:02:58):
successful life. And you can volunteeror star by the way, go to
shmission dot org for more information.Oh mission dot org. For two dollars
and eighty cents the cost of afancy cup of coffee, you can you
can provide somebody with a meal.They have volunteer opportunities. They need people
to help with everything from helping withmeals to just writing encouraging notes. This

(01:03:19):
is a great way to make adifference in somebody's life. So let's take
that compassion that we all have andlet's put it into practice in a way
that really truly brings hope and change, and that that is with starvoph Mission
dot org. I'm going to headout now to Spring Branch and we're going
to talk to Richard. Good morning, Richard, good morning. How can

(01:03:43):
we help today? Well, thisis not it's help for information, is
what it is. I was ata popular nursery the other day and they
sail in lonely Pine, and peopleought to be aware that it's not like
the regular pines around here and there. It needs certain conditions. It goes

(01:04:10):
in sand or sandy long and ithas a tap root. Most places don't
think that pines have tap roots,but this particular pine does. Well.
A lot of pine trees haven't taproot. Yeah, that's right, right,
So if if you planet, thenit's real slow growing and people need
to understand that because other pines goreal fast, but it goes real slow.

(01:04:35):
Yeah, we have a we havea number of good pines for hearing.
You know, they each have theirpros and cons. But I appreciate
that that information. Richard. Didyou have a question to go with the
call? Uh? No, Idid have another piece of information. Most
people think that Houston has old claysoil, but in north of O ten

(01:04:58):
there's a lot of s andy loampocket that is true, that's right.
So if they need to make surethat there's I believe to grow pine tree
with a tap root, they needto make sure that they have sandy loams.
Saw it all right, Richard,Well, I appreciate that information.
Yeah, we do have a varietyof types of soil around here. The

(01:05:19):
predominance through the Gulf Coast. Wehad a lot of that Houston black clay.
They even named it after us.That's the official name of the sail
type. But as you get upin the piny woods, got some wonderful
sandy loams. And it just variesany area you live in. You know,
it may be mostly clay, butyou may have pockets of sand.
And just check your sword before youmake assumptions. It's a good, good

(01:05:41):
idea. You know, you hearme talk about ACE Hardware on this show,
and it's because I just am amazedat the way they have preserved the
old time hardware. Qualities of staffthat know what they're talking about, that
greet you, that take you tothe products you need, that it advise
you, that help you with yourproject, and that includes having the gardening

(01:06:04):
products that we need. And theycarry the stuff we talk about here.
I mentioned that before, but ifyou've not been in an ACE Hardware I
would just ask you, do mea favorite, go in one and just
see what I'm talking about. There'sthirty nine of them around here. You
can go to ACE Hardware dot Comyou can find a one near you.
But you would be amazed. Imean, it's not your daddy's hardware store,

(01:06:27):
although they treat you like it is. But when you walk in there,
the products that they have, thevariety of products that they have for
the home beyond just home and garden, I mean for the home, and
it's just amazing. Ace Hardware dotCom. Check them out. I promise
you won't be disappointed. You'll beamazed like I was when I first walked
in to the new modern Ace andthe quality stores we have in our group

(01:06:51):
of thirty nine hardware stores here inthe Houston area. This is this is
a good time of the year tobe getting ready for the summer garden.
And that means that means that weare going to be planting the vegetables that
do well in summer. It meanswe're planting the flowers that do well in
summer. And we're gonna take abreak here. But when I come back
from break, I am going totalk to you about some of those things.

(01:07:15):
In the meantime, write down thenumber and give us a call seven
one three two one two fifty eightseventy four. Josh, you'll get you
on the board and we'll talk toyou about what you're interested in. We'll

(01:07:36):
get Sunday morning watching the skies brightenup a little bit as we get a
little bit more light in here.You can see around everything. It's kind
of nice now, you know.The weather is just so awesome these next
few days. We I think we'reprobably in the next three or four days,
you know, maybe upper eighties atthe most, mid eighties, upper

(01:07:57):
eighties somewhere in there. That boy, that's that's great weather. Good good
time to get out and get somework done out in the garden. By
the way, if you live ifyou live in down you know, kind
of in the north central part ofthe interior part of Houston. If you
house that for a description you needto know about Quality Feed Company, Quality
Feed and Garden Quality Feedco dot com. Go to Quality Feedco dot com and

(01:08:21):
Ken and Cress. This place.It's been going on since well, actually
the store itself since nineteen twenty eight. They've owned it for like thirty two
years now. They carry all theproducts we talk about when you hear me
mention a fertilizer or mulchis and things, they have it. And they even
have some of their own kind ofproducts, like Ken makes his own potting
soil there and that they sell thereeverything you'd expect from feed store. Certainly

(01:08:44):
they get chickens in all the timethere and so if you're intesting backyard chickens
and the products to go with them, they're going to have it all so
you can get the complete setup.They're at Quality feed Now. They're open
today from eleven thirty to four pm, so it's a good time to go
buy now. If you went tothe old location like I used to go,
you're gonna need to know. Thenew location is at eighteen thirteen Luzon

(01:09:04):
Street, which is near the intersectionof Equipment and Alesion. So Quality feedcode
dot com check them out. It'sone of those cool old time feed stores.
But wow, you will be impressedby the products and even by the
bones eye and other plants that theyhave there for sale. We're gonna take
some time to go out now toOatesbury and talk to Lee. Good morning,

(01:09:29):
Lee, how are you this morning? I'm doing fine, doing fine.
Uh, skip us wondering I haveseveral contrees that I would like to
see if I could get some consproduced out of them. How I go
about that? How old are thesetrees are? How big are they?
They're pretty old, several several yearsold. So if you went up to

(01:09:56):
the trunk and gave it a hug, about how far how far across that
t punk is it? You know? At chest high? Are we looking
at an eight inch trunk? Atwelve inch trunk or what it might be
about twelve inch trunk maybe a littlebit larger? Okay, good? Probably
at this point, don't know whatthe varieties are, right, No,
I don't know what kind they are. They just volunteered, Okay, and

(01:10:20):
do they ever produce for you?I have seen some green ones pop up,
but then when I opened them upto the shelves, who not,
they're not very good? Okay,well, pecans, it's our state tree.
I mean, there's no question thatwe beloved. They are beloved here

(01:10:41):
in Texas. However, when westart kind of bringing them into landscape type
situations and whatnot, they're a challengeand even out in a pasture. Uh,
you've when a pecan comes up fromseed, it's genetically different than any
other pecan, just like people areall individually different from each other, and

(01:11:02):
so it may be more susceptible todisease, which means every year you've got
a problem with that. It mayhave issues with branch structure and tendency to
break branches. It's going to varyin terms of does it produce pollen or
nutlets first, and so it's kindof a mixed bag. When you describe
having a pecan and you open itup and it's nothing inside, it's black

(01:11:25):
inside or dried up inside, thatis probably because something has killed the shuck
tissues. There are diseases that affectthe leaves, and there are diseases that
affect that green shuck. And interestinglyenough, you know the branch comes into
the base of the pecan and thenthere's that schuck around the pecan. The
nutrients and water go through that shuckbefore they move into the pecan, and

(01:11:47):
so if you kill the shuck,you affect that pecan's ability to fill up
with good pecan kernel, and soyou may be looking at a disease problem.
There are also insects that feed insidethe shock, and insects it can
feed inside the nut itself, soa lot of things can go wrong for
trees that size. It's gonna takeone heck of a sprayer to try to

(01:12:10):
get on some kind of a scheduleto shut that down. And that just
maybe the straw that breaks the camel'sback in terms of you, you know,
being able to go out and yeah, I'm gonna go I'm gonna go
through that and get try to doit that way. But spraying is probably
necessary just based on what you've toldme, which I know is limited information,
but I just know that with pecans, insects and diseases can spoil the

(01:12:33):
show if they're in a lot ofAre these in a pasture or in a
lawn or where lawn? Okay,So a good soaking watering when we go
through extended summer heat and drought likelast year is important because up until about
August first, roughly, that pecanis growing and the pecan nut is growing

(01:12:57):
in size, and then the shellhardens and after August first it fills the
kernel creates that we call it nutmeatinside. So if you are not getting
well filled pecans, it's often alsobecause of a lack of adequate moisture during
August, September and early October,and so that would be another thing that

(01:13:17):
would be in your control is togiving a little bit better good deep soaking,
because you're going to need to puton at least an inch of water
to wet the soil deeply, probablymore than an inch to help rescue a
pecan when it's in a drought stressand it's depleting those bank account nutrient of
moisture in the soil. Okay,all right, there's a lot of information

(01:13:43):
the really I hope that was helpful. Well, it has helps, so
I do, thank you very much. Yeah, and there's good information online
if you go to the Agge Horticulturewebsite, it's aggy Dash Horticulture dot TAMU
dot edu, or you can justdo a Google search for Aggie Horticulture.
There's a publication in the fruit sectionon pecans. It's many pages of full

(01:14:08):
color pictures and it'll tell you allabout the kinds of things you're probably curious
about in terms of getting success withthose. Okay, okay, thank you
very much. Well, thank youfor the call. I appreciate that very
much. We are you know,we talk about trees and things and success
with them, and I know thatjust like turf, trees are one of

(01:14:30):
the big things that people care alot about, very concerned when you start
seeing trees having problems and you know, I know a pecan is it would
be in that group of trees wecall fruit and nut trees, but they're
also shade trees. And when itcomes to taking care of trees, you
need somebody that knows what they're talkingabout. And the folks at Affordable Tree
Service I'm talking about Martin and hiswife Joe. They've been in the business

(01:14:53):
fifty two years. It's the thirdgeneration for those folks that family in the
Tree Service. When you call sevenone three, six nine nine twenty six
sixty three, either Martin or Joe'sgoing to answer. And there are some
other companies that put Affordable in thename. So if it's not Martin or
Joe that answers the phone, we'retalking about the owners answering their own phone,
then hang up and you got thewrong number. Seven one three sixty

(01:15:16):
nine nine two six sixty three.Or you can go online to aff Tree
Service dot com. They do itall, you know, consulting and that's
a that's a very good thing tohire somebody to come out look at it,
see the situation, especially if you'reabout to do any changes to the
landscape or build a house around atree or anything like that. They do

(01:15:38):
pruning, deep root feeding, pestdisease control, They grind stumps, I
mean, you know, the wholewhole nine yards. Affordable tree service or
folks that you can depend on todo the job right. And remember with
trees, you only get one shot. When someone comes in and they don't
know what they're doing, they screwup the tree. That's for life.
They did they don't outgrow a butcheringpruning, but a four tree service does

(01:16:00):
know what they're doing. Tell them, tell them that you are with KTRH,
that you listen to garden Line andthey will put you to the front
of the line. And they havea lot of business, but Guarden Line
customers go to the front of theline, So make sure and mention that
when you call seven one three sixnine nine two six six three. We

(01:16:23):
I'm really enjoy visiting with Martin andJoe. Just a really pleasant a couple
to be around, and it's justpleasure. It's a pleasure to be able
to recommend something where I know you'regoing to get a good results from it,
because there's, as you know,in any industry, there's a wide
variety from the good, the bad, to the ugly out there, and
that's certainly true and tree care aswell. Were you're listening to Garden Line,

(01:16:45):
we are putting another hour in thebooks and we'll be back again after
a break for news. If youwould like to get on the boards,
give Josh a call seven one threetwo one two fifty eight seventy four,
seven three two and two five eightseven four. He will get you on
the board so we can talk aboutwhat you're interested in. By the way,

(01:17:06):
next hour, I'm gonna talk alittle bit about the transition into hot
weather for our flower gardens and forour vegetable garden, so you definitely will
stick around with that. If yourneighbors are still sleeping in, go bang
on the door, wake them upand tell them they're missing garden Line.
They'll appreciate that, trust me.Someday, maybe maybe not this morning,

(01:17:27):
but someday they will say thank youfor turning us on to garden Line.
Hey, we'll be back in alittle bit here. KTRH Garden Line does
not necessarily endorse any of the productsor services advertised on this program. Welcome
to KTRH Garden Line with Skip rictorjust what I have been called a lot

(01:18:02):
of things, but to my knowledge, not adorable. You're listening to garden
Line. I am your host,Skip Water. You can decide whether it's
adorable or not as we go throughthe show today seven one three two one
two fifty eight seventy four, twoon two fifty eight seventy four. We

(01:18:25):
are here to talk about the thingsyou're interested in. And why don't we
just start by going up to springand visiting with Rich. Good morning,
Rich, Good morning Skip. OnMay the fifth, I put down my
second application of fertilizer, the nitrofoss nineteen four ten, and I also
applied amid a cloprit as a preventativemanager against side web worms, and we

(01:18:50):
got all that monsoon, and I'mwondering, do I need to reapply either
or both? Tell me the dateagain when you put those down, May
the fifth, May fifth, No, you don't. And as far as
the metacoprit, it is a systemicand it hangs around a while. But
side web rbs are going to comea little bit later on, so I

(01:19:13):
think I wouldn't do it again forsure now anyway, that number one that's
already in the plant. But Iwould wait a little bit later and we
see if we're going to start tohave a web worn problem, you can
get in on it really early andknock that out too. There, so
there's no need to you know,start earlier in the year applying the meta
culprit. But so i'd wait.I would wait, and that nineteen the
fertilizer you mentioned putting down, thatone's gonna gradually release anyway over time,

(01:19:38):
so even the rain, that's oneof the nice things about having something that
releases slowly. Got it. Appreciateyour help, Skid, Thank you all
right, Well that was fast andeasy. Thank you very much. Rich.
Appreciate that call I mentioned before break. We're going to talk about some
of the transition to hot weather inour gardens. By the way, our
number seven one, three, twoand two fifty eight seven four, if

(01:20:00):
you'd like to give us a call. When it comes to the flower beds,
the petunias, some of those springflowers that were just gorgeous in the
spring, but when the heat ofsummer comes, it really hammers them pretty
good, and you can stretch themout a little bit. You can keep
them going a little bit if youwill shear them back and give them some

(01:20:20):
fertilizer, give them a boost ofa good fertilizer designed for color plants.
Okay, And so last year Ihad a petunia in a hanging basket.
Oh my gosh, it was beautifulor it just unbelievable, and they actually
almost bloom themselves to death if youlook at it early on. You have

(01:20:40):
a lot of leaves, and thenhere comes out the bloom stalks and things,
and it just blooms and blooms andblooms. And at some point I
looked at it, and the lastfoot of that vine, if you want
to call it a vine, itwas all just where flowers had been,
and there were no leaves. Andso a plant can't make carbohydrates to make

(01:21:00):
more flowers without foliage. And sosometimes people say, well, why would
you recommend a high nitrogen fertilizer ifit's a blooming plant. Well, you
don't necessarily need a high nitrogen,but you do need nitrogen. And so
ever, fertilizer should contain some nitrogenfor blooming plants too, not just phosphorus
and potassium, and that boost ofnitrogen combined with a shearing back. So

(01:21:23):
think of it this way. Youlook at these plants that seem to be
kind of blooming themselves into a littlebit of a weakened state. There's not
as many blooms. You cut themback, you fertilize them, you water
it in, and you get afresh, new vegetative growth, and then
the blooms come back, you getmore blooms again. And we can do
that with a lot of plants.You know, maybe you have Salvia greggy

(01:21:44):
I greg sage or cherry sage.Sometimes it's called autumn sage. I hate
that name for it, but anyway, Salvia greg it's a little subshrub and
if you just let it go,it'll just keep growing. As a little
subshrub kind of gets open, alittle woody look in. It always is
blooming, just a few blooms,but always blooming. But if you will
share that back, I share mineback at the end of winter. I

(01:22:06):
come back typically when it's finished thespring flush of growth, and it's always
gonna have blooms on it. Sothis is gonna be a hard pruning for
you to do, but you shareit back by about a third again going
into summer, fertilize it, waterthat fertilizer in fresh new growth, lots
more blooms. I'll do that againat the end of summer, the sharing,

(01:22:27):
fertilizing and watering, and it's abeautiful fall. Now, if you
don't do any of that, it'sa tough plant. It'll stay alive,
but it'll be rangey looking and youwon't have nearly the bloom production. And
here's why, and I've talked aboutthis before, but a lot of plants,
many of our gardening plants, bloomon the terminal ends of shoots.
Roses do that. Salvias do that, for example. So if you have

(01:22:49):
one shoot with blooms on the end, and you go back and you prune
it back far enough back to encouragesome resprouting and vigor, not just cutting
the end, the end off withthe very bloom on it, but cut
back a little further. That's whyI say about about a third, and
you fertilize in water, then allthese new shoots come out. Where there
was one shoot, you may havetwo or three, and now you have

(01:23:11):
three terminals that can have blooms onthem. So your plant is more compact,
more tidy, and more floriferous.How's that for a nice word for
a Sunday morning. Floriferous. Sothat's the care. That's the management.
People used to ask me. Youknow, they would say things like,
I don't know how to take careof my plants, and I never could
understand what what are you talking about? You water at your fertize. What

(01:23:33):
do you mean? You don't knowhow to take care of your plants?
And I think it's it's just this. I look at a plant. I
don't know about plants. I don'tknow what to do, and it's kind
of intimidating. Maybe, Well,I'm telling you what to do, and
I'm telling you for these kind offlowers, don't be afraid to two or
three times a year give them asharing back, give them some fertilizer and

(01:23:54):
some water, and get them goingagain, and you will just have good
success. Now, as we're gettingwarmer, we're going to be heading into
some really hot weather. So thingslike petunias. Even though they've improved on
heat tolerance with these plants, they'restill not totally summer heat tolerant in terms
of performing their best in the summer. So that's when we look to things

(01:24:15):
that can take the heat. AndI keep talking about summer snap dragon or
angelonia, just because the breeding that'sbeen done on that plant, the colors,
the compactness, the size just coveringup with little spikes of blooms really
beautiful. I mean, it's hardto go wrong with Angelonia for a summer
color plant. It will never gettoo hot and humid in Houston for angelonia,

(01:24:38):
so that that would be a goodexample. There are several other plants.
There is a kind of a versionof a lissum, which we normally
think about as a winter plant,but you can get them to bloom in
summer. But there's one called whitestream. We call it Lobularia as if
that's something different, but that's thesame genus as a lissum, but albularia
white stream will bloom all summer.When I worked out at Bear Creek Park

(01:25:01):
at the Extension office here in HoustonHarris County, we planted some white stream
Liabularia in May. Now May isjust the doorstep of really hot weather,
and it was mid to light Maywhen we planted them, and we kept
them watered. Of course, theygot to have water. But I thought
these things don't have a chance.They just got better and better each month

(01:25:24):
of the summer. White, justlike a lissome little tiny white flowers all
over the place. Nice, pleasantfragrance, very attractive to beneficial insects.
If you've got a container, itspills over the side and just looks beautiful,
nice trailing plant. But anyway,I'll come back. We'll talk about
some more of that stuff in aminute. We're gonna take a break now.
Our phone number seven one three twoand two fifty eight seventy four.

(01:25:50):
Is it still over mind? Well, good morning on a good Sunday morning.
We are glad you're listening to gardenLine our phone number seven one three
two one two fifty eight seventy four. If you would like to give us

(01:26:14):
a call, I want to remindyou that next Saturday, that's Saturday,
the twenty seventh of May, Iwill be at the Wall Birds Unlimited in
clear Lake from eleven thirty to onethirty. We'll spend two hours out there.
We'll answer your gardening questions. We'llcertainly be pointing you to some good
quality supplies at Wilbirds. And bythe way, if you've not been into
a wild Birds you're not going tobelieve it. In fact, let me

(01:26:34):
give you a website. Please writethis down w BU dot com, WBU
dot com forward slash Houston. Whenyou go there, what you're gonna see
are the wild Birds Unlimited store inour Houston grouping here. Now, there's
one missing out there, and that'sthe clear Lake store. That's the one
I'm gonna be out. They haven'tgot that on the map yet. It'll

(01:26:57):
be up there soon. But allthe wild Birds around town, you're going
to find the one near you,and they're all over around town. It's
not hard to get to one.But next next Saturday, I'll be at
the one in clear Lake. Butcheck out that website. Go to a
store near you. There's a Youcan go to the website of the store
from the link I gave you,and you will be amazed what you'll find.
All this kind of information online.You know, how do you squirrel

(01:27:19):
proof a feeder? Uh? There'scams on there. I like these.
There are several bird cams, likefive different bird cams around the country and
they're just set up all the time, and you could just sit there and
watch birds come to it. Infact, if you put that on your
TV and just let it run kindof like background, it'll give your catch
something to do all day, trustme. But they'll never get close enough

(01:27:41):
to get a me a lot ofthat. But while Bird's unlimited, just
so many educational things upcoming events.You know, the materials they have,
the food they have, the feedersthat they have, the bird houses.
By the way, a good timefor getting out there with some bluebird houses.
We got a little property with maybea little grassy field out to the
side that is just bluebird heaven.You know, get up on the edge

(01:28:01):
of the woods and put your bluebirdfeeders in such a pleasure to watch.
While Bird's unlimited. Well, let'scall to Montgomery. We're gonna talk to
Jim this morning. Good morning,Jim, Hey, good morning. Say
I wanted to ask you about thisblueberry. I got it. It was
called a southern high bush and it'sin a container, a large container,

(01:28:21):
and I left it out all winter, and you know, it's deciduous,
but it came back big time andit put on tons and tons of blueberries.
Okay, but it looks like arabbit got him. I have a
big old rabbit. While rabbit runsaround here, I'm just assuming that's we've

(01:28:42):
got it. But they ate themgreen, can you? Uh? And
I was wondering, you think thisblueberry is gonna boom twice like another time
this fall? Probably not? Probablynot. It's just a one shot deal.
Yeah, it would if they ifthey got them green. I don't
think it was bird birds, althoughbirds birds can eat blueberries for sure.
It could have been squirrels too,but that is unusual. Yeah, I

(01:29:06):
got squirrels too, but I didn'tthink they'd eat them green. But I
got a few that were ripe,and they were big and nice and sweet
and everything. And I use thatMicrolife red label at the Microlife sixty four
for acid loving plants, and yeah, that's wonderful stuff. I also use

(01:29:26):
the orange label for my cum quots, and they're like blooming their heads off
right now. But I thought ofanother question, if you got time.
I was in France a couple ofyears ago, and I noticed it's some
of the outdoor cafes. They havethese trees that grow up in there.
I don't know what kind of treesthey are. They had blooms on them,
but they're not great myrtles. Butthey I don't know what you call

(01:29:50):
it, but they've they've grafted thelimbs together to form a lattice, you
know what I'm talking about, Like, have you seen that? Yes?
I have Huh do they have thatin Texas? Anywhere? I'm sure people
have done that. I mean it'sa little bit of work to do.
But basically, where two branches wouldtouch, you know that, you you

(01:30:13):
can create the kind of like checkerboardxes type lattice, or you can create
even a ladder if you want todo that. But where two branches touch,
you kind of cut the bark backand you put them together so they
heal back together there, you knowit. The books these were older,
and they you know, had likeknots where they grafted them together, whatever
you call it. And they didit all over the top. You know,

(01:30:36):
it's like a ceiling of lattice.Yes, and the blooms. It
was wonderful. You know. Iwas always afraid though a bird was going
to drop something in my food,but you know, I was taking a
chance. But they really looked cool. I was wondering if that was kind
of a just a French thing orpeople did that, you know in the

(01:30:56):
United States. Yeah, well,you know in different countries, they're different
traditions and styles and things. Butwhen you get over into parts of Europe,
there are some elaborate pruning things thatthey do to create beautiful uh,
like you described there, allott Uswould be one example. You can do
that here. You just have to, you know, pick your plants accordingly,
things that are going to do wellhere. It does take time,

(01:31:17):
and I guess you know where youhave this little courtyard with a stone wall
around it, and that's been inthe property for three generations. You know,
time is not an issue we youknow, we create beautiful things,
but we tend to be a littlemore mobile over here, and you don't
see things like Espalier. That's anotherexample, you know, the sal with

(01:31:38):
one and if that would work,you could do it. You could make
it work. It's going to takea lot of work, and you're gonna
have to really do a lot ofreally big right now. And they're kind
of touching each other right now,but yeah, they're I could do that,
but I couldn't make it one.You know, it's just going to
be in one line it's not goingto be like over like they headed over

(01:32:00):
a courtyard. Well, what theywill often do on that is you will
you will plant the crape myrtle atlike a forty five degree angle, a
single shoot, and then you canuse like a bamboo stick or something to
tie it to to keep it goingat that forty five degree angle. And
when you do that to several crapemyrtles, now you've created a row of
them leaning like that. Then shootscome off and you train them back the

(01:32:23):
other way at a forty five degreeangle. So you kind of get the
design in your head and use piecesof bamboo that will allow you to attach
those shoots to it so that it'sperfectly straight and at right at the angle
you want to create that ultimate finaleffect that you're going to grow yourself into.
Oh it sounds interesting, sounds likea fun thing to do. Yeah,

(01:32:44):
I'm gonna give it a start andsee what happened. Yeah, we'll
have to well I have to trythat myself. That'll keep us out of
trouble. I guess we'll have somethingbusily keep that. Seeing out of trouble.
Not my thing, but I cancut it all right, Hey,
Jim, thanks for the call.I appreciate good luck with that out there.
Oh wow, that's funny. Yeah. The the kinds of pruning and

(01:33:08):
design and things that people do,it's just it's really it's really outstanding.
I was talking about the importance ofgetting trees planted properly and you. In
fact, yesterday I was visiting someoneabout it's time to get that done.
Now. You can plant trees twelvemonths out of the year here. If
you know how to take care ofthem, you can just keep going and

(01:33:29):
planting them. But if you reallywant a quality tree, I would suggest
you check out Verdant Tree Farm.That's Verdant tree Farm dot com. Now
their original location, the one Ifirst went to, is out of bark
Or Cyprus, on the west sideof town, kind of just past Bear
Creek Park on in pair Land onBroadway West Broadway. There is a Verdant
Tree Farm down there. For thoseof you south and east, if you're

(01:33:53):
kind of in more central three thirtyseven Yale Street is the newest one.
It's right at Eye Tend there.Verdant Tree Farm in the Heights area never
Dance got all the kinds of treesthat you would want to grow. I
mean you go picture tree, youtag it, they bring it, they
install it for you. They'll goall the way up to seven hundred gallons.
I mean, if you really wantto just an instant tree, they
can do that. Of course.They they have always specialized in palms,

(01:34:15):
greatest selection of palms in town,and Verdant Tree Farm is the kind of
place that can get you set upwith a quality tree and they can plan
it right so it survives and itjust gets better with time. Go to
Verdant tree Farm dot com for that. Speaking of go to let's go to
Cyprus and we're going to talk toStephen. Hello, Stephen Poties, get

(01:34:36):
what's up today? Hey, Igot a question for you. I have.
We have three goldies in a KKing Cavalier and I'm trying to find
out what type of fertilizer and wheatkiller I can put out there that's good
for the pets, because the problemI have is the dogs like to eat
the grassy, but we try tostop them. But it's I always section

(01:34:59):
off the art where I think itneeds it most, but I like to
do the whole yard if I can, and I want to make sure that
that you know, I have tumblesometimes, you know, trusting what I
read. Question says they grass.Yeah, so I was hoping maybe you
can give me a direction where Ican do the whole yard and try to
get the you know, like apre emergent and the fertilizer to put out

(01:35:21):
there to where the dogs you know, if they do eat the grass,
you know it won't harm them.Okay, well, my preference is always
to do fertilizing and pre emergent.Separate. Fertilizing and herbicide separate. I
know you can buy combo products.There's a few times of the year where
the timing is okay for that,but I would I would separate those out.
That way, you pick the herbicidethat deals with the weeds you're dealing

(01:35:43):
with at the time of year you'reneeding to deal with them, and you
pick the fertilizer of your choice separately. I think that's the best way to
go. But that said, whenyou put a fertilize or when you put
a herbicide out, you're gonna wantto water it in if it's a pre
emergent. If it's a post emergent, you're gonna get it on the foliage.
And just give it some time.You just need to keep the dogs
off for a little while. Now, technically, when it dries, they

(01:36:04):
should be able to go out therewithout a problem. But if you just
want to be extra careful, justkind of keep them off of an area
for a while, give that.Maybe if you can give it a week
to keep them out of a certainarea, that would be even better.
Maybe your situation doesn't allow for that. But as far as the fertilizer,
you know, if it's a granulehere and there and then you give it
a good watering in after applying it, I'm not so concerned with the dogs

(01:36:27):
coming along and just eating up allthe fertilizer. And if it was an
old pile where they could you getinto more trouble there, that might be
a thing. I'll tell you this. You know, Microlife talks about their
products being safe for pets. Notonly they are safer pets, but pets
like them. You mentioned you havedid you say three Goldies? Yes?
Yes? Wow? How many Rubotvacuum cleaners do you own? Seven?

(01:36:53):
It's funny you say that. Mywife, Sylvia, I think she has
three of them, Missie Baggage,like two or three times a day.
Oh no, and people listening.This is not an exaggeration. This man
is speaking the truth. We havetwo goldens and Ellie and texts. And
I was out I put some microlifein my vegetable garden a few weeks ago,
and Texas out working in the gardenwith me, which he does,

(01:37:15):
and I was just looking and hewas just going through there picking up the
microlife and shooting it up. It'slike tax I paid for that, cut
it out, so I would.I would definitely water it in really good
because they'll be fond of it.Oh yeah, trust me, I agree.
All right, Hey, Stephen,thank you for the call. I
hope that's helpful. No, itis very helpful. I appreciate your time.

(01:37:38):
All right, you take care.We'll get Sunday morning. Welcome to

(01:37:59):
garden. We are here to talkto you about whatever it is of interest
to you regarding the home, gardenlandscape kind of things. Our phone number
seven one three two one two fiveeight seven four seven one three two one
two fifty eight seventy four. Youknow, I was visiting the folks at
League City Feed a while back,and that's Wes and Madison Funderberg there running

(01:38:24):
the show. Now, League CityFeed is one of those old time feed
stores. It's the kind of randyused olways say we love our feed stores.
Well, this is why, thiskind of place is what we're talking
about. We're talking about a placethat gives you the kind of service you
need. You know, carry thebags out for you. You don't have
to sign up for a chiropractor visitevery time go bag of feed. They

(01:38:44):
bring it out for you. Theyprovide that kind of service and they carry
the products that you need. They'regoing to have the things we talk about
here, all the different fertilizers.They have a good selection of pesticides and
herbicides and fungicides, quality premium petfood and products for your backyard chicken needs.
I know that's a real popular thingnow people are interested in getting some
backyard chickens. League City Feed canprovide you those kinds of products. Now

(01:39:06):
the phone numbers two eight, one, three three two, sixteen twelve.
But if you are looking for LeagueCity Feed, they are on Highway three,
just a few blocks south of Highwayninety six, so near League City,
Santa Fe, Dickinson, Lamar,Clear Lake City, all those places
you're close to League City feed andyou need to check them out. You

(01:39:27):
will find the selection of what theyhave, the quality of what they have
to be exceptional. I'm going tohead out and talk to let's you know.
I think we'll start by going toRichmond and talking to Warren this morning.
Good morning, Warren, Hey,real, good morning. Question.

(01:39:48):
I've got Dallas grass in my frontyard. I think it's because the neighbors
also had Dallas grass and it hasinfiltrated my beautiful Saint Augustine and I'm trying
to figure out a way to getrid of it and keep it from coming
back. I do do the preemergent, but I think I didn't get

(01:40:10):
enough down or you know, it'sjust more aggressive than I thought. Yeah,
so how long? How long hasthis been a problem If you've been
dealing with for years or yeah,I've been a deal with a couple of
years. Yeah, okay, Well, now my backyard is perfectly fine.
There's no Dallas grass in the backyard. The front yard is the one that's
uh, you know and affected.Well, you certainly a pre emergent can

(01:40:31):
stop the seeds from creating new Dallasgrass plants, but Dallas grass is a
perennial, so you're gonna have toget rid of that weed. And there's
not a grass killer to kill Dallasgrass but not kill your long grass.
So what I generally do, Dallasgrass is very happy to send its leaves

(01:40:53):
up a little higher than the SaintAugustine. I don't know if it's there,
yeah, yeah, And that's whereyou have the opportunity for a white
or applicator where you could wipe somethingon those leaves without getting it on your
grass. And so I would useyou know, you could use a grass
only killer, one of the productsthat's the label will tell you just kills
grass. There's a couple of ingredientsthat that do that, or even even

(01:41:16):
something that's a general purpose you know, kills all the plant you know,
broadly ven grassy plants. You coulduse that carefully in there, but if
you can get the if you canwipe it on those leaves, you probably
you are not going to get itall the first time, because just the
way the plant comes out of theground, you maybe get leaves on this
side, but then some on theother side survives. So that leaves you
with the options of either carefully tryingto dig it out as best as you

(01:41:40):
can, and then the grass rightwell, if it's that bad, then
the other alternative is you just youspray those spots as much as you can,
just get the spotty right down.Then there on the Dallas grass,
you're gonna have a dead spot andyou're Saint Augustine. But it'll fall back
in over the course of the season. So those are kind of the options.
Just when you see those big seatheads coming up tall that have the

(01:42:00):
little angles going out with all theseeds on them, don't let clip those
off. Mow them off with abagger or something. You don't want that.
Yeah, we've been mowing more frequentlytrying to keep those at bay.
That'll do it. Yep, that'llthat will do it. We'll skip.
Appreciate it. Thank you. Havea great morning. Hey, Warren,
thank you for the car. Iappreciate that. Now let's head out and
we're gonna go to Bay City andtalk to Mike. Hello, Mike,

(01:42:25):
Hello there, how are you goingto skip? I'm doing well. Go
to Indians. By the way,Hey, I was gonna call you about
I got something in Milan and it'sbeen there for a while, you know,
like last year and everything but it'sspread. It's like crazy. I'm
gonna try to describe it. It'slike a heart shaped leaf. If I

(01:42:45):
pull a real small one up,it's got a little nod on me.
Okay, I'll pull a bigger oneup. It's gotta like a large,
you know, tubrious thing on there. But anyway, I don't know how
they spread or how they've gotten sofar. They're getting into everything, and
I need to know how to whatyou think about how I needed to get
rid of this. I mean,they're just they just keep ye spreading and

(01:43:09):
I don't know what's doing it becauseI don't never see him bloom. What
I think I look try to lookthem up and said, it's a wild
violet or would okay, would violetor something like that. Well, that
has somewhat of a leaf like youdescribe, but they also have a little
violet flowers on them. I tellyou what, I've never seen a flower.
Yeah, I'm gonna put you onhold because I cannot just guess based

(01:43:30):
on that description. I'm gonna putyou on hold and Josh will give you
an email address. Please take somepictures. If you can do that pretty
quick this morning, I might beable to see them and enter online.
But if you can make sure they'rein sharp focus, get as close as
you can to the plant, okay, and nail them to me and I'll
give it my best shot. Let'sjust do it that way, Otherwise I'm

(01:43:51):
gonna beat around the bush and probablynot help them. Look okay, very
good? All right, Mike,Hey, thank you, thank you,
all right, thank you, thankyou for call. I appreciate that.
Let's run out to Kingwood and we'regonna talk to Pamela. Hello, Pamela,
Hi, gets listen. I justgot back from Europe. I was

(01:44:13):
there for over a month for thegarden shows like Cordoba the Patio Gardens.
But I didn't get my Azzalius trimmedbefore I left. Can I steal trima?
Yes you can, absolutely you can. I've got about thirty seconds before
breaks. So here's a quick answer. Prune them back as needed, take
out the wild hair, shoot thebush like you want. They don't need

(01:44:35):
to be heavily pruned, but youcan do it now, and you get
it done now. They have plentyof time all the rest of mid to
late summer and fall to set theblooms for next year. So just get
it done by midsummer. I wouldsay, okay, great, thank you,
all right here, thank you.I appreciate that call a Linda.

(01:44:55):
Don't have quite enough time to getto you for a break, but you
will be first when we come back. Number seven one three two one two
fifty eight seventy four. A goodmorning on a good Sunday morning. It's

(01:45:19):
nice at day of the day.Little cloudy, a little lowercast, but
that just makes it not get sohot, and it's not gonna get so
hot today. Pretty good day tobe outside in my opinion. Let's see,
we are going to go to thephones. Got a few folks here
lined up. Let's start with Davidin Spring Branch. Hello, David,

(01:45:39):
Yeah, good morning. I hada quick question about my peach and neck
three fruit trees. They gave megood truth this year, very happy about
it. Where's a good time forme to prude the upward branches. They're
getting a little bit too high forme to reach up here on a small
lad in anything going up through themiddle of the tree or out at the
tall ends of the branches. Youcould do it now. Just a little

(01:46:00):
bit of pruning here and there isjust fine. We do most of the
pruning in the winter, but you'vegot to keep the suckers and water sprouts
and like that under control or they'llshade out your interior. I appreciate that,
Thank you very much, you bet, I appreciate appreciate that call.
If you're interested in a quality productto add compost to your should maybe you're

(01:46:21):
needing a rosebed mix, or maybeyou're needing a vegetable garden type mix.
The folks at Airloom Soils now havethe supersacks. What is that, Well,
that's a one cubic yard. That'sa big sack that they bring out
and set on your driveway. Theywill deliver that to you. You can
go to Airloom Soils of Texas dotcom and see what products they have that

(01:46:43):
you need that are available in thesupersack. While you're there, check out
the Airloom Soils cubic yard calculator.Maybe you need to put four inches over
X number of square feet and youneed to know how many yards do I
need for that? Or I wantto make a bed this tall or whatever.
You can do that and it'll breakit down to how many five gallon
buckets or how many will barrows,you know, are in a qubic yard.

(01:47:04):
It's an amazing calculator that the folksat Heirloom Soils of Texas dot Com
have put up for you to use. I really recommend that you check that
out. Uh. If you're ifyou're in the market for um, you
know, getting a quality soil likethat, I suggest you do get McCall
because they have they have a wideblend. I could sit here all day

(01:47:25):
just talking about all the different heirloomsoil products. Pretty pretty cool stuff.
Let's see where are we now.We're going to head to Missouri City and
talk to Don. Hello Don,Hello, Skip. I've got two problems
I want to ask you about.One is I've got a Japanese you that

(01:47:45):
is, uh, the needles arestarting to turn a little pale color.
Uh. And then I've got aproblem with the lawn kind of doing the
same thing. Spots all over theyard a light green to yellow. Okay.
So either we're looking at some sortof a nutrient issue, which just

(01:48:11):
quality fertilizing will get you out ofthat situation. And if you're if you
know, if you if you're lookingfor like in the lawn, I don't
know, have you fertilized this yearyet, Oh yes, all right,
Well, I would then look tosomething like a take all root rot and
that's going to require a proper diagnosis. You may want to send a sample
up to the plant clinic at Aand M and have them look at it

(01:48:32):
and determine what that is. They'lltell you how to take the sample and
everything. But yellowing at this timeof year, if the nutrients are already
there and they're right, I thinkI would look to look to a disease
sample because that's probably what you're gonnabe looking at. Okay, and the
Japanese use on the y. Itcould just be some older it could be

(01:48:53):
a little bit of damage from cold, but it could also just be some
older foliage that's being you know,basically given up by the plant that at
this point just a few older leaves. I wouldn't sweat it. Okay,
done, sor right? Thank youvery much? All right, thank you
for the call. You know,if you're looking to fertilizer, lawn Nelson's
Plant Foods Slow and Easy twenty twotwo ten powerhouse blend gradual release through the

(01:49:17):
season, high quality fertilizer. Ican't recommend it. More. And when
you put a fertilizer like that out, you do it once now and you're
done until fall. I mean ithas that kind of slow release. Now.
Nelson's has their Color Star line,the Nutral Star Line, Turf Star
Line, Nature Star Line. Butthis Turf Star Line for your lawn this
time of year is it's the productand the time to get that done.

(01:49:42):
I'm going to head out now totalk to Linda in tom Ball. Hello,
Linda, good morning, good morning. Thank you for taking my call.
Yes, um, I'm it's callingbecause I have poison ivy growing on
my tnsit okay, and I wantto know what's the best way to kill
that poison ivy without harming my horses. I also have a couple of horses.

(01:50:05):
Well, you're not going to harmthe horses because they're not going to
eat that poison ivy. So whateveryou spray on it, it's okay.
If it's on the fence. Youcan use a product that contains triclopier t
R I c l O p yR. There's a number of brands.
Some of them will say things likepoison ivy killer, some of them will

(01:50:26):
say brush killer or things like that. But if it's just a bunch of
foliage, you can spray it onthat. Just know that the tricleal pier
kills broadly plants, so if youhave anything desirable around it, don't let
it drift over on those. Ifit's a big stump coming either ground,
a stem, or a trunk ofthe poison ivy, you can just cut
it off at the ground and everythingabove it will die and the leaves will

(01:50:47):
eventually rot and fall off. Andthen you treat that stump with the tricle
pier directly. You dab it righton the fresh cut stump and it translocates
down and that way you don't spraythe foliage all over the place. You
just go right to the source andyou treat that base of that cut stump.
What would you suggest to cut itoff with it? I mean,

(01:51:09):
I'm really highly alarmed. Yeah,well, you you just gotta be careful.
I mean, somebody has to havesome sort of a saw that they
can reach down there. I wouldn'tuse a chainsaw that's flinging pieces of bark
all over your face. Right,Just a little saw you want to cut
out a section, you know,you just cut it where you can get
to treat that stump. So anykind of a little tree pruning type saw,
maybe a pole pruner, you knowwhere you got a little bit longer

(01:51:30):
extension and you can get in thereand oh yeah, void that. Okay,
Linda, I appreciate it. Yeah, appreciate today. Good luck with
that. Thank you, thank youvery much. If you haven't been out
to RCW nurses in a while,you need to check them out. They're
that nursery at Tomball Parkway and Beltwayeight. They're the ones we think about
when we think of roses because they'vegot such a huge selection, certainly trees.

(01:51:54):
They grow them out in Plantersville ona farm and everything for fifteen to
two hundred gallons. I'll even comeout and play them for you. But
they're also the place where you pickup the fertilizers. We talk about where
you would get herbs, perennials,annuals. If they don't have it,
ask them, I bet they canget it. We call them to get
it. Got it nursery RCW nurseriesdot com. Check them out there RCW

(01:52:15):
nurseries dot com. You're going tobe impressed with a kind of color and
the other options that you have.Boy, We've been going here on Guarden
Line all day and it just seemedlike the hour is finishing up pretty fast.
So I I do want to mentionagain. I talked about this folks
earlier, but Star of Hope.Star of Hope here in Houston gives hope

(01:52:38):
to people that are homeless that arein need of help. They not only
send a van out to help peoplein the streets to try to invite them
to come in and have a changeto their life, but they have a
place where people can live for upto a year, where they can get
training, they can learn how toget a job, how to hold a
job, they can recover from stuffsubstance abuse, get meals and clothing that

(01:52:59):
they need to at a start.And I've I've seen the folks there at
Star Hope. It's a different lookat homelessness than you normally would expect.
These are people that they want tomake a life for themselves. They've run
into trouble and they're willing to dothe work to get back on their feet,
but they need help doing that.So rather than just a hand out,
invest your money and Star of Hopego to a Star of Hope mission.

(01:53:20):
Dot org and put your compassionate heartto work by providing the money or
even volunteering to be to be ahelp at Star of Hope. You can
do things like helping with the food. You can even just write encouraging notes.
I mean, there's a lot ofopportunities put your compassion to work at
sh mission dot org. Just that'sa passionate, a passionate thing for me

(01:53:47):
to talk about because it just meansa lot to me. I've been involved
with it in the past. Mywife and I volunteered there. We just
love the Star Star of Hope Mission, and I would encourage you to get
an involved with them as well.You've been listening to garden Line. We're
finishing another hour up, about toput the eight o'clock hour in the books.

(01:54:09):
If you want to get on theboards seven one three two one two
five eight seven four seven one threetwo one two fifty eight seventy four,
Josh, we'll get you in thereon the boards. Get your car ready
to go. You'll be the firstwe come to. Now, we've got
one more hour left today in theshow, so don't delay. You wait

(01:54:29):
till the end, and that's usuallywhen we have a little bit of a
bottle of that coming in and we'retrying to wrap it all up fast,
so give us a call sooner ratherthan later. By the way, next
Saturday eleven thirty to one thirty,I will be at Wahbird's Unlimited out in
clear Lake. That's the newest store. By the way, you can go
to WFBU dot com forward slash Houstonw BU dot com forward slash Houston.

(01:54:53):
You can see all the wahbirds storesthere. By the way, I haven't
added the clear Lake win to themap, yep, but it's coming soon.
But for those of you in otherareas, you can find their store
there the clear Lake Lawbirds. NextSaturday, eleven thirty to one thirty.
Bring me your plants in a bag, take a look at them. Maybe
it's a bug you want to identifyit, or a plant you want to
identify it or diagnosed, or maybemaybe you just want to talk about a

(01:55:15):
good way to die to a landscape. We'll take a look at some pictures
and help you do that. KTRHGarden Line does not necessarily endorse any of
the products or services advertised on thisprogram. Welcome to KTRH Garden Line with
skip rictor just watch him as anywell. Good Sunday morning, a good

(01:56:00):
sunny morning. Every day is agood day for gardening, and today's no
exception. I hope this afternoon youget out and enjoy that a little bit.
If you're looking at your landscape andyou know it's just like I go,
I buy a new plan. Ilike it, I'll bring it home
a planet, but just overall itdoesn't have the look I want. There's
something missing. You need to givePeerscapes a call. Peerscapes is the kind

(01:56:27):
of company that can design impressive beauty. They can design that look that is
exactly what you want. I mean, it may be heartscapes that maybe that
you need to put in a rockborder, or maybe there's an issue with
drainage that you need to address.We certainly have those issues around here.
They do the whole thing. Theyhave complete custom landscape design and installation practices.

(01:56:48):
Now you can call them up toeighty one three seven zero five zero
six zero and see what Peerscapes cando for you. Also check them out
online. Go to the web sitePiercescapes p E A r C E Scapes
peerscapes dot com and find out thedifference that they can make that landscape that

(01:57:11):
you or I and I'm not adesigner. We can get our landscapes so
far, but when you want tojust take it to that next level,
you need a quality company with thetraining, the expertise, the design abilities
that Peerscapes has to do just that. We are here to answer your gardening
questions today. We're in our lasthour for this weekend, so if you'd

(01:57:32):
like to give us a call nowwould be a good time. Trust me,
at the end it often gets alittle too busy, so let's move
that forward a little bit and getyour call in when we have a little
more time to address it. That'sseven one three two one two fifty eight
seventy four seven one three, twoone two five eight seven four. I

(01:57:53):
was talking about hot weather flowers earlier, and I also wanted to mention hot
weather of thats when the vegetable seasontransitions. You know, our cool season
plants are done. I mean thevegetables they're done. We plant a lot
of things in the spring that aregonna do great in spring and early summer.
That would include tomatoes. By theway, this is May is the

(01:58:15):
big warm season garden production month herehere in the area. That's tomatoes,
there's some peppers, there's eggplant there. You've got squashing cucumbers and all kinds
of things like that that do well. Then we get into summer when it
gets really hot and you need toinclude a few vegetables for that. That's
where sweet potatoes come in. That'swhere southern peas, the black eyed peas,
the purple hole peas, the crowderand cream and lots of different kinds

(01:58:38):
of Southern peas. By the way, if you've eaten black eyed peas out
of a can, you haven't eatenblack eyed peas. Now. I know
everyone says when you grow it yourself, it tastes better. I agree with
that, but I can think ofvery few crops where the difference is so
dramatic as fresh shielled southern peas versuscanned. Now, the frozen kind those

(01:59:00):
are okay, that's fresh frozen,But growing yourself, it's unbelievable. Will
you will really love it. Andthen we have a lot of good warm
season greens, malabar greens. Thereis one called Egyptian spinach. It's actually
a type of solosa that you cangrow here there's molaquia that grows very well
here, makes a little bush infact before it freezes back in the winter

(01:59:23):
time, and it's an annual,but it does make a bush in the
garden. So you don't need verymany of those. And there's some others
that we can talk about. Butthe warm season is no reason not to
garden. When I say warm,I should say the blazing hot season is
no reason not to garden. Wehave a lot of other options. Those
are just just a few that youmight want to think about when you're building

(01:59:44):
a garden. By the way,you always build it with quality soil.
That's the beginning. I mean,I don't care how good of a vegetable
you put it in an earth flower. If you put it into unprepared soil,
it's like tying an arm and ahalf behind your back. I mean,
it's gonna be very hard to havesuc us when you didn't start with
good soil. And nature's way resourceshas been making good soil for a very

(02:00:04):
long time. They were the originatorsof rose soil and fungal compost and so
on. In fact, if youjust want to tip, every Friday is
fungal Friday. Fungal Friday, that'sa good name. Ten percent off their
bag products, twenty percent off theirbulk products, and they have thousands of
yards of fungal composts ready to goto help you enhance your garden and your

(02:00:28):
landscapes and every kind of way.By the way, one of the best
things about Nature's Way Now that I'veseen going out there. I mean,
the soil is absolutely outstanding. Butwhen you're out there, check out their
plants. We're talking about two acresof nursery garden center. They've got fruit
trees, native perennials, they evenhave house plants and seasonal vegetables out there.
One of the largest varieties of nativeplants here in the Houston area out

(02:00:50):
at Nature's Way. They're up thereon North forty five, just south of
conro about where fourteen eighty eight comesin. But Nature's Way Resources, you
just kind of check it out andyou'll see what I'm talking about. The
difference in their soils is just dramatic, and it will make your gardens successful
by starting them correctly with that kindof quality mix. We're gonna go to

(02:01:12):
the phones and go out to HumbleNow and talk to Lawrence Hello, Lawrence.
Are you there, Lawrence? Yes, I am. How are you
going good? I'm good. Howare you doing? I'm pretty good?
Thanks for asking. How can wehelp today? So I've gut these strange

(02:01:34):
bulbous planks me and my neighbors.It looks like lying. When you pull
it up, it's got like littleshoots that shoot up straight from the ground.
And when you pull them up,it looks like onion, horse gallion
hanging on the bottom. But itdoesn't smell like it. Oh, it
doesn't smell like it. No onedoes not, even when you break the

(02:01:57):
leaves, and you know, yousmell that fresh cut, broken, little
strappy leaf. So I broke thebulb. I think that'd be the stronger
which it. Huh, Well,it's either there's wild onion and there's wild
garlic, and they are quite similarU and they but they both have that
alium family smell. And so ifyou're not smelling it, then we're gonna

(02:02:21):
have to shift over to something else. And off the top of my head,
I'm not thinking what that particular thingwould be. Now, the control
of it is going to be similar, but h in a flower bed,
you know, the products that wouldkill it will also kill your flowers,
and so you want to probably probablyavoid the spraying, and that leaves you

(02:02:41):
with the unhappy task of getting oneof those long handled weeding forks where you
can push it at the ground andyou you pull on the leaves but not
enough to break them, but youknow, your fork kind of leverages it
up out of the ground. Youget the bulb and everything that would be
you know, that would be mysuggestion, uh, spray and not being
a option. Him pulling not beingmuch fun. So sorry, but I

(02:03:03):
don't I don't have I don't havegreat simple silver bullet on this one.
They come up easy. But I'vejust didn't know if it was like a
lily or some kind of flower,or well, if it's a strappy skinny
leaf, you know, a littlelittle straight skinny leaf coming out in a

(02:03:24):
clump out of the ground, there'sa whole bunch of them. Uh,
then that boy, thats or soundslike a wild onion, wild garlic,
But it's going to be something elsethat there are some other plants that will
do that. I'll tell you what. If you want, I'm gonna put
you on hold. If that's theIf that's the last question, you have,
I'll put you on hold and Joshwill pick up the line and get
you an email. If you canpull one up and lay it on a

(02:03:47):
dark surface like a kitchen table orwhatever's a dark surface, and take a
good sharp close up, well focused, very well focused photo, I'll see
what I can do. All right, okay, all right, thank thanks
a lot. Okay, so Joshgonna take that one for me. We're
gonna go to a break now ourphone number seven one three two one two

(02:04:09):
fifty eight seventy four. I willwait for you, and I will wait.
I will wait for you. Well, good Sunday morning. We are
looking forward to visiting with the lastfolks here as we go through our last

(02:04:31):
hour here today. If you'd liketo get on the board seven one three
two one two fifty eight seventy four. You know, if you yellow piece
of land and you need to takecare of it, we're talking about an
acre, five acres even more,you need to consider a Lansdown Moody cubot
a tractor now. Lansdown Moody isavailable. There's number of stores around the

(02:04:51):
area. You can go to LMtractor dot com LM tractor dot com.
But check out their Texas edition KubotaL twenty five one. That's the one
with hydrostatic transmission. It is afirst rate tractor. You can trick it
out with that front end loader,maybe a box blade so you can smooth
the soil out and you know,spread some spread soil around, get everything

(02:05:13):
like you wanted. A rotary cutteranother good addition to it. But but
here's the thing. You need tohear until June thirtieth. Only until June
thirtieth, zero down, zero interestfor eighty four months. I don't know
how they do that. Seven years, zero down, zero interest, landsdown
and Caboda is a good combination,a good package. LM tractor dot com.

(02:05:38):
But don't delay. The deal lastsuntil June thirtieth. I want to
go now out to Conro and we'regonna talk to Ben. Good morning,
Ben, Hi, Skip, Hey, I'm out here Premium Sego Palms.
And it's okay to just yank themloose, right, you mean cut the

(02:05:59):
cut the leaf front off where theyattached to the n Yes, yes,
yes, okay. I just wantedto make sure I wasn't going to damage
anything doing that. Well as faras yanking them I've never tried that before.
I guess they did break off.That is an option. I usually
to snap them off real close tothe trunk, but some of them,
the dead ones, pull off reallyeasy. Some of the green ones brings

(02:06:20):
a little trunk of the meat ofthe trunk with it, just a little
bit. Though. Well it's notlike a pineapple. Yeah, it's not
going to kill the sago to dothat, I don't know. I generally
just prune mine off, but youcan probably do it either way. I've
pruned them for in it a trunk. It's not two feet tall on one
of them or a couple of them, and it looks like a like a

(02:06:41):
porky pine or you know, asticker bird or something. It's, oh,
I don't know, just look kindof funny. Okay, yeah,
well it does look way with allthose little stubs sticking out. So when
I get done, what do Ido to feed these things? Is sixty
four good enough? Or yeah,that's that's perfectly good enough, A good
y you know, any even along type fertilizer works really well. If

(02:07:03):
you have you ever used the nitroFoST products before? Oh yeah, yes,
all I really owe us around herepurposes the micro six two four,
I would do the green bag sixtwo four. I think that you're going
to have good success with that.You can throw some of the humans plus
in if you want, but thatwill do just fine. That kind of

(02:07:25):
ratio for that kind of plant isjust ideal. Yeah, okay, great,
all right, that's all I got. Thank you, you bet,
thank you for the call. Iappreciate that. Uh. You know,
we were talking about garden centers alreadyevery time, about some of the great
garden center around here. In theimportance of an independent center if you're down
in the Southwest region. In fact, these folks Enchanted Forest in Chended Gardens.

(02:07:46):
They have people driving from Austin andother places to come there because it's
that kind of destination. Gardens thatare both of them are enchanted forest.
That's the one. If you're donein Richmond kind of in the Sugarland direction
just south of fifty nine, andif you are in Richmond area going north
toward Katie direction, that would beEnchanted Gardens. So each of those nurseries

(02:08:09):
has their own Facebook and Instagram pages, so just go on and find them.
In Chanted Forest and Chanted Gardens,you will be staying up to date
with what the latest deals are,what's going on there. Maybe they got
a food truck coming out or somethinglike that. That's the way to find
out. But this is one ofthe places where you go and I don't
care where you're driving from. Youwill enjoy it and it'll be time well

(02:08:31):
spent. In Chanted Forest and inChanning Garden, both of them. I
love to go there. Let's headout to Full Shure and we're going to
talk to chat. Well, hello, chat, how are things out in
Full Shure? They're good, skip, thank you. So last year we
planted some southern leaf wax myrtles,all right, and now they're and the
goal is to have a privacy headgekind of hide our wood fence, and

(02:08:54):
they're about six seven feet tall nowand they're basically growing like wild child and
thank you. And I'm just tryingto figure out what's the strategy to prune
them, how to you know,how do you do that appropriately so that
they're you're sort of stan or youknow, kind of flat on the runt
and you know, but they we'rewanting to height too. Yeah, I

(02:09:16):
get it, I get it,all right. So here here's the deal.
Wax myrtle is a little bit ofa loose, open growing shrub.
That's its natural style. But everytime you share a plant, what was
one shoot, now you get abud breaks that create several shoots to fill
in for it. Okay, youcut off the end of a shoot,
two or three shoots or true orthree shoots replace it, And every time

(02:09:41):
you do that, the density getsmore and more. You just want to
watch chap that you keep the topa little narrower than the base because wherever
you don't get sunlight, you willnot have foliage on any shrub, including
an evergreen like southern wax myrtle.So if the plant will always try to
grow top heavy, it'll become moreof like an umbrella that's spreading out at

(02:10:03):
the top and then everything underneath thatyou lose the foliage. So you make
that plan have a narrower top withyour sharing. The more often you share,
the denser you're gonna have in termsof a wall of foliage. So
that's the key to it, andthat in fertilizing it. Put a good
quality fertilizer on there. And uh, you know what kind of what do
you have a favorite brand or somethingyou'd like to use on the fertilizer.

(02:10:28):
Um, yeah, nro flies,I think is what we typically use.
We we we shop and we gotthese actually from enchanted gardens. Okay,
that's where we where we do areare shopping. Good place to shop.
Well, I would, I woulddo. And this is gonna sound weird,
but you know Nitrofis has that nineteenfour ten which is for lawns.
But it would be great because you'regrowing foliage. Just like on a lawn,

(02:10:50):
you're growing foliage. On a waxmurder, you're growing foliage. Now
you could use one of their fertilizersfor trees and shrubs, that's just fine.
But if you're already is that agrand kneeler like you would just kind
of throw under the plan. Yeah, no, yeah, it's a grand
yard. It's it's you know,you put it in your fertilizer spreader for
the lawn. And I'm not sayingyou have to have that one. I
mean that you get one of theones that have for trees and shrubs,
that's just fine too. But ifyou already got that for your lawn,

(02:11:13):
I would use it on that waxmyrtle for every inch of trunk diameter on
your wax myrtle. So just useyour thumb as a measuring guide for every
about every thumb width across the thing. Give it a cup or two a
fertilizer, spread evenly throughout a bigcircular area and watered in really well.
All right, okay, okay,And then how far out from the trunk

(02:11:35):
should I be trimming? I mean, is there? I don't want to
understand what you said. You cutit and then you get more shoots coming
off. But yeah, you knowsort of a rule eight inches out or
six inches well no, I mean, you know those shrubs, A lot
of people keep them probably five feetsix feet wide, but you can make
them four feet. You can makethem two feet. If you've got a

(02:11:56):
little bit of area and you needa two foot wall of foliage, you
can and make the shrub do that. But the tighter you get it,
the more often you have to shareit, because it's constantly coming right back
into that little walkway space or whatever. So I would start my sharing chet
a little narrower than you're eventually gonnawant it to be, because think about

(02:12:16):
it, you share back. Let'ssay you shared it a foot away from
the trunk and then there's no reasonto do it there. But let's see
you did that, well, thenit's going to grow out. Now it's
sticking six inches out and you shareit back again. But you're not sharing
it right back to one foot.You're sharing it an inch or two out
from that right or six inches outfrom that, and so it's going to
get a little wider on you.So start narrower. Okay, okay,

(02:12:37):
is that a good table? That'sit? Alrighty so much, thank you,
thank you, I appreciate, appreciateyour call our phone number seven one
three two one two fifty eight seventyfour. You know that Nitrofos nineteen four
ten. It's a good it's agood all purpose really, but it's it's
made for the lawns for a gradualslow release, which is what we need
in the summer. You put itdown now twelve to sixteen weeks. A

(02:13:01):
good, good, even growth isgoing to come out of that product,
and that's what we need. Wedon't want encourage these we don't want to
encourage insects, We don't want toencourage having a mo mo mode to keep
up with it. So put itout at the right rate, it'll feed
gradually over time. And by theway, when you do a fertilization,
you need to also consider adding azamiteto your lawn. And azamite don't think

(02:13:24):
of it like a fertilizer. Itdoesn't replace the three numbers on the bag
that your typical fertilizer has. Whatazamite is is it's all the other elements
that you need as well, allthe micros. You know, there's tons
of trace elements, many of whichare essential for plant growth, and we
need to have a good supply.The soil is a bank account. If
your bank account is few and farbetween, when it comes to finding a

(02:13:48):
manganese molecule or an iron molecule ora zinc molecule, that turf is not
going to do as well. Youneed to have plenty of it there.
And that's why we follow our fertilizationwith an application of ASMIT. You can
go to ASMIT Texas dot com andfind out more about it. Basically a
mind mineral that is excellent and Iuse it my vegetable gardens because I want

(02:14:09):
my vegetables to be as packed withnutrients. It go beyond what the plant
needs, including the nutrients my bodyneeds, and it just makes for healthier
produce to have that kind of anapplication. We're gonna head out now to
Spring and talk to Greg Well.Good morning, Greg, good morning.

(02:14:31):
I have a question about a labLally pine. It's about sixty five or
seventy years old and it looks likethe roots are coming to the surface.
Okay, so you or can youwhat do? What? Please? What

(02:14:56):
are you asking me? Can youdo? The roots seem to be coming
to the surface. Okay? CanI cover those with soil? You can?
You can bring the line up tothe top of the roots. There's
no problem with just adding a littlesoil. That's primarily around the base that

(02:15:16):
you get the most surface roots,and that would be just fine. You
could do a mulch. The pinewould love to have you do a mulch
bed around it. That would beeven better. It's gonna be hard to
get grass to grow around there anyway, but either way it would be fine.
Greg, Okay, understood more tohurt thee now, now, if
you put four inches of soil overthe whole root system, yes, that's

(02:15:37):
a problem. But just putting alittle soil around the base to bring it
up to the root level. That'sfine. Okay. These are out from
the base about four feet Okay,well it still would be okay, it
would still be okay. If itwere mine, I would seriously consider a
big mulch bed there because I don'tthink you're going to get much to grow
there anyway. But that's your that'syour call. We can go either way

(02:15:58):
on that. All right, Okay, thank you sir, Yeah, Greg,
thanks for the question. I appreciatethat We're gonna take a little break
here, but our phone number isseven one three two one two five eight
seven four. Give Josh a call. Let's get you on the board.
We're heading into our last thirty minutesof the weekend, so this is the
time to talk if we need totalk. And speaking of talking, we're

(02:16:20):
gonna hear Nikki Talk now. Ohmy goodness, NICKI talk with Nikki Talk.
That's like a podcast. It's yes, it's the talk show. We
just gather around and discuss current events. I'll jump into it. That's a

(02:16:58):
fun song. Can anybody tell mewho sings that? Who is that?
Well, I'll give you a hint. The answer is it fits the store.
This show by the Lemonheads. Soyou've body been listening to garden Line
for a while. That's pretty appropriatesong, isn't it a song by the
Lemonheads for garden Line? And plusit's fun enough beat. Hey, if

(02:17:20):
you have any interest in bees whatsoeveryou need you need to check out the
B Supply out in Dayton. Nowhere's what I'm talking about. If you
would like to have a hive,and you should there. If you have
a garden, a productive garden,a hive of bees is gonna you're gonna
actually see an increase in production becausemore seats get pollinated, the fruits develop
better. It's just a better wayto go. If you're inserted in keeping

(02:17:41):
bees. They have classes twice amonth and they walk you through everything.
I mean, your hands on youlearn. It's a six hour class with
twice a month out in Dayton.Go to the B Supply dot com.
Now my fascination in bees. Iused to keep bees a current time.
I'm not, but my fascination isjust learning about bees. You know,

(02:18:01):
how bees affect the environment, thedifferent bees in the hive, the jobs
they do, just how everything transpiresinside the hive. You can go do
a free honey tour out there.Now, this is a great exposure to
bees. The honey tours that theyprovide I said free. I believe there's
a small charge for them. Imay be wrong about that, but either
way, it's well worth it.We're talking about getting to taste like six

(02:18:24):
different kinds of honey. What doesclover honey taste like? How about BlackBerry
honey? What does that taste like? You'll find out if you've got a
homeschool group, a church group,pacific organization, or a garden club,
or you just want to help yourkids learn about that wonderful science of the
world of bees. The Bee Supplydot Com check them out. While you're
there, you'll get to see thesecond largest indoor bee observation hive in the

(02:18:48):
world. It's just like plexiglass giantabove the ground room where bees are building
comb and coming in from outside.It is amazing. You just need to
go check it out to be supplied. We're gonna take a phone call now
and I'm gonna head out all theway to New Caney and we're gonna talk
to rust Stee. How are youdoing, Rusty? Hey, Rusty you

(02:19:13):
there? Yes, I couldn't hearbetter with my radio. No I know
we'll go ahead and turn it downand you and I'll just talk on the
phone. Here. What can wedo for you today? I wanted to
just tell you that you are sucha wonderful garden line. You have so
much information, your kind, yourpatient, You give people the right to

(02:19:37):
do whatever they want. And Ijust want to give you a double a
plus. And I've been wanting totell you that for a long time.
I haven't called in lately, butanyway, I was wondering, I appreciate
that. Is it okay? Justsoak them? Is it better? What
results? I want? Good results? So do I soak them? Is

(02:20:01):
this you're talking about like southern peas, like black eyed peas, purple haul
peas, those kind right? Yeah, okay, you don't have to just
plant them into ground now when wego into warm hot weather are now we
just had rain here, so thisisn't a situation right now. But I'm
going to answer your question a littlebigger than you ask it, and that
is when we get into hot weatherand the soil gets a little dry.

(02:20:24):
Before you plant those summer crops likepeas, you want to wet the soil
thoroughly. Some people make a littletrench, just a little furrow for the
seed, and they water it welland soak it deeply and get that water
down six eight inches or more intothe ground. And then a day or
two later you just come in andyou plant your peas. But when that

(02:20:45):
seed germinates and puts a root down, it puts a root down into moist
soil, because if it doesn't staymoist, the seedling dies. And that
preplant watering is the most important onebecause once you've planted, it's hard to
get a good soaking with without washingyour seeds up or something. So yeah,

(02:21:05):
do that now. Now it's rained, so you probably don't need to
worry about it. But in general, just always remember our summer crops that
preplant watering is very important. Butyes, put them right in the moist
soil, cover them up, givethem a little top watering and you're good
to go. Okay, Is thatalso good for like a big bean?
You know? I have someone broughtback from Africa. They're very big large.

(02:21:28):
Yes, any beans you plant,the instructions I just gave you applied
to them as well. Okay,right, well, God bless you well,
thank you wonderful show, and Iam thoroughly enjoy listening to well,
Rusty, you're making me uncomfortable.Thank you very much for the kind words.

(02:21:48):
By the way, I'm not kinderRusty, and I didn't give her
twenty dollars. You have a goodrest to your Sunday, Rusty. Thank
you very much. You know,if you're if you're planting a woody ornamental,
you need to just think of itthis way. If I buy a
tree or shrub, I need atree hugger sprinkler. Maybe you already have
one, maybe you need to getone. There's a seven inch diameter,
eleven inch, fifteen inch. Butyou go to TreeHugger sprinkler dot com.

(02:22:11):
You can find the retailers close toyou. But I can tell you this,
everywhere I look at our garden linesponsors, you know, the Ace
Hardware's, the garden centers, thefeed stores, they all got them tree
hugger sprinklers. You're not that expensive. And you're investing in a woody ornamental,
and you can set it to comeon and just water that small area
at and just beyond the cylinder ofroots you put in the ground so you

(02:22:33):
can keep them moist. Because inthe nursery they've been watering them once or
twice a day to keep them going. And so this way you control that
as a tree grows, you canturn it on more. You can water
a wider and a wider area toget young trees or trees that are year
or two old and through the summerdroughts. Tree hugger sprinkler is a very
good investment. And I wouldn't plana woody ornamental without planning without getting one.

(02:22:56):
It just makes sense. You know, when we're when taking care of
our plants and we're being proactive,we're thinking about things like what I just
talked about. You know, anew plant needs to be needs to be
taken care of. You know,I've talked to people who put a tree
into the soil the soil was moist, and they felt like, well,
the soil is moist, the tree'sokay. No, the whole root system

(02:23:20):
of that tree is still in thatcylinder and it pumps that dry in less
than a day in hot weather.Okay, So yes, you're going to
get some soil wicking in slowly fromthe sides, but early on you got
to water that cylinder and the soilaround it. You don't want to keep
it soggy, but you do wantto keep it moist, and normally a
tree established is going to have rootsway out in all directions. You can

(02:23:43):
just crank up your tree hugger andwater a large area, but early on
you got to take care of thatinitial cylinder because just imagine if you pulled
it out of the pot and justset it on the driveway, how long
does that take to dry out?I mean, not anytime at all.
So we need to take care ofour trees that way. We're coming in

(02:24:03):
the end, toward the end ofour show here. You know, we're
here every Saturday and Sunday from sixto ten to answer your gardening questions and
really enjoy doing that. I wantto remind you that this coming Saturday,
from eleven thirty to one thirty,I will be at the wild Birds Unlimited
out at clear Lake. This isour newest store. Now you can go

(02:24:24):
to WBU dot com, slash Forward, slash Houston and find the wild Birds
Unlimited stores near you. This clearLake store is a new one and it's
a pretty cool and you need toget out there and check it out.
I'll be there. Hey, let'stalk about plants. Bring me things to
identify, bring me things to diagnose, Bring me pictures on the phone of

(02:24:45):
your landscape and questions you might have. Always try to get a picture from
a distance, a picture from reallyup close, so we can see what
both of those look like. I'dget a good, crisp, clear,
focused picture. I can tell awhole lot of things, and so I
would encourage you to do. I'dlove to meet folks that are listening to
the show. You need to seethe wild Birds Unlimited stores. If you

(02:25:07):
haven't been in one, it isjust bird, one bird, wonderland.
I mean every kind of thing.I don't care what your interests are.
If it's any type of gardening interest, there are going to be a lot
of things and wild Birds Unlimited thatyou will want. You'll want for your
landscape. You'll want them for yourpatio, to be able to watch and
enjoy those birds. To get qualityexpertise, advice, you know, all

(02:25:31):
those questions that you might come upwith and things you may not even have
known about that you need to beasking from wild Birds Unlimited. Hey,
we're gonna take a break right now. We'll be back for our last segment.
The phone number seven one three twoone two fifty eight seventy four.
Now, well, good morning,it's a good Sunday morning. You're listening

(02:26:03):
to garden Line. Our phone numberis seven one three two one two fifty
eight seventy four. I am goingto head out, I think to Galveston.
We're gonna talk to Kent here.How are you doing, Kent doing
good? How are you buddy doinggood? How can we help today?
We play at Cilantro like a fewmonths ago, and it's already dying.

(02:26:26):
It meant more of a winter typeof herb. Yeah, Cilantro, you're
right, it's a cool season.It can grow in warmer weather, but
when the day length gets longer,it bolts and it sends up its bloomstalks
and then it dies. That's kindof behaving like let us does and spinach
does and some of those others.Now, you know, if it bolts

(02:26:48):
on, you let it bold,let it bloom, because those blooms are
very attractive to small beneficial insects,and so there it's a benefit to leave
it in for a little extra Plusyou can get some seed for replanting next
year that way. But yeah,once it's yeah, it's hard to just
keep growing. I don't know.I don't know how you make your charo
beans after early summer, but Iguess you could keep planting it and go

(02:27:13):
to great lengths to make it.Think it's still short days. But okay,
buddy, thank you so much.Hey, thank you, Ken.
I appreciate I appreciate that call.If you are if you live out in
the Kingwood area, You've got you'refortunate. You've got a couple of really
outstanding garden centers in that area.That would be Kingwood Garden Center and Warrens

(02:27:37):
Southern Gardens now Kingwood Garden Centers onStonehallow Drive out in Kingwood. Warren's Southern
Gardens is on North Park Drive.They each are unique in their own way.
I love the gift shop that theyhave there at a Kingwods. Of
course Warrens as a gift shop too, but they have a wonderful gift shop
out at the Kingwood Garden Center.Warren's a nice spread, beautiful, lots
of beautiful plants. I mean it, you got to go there to see

(02:28:01):
what I'm talking about. But again, this is this is a destination kind
of garden centers. These are theseare the ones that you may live far
away or may if your friends comein from out of town and they're visiting
you. Where if you live inthis Houston area and you say, hey,
I want to I want to takeyou out and go see garden centers
and Warrens would be one of thoseplaces you need to go stop. Warren's
Southern Gardens has got all the kindsof plants that you need. They have

(02:28:24):
excellent information, very educated staff too, and the same is true with Kingwood
Garden Centers. They are going tobe able to direct you to the plants
that are going to do well.They're gonna tell how to plant them,
how to take care of them.They're going to have the products that we
talk about, like the fertilizers forexample, that will sustain those plants.
And so it's kind of a onestop shop. You can get it done.
You can follow them, follow Warrensand their Facebook page. They've got

(02:28:48):
a really cool Instagram page as well. That's a great way to find out
what's going on to kind of stayup to date on things. Kingwood Gardens
that are likewise, they got aFacebook page and you can follow them stay
up to date. It's really fortunateyou're you guys are in Kingwood are rich
with garden centers to have two greatoptions like that so close by. Both

(02:29:09):
of them, by the way,are open seven days a week. So
you've got something to do this afternoon. If not, hey, I've got
a great idea for you. Goand get some ideas, inspiration, and
some plants that take home from oneof the Kingwood Garden Center and Warren Garden
Centers. You know, today wentso fast, I feel like we are
just getting started. But here weare at ten o'clock next Saturday. Mentioned

(02:29:35):
this again case anybody missed it.While Birds Unlimited out at clear Lake,
I will be there from eleven thirtyto one thirty. Please put that on
your calendar. Come out and seeme. This is your chance. You
got those weeds in the yard youwant identified know what to do about them?
Pull them up, put them inhis uplock bag, bring them in.
You've got a plant that's not lookingreal good. It has some yellow
leaves. Take me a picture ofthe plant, the whole plant. Take

(02:29:58):
me some pictures up close. Cansee which of the leaves are yellow and
how they're turning yellow. And we'llget to the bottom of it. And
so you can take care of whatit is that you need, you know,
need to get done on those.It just really helps to have a
good diagnosis. You know. Isometimes cringe when I hear people say,
well, I bought a weed controlproduct to kill my weeds, and what

(02:30:20):
product. I don't know what productI bought? Well, what weeds you
have? I don't know what weedsI have. Well, here's how I
look at that. That is like, it's like going no, It's like
calling your doctor up on the phoneand saying I don't feel so good today,
and he goes, okay, I'llsend in a prescription. Wouldn't you
go, wait a minute, youdon't even know what's wrong with me yet,

(02:30:41):
and of course you would. Well, not all products kill all weeds.
Not all products prevent weeds. Somekill them after they're up, some
prevent them from coming up. Somework well on grassy weeds, some work
better on broad leaf weeds. There'sthe cool season weeds and the warm season
weeds. There's annual weeds and perennialweeds. One size does not fit all.

(02:31:05):
And so if you know the weedsyou're dealing with, these are the
main weeds that are my problem,then we can put together the suggestions for
here's what to use and when touse to get those under control. And
you know me, I'm always goingto say, first mo water, fertilized,
get that lawn as dense as youcan and choke out the majority of
the problems, and then we'll dealwith the ones that can survive in a

(02:31:26):
dense, healthy, otherwise healthy lawnthat we can take care of that.
The same is true with insects.You know, to go buy quote an
insecticide, Well, what insect areyou going after? And do you have
beneficial insects that are helping with thejob or is it just you and the
insects? Probably not the latter,but it's probably the former. But let's

(02:31:46):
prescribe the right one in the rightway. We always go with the safest
thing that we could recommend. Wego with the thing with the least unintended
consequences that we can recommend. Solet me give you an example. You
have a particular pest on a plant, and you also have spider mites on
the plant, and so you goget seven dust. Seven dust, something

(02:32:07):
I've used my whole life. Imean, I grew up with seven dust.
My family use seven does well throughtime and research. You know what
we've learned when you put seven duston spider mites, the way the plant
changes makes it more nutritious for thespider mites, and the spider mites reproduction
and development is actually enhanced. Becauseseven dust is not a spider mite control.

(02:32:31):
It kills a lot of different insects, including insects that eat spider mites.
So it is not wise to useseven dust on a plant when you
have a spider mite problem because it'sjust going to exacerbate that problem. And
we keep learning more and more aboutproducts like that. Now that's not to
say there's never a use for seventhere. It does many things well.

(02:32:54):
But as time goes on and astechnology advances, we're able better or to
have more options, including organic optionsfor controlling pests and diseases. And so
that's why I know, you knowon the radio you call in, it's
like, okay, tell me whatit is the bug. No, don't
even tell me what the bug is, just tell me how to kill it.
Well, we can do that,but I'm going to give you an

(02:33:16):
answer based on thinking like I justdescribed, and you don't have to listen
to me. Go through all that. I won't bore you with that.
But that's why proper identification and properdiagnosis is so important. What is the
plant, what is the past?How long has it been there? What
else is going on? We wantto give you that kind of help.
And that's why I love these individualyou know appearances like I'll be at Wallbird's

(02:33:37):
next Saturday eleven thirty to one thirtybecause I get to visit with you eye
to eye. We need to goback and forth. We have more time.
I can look at your pictures,I can look at your plants,
and we can guide you to theright things. And plus when you're when
you're in Wallbirds, you you probablywill I'll have to call you to come
over my table because your eyes willhave spirals in them as you see all

(02:33:58):
the cool products that they have.There's anyway come over here and see me
too, not just the stuff now. Seriously, though, they do have
a great supply. But I hopeyou can make it out next Saturday.
In the meantime, I hope youhave a really really good week. Don't
forget this is a week to getthat lawn fertilizing done. If you haven't
done it, already get that down. I believe we may have rain a

(02:34:20):
little bit later in the week that'llhelp water it in. If you don't
know how much it's going to rain, you just watered in with irrigation,
because too much rain can wash awaywhich you just put down, or at
least a large part of it.But about a half interrigation, we'll do
it just fine. Remember to keepthe lawn more sharp for a greener,
healthier lawn. Less wear and tearon your lawn more. I don't say

(02:34:41):
think you need to water just now, because we're not in that season quite
yet with all the rain we've beengetting, but we hope you have success.
If there is bear soil in yourvegetable garden, your herb beeds,
your flower beds cover up the bearsoil. Nature plants of weed. Whenever
sunlight hits the soil. That's howin the forest the trees take care of

(02:35:03):
it. They know how to stopthe competition. They drop leaves on the
competition, they bury it and mulch. That works in our gardens too,
So who wants to spend their summerfighting weaves as the fiance bite you and
the kids. Vocabulary grows in waysyou don't want it to start with mulch
and avoid the problem.