Let's Keep everything Green this Summer

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Katie r h Garden line with skip Rict.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
It's the crazy here.

Speaker 3 (00:09):
The gas gas they can use shrim Just watch him
as wol go gasses like gas begin your day verso man.

Speaker 4 (00:20):
It probable takes the soup uppers in the way.

Speaker 5 (00:24):
The grasses like gas and began you Dad sables glubbles back. Second,
they're not a sun the glassy said gas and.

Speaker 6 (00:35):
The sun bemons of treating.

Speaker 7 (00:39):
Has in the gassy said gas.

Speaker 8 (00:40):
They begin you jam.

Speaker 5 (00:43):
First, starting and treating the gases like gasca.

Speaker 3 (00:48):
You did everything is so let's see and never.

Speaker 5 (00:54):
Thing here Sunday in the sounds so good morning, Good
Sunday morning, gardeners. I y'all doing this morning? Hopefully got
a cup of coffee, two eyes open and ready to
talk about gardening. If you just got one, We'll wait

(01:16):
a minute. It's okay to take your time and know
how that goes well. Waking up sometimes comes a little
bit slow, doesn't it. You know, I used to be
a night person. I mean I could when I was
in school. I could stay up till two am and
still be going strong, stud dinner doing. And I just well,

(01:37):
I've switched. I flipped upside down. Now I can get
up in the mornings and I still you know, first
thing is a little rough, but after that, here we go.
I guess that's a good thing because doing this radio
show when I was in college, yeah, you'd have heard
the music just playing for about four hours, but I
still wouldn't have been up and going again. But anyway,

(01:58):
it's a good thing. Hey, we had a lot of
things to talk about today, you know, the the we're
calling this a cold front. I believe we dropped our
temperature by four degrees or something. I don't know, but
it is. It is a little bit of a break,
and we're gonna take it. Absolutely, We're gonna take that.
There is one thing about gardening that I really enjoy
is the fact that it's always something new. It's always learning.

Speaker 9 (02:22):
Now.

Speaker 5 (02:22):
I mean, you can just kind of close your eyes
and go on autopilot. But I am always out there
checking things out. And the other day I was out
around let's see, I was around a salvia garay knittika.

Speaker 6 (02:35):
That is the.

Speaker 5 (02:37):
One of the salvias that gets taller. It's a probably
four foot or so, maybe five even now mine's about
five feet. Has the dark blue or dark purple flowers
on it and tracks hummingbirds. It does okay, and moderate sunlight,
you know, it doesn't want to be in shade fully,
but mine is in shade for a good part of

(02:59):
the day and then gets a few hours of sun
It does okay. But I was standing there and actually
turning on the water the fauceage behind it, and I
looked and there's this little pink moth on my salvia,
And I thought, well, that is It is a pretty
little moth. And when I say pink, I mean just
like a very rosy pink color, and it's only about

(03:22):
maybe a half inch across or something like that, and
triangular shape like a lot of moths. When they hold
their wings out to the side, they look sort of
like a jet fighter. And I just thought, well, that's
very unusual. I took a picture of it, and then
I went and hunted it down. You know, you can
go to my favorite There are a lot of plant
apps where you can go and there's nature apps where

(03:43):
you can go to find out, well, what's this plant
or what's this bug or things like that, And some
of them are pretty good, and then some of them
are like, yeah, that was made for a different part
of the country, and it doesn't seem to understand what
any of our plants are down here, especially the natives.
But I use Google Lens a lot. Google Lens is

(04:04):
part of the Google Search now, and it's pretty darn good.
It doesn't always tell you exactly what the insect is,
in this case an insect or plant, but it'll get
you so close that then you can search within that
maybe genus plant of insects or plants or whatever, and
find the one you're looking for. Anyway, bottom line is

(04:24):
what I discovered is I had it's called the Southern
pink moth, Southern pink moth, and you look it up,
very unusual, very pretty. But the thing that intrigued me
was it feeds on salvia, and I did not know
that there was a moth that that is its primary

(04:45):
food source. And so since salvia is my favorite genus
of plants, because there's so darn many of them. I
think there's nine probably over nine hundred salvias out there
in nature now, nine hundred for planting here, but about
a undred twenty or thirty or forty of them probably are.
So it's a good genus anyway, that it feeds on

(05:05):
the buds. It eggs become caterpillars since it's a moth,
and it goes to the base of the flour, the
bloom or the bud itself, and it just starts chewing
in right there. And I've never had them before. I've
never noticed it as a problem before, So now I'm
going to keep my eye out for them. From what
I'm reading bt because it's a caterpillar would control them,

(05:27):
but they're kind of attractive. You all to go look
it up and see. Anyway, I didn't know we had
them here, and apparently they are across the south, especially
although I've seen reports of them from up in Oregon
as I was doing my research. So anyway, that's a
fun thing about gardening is it's always something new to learn.
There's always there's new plants, there's new ways of growing plants.

(05:48):
There's new beneficial insects that you haven't learned about before,
or the way that microbes work with the roots of
plants to do some amazing things. Gardening is is a
very fun learning process, and learning keeps you on, keeps
your mind going, and everybody needs to be doing some

(06:08):
sort of learning, even if you're not a gardener, but
I'll tell you this, life science is a fascinating realm
and I would highly recommend it as a great hobby
for everybody. And your gardening is one of those hobbies
where there aren't really edges to the hobby. You know.
Let's say you're a.

Speaker 3 (06:28):
Quilter.

Speaker 5 (06:30):
That's a great hobby and you enjoy quilting and things
like that. Well, that is a hobby that's got a
lot of aspects to it and things. The thing I
noticed though about gardening is it extends to other hobbies.
So like when you're into gardening now, suddenly the other
day I was into entomology and I was looking at
that the same way I could see a bird and

(06:54):
that is beautiful song. I enjoy listening to it in
the morning. Go look at that bird. And next thing
you know, I'm planting things in my garden that attract
that bird. Maybe it's a seed feeder, maybe it is
in there for the caterpillars and things that get on it.
With the bottom lines, it just grows it and it
is always new source of learning and wonder and that

(07:17):
is an important part, you know, to become sedative and
and for our brains to become sedative. I'm just realizing
this is a gardening show, and I'm it's more like
gardening philosophy, I guess now. But anyway, what we're easing
into the day is not a good thing to become
sedative and in any way, shape or form, and gardening

(07:39):
allows you to. Gardening also allows you, as you get older,
to continue gardening, maybe in less physical ways. You know,
the more you can get out and get up and down,
and we have tools to help us with that, by
the way, like the kneeling bench. The more you can
do the working and the soil and things, and if
you've got auprightis or other issues, there's tools that are

(08:00):
orgonomically designed to make that easier. And then there's times
or in situations where people just they can't do the
end the dirt thing anymore. And you can garden indoors.
There's all kinds of lighting and things that you can do.
There's hobbies within gardening like bonees eye training plants. I

(08:20):
talked to somebody the other day that was digging up
a plant and they were gonna make a bonees eye
out of it. So I guess what I'm saying is
just there's a realm of things in gardening. You know,
maybe you don't want to dig up the back forty
and make a vegetable garden like I have. I love
vegetable gardening. But there's gonna be something that you're interested in,
something that beautifies, something that brings maybe a wonderful sense

(08:45):
to the garden around you. I've got gingers planted by
my back patio. I love it when the wind blows
from those over to the patio. I've got brigmancias or
angels trumpets also planted kind of on the southwest side,
so the breeze brings some fragrance in. There's no to
gardening as a hobby. There's no limit to gardening as
something to keep you physically active, to keep you mentally active.

(09:07):
And as I like to say, I may be biased.
In fact I am biased about this, but that don't
mean I'm wrong. All right, let's take a little break
here and we'll be back in just a moment. Welcome
back to garden line. Let's talk a little bit of
gardening this morning, get away from my philosophical musings for
the morning. It's the time of the year when just

(09:31):
due to really intensity we're running into some plant problems
kind of quickly. I think I'll be talking to a
few callers today, probably judging from emails and things of
a very sing going wrong with plants. You may have
a plant that is just suddenly wilting, and you're kind

(09:51):
of trying to figure out, well, I'm watering it, why
is it wilting. One thing to remember is in the heat,
an intense heat, the demands on that plant or through
the roof when temperatures are up in the upper nineties
even mid nineties, plants are struggling with a lot of
their biochemical processes that they do to stay alive. You know,

(10:12):
things like photosynthesis are affected. Photosynthesis is what feeds a plant, right,
and also some of another process called respiration where they
burn fuel in order to do whatever they got to do,
and other processes like that. And so a plant is
having trouble just kind of functioning and getting by in

(10:33):
many cases. But when you add to that a lack
of water the root system, it gets serious real quick
because plants losing water is how they cool themselves. And
that's true of us too, right. We perspire, the perspiration
evaporates and it cools us. That's why we perspire and

(10:54):
plants transpire. They don't have little drops of water on
the leaves in the middle of the heat, but they
do lose water out of the leaf. And as it
changes from okay, little quick physics nerdy here. As water
changes from one state to another, from liquid to a gas,
or from liquid to a solid like that's called ice,

(11:15):
it either takes in or gives out heat in that process.
And so part of the reason why when you you know,
if your hand is wet or unlet you stick your
finger in your mouth to get out the window of
the car as you're driving long it feels cool is
because the water on your finger, the saliva, is evaporating
away and pulling heat with it, and it's cooling your
finger that way. That's how that works. So plants, it

(11:37):
works the same way as they As liquid water in
the plant becomes a gas, evaporates away, it cools the plant.
So when a plant lacks water, one of the reasons
it's so hard on a plant, especially in the heat,
is because it just really overheats. And you know, anything
out in the sun gets hot. You go out and
put your hand on a picnic table or the asphalt

(11:58):
or your driveway, or you know, a garden tool sitting
in the sun. It gets hot, and so without the water,
it can't cool. Without the cool then we start to
run in even more problems because it's getting even a
hotter than it really is outside. That plant surface is
getting hot. So that's one thing that happens. Another thing
that happens in the heat is when we overwater, the

(12:21):
plant roots can't get oxygen and they start to shut down. Now,
if the plant roots can't get oxygen and they're shutting down,
the plant can't take up can't take up water. And
so you can kill a plant really fast in the
heat by just keeping it water logged and starting to
see the loss of roots because now at a time

(12:42):
when it most needs fully functioning rapidly taking in and
moving water from its root system, it doesn't have the
root system function to do it. And so that causes
a problem too. And I'm seeing pictures of people that
are showing me a plant in their yard and the
plant is wilting and the leaves are turning yellow and
the leaves are falling off, and so you know, the

(13:04):
first question is, well, probably needs water. Well, maybe it does,
very likely it does, but maybe it needs oxygen in
the roots too, and in our heavy clay soils when
we're water water watering because we know it's hot outside
and we know the plants need help, but we end
up creating the opposite problem and it ends up in
the same result, and that's the plant die in. So

(13:25):
you got to be careful with that when you're doing
the watering of the plant. Just remember that in the heat,
good drainage is critical, very very important. There are very
few plants that have developed the ability to live with
their roots underwater. There are some that can, for sure,
but very few, and most plants need good drainage, and

(13:47):
so raised beds are important. When you add organic matter,
you take what let's just use a clay soil as
an example, since we have so much clay around here
in the listening area. If the if a heavy clay,
like take modeling clay and you know, you just model it.
Let's say a plant root as a pencil, you know,
and you were to take modeling clay and squeeze it

(14:09):
all around a pencil, Well, that pencil is smothered by
the clay. You can't oxygen can't get through the clay
to get there, at least not in a fast enough right.
When you add organic matter, it's like taking that clay
and breaking the particles apart into clumps. So it's more.
Here goes all these analogies, but for me, it works
a bowl of popcorn. The popcorn is the clumps of

(14:32):
clay in organic matter, and now there's oxygen in space
between those popcorn kernels for air and water to move
in and out, and so organic matter helps in that way.
Expanded shale can help, but you got to put enough
of it, you know, just a shell particle or two
here and there is not enough. They did a study
up in Dallas in a Dallas black clay, which is

(14:53):
very similar to our Houston gambo down here, and they
found that about three inches of expanded shell mixed in
is deeply as they could. Followed that they were planting
some roses to test for the earth Kin rose program
that the roses did very well with that. But that's
putting quite a bed in the soil because again, just
a granule here and there is not making much difference.

(15:15):
Organic matter is great, it has a thousand good things
that it does for the plant, for the soil, but
expanded shew lasts longer, and so you kind of need
both really to do the best with it. So those
are some tips for your plants, for the roots, for
getting through summer, making sure they get adequate water. And
you know, I've been asked a million times, how long

(15:39):
do I run my irrigation system? How do I know
how much to water?

Speaker 9 (15:44):
Like that?

Speaker 5 (15:44):
And every system is different, every soil is different, every
planting site is different. You know, is it sun or shade?
Do you have a lot of organic matter or not?
It's hard to answer that question. So here's the way
to answer it. We have a lot of gardening devices
that are attached to the end of our hands, are
called fingers. Dig down about four inches in the soil

(16:06):
and feel the soil. The top is often going to
be dry in weather like we're having, but dig down
about four inches and feel the soil maybe six inches,
and feel the soil and see what it feels like.
If it feels moist, if you squeeze it and water
comes out, well it's probably too wet, but that that's
good to be moist. But if it's dry water, and
that's how you know, and you don't have to feel

(16:27):
the soil every day. After a while, you kind of
get in Yeah, here we go. But you get the
feel for it, and you know exactly when it needs
water and when it doesn't. So when in doubt, just
get down there and see what the roots are experiencing.
Feel what the roots are experiencing, and that'll guide you
when you need to get a good idea. Is like,

(16:48):
what's going on here with these plants. Finally, and I
talk about this a lot, but remember when you plant
a plant, typically plants are grown in round, cylindrical plastic containers,
and when that happens, the roots go in circles. The
whole root system is in that container and they're watering
it and fertilizing it. So the plant grows, so it's
a bigger plant for you to buy. But when you

(17:10):
put it in the ground, that whole root system would
have in nature been much more extensive and expensive in
all directions around that plant. And so you got to
water where the roots are. So a cylinder comes out
of the pot, a cylinder goes in the ground. You
got to water that cylinder for the first I don't know, days, weeks, months,

(17:32):
It just starts off. Every day you're just watering it
like it was being watered in the garden center to
keep it alive once or twice a day, depending on
all the factors I mentioned. And then slowly, you know,
you're wetting the soil around it because roots are going
to begin to move out into that soil, and gradually,
over a course of this first summer, you're going to

(17:52):
be watering wider and wider of an area. But just
know that for a good while, the vast majority of
the roots oft is still in that cylinder and right
around that cylinder starting to venture out in the soil,
and you got to keep that area moist. Very important,
because yeah, it's you got a water where the roots are.
That's the bottom line. And also I would say water

(18:15):
where the roots are about to be are starting to
be and the soil around it. Okay, well, there's a
few tips on water and plants and getting them through
the heat. Listen, it's hot out there. We've got a
lot of plants that are tough as a boot. They
can take the heat, but they got to have water
in order to take the heat. So there you go.
I hope you've chosen some good plants. There's annuals, there's perennials,

(18:36):
there's shrubs, there's trees. There's lots of good plants that
can take this heat. Tropicals from areas where it's a
steamy jungle. They're used to this kind of heat. They
like this kind of heat, but they got to have water.
All right, let's take a little break. We're at the
half hour here. We're going to turn it over to
the news and we will be right back with your
phone calls seven one three two one two five eight

(18:59):
seven four seven one three two one two kt rh
right back. Welcome back to Guardenline, folks. Good to have
you with us. I want to dive on in here.
By the way. Uh, if you are looking to have
some landscaping done and you want quality work done, you
want professionals dealing with your landscape, then you need to

(19:20):
call the folks at Peerscapes. It's as simple as that.
Peerscapes dot Com is the website. If you go to
peerscapes dot com and look at the work they do,
you'll see what I'm talking about. They know how to
do it. They've got professionals on staff in every aspect.
I don't care if it's designing a landscape or proper
irrigation so that it does does work effectively, or proper

(19:41):
drainage so that you can get that water off of
a sagi spot like we were just talking about while ago.
Piercescapes dot Com. That's who you need to reach out
to if you would like to give them a call. Well,
let's do it that way. We can give you a
phone number and seven excuse me two eight one two
eight one three seven oh fifty sixty two eight one

(20:02):
three seven oh five zero six zero. Let's head out
to spring now and we're going to visit with Bonnie
this morning. Hey Bonnie, welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 6 (20:12):
Hi, Skip, thanks, good morning to you. I send a
picture of my droopye quite myrtle, and it's just what
you were talking about.

Speaker 8 (20:22):
What can I do?

Speaker 5 (20:24):
Yeah, isn't it?

Speaker 10 (20:26):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (20:27):
I was just thinking about that.

Speaker 11 (20:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (20:29):
I think it's one or the other. It's too wet
or too dry that. Let me put it this way.
The tree is showing drought, okay, But if you kill roots,
you get drought symptoms because it neverage to take up water.
So whether there's no water in the soil or no
roots to take up water, something is happening. Along those lines,
and you're just gonna have to dig down and see

(20:52):
that tree. I think you said was planted a year ago,
right last Yeah, yeah, okay, so it had time to
establish and the fact that it grew that many leaves
and it bloomed for you and all that this year
tells me that the tree was happy and has a
good root system. I think it just suddenly got dry.

(21:13):
And my gut feeling is that it may be lacking
enough water. But again, until you dig down, it's hard
to know for sure.

Speaker 6 (21:23):
Yeah, what do you mean dig down? What do I
see or what do I do that I would do?

Speaker 5 (21:29):
Yeah, I would dig down around you know, like right
where your malt stops and the grass is about to start.
Take a trowel, a hand trowel, and just dig down,
make a little hole about get where you can get
some soil down from about four to six inches deep
down under the soil surface there and I feel the
soil and see what you think you could do that

(21:49):
out in the yard, you know, maybe four feet away
from the tree too, just to feel the yard looks okay.
But the yard doesn't look overwatered. It looks like it
may be a little on the thirsty side. So if
I were going to give my best guess at it,
I think your tree needs more water. And when you water,
you need to give it a good soaking. So Bonnie,

(22:11):
if you'll get you a garden sprinkler, or if you
have an automatic sprinkler system, that's fine too. It get
things with straight sides, like a pinto bean can or
a cat food can, or a tuna fish can, or
something that has straight sides, and you're going to put
those two or three of them around the tree, turn
on the sprinkler until you've caught about an inch of

(22:32):
water in those cans, and then have soak the soil
deep enough to do some good. Okay, not less than
an inch, but you want to give a good soaking
to that whole area. Let me ask you this. Does
the ground slope downhill from the tree toward the fence

(22:54):
to the left in that picture. If I'm looking at
the picture in the fence, it's fairly there, all right. Okay, Well,
give it a good soaking. I think it'll perk up
if it. If it went far enough, you're going to
have some more yellowing, leaf curling and leaf dropping, but
you're not going to lose the tree if you can

(23:15):
give it a good soaking.

Speaker 6 (23:17):
Okay, we'll keep wordering and all right, thank you.

Speaker 5 (23:21):
Appreciate it, all right, buddy, Hey, thank you for the call.
Appreciate that, good question. Appreciate that very much. Alrighty, let's
see here, Oh I wanted to mention. Uh, let's see
we got got let me go to Myron first, Myron
in northwest Houston. Hey, Myron, welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 1 (23:44):
Good, good morning, Skip, Thank you for taking my call.
I had got busy and fell behind the fertilizer schedule
for that slow release.

Speaker 6 (23:54):
That was.

Speaker 1 (23:56):
Late late June or early July.

Speaker 8 (23:59):
Is it too late?

Speaker 5 (24:00):
Yes? No, you can do that. You can get you
get your silver bag a super turf that nineteen four
ten applied and watered in real good and then just
keep keep watering adequately to move those nutrients down in
the ground and it'll it'll carry all the way in
the fall easy and then some. But you can still

(24:23):
do it now. That is that is fine. You also
were kind of hitting a point now where now that
we're in August, you know you can go either way.
You can do you know, the longer slow like super turf,
or you can do something that's a little little less long.
I do it once or maybe twice, and then we're

(24:43):
going to be in our fall fertilization too. But the
super turf applied now, you can still do that. There's
no problem with it.

Speaker 1 (24:50):
Well, let me ask this question.

Speaker 4 (24:51):
I have.

Speaker 1 (24:53):
The two bags left over of the brown of the
fall Special from last Yes, I've overbought.

Speaker 8 (25:02):
Yes, okay, too early to use that.

Speaker 5 (25:07):
You could use it if you needed to where fall
is coming in October. If it were me, I'd hold
those bags until October, and I would use something with
a little more nitrogen right now, a little higher, you know,
the fall Special. The first number is a little lower
and the third numbers a little higher, and so nothing

(25:29):
wrong with using small special now if you need to.
But I would just grab me something that I could
use now. Again, you'll definitely use that the fall Special. Okay.

Speaker 1 (25:40):
Let me add another question. We're getting yellow spots. Where
are poodle PE's in the yard? Is there any special
treatment you should make for those yellow spots?

Speaker 5 (25:54):
You know, I'm not an expert in that, but I
have two I have two golden retrievers, and I understand
what you're talking about for sure. If you could follow
the poodle and with a garden hose and the minute
the poodle moves on, just wash that out, it would
prevent that. But that isn't how life works, right, And

(26:15):
so what we're left with is kind of a concentration
of salts and other things that are in the air,
and it just it just burns, burns the grass and
you know, it fills back in, but it doesn't look good,
as you know, And so that'd be the only thing
is just being able to jump on it right away.
I've heard of stuff like put this in their feed

(26:37):
and things like that. I'm not an expert in any
of that, and I doubt that that stuff is that effective,
but you might want to research it a little bit more.

Speaker 1 (26:46):
Should you pull out the dead grass that's there, just
kind of pull that or just leave it?

Speaker 5 (26:53):
You could if you wanted to get the brown look
out of there, but I would leave it because even
the dead grass is shading the soil and preventing weeds
from coming up. You know, if you cleared it all
out right there, you probably get a few weeds sprouting
while you're waiting on the new grass to fill in.
Thank you, Thanks, all right, sir, thank you for the call.

(27:14):
Appreciate that. All right, there you go, Let's take a
little break and we will be back with your calls
in just a moment. We are back. Welcome back to Gardenline.
Good have you with us on this nice Sunday morning.
I hope you are having a nice, relaxed start to
your day. We have been talking about different kinds of
things gardening, but a lot related to roots and watering

(27:38):
and proper watering and the importance of not overwatering and
all that kind of thing. I wanted to talk about
a couple of products that Microlife has that I think
will be very helpful for your plants as they're struggling
through these stresses. Now, now, we've known for a long time.
Organic gardeners for long have long known that fish emulsions

(28:01):
and seaweed have been a great combination for plants in many,
many different ways. Microlife has something called super seaweed. Now,
the super seaweed is kind of cool stuff. It's got
the kelp itself, which is kelpus seaweed. It's got fish
hydrosylate in it also, so it has fish substances in

(28:22):
there as well as well as black blackstrap molasses, and
we know that molasses stimulates microbial activity in the soil,
the humid and fovic acid that you would get from humus,
and that is very helpful for the soil. It's got
to minum acids in it, a lot of other good
substances in it as well, and super seaweed done. You
could do it as a folio spray, but you can

(28:43):
also do it as a root drench, and I would recommend,
especially for younger plants, you consider that maybe doing both
a folier spray and a root drench. Do it early
in the morning. And here's why. Early in the morning,
the stowmates of the leaves, the holes if you will,
the bottom of the leaf are open and as it
heats up, they tend to close up. And so if

(29:06):
you do it early in the morning, you get better
intake of any kind of thing you're fully your feeding
when you do it early in the morning. The other
product that goes with it, by the way, the seaweed
is a green label that makes sense, weeds green, seaweed green,
and the blue label is Microlife Ocean Harvest. Now that's
a four two three fertilizer. So it's a nice little

(29:26):
package of nutrients there. Now. Ocean harvest, on the other hand,
is it simulates biological activity, but it also provides minerals
for the plants themselves. It has also the fish hydrosylate.
It's got some kelp in it as well, and some
other compounds. But both of these together, I think are

(29:47):
a good mix for a complete nutrient package and all
of the things other than nutrients that are part of
helping a plant through stress and helping a plant to
survive from microlife. So let's make make this simple. In
both the court and the gallon size, you've got the
blue label that's ocean harvest, think of it as primarily fish.

(30:08):
And the green label, which is super seaweed, think of
it as primarily seaweed. Okay, that's what we're looking at.
You put those two together, mix them together, use them
as a folder, use them as a root drench, put
them in when you're planting new plants. Put them in
with established plants. Drench them into the ground and help
your plants out during these very very stressful times. From

(30:29):
the folks at micro Life, nice concoction there. I was
doing some fertilizing myself in that way with some plants
that we have and on the outside. By the way,
just as a just as a tip, it is hard
to get the smell of fish out of any kind
of a fisher mulsion type of product. They're working on it,

(30:51):
and they do a pretty good job of it, But
in general I tend to use those fish emulsions in
the outdoors just you know, I just think it's a
little better use outdoors. We have plenty of other good products,
including for microlife, that we can use on our indoors
too as well. So stip for you there. So let's
get back to talking about plants and things going on

(31:13):
in the landscape. If you have plants that were blooming well,
but now I've kind of, i don't know, puttered out
a little bit, you can give them new life, a
new boost of growth by shearing them back and giving
them a little fertilizer. So Salvia's they bloom on new shoots,
and if you give them a little bit of a shearing,

(31:33):
they're not to prune them heavily, but share them back
a little bit and then give them a boost of fertilizer,
especially things with a good nitrogen boost in them, watered
in real good and get some fresh new growth. You
will have a whole new group of blooms that pop
up on those plants. You know, after the shearing they
look a little bloomless, but that's okay. Salvia's never It's
like they never quit blooming. They just kind of slow

(31:55):
down a lot, and so a boost. What I will
do in my salvia is I'll runum. And this is
true not just Salvius, but other subshrubs and things. Zex
Minia is a really good subshrub to use for our
area and others. Share them back at the end of
winter and then give them a boost fertilizer and get

(32:17):
really good spring growth. Then typically and sometime in May,
late May, typically I will do another sharing and then
give them some fertilizer and get another group of blooms.
I'll often do that too toward the end of August.
It could be early September, but toward the end of
August sometime like that, a shearing and then fertilizing, watering
good and another set of bloom growth. If you've looked

(32:40):
at salvia, greggy I greg salvia, autumn sage, cherry sage,
those our own names for the same thing. They bloom
all the time, but not like they do in spring.
But you can get that flush by sharing them back,
fertilizing them and getting them growing again. I will do
this to my roses too. As we get toward the

(33:01):
end of August, We'll do a shearing on my roses,
give some fertilizer to them, get some fresh new growth.
Roses also bloom on the terminals, the new shoots. So
if you have one shoot and you cut it back,
you're gonna have more than one shoot come out from
behind where you cut it back. Those will each have
a bloom on them, and your October bloom show will

(33:21):
be even more I love using this word floriferous as
a result. So just a tip there, Always have the water.
Always provide the water for them. Little boost, little shearing,
and you can keep these things looking good. Lots of
plants are supplies to.

Speaker 7 (33:39):
Well.

Speaker 5 (33:39):
Music means the first hours in the books. Guess what
we're gonna be doing for the eight o'clock hour. We're
gonna have Beverly Welts from the arbor Gate in and
we are going to talk to Beverly all about color
during these hot weather seasons. Some of her in my
favorite plants that we have it. We just think people
need to you can't live without them. And other kinds

(34:01):
of tips for having a wonderful landscape. If you've ever
been out to Arborgate, you know what a great job
they do out there, bringing in some of the best
plants in the world. Advice stick around for the eight
o'clock hour. There's enough light outside to be able to
pull weeds, you know, if you're going to go out
there and do that, though I will, first of all,

(34:22):
it's a good time of day to do it, but
I would recommend you take your phone and you download
one of the podcasting apps. I like to use the
iHeartMedia app. It's a good one, but there are others
that'll do this. You can go find garden Line and
you can listen to the show live on iheartmediapp. At
least I know you can, and you just what I'll

(34:44):
just put the speaker on, or if you've got earbuds,
you can do it that way. But however you want
to do it, just get out there in the garden
and listen to Guardland. Who knows. You may see a
bug or a weed or a plant or something. Take
a picture of it. You can email it to me,
and we will be live from your garden, right here
on Garden Line, diagnosing or identifying or whatever we need
to do. We're happy to help with that. Just a

(35:05):
reminder that when you want to ask a question that
requires me to really get a good picture of what
you're talking about, Like, well there's this bug, describe it
to me. Well, it has six legs. Okay. We didn't
eliminate any with that, you know, and it just helps
to have a picture, it's the bottom line. You can
do that. You can call my producer, get an email,

(35:28):
send a picture, and follow it up with a phone call.
I enjoy getting your emails. I'm not able to type
out answers to all the emails, but if you follow
them with a call to Garden Line, we will absolutely
be able to take care of it. And with a photo,
we can do a lot better job. I've had several
questions this morning. Where I can look at a picture
of a plan, I can look at what's going on
around the plant, I can do a better job and

(35:52):
make sure the picture is in sharp focus. Fuzzy pictures
get fuzzy answers, and we don't want fuzzy answers. We
want a nice sharp act your answer, So help me
see what is going on there as best you can
get up close. If there's some little bug on there,
the closer you can get to it. And check your
photos before you send them. Sometimes our cameras focus on

(36:14):
something behind what we're holding up and want them to
take a picture of, and so just make sure it's
well focus so we can do our best job of
helping you find success. Gardening is the best hobby that
there is, and in order to fully enjoy that hobby,
we want to follow the principles of success for plants.

(36:35):
And you know what the you know what one of
the number one things is I wish i'd make I
had made this. I wish this quote was for me.
It's not from somebody else. I read a long time ago,
and it's that success with gardening is learning to see
things from a plant's point of view. And that is
so true. Learning to see things from a plant's point
of view, you understand what a plant wants and what

(36:55):
a plant is if you will experiencing and you can
fix the problem. You know that plant is saying, I
can't get oxygen to the roots, I cannot breathe to
do the process as roots have to do. My roots
are dying. Quit watering so much. You know, the plants.
Understanding how a plant is experiencing the world around it

(37:19):
is very important. Like a Colorado blue spruce in your
yard in Houston, Texas, it's saying, Okay, first of all,
I was very happy up in the cool climate of Colorado,
and I'm not down here. This is horrible. Get me
out of here. Why did you leave to come up
to Colorado and get me? Bring me back. We need

(37:40):
to have a society for the prevention of cruelty to plants,
and they need to have a station some up around somewhere,
up around Amarillo where everybody comes across the border and
they confiscate any poor blue spruces and blue Colorado Columbines
that are being hauled down here. All right, enough of
that anyway, Learning to see things from a plant's point
of view is very very important. You know what a

(38:01):
plant wants. You can have success with that plant by
giving it what it wants. There you go, all right, Uh,
if you have a gardening question seven one three, two
one two five eight seven four seven one three two
one two fifty eight seventy four Nilson water gardens. What
a great day to visit out there.

Speaker 9 (38:19):
It is.

Speaker 5 (38:20):
It is going to be a four degree cooler day.
I guess we got a little break from the sun.
But they got a lot of nice trees out there
you can walk around under. And the sound of water,
Oh my gosh, how soothing.

Speaker 3 (38:31):
You know.

Speaker 5 (38:31):
I told Ralph this more than once. But they need
to charge admission for you just to come in and
set They get hands you a little folding chair and
let you just go out and sit by running water
and enjoy that sound. Watch the fish, watch the blooms
of the of the lily pads, or whatever the plants
are for the for the particular garden you're sitting by.

(38:54):
You know, they are nationally known specialists in water gardening.
That's just the way it is. They've they have invented
things that are now used across the country and water gardening,
and it is the place to get started, whether you
want to start off with just a little small pond
that's in a container above ground, or whether you want
to do an in ground pond, if you want a

(39:15):
beautiful waterfall and go the whole nine yards, however you
want to go about it. Nelson nursery. Water Gardens is
a place. It's also a good nursery, an awesome nursery.
You got you got all kinds of plants there. Start
by going through the inside and look at the houseplants.
They have beautiful house plants. I mean there's such wonderful
attractive shape that you can just grab them off the shelf,

(39:37):
take them home, give them to a friend as a gift.
They are really really nice selection of houseplants. And then
the herbs and the vegetables, and the annuals and perennials,
and the shrubs and trees and fruit and all the
other things that you might want for your garden. If
you got a little kiddos, bring them with you. If
you've got friends, family, bring them with you. This is

(40:00):
a destination garden center. They'll give the kids some fish
food and they can go out there and drop little
fish food pellets right in the koy mouth and kids
love that. I just make sure and grab a back
belt loop so they don't lean over too far when
they're feeding the fish. Nelson Nursery and Water Gardens on
Katie Fort Ben Road two eight one three nine, one

(40:22):
forty seven sixty nine. I've never heard a splash, a
loud splash out there though, that would be that would
probably be me falling in because they don't by the way,
they don't card you when I say they give kids
free fish food. It doesn't matter what age you are,
that you can you can get free fish food to
feed the fish. There. You got our landscapes. We are

(40:47):
watering to try to keep things going. And just remember
that the most important place for water to be is
down in the soil where the roots are. When you
use sprinklers, you wet the foliage and you may even
a lawn you may wet at that's some. But you
got to water a while to get water down into
the soil, and that's very important. That's why yesterday espens

(41:10):
when it's time talking about drip irrigation, microjet irrigation and
shrubler irrigation, getting water down on the soil surface rather
than on the plants. But you got to give it
a good soaking and plants pump the soil dry quick.
Years ago, when I was in working on my master's
in horticulture, there's a Texas A and M Fruit Station,

(41:34):
or actually just a research station out there in Stephenville, Texas.
And they had a giant underground pot that weighed soil
and plants. So imagine you know how trucks will drive
across these scales and it basically is just a big
box on the ground that they roll across it, and
it weighs the whole truck itself. Well, anyway, they do

(41:56):
well they created these. They're all like they're just a
big weight box, and it's constantly measuring the weight of
the soil through the day. And so they grew a
peach tree in it to an almost mature sized peach tree,
a pretty large peach tree, and they weadh it through

(42:17):
the day. And the only difference in weight of a
tree and soiled during the day is the water that's
gained or lost. So when you water it, it pie
gets heavier, right, you know that from your house plant. Well,
they determined that a mature peach tree on a warm,
a hot, sunny day can pump forty gallons of water

(42:38):
out of its leaves. That's a lot of water. Now,
if it starts to go short, it's not going to
pump forty gallons, but it can pump that much. So
when you go out and you put lit a five
gallon bucket of water on a full mature peach tree.
You're not even scratching the surface of what that tree needs.
And so you want to give a good soaking to
the soil. Again, we went over and over earlier. Don't

(42:59):
over water. But just know this that if you just
sit there with your thumb on the end of a
garden hose and you squirt the ground and the water's
running off the top, you're not watering. In fact, if
you go over there afterwards, just dig down, you'll see
you've wetted about an inch deep maybe, And so you've
got to give it a good slow soaking to do
the plants the good they need you to do them. Okay,

(43:22):
let's take a little break here and we'll be right
back with your calls in just a moment. Glad to
have you with us this morning. We are here to
help you have a bountiful garden and a beautiful landscape.
If you'd like to give me a call, we'll answer
your questions at seven one three two one two fifty
eight seventy four seven one three two one two five
eight seven four. We are going to start off by

(43:45):
heading to West Chase to talk to Bill this morning. Huh, Bill,
Welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 8 (43:51):
Good morning. I have a plumb tree. It's a mature
plum tree that's thirty years old, that has sap bubbles
on the truck and some of the limbs and a

(44:13):
couple of the major limbs seem to be dying. Okay,
well what could it do?

Speaker 5 (44:23):
Yeah, that's a good question. First of all, a thirty
year old plumb tree is a very old plum tree.
They you know, typically you look at orchards of peaches
and plums and things, and thirty years is they're usually
replacing it by then, and so kind of like I guess,
in some ways you could say plants are like us.

(44:44):
The older we get, the less resilient we become, and
so different things can you know, cause us problems and
we just don't bounce back as fast. This plumb tree
that you have, the sap that I see right now
is just leak gage due to an infection inside the
branch or trunk itself. And that is just to think

(45:08):
of it as bleeding if you will, on the tree.
I don't see any signs of it being a borer
related bleed, but I think it's more of a disease
canker kind of thing. There's nothing to spray on it
to control that. The bubbling you were talking about though,
when you when you see it, was it white and
kind of frothy looking or was it more of a black,

(45:31):
gooey mess when you were seeing.

Speaker 8 (45:33):
The bubbling, But I would call it a dark reddish
bubble like some kind of candy.

Speaker 5 (45:46):
Okay, well, here's what happens. Sap is still sugar. Yeah,
sap is full of sugar from the leaves, the leaves
that make carbohydrates, and they're moving them down to the
roots to take care of the tree. And whenever bacteria
gain access to that, they can cause it to start
to ferment and uh and and as it does, just

(46:09):
like if you were brewing beer, you know, you would
get you would get fermentation and bubbles and air escaping
like that, and it it sort of leaks out of
the tree and that gooiness just sort of creates a
bubble like like bubble gum or any kind of goo.
And that is what you're seeing. That's not a bacteria,
that is a disease of the plant per se, but

(46:32):
it's just in there in an enclosed anaerobic space. Uh,
fermenting the sugary substances, and so again there's no spraying
it because it's it's it's it's like having an infected
cut on your hand and just putting a little you know,
salve over the top or it doesn't deal with the

(46:52):
infection down underneath. And so there's no there's no controlling it.
The best thing you can do is keep that tree
as healthy and vigorous as possible with adequate watering during
this drought so it's not stressed, uh, and very moderate fertilization,
not too much, but just a little bit. That tree
has kind of reached the size that it's able to

(47:13):
be in your soil and climate and everything like that.
And so we're not trying to push a lot of
new growth, but we are trying to alleviate stress. That
gives a tree the best chance it can at its
age of walling off those infected spots and continuing on
with healthy growth.

Speaker 8 (47:33):
Should I trim off any of the dead leaves are branches?

Speaker 5 (47:43):
Yeah, if you have a branch that the leaves have
turned brown and diet are fallen off on, you can
cut that back. And now is the time, you know,
you follow that dead back to where there's living tissue,
you can make those cuts. You could also make a
note just flag those and do it in the winter time.
Late summer is okay to do some pruning on the tree.

(48:05):
It's sometimes that opens the door to some problems though,
like we've been talking about, and so we try to
do most of our pruning that we can, significant pruning
where a saw is involved, at the end of winter
before spring growth begins. Yes, sir, yeah, But having said that,

(48:31):
bill cutting into dead wood to cut off dead wood,
it doesn't matter when you do that. It's if you
cut back far enough where you're actually cutting into some
living wood. That's what I would rather not do at
this time of year and save that for winter. Okay,
good luck with that tree, appreciate it.

Speaker 8 (48:52):
Yes, all right, you take care.

Speaker 5 (48:55):
All right, there we go, boys. That is a giant
plum tree. Very beautiful, very very beautiful. Hey, speaking of trees,
we are, of course here in Houston, we're always dealing
with storms, whether it's hurricane season or not. The folks
at Affordable Tree Folks meaning Martin spoon Moore, Martin spoon

(49:16):
Moore has been around doing this for a very very
long time. He knows trees. He knows our area. Like
I said, he's got the time and the experience with it.
And so Martin stays busy right now, he's booking for fall.
And if you want to get tree work done, you
need to give him a call, make sure and get
on the schedule so that he can come by do
an assessment of your trees, see what kind of trimming

(49:39):
and what not might be necessary. It's a chance to
talk to him about other things you know doesn't need.
Some of the other services that they offer. Here's the
phone number seven one three six nine nine two six
six three seven to one three six nine nine twenty
six sixty three. That is Affordable Tree Service. If you
want to go to the webs site and see the

(50:00):
other services that they offer. Afftree Service dot com. Aff
Tree Service dot com. Give Martin a call, let him
come by, assess your trees and look at it. Listen
to it. When you get a large tree, those branches,
should they give way during a storm, can cause significant damage,

(50:21):
even threatening the lives of people that are around them.
You don't want to mess around with that kind of thing.
And whether you have a big tree or a small tree,
having a knowledgeable person like Martin come out and assess
those trees and give them the training and pruning over
the years that they need to make sure they're as
strong as possible. That just makes good sense. And so

(50:41):
don't wait until the tree is old and has issues
that now we're trying to you know, correct and fix,
take care of those trees all the way along in
the process. And that is affordable tree service. Who you
want to call? Martin Spoon Moore seven one three six
nine nine two six six three. Let's now to sugar
Land and visit with Laurie this morning. Hello, Laurie, I

(51:05):
stamp are you I'm doing well? How can we help today?

Speaker 7 (51:10):
Okay? Yes, I have two magnolia trees and they're pretty
mature and they are developing like exponentially a ton of
wal moss. And at first, when it was on the
lower branches, I used to try to pull it off.

(51:31):
Now it's up in the whole tree and it seems
like it is killing branches along the way. Is my
whole tree going to die?

Speaker 5 (51:38):
Okay? No, it's not. Bal Moss is not a parasite
it I've seen bal moss growing on power lines and
fence posts and so it's not taking anything from the tree,
it's just attached to the tree. And so what the

(51:58):
way to get I get it out of there? To
physically remove it, which is incredibly tedious and not easy
to do on live oaks and things. What we'll do
is we'll spray them with a copper based spray in
the springtime when they do their main leaf drop and
you can actually get the spray to the ball moss.
Magnolia leaves are just deflectors of spray.

Speaker 3 (52:19):
I mean it.

Speaker 5 (52:20):
They It's hard to get good coverage to the ball
moss with all those stiff, leathery magnolia leaves in the way.
Magnolia also goes to a leaf drop, but it's not
typically as extensive as the live oak, and so it's
going to be difficult to get a spray in there.
But a copper based spray in the springtime could help
with that. If you would send me an email, I'll

(52:43):
have my When we're done here, I'll put you on hold.
My producer will give you an email. I'll send you
some information if you choose to go that route. But
I tell you a lot of people go the physical
removal root. But just know that the only way that
ball mass is harming a tree is by shading out
some of the leaves that would have gotten light that

(53:05):
the ball mass is blocking. But that's if your tree
is struggling and filled with ball moss. I would say
that whatever's causing the tree to struggle is causing the
foliage to not be as dense up there, and therefore
the ball moss is getting more of an opportunity to grow.
So I se, I see the problem is something other
than ball moss that is causing a lack of vigor

(53:28):
in the tree. Could be soil compaction, It could be
a lot of things. But if you can figure out
why is this tree stressed compaction being a possibility, or
lack of water at times, or heavy clay soil or whatever,
that's probably going to be the case. I've talked to
myself right up into the seconds where I gotta go.
I'm gonna put you on hold lari uh and uh

(53:48):
just talk to my producer and they will they will
give you the email. Okay, let's see phone number here
is seven to one three two one two fifty eight
seventy four. I'm looking, I got a clock problem here
that's going on. I just I'm just realizing that another
discrepancy seven one three two one two. I need to

(54:09):
fix that. Seven one three two one two five eight
seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight
seventy four. And we will be right back in just
one second after Erica tells you about the news. I
want to dress warm today. It's four degrees cooler outside,
so don't go out, don't go out unprepared. We are

(54:31):
enjoying a little bit of a break from the warm,
warm weather. But hey, it's it's summer. It's okay. We
live here. We're tough, you know, we can take it.
No problem, no problem whatsoever.

Speaker 11 (54:43):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (54:44):
You're listening to garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter,
and if you have a gardening question, give us call
seven one three two one two five eight seven four.
We got open lines right now, so we're happy to
take the call and get right to it. Sweet Green
from the folks at Nitroposs is a product that's based
on a molasses space. It's eleven percent nitrogen fertilizer, which

(55:05):
is a really good boost of nitrogen for a natural
type fertilizer. Sweet Green, you put it down, you watered
in microbes get a hold of it, get real excited
about that. They love molasses, and they love sweet carbohydrate
type material, simple carbs, and they make you long green.
They turn that loose a long picks up the nutrients
and it just really responds. It would be a good

(55:27):
one to use right now if you were kind of
getting toward the end here of our official calendar summer
three months you know, June, July, August, those of you
who lived here before, no summer in sometime in October.
We just don't know which day. But the bottom line
is seriously joking aside. You can give your a little

(55:48):
bit of a boost now and then next thing you know,
we're going to be in the fall season where we
switch to a different type of fertilization for getting plants
ready for that winter heartiness, which we will talk about
a lot when that time rolls around. You can get
sweet grain in a lot of different places. For example,
Lake Hardware in Angleton on Velasco Inclute. There's also a

(56:09):
Lake Hardware on Dixie Dry. Both of those carried night
Foss products and a wide line of them out in Brenham.
Plants and things on Highway thirty six South carries Night
foss products, as does Ace Hardware City on Memorial Drive
on the west side of Houston. Easy to find the
sweet green around you. Well, we've talked about a number

(56:33):
of things today, mostly related to water because with the
temperatures we're experiencing, water is the topic of the day.
I just want to remind you that your containers dry
out faster in the hot weather. And we're going to
add to that. You probably sitting there thinking we'll skip.
I know that I mean for crying out loud, but
did you know this that the container soil is hotter

(56:56):
and the root function is a little different as a
result out of that, you get roots when the temperature
start to rise, and the roots can get like one
hundred something degrees on the especially on the west side
where the sun is shining down on the pot, it
actually affects root growth. In fact, I've pulled plants from
a grower's field that were you know, where you just

(57:19):
had like containers. As far as the eye could see.
I pulled plants out of a pot and on the
west side there's actually brown roots where the intense heat
against that black pot actually killed roots on the very
outside of the root ball and that just tells you
what we're looking at there. So keeping a moist is
very hopeful in that because it's an evaporative cooling, that's

(57:40):
that they're able to do. And then of course they
don't lack for the water. So watch your containers.

Speaker 11 (57:45):
What I do.

Speaker 5 (57:46):
I have certain plants that I move seasonally in the springtime.
Geraniums look great out in the full sun. They just
look great, and they're doing fine. As it starts to
get hot, the struggling along a little bit. And so
my geraniums for a while now have been where they
get some morning sunlight, sunshine directly, and then in the

(58:08):
afternoon they get a break from the sun from the
full brunt of the sun because it's just a little
too much for them. And so that's just an example
of what I'm talking about that you can do. Volume
of soil is very important. So if you are going
to lose some roots on the outside on a hot
side of a pot, having more volume of soil means

(58:29):
there's more soil to whole moisture with living roots to
take up the moisture. So a large volume is helpful
because of the amount of water that a plant pumps
during the day. If you've got a plant that is
a large plant and it's in a smaller sized pot,
then you're going to be watering it more often, trying

(58:50):
to keep it adequately hydrated. So put it in a
bigger pot. I often say that when you watch gardening
shows that are from north of the Mason Dixon line
or one of the two coasts, especially east and west,
you see plants growing in things that are too small
for here oftentimes. And I saw one time of show

(59:10):
where they were talking about taking old leather shoes or
boots and putting soil in them and growing some stuff
in them. Well, that's all cute and pretty online, I mean,
on the show, But bottom line is that's not enough
soil for plants to keep them going. We need more soil,
We need bigger pots. That is important, and so keep
that in mind when you're planting plants, but also when

(59:33):
you're taking care of plants, maybe it's time to bump
a plant up to a bigger container. Can you grow
a tomato in a five gallon bucket? Yes? You can.
Are you going to water the heck out of it
regularly trying to keep it alive and out of stress
so it doesn't abort tomato blooms. And you have tomato
plant but no fruit. Yes, you're going to water it
a lot. Why not give it ten gallons or fifteen

(59:55):
gallons even, I mean, if you want to. The bottom
line is it's not what can you get away with?
What can you keep that plant in a good, strong,
healthy state with? If you want fruit, if you want flowers,
you can't let the plant be stressing every day. So
there's a tip for you something to think about out there.
We're going to run now out to Spring Branch and

(01:00:17):
talk to Herda this morning. Well, hello, Herda, welcome to
garden Line.

Speaker 3 (01:00:22):
Thank you, good morning. I have an old tree. Let's
see about twenty feed up.

Speaker 2 (01:00:35):
It begins to make a curve like over the street,
towards the street, and at the top the leaves on
the top branches, I guess the top, I'd say ten
feet of it.

Speaker 3 (01:00:57):
The turning brown. Now below that the branches are green,
you know, Okay, I don't know.

Speaker 5 (01:01:10):
Well, it's gonna be one or two things. And is
this kind of in the middle of the tree at
the top, or is it is it on one side
of the tree at the top.

Speaker 3 (01:01:21):
It seems to be the whole top. I would say
seven to ten feet of the top.

Speaker 5 (01:01:31):
Okay, well, you know there are different things that can
cause that. One thing is something is disrupting the bark,
the living bark tissues inside of the trunk, the living tissues.

Speaker 9 (01:01:44):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (01:01:44):
And so that could be a borer. That could be
when the branches are smaller, squirrels we'll get up there
and chew on them, and you'll see pecan trees a
little we call them flagging, but it's little brown sections
of branches all through a pecan tree because the squirrels
have done that to the pecan. A larger area like that,
it could be bothered, it can go ahead.

Speaker 8 (01:02:06):
There are.

Speaker 3 (01:02:10):
Little rectangles of bark that have come off.

Speaker 5 (01:02:18):
Okay, I don't know. Well, that's that's hard. That's hard
for me to assess without you know, just seeing it
and seeing a picture of it and seeing what they
are and what they look like. It's either going to
be something damaging the tree physically up high, or it's
possibly due to some problem in the roots system where

(01:02:39):
certain roots have been damaged and the top is not
getting the flow of water and nutrients that it needs.
And there's you know, there's a lot of possibilities. I
don't I'm I just don't want to make a wild
guess other than talking about that general idea that it
could be one of those two things that you're dealing with.

Speaker 2 (01:03:00):
All right, Well, I was thinking of having that top
ten feet cut off because well, it leans over the street,
and I don't want you know, let's say a strong
wind comes and it breaks off and falls on a car,
and that'd be horrible.

Speaker 5 (01:03:23):
Yeah, that would be I would wait until it'll take
a while for it to get weak enough to fall
out like that, if it's just now turned brown this year.
But I would in the in the late winter time,
have somebody come out and do that pruning for you
and take that out somebody. That's what they're doing. You
call Martin Spoonmore an Affordable Tree.

Speaker 3 (01:03:41):
He can help you, all right, all right, well, thank
you very much.

Speaker 5 (01:03:48):
All right, thank you heard it. I appreciate that. All right,
Let's take a little break right here and we'll be
right back. Hey, it's a good day to be talking
about gardening. But I'm telling you right now is a
good day to be gardening. You take that phone with you,
keep listening to the garden line and let's get out
there and get some things done. Be a good time
to assess the plants and see what's going on. You know,
they say that the best fertilizer, no, the best pest control,

(01:04:12):
or the footprints of the gardener, meaning you get out
there and you see what's going on, you catch things
early before it becomes a big problem. Well, I would
say the best fertilizer is also the footprints of the gardener,
getting out there and attending to your plants, providing them
some care, make sure the soil is right, making sure
weeds aren't taking the nutrients and the water and things

(01:04:33):
like that from them. I'm just telling you it's a
good idea to get out and check your plants regularly.
The more often you do, the better on top of
things you are. And what is the old adage stitch
in time saves nine right, every seamstress knows well, it
certainly is true that when you attend to plant problems early,
you're much much better off. And that's a good idea,

(01:04:55):
so I highly recommend it. Hey, your local ace hardware
store is rare to go with all the stuff you
need for success. You know, we need to be water
and now They've got the hoses, they've got the sprinklers,
they've got the watering ones and attachments and everything like
that that you need. They also have the products that
you need. The fertilizers. We're always talking about fertilizers and

(01:05:16):
when to apply and what to apply and so on.
ACE Hardware Store has stocked up. They're ready to go
for that. If you're wanting to do any indoor or
outdoor entertaining, they have plenty of things for that as well. Listen,
if you have not been into an ACE Hardware store
in the last fifteen years, you haven't been into an

(01:05:37):
ACE Hardware store. You need to see what these things.
The wonderful things that they carry. For barbecue pits, all
the best brands, all the best brands are there at
ACE Hardware Store. For power tools, they've got them for
if you like a battery operated mowars, for example, and
regular or standard engine mowers. You needed a nice deck

(01:06:02):
box to store those cushions in well. As a matter
of fact, right now, if you're an ASH Rewards member,
you get a thirty dollars off exclusive on their deck boxes.
It look good too, by the way, and what is
rewards aceh Rewards. You sign up with the ACEH Rewards
program and you get special notification when things are going on,

(01:06:23):
and there's always some deals going on for ACEH Rewards members.
You got to do it. It's free, it costs nothing
to do it. Just do it and get on by there.
Get all the supplies that you need, you know, everything
from the first aid kits and the flashlights and the
batteries and stuff. When the power goes out and the
storm comes through, you know, to the you name it.

(01:06:47):
ACE Hardware has it. They just do. And I'll tell
you this, You're going to find some really cool things
to beautify that outdoor area and to beautify the indoors
as well. ACE is way more than your grandfather's hardware store.
It has all the grandpa's hardware store had, but a
whole lot more pretty cool stuff at your local ACE

(01:07:08):
Hardware store. And how do you find yours? Go to
ACE Hardware Texas dot com. Ace Hardware Texas dot com.
Let's go now to Spring, Texas and we're going to
talk to Dennis this morning. Hey, Dennis, welcome to garden
Line oinn Skip.

Speaker 12 (01:07:22):
I sent you two pictures of my struggling as failure.
I see how much what I am doing wrong with
that thing.

Speaker 5 (01:07:37):
Well, it's kind of curious to me that all the
mulch is washed away around that azelia. Is it under
a down spout or something or uh no, you know
the box chips are all off to the side.

Speaker 6 (01:07:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (01:07:50):
I actually I pulled them away from the main trunk,
just trying to make sure it was getting enough boxing in.
And you've got one choking it out.

Speaker 5 (01:08:04):
Yeah, here's what i'd do. I'd go it's a soil
root moisture problem of some sort. To dry too wet,
could be the one. Azellias lack root hairs, and so
their efficiency and taking up water and nutrients is less
than a lot of plants, and they're not a drought
tolerant plant. So it gets a little dry. And you

(01:08:26):
see that the tailtale signs on your plant of tip
and margin burn. You know, you got a leaf and
out on the ends of it, the tip turns brown
or the edges of the leaf turned brown, because that's
the last part of the leaf to get the water
that's coming up through the stem. And so I see that,
But I don't know if it's caused by something that

(01:08:48):
kills some roots and so now it can't take up
water until it grows more roots, or if it's just flat.
Got the roots, but they're not getting quite enough water.
So dig down a few inches, feel the soil, see
what you think, and water accordingly.

Speaker 8 (01:09:03):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (01:09:03):
If you feel like it may be a little on
the wet side, you can and you got you gotta
do this carefully, but you can take a spading fork
and stick it down in the soil and kind of
pull back on the handle a little bit. You're sort
of wiggling a little hole in some holes into the ground.
You're not spading the plant out. You're just pushing straight down,
wiggling back on the handle. Move over, push it straight

(01:09:25):
down and wiggle back and get some oxygen down in
the root system. If you feel like it's a little
too wet, that doesn't make a huge change, but it
gives it a little bit better chance of getting some
oxygen down there and recovering. While in the meantime you
either back off the sprinklers or if water's coming in there,
figure out how to how to shut down that coming

(01:09:46):
off the roof or whatever. Okay, I got you, all right,
the plant has new growth that looks good. The plant
has new growth that looks good, so I think you're
going to be okay done. Just just give it that TLC.
And the only other thing that could have caused this,
I know the music explained, but real quick before we go,

(01:10:07):
is if you used a salt based fertilizer and you
put too much on it, a synthetic assault base that
wasn't a slow release, immediate release. You can burn tips
like that too from the salt and the fertilizer, but
that would take a pretty good, strong application, and I
doubt that's what happened.

Speaker 8 (01:10:23):
Yeah, okay, good right, Thanks.

Speaker 5 (01:10:28):
Thank you, appreciate your call. You bet all right, folks, Hey,
stick around Beverly Well from the arbor gate. It's going
to be with us for the next hour and you
do not want to miss it. Welcome back. Oh gosh,
what a nice morning. Nice morning to be out trapsing
around the garden, checking things out, seeing what's happening and

(01:10:49):
deciding what you need to do. You know, this is
a time of year it's good to do a walk
through in your garden. I've done this for a number
of years. You know, you get to the end, toward
the end of summer, we're not there yet, but you
start to see plants that are struggling. Maybe they're in
too much sun or maybe plant's not getting enough sun.
You just see how things are doing areas of the garden,

(01:11:12):
how they're performing, and make some notes because fall season
is coming and we'll be doing a lot of different
kinds of planning and renovations and stuff like that in
the fall, and so making those notes now would be
very hopeful in order to kind of start to prepare
your plans for that. Just to tip for this time
of year. Hey, guess what we're going to do this hour.

(01:11:33):
We're going to talk to Beverly Welch of the arbor Gate.
As I mentioned several times this morning, Beverly is going
to be here to talk all kinds of plant topics
for this time of the year. And let me head
out to the phones here. Hey, Beverly, do.

Speaker 8 (01:11:47):
We have you there?

Speaker 3 (01:11:49):
You do?

Speaker 11 (01:11:49):
Good morning, scam.

Speaker 5 (01:11:52):
Well, good morning, Thank you for calling in. I appreciate
that I've been looking forward to kind of picking your
brain and talking plants with you this morning, so thanks
for taking some time out. Tell us a little bit first,
what's happening at the Arborgate this time of the year.
What kinds of things are going on out there?

Speaker 11 (01:12:13):
Well, you know, right now it's a good time to
replant that fall garden. So tomatoes have been very popular lately.

Speaker 5 (01:12:23):
They have good and you guys always have a good
selection of vegetables and herbs.

Speaker 11 (01:12:28):
There though, Yes, yes, and herbs are thriving right now,
especially the rosemary. The basil. They're loving this weather.

Speaker 5 (01:12:40):
Well, that is true. Basil is very happy right now.
I just was tending to some Genevie's type basil that
we have. It's so good for pesto. But you know,
I can't get enough basil Beverly. I'm serious. African blue
basil is always in the garden, don't I don't eat it,
and I probably should. It's just a different flavor. But

(01:13:02):
I grow it for the bees and my moment, My gosh,
they're lined up down the block to get on that thing.
I love the some of the upright types of basil
that are slower to bolt. I love the lemon basils
and all of the ones. It just can't get enough basil.
It's a good herb for summertime, it is.

Speaker 11 (01:13:20):
And you know you mentioned the African blue. I like
to use it just as color in the garden. It
does have a bit of a stronger flavor that a
lot of people aren't really attracted to. But you're right
it Texas Gardener named it a few years ago the
number one pollinating plant.

Speaker 5 (01:13:40):
Well that's that is a very high likelihood honor for
that plant because it is awesome for that purpose, and
so we're always needing to bring more pollinators in and things.
And yeah, you're right, it does look good. I like
the I know we're kind of off on a basil
thing right now, but I like the Thaie basils too.
They have such a track to of blooms that really

(01:14:01):
stand out. And then there's some that are bred just
kind of to be ornamental. I think one's called red
bird or something like that, the especially ornamental tops to it.
But I think they're all pretty.

Speaker 11 (01:14:13):
They are beautiful plant.

Speaker 5 (01:14:15):
Let's talk. I'm sorry, I'm sorry for this delay. We'll
figure our way through it.

Speaker 13 (01:14:20):
They'll go ahead, no problem.

Speaker 5 (01:14:29):
So let's talk a little bit about plants that can
take the heat. You know, they we think of summertime
it's like too hot to grow anything out there, and
it's absolutely not. There are plants from parts of the
world where this is just normal, you know, hot, sultry, humid,
they can take it. And do you have any plants
in particular that you think are ones people just you

(01:14:51):
really need to have this in your landscape, just because
it's gonna keep going strong during the summertime.

Speaker 11 (01:15:00):
But I have a long list here, skip. I hope
we have enough time to get it all in.

Speaker 8 (01:15:06):
You go for it.

Speaker 11 (01:15:10):
One of my favorites, and you talk about a great pollinator,
is the Molochia tomatosa with that lavender pink bloom against
the silvery foliage. I mean to me, that is probably
one of the greatest superstars in the summer garden. Such
a reliable perennial. We've had it in the garden for years,

(01:15:31):
literally years, and it has been through all freezes, all floods,
all droughts and just shines.

Speaker 5 (01:15:40):
Yeah. I like the fact that it's a moderate size too,
so you can use it in a lot of places
where it may be a much larger plant. Woodn't fit.
But that's an awesome one.

Speaker 11 (01:15:52):
It is a great one. And then of course, you
know I love those Heliopsis summer sun little sunflowers that
come again so reliably year after year, and the hotter
it gets, the more beautiful they are.

Speaker 5 (01:16:09):
Well, would you give a little bit of a description
of those, because a lot of people when they hear sunflower,
they're picturing this big tall stalk with a bloom on top.
But describe these for us.

Speaker 11 (01:16:19):
Well, it is a sunflower type bloom. Of course, it's
a lot smaller bloom. I would say probably more like
a three to four inch diameter bloom. The planet itself
stays very upright, but stops at about thirty inches thirty
to thirty six inches and receeds itself. It has traveled

(01:16:40):
all through the Arborgate gardens and I just let it
go anywhere it lands.

Speaker 5 (01:16:48):
Yes, it does.

Speaker 8 (01:16:49):
I know.

Speaker 5 (01:16:49):
I saw a bunch of them over the Georgia the
gift shop across the little drive through area over there.
You had a bunch of them that were very happy
over there. And there's a little bit of variation in
them as they reach seed too. That's kind of cool.

Speaker 11 (01:17:02):
It's very cool, and it's such a beautiful combination with
the Henry Dulberg salvia or the myst expires. Again, savias
are just incredible in this heat.

Speaker 5 (01:17:17):
They are they are very very happy in the seat.
Those are good, But do you know a plant that
has really surprised me?

Speaker 11 (01:17:25):
And it.

Speaker 5 (01:17:28):
And we're talking about plants that love to be in
the heat and all of that, but I'm gonna just
for one second talk about a plant that survives the
heat that I never thought it would, and that that
is the the daisies, you know, the the some of
the beautiful, like the colorful daisies that we have, you

(01:17:48):
guys carry the ones that just have the giant blooms
with beautiful pastel colors and the foliage is pretty disease resistant.
Uh you know what I'm talking about.

Speaker 11 (01:18:01):
Yes, sure I do. One of my favorites, the Garvinia
gerber daisy. It has just been as superstar.

Speaker 3 (01:18:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:18:11):
You know, we had those, and I think I may
have even gotten one from you two three years ago
and the next year it came back and we had
it in an area where I was getting some care,
but we weren't pampering it. I've had it in containers,
I've had it in beds, and I've got plants. Every
time I buy a plant. It's just a perennial that's
always there for me and comes back in just a

(01:18:33):
modern amount of water, and wow, those are gorgeous. They're showstoppers. Anyway,
I kind of got off of the tropicals that are
from areas and love it to plants that can survive
it that we didn't expect. But that is a plant
that really impressed me. How about some of the some
of the hibiscus, the both the perennial and the tropical types,

(01:18:55):
any thoughts on those.

Speaker 11 (01:18:57):
Well, of course they do exceeding well, and I think
right now I would have to say the perennial high
business really do even better in this heat to me
than some of the tropicals. But you know there's one
in particular that gets overlooked that is another two superstar

(01:19:18):
and great color in the garden, more for its foliage
than even the bloom is the mahogany splendor.

Speaker 5 (01:19:26):
Mahogany. I want you to describe that for folks too.
That is a gorgeous plant.

Speaker 11 (01:19:33):
It is beautiful and what a great color combination with
your Heliopsis or even your Rebecca Goldstrom that golden yellow.

Speaker 8 (01:19:41):
But the leaves are.

Speaker 11 (01:19:43):
Very deep mahogany purple, just just a deep, luscious color.
The leaves are a bit smaller than your traditional mallows,
but you're growing it for that foliage, that incredible foliage color.
They do bloom later in the season, and the blooms
are not as large as the mallows, more like the

(01:20:07):
size of the tropicals, but they are the exact color
of that foliage and they look like burgundy velvet.

Speaker 13 (01:20:13):
They're so gorgeous.

Speaker 11 (01:20:14):
And I absolutely love that, guy, I love that.

Speaker 5 (01:20:19):
That's a good description. Well, you've given us our next topic.
We've got to run to a break, but coming back,
I want to talk about foliage for color in the summertime.

Speaker 13 (01:20:28):
Folks.

Speaker 5 (01:20:29):
We're talking with Beverly at the arbor Gate and we
are talking about plants that thrive in hot weather. We
got plenty more things to talk about. Don't go away,
We'll be right back. If you have a question that
you would like to ask Beverly about some of their
plants or things out there, feel free to give us
a call. We're going to focus on those kind of
questions for this hour, and we'll go back to general
questions during the nine o'clock hour. We'll be right back.

(01:20:52):
I'm your host, Skip Richard. We are talking with Beverly
Welch from the arbor Gate this morning. We're talking about
plants and hot weather and plants that thrive in hot weather,
and Beverly, one of the things that I always point
out to folks is that in spring everything wants to bloom.
It seems like it's easy to find flowers in spring.

(01:21:13):
We have some flowers for fall, too, and we do
have some for summer, but not as many options as spring.
But summer is a time when foliage can take the
front burner and break up that sea of green in
our landscapes, green grass, green trees, green shrubs, green ground covers,
and come up with some other colors. So do you
have some foliage plants that are you're especially fond of

(01:21:35):
for hot weather color?

Speaker 11 (01:21:39):
Yes, I do, of course, we talked about it. I
know it's about them, and you're so right. You're so
right to mention foliage color because blooms do come and go.
But the foliage is a mainstay in the summer garden.
That mahogany splendor we were just speaking of. There's another

(01:22:01):
high biscus that gives you great color. That's the snow
Queen with the green and white foliage that blooms the
red bloom, or the Salsa Dancer that has the green
white and pink in the foliage. Those things are superstars
in your summer garden.

Speaker 5 (01:22:20):
M for excellent.

Speaker 11 (01:22:26):
Yeah, and I find those to be quite rooteeardy as well,
more so than the traditional tropical highbiscus.

Speaker 5 (01:22:36):
Okay, and then continuing on that, go ahead.

Speaker 11 (01:22:42):
Well, I was going to say another Another great one
is Cuban gold Duranta. You know that lime green just
makes everything pop?

Speaker 5 (01:22:51):
Yes, it is. That is gorgeous. That kind of like
a sunshine lugustrum, really makes things show up around it.
It does a couple a couple of gosh, we're one day,
we're going to fix this delay everything.

Speaker 13 (01:23:11):
Go ahead.

Speaker 11 (01:23:12):
I'm sorry, Well, I was.

Speaker 5 (01:23:15):
Just gonna throw a few out that I like. Uh,
you know, I'm ah, there's cannas, and I know you've
got some gorgeous burgundy cannas options. You may want to
mention those. I like the tropic cana too. You know,
it used to be another name for its phasian, but
it has so many different colors in it, even a
coral color and whatnot. And uh in the Bengal tigers

(01:23:37):
with the stripe and oh gosh, Praetoria, I believe is
another name the green and yellow stripe leaves. When the
sun shines from behind those, it just lights those things up.
And those are really beautiful.

Speaker 11 (01:23:53):
They are. And I'm so glad you mentioned the cannons
because tried and true, toughest boots, and that one I
think you were mentioning earlier, the Australis with that deep
burgundy foliage in that bright, vibrant red bloom. You know,
a lot of times people don't like cannons because this
time of year, when the leaf rollers get very active,

(01:24:15):
they can look a little bit morally. I just cut
them back, cut them back, give them a good dose
of food, and within a couple of weeks you have
a whole new plant, all new foliage and just a gorgeous,
tough Texas perennial.

Speaker 5 (01:24:32):
Okay, yeah, that's a good one. Another one that you
don't see it many places, but it's the tapioca plant
that has the yellow and green leaves with the little
red stamens. That's another one that's good. The copper plant
for color, the Joseph's coats for color, the beefsteak plant.

(01:24:54):
I mean, there are just so many. Oh gosh, how
could I forget Persian shield with its silvery the silvery
purple colors. Just we could go on and on, But
do you have some other thoughts on some color foliage plants.

Speaker 11 (01:25:09):
Well, you mentioned a Persian shield. I love this Stromanthes
that has the green and white on the top of
the foliage the burgundy underneath. That's a wonderful one. The
Persecrea red dragon that gives you a variegated foliage that
can almost change in color depending on the sun exposure

(01:25:29):
that you give it a great almost more like a groundcover,
a lower growing that's wonderful too.

Speaker 5 (01:25:37):
Yes, those are those are excellent. We're talking about a
lot of perennials and annuals and things like that, and
then there's shrubs and trees and breeders just keep messing
with red buds and coming up with some pretty exciting things.
You guys have a really beautiful one outside the gift
shop there, and then you sell some others. We talked

(01:25:58):
to us a little bit about some of the red
buds with the color options, not just the burgundy, but
also some of the other options that you're excited about.

Speaker 11 (01:26:09):
Well, you're right to mention that flamethrower. That thing is incredible,
and I think the foliage that it gives us the
color all throughout the summer, outshines the bloom, the short
lived blooms in the spring. It's a moderate grower, will
take full sun and surprisingly holds this color through this

(01:26:30):
summer heat.

Speaker 5 (01:26:32):
M Yeah, the newest growth out on the end is
a little bit more toward the orangish red end of
the spectrum, and then as you come back into kind
of a yellowing color. It's a showstopper, you.

Speaker 11 (01:26:48):
Know, it truly is. And red buds are always a
popular plant or tree through here. And you know, with
a lot of the smaller landscapes now a really good option.

Speaker 5 (01:27:01):
Yes they are. That's a really good one. How about
some shrubs, some shrubs that you think would be good
for some foliage types of color in the landscape or balloons.

Speaker 11 (01:27:12):
Well, you mentioned earlier the sunshine with custrum. I don't
know that you can beat that one. That has just
been a superstar. I think my only thing that I
always warned people about. It can be a quite large
shrub and very very fast grower. So if it's a
spot that you need to stay a bit smaller, you

(01:27:34):
might offer like the Eureka gold yopon.

Speaker 5 (01:27:39):
Okay, that's the new one. I've never grown that one.
That a gold yopon. That's exciting.

Speaker 11 (01:27:47):
It's beautiful, and it's got the same characteristics as far
as coutness is your traditional dwarf jopon, same growth habit,
perfect little roundy, maundy meatball. But you get that rent
lime green color.

Speaker 5 (01:28:03):
Wow, that's nice, that's exciting. Gosh, there's so many, so
many good options out there. Then we have some plants
that you know, they just they just shine through the summer.
They look good. I think althea is a is a
nice one. It's of course related to our hibiscus and things,
and one that I don't know how show it is.

(01:28:25):
But I'm bevery lately I've been let around the landscape
by my nose and the almond verbina. I just cannot
get enough of that. It ought to be a control substance.

Speaker 11 (01:28:37):
It's so intoxicating, it truly is, and it's not just
something that you have to stand right next to. That's fragrance,
just as a oh gosh, I guess a faint almond
fragrance you might describe it. It's not too perfumeing, but
it just, like you said, travels and just lightly goes

(01:29:00):
throughout the landscape. It is. It is a true superstar.
One of my top favorite fragrance plants. I think. The
only thing that I would put up next to it,
which is not as constant a bloomer, is the sweet olives.
I love the Osmanthus.

Speaker 5 (01:29:18):
Oh oz memthis I know, and that one. It's kind
of the mystery plant. People walk by and there going
where is that fragrance coming from? Because it doesn't have
these giant blooms out there grabbing your eyes demanding attention.
But boy, does it ever have fragrance.

Speaker 11 (01:29:35):
And you know you were mentioning earlier we were talking
about some of the trees and shrubs. You know, there's
a couple of new Vitecs that's such a popular and
showy tree in the summer landscape. There are a couple
of new ones out one in particular is called Violet
Mist and it's come out from first editions. Do you
know that guy stays three to four feet tall and wide?

Speaker 5 (01:30:01):
I know that's that's unheard of. That's wonderful. Wow. By
texts are so pretty, absolutely gorgeous, pretty and tough, really small.

Speaker 11 (01:30:13):
Isn't it nice? I mean, it's a great substitute for
bud Laya.

Speaker 5 (01:30:20):
Yes, in fact, it absolutely is well Budleya though the
h the butterfly sure do like that one too, So
that's another good one, good one to have. Well, you know,
let's uh, let's do this. I'm up against that hard
half hour break. As you know from the time when
when you were sitting in the chair here holding things over.
I do appreciate you and Angela doing that all those

(01:30:42):
all those weeks and time between Randy and myself here
in the chair, but thank you for that. But that
means we've got to go to that hard break at
the thirty minute hour, and we're going to come right
back with Beverly. If you got a question about some
of these plants, give us a call, talk to Beverly,
and I would love to hear from you. We are
visiting with Beverly Welch from Arborgate today about plants for summer.

(01:31:04):
We got some other topics we're and try to get
to here. It's a lot to talk about. We were
visiting about some foliage plants that do especially well and
some plants that provide just really attractive blooms through the summertime.
And I there hang on just a second, let me
grab the right there we go, bring Beverly back in here. Beverly,

(01:31:28):
I was just thinking about during break, A few plants
went through my head, and it's like, I can't let
this conversation go by without mentioning them. But plumbago with
the light blue, it's a hard color to come by
in the summertime, and yet it's so gorgeous and so
heat tolerant. When I was at the extension office in
Travis County in Austin, we had a landscape that we'd

(01:31:48):
put in and the water went out, and in the
middle of summer, for forty days, we did not have
water to put on those plants. And the plumbago looked bad,
but it bounced right back, and I would have not.
It just looks too It looks too soft, and like
like it might need pampering, and boy it doesn't. It's
a good tough plant. Another one of my favorites is Thrialis.

(01:32:09):
The more you share it, the more it blooms. And
I don't know if I know a plant that blooms
more months of the year than thrialis.

Speaker 8 (01:32:15):
Does.

Speaker 5 (01:32:16):
It just keeps keeps going all summertime, so and I
gotta throw one more in here. H And that is
my favorite summer plant. And it's says sulpenia, well krama.
Some people call it red bird of Paradise. I prefer
to call it pride of Barbados because there's other things
called bird of Paradise out there. But oh my gosh,

(01:32:37):
I was just looking at mine yesterday and the tiger
swallowtail butterflies were just going nuts over that thing.

Speaker 11 (01:32:45):
You were talking about folage earlier too, and that adds
a really nice light, delicate texture as well.

Speaker 5 (01:32:55):
Yes, it sure does that. That kind of almost a
mimosa like folog on that planet. That is such a
good one. Beverly. We had a collar here from We're
going to bring in Jeff from Wharton. I think he
has a question about vitext. Hey, Jeff, welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 9 (01:33:10):
Hey, good morning and Angela. We obviously live be Wharton
and don't make it west of Tomball very often, but
our son in law now has a medical practice in Tomball.
So we are bound and determined to get to get
to Arborgate because we've heard you many many times and
your voice is very recognizable. I have a vy text

(01:33:33):
that's been in patio for some years and it's already bloomed.
And it's this you know, the seed pods are on it.
Is it too late or too hot to deadhead those
and hope to get some more blooms before the end
of the year.

Speaker 11 (01:33:52):
Absolutely, okay, thanks, absolutely not. I definitely would dead headed.
And you know I use those seed pods inside arrangements too.
They're really great. They last a long time in a vase.
But yeah, you need to get that extra bloom out
of it.

Speaker 9 (01:34:09):
Well, my wife is listening right now. She's nodding her
head about the flower arrangement, so she knows that's not
good you're talking about.

Speaker 8 (01:34:17):
Anyway.

Speaker 9 (01:34:18):
I don't want to keep y'all know that y'all have
watched to talk about. But when you started talking about
how you like the Vitex, it just made me think
show a.

Speaker 5 (01:34:27):
Dead headed Now.

Speaker 9 (01:34:28):
Anyway, y'all have a great day.

Speaker 5 (01:34:30):
Very good. Thank you, Thank you, Jeff. I appreciate that.
That is good to hear. Remember, I'd like to shift
gears a little bit. We have so much to talk
about and I'm watching the clock click by it and
it always that way, But will you talk a little
bit about your tips for establishing plants in hot weather,
and I'm going to set it up this way. A
lot of people feel like I can't plant in the summer,

(01:34:52):
it's too hot to plant. But those plants are living
at the arbor gate day by day by day and
they're doing just fine. So what is the secret to
making them come to your house because you can plant
now and having success with them.

Speaker 11 (01:35:09):
Well, I'm so glad you said that.

Speaker 8 (01:35:10):
Skip.

Speaker 11 (01:35:12):
You know, I garden every single day, and I think
I planned something almost every single day. I can't help myself.
But in this heat, I think one thing to remember
most often is don't confuse wilt from heat with wilt
from dry and people oftentimes confuse heat with dry. So

(01:35:35):
I always recommend number one, look at your plants for
wilting first thing in the morning or after the sun
has been off of them for a couple of hours,
and see if they don't just perk back up, because
they will fold their leaves in the sense of that
hot sun. Make sure that you water deeply. Don't rely

(01:35:56):
on a sprinkler on a new plant. Lay that hose
barely running lye it on the ground and soak really well. Again,
sprinkler systems get run too often and too short of time,
and a lot of times you're just keeping the mult
top of the mult wet or the foliage wet, which

(01:36:17):
was what we don't want to do in this high humidity.
So make sure when you water that you water well,
and you water deeply. Don't confuse heat, but dry. Make
sure that you water. You plant a well watered root wall.
I like to make sure that rootball is good and damp,
well soaked prior to planning. It's a lot easier to

(01:36:41):
keep a moist rootball moist than to try to get
it moist once it's in the ground.

Speaker 5 (01:36:48):
It's a good tip. That was a very good tip.
Something that I often will say too, is that if
you will imagine when you planted the plant, that you
didn't take it out of the pot. You just set
the pot in the ground and brought in soil around it. Folks,
I'm not recommending to do that. I'm just saying this
is imagine this. Where would you water it If you

(01:37:10):
had planted it in the pot pot and all in
the ground. You would water it right where the pot was,
because that's where the roots are. Well. When you take
it out of the pot, it's still where the roots are,
that's cylinder. So remember that that is the most important
place to keep moist. Even if the soil around it
is somewhat moist, that root all can pump dry on
a hot day, and so just you know that it's

(01:37:33):
going to take some time for the roots to get
out in the soil, so especially initially, keep that moist
and as we were saying, without keeping it soggy wet,
because a lack of oxygen due to drowning of the
roots is as deadly as anything.

Speaker 8 (01:37:50):
Exactly.

Speaker 11 (01:37:51):
And you know, I always say too, they would much
appreciate being in that cooler ground than that hot pot
in this weather.

Speaker 5 (01:38:00):
They sure would, They absolutely would. All right, well, there
you go, folks. It's still a good time to get
out there. And we have arranged for a four degree
cooler temperature today, so it'd be a good day to
get out to Arburgate when we get through talking here
and go check out some of these wonderful plants that
they have out there. We're gonna take another quick break, Beverly,
and we got one more segment. Thanks for sticking around.

(01:38:21):
It is so appreciative of having you on today. Appreciate
you taking time out to do that. We'll be right back, folks.
Welcome back to Guardline, folks. Good have you with us.
We are talking with Beverly from the arbor Gate. And
if you've not been out to Arburgate, you need to go.
I don't care where you live if you hear my
voice right now, this is a destination garden center that

(01:38:41):
you need to see. And it is just well, I
don't know how to describe it fully except to say
I promise you you will see a lot of plants
you've never seen before. You've see gorgeous layouts where they've planted,
and some really cool landscape bling. And also, don't just
do plants. You know, it's summer. It's okay to be
in a little air conditioning too. Go in and check

(01:39:03):
out the gift shops. There's a gift shop out away
from the main building and then the gift shop in
the main building. You need to go check those out
because you're going to find some really cool stuff you
can't live without in those as well. So what we're
going to do here is go bring Beverly back in
with us. Beverly, well, we got one more run at it. Here,
So let's talk about I want to hear some of

(01:39:25):
your favorite new plants. You guys are always ordering new
things and bringing in new kinds of plants. What are
some of your favorite ones? And it doesn't have to
be brand new, it could be not so new, but
in general getting away from just summer plants. But what
are some of your favorites that you think people need
to check out?

Speaker 11 (01:39:43):
Well, we mentioned earlier these new dwarf I I techs.
I don't think you can grow wrong ever planning a
y tech street. Another really showstopper that's been becoming quite
popular is the dwarf sore Venca. The growth habit of
it is low and mounding. You get that consistent bloom

(01:40:06):
that you're so familiar with vinkas or prairiewinkles. It's a
smaller flower, but wow does it make a statement. It
is tremendous in the bag.

Speaker 5 (01:40:18):
Not so new, yes, and you know what, and let
me throw one come in and about that before you
move on. This worry is so good for using around
a container also because it is more dwarf and its
habit and stuff and hanging over a container or filling
in is almost like a groundcover through an area. That
is a gorgeous plant. But go ahead. I love that one.

Speaker 11 (01:40:40):
Well, not so new, but what I think is super underused.
Aside from that Malochia tomentosa we talked about earlier is
the Coleandra pink powder puff, A real superstar. It's a
great pollinating plant self heading. You don't need to do

(01:41:02):
anything to it. It just stays in bloom. That little
bud looks like a tiny little raspberry there. And then
of course the flower itself is reminiscent of mimosa bloom
and a great great pollinator. I love Justicia orange flame.
I think that's another that's underused. It gives you a

(01:41:23):
kind of a tropical feel, but it's tough as a
Texas native, and that vibrant, bright orange bloom is incredible.
Another one that I think.

Speaker 5 (01:41:35):
Would you put the sorry, Beverly, would you put that Justicia?

Speaker 9 (01:41:38):
In?

Speaker 5 (01:41:39):
How much sunlight? Is this going to?

Speaker 8 (01:41:41):
Warm?

Speaker 5 (01:41:41):
Full sun?

Speaker 11 (01:41:44):
I have grown it in all of the above. It
does wonderful and full sun and it does great in
part shade.

Speaker 5 (01:41:54):
Okay, thank you. Another one, keep going, Oh.

Speaker 11 (01:41:58):
That's okay, that's okay. Another thing, you know, we didn't
really touch on vines, but so many vines can be
almost garden thugs if you will, they get so large.
The mercer blue sumburtia, I grow it in the garden
at the nursery, almost like a mounding plant. Put it
in a little o'blase, Let it grow up and drape

(01:42:21):
over a nice tidy neat, you know, four to six
foot little vine. But that deep, deep purple bloom with
that bright, short truse eye is again a showstopper and
a constant bloomer, a very very reliable di perennial and
a great a great vine for a small space. And

(01:42:46):
on the shade side, yeah, the shade side, you know,
under used to me cat whiskers. They're so beautiful and
a lot of times in the shade we have to
rely on as we spoke about earlier, foliage textures and color.
I love the variegated terrace fern very it almost gern, Yes, sir,

(01:43:13):
p t e R I s a brake fern.

Speaker 8 (01:43:17):
M h.

Speaker 11 (01:43:19):
I love Carissandra that those are attractive. Yes, the persian
shield that you talked about earlier, right, and there's so
many gorgeous tradi is cancious. Now you've got the the
like the mint green and white foliage one, the one
that's a tricolor foliage. Bells are great, great color, not

(01:43:43):
only in the garden, but any container as well. And
I like the Dremiopsis. Yeah, the dremiosis the African hosta.
It's a great hostas substitute because you know, sometimes they
wait a little bit when we start getting toward the
end of summer. But the Dremiopsis just shines through all

(01:44:04):
the heat. But it's beautiful in a shade garden.

Speaker 8 (01:44:09):
Another under.

Speaker 11 (01:44:12):
Yeah, it's the standing tiger Klathium. And I know you
tropical enthusiasts think of the klathea as a houseplant and
a tropical, but the standing tiger gives you a great
upright and a good, good, reliable perennial in the shade garden.

Speaker 5 (01:44:34):
Oh my gosh. Okay, So in addition, I just need
to tell Everyboddy I know you're on your way over
to Arburgate, stop at U haul and get your trailer
to hook up because we got way too many plants.
Are you you're going to fit in your car here?
Oh my gosh. These are great, great ideas. Yeah, so

(01:44:55):
many exciting things. You know, it's always it's always rough
to ask a plant person what their favorite plant is, right,
I mean, that's like, that's what I'm asking of you here. Okay,
any others you'd like to add to the list.

Speaker 11 (01:45:11):
Well, if we hop back to the sunny garden, love
to sparkle. It as bronza. Everybody knows the gold star,
but Sparklet is a nice, smaller variety of esperanza that
is equally as showy and reliable. A bloomer.

Speaker 5 (01:45:29):
With a beautiful orange color blooms instead of.

Speaker 11 (01:45:33):
Just the yellow, right right, You've got that in this,
and then you've got the yellow with the little orange throat.
They're wonderful. Another one is the fruity fruity pebbles lantana.
So a very different lantana. It's going to be more
of a shrubby that gives you a lavender bloom, perfect

(01:45:55):
little cottage garden.

Speaker 5 (01:45:57):
Look, well, the music means we got to stop with
that one. We're just getting started. If you'd liked more
ideas like this, you can continue the conversation with Beverly
at Arborgate after the show had on over there. I
I so appreciate you coming on, Beverly. Lots of good

(01:46:17):
exciting plants, and just another reminder that just because it's
summer doesn't mean we quit planting, or that we quit
having even more beauty in the landscape. I'll tell you,
driving down through the neighborhoods, driving down the streets and
just seeing the sea of green, I just want to
knock on every door and go, oh, you're missing a
lot of opportunities for color here. It's because we have

(01:46:40):
so many good opportunities.

Speaker 11 (01:46:42):
Well, thank you so much, Thank you so much, Skip,
and what a wonderful show. Thank you so much for
all you do.

Speaker 5 (01:46:51):
I appreciate that. We'll be right back folks. Hey, welcome
back to the guarden Line. Boy, was that fun talking
to Beverly at Arborgate many plants. I was sitting here
writing things down myself, some notes, and I hope you
were too. It's so so many good plant opportunities that
are out there, so many plants. A little time, as

(01:47:12):
we say, but now we're wide open for calls of
all types, and we are going to head straight out
to do that. We're going to start by going to
Deer Park and visiting with Steve this morning. Hey, Steve,
welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 13 (01:47:31):
Of a hosta pretty sick looking hosta. Yeah, and I
believe it or not, that thing is about three years
old and that black hose thereby it is condensate from
the air conditioning and I move it sometimes. But anyway,

(01:47:54):
I just I don't know what I need to do
to it. Do I need to break up the soil better,
or what's wrong? It's in pretty much all day shade
under a big tree.

Speaker 5 (01:48:05):
Yeah, well, all day shade is very good and hostas
in our climate, we're asking a lot of a hosta
to grow down here. There are some that will grow,
and you'll see them here and there, but in general
people that plant them find that they don't hold.

Speaker 13 (01:48:19):
Up well because I just don't like the heat.

Speaker 5 (01:48:22):
I guess that the heat and then the demand of
great sun. Even in further north. They're a shade type plant,
but down here especially and keeping the soil adequately moist
which it sounds like you're doing. If you've got the
condens ate there, just make sure that it doesn't get
too wet. You know where it's in a swamp. Hostas

(01:48:42):
are not swamp dwellers either, so consistent moisture but not
but oxygen in the roots at the same time, what
I'm seeing on your plant when I look at it,
hostas are often attacked by snails and slugs. They the
kind of conditions that are hostile wants to be in,
or the kind of conditions of snails and slugs enjoy

(01:49:04):
hanging out in too. And some of the holes in
there look like it could be one of those two
feeding on it. You'd kind of almost have to go
out at night and check around on the plant. I
don't see the telltale signs of dried slime trails on
the leaf that generally a snail or slug will leave,
but it could be on the backsides of the leaves

(01:49:25):
and I'm just not seeing it, but look for that.
If that's the case, you would need a snail and
slug bait to pushut those down. And I also see
some signs of foliage fungal leaf spots, and so it
may be that in the moist conditions that's struggling it too.
It's just when we get a plant, Stephen, we ask

(01:49:46):
it to be stressed, but to hang on and perform
for us. What often happens is because it's stressed, it's
more likely to get sick, just like us. If we
don't eat right, sleep right, get exercise, and someone, we're
more likely to get sick. And it may be that
some of these leaf spots are just due to the
stresses that the plant is enduring. That would be my suggestion.

(01:50:10):
If you're going to fertilize it, do it very moderately
with something that's very slow release. I might use an
organic like the red bag or red bag or red
jar of Microlife organic plant food that they provide, and
just put that around it, scratch it into the soil,
water it, and let it slowly feed that plant. That

(01:50:33):
would be one good option for doing that. And you're
going to find that out into your park area.

Speaker 13 (01:50:39):
For sale, I may just give up on it.

Speaker 8 (01:50:42):
If, like you said, if it's if it takes.

Speaker 13 (01:50:46):
I like to grow stuff. It's easier to grow than that.
So I thought it was easy to grow plant.

Speaker 5 (01:50:51):
Well, well, some other similar Okay, yeah, there's some other plants.
Say not good. Well, I was going to say, there's
a ginger called peacock. There's a ginger called peacock ginger.
It's not super easy to grow, but it does like warm,

(01:51:13):
jungly conditions in the shade unless that area gets direct sun.
You might try a few peacock gingers just see how
they do for you before you, you know, invest big
time in them. But they have leaves that come up
out of the ground and have leaves very flat to
the ground. They have little blooms down low. The leaves
often have some markings on them that make them a
little ornamental, so that might be an option for an

(01:51:36):
area like that. There is a plant called tractor seat plant.
It goes by the names as well, but it has
very large leaves that look sort of like a tractor
seat sticking up off the ground, and it grows in
warm areas. It gets up taller that it's quite unattractive plant.
Sometimes a leopard plant is a name that you might
look for for a shady area like this. And I mean,

(01:51:59):
we could go on, but you go out, You're not
You're not too terribly far away from moss nursery out
there in seabrook. Uh and a ton of great shade
loving plants. Yeah, the moss will be able to put
you in touch with a number of good shade loving plants.

Speaker 13 (01:52:16):
Okay, well, thank you and the information. Georgia guest earlier, thank.

Speaker 5 (01:52:21):
You, thank you, appreciate your call very much. Uh. That
is that is a good idea to go to Moss
Nursery and check out them because they've got Jim's got
tons of good stuff like that for you there.

Speaker 9 (01:52:34):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (01:52:34):
Wildbird's Unlimited is the place to go for the supplies
that you need to bring songbirds to your yard for
their beauty. We were just as matter of fact, it
was yesterday my wife said, look out there at that
redbird taking a bath in our in our sprinkler. And

(01:52:55):
we I had a little sprinkler right outside the window.
Was was watering some gingers that I have out there.
And yeah, it had just perched and it was just
fluffing its feathers and enjoying the bath. And it was
getting from that little sprinkler that was watering. And that's
such a cool thing. I get up every morning and
just love the songs of birds. And Wildbirds Unlimited. They

(01:53:18):
can tell you how to bring them to your house,
whatever you're looking for, whatever kind of birds you want
to attract. They'll tell you what kind of birds are here,
the seasonal paths of the birds and so on. They
have the bird houses, they have the bird feeders, and
they have the bird seed that is just a must
because their seeds are things birds want to eat. They
have various blends for different seasons, for different types of birds,

(01:53:41):
and the expertise to help you have success. But just
all starts at your local Wildbirds Unlimited store. I've got
six Wadbirds on limited stores part of my group here
in the Houston area, the Greater Houston area. There's one
in Paarland, one in Kingwood, one in Houston on the
west side of Memorial, one on bel Air on the
southwest side, one up in Cyprus, and one in clear

(01:54:03):
Lake on Eldorado Boulevard down there. Go to WBU dot
com forward slash Houston and find the ones that are
near you. But the main thing is just go do it.
Absolutely do it. By the way, today's a good day
to visit because it's air conditions and every wild Bird's
Unlimited store there you go. All right, let's see here,
Tom and Cypress. You've been waiting. We got to take

(01:54:24):
a quick break. You are absolute first up when we
come back. Hey, welcome back to guard Line. Good to
have you with us. You got a gardening question, give
us call. We'll be happy to help you with that.
We're going to run right now though, first thing right
out here to the phone, stalk to Tom and Cyprus. Tom,
I think you may get the award for the most
patient person I know today hanging with us. But thank

(01:54:46):
you for doing that. How can we help you?

Speaker 8 (01:54:49):
Okay? Well, I appreciate that. Yeah, I've spoken to you
several times, a couple of times, but your public appearances,
even at arbor date as a matter of fact. But
my question is my neighbor across the street has this
enormous flower pot in his front yard and it's in
the sunlight, direct sun from sun up until maybe two

(01:55:11):
hours before sundown. And this pot is three feet in
diameter at the top, two and a half at the bottom,
and two inches tall, and it's made out of two
and a half inch thick concrete. So it's a brutal
environment for a plant. The only thing I can think
of that might grow in there be a prickly pair

(01:55:31):
of cactus. But what would be your suggestion of the
shrub only two inch?

Speaker 5 (01:55:38):
Is only two inches tall?

Speaker 8 (01:55:41):
No, no, it's two feet tall. The walls of it
are two and a half inches thick, two and a
half inches thick walls of concrete.

Speaker 5 (01:55:50):
Got you, got you? All right, Well, you got a
number of options here. One way to go is the
safest bat be to put something in the top that's
like a yucca or a gave that's a dwarf type,
or something called men gave, which is another kind of

(01:56:12):
plant that you can grow and then to use on
the sides. A trailing succulent. There's one a gray one
called a ghost plant that doesn't trail a lot, but
it does reach out a little bit. There is Aptinias
are kind of a trailing succulent that has reddish flowers
on them typically, but there's a lot of options there.

(01:56:35):
You could put a bowl being in it as well.
They have a little yellow flowers, but something that's just
basically a desert southwest kind of tough plant. If you
wanted to go the root of color, you could go
with a croton. Crotons have big leaves that are splashed
with everything from a pink and copper and yellow and green,

(01:56:55):
and they just have a lot of colors in them.
They're very, very attractive. And then use some sort of
a trailing plant around the outsides of that. Beverly was
talking about the Sori vinca that's a little vinca that
trails over the side, and just the regular vencas a
plant that size, you can plant regular vencas around it
and get the trailing type. Some vincas are trailing, they

(01:57:18):
spill over, some don't, and so get the trailing type.
Another good trailing plant is the gray leafed plant called
silver ponyfoot, and it just trails and trails and it
never gets too hot for silver pony fit. In fact,
you'll be trimming it because it'll hit the ground and
take off across the patio. It's a it's a very
heavy trailer as long as you give it adequate moisture.

(01:57:41):
It's not invasive, don't worry about that. It just it
just trails very readily. So that would that would be
an option that you might consider. I tell you another
another thing that that I just really enjoy in terms
of you know, container plants, is a good hibiscus tropical
hibiscus make it a very nice plant, but you got

(01:58:01):
to keep it watered, don't let it get too dry,
and it does very well. That will be an option.
And then salvia's some of the dwarf types of salvia
would be really pretty. So if you took a blue
salvia like mystic spires Mystic spires, and you use that
silver pony foot trailing over the sides. The blue and

(01:58:23):
silver look really good together. So you know, we could
talk for the rest of the show and tomorrow or
the next weekend show on options for plants. But those
are a few just to consider. And you jokingly said,
prickly pair. I know, but there is a prickly pair
that has burgundy edges to the to the pads that

(01:58:44):
is really quite attractive. And you know you would have
to do they always get too big and you kind
of have to break them off and prune them by
breaking off the outer pads. But that would also that
would be an option if someone was interested in the
look of that.

Speaker 8 (01:59:03):
Okay, well, those are some great ideas. The yuka is
the one that I hadn't thought of that sounds right
the top of the list there. But I think they're
not have to walk to water it regularly, and I
think that by the late afternoon this time of the year,
that entire pot is probably one hundred and twenty degrees
and then in the winter time it's too heavy to

(01:59:23):
move so it freeze as solid. Like I think what
the shrub that was in there was killed by that
one hundred year freeze we had a couple of years back.

Speaker 5 (01:59:33):
Yes, well, and that's going to happen occasionally. And I'll
tell you. I'll tell you another one though, that that
does pretty well, and it does well in full sun,
and that is a plant called purple heart, and you've
seen it growing before. It's like a wandering jew that
in sun is a deep, beautiful purple color. And so

(01:59:55):
if you were to use purple heart along with a
silvery leafed yuka excuse me, or agave that's dwarf one,
that's not going to get you know, seven feet across
a little one. Uh, that would be a nice color
combination too, Okay, okay.

Speaker 8 (02:00:12):
Sir, all right, Well, and and uh you figure that
many of these plants or all of them would be
available at Arbor Gate.

Speaker 5 (02:00:21):
I think they up to now, I don't think I
mentioned any of that aren't going to be available there
at Arburg. But talk to him, because they're going to
have a bunch of other plants that I didn't even
think of or or didn't have time to get to.
So yeah, okay, yes you can tell them something that's
almost yeah, almost, No watering that that's what you're looking for.

Speaker 8 (02:00:42):
Okay, I wonder I called because I saw Rudy out
there pulling weeds out of this pot. So I'll have
to try to drag him over to arbor gate and
we'll we'll put something in there that'll, uh, that'll look
good in his yard. So I appreciate it.

Speaker 5 (02:00:56):
There you go, sounds like, thank you, Tom, appreciate that
very much. Yeah. Absolutely, there's so many good plants. That's
a great call too. By the way, what a challenging situation.
There's a lot of good options for that. It always
comes down to you know, how can you take care
of it and what do you need. Well, we spend
a lot of time today talking about heat, the heat

(02:01:19):
that we're dealing with. And if you're planting plants in
this heat and you want to give them a break,
you need to give them a break. You need to
give them a head start. You want to give them
an advantage in the roots. Mighta grow is the product
you need to know about. Mighta grow it's not dead yet.
It doesn't matter what kind of plants you're planting. You

(02:01:40):
put some mitigro down in the ground, you put it
in the root system. Soak it in. It's a powder,
you mix it into water. You soak it in and
give those roots an inoculation of some microbes that help
a lot, but also things like be vitamins, things that
are hormones that plants naturally produce that cause development of rooting,

(02:02:01):
cost strength, and growth in the plant. Might have grow.
So you could wait until a plant is struggling. Mighta grow,
may save it it's not dead yet. Or best of all,
you could just do it right when you plant a plant,
just make it part of your planting regimen and give
that plant the start that it needs. Might grow. You

(02:02:21):
can find might to grow all over our area very
readily available, and I wouldn't plan a plant, especially in
this hot weather without it. Is it time for me
to take a break here, I've lost track of my
time justin Oh okay, good good? So want to watch
I get to talk in and I hear there's this

(02:02:43):
thing called a clock I'm supposed to be watching, but
I forget about it. Let's go out to League City
now we're going to talk to Walter. Hey, Walter, welcome
to garden Line. Good morning. How are you doing, sir?
Doing well? Thank you? How can we help. So regarding
those two oak trees that I have in front of the.

Speaker 4 (02:03:05):
Yard, one side have leaves, the other side has no leave,
and it seems to me that it's like diseased or
maybe stretched. Not really sure what's going on, so I'm

(02:03:26):
reaching out to you to figure out what's causing all that.
I did send you some some pictures in the second
round of the trunk. Yes, I was wondering if you
were able to get a chance to look at them.

Speaker 5 (02:03:44):
I had a couple come through and it kind of
told me most of what I needed to see. What's
growing on the trunk is called liken l I c
h E N. And it is of no concern at
all to the tree. It's just something growing on. It
grows on rocks, it grows on dead fence post, so
it's just on the outer dead bar. I would make

(02:04:05):
sure and keep the mult pull back a little bit
so the base of the trunk isn't kept too wet.
I think that's important, but that's not the main thing
going on. When I look at your whole tree water,
I can't tell exactly what kind of oak it is,
but it's some type of oak, and the red oak group,
and the tips and margin burn and the yellowing of

(02:04:26):
the leaves is telling me that something is very seriously
wrong in the root system. Now, the root system of
your plant could be struggling because of a root that
is wrapped around the trunk. In the photo where you
pull back the mult for me, I don't see a
root circling the trunk. But you might try digging a

(02:04:46):
little further, or get you a little water gun, you know,
on the end of a hose, where you can really
blast water and blast the water, blast that soil away
at the bottom of the trunk and see if there's
a root going horizontally around it like a snake wrapped
around it that is strangling it. If that's the case

(02:05:08):
down there, and it could could be another three or
four or five inches down below where we can see
in the photo, then that would make total sense to
what you see on top of the tree. If it's
gone too far, it's hard to save it. But if
you can get in there and cut away a root
like that, it'll be a little surgery with a hammer
and a chisel and whatnot, but you might be able

(02:05:29):
to save it if you find that embedded root. If
you don't find the embedded root, then I would just
watch that you're not excessively watering it. There are a
couple of types of oaks that like acidic conditions, and
when you put them in high pH conditions like much
of the Houston area can have, not all but much,

(02:05:50):
you may find that the leaves are just never getting
any better than kind of a yellowy color with some
green veins. And that's what you're seeing on your leaves,
is the veins of green you're in the leaves are yellow.
That could be due to the fact that it's just
trying to grow into high pH of a soil for
that species, and there's not an easy way to fix that.
I'm hoping that what we find is something else, because

(02:06:12):
the leaves are telling me we have major problems in
the root system of the tree. Okay, so okay, that
die back saving finest strangling route. Watch that you don't
keep the soil just continually soggy wet, you know, a
lot of times, trying to keep everything happy and live,
we keep it too wet, and that that could be

(02:06:35):
a contributing factor.

Speaker 8 (02:06:36):
Okay, all right, I appreciate your help.

Speaker 5 (02:06:39):
Thanks so much, you bet, thank you for the for
the photos and the call. I appreciate that. Let's go
ahead and take a break here for the half hour
break on the news. Turn it over to Erica when
we come back. If you have a question, that'd be
a good time to call in. We got open lines
seven one three, two one two five eight seven four.

(02:07:00):
You're listening today. If you've got a question, feel free
to give me a call. I'll be happy to visit
with you about that. Your local Ace hardware store is
set up ready and rare to go for whatever you
need to create beauty, to take care of the stuff
that you got. You know, you got a lawn, you
take care of it. You got garden beds and things.
They've got all the supplies from tools and equipment to

(02:07:20):
the products that you need to have success, products like
fertilizers you hear me talk about all the time here
on guard Line. They've got you set up for that.
I'm gonna do it yourselfer I like to try to
fix stuff myself. Sometimes I have to hire somebody to
come fix what I fixed, but in general I like
getting out better and fixing stuff myself, and so I'm
always looking at as hardware store can they carry the

(02:07:42):
brands that I like, and I really mean that. I
love to Walt. That's just one of a dozen brands
they carry of tools and things. I love to Walt.
I like the Ego battery powered mowers. That's a brand
I happen to like. Not the only ones out there,
just one. I like what the ones you like. I
bet that Ace Hardware store has got you covered on

(02:08:04):
those two. When whenever you're wanting to do a job right,
you got to have the right tool right. That's true
whether you're a seamstress. My wife's a seamstress. I know
about having the right kind of sewing machine or the
right kind of gadget or tool for whatever. Or if
you're a do it yourself orre on the outside, Ace

(02:08:25):
Hardware has you covered on all those things inside the house,
outside the house. Success and enjoyment. That is what Ace
Hardware is and I love going into Ace Hardware stores.
Go to Ace Hardwaretexas dot com. Find some stores and
check them out. They're all different in some ways. Now
it's Ace Hardware. There's all the standards. You're going to

(02:08:47):
expect that from Marie's Hardware, but each is owned by
somebody that gets to kind of give that store the
flavor that they want to give it. You may walk
into one that has a fudge bar. You may walk
into one that has a knife sharpen tool. You may
walk into one that has you name it, a garden
little section out on the outside with a few plants.
I mean Ace Hardware stores or whatever that owner wants

(02:09:10):
to turn them into. And boy did they ever come
up with some great opportunities. Love going to them. And
I mean that there's an Ace hard restore I passed
by a couple of times that I've been into you,
and I'm gonna next time. I'm gonna because I love
doing that. All right, Ace Hardware Texas dot Com. That's
what you need to know. When you get in there,
you're gonna find the fertilizers. People have been asking, can

(02:09:32):
I still fertilize my lawn? Yes, you can still fertilize
your lawn if you forgot to or just got busy
didn't get around to it earlier in the summer, you can.
I just go into your Ace Hardware store. You know
Ace Hardware for example, this is just an example that
they carried nitrovoss products, the silver bag, the Nitrofoss Superturf
nineteen four ten. And I say this kind of jokingly,

(02:09:56):
but it's truly true. I walked into an ACE Hardware
store this bring, and when I when I got just
past the you know, the registers check out kind of thing,
and stopped and looked down the aisle. I could see
silver bags down there in the garden section. It's so
easy to spot Night five super turf bags nineteen four
to ten. You can still put them out if you
want to do that now. If you haven't done it yet,

(02:10:18):
your lawn needs a boost, this would be a good
time to do it. Get it watered in, because we've
got fall fertilization coming up for too long here and
h products like Nitrofoss are available all over the place.
ACE is like the Memorial Drive ACE, like the Langham
Creek ACE on the on the backside of Copperfield, like
the Jones Road ACE that's up there in the Cypress area.

(02:10:40):
The uh so many, so many really excellent ACE hardware
stores carrying the night Foss products like that super turf.
All right, well, let's see here. It actually got quiet
for just a moment on garden line, so I get
to talk about some things that I've been want to
visit about myself. We were visiting with Beverly about plants

(02:11:02):
that do well in the heat, the fact that you
can plant even in the summertime. And I am spending
some time dragging hoses. I've got an irrigation system that's
an automatic system, but without going into details that you
don't even care to hear, it's not working right now

(02:11:22):
and I'm having to get some work done on it
and things. So I've been dragging some hoses around and watering,
and you know what, the thing I've noticed is when
when you have to water yourself by hand, you're you're
a little more attentive to how things are doing. I
would recommend walking around your property and checking out how
plants are looking and how they're doing. A lot of
times I'll get a call in an email when a

(02:11:43):
plant is pretty much too far gone to save that
maybe earlier on something could be done. I try to
stay up the date with what's going on in the
landscapes throughout this region, and part of the way I
do that is from your calls and emails that I
get in my own driving around and seeing and I'll

(02:12:04):
put publications up on my website that show you or
talk to you about what to do about different things. Recently,
I got some phone questions about sod webworm. They didn't
know that's what it was. They sent me pictures of it,
but as I looked at the pictures, it was sod webworm.
It's actually called tropical sod webworm. And if you go

(02:12:27):
to my website, which is gardening with skip dot com,
there's a new publication I just put it up about
a week ago, tropical sod webworms. And there's pictures of
them in here, some pictures of a neighborhood up in
Cyprus I used to live in, and there's pictures of
what the damage looks like from a distance, what the
damaged leaves look like up close, with the moth that

(02:12:50):
does this, well, it's babies do it, what the moth
looks like, and then what the larva themselves look like.
And I talked to you about your options why range
of options from organic to synthetic to even doing nothing.
You can print it out if you like, if you'll
take it with you. Tropical sod webworm. That is an

(02:13:10):
important one for right now. Another one that's important for
now is a publication that I put together. It's in
the plant problems section, which is one of the sections
of the website called stress related tree decline and death.
And it's got a picture of a beautiful yard full
of trees with one tree that is turned brown as

(02:13:33):
if suddenly overnight. And I get a lot of calls
on this, and I go into the causes of tree loss,
so you understand how this tree works, what's going on,
and why we suddenly see these kinds of things, how
to prevent the tree loss, a number of ways to
do that, and then some final thoughts, and then I
link you to a few publications that will be very

(02:13:56):
very helpful for you, and you can download a printable
copy of that too. Those are just two examples. There's
a lot of other publications on the website. I've got
a section on soil and composting. You can imagine how
much I like that because I always talk about it
on launds, on landscapes, on gardens and orchards, in other words,
stuff you grow to eat, that would include herbs and

(02:14:19):
plant problems, and then miscellaneous, and in the miscellaneous section
we do everything from a weed wiper, of course, is
in there some other tips and things. If you haven't
talked about this in a while, but the Randy Lemons
Scholarship is still out there available and I have links
to how you can go and give toward that. I
think it's a great cause for people that are wanting

(02:14:43):
to do things like Randy and I did in the
green industry, providing a scholarship for students in horticulture that
are wanting to do that kind of thing. So all
those sections are out there on the website. I do
recommend that. By the way, it also has links to
our social media up there, and you can even listen
to garden Line straight from the website by clicking on

(02:15:05):
some buttons that are on there. Let's take a little
break here when we come back. Doug in the Woodlands.
You're our first up, all right, Welcome back to garden Line, folks.
It's good to have you with us. We are heading
back for our last segment of the day of the weekend,
as a matter of fact, and we're going to start
by heading out to the Woodlands to talk to Doug

(02:15:26):
this morning. Hey Doug, welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 13 (02:15:29):
Hey morn skip.

Speaker 10 (02:15:32):
Uh yeah, I got a large calling it a water
oak in my front yard. It's it's pretty big, pretty old.
We had a pruned last winter and it's probably done
this before though I don't think that's anything to do
with it. But it's a weeps sap all over our vehicles.

(02:15:54):
Was just wondering if it's something that can be treated
or need to be treated, or is typical.

Speaker 5 (02:16:02):
Yeah, well, let's let me ask if you diagnostic questions
on it. The how how big are the little droplets
of sap? Are we talking about something like a BB size?
Are we talking about you know, like a pencil moiser
or what?

Speaker 9 (02:16:17):
Are you?

Speaker 10 (02:16:19):
That's more like a mist?

Speaker 5 (02:16:23):
Like a mist? Okay? Good? So what that is is
it's actually not sap coming out of the tree. It's
it's a bug pea. Isn't that exciting?

Speaker 9 (02:16:31):
So?

Speaker 11 (02:16:32):
Uh?

Speaker 5 (02:16:32):
There are insects up in the tree that are that
are slurping up the sugary substances the leaves make, the
carbohydrates that the leaves make, and they stick the little
mouth part in there, just like a mosquito would would
on our arm. They sick the mouth part in there
and they suck out those sugary substances, but they don't
really care about sugar. They're needing, they're needing nutrients and

(02:16:53):
minerals and things that are in there with it, and
so they have to drink so much liquid to get
the nutrition they need from it that the sugar water
goes in them and out the back end, I mean
just real quick. And so you're standing underneath it and
you can feel this mess, but it's basically sugary water

(02:17:14):
that came through an insect, and so it washes off
pretty well because you know a little concentrated sugar that dries.
You know, you wet it and it's gonna dissolve and
be able to wash it off. But that's what's doing it.
Trying to treat the whole tree to poison the SAPs
so that they can't do that is really not practical,

(02:17:36):
and you know it has secondary effects that probably weren't
worth it either, but that's kind of what's happening, and
we just have to wash it off some The only
thing I would say is if you're gonna, if you're
gonna go out there with a glass of iced tea,
you got two options. One, get your a little umbrella
put in the drink, just because our number two don't

(02:17:57):
sugar your tea inside, just come outside and leave the
top open. Then before too long, it's gonna be sweet. Yeah,
that was very funny. But yeah, it's kind of seasonal. Uh,
We've got we've got a number of insects that do that.
Earlier in the season, we had a different insect that

(02:18:18):
was causing the little people thought it was raining underneath
the trees. That was a different insect, which, by the way,
I put a publication on my website for that one,
but I don't have anything about I need to put
something up about this kind of bug. But it it's
just part of nature out there. So it's the trees
are losing moisture, but it you know it, it's really

(02:18:38):
not a threat to the tree.

Speaker 10 (02:18:41):
Okay, I have my irgregations that shoes right on the
face of the tree if you feed up when it's on.

Speaker 5 (02:18:50):
Yeah, I guess that doesn't does it?

Speaker 9 (02:18:54):
No? Not right?

Speaker 5 (02:18:56):
You know, we'd rather not keep the trunk wet all
the time. That's why we don't paul mulch up against
the base of the tree. But just getting it wet
and then drying out is not a real big deal.
You should be glad, all right, you bet, you bet?
Now you can have some fun with that. When people
come over, you can you can put an umbrella in

(02:19:17):
your glass and not in theirs, and when they come
in and you can come and tell them why after
a suitable interval.

Speaker 6 (02:19:26):
Okay, you thank you.

Speaker 5 (02:19:31):
Right there you go. That's good. Suitable interval. You know
where I first heard that. Some of you are old
enough to remember the Carter administration right one time when
what was it Donaldson? Sam Donaldson, He.

Speaker 9 (02:19:48):
Was a.

Speaker 5 (02:19:50):
I don't think he was ABC News or reporter, and
he was they they'd gone out. President Carter was out
there at the edge of this giant hit It was
basically like a septic sewer pet. I don't know if
there's an animal, you know, like a dairy cattle operation
or what. Anyways, it's a giant pit full of manure, basically,
And Sam Sam Donaldson asked Jimmy Carter. He said, President Carter,

(02:20:14):
if I were to slide down this side and fall
into the pit, would you pull me out? President Carter
said yes, Sam, And he paused, and he said, after
a suitable interval, I've used that a lot. That's good.
I maybe the only one laughing right, I'm going to

(02:20:35):
assume I'm not anyway, you're listening to garden line.

Speaker 9 (02:20:39):
I got time.

Speaker 5 (02:20:40):
Oh no, I don't have time. We're out and about
less than a minute here, So I'm not gonna take
you more calls today. But I hope you have a
wonderful week out there in the garden. I remember the website.
I've talked about it a lot, lots of free information
that I put up there. Stuff where we go into
a little more detail. I think you will find very
very helpful. If you want to check out that top
Tropical sod webworm publication, you can. I do have two

(02:21:04):
publications on take all root rot. Take all root rot
is the thing that just flat kills grass, especially Saint Augustine.
You can attack zuz and bermuda grass, but we normally
see the problems on Saint Augustine. You need to read
about this, and it starts with not letting the grass
get stressed. But all the tips are in those two publications.

(02:21:26):
One is a one pager, one's a two pager. I'd
recommend you read them both, but anyway you can print
these things out. You'll also find my lawn care schedule
and my lawn pest Sweden Disease management schedule far free
there on the website, So have a good week out
there in the garden. Enjoy the colfront that's come in today,

(02:21:48):
make sure and bundle up so you don't freeze to death.
And we will talk to you again next Saturday and Sunday.
Have a great week in the garden. Folks mean something,
but

Speaker 9 (02:22:09):
Didn't in