Pipelines of Nutrients, and the Tyranny of Dying Trees

Episode Transcript

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

Speaker 2 (00:06):
The crazy gas can use a shrimp you can just
watch him as well as many good things to suit
backs in the way the grass gas begin you dis

(00:27):
troubles back nicking. There not a sound gas sum and
down between.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
The gas gas you jam.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
Starting and treat hey, good morning gardeners. It's gonna be
a good day in the garden, whether your garden is
indoors or outdoors. Might be a little better day if
it's indoors, but because it's gonna be a little warm
outdoors except for right now, it's a good time to
get outside and get some things done. Just put your

(01:06):
head lamps on and head right on out there. We're
going to talk about a number of things regarding various
parts of the garden today that are timely and so
we'll be doing that off and on through the day,
intermixed with your calls at seven one three, two, one
two fifty eight seventy four. What do you want to
know about? What do you want to ask about? Maybe

(01:27):
there's a diagnosis or identification of something. You can call
my producer, get an email to send a photo in
and then follow that up with a call. That's how
we do it here, and uh, we can talk about
what it is that you're asking about. Whatever that is.
I often will ask the question, what are you going

(01:49):
to do new or different this year or this season
for example? Uh, And it's the reason I do that
is there's so much to doing gardening. And if you
want to trudge along and do the exact same thing
you do every year, plant the same variety as you
plant every year, whatever, whatever, You're welcome to do that
of course at your garden, do whatever you want. But

(02:11):
I think it's fun and often helpful to try some
new things. There is always a new way of doing something,
a new product to use to fertilize or to stimulate
microbial growth, or maybe it is a safer or less
toxic pest control. I spoke to the Houston Roads Society

(02:34):
yesterday afternoon and we talked about all kinds of things
for diseases and insects that are less toxic and approaches
to it. So some of you probably may have watched
that on Facebook or they did Extreme Facebook Live, but
that may be something new that you're trying this year,
or maybe what you're doing new is growing a whole

(02:56):
new plant that you've never grown before. And there's so
many plants in so little time. And I may throw
a few ideas out for some of my favorite summer
plants here as we go through. That would be a
good one. It also something that I would really encourage
you to do is do some extra learning this year.

(03:18):
And I'm talking about, you know, getting a book and
taking a test and taking a class or necessarily or
things like that. I'm just talking about investigate, learn some
more about some things that you didn't know, like, for example,
the summer garden is in the vegetable garden is usually
pretty bare. There's just not a lot out there. There's
there is sweet potatoes, there's okra. Of course, there are

(03:42):
some other plants that aren't happy to be out there,
but they're long term, like, for example, the pumpkins and
winter squashes. It takes them, you know, typically about seventy
to one hundred and ten or more days in order
to reach maturity. So you got to spend into the summer.
But what about other things. There are a lot of

(04:05):
good vegetables you can grow in the summertime. Some of
them are culturally unique. They may not be what you
grew up with in your Texas garden or wherever you
grew up. But they're good and they do well here,
and they're often from parts of the world they're very
very hot, humid, sultry, kind of like our weather here,

(04:25):
and so why not give one of those a try.
You can even do it now when it's hot. Things
like malabar greens. Malobar greens. Another one is molochia. Molochias
pronounced different ways in different areas, but it is a
actually a relative of jute. And you're thinking, okay, so

(04:45):
you want me to eat jute twine. No, not quite
like that. When the leaves are young and tender, they're
they're very tasty and they're very simple to use. I
have a neighbor who makes a pesto out of molechia,
just like you put out a basil with some pine
nuts and oil and things. Now, that's a really easy

(05:08):
one to grow, and you don't need much of it,
you know. It makes a pretty good sized bush annual.
It freezes to the ground kills it. But that would
be one example of that. There are amaranth varieties that
are developed to be vegetable or leafy, more leafy than
weedy or grain producing. That would be very good. Part

(05:29):
person laine is awesome. You know, we have personallyane hanging baskets.
But there are person lanes that are that are made
for vegetable type use, like one called Mithra, one called
red Grooner is another one, and gold Gelber is another
person lane, and they have larger leaves that are very succulent, fleshy,

(05:51):
high in omega threes, very very good for your health,
and a little bit of a lemony tang. I'll put
them in smoothie sometimes just to give it a little
bit of a zip for the right kind of smoothie
and salads. But anyway, there are a bunch of vegetables
that grow in the summer and you can do a
little search on that. I wrote an article for Texas

(06:14):
Gardener a little while back on that, so maybe you
can hunt that one down online. By the way, if
you don't subscribe to Texas Gardener, I highly recommend it.
It is a very unique magazine in the world right now,
the gardening world. Right now. It is the only state

(06:36):
focused vegetable and flour and et cetera gardening magazine that
I know of in the country. And I think there
somewhere is Pennsylvania or the Northwest somewhere there was one,
but it was supported by an organization like the Horticulture
Society of the State or something I can't remember as specific. Anyway,

(07:00):
just say this, there is not a magazine to my knowledge,
in Oklahoma and Louisiana, Alabama, New Mexico, Mississippi. All that
is just like the Mississippi Gardener magazine. And the point
isn't that other states don't have it. The point is
that we have it. And so when you subscribe to

(07:23):
Texas Gardener, first of all, I write for it. So
that's part of the reason I'm very positive about it.
But you're reading people who garden in Texas. You're not
reading people who garden somewhere where they think that eighty
five degrees is sweltering, or where summer doesn't last ten

(07:46):
months out of the year like it does here, and
other kinds of challenges and stuff that we have. These
are gardeners that I've known. Some of them are people
that were in Master Gardner classes that I taught. Some
of them are people that worked for uh tex A
and M Horticulture. Some of them are former County Horticulture agents,

(08:08):
for example. But these are when when I read the
articles like these are good. These these are informative, and
it's a there are some articles that are, you know,
kind of interesting and you read them and they're they're
fun to read and educational and things. But a lot
of the articles also fun to read or more get

(08:29):
your hens in the dirt and how to do it,
and so they talk to you about how to put
in a summer garden in the heat for your fall
season and things like that. So Texas gardener dot com
is a website. Go check it out. You can subscribe
to the print magazine or you could subscribe to the
digital or I think they do both too.

Speaker 4 (08:50):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (08:50):
And then they have other other things available there, but
I I go to it the here here's one thing
that to me is just like, Okay, this settles it.
And for all if all that other stuff I just
said doesn't it is you have a botty. I think
it's a thirteen year archive of six times a year
comes out of all the Texas Gardeners. So if you

(09:12):
subscribe today, you can go back and I think it's
thirteen years and read all the magazines that have come out.
In the articles and them. That is amazing, as they say,
that's worth the price of admission. So check out Texasgardener
dot com and find out about it. We had j
White here on the show this summer as one of

(09:32):
our guests. Just a good family that runs the operation,
and you will like it. I'm always I read it
myself to learn things because some of these writers are
They are off into kinds of plants that I just
haven't delved into that much. And it's good, very good.

(09:55):
All right, Well, let's take a little break and we'll
come back if you'd like to give us a call
this morning. Seven one three, two, one two, five eight seven.
Congratulations everybody that is awake right now. You are an
early bird, uh and uh. We look forward to visiting
with you this morning. We're gonna start by going out
to Beaumont, Texas and talking with Karen this morning. Hello, Karen,

(10:19):
welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 5 (10:21):
Good morning.

Speaker 3 (10:22):
Hi.

Speaker 5 (10:22):
I have a boulder of aecon tree. It was probably
planted around the thirties and I was wondering if it
was safe to put malt around the bottom of it
to kiolla some of the vines and stuff.

Speaker 1 (10:42):
I don't know if it'll work. On the vines. Most
vines you're gonna probably have to dig out or spray
out or something like spray or something like that. But
any kind of weed that's coming from seed, you know,
sprouting up from seed, the mult will keep those down
quite well. Uh, make it as kind of as deep
as you want to. There's no need to go deeper

(11:03):
than about four inches on mulch. And don't pile the
tree itself trunk, you know, let the trunk.

Speaker 5 (11:13):
At the bottom are the colored mulches bad? Which good
mult should I kick out?

Speaker 1 (11:21):
I'm not at all a fan of dyed mulch. It
depends on your esthetics. I use leaves, you know, from
the neighborhood. I mow over them and I throw them
in under my shrubs and things as mulches, and that's
fine with me. Some people want a more attractive mulch
or with the no.

Speaker 5 (11:38):
No I'm in I'm in the country. I think I
think that's a good idea.

Speaker 4 (11:42):
I like that.

Speaker 1 (11:43):
Yes, yeah, I would do that. But you're probably gonna
need more than leaves because they break down pretty fast.
So I would say that, you know, gets you a
good shredded hardwood mulch, and you can buy these in
a number of places you are a distance away from Houston,
but right now the ground up, which happens to be
on the west side of Houston. Uh, they're having a

(12:04):
deal where you can get molts for like two dollars
a bag, unlimited supply of a high quality mault. And
so if you were to I mean you could literally
just I think thirteen bags is a cubic yard, so
it would last you a long time. But if you
if you're this way and have a trailer, that would
be a really good deal. But I'm sure you got
mulch sources over there that it would be fine.

Speaker 5 (12:27):
We do, and I have a bit of a compost
corner in my.

Speaker 1 (12:33):
Yard. Well, it's take a lot of mold. It's gonna
take a lot of molts for a tree. How do
you have any rough idea how wide the branch spread
of that tree is. I bet it's huge.

Speaker 5 (12:48):
It covers the whole entire yard. You mean the branch
probably like thirty forty feet. Okay, it was planted in
the thirties.

Speaker 6 (13:00):
That's pretty big, true, huh.

Speaker 5 (13:02):
And it's full of pecons right now, so it's hanging
down a little bit.

Speaker 1 (13:06):
Well, good well that's good. Your squirrels are going to
be very happy this year. Yeah. Well, just to give
you an idea what we're talking about, you said thirty
or forty feet, So if you were to take a
thirty five foot circle and put mult three inches deep
in it, that's a pretty good amount of maltch for

(13:31):
let's see, you know, for a p coon tree, it's
going to take about nine cubic yards of mult.

Speaker 5 (13:37):
That is a lot, you know, and so so do
you have a dig down to put that in or
just lay it on top of it?

Speaker 7 (13:43):
No?

Speaker 1 (13:43):
No, no, no, you'll put it on top. Get you
a mower and mow as low as you can mow.
I mean, just mow it to the dirt if you can.
We need a way and take it all down to
the dirt and then put you your mult down and
put it deep enough where no sunlight can hit the soil.
But be ready, you mentioned vines before, and a lot
of the vines that grow wild out there, mault is

(14:04):
just not gonna cut it on them. You're gonna have
to spray them or dig them out.

Speaker 5 (14:08):
Yeah, yeah, I spray them. Okay, Well I appreciate your information.

Speaker 1 (14:15):
All right, thank you, Karen, take care of You're welcome. Okay, Yeah,
malch Is you know, forests mults themselves. I had someone
in time ask me, is it okay to put oak
the oak leaves under an oak tree? And I just thought, well, God,
did the creation of trees drop their leaves. They fall

(14:39):
on the ground and they decay and they feed the oil.
That's what it should be. I mean that that's kind
of how trees want to grow. That's what they like,
if you will, And so yeah, it's okay to use
shredded leaves and leaveshrem napor. It doesn't have to be
the same species in oak leaves under an oak tree.
You can put the colon leaves on nder not tree,

(15:00):
whatever you want. No worrying about that. Let's got to
Fairfield now and talk to Marty this morning. Hello Marty,
welcome to gardens.

Speaker 8 (15:08):
The morning skipt Good morning. Hey, I sent you some
picture yesterday. I think you got him, but Kenny located
him this morning.

Speaker 1 (15:16):
Okay, yeah, I think so. Let me look here. Yeah,
there we go. I found them. Okay.

Speaker 8 (15:24):
I put some ms in around the bottom to kill
some Virginia button weed. I think it might have like
seeped into the ground. I don't know it like what
this has happened within two weeks. This went from a
beautiful overgrown privet to dying.

Speaker 5 (15:46):
So is it gone gone or is it okay?

Speaker 8 (15:50):
I mean, I know I sent you three different pictures.

Speaker 1 (15:55):
Yeah. What it looks like to me is that any okay,
in general, roots feed individual sections of the top of
a tree in general, So think of it as little
pipelines taking water and nutrients up. That pipeline goes up

(16:15):
to a leaf at the tip of a root, to
some leaf on the tree. That's a generalization. But what
happens is when you do something to a root system
on one side, some section on the top of the
tree is going to affect be affected. And that's what's
happened on your prevet there. So it's probably the roots
that are more out in the yard that are most affected.

(16:38):
I think the rest of the tree is going to
be okay. What you're what I would do is let's
let it do what it's going to do. Prune out
the ugly stuff. Don't do heavy pruning now, but later
you may want to come in next at the end
of winter, improve that thing back heavenly, heavily and get
a fresh new sprout of growth that you can prune

(17:00):
and trim to whatever shape you want and then it
won't be all ugly and lopsided looking.

Speaker 7 (17:07):
Okay, well, I.

Speaker 8 (17:10):
Thought God may have heard me, just say, gosh, this
tree needs to be senned out. And you know, next thing,
I know it, Well, it's doing send out.

Speaker 1 (17:20):
I know MSM heard you. That's one thing about folks.
If you're using product called MSM another name for MSM
another oh gosh, I did just as I start. Manner
M A N O R is the same ingredient and
it's a really effective broad leave weedkiller. But if it

(17:41):
gets into the root system of tree, maybe it's over application,
maybe it's a rainfall. You know, there's a lot of
ways that can happen. Bottom line is just you don't
want it to be misused and stuff. But I think
your tree looks to me like it's going to survive.

Speaker 8 (17:57):
Well, I'm going to leave it, but uh, you know,
worst case scenario will die and I can cut it back.
How far can I cut it back in the.

Speaker 1 (18:06):
Winter, though, Well, my only hesitation is I don't want
to do major pruning when the tree is struggling to
survive this the chemical injury. So that's why I was
going to say, then where if by the if by
the going into fall the plant, parts of the plant
that are still alive have started dying, then I wouldn't

(18:29):
do the heavy pruning in winter. I would wait and
let's let that tree somehow turn the corner here and
move forward before doing the pruning. But I would otherwise,
I would just say maybe early February, late February, you
could you could cut it back as far as you want.
You could cut it. You cut it down to that
butterfly that's hanging underneath it if you want. Uh, And

(18:49):
that would be fine. And it reached sprouts, but just
keep in mind that you know it's had a major
attack that's hit it.

Speaker 8 (18:57):
And so okay, all right, well all right, well thank
you very much.

Speaker 1 (19:03):
All right, thanks all right, thank you for the coming.
I appreciate that party. Bye. Oh gosh, here we go
on a break. Uh well, we don't have enough time
to do justice to the next call, but I will
say that Ruthie and Hockley and Joe and Stafford, you're
our first two up when we come back from this break.
Right now, if you have not put out fertilizer for

(19:24):
the summer. You can still do that with super Turf
nineteen four to ten from Nitrofoss. Just get it out there,
follow the label, putting it down. Just gonna give you
several months of feeding on that turf to help provide good,
strong turf without overdoing the nitrogen at one time, because
it gradually feeds that lawn day by day, week by
week over a few months. Superturf from Nitrofoss looking forward

(19:48):
to visiting with you about the calls that you might have.
All right, so let's do this. Let's start by going
out to Ruthie and Hockiley. Hello Ruthie and welcome to
garden Life. Can we help you today?

Speaker 7 (20:00):
Good morning Skip. I have a question about vencas. I
hear you call the Madagascar periwinkles at time, and I've
got vencas. I'm just wondering if it's two different plants
or the same plant with two names.

Speaker 9 (20:14):
I was just very curious.

Speaker 1 (20:17):
That's a good question, and I do that to stop confusion.
And now because I'm doing that, it's creating confusion. Well,
there are there were a number of plants with similar
looking flowers that are bluish, though called vinca. They're viining.
Two different types of vining plants called venca and stuff,

(20:37):
and everybody calls them venca. I understand that I prefer
Madagascar prairiwinkle because it has a it just it's clearly
you know, a different plant. And if you if you
look it up, you see them called Madagascar praiwinkle a lot.
It's native to Madagascar, those plants. But anyway, you can
call them venca, you can call them mada, cascar periwinkle.

(20:58):
You know, it's they're both acceptable names for them.

Speaker 7 (21:03):
Okay, So when I'm looking at my vinkas, I mean,
how can I tell is there a difference? Can I
tell there's a difference. I'm just really curious about that,
or is it basically the same?

Speaker 1 (21:15):
It's the same plant what you grew up. Probably if
it's not a vining groundcover kind of plant, then you
were probably talking about the same plant Madagascar. Purpose if
it's let me do it this way. If if the
blooms are pink and red and white, those kinds of colors,
it is it is not a venka, a true vinka.

(21:37):
It's a Madagascar periwinkle, but people call it menka. How
about that.

Speaker 7 (21:41):
Oh, okay, that's perfect. That's what I have then, Okay,
thank you you helped me a lot.

Speaker 1 (21:47):
All right, all right, okay, well, thank you appreciate that.
My apologies for that confusion we have right there. Let's
see here, let's go out to Stafford here. Hey, Joe,
good morning, welcome to garden Line. Good morning.

Speaker 10 (22:08):
Thank you for taking my call.

Speaker 1 (22:09):
Skip.

Speaker 10 (22:10):
I've sent you a couple of photos. I've got a
couple of cannon plants.

Speaker 6 (22:18):
And I got eating on the leaves.

Speaker 10 (22:20):
I sent you a couple of photos.

Speaker 1 (22:24):
Yeah, I'm not sure what's happening, but I'm not getting
the photos. But describe to me what you're seeing on
the leaves.

Speaker 10 (22:32):
Well, it looks like somebody like a sewing machine went
through it.

Speaker 1 (22:37):
Yeah, you don't have the photo.

Speaker 6 (22:39):
I sent it to you twice.

Speaker 1 (22:41):
No, I know, and I keep looking here and I
don't see them. But it doesn't matter. I know what
you're talking about, baiting. When you said the sewing machine,
then I got it. That is a little insect called
the kenna leaf leaf tire. And what happens is this cannon.
Could you turn the radio off in the background.

Speaker 10 (23:03):
Oh, I'm sorry, Yeah, yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 1 (23:07):
All right. So when the kennel leaves come out, they're
rolled up like cigar, where you know, the leaves are
all rolled up in a tube and a little insect
will go in and he'll chew through that. But by
doing that, he's creating a series of holes that when
the leaf unfolds, you've got these holes that are in
a row like a sewing machine went across, except they're

(23:28):
much bigger holes than a sewing machine would make. But
that's that is the insect. It's a caterpillar, and so
anything that controls caterpillars, it could be BT spray, it
could be spin no said, is a little bit longer
lasting s P I N O S A D. Like
the word spin, the letter O and the word sad.

(23:51):
Those two sprays are the safest ways to go about
going after a caterpillar. Like the cantile.

Speaker 10 (23:58):
Well, yeah, I did kill I don't know about a
week ago, I guess I found a slug okay in
the plant about two inches long, So I don't know if.

Speaker 1 (24:18):
That well it it could be a slug. A slug
can cause damage to a can or other kinds of
leaves like that. But it's it's what you described does
not sound like a slug at all.

Speaker 10 (24:37):
The dam Well, I killed a slug, so anyway, yeah.

Speaker 1 (24:41):
Okay, yeah, well they're it's not good to have them
up there either. But yeah, this insect it, I guess
it could look a little slug like. It's a long, skinny, flat,
shiny caterpillar that I mean. I've seen them like over
two inches long, uh in there. So anyway, it doesn't matter.

(25:04):
All of that doesn't matter. Bottom line is if you
want to if you want to spray them and control them,
you can do that. Another option is to cut that
whole can of stalk off at the ground, get it
out of there, throw it away so the insect doesn't
become them off to lay eggs and do it again.

Speaker 3 (25:19):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (25:19):
And a cannon will send up a new shoot in
its place, So that's another option.

Speaker 10 (25:24):
Okay, sound lock a plan, you have a one bad.

Speaker 1 (25:32):
As well. Thank you appreciate that very much. The cannon
leaf it's actually a leaf romer THEO and you're going
to why I was calling it tire, But the leaf
roller is a problem because it ties the leaves together
and sometimes they don't unfurl properly.

Speaker 3 (25:55):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (25:55):
They have a little they use like a little silk
had a very strong silk thread to tie those leaves together.
I've had them in Cannon's before and you know, just
kind of cleaned them all out. But you'll also find
that wasps, if they find them, they'll be flying around
your canna is trying to get those caterpillars and haul

(26:15):
them out of there for you. Now when they're hidden
inside a rolled up leaf that's been tied together by
the caterpillar, and it's going to be very difficult to
for a wasp to get in and get to them.
But that's what nature does about them. Pierce Scapes is
our go to landscaper here on guard Line. You know,
the quality of work they do and the extensive breadth

(26:39):
of work that they do is really amazing. I mean,
if you need a concrete or a stone patio, let's
say in the backyard you have barbecue pet and create
a new place to go out and be with the family,
they can do that. If you want landscape lighting, they
can do that. If your irrigation needs work, they can
do that. If you need them to come in and

(27:00):
do quarterly maintenance on your beds, they can do that.
If you need a brand new landscape from scratch, starting
with dirt. They can do that. Or if you just
want to spruce up, redesign improve your landscape in various ways,
they can do that as well. Pierscapes dot com is
the website piercescapes dot com. You need to go. You

(27:23):
need to check out what they're doing. Look at them
on social media too. They post a lot of pictures
of things on social media that would be very helpful
to give you an idea if you want to get
them a call two eight one three seven oh five
zero six zero. I'll give you that again two eight
one three seven oh fifty sixty for Peerscapes quality. Let's

(27:46):
do this. Take a little break and we will be
back in a minute for the final segment of this hour.
We'll be here till ten am today. If you've got
a gardening question seven one three two one two five
eight seven four in summertime, if it wants to delay
a little bit, we'll also take that avoid the heat

(28:06):
up that comes. Hey, you're listening to guard Line and
we're here to help you have success with what you
want to grow. That's kind of the bottom line. How
can we help you grow things more successfully, so you
get more enjoyment out of it, So you get more
food nutrition out of your fruits and vegetables and herbs,
so that you get more visual attractiveness of your landscape

(28:27):
and the flowers and shrubs and trees and things. There
are things you can do, and it all goes down
to what someone said a good while back, and that
is learning to see things from a plant's point of view.
When you learn to see things from a plant's point
of view, then you know exactly what to do to
keep them happy. And that is kind of what becoming

(28:50):
a more and more experienced gardener is all about, more
and more understanding what it is that you need to
do to keep plants happy. And there's a lot of
is to In other words, it is putting them in
the amount of sunlight they want. It is giving them
good drainage in almost all cases. It is making soil
that is filled with organic matter, which stimulates, of course,

(29:13):
and fuels microbe growth and development, keeping that soul moist.
It is giving them the nutrients that they want too,
not too much, but enough nutrients so that they can
do their best in growth. All right, that's it. It's
not that difficult but when we do it, we enjoy

(29:34):
bountiful gardens and beautiful landscapes, and that's what we're here
to enjoy. We were talking about the can of leaf rover,
and when I was watching the can of leaf rover
at my house a few years ago, I ended up
removing some cannons from that area. But when I was
watching them, I just noticed the red wasp that was

(29:54):
flying around us and seeing I know what wasped up
to their number one one food sources, caterpillars, both the
yellow and black wasps paper wasp and the red wasp,
paper wasp. They are number one food just caterpillars, and
so that's what it was doing. And I actually saw
one land and start chewing into a CANi leaf roller.
It was kind of cool to watch that happen. And

(30:16):
Nature's that way all the time. Things are going on
out there that are helping you in your gardening. You know,
I know things are going that aren't helping you, like
aphid populations exploding, or you know, a wave of grasshoppers
flies in from the hay pasture next door. I get that,
but there are a lot of things going on good
that are helping you. You look think about this. This

(30:39):
is just a quick fun fact when you think about
the reproductive potential of an aphid. Aviids can be born
pregnant unless let that sink in for just a minute.
So they hit the ground and before it's a matter
of days and they are able to pop out a
bunch of aphids themselves. So you take one mama aphid

(31:02):
pops out a whole bunch of aphids in each one
of those within a few days is popping out a
bunch of aphids. And each of those, I mean, it
gets to where it's a wonder we're not wading through
aphids knee deep in the garden after a month or
so because of their reproductive potential. But we're not why well,
number of reasons. The weather's won. But there are a
lot of things that eat aphids there. I mean, if

(31:23):
you are an aphed when you go watch horror movies
at the movies, here's the kind of movies you see.
Ladybugs or No Ladies. That's the title of the movie,
and it shows ladybug adults and their babies just ripping
you up with their teeth and like a Tyrannosaurus Rex
and Jurassic Park just chomping you to death. And then

(31:46):
the next movie is about danger from a dive bombers
from above, and it's these tiny little parasitoid wasps that
are flying down and landing and popping eggs into your body.
So the movie aly and become a living experience for
this ephit. The wasp grows inside the aphit and then

(32:06):
comes out. You see what I'm saying, lace wings that
attack them, many things attacking feet on them. And that
nature control is what keeps us from being knee deep
in aphis every year, or one of the things that does.
And so just know that, become aware of that because
and I told the Rose Society folks says yesterday and

(32:28):
the talk I was giving, when you kill a beneficial insect,
you inherit its job. So take a lady beetle larvae
in the process of that little black and orange alligator
looking tiny critter on the leaf, in the process of
it growing from an egg to becoming an adult, It's

(32:48):
going to eat about three hundred aphids. That's what I'm told.
So if you were to, I showed a picture of
sixteen lady beetle eggs on a leaf around some aphis
and then we did the math. You know, if there
were fifteen three hundred times fifteen, that's four thousand, five
hundred ephits. That little cluster of eggs among a bunch
of aphids has a potential to take out four thousand,

(33:11):
five hundred ephits. And that's before it even becomes a
mama and flies around start continues to eat. My point
is just this, that nature is out there doing a
lot of help for us. And the more you learn
about what's happening, it's kind of fun and cool to
see anyway, especially for kids. Way cool. And then the
more you make decisions that help your gardening goals rather

(33:35):
than harming them, because when you kill a beneficial insect,
you inherit its job. So just something to think about.
All right, I guess that's a thought for the day.
We need to have a thought horticultural talk for the men.
All right. Here, music means time to go to the news,
take care of some business like that. Then we'll be back.

(33:57):
If you've got a gardening question and would like to
be for stop when we come back seven one three,
two one two five eight seven four give me a call.
We'll talk about that. I want to remind you again.
The website that I put up that we're continuing to
grow and it's gardening with Skip dot Com. I encourage
you to go there. I just break all be a

(34:19):
good time Gardening with Skip dot Com. Bookmark that thing
so you have it. And when I refer to things
you already just click on the link and you're there. Uh.
You got questions that come up about take all root rot,
That's where I'm gonna send people. We got questions that
come up about needed to it. That's where I'm gonna
send people how to do a SOL test. That's why
I'm gonna send people proper lawn care on schedules that

(34:40):
I talk about. We're there, so we are going to
make it more and more resourceful as we go. Gardening
with skip dot Com. It's what are we on to
talk about this morning? Well, you'll have to answer that
question seven one three, two one two five eight seven four.
We'll visit about the things that are most of interest
to you. You know, one thing that I talk about

(35:06):
pretty often when I'm helping people understand plant success is
that a plant lives in its roots. And why did
I say it that way? Well, we see the top part,
you know, we see the leaves and the flowers and
fruit or whatever of the plant. But of course that's
critical that leaves capture sunlight, they feed the plant and

(35:27):
so on. But we forget about sometimes the root system
that drives everything. As the roots go, so goes the plant.
If the roots are dying, the plant's going to die.
If the roots are not taking up water and nutrients,
the plant's going to either be wilted or or show
nutrient deficiency symptoms because that's the whole building blocks for
everything that the leaves are turning into plant food, and

(35:50):
so the success of a root system determines how the
plant does. Now, what you're going to see is when
we get into summertime, our plants are understress period. It
may be transplant shock for things that are trying to
get established. It may be drought. There's a lot of
things that stress our plants, but typically the temperature and

(36:12):
the drought and things like that really make it difficult
for that root system to do what it needs to
do well. The folks that design might have grow, did
it not to create a fertilizer for the roots. You
can fertilize your plants and provide nutrients. What we need
is roots for the plant to do well. So you
need a root system that is efficient and that is expanding,

(36:35):
that is growing, that's developing the feeder roots, that's getting
its tentacles if you will, out there through a large
volume of soil to pick up water and nutrients when
they're scarce. And that's what mitigro does. It has an
effect on plants that cause it to develop a more effective,
more robust root system. It has an effect on plants

(36:56):
that protects root systems in some ways. Some of the
ingredients and MIGHTA Grow do a number of different things
that just help a plant to recover from shock or
to fend off stresses of summer. It's as simple as that. Now,
I would suggest if you're going to plant a plant,
just go ahead and drench it in with Mina grow.
Get those things on the roots, the living parts of

(37:19):
mighta grow. Let them be multiplying down in the root
system there and helping that plant establish. If you've got
a plant that's struggling, drench it in with MITI grow
it may it may need water, you know, and so
you're going to water, but water it with mitogrows in
addition to just perking it up with some water which
will last for a while. You are doing something to
the planet itself to help it fight stress. That's why

(37:39):
it says it's not dead yet. On mitigrow packages you
it has not just the preventative, which it does, but
it has the helping that plant recover and re establish
when it's beginning a decline might grow. It's not dead yet.
Let's go out to the phones and we're going to

(38:00):
head to Spring, Texas and talk to David. Hello, David,
welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 11 (38:06):
Good Morris ship. I got a brass problem. I sent
some pictures in. I think pretty sure it's a bug problem.

Speaker 1 (38:18):
All right, Uh, what what is the let me get
your trying to get your photos up here. What the
pictures you sent me? Are they of turf?

Speaker 3 (38:27):
No turf?

Speaker 11 (38:29):
And there's two or three pictures of bugs that came
out when I sprayed it with some cyonara.

Speaker 1 (38:36):
They came running out on the driveway. Yeah, I bet
they would any any no bug like cyanora. Okay, the
turf is showing a drying and decline, uh, kind of
blending in with different areas. Okay. The bug looks to
be a June bug. To me ai AI and it

(39:04):
said bill bug b I l l bug. Well it
looks too big. There's some pot needles in the picture
and stuff, so I think that's too big for a
bill bug. I think, boy, if I were just looking
at your turf, I would consider things like take all
root rot as a possibility due to the erratic spottiness

(39:28):
of it going through that area. Uh and the die back.
I have two publications on my website that talk about
take all root rot and what to do about it.
If you will read those some of those do some
of those things. I think that'll help. It doesn't quite
look like chinchbugs a little bit, but not quite. It

(39:49):
looks more like take all root rot or drought than
it does chinchbugs. So, but whatever it is, I would
do something very soon because you're kind of at that
tipping state age where you're going to lose major sections
in there that don't recover if you don't shut down
what's happening there now.

Speaker 11 (40:09):
Already, Yeah, you sign And I went back two three
days later with the Bison seven point nine.

Speaker 1 (40:16):
Okay, Well, if you've if you've done all that, we're
going to just eliminate bugs, because even if it was
gingerbugs or or bill bugs or whatever you've take taken
care of all that. I think it's a disease. So
I would I would get those applications and read them,
read them at gardening with Skip dot com. Look at them,
and it's going to give me several things to do.

(40:38):
There is a fungicide that you can spray at certain times.
You'll find that on my lawn care schedule, the lawn
Pessweden disease schedule rather.

Speaker 12 (40:45):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (40:45):
And then there are there's pete moss. I would use
peat moss rather than compost in this situation for this
Uh if it's take all route right. Uh there. It
just goes into a number of things that to be
aware of and to do. And I would read these
and start them right away. All right.

Speaker 11 (41:03):
Did you see that one picture with a sidewalk in
it and the grass towards the street.

Speaker 1 (41:09):
How green it is? Yes? It looks.

Speaker 11 (41:16):
Between the sidewalk and between the sidewalk and the roads
in that little area.

Speaker 1 (41:23):
Yeah, it's it's it's always darker green than the other
ones around it.

Speaker 3 (41:27):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (41:28):
Why is it? I'm just curious, why is it there
and not in your the rest of your yard?

Speaker 11 (41:32):
I got it from a neighbor and I had a
problem with that, and neighbor give me some pro vista turf. Yeah, okay, well,
sure to put it down everywhere.

Speaker 1 (41:45):
Well, but it's not Yeah, province is not immune to
take all root rod or chinch bugs or things. So
I mean it has its problems, but yeah, it's a
darker green. But anyway, aside from the varieties of grass,
I would jump on that. And again, just repeating myself
a third time here, read those publications. Please look at
them and start doing as many of the things in

(42:06):
them as you can, and I think you can turn
this around. But in the meantime, forget what I say
about only watering once every week or so. Go ahead
and water it twice a week because it's got a
limited root system and you don't want it to lack
for water at all. You don't want to overwater it,
but you want to keep that root system adequately hydrated

(42:27):
until you get this scrass turned around and it grows
some more roots. Okay, all right, all right, what's up? Yeah?
Can I would minidro help that micro wouldn't hurt it.
I use some mighty grow on a take all root
rot lawn that in my neighborhood with a neighbor friend,

(42:52):
and we also put down p moss on it. And
so I don't know exactly what did the benefit, but
alan that was struggling suddenly looks great now. And I
say suddenly it is. It is moved over weeks and
a couple of months, uh, and it looks fine. But

(43:13):
again the publication goes into a lot of other things.
I have not put mighta grow in that publication yet.
I'm evaluating it for this. But I know with my dig.

Speaker 11 (43:24):
The products are the same ingredients. All the what all
their products seem to be the same ingredient. Does that matter?

Speaker 1 (43:33):
Yes? Yes, no, that's fine. You can you can, you know,
grab the one for tree and shrub or grab the
one for flowers or whatever. Just use it. There's not
the one that says lawn. Not right now, there's not
one that says lawn to my knowledge right now. But
just just use it. It's good. Yeah, all right, that's it.
But follow follow the label. Put enough, put enough water down.

(43:54):
Don't just you know what the foliage you want to
drench it. You want it to go down in the roots,
So get a hose in and follow the instructions and
get it down in there. But again, all the other
things this, I can't tell you how important it is
to read and follow the publication. I got to run, David,
but good luck. I appreciate that. Let's see here, I'm

(44:15):
past a break or I justin we yeah, I got
to take a quick break. Bonnie and Spring your first
when we come back. Welcome back to the Garden Line
with us. We are here to help you have success
with your plants. It's as simple as that. It's as
simple as that. Let's head out to us Spring, and
we're going to talk to Bonnie now this morning. Hello Bonnie,
welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 13 (44:35):
Hi, Hi, Skip, thank you. I sent pictures as plants.
I have something that seems to be transferring from one
to another. I think it started on the Halloween, your plant,
and now it's on others that it's been nearby.

Speaker 1 (44:53):
Okay, let me get these pictures open. They're a little
small for me to zoom in real good on, but
I never know how well it's the number, it's a
number of pixels in the picture. As I see, you know,
it gets kind of kind of pixelated. I'm sorry you're

(45:14):
you're no, no, no, no, no, no problem.

Speaker 3 (45:16):
No.

Speaker 1 (45:17):
I just for order for me to give you the
best answer, I'm trying to zoom in here and take
a look. I can't. I think what you've got there
is Meali bugs. That's what it looks like best I
can zoom in. Mealie bugs are little insects that have
a cotton knee kind of covering around them, but they're
inside there. And if you were to go let's say

(45:37):
you go up to that hibiscus bud and you were
to just take your thumb and forefinger and just kind
of rub off, squeeze off, pinch off some of that
white stuff and then smash it between your fingers and
then look and if it's kind of a pink goo,
that's me okay. I think that's what you'll see. But
I'm giving you that. I'm giving you the gross task

(45:59):
that you got to go do in order in order
to make sure that I'm right about that, because again
my visual on this is a little limited. But if
you will do that, if it is mealy bugs, your
options are. You have several options. One is to send
something through the plant that will kill the Meai bug

(46:19):
so that when it's sucking juices out of the plant.
It's getting an ingredient that is an insecticide. Now, I
wouldn't do that on the hibiscus. Not a super pollinator attractor,
but anything that's going to bring pollinators to flowers. You

(46:40):
don't want to use the systemic in there just because
it can cause some problems for the bees. For example, Uh,
well the jasmine is it? Yeah, when the jasmine's not
in blooming season, it's great time to do it. When
jazzline is blooming, I wouldn't do I wouldn't do it. Okay,

(47:04):
So the and the pepper being an edible I don't
know of a udible form of the ingredient, but anyway,
a systemic insecticide would would have that. And you know
it says you're in spring. Are you up more up
forty five or are you more kind of like spring

(47:25):
branch down it ten and.

Speaker 5 (47:29):
Ninety nine and nine?

Speaker 1 (47:33):
Oh okay, okay, good, Well in the Houston area, Yeah,
so you've got some ACE hardware stores around you up there,
I would probably I would probably just go in there
and and ask them, you know, what they have in
terms of a systemic insecticide. The only other alternative is

(47:53):
to repeatedly be spraying them with a soap, you know,
or an oil, and I think you're always going to
be chasing the tail into the mealee bug problem and
not catching up to it with those kind of products.
Many bugs are not easy to get rid of. You
can prune out sections, but if you look at your
pepper closely, everywhere there's like a little leaf that comes
out of a stem and whatnot, you're gonna find one

(48:15):
of those little boogers in there feeding and so that
is gonna But anyway, you've got a you've got a
spring Ace hardware on spring Cypress that's going to be closed.
Oh I have someone closer to you, all Star all
Star Ace on Rayford Road up in the spring. Yea,
I know. Yeah, so yeah, So go in there and
talk to them about it. The ingredient is in midow

(48:36):
cloak bred I M I D O C L O
P R I D. Now you could take that hibiscus
because right now you're just trying to save it from
a big problem, and you can just snip off the
blooms and just for a while you're not gonna have
blooms on it. You're taking them off yourself and then
treat that plant and give it, you know, give it
a month or so or two fully do its work.

Speaker 13 (49:00):
All right, all right, yeah I can do that, Thank
you so much.

Speaker 1 (49:04):
Yeah, and keep keep these plants away from your other
plants too.

Speaker 13 (49:09):
Will do yes, all right, okay, appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (49:14):
Bye bye, bunny. Mellibugs are bad news because they aren't
real simple to get rid of, like aphids and mites
are much easier to deal with. But anyway, that's that's
what we're looking at. I've dealt with them too, and
it is a problem. And there's a form of that
amittle clopriated for houseplants too. You put it in the

(49:35):
soil you watered in. It's a grain near in the
for the house plant type, and uh yeah, it just
goes into your plants. We have some plants here at
the house. I won't say where they came from in
case that person is listening. They came into my house
and they have mella bugs on them, and so we
put them out outside and treated them. We'll get rid

(49:59):
of it. But anyway, there you go. So, uh, one
of one of the full proof plants that's out there
for you. Well, there's there's a couple of full proof plants.
But when someone asked me, I want to give someone
a gift of a plant that they kill everything, and well,
I usually there's two plants. I usually say. One of
them is san savaria also called snake plant, also called

(50:24):
mother in law's tongue, and my mother in law may
be entering or listening, so I'm not going to elaborate
on that. But san savaria is a very tough plant.
Lots of light. It's fine low light. It gets by,
it manages to survive. You forget to water it, it's okay.

(50:44):
I mean, just don't forget for six months, you know.
I mean, it's a really tough plant. The other one
is zz plant ZZ as in zebra zebra zz and
zz plant is a really unusual looking plant. It kind
of forms a clump that gets bigger and bigger and bigger.

(51:05):
If you have it in a plastic pot, your pot
will not be round. It'll start pushing out, you know,
where one of the little underground growth pushes is going
out to the side. And it's a It is a
cool plant. There's one type that has black leaves almost
black leaves, very very dark. They come out green, but
they turn dark, and then there's the regular standard green type.

(51:28):
It's propagating. It is very unusual, and that's a whole
another thing. You can go look that up. But it
thrives in low light to bright light. It is very
drought resistant. In fact, only water when the soil is dry,
you know, don't keep it soggy all the time. It's
a beginner friendly plant. The way I like to put
it is if you can't grow mother in law's tongue
or sense of aaria. Excuse me, I use that word again,

(51:51):
sense of aia and ZZ plant, I can't help you.
I'm sorry. Well I can. There's a thing called silk
plants that you can get at Michael's and hobby places
like that. You could probably, but I jokingly tell people that, Yeah,
but even citrus plants are silk plants get dust mites.

(52:11):
But all right, so zz Anyway, I was I was
thinking about ZZ because I was checking out Facebook page
for plants Fall Seasons. Plants Fall Seasons is a garden
center right there where Tomball Parkway and I just went blank.
Tombell Parkway and Luetta come together just north of it

(52:33):
on Tomball Parkway. But They've got a lot of great
house plants in their houseplant greenhouse, some unusual things, you know,
do you go in there. Sometimes I'm checking out the
insectivorous plants that eat insects, beautiful foliage plants. But anyway,
these these easy plants are easy and you know, you
got to work hard to kill one because they are.
They're easy to grow, They're very unusual. They look different.

(52:54):
They're not going to look like your other plants sitting around.
And so yeah, that's a good one that I would
recommend while you're there. By the way, plants for all seasons.
They got a really nice seed rack that's fully stocked.
Looks great right now, and so you're thinking about doing
some flowers or vegetables and things for fall, get stocked
up on that. It's also good just to get out there.

(53:15):
And this is just an aside, but it's good to
just get out there and walk through and walk. You know,
if summer doldrums have got you kind of like about gardening,
maybe go out there and walk among the flowers and
the foliage and the beauty and you will get reinspired.
And it still is a good time to go out
and to do planting. You just have to water that

(53:39):
plant daily to every other day with a little bit
of water, just like it's being taken care of at
the garden center as we go through the next weeks,
and it will get just established, just fine. Have a
little bit of a head start on fall plants for
all seasons two forty nine Lueta Plants for All Seasons
dot com. Okay, if you've got a gardening question, give

(54:02):
us a call. We are seven thirty. We had another
hour and a half. Oh we got two and a
half hours still to go.

Speaker 6 (54:14):
Here.

Speaker 1 (54:15):
Times flying when you're having fun. H seven one three
two one two five eight seven four. I got a
call coming in here seven one three two one two
fifty eight seventy four. We will be back in just
a moment. Again. I want to remind you about gardening
with skip dot com. I still run into a lot
of people that listen to guard Line all the time.
They'd been to the website. Lots of good stuff there.

(54:38):
You need to check it out. I got videos, got publications,
it's all free.

Speaker 3 (54:43):
All right.

Speaker 1 (54:44):
We're back lining. Welcome back. Good have you with us.
We're talking about gardening this morning, as always on guard line.
So I wanted to go over a couple of things.
We've had some various questions that have come in from
email and whatnot, and sometimes people follow up with a call,
sometimes they don't, and I'm just not able to get

(55:04):
back to the typing answers and things due to the
amount of time it takes for all the other stuff
I'm doing during the week with Horta Culture. But I
did want to comment on a question That's come up
several times. I talk all the time about the importance
of soil, the importance of having a good quality soil

(55:25):
for the plants, brown stuff before green stuff, And one
of the questions that I get sometimes is about planting
a plant and digging a hole and how did what's
the right way to do it? And you can go
online and see all kinds of diagrams and instructions. Typically,
you know, an international Society of our Bora Culture has

(55:47):
a website that has a publication on how to plant.
The Texas Forest Service has websites that have homeowner residential
type information like how to premptory, how to plane, and
so on, and there's a lot of good information out there,
but there's not one way to skin the cat. Here's
the basic concepts that we're going after. When we plant,

(56:11):
we want to put the plant in a hole that's
not deeper than the plant's roots. Cylinder is in the pot,
and I would take the plant and if you don't
see roots at the top of the pot, I would
take your fingers and scrape back the soil water guns
blasted away and find the topmost root. That topmost root

(56:34):
should be right about the soil line. Right it about
the soil line, not deeper, not deep down in the ground.
Planting too deep, significantly too deep, especially as a problem,
But that's how deep you on the plant. So dig
the hole that deep. Why do I say that, Well,
if you dig a hole that is deeper and you've
loosened that soil up, and then you go, oh, I

(56:55):
want to plant it at the proper level. You're putting
loose soil down in there, and you're trying to push
you down a little and set the plant in it.
But it's gonna sink down. So that planting level you
aimed for is gonna sink down. So just set it
on the bottom of the hole. Only dig as deep
as the plant root ball. Any things that are going
in a circle, the roots going in a circle around

(57:17):
that when you pull, when you slide that pot or
a plant out of its pot, go ahead and cut them.
They're not going to unwind underground. It establishes much slower
if you don't. If you don't cut them, and they
will branch. I one time I was talking to Beverly
out at Arborgate and there were some trees in the

(57:39):
back and I just asked, you know, can we pull
one up? Because if a plant's grown in a round pot,
it's gonna have circling roots. It just is. It's what
is You can't avoid that in a round pot. And
I said, well, it's pull one out. Let me pull
one out and cut those roots and then come back
and look at them. And I did, and about two
weeks later I was by there and I looked and
it was fresh little white roots coming out from the

(58:01):
cut ends. Everywhere I cut a root, there are fresh
white roots going out. And if you did that right
before you put it in the ground, those roots would
just go right out and establish very well. It's the
way to do it. Now, how big do you dig
the hole? Usually they say two and a half times
with the root ball, something like that. Two and a
half or three. And the reason for that is to
give you to get you to loosen up an area

(58:24):
of soil around it. That is fine if you want
to do it that way. That's a lot of work.
That's a big area for especially for a bigger plant.
But you can do that. But one other thing that
you can do, and I will do this, is take
a spading fork. And maybe the plant is just maybe
the hole is just twice as big as a plant

(58:47):
that's not quite big enough, but about that size. Take
a spading fork and go around the plant, push it
straight down in the soil, and then pull back on
it a little bit to crack that soil open. You know,
it kind of falls in toward the plant, and you
just do that couple of circles. You're not bending over,
you're not stooping, you're not picking up severals of soil.
You're just cracking that soil open and breaking it loose.

(59:08):
And now you've loosened the soil in a nice big
area and rooch are going to establish just fine. You
don't have to dig the soil out of the hole
and put all the soil back in the hole. If
you do this thoroughly, you can do pretty good. And
then you know, put some composting material on top, let
it fall down in into those holes as you're doing
this cracking around it, and just get it out, maybe

(59:30):
twice as wide as or more as the root ball.
And that is a savior back, not putting your chiropractor's
kids through college. Way to plant a bigger tree or
shrub where you're doing a lot of digging. So that's
an option. It's not one way to do it. There's
not one way, but you do want to a don't
dig a hole too deep. B set the plant where

(59:52):
the topmost root is at or slightly above the soil line,
the final soil line. You gotta lay a little bored
across there or something to see what that depth is
so you measure it right. And then the other thing
is to loosen the soil in a large area for
that plant roote. Do not fill the soil with fertilizers,

(01:00:15):
don't especially fast release. Don't use composts or potting soil
in the hole. That's just like makes it, especially in
a clay soil like an underground flower pot, where the
roots are growing round in that compost or in that
growing mix, like they were in the pot very happy,
but now they hit the sides of a clay hole

(01:00:35):
and they start to turn and go. Now, the other
question is should I dig a round hole or a
square hole? Well, dig an ugly hole. What do I
mean by that? If you use a moist or wet
clay soil and you dig a hole, your shovel creates
a slick side as you dig that hole going around,
and that is that root hits that and it doesn't

(01:00:59):
go into the play is as readily as you would
like it too. So the thing of a square hole
is to make it kind of hit the corner and
go sideways and then kind of push out a little better.
I would just take when you're all done, take your
your shovel or something and just stick it into the
side of the hole. Just hit the side of the
hole with it to break it apart. So it's a

(01:01:19):
very jagged, irregular sides of the hole, and that accomplishes
the same thing if you want to go that route.
So those are some things to keep in mind. Watered
in very very well, watered in very very well, and
then I would use a product to soak into the
soil to start to provide that plant the things it needs,
and so you know, for example, a good choice for

(01:01:40):
that would be something like Medina's product which is has
to grow plant. That's a six twelve six. It's got
a lot of phosphorus in it, which good for root development,
good for bloom development, and so on. That would be
a good choice for that. Now, Medina has a number
of good products that you could use for that as well,
Medina Plus or Medina Soil Activator. I'd probably go with

(01:02:03):
Medina Plus with a little extra stuff in it, but
Medina Plus or HAST Grow six six plant food. Soak
it in there, mix it up according to the label
and a watering can, and just drench it all in
that root system and in the soil around it and
help that plant get off to its best start. Finish
it off with some mulch, keep the weeds in lawnmower

(01:02:26):
and grass and therefore the lawnmower and we'd eater away
from the trunk of those shrubs and trees and you're
off to a good start. So there's just some tips
to keep in mind. Let's take a little break, we'll
be back. I feel like, growing up in Texas, is
it rude to interrupt George straight, I think it may
be good to have you back here on guard Line.

(01:02:48):
We are ready to go. In terms of what do
you want to talk about, Let's have a conversation about
what you're interested in things. It could be problems. People
usually call about a problem that you know, what's this bug,
what's this spot? So on, But it could be something like, hey,
what are some good flowers for fall? Or what are
some mid vegetables? Or how do you start tomato seeds?

Speaker 3 (01:03:09):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:03:09):
Whatever you want to do, we'll talk about those things.
Uh seven one three, two, one two five eight seven
four seven one three two one two fifty eight to
seventy four. I just went in along a spiel there
on proper planting. If you just tuned in and didn't
get to hear that, you might want to listen to
that segment of the show. You can listen to pass
shows at the KTRH website. You can also get the

(01:03:33):
iHeartMedia app or some other podcast type app and follow
garden Line and pass shows are posted on there as well.
So I got some downtime and you want to listen,
you can zoom through and catch up on those things
maybe you missed or that you didn't quite get written down.
That would be a good idea in my opinion. All right, so, uh,

(01:03:55):
things to talk about for this time of the year
that we need to think about. We have we're dealing
with a number of pests that are typical for the
summer season. Of course, we talked about mealy bugs earlier.
They are a problem and they're not easy to get
rid of, and so that's one, probably the number one
pest in my landscape right now is spider mites. Spider

(01:04:17):
mites love hot weather. They like a dry, dusty leaf surface.
So just blasting water typically most of the spider mites
are under the leaf. They'll be under and on top two,
but they'd rather hide under the leaf. And so when
you blast water up through there, you dislodge them, You
knock them off there, You get them wet, and when
they get wet, they start to get like a disease

(01:04:41):
of their body. You know, they're not made to stay wet,
and so that in and of itself is disruptive. Insect
cital soap sprays done early here that early, early, early
in the morning, way before the temperature heats up and
the sun starts baking down are very effective too, because
it does. But it's only as effective as your coverage.

(01:05:02):
Only spider mites that you give a bath in the
soap with your spray are going to be killed. If
a leaf is blocking a section of another leaf where
spider mites are that blocked section, those mites are not
going to be killed by your spray. You didn't reach
them with it, So try to get best coverage you can't.
There are other ways to control spider mites. There's poisons,

(01:05:23):
and then there is the horticultural oils that work very well,
but in the heat. I worry about oils. When temperatures
are up in the nineties and above and we're well
into that, I'd rather not use the oils just because
some plants, especially are very sensitive to them. So spider
mites big problem. I'm doing a little experiment with some seaweed.

(01:05:44):
I was looking at some research and it indicated an
effect of seaweed on spider mites. I've never used it
for that before, believe it or not. So I'm trying
it and I'll tell you more about it later if
it works. If it doesn't work, want to find out
about it. But that is another good thing that we
can do. So watch out for the spider mates. How
do you know if you have them, Well, the leaves

(01:06:04):
start to get stippled instead of nice and evenly green.
They're losing their green color. But when you look close,
it's not a perfectly uniform loss of green. It's like
little specks that are turning ten and more and more
and more specs and the green just sort of goes away.
And when it's really bad, you'll see some webbing under
the lee, fine webbing spider mic like a spider can.

(01:06:28):
They're not spiders, by the way, they can produce webbing. Spiders,
spider mits. Some caterpillars can produce webbing, so it's fun
fact anyway, take care of them sooner rather than later
when they're really bad. It takes a while, and by
the way, one spray of water is not going to

(01:06:49):
do it. You need to do it about twice a
week for about two or three weeks. Just keep watching them,
keep checking them. If you don't know if you have
spider mates, here's a way to tell. Put a white
piece of like printer paper underneath a leaf and thump
it sharply, I mean just a pop like that and
knock them off the bottom. That'll knock them off the bottom.

(01:07:10):
You'll look on your paper and you see little tiny
specks like fine, small sized pepper flakes, tiny tiny that
are moving around. They're kind of a there'll be kind
of a reddish brown color that spider minds. And so
if you see that, you know you got to deal
with it, because they're not gonna get better on their own.
So then you have some natural enemies. But I've got

(01:07:31):
a brougmanc here an angel's trumpet that I'm just busy
going out doing my horticulture and enterprises and being gone basically,
and it's gotten really bad, and I'm gonna have to
go in and rescue that thing so the new growth
that comes on isn't attacked by the spider mines. Something
to think about. There. Another thing that I'm noticing out

(01:07:53):
and about in the garden. I'm seeing some some damage
from some caterpillars and also some some beetles chewing into
the leaves. Now, I can't give you a hard and
fast rule about how to tell a beetle beetle damage
from caterpillar damage, but I will say this, a lot
of beetles will feed in the leaf creating holes in

(01:08:13):
the leaf. Not only that, but that and a lot
of caterpillars will feed from the edges of the leaf,
chewing in like taking chunks out of the leaf from
the outside end. But there are caterpillars that make holes
in the leaf. So there's exceptions to these. But if
you're not sure what it is, we'll turn the leaves around,

(01:08:33):
see what's on there, and if you can't find anything,
go out at night with a flashlight and look at
that plant. Because some pests are nocturnal, they kind of
go high during the day and then they come back
out and see if you can catch them at it
at night. And if it's a caterpillar, it just can't
run away. You know, they're really slow, and so you'll
see them. If you can't never can find anything on there,

(01:08:55):
I would say it's probably a little beetle. Well, flea
beetles will hop off there. There's some other insects like
that that when you go grab the leaf to turn
it over, they're gone. But a caterpillar can't run away,
so it's probably not caterpillar anyway. There's a little tip
for it's searching those things out. Another thing we're still

(01:09:18):
seeing a lot of is the leaf footed bugs. If
you've got tomatoes, they're going to be out there on them,
as are stink bugs sticking their beak in there and
causing discoloration and malformation of fruits, including peaches too, by
the way, which we're out of peach season now, but
stink bugs are as a problem to watch for. Learn
what their eggs look like, Learn what their nimphs look like,

(01:09:40):
steak bugs and leaf footed bugs when they are at
the egg stage. If you know what eggs look like,
you can just smash them or snip it out of
the plant and you're not spread it all. You know
what nimphs look like. That's newly hatched out of the egg.
They don't have wings yet. Put a piece of put
a pail or a bowl of soapy water under it
and swap the branch and the whole little herd of

(01:10:00):
stick bugs or leaf foot of bugs falls in it
and drown. You didn't have to spray at all. Wait
until they get lead wings. Now you got a problem.
Good morning, gardeners. We are back ready to talk about
whatever's of interest to you. That's kind of how we
work here on Garden Line. You got a gardening question,

(01:10:21):
give me a call seven one three two one two
fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one two
five eight seven four glad to visit with you and
discuss those kinds of things. When whenever we're talking about
plants and plants success, I always try to start with

(01:10:41):
the principles because the principles are Understanding those helps you
answer a lot of questions. If you just do it
question by question, well, you you know, you can do
that all day. Uh, but understanding principles like you know,
plus need light, plants need moisture, and so on. Uh,
it kind of helped drill down and find out, you know,

(01:11:02):
what's going on that's causing a problem with the plant,
Understanding how to take care of things, so that that's
kind of what I try to do. So, for example,
when it comes to principles, plants cannot function well when

(01:11:23):
the temperature gets too hot. When it gets too hot,
when temperatures rise up, even in the nineties, tomatoes start
to have problems. For example, the pollen doesn't clumps, or
it doesn't functionally fertilize the flower inside the tomato flower

(01:11:46):
when temperatures are hot. That's why your slicers, especially the
small types, aren't as bad, but they still are affected.
That's why your slicer tomatoes don't set well in the heat,
because they just they just can't. They don't they don't know,
you know, they don't have the ability to do that.
There are things, there are plants where it gets hot
and they start having trouble with photosynthesis. There's plants that

(01:12:08):
because the nights are so hot that they are struggling
to not use up the energy that they made during
the day because of the hot night that they're going through.
So there's a lot of different causes for these things.
But when temperature gets out of whack, that is a

(01:12:29):
big problem for a lot of our plants, and so
it's very difficult to deal with that and to make
a big difference in it. So anyway, when we get
into the heat of summer, you can't do a lot
to change the temperature. You certainly can't change the air temperature.
People talk about shading plants, and some types of plants

(01:12:49):
can be partially shaded, where you shade them a little
bit in order to keep the surface of the plant cooler,
but you know, shade them so much that they're not
able to make the carbohydrates. You know, tomatoes don't grow
in the shade. They don't well, they don't produce well
in the shade at all. So I would say that

(01:13:11):
for when it comes to shading, about thirty percent shade
over peppers and tomatoes. The research I've seen is that
you can still get a decent set of plants of
fruit and at the same time not shade the plant
too much as a result of that, so it makes

(01:13:31):
it different. So think what am I talking about when
I say you can't change air temperature. But when the
sun shines on anything. I mean, go out today at
noon or something and just reach and touch some object outside.
It could be a piece of wood laying on the ground,
and it's going to be hotter than the air temperature
because the sun is baking down on that wood and
heating it up. And plants are trying to respond to

(01:13:55):
that because they would get so hot that it would
kill them. But they release water. We perspire and the
water evaporates and it cools our skin. Plants transpire, they
release water out of their leaves, but they got to
pump a lot of water to do that. So watering
is more important our water stress is more damaging in
the summertime than it is at any other time of

(01:14:16):
the year, and so keep your plants adequately hydrated. That's
just a principle of things, because that water isn't just
carrying nutrients and water itself to the plant, but it's
also part of the cooling system of the plant, and
they get in big trouble and they can't cool off
a little bit. Let's head out to Katie now and
we're going to visit with Renee. Hey, Renee, Welcome to

(01:14:39):
garden line.

Speaker 7 (01:14:40):
Hi there, Hi there, How are you.

Speaker 1 (01:14:43):
Doing good? Doing good? How can we help?

Speaker 14 (01:14:47):
So?

Speaker 3 (01:14:47):
I have a bartlet pear tree in my backyard that
I've probably had for ten years. It's enormous and it
has a lot of pairs on it. I have never
been able to figure out what is the best time
to pick them.

Speaker 1 (01:15:06):
Okay, is there a general rule? The longer you name
on the tree, you know, up to a point, the
better off it is. As far as ripening, it's I
like to kind of reach up and when you feel them,
you can tell that they're going to give a little
bit to a little pressure on the skin. That means

(01:15:29):
they're getting soft but they're not fully fully soft yet.
You could pick them at that stage if you like,
or you can let them go all the way, you know,
and get normally soft, like a supermarket pair would be.
Are you sure that yours is a Bartlet? That's unusual here?

Speaker 3 (01:15:46):
I guess I thought that's what we bought. I mean,
I could be wrong. It's been a while, but I
thought it was a Bartley.

Speaker 1 (01:15:53):
Well, I'm just curious because that that is not one
of the pairs we normally play recommend. It's very light, susceptible,
and so on. You get the black shoots that just
turned chocolate brown and lean, and it has that oh
it does. Okay, Yeah, be real careful with fertilizing and

(01:16:14):
watering to promote growth because that's especially predisposing to that disease,
to have a lot of succulent pushed growth on the plant. Okay,
but yeah, that's it. You haven't when you're picking them,
are you finding the ones you're picking that are not
flavorful or you feel like they should have been on longer,
or what?

Speaker 3 (01:16:35):
Well, I mean I've picked them at all different times
of the year, trying to pick them before they got soft,
and then they're just kind of hard and woody, and
then waiting and then I just don't feel that they're
very flavorful.

Speaker 1 (01:16:50):
Yeah, well, uh, it's it's better to wait that that
gives them the best chance. As long as you've got
good foliage on the plant, then you can, you know,
you can make sure those carbohydrates are continuing to go in,
but I I don't know they should also you should

(01:17:11):
also be able to wrap them up. You may just
have to to put them in a in a mild
spot on the counter. Indoors pairs have the ability, unlike peaches,
to ripen after they pick. You know, you can harvest
them firm, they'll continue to ripen inside it room temperature.
So if they're exposed to ethylene gas, they ripen. Its

(01:17:38):
speeds the ripening of them. So if you were to
take some of your hard pairs that you picked and
let's say put them in like a grocery bag, that
plastic bag you know you get at the grocery store
and put them, put an apple or two in there
with them, a ripe apple, and then just kind of
pull it over and you know you're not air tightening

(01:17:59):
seeing it, but you're you're kind of locking in the
air there and leave them there for about a week
that check them periodically. That will speed the ripening, as
it will for bananas too. By the way, if you
have green bananas, okay, but anyway that that would be
something else you might want to try. All right, really okay, but.

Speaker 3 (01:18:17):
There's there's not like a particular month or time that
is recommended for picking them.

Speaker 1 (01:18:28):
No, No, each each different varieties of pairs are going
to ripe them slightly different times. And uh yeah, just
you can look at the color as it goes from
green toward you know, whatever color that pair would be,
like Bosque is a different color than Bartlett, it's a
different color than Deandrew and all the pairs in the
grocery store. And so each one is going to look

(01:18:49):
a little different when it's ripened too. But as you
sample them you should be able to figure this, you
know out what Okay, this is a stage I like
it best. But try that ripening thing I mentioned in door.
It'll take a little while, but not too long.

Speaker 3 (01:19:03):
Okay, okay, thank you, thank you appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (01:19:10):
All righty, let's see here, We're gonna go down to
Larry and the up Larry were just about to bring
you on. We lost you. Let's go to Marty in Fairfield.
Hey Marty, how are you doing?

Speaker 4 (01:19:20):
Hi?

Speaker 9 (01:19:21):
Sorry I'm calling again. You brought up a subject and
I wondered why my Maria was wilting. But I wondered,
is it because maybe the soil is not getting in
this sun and it's the only one that's wilty. The
rest of them are in fullsome the soils in full sun.
That one does not have soil in full sun.

Speaker 1 (01:19:45):
And it's wilting. The only reason why every day well,
but the is are the leaves in full sun or
are the leaves in shade too?

Speaker 8 (01:19:58):
The leaves are in full sun, and the leaves are
the ones that are wilte.

Speaker 1 (01:20:03):
So it wilts and then it recovers overnight. Is that
what you're seeing?

Speaker 8 (01:20:09):
Sometimes sometimes okay.

Speaker 1 (01:20:12):
Well, something's wrong and getting moisture up to the plant.
And it could be that the soil is too dry.
It could be a very very very chunky kind of
soil mix. It just drains too well and so it
doesn't hold enough moisture. I think those are a little unlikely, though.
I assume these are in containers or are they in
the ground.

Speaker 8 (01:20:32):
Containers and it's all the same soil, and it's, if anything,
it stays wetter than the other ones because it's underneath
the bird bath.

Speaker 1 (01:20:44):
Right. Oh okay, well that was my next place to go.
As plumerias don't like to be soggy, you know, they
they need good drainage. It could be that the soil
is stand too wet because of too much water application,
maybe from the bird bath. But it also could be
that maybe the drain holes aren't functioning as well as
the others are, and so but the soil staying out

(01:21:06):
of sun should not make a plant wilt. It Possibly
poor aerated soil around the roots due to sogginess could
But that's that's the best shot I got at it
without you know, getting there and pulling out.

Speaker 8 (01:21:24):
Okay, I'll pull it out from underneath the bird bath
and see if it doesn't fix it.

Speaker 4 (01:21:28):
Because you were talking about.

Speaker 8 (01:21:30):
Shading some of the soil, and I went, oh, bingo,
that's got.

Speaker 9 (01:21:35):
To be what the problem is.

Speaker 1 (01:21:37):
All right, Okay, thank you good, Thanks for the call, Marty.
You take care appreciate that. All right, we gotta go
to a quick gotta go a quick break here, folks.
Jason and West Houston your first when we come back
to have you with us. Listen, if you've not done
your summer fertilizing yet, you can still do it. Super
Turf from Nitrofross's silver bag. It's good to use. I

(01:21:57):
was going to you know, you put it down your
watered in and it's going to slowly release that nitrogen
over time. And it doesn't just stop nitrogen. It's got
phosphorus potassium as well in it. But the nitrogen gradually
over time. That's what fuels growth. And you don't overdo
it at one time. I mean, you know, you mow
a lot more, you water a lot more when you
do that. But with super Turf the silver bag, it

(01:22:21):
is controlling the release, so you don't have to worry
about that. You put it down according to the label
and it gradually feeds your turf. And I've seen great
results on some Saint Augustine I've got in the front
yard where I did some super turf this spring and
it just has I never had that flush of growth.
I always had good, strong color and strong growth. It's
always been good for me this year. And you can

(01:22:43):
find super Turf at places like and other night Foss
products by the Way and Shended Forest on FM twenty
seven fifty nine. Or the bearing hardware is both the
one on West Teimer and the one on this and
that carry night Foss products there as well, So it
makes it easy. Let's head out to West Houston. Now,
I'm going to visit with Jason. Hey, Jason, welcome to garden.

Speaker 14 (01:23:05):
Hey, good morning, morning, morning you. So I've got ill
to jump into it. I've got a large water oak.
I would have to assume it's been there since the
house is built in nineteen seventy four, and the roots
system over the past few years has been pushing up
my sidewalk in my driveway. Now the ho has gotten

(01:23:26):
a baald or upset about the water rope obviously pushing
up the sidewalk. But I just don't know how many
of these large roots I can cut still save the tree.
I gotta do some concrete work, but I can't do
the concrete work unless I cut the roots that are
still going out latterly.

Speaker 1 (01:23:41):
Okay, a couple of directions we can take this. First
of all, I would suggest you call an arbist to
come out and look at it and make that assessment.
You know, I can, I can take you things like, well,
you can cut one root a year, but every situation
is different. You know how big is rude and uh

(01:24:04):
is there? Yeah, so you'd rather not have to cut him.
But other than removing the tree, you're you're probably gonna
have to cut something. But I would I would call
Martin Spoon Moore an affordable tree. Do you have a
pinner pencil or pinner pencil?

Speaker 4 (01:24:22):
Yeah, I've got Martin's number.

Speaker 1 (01:24:25):
Yeah, he's come out before. Yeah, okay, well have him
take a look at it and see what he thinks
based on seeing the site firsthand. And that would be
one thing. Another thing another option is to call tie
it fixed my slab. We had tie on as a
guest yesterday. Did you happen to hear that conversation yesterday?

Speaker 3 (01:24:48):
No?

Speaker 4 (01:24:48):
I did not.

Speaker 1 (01:24:49):
I was traveling. Okay, okay, that's fine. So we we
talked about they can do a couple of things. They
can take a broken driveway and they can float it.
They can put some stuff under it that levels it
out and gets the big gap out of it and
stuff like that. But they also have a company that
does some other more more advanced things with like driveways

(01:25:13):
in this kind of situation where trees are causing problems.
So this may be something that ty could handle, that
fixed my slab could handle, or it may be something
that you when when you send them a picture, they go, no,
that's that's too far gone what we're doing. Can't fix that,
but it's worth a try. His his number is two
eight one two five five forty nine forty nine two

(01:25:36):
eight one two five five forty nine forty nine. Or
go to the website is fix myslabt dot com and
he'll come out and do a free estimate if you
want him.

Speaker 3 (01:25:47):
To do that.

Speaker 1 (01:25:48):
Okay, sir, thank you, I appreciate that. Thank you. All right,
you bet. Let's go now to Steve and Lake Jackson. Hey, Steve,
welcome to garden. A good morning, Skip.

Speaker 12 (01:26:02):
It's good to speak with you again.

Speaker 4 (01:26:06):
So uh, yes, sir.

Speaker 12 (01:26:08):
About three years ago we had to take down a
very large oak tree in our sideyard. Unfortunately, it was
leaning over towards our neighbor's house and we were afraid
that in a storm it would go down on top
of their house and whatnot. Okay, So the footprint of
the of the base of the tree was probably five

(01:26:29):
to six to seven feet eight feet in diameter, I guess, uh.
And so since that time, I've had a bear patch
down there, I've sotted it, but the grass has has died.

Speaker 3 (01:26:42):
Uh.

Speaker 12 (01:26:43):
In that in that footprint, I've put long soil down
from time to time, and then then I get a
recurring phenomenon now where it's like there's a fungal infection
that's recurring over and over and over again, where the
grass will wilt and turn sort of a grayish color,

(01:27:04):
and I treat it with you know what fungicide and
it seems to help control it, but it's recurrent.

Speaker 1 (01:27:10):
So I'm wondering if that.

Speaker 12 (01:27:12):
Has something to do with the rotting root system underground.

Speaker 1 (01:27:16):
Okay, so what you're seeing is the grass blades are
getting a grayish color. Am I correct about that? Yes,
that's correct, like a funk like something on them. Okay,
So what that is is that is something called slime mold,
and it happens on grass, especially during the warm, sultry
summer season, and you can just take a garden hose

(01:27:36):
and blast it off there. The only damage to the
grass is it shades it. And so sometimes you know,
the grass blades can't use the chlorophyll or do photosynthesis
and so that it discolors it a little bit, but
it's not an infection. It's more a surface growing over
it blocking the sunlin and just a blast of water
will take care of it. And it's not related. It

(01:27:58):
shouldn't be related to the where the tree was being there,
maybe coincidental or maybe something else in the conditions or
favoring that, but not a big problem on turf at
all at all. So it's just a matter now of
those those roots rotting and as they do, they sink down,
and as you've said, you've had to add soil over

(01:28:18):
them and things. Don't worry about the gray on the grass.
Just get your gun on the water hose and just
blast it off. If you don't like the next of it,
it'll go, it'll go, and in seasonally it'll it'll go
away too as it clols off a little bit.

Speaker 9 (01:28:33):
We do that.

Speaker 1 (01:28:34):
I'll water.

Speaker 12 (01:28:34):
I try to water about once every five days or so,
and try not to overwater, and try to catch it
in the morning hours, between about four and eight o'clock
in the morning.

Speaker 1 (01:28:45):
I'll run the sprinklers at that time.

Speaker 12 (01:28:48):
And so it seems to be having some good success
with that as opposed to at night.

Speaker 1 (01:28:55):
So yeah, well, Steve, I'm up against the absolute heartbreak,
but good luck with it. I'm glad to report you
don't have a big problem there, folks. We're having to
go to break here Andy and College Station in Alan
and Kingwood. You're a first two up when we come back.

Speaker 15 (01:29:09):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:29:10):
By the way, if you do want to give me
a call seven to one three two one two five
eight seven four. That's seven one three two one two
fifty eight seventy four. And when you call, if you've
got a question, that's going to be kind of a
uh you know, maybe you got to see it to
answer this question. Semi a photo, call my producer, get

(01:29:31):
the number semi photo and then call and we'll talk
about it. I was talking to you a minute ago
about visiting someone about Affordable tree Service. Martin Spoonmore's company
is Affordable Tree Service. It's aff tree Service dot com.
Now if you want to get Martin a call, and
you should. If you haven't had your trees looked at
in the last couple of years, have to make come
in there and check them out. They problem branches only

(01:29:55):
get worse over time, and the wound that has to
be made to take a branch off only gets bigger
over time. It's better to do it sooner than later.
Have Martin come out seven to one three six nine
nine two six six threes booking for fall trimming right
now seven one three six nine nine two six sixty three.
A F F Tree Service dot Com is his website

(01:30:17):
if you'd like to do that. But uh, it's always
storm season here in Houston, it seems like and a
good well prune tree, well trained tree, well cared for
a tree is important to give you the best chance
possible of avoiding some serious kinds of damage. Let's ahead
a college station now, and we're going to visit with
Andy this morning. Hey, Andy, welcome to guarden Line.

Speaker 6 (01:30:40):
Good morning.

Speaker 3 (01:30:42):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (01:30:43):
I'll get some uh square metals that uh the cod
with the power meld. What can I stay on that?

Speaker 1 (01:30:57):
Wait? I go ahead, go ahead and finish what you
were asking us.

Speaker 6 (01:31:03):
Uh something that's uh that's called and they've got stop.
I'll bet some of that on my clare metals. Did
you I don't know, Okay, I don't know if the.

Speaker 1 (01:31:16):
Thing tell me? What what did you see after you
after you apply that?

Speaker 6 (01:31:23):
Well? I just put it on yesterday so I.

Speaker 1 (01:31:26):
Just okay, yeah, yeah, okay. Well, fertilo f STOP fungicide
is uh, it's an effective product for for various types
of things. No one fungicide you know, controls every every
disease that there is out there. But f stop has
my clob buttanil in it, and that is a that

(01:31:49):
is an effective fungicide for a number of different kinds
of things. So you may see good results from that
and you may have already taken care of the problem.
Just powdery mildew, though generally we see it mostly when
the temperatures are a little bit milder and uh than
they are right now. So I'm a little surprised. Maybe
maybe there's some it's some older infection that's still on there,

(01:32:12):
but it is. It is on the label for for
for furlough f stop. Powdery mildew is a disease that
furlough f stop can control.

Speaker 3 (01:32:26):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:32:26):
So see how it does. Uh, it's it's really related
to the weather and uh, you know, when we have
milder temperatures and humidity and stuff, that's when we see
a lot of the powdery mildew. By the way, if
you're ever planning another crate myrtle plant one that's resistant.
There's a lot of varieties that don't get powdery mildew,
and that is the best way. Then you're not having

(01:32:48):
to spray it all the time. Okay, oh, thank you,
take care all right, you take care bye. So interestingly enough,
the USDA breeding program of powdery of crape myrtles is
in Beltsville, Maryland and just north of DC. And gosh,

(01:33:12):
what's the guy's name. Oh, I can't think of his name.
That's doing the break anyway, he's done it for years.
And when he names these varieties that he releases that
are resistant to powdery mildew, the names of the crape
myrtles are Native American tribe names, so things like Natchez
and a Rapahoe. You know, I say, oh, that's a

(01:33:34):
Native American Indian or a Native American tribe name. Yeah. Yes,
that those are resistant to powdery mildew. They're not the
only crape myrtles on the market resistant to powder and mildew,
but when you see those names, you recognize that as
a Native American tribe name, that is going to be
one that was bred for resistance to powdery milder. So
you can get varieties that are small, that are tall.

(01:33:57):
You can get varieties that are white blooming, lavender blooming,
pink blooming, red blooming. You have a lot of options.
So next time you're out and thinking about buying a
crpe myrtle, less talk or do it. Let's just go online,
do some searching and find the right one one that
you know if you wanted at the corner of your house.

(01:34:18):
Don't plan in Natches. Natches is a great crpe myrtle
that's resistant to bowdery, mildew, bread and marland by USDA.
But it gets thirty five feet tall. I mean, if
you can buy it, buy a chainsaw so you can
keep it underneath the eaves of your house, or buy
one that doesn't get but five to seven feet tall,
for example. So that's what we're talking about here. Do
some thinking and shopping before you invest in a crate myrtle.

(01:34:40):
And a lot of folks have crape myrtles that were
planted years and years ago before a lot of this
wasn't it was available. I understand that, But for the
rest of you that are listening, don't just go out
and grab a crape myrtle because it's for sale, and
you think it's pretty, We'll get you a pretty one
that's the right size and that's powdery mildew resistant. Let's
go out of Kingwood. One of his with Alan this morning. Hey, Alan,

(01:35:01):
welcome to garden Line. Well, good morning, Skip. I love
your show.

Speaker 9 (01:35:06):
Here.

Speaker 16 (01:35:07):
I put sod down new side down about eight weeks ago,
and my understanding is it's about time to fertilize it.
I don't know what numbers to use, and I'm starting
to see a few weeds maybe grab grass come up
into in the new sod, So I'm not sure what
to do.

Speaker 1 (01:35:25):
Yeah, well, on my long care schedule. You know, we've
got the times when you fertilize, but those are all
flexible in like in your case you put sod down.
I like to give it at least a month before
were fertilize. So you've given it that plenty of too much,
so you could you could do a fertilization now I
would do something faster probably.

Speaker 4 (01:35:46):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:35:47):
The folks that nitrofoss have a product called sweet Green
and sweet Green and you're going to find it. You know,
you're you're up there kind of in the Kingwood area.
You're going to find it. At local ace hardware stores
will typically typically carry that kind of thing.

Speaker 3 (01:36:10):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:36:10):
So just look for sweet greens. I love them. Put
it down now and do it according to the label.
Don't overdo it. Uh and it will carry you up
until it's time to get back on my schedule with
the October Okay. Uh So that that would be uh okay.
What about the weed kill Okay?

Speaker 16 (01:36:29):
Uh I think we got several ace places over it.
What about the weed killer? Is I'm worried about burning
the grass up. You know, I was right on the internet.

Speaker 3 (01:36:40):
Be careful.

Speaker 16 (01:36:41):
You don't want to burn your grass up. So that's
what I'm concerned about doing. Can I use weed killer?

Speaker 12 (01:36:45):
Now?

Speaker 1 (01:36:49):
Grass not a crab grass? So so for crab grass
you have to prevent it by putting a pre emergent
herbicide down to prevent it. And so any any weed
you see in the lawn now it's too late to
prevent it. Uh to use a pre emergent. That was
that that boat has.

Speaker 16 (01:37:10):
Spray anything on it to kill the kill kill the
the the crab grass.

Speaker 1 (01:37:15):
And not crab grass, the correct grass. And they're both
grasses and grass killers. Kill the lawn and the crab
grass so so you don't want to do that. They
don't they don't make.

Speaker 16 (01:37:30):
Chemical called crab grass killer or anything like that.

Speaker 1 (01:37:36):
If it if it, if it's a grass killer, it's
there's two different primary ingredients that are going grass killers,
and both of them will kill your Saint Augustine, your grass. Uh,
And so you don't want to use those. I would,
I would, I would just wait and see. Now I've
got to go to a break here. But if you
would like to send me a close up picture of

(01:37:58):
this what you're calling crab grass, there's a chance that
it's not crackgrass, because a lot of things get called
crackgrass that aren't. I'd be glad to look at it.
And it may be a perennial grass, it may be
an annual grass at me whatever, and and but the
thing to do is to prevent it from coming up
in the first place with a pre emergent.

Speaker 16 (01:38:17):
Now out another house. I got another house where crab
grass is overtake in my bermuda. So I gotta try
to kill that.

Speaker 1 (01:38:26):
Yeah, or to spot treat it with with something that's
gonna kill anything you get it on. But just spot
treat those individual weeds and you have a little dead
spots in your lawn. That well, then the lawn will
close back over again. So those are some of the
else I'm gonna put you on hold and my producer
an email and we'll take a look at it. All right,
Thank you allan appreciate that you take care. We're gonna

(01:38:48):
go to a break. Folks will be right back. Good.
Have you with us kind of gardening questions? Do you have?
Happy to entertain those if you give me a call.
Seven one three two one two five eight seven four.
That is seven one three two one two fifty eight
seventy four. I'm always amused by things that are the

(01:39:10):
national holiday, you know, the unofficial national holidays.

Speaker 3 (01:39:14):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:39:14):
For example, Uh, you know there's the let's see where
are we today? We're on the ninth of August. Let
me just pull one up here to show you what
I'm talking about. Uh, there we go, dead airspace on
the air. Don't do that, all right? So today is
National rice pudding Day. Today is also melon day. Now

(01:39:39):
I can go with that. I just I purchased some
uh cantalop type melons the other day. I love those things.
And there's a lot of breeding that's been done on
cantalops where there's some very unusual new melons that have
just heavenly aromas or high high sugar levels or so on.

(01:39:59):
But today is melon Day, so that is I know
what I'm doing after the show now, that is going
there and get me, give me some melons to enjoy.
Oh gosh, weird days. Did you know that Tuesday is
National Presidential Joke Day. I'm not even to I don't

(01:40:20):
even know what that means, and I don't want to
explore that right now. Anyway, that is that is the
official day for those of you left handed. Thursday is
International Left Handed People Day, so that I don't know.
You're probably already planning a celebration, but you should go
ahead and get ready to go for that. Oko yah,

(01:40:41):
I'm gonna stop with this one. This Friday, for those
of you who have embarrassing tattoos that seem like a
good idea at the time, is National Tattoo Removal Day.
You can thank me later. All right, let's quit that.
Welcome back to garden line. Let's talk about I'm sorry,
let's talk about plants. We have an opportunity in our

(01:41:05):
lawns and gardens to grow herbs. In so many ways.
You know, you may when I say picture an herb garden,
you may picture some beautiful geometric design at some castle
that Louis the fourteenth or whatever. You know that just
a very formal looking garden. Okay, you can do that.

(01:41:26):
That's fine, you can do that's perfectly. Okay, hate your yard.
You can do whatever you want. But herbs are so versatile.
You can use them in containers anywhere you have a container.
Lots and lots of herbs are good for that. You
can use them in garden beds. Some herbs have beautiful flowers.
I would consider salvia pine apple sage an herb because

(01:41:50):
the fragrance of the leaves is pineapple FC used on
pound cakes and stuff like that, and the flowers are
also edible. The in the fall, late summer and fall,
we start to see the Mexican marigold blooming, its yellow blooms,
and those that foliage smells to me like black jelly beans,
kind of that liquiicy smell. But it's used as a

(01:42:11):
as a replacement for terragant and cooking. That is a
blooming herb that is really quite beautiful. Borage is a
blooming herb the little light blue flowers are edible and
can be used to decorate a cake or something like that.
Very pretty. There's just a lot of blooming herbs and
attractive ful of herbs. One of the toughest drought resistant
plants we've got is rosemary. Rosemary is very drought resistant,

(01:42:35):
and you get it in a sunny spot with good drainage.
It does not like to be in a swamp. It'll
die in a heartbeat if you keep the roots too wet.
But put it in a well drained bed and it
looks good. I've got some in a big pot by
our front door, you know, outside of the front door
enough to get good sunlight, and it just looks good
all the time. It is really good. Trailing rosemary blooms
better than upright rosemary. So if you want to bring

(01:42:58):
in bees and support pollinators like that, trailing roseberry is
a good one. And by the way, August fifteenth, Saturday
is national World Orskin Me World Honeybee Day, so there
you go. So plant a trailing rosemary for World honeybe Day.
That's a good one. And then there's herbs that are

(01:43:19):
just attractive in other kinds of ways. Chives that make
a clump to onion chives, garlic chives that make a clump.
Salid burnet, I bet, I bet less than one in
one hundred people knows what it is, and fewer than
that have grown it. But salid burnet is a little
mounding plant with leaves that taste like cucumbers. It's a

(01:43:40):
real simple little herb plant that you could use it
as a flavoring in a solid, for example, to give
a little bit of a cucumbery flavor to it. That's
a good herb. Then there's herbs that make groundcovers, like
time and oregano and others. There's just a lot of
good herbs. How do you want to use an herb
this year? How do you want to start a new
garden of herbs? Oh? My gosh, basil, basil. The blooms

(01:44:02):
of basil are pollinator magnets. And there's so many flavors
of basil from the traditional Genoese type that is just
a must for making great pesto to all kinds of variations.
There's thie basil, there's holy basil, there's African blue basil,
there's lemon basil, there's lime basil, there's on and on

(01:44:23):
and on all kinds of basils, and they love the heat.
Never gets too hot. You get blazel moist soil and
it'll grow right through the heat. And do just find
so there's an herb that you can't live without. I
ran across one a while back called evergreen Tower, ever bloom,

(01:44:44):
evergreen Towers, I believe something like that. Basically, it's a
basil that was bread to not bloom so fast so
that it continues to pres leave and it grows almost
straight upright, I mean, it's just a column a columnar
basil great and a pot is a centerpiece, and then
you have birds that are spilling over the sides of

(01:45:05):
the pot around it. But anyway, that's just an example.
Lot's happening in the basil world. Herbal You should try
some of those things. We're going to take a break
here for the top of the hour news and start
our next hour right after that with Darren from Willis
Aaron Darren. We'll be right there all right, we're getting

(01:45:41):
back to garden line here. We've got last hour of
the day coming up. So if you have a gardening
question now, it would be a good time to call.

Speaker 5 (01:45:50):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (01:45:51):
I just had to excuse me. I got to write
something down on my calendar. August the eighteenth, Tuesday is
National Faheta Day. I'm all in. All in, somebody find
when National Interlada Day is, because I may just take
a take a vacation for that day. That would be
a good That would be a good one.

Speaker 15 (01:46:08):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:46:08):
Glad you're listening to us. We're not here to talk
about food and gardening holidays. We're just playing around with that.
We're here to get to the bottom of how you
can have success, to have a beautiful garden and a
bountiful garden and a gorgeous, believe beautiful landscape as well.
We're gonna go now after Willis though, and talk to
Darren this morning. Hey, Darren, welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 13 (01:46:29):
Good morning.

Speaker 4 (01:46:30):
I sent some pictures after talking with him a while ago.
I sent you some pictures. I don't hope you got them.
About the chinchbugs.

Speaker 1 (01:46:38):
I see them here. Let me pull Oh my gosh,
Holy moly. Okay, so tell me how that's developed.

Speaker 4 (01:46:48):
I developed on the opposite side of my neighbor's yard,
and I told Hi night that he had chinch bugs
over there. He wanted to know he could say he
couldn't figure it out. He kept watering it, watering, and
I said, the chinch bugs, and they're gonna spread well
and spread to the other side of his yard. And
then now they're in my yard. And I use the
bugout Max around my house. But I've got two acres here,

(01:47:09):
so you know, using it over the whole two acres
is a little expensive. So but I don't mind spraying it.
I've got to spray that I can mix up, spray
that I can mix up. If I can, like get
his yard in mind, I'm willing to do his in mind,
but I need to know what kind of product I
can spray.

Speaker 1 (01:47:30):
Okay, there are a number of insecticides that will work
just fine if they're labeled for use in turf grass.
That's that's what you got to go for. But a
lot of the what are called synthetic perrethroids, they work
very well. By fen Thren as an example of one.
There's a lot of them. Then in the letters t

(01:47:50):
h R I n thren uh and and my fen
throns I flew through and lambda something thrin. Anyway, those
all work. You're going to want to get you a
probably a hose in spray or if possible. That may
be too big to drag a hose across. But the
bottom line is you got to get the product down

(01:48:11):
to where the chinchbugs are. The nice thing about the
bug out is it's a granule, so it just drops
down in there. So then when you water the area
or when it rains it really you know, it washes
the that ingredient off down into the thatch where where
the chinchbugs are hiding. So either a liquid product put
out with enough volume to wash down in there or

(01:48:34):
the granule you you might want to talk to. I'm
trying to think up in the Willis area who would
carry that that kind of level of ingredient up there.
I know down in Houston we've got places like Southst.
Fertilizer that I bulk. There's a lot of egg places.
They will have more of a pasture level of pest control.

Speaker 4 (01:48:58):
That might be store Montgomery that has it.

Speaker 1 (01:49:02):
Okay, good, okay, well yeah, but I'm just thinking of
other options that are made for people that are putting
them on acres, you know, for example, Hayfield or something
that the economical way to go.

Speaker 4 (01:49:17):
Yeah, they had the go ahead the bison by the gallant,
so I mean I can, but you're saying it. I
need to make sure that I need them to soak
it well enough that it gets down to the soil,
not just on the grass.

Speaker 1 (01:49:32):
Yeah, and it doesn't mean you put out a lot
of bivan. It just means you get enough liquid to
get it down in there and you don't have to
soak it. I'm going to correct what I agreed when
you said the word soil, and I don't mean the soil.
I mean down in the thatch and the runners. Do
you want to get down there? That's where the chinchbucks
are hiding. They're on the surface of the soil, they're

(01:49:52):
not under the surface. So when you toxify that area,
you're going to kill them. And you need to do it,
you know, as you know, sooner as sooner rather than later.
In the meantime, if there's any way to get water
to those things, it will help the grass to hold
on as best it can. The water doesn't eradicate tincherbugs
by enemies, but the grass is being sucked all the

(01:50:13):
juices out to death, if you will, And so having
adequate moisture in this heat would be would be important.

Speaker 4 (01:50:21):
That particular area that I sent you the pictures of
I have been watering religiously almost every day. It doesn't
even look like it's taking the.

Speaker 1 (01:50:30):
Water on right. Well, it's because the jet bugs are
sucking all the juices out of it. But don't add
drought stress to chinchbug injury as well. All I'm saying,
but how they started over there? Just yeah, yeah, well, anyway,
that's what you do, and you do it soon as possible.
I would suggest one thing there. It I'm ninety five

(01:50:54):
percent sure you're dealing with chinchbugs, but there's a five
percent if you were to get you some lemon scented
dish soap, you know, the like at the sink washing dishes,
pome olive kinds of stuff, but lemon scented I'm trying
to think of that the brand anyway, lemon scented dish soap.

(01:51:14):
Put a couple of tablespoons per gallon of water in
a watering can and water like a three about three
a yard square yard kind of area with a couple
of gallons of that dish soap, and then stand there
and watch. It is really irritating to chinchbugs, and they'll

(01:51:35):
come crawling up out of the thatch the little bugs.
So if you haven't gotten on your hands and knees
to search for them, just find an area not dead
grass because they've left the dead grass to move into
living grass. Find an area that's declining and do that test,
and then you'll be one hundred percent sure you're dealing
with chinch bugs and you won't waste your money if
we're having to do something different. But that'd be my
only caveat suggestion. Okay, sounds good. All right, Now, if

(01:52:01):
you go to my website, Gardening with Skip dot com,
I've got a publication on take all root rot, And
on that publication I have two of them. Actually, one
of them has pictures of chinchbug because I'm talking about
how to tell takeoff from chinchbug damage. And if you
don't know what they look like, look at that picture
and you'll see the adults and the nymphs and everything,
because they all look different. Answer. That's my best shot, Darren.

(01:52:27):
Good luck getting getting ahead of it. You take care.
Chichbugs are not to be trifled with. And boy are
we in chitchbug season. You know, if you look at
my schedule, my gardening schedule, it's called not long gardening
schedule lawn care schedules. It's the one called lawn, pest,
weed and Disease Management. I have two schedules on gardening

(01:52:50):
of skip dot com. One of them is how to
grow a lawn bow water fertilized. That's called the lawn
care schedule. The other one is what goes wrong with
the law, and that's the pest, Wheat and Disease Management schedule.
And if you look on there, I started talking about
chinchbugs in June all the way to September, but the
real primetime for chinchbugs is now. This is like the

(01:53:12):
peak time. It's not like suddenly on June first they
turn up by the brazilions and on September thirtieth they
disappear by the brazilion. There's a variation in there, but
late summer's primetime for that. And so just something to
think about. But if you see some areas where the
grass looks like it needs watering and you water and

(01:53:34):
it doesn't respond, that's probably either take all root rod
or chinchbugs, and they're both on this schedule. So it's free.
I don't know how to can't talk me down on
that price. It's free. Gardening with Skip dot Com. Let's
take a break and we'll be right back. Welcome back
to Guardline. Good to have you with us. We are
here to help you with gardening questions of all types,

(01:53:56):
things that you may be dealing with, are wanting to do.
You know, I would like if I could like change
one little thing, it would be to have more conversations
with people about things to do going forward. You know,
And I realized when you have a gardening problem, well
it's like I gotta solve this, it's give them a call.
Well I get that, but it's also fun to talk

(01:54:18):
about things that you can do, not just everything that
can go wrong with the garden, because we got plenty
of those things, as you know, as a result of that,
so talking about timely things that we can do. Someone
has recently was asking me about when you when you

(01:54:39):
see browning on the leaves, how do you how do
you tell what that is? I mean, because what causes
leaves to turn brown and things, well, obviously everybody knows that.
You know, if you planting any water, that leaves are
gonna turn brown and the plant's gonna die. But there
are some nuances in the way a leaf turns brown.
So I'm just gonna real quickly just make a couple
of comments there. Whenever the root, the root tips, the

(01:55:05):
new root growth of the plant is damaged in some
way or killed in somebody, it could be drought, or
it could be what happens often. Remember earlier I said,
when you're planting, don't throw a bunch of salt based
immediate release fertilizer and the planting hole because you'll burn
the roots and the burn the root tips. The symptoms

(01:55:25):
you see on that with both drought and with fertilizer
burn are that the tips of the leaves and the
edges of the leaves, tips and margins of the leaves
turn brown. So when you see that, that is a
sign that could be dry conditions and the way that
plant responds to it. And each plant responds differently to
these things by the way or they can or it

(01:55:48):
could be a burn from the tips of the roots.
But it takes a pretty good excessive application of the
salt based materials combined with a little bit of a
dryness to the soil when you start those kind of symptoms.
When the brown spots appear randomly across a leaf, maybe
they're circular, or maybe they're angular. It could be a

(01:56:09):
bacterial fungal or fungal spot that's attacking the leaf. Fungi
and bacteria they land where they land, and it's a
random thing. So brown spots in a line are not
going to be a fungus or a bacteria. Brown spots
that are just on a certain part of the plant

(01:56:30):
but not on another part of that probably not a
fungusuer bacteria. Probably because those spores of a fungus are
floating through the air and they're landing randomly all over
the place. Then the plant leaves get wet and the
fungal spots begin to appear. So that's something to look
for when you see plant. When you see spots that
are just on maybe the outer part or the top

(01:56:51):
of a plant, that's when I start to look up.
You know, one time I had a question and there
there were a little round, deadish spots somewhere a little
bit streaked on the plant leaves, and I just was thinking,
you know, you think about diseases. They don't know how
to well, let's go land on top of the plant
and do that. So ask if you had a wasp

(01:57:14):
nest in the eaves above the plant and they go, yes,
we did, and they sprayed it with one of those
petroleum types. Zap the wasps and the mist and the
drops falls down on the plant. There you go. So
sometimes you got to play Sherlock Holmes a little bit.
But there's a logic to it. But just remember nature's random.
So something has a pattern to it. Then we got

(01:57:34):
to think a little deeper because something else is going
on other than that just random leaf spots and stuff
on a plant. So a little bit of a diagnostic
tip right there for you out in the vegetable garden.
I don't talk about vegetable gardening enough. I should. And
in the vegetable garden, we are in that season where

(01:57:56):
we're planting some things for the fall garden. We've already
been planting like tomatoes and peppers and whatnot to get
ready for fall gardening. But as we get toward the
end of August here mid August to late August to
early September, planting snap beans. Typically snap beans like a
contender bean, are going to take forty five to fifty days.

(01:58:20):
They can take longer than that. You want one that's
a little faster, not a seventy two day and if
you plan them right at the beginning of September, late August,
beginning of September, they're going to have enough time to
ripen in the warm but cooling off a little bit
days of October when you're going to get much better
quality out of them. So that's a good time to
do that. Cucumbers, if you're going to get them in

(01:58:42):
and time for them to make cucumbers, you need to
be doing that now. Now's a prime time for getting
that done for your fall garden. Another example of that
would be potatoes, and I'm not talking about sweet potatoes.
I'm talking about the Irish potato, the new potato, the
red potatoes, the white potatoes, those kinds of things. Late

(01:59:03):
August is the time when you plant them. Now. Normally
with potatoes, you cut the potato and let the surface
dry for a few days. Dusting them with sulfur dust
helps to prevent rot and decay, and the hot soils
of summer, fresh cut potato pieces are just going to
rote away before they have a chance to get started.

(01:59:24):
Sometimes people will grow them in a little transplant tray
just to get them started and growing, get some roots
down in the ground then move them out there. But
now's a good time to do that because they have
to have time to grow and they have to have
time to form the potatoes before the first frost hits.
So the second half of August pretty good time in
most of our area. And I realize I have people

(01:59:45):
listening in Galveston and people listening in Huntsville and so on,
and there's a variation there, but I'm giving you some
general guides, so this would be a good time to
do that. A lot of people will save potatoes that
are small from the spring and plant the whole potato.
That way, you you don't have like eight buds on
a giant potato that are all sprouting and growing. But
by planting a whole potato, you avoid the decay. Shading

(02:00:08):
the soil helps a lot too. Don't worry about shading
out the new plant sprouting out of there. Put a
good thick mulch over the soil. I say good thick.
Put an inch or two of mulch over the soil,
and let the potato come up through those leaves that
you've ground up and used as mulch or whatever kind
of material like though, that helps a lot right there.

(02:00:29):
So those are a few things that you can plant
right now. Another thing is when we get into September,
we're going to get really busy planting a lot of
different things once we hit mid September. For those of
you in this general listening area, we're ending the big
time of putting out transplants of all the blue leaf

(02:00:51):
vegetables like broccoli and cabbage and cauliflower and kale and korabi.
So if you want to start your own transplants, do
that now indoor under a light, a good light, or
just get them sprouted and then move them out into
a protected spot that's very bright, but not the full
one hundred degree basking in the sun and let them

(02:01:15):
get light and get them growing so that you can
move them out to the garden in mid September through
early part of October, first half of October and getting
them getting them growing out there. So that would be
a good idea, And that's a lot of different things
Swiss chart can go out at that time too, collars
and cabbage and korabie and oh cauliflower, a kale, Brussels sprouts,

(02:01:40):
all those kinds of things. It's bluely vegetables I can
go out at that time, so that that's something you
might want to do mustard transplants at that time too.
So anyway, I'm just giving you a few things. I'm
not covering everything we got here, but all of those
kinds of things are going to happen in September. So
if you want to grow your own transplants, that would

(02:02:00):
be a good time to do it. I'd recommend to
it inside under really good lights, bright bright lights, very
important quality wavelengths for plants. And you know what I
think I have. This is funny. I don't even know
if this is on my website. I'm ninety nine percent
sure that on my website if I can find it.
I actually have a link to my website. I think

(02:02:22):
I have a publication. It'd be under miscellaneous on yes,
quality lighting for growing transplants, under miscellaneous on the website,
Quality lighting for growing transplants. It is very helpful for
you in growing a good stocky, not a lanky floppy
who that rhymes transplant. So i'd recommend you look at that.

(02:02:44):
But hey, have some fun this year. Even if you
don't have room for a garden, you have room for
a five gallon bucket, drill some holes in the bottom,
put a quality mix in it, put your transplants in there.
You can grow one or two rocky plants in a
five gallon bucket one ideally, but you could squeeze. I
have put two or three kale plants into a five
gallon bucket and grown them before. So get the kids

(02:03:06):
out there, get them involved, let them grow stuff that
they're going to eat and enjoy. All right, Well, there's
enough of that. Nelson Water Gardens outstanding destination garden center
in for the all you folks out west. Now people
drive from a long way to go to Nelson Water

(02:03:27):
Ground just nationally famous as a water garden by the
way supplier. But they're in Katie on Katie Fort Ben Road.
You go north in Katy to Katie Fort Ben Road,
and when you get there, I want you to stop.
I start by going inside, or finished by going inside,
because that's where the house plants are. And they are gorgeous, beautiful,

(02:03:48):
wonderful selection of houseplants. If you want to create your
own fountain, they've got all the pieces and parts and
supplies and pumps and you name it, and filters that
you can do that yourself. And they will tell you
how to do that yourself. If you want to have
them do it, that's a great way because they're professionals.
They'll come out and they'll create it right there for you.
And if you're just looking, you know, I was trying

(02:04:10):
to talk you into growing more herbs. They've got a
good selection of herbs right now out there, as well
as annual flowers and vegetables and perennials and fruit trees
and roses and every other kind of planet you can imagine.
It is a nursery, a full fledged nursery as well
as the we're fortunate to live here. Let me just

(02:04:31):
put this way, this is a nationally award winning water
garden Hall of Fame place, Nelson Water Gardens and nursery
out there. Nelsonwatergardens dot Com is the website Nelson Watergardens
dot com. Surely easy to remember that Nelsonwatergardens dot Com.
You need to go check them out. Pretty cool place.

(02:04:55):
We are about to have to put this aside for
the news, but I did want to mention that before
we go to the break during the week, I would
recommend if you don't follow us on social media, that
you would go ahead and do that. You can find

(02:05:15):
garden Line on Facebook. You can find a garden Line
with skip on Instagram and follow us and check out
the posts and things we're putting up. I think you'll
find it helpful. All Right, we're back, Welcome back to
garden Line. If you got a gardening question. We got
half an hour left in the day, actually a little left,
a little less than that, now would be a good
time to call seven one three two one two five

(02:05:37):
eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty
eight seventy four. I have talked about a number of
different things regarding things to do right now, how to
assess disease and insect and different kinds of problems like
that that we have. I think it's important also, by
the way, we just got through talking for those of
you who might have missed it about things to be

(02:05:59):
planting right now out in the vegetable garden. If you
have citrus leaf miner on your citrus trees, those come
in waves. You probab already notice this, but if you're
new to it. Citrus leaf miner is a little tiny
insect that lands on the leaf, lays an egg in
the leaf, and a larva hatches out, and it's called

(02:06:21):
a leaf miner, think of coal miner, because it tunnels
through the leaf between the upper and lower leaf surface,
creating a very serpentine trail that wanders all around, squiggly like,
and by eating away all the green stuff, the leaf
takes on a silvery look and you can see the
little trails because they also this is gross, but they

(02:06:44):
also as they eat the leaf, it's got to go somewhere.
It goes out the back end of the larva and
it makes a little black line through the leaf, so
you can kind of track the serpentine pattern that way
as well. Now on an established tree, I would just
say don't worry about him. If you want to worry
about him, worry about him, spray them. But you really

(02:07:04):
don't need to worry about him. On a tree that's young,
where you have severe damage, it stunts the tree. It
didn't kill it at all. I'man tree's gonna be fine,
but it stunts it, and so you're not getting that
little tree to become a big tree fast. So you
can hang a lot of citrus fruit on it, so
that that would be a warranting control. The safest thing

(02:07:24):
I can think of to use for control is spin
No said, spin like spinning a top o like the
letter O and sad like I'm sad because I have
cetrus sleeve miner. So Spino said, you spray it on
new growth. Citrus sleeve miner attacks new growth, not old, tough,
fully formed, leathery growth. You don't those leaves are safe

(02:07:46):
once they hit that stage. That's not leaf miner food anymore.
So whenever you have flushes a new growth, now you'll
get one as we warm up in the spring, you
get there can be two or three different flushes of growth,
depending on how you're watering and fertilizing also through the year.
But when you get a flesh of new growth, you
just have to spray the new growth shoots. So you
don't have to, you know, make up gallons of this

(02:08:08):
stuff to spray the whole plant. So anyway, do it
early though, so it'll soak into the tissues, and then
do it again. If you're going to use spinosaid, I
would do it on about a five day to seven
day schedule, and that way you've you've got it covered
because spinosa soaks in lasts a little while and that
will take care of it, and then as those trees

(02:08:30):
get bigger, don't sweat it. You know, just because there's
a pest doesn't mean that you need to do something
about it. And let me comment on that just for
in a second here. I want to first this morning,
when I got up, I was listening to the birds singing,
and it just it always reminds me of wild Birds Unlimited.

(02:08:50):
That is the first place. One of the wild Birds
manager store owners told me about an app called Merlin,
like Merlin the Magician Merlin. And the app's a little
white box with a picture of a black flying bird
on it. It is made by Cornell and it is free.
And if you have any interest whatsoever in birds, any interest,

(02:09:12):
you need to check this app out, play with it
for a while, because here's what it'll do. You sign up,
you know, you get in there and you get the
app and get all signed up into it and everything.
Whenever I walked out yesterday and I heard this bird
singing up in a tree and I couldn't see it,
and I thought, well, that's a different kind of song.
I don't remember hearing a bird like that. So I

(02:09:34):
opened Merlin. And you can do it by sight or
by sound. So if you took a picture of a bird,
you could put that picture in there and say what
is this and then tell you I just said sound
And you can just see it going across the screen.
Merlin is listening and when it hears the bird, it'll
put it on the screen and you can click on
it and you can learn more about it. Oh, this

(02:09:55):
is this bird, and here's where it is, and all
this kind of stuff. Also, if you got three for
birds and they're all making noise out there, they'll all
pop up on your screen. It can listen to all
this cacophony of bird music and it can tell you
what they are. And it's so cool. And I found
out about that talking to wild Bird's Unlimited. About ninety
nine percent of what I know came from talking to

(02:10:16):
people at Wildbirds Unlimited. They are experts at this. And
when you go into a wild Bird's Unlimited store, and
there are six here in our area, and let me
just do this, let me just tell you where they are. Okay,
all over the Houston area. We got six Wildbirds Unlimited stores.
One of them is in clear Lake on El Dorado Boulevard.

(02:10:36):
One of them is in Houston on the west Side
on Memorial Drive. One of them is in Kingwood on
Kingwood Drive. One of them is in Cypress on Barker Cypress.
There's one on bel Air in south west part of Houston,
and then there's one in pair Land on each Broadway
and they are all excellent stores. While you're in there,
grab you some quality seed. When wild Birds Unlimited bags

(02:10:59):
up bird seed, they bag up stuff that's going to
go in the bird's stomach, meaning the birds are not
going to kick it aside because they don't like to
eat it. Those dead gum red bebes and cheap bird seed,
you know, you think you're getting a cheap bag of seed,
and you're not really because if a birding and eat
half what's in there, then how good of a bag
of seed was that? How cheap was that? So I

(02:11:22):
would get right now. Feather Pro feather pro is it's
the super blind feather pro super blind it is for birds.
It's it's just good for birds period. But during the
time when they're molting and they're getting new feathers, they
need that extra protein in the fats that are in
feather Pro to support the feather growth and development on

(02:11:44):
the birds. And it's kind of a vulnerable time for birds,
you know, when they're molting and their feathers aren't just
fully what they're gonna be and need to be. And
you can even buy feather pro in a seed cylinder's
one type has hot that hot material in it so
that the squirrels don't get in and munch it out.
But that's kind of the seasonal one right now. I'd

(02:12:05):
suggest you go. But there's lots of other blends at
Waldbird's and Limit. They're all good. Go in there, talk
to them, ask them questions. That's what they're there for.
Maybe you're just thinking about having a Purple Martin house,
and because they eat insects for us, and you'd like
to know more about it, take some time. They'll explain it.
They'll show you the different kinds of options that they
have and what they do. They'll tell you about Purple Martins,

(02:12:27):
they'll tell you when they arrive typically and it's just
a place you need to go. Wild Birds Unlimited six stores.
You don't remember those stores. I just said, just remember
this WBU dot com Forward slash Houston. So in other words,
Wildbirds Unlimited, wbu dot com Forward slash Houston. We're the

(02:12:49):
Houston stores. That's what that website will get you. I
promise it'll be fun. I warn you it'll be addictive.
They are it now. I'm I'm constantly pulling out because
I'm curious what that That bird song is kind of fun?
All right, folks, let's uh, let's do this. Let's go
out to Hockley and visit with Mike this morning. Oh

(02:13:11):
are we at now? Let's Mike. I'm gonna hang on.
I'm gonna have to put you on a whole one second.
I just realized I'm going to break Mike. You're first
when we come back. Sorry about that false alarm. Hey, folks,
we're fixing the lend this plane. Stick with us a
little bit. We got a little more garden line left.
We're gonna head straight out to Hockley, Texas and talk
to Mike this morning. Hey, Mike, welcome to garden. Hey, Skip,

(02:13:34):
how you doing? I'm doing well. How can we help today?

Speaker 16 (02:13:38):
Good?

Speaker 10 (02:13:39):
Hey?

Speaker 15 (02:13:40):
I have some i'll say, depressions in my yard on
my grass, okay, and I want to fill them in.
And then I have some other areas where I had
crab grass and I yanked the crab grass all the
way out, and I through some top soil on top
of it. To you, I had some runner going, So

(02:14:00):
I do a little bit of top soil down. What
should I be putting down?

Speaker 1 (02:14:10):
You're asking me, as far as a grass or as
far as a fertilizer.

Speaker 15 (02:14:15):
No, no, no, no, I've got yeah soil. Yeah, what
kind of material composed?

Speaker 4 (02:14:22):
Or?

Speaker 1 (02:14:23):
It is best to put down just a good quality
top soil. And the reason is from a structural standpoint,
it's not going to sink down as much if you
put compost. You know, if you've etter had a flower
pot on the patio for about two or three years,
it's like this. It starts off full of soil and
it ends up like it's got a third of what
it used to have. And because compost decomposes a way,

(02:14:47):
so if you use it to level out your yard,
you're gonna have a hole again pretty pretty soon. So
I like to use just plain top soil. Also, the
other thing is if you use compost in it, it's
going to be a green spot then because that's gonna
be better soil and anywhere around it. So I like
to just use regular soil, bring that level up, let
the grass crawl back over the top of it, and

(02:15:08):
I go that route. Now, if you're gonna do a
very large area, so now you've got let's say a
seven foot wide dirt spot, because you've you've deeply covered
up all your grass, well then maybe you would do
it in smaller amounts, you know, an inch or so
at a time, and that's a lot more work over time.
But otherwise you're just gonna plug some grass in on

(02:15:30):
top of it, uh to fill that area in.

Speaker 15 (02:15:34):
Well, hey, good enough, Yeah, I've got hopefully I got
plenty of time, so I'll go ahead and just pour
a little bit on there and uh good.

Speaker 1 (02:15:45):
Or that's it. Hey wait, Mike, does your grass look
good even in those low spots?

Speaker 4 (02:15:54):
Uh?

Speaker 15 (02:15:56):
Yes, yeah, no, it's I should same pictures of my grass.

Speaker 1 (02:16:02):
Uh yeah, Okay. What I was thinking. The reason I
asked that is, if you know, the lawn looks good,
it's just kind of undulating with the holes and hills
and stuff. You can also get underneath there about let's
say three inches or so deep. Uh, And with a

(02:16:23):
shovel going sideways, a little flat shovel, and you can
literally cut underneath it and just lay that flap of
grass and soil over and then put your soil in
there and then lay that flap back over the top
and watered in, and you'll get back in business fast
that way, because you've you've got a good section, you know,
three inches of soil with roots. That grass is going

(02:16:44):
to hit the ground and be okay if you keep
it watered, and it's gonna cover back over again. So
that may be easier than filling it all up and
then going buying sections aside and trying to get that
little half inch of soil that comes on side rooted
in and this heat. So just think about that as
an alternative. I will do it.

Speaker 15 (02:17:04):
I appreciate the advice.

Speaker 1 (02:17:06):
All right, Mike, you take care. I'm good with Thanks
for your call. All right, there you go. There's an idea.
You know, our turf, our Southern turf is typically primarily
three grasses. It is Saint Augustine, zoisia and Bermuda grass
for lawns and well bermuda grass for sports fields too

(02:17:28):
and golf courses. But there are some other turf that
can grow. Some people, especially in Florida, they love behea
grass here it's a dead gum weed. I wouldn't recommend
it for a lawn, but if you want something tough
for a little parking area when your farm outside the house,
well behea grass wouldn't be a bad choice for that.
And then there's centipede, which likes especially the East Texas

(02:17:50):
areas where it does a rain a lot and typically
acidic sandy soils and stuff. It does well in that.
But those three are our main grass and all of
them can take our heat just fine as long as
they're watered. You give them a good soaking of water
and they're going to do just fine. So that is
something to think about on those. We're getting right toward

(02:18:12):
the end here. I've had some let's see you getting
some photos in here. I don't believe we've got time
to make a phone call on this, but we can
talk to you next next week as we come back.
All right, Well, you have been listening to garden Line
and we're here to help you have success. That's the
bottom line. Gardening is fun and it should be fun.

(02:18:34):
And if you're not having fun, then let's talk and
fix that next week. In the meantime, don't forget the
website Gardening with skip dot com. Go get some ideas,
look at some of the videos. Got some cool videos
that are up there, got some more about to go
up and just have a good time out there in
the garden. Stay safe, drink plenty of water, block the

(02:18:56):
sun off your skin and sundamage is cumulated. We don't
want that happening. And work early in the day and
just just enjoy it. Summer is a hot time to
be outside, but sure is a good time though, to
still have a beautiful landscape. There's no excuse for that.
Maybe go visit a garden center today. We've got some
great ones north, south, east, Western, Central and the Houston

(02:19:16):
area just amazing garden centers. Go get some inspiration. We'll
see you next week.