The Citrus Tree Spree

Skip Richter answers your questions all morning long!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Katie r h Garden Line with skip rictor Hill.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
The bases in Baden the basis gas can use water trim.

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

Speaker 4 (00:15):
World god Gass said gas and as many GOODA takes
the soup boxes in the bed.

Speaker 3 (00:23):
Busing the bassis like gas.

Speaker 4 (00:25):
And again you Dad, samos the globos back against a
sound the glasses like gas.

Speaker 3 (00:35):
The sou themon of has the gasses like gas.

Speaker 5 (00:40):
Maybe can use.

Speaker 4 (00:43):
First starting out of the treatments in the basses like gas.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
Time you d everything is so clean and.

Speaker 3 (00:52):
See and everything here is Sunday.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
In the hand.

Speaker 6 (01:07):
I think it was so real. There's a real chili outside.
Been outside this morning. Some people say it's too cold,
we want to warm up. Well, well, it's called summer.
Starts in May ends in October. I think that's pretty
much how summer goes here. So let's enjoy it. Well,

(01:27):
we got it a little bit of chili weather not
too bad though. I was looking at checking the weather
before starting show today. Is you know, how is it
in Huntsville and down in sugar Land and Galveston And
I'm just all over the listening area and got some
freezes going on here and there not too terribly bad,
though not too terribly hard. We should go further north.

(01:48):
Some of the areas go down into the mid to
upper twenties. Maybe upper is a better way to put it,
but anyway, right on the line there, So things are okay.
I brought my little lime tree in last night and
threw a cover over my blood orange. I'm where I am.
It's a little too cold for blood orange. But hey,
we know how to fix that, right. You know, we

(02:09):
can grow a lot of things here just by adjusting
everything from soil to actual temperature extremes. For example, if
if you're listening to me and you live up in
let's say, Conroe Cottage Station, Huntsville, can you grow an
orange tree? Well, you can if you have a big
enough structure to keep it warm, because it's you know,

(02:31):
most most of the oranges are gonna be a little
too cold tender. But you can do that. It is
possible to do that if you live in an area
where the pH of the soil is just too high
and it's a heavy clay. Blueberries and azaleas and camellias
and things like that, they do not like that kind
of soil. But put a box on the ground. Fillip
full of a nice mix acidic mix with some sand

(02:55):
and decomposed organic matter, maybe some even some peat. It
could be in there. So things just to bring you know,
keep the pH a little chili chili a little lower.
Excuse me. You'll think about temperatures and then provide them
with quality water. Now I know at some point it's like, well,
my goodness, you can grow on the moon if you
do all that, Yes you can. Absolutely good point. I'm

(03:16):
glad you understand. All we have to do is get
plants what they want. And that is what success in
gardening is all about, is learning to see things from
a plant's point of view. And that's what we do
every day here on garden Line, is to help you
see things from a plant's point of view. What does
the plant want? What makes it happy? Some people tell
me they have a brown thumb, and you've heard me

(03:36):
say this before if you've listened to garden Line more
than once. There's no such thing as a brown thumb.
There are uninformed thumbs. All you need to do is
bring your thumb to the radio. Let's talk. I'll visit,
we do them. We'll give it some good information so
it knows what to do. Grandma could grow anything because
Grandma gave plants what they wanted. That's the bottom line.
There's no such thing as this magical thumb where some

(03:58):
people can grow things in some people can't. It's a
matter of knowing what the plant wants and giving it
what it wants, as simple as that. So let's just
remember that. If you have any kind of questions, you
want to talk and maybe get that thumb a little greener,
well let's do that. Seven one three, two, one two
five eight seven four seven one three two one two

(04:19):
fifty eight seventy four. The kind of weather we're having
through on into a good part of the day to
day is good chilling hour weather. If you're going to
go a fruit tree here, that is a deciduous tree
like peaches, plums, apples, even pears, any blueberries to some extent,

(04:39):
but fruit trees in general, they have a thing called
chilling hours that they need. And chilling hours are not
the colder it gets some more chilling it gets. In fact,
the best chilling hours are somewhere between like thirty five
forty five, right in that range. But you get a
little bit of chilling hours between forty five and fifty
just a little bit for every hour. I don't know

(05:00):
what the actual transition is, but maybe it's like for
every hour you get half an hour or third of
an hour or something like that. And then if you
go down low, you're around thirty two thirty twenty eight.
In there, you're getting a little bit of chilling, but
not much, not as much. It's that sweet spot in between.
So if you were a fruit tree, the kind of

(05:20):
days you want to see in the winter, if you're
trying to accomplish your chilling hours, oh, it would be
like an overcast day where it's a little bit misty,
you know, yeah, it's extra chilly cool, when you got
a little bit of a mist falling, very wet, and
those kind of days that's just perfect. Chilling hour stays
when it's on the coal side. And once a tree

(05:40):
has what it needs, then it's ready to grow. So
here's how this works. Let's just take a moment here.
We're going maybe it's too early to start nerding out,
but I think it's important to understand this kind of thing.
So in your buds on your tree, let's just say
there's a little countdown cold like an egg timer, you know, click, click, clicking, Well,

(06:04):
that egg timer is lound up to whatever the chilling
requirement of that tree is. If you're listening to my
voice here in the greater Houston area, then you would
be looking at chilling hours from three fifty, four hundred
all the way up to some of your getting six hundred, six,
even six fifty for those of you way way for
north depends on the winter, though, depends on the winter.

(06:27):
So we're aiming generally in the four to five hundred
hour range for a good part of the listening area.
But again it varies, so that egg timer's wound up,
let's say it's wound up to four hundred and fifty hours.
That's how many hours of chilling that that particular variety
you put in your ground needs. Well, when we get

(06:49):
the right hours, that egg timer starts clicking and it's
on its way down. And then when we get a
little on the high end, little on the low end
of that range, it slows down the clicking. It's still clicking,
but it's not as fast. And then when we get
above it or below it, it just stops and it waits.
And then here comes some more cool weather and it
gets clicking again. And once it gets all the way

(07:09):
down to zero and you hear the ding on the eggtimer,
that means not that the buds are starting to grow,
but they can with the inhibitors that we're keeping the
budgs from being able to grow. On a few seventy
five degree or seventy eight degree days in the middle
of winter, that tree's not growing because it's still inhibited.

(07:30):
But when the ding goes off, the eggtimer's done, the
chilling is achieved. Now when the weather worms up here
pop the blooms and the leaf buds and new growth
coming on, we want that to not happen until winter's over,
because if it happens right now versus January, and we
still maybe have another frost, especially if for those of

(07:51):
you further north, then that's going to be a loss
of the crop because those balloms will get frozen. So
on the other hand, we don't want it to be
real high. We don't want to get an eight hundred
chilling hour peach, for example, because when spring comes, the
egg timer's not done, the inhibitors are still in place,
and that tree can't grow. It can't grow. It's being

(08:13):
chemically inhibited in its buds, which is a survival mechanism.
Makes a lot of sense for the tree to be
that way. But what happens then, well, you get warmer,
you get warmer. Everybody else's trees are blooming and peaches
and stuff, and they're going and yours is sitting there
and all of a sudden you' a little spurt of
green growth out at the end of a branch, and
then maybe down the branch about two feet there's another

(08:34):
leaf that pushes out, and it's like, this is no
good and the tree cannot survive that way. It's not
going to perform. You're never going to get a good
crop out of it. And even at that, the tree
itself is really going to struggle. So pick your varieties
according to the chilling hours of your area. If you
don't know, call your county agro Life Extension office call
garden Line, we'll talk about it. Or go online to

(08:57):
the Aggie Horticulture website. Go to the fruit section fruits
and nuts. Go to that section, find the plant you're growing.
Is it an apple, Is it a pear? Is it
a peach? And go look and it'll tell you about
chilling hours in there. And we'll give a little map
at Texas As to rep roughly what we get. And
I say roughly because all temperature things are estimates, they're averages,

(09:19):
and so averages just are averages. They in any given year,
it'll be different than the average, except once in a while.
In general, our last frost is a little later than average,
or a little earlier than average, and so on. So anyway,
that's chilling hours in a nutshell. I hope that makes sense.
Let's take a little break here when we come back again,
if you'd like to ask a question. Seven one three

(09:41):
two one two five eight seven four. Well, good morning, Hey,
good morning, welcome to garden Line. You looking forward to
visiting with you today. You've got some questions, pekaull we'll
talk about it. Seven one three two one two fifty
eight seven five eight seven four. Let's do this. We're

(10:03):
going to run out of the phones for our first
caller this morning, Steve in Cyprus. Well, hello, Steve Okome
to garden Line.

Speaker 7 (10:10):
Good morning, good morning. I sent you an email yesterday
a couple of them with some pictures.

Speaker 6 (10:17):
Yeah, and.

Speaker 7 (10:19):
You get them hopefully.

Speaker 8 (10:21):
Anyway.

Speaker 6 (10:22):
I've got a couple I've.

Speaker 7 (10:24):
Got and I've talked to you before, and this the
one tree the water, it looks like it has Sun's
called We talked about that. Uh, but my question now
is twofold one the pictures I sent you the one
they had the Sun's called the leaves. A lot of
the leaves turned fall colors and then dropped. The other
one didn't do that. But I don't know if if

(10:47):
that looks like a team like it could be a
health problem or it's just one of the things that
just hapens. Do you tell by looking at that?

Speaker 6 (10:57):
Yeah, it's kind of hard, a little hard to tell.

Speaker 9 (11:00):
Is that.

Speaker 6 (11:02):
Green wire? Is that embedded in the trunk or is
it just hanging beside it? I can't tell the green wire. Ah,
there's like a wire that maybe was used to it's
got to straighten the tree up.

Speaker 7 (11:16):
Yeah, No, that's not even it's not even connected anymore.

Speaker 9 (11:20):
I took it.

Speaker 6 (11:21):
I took it, okay, okayad like the hose in saying.

Speaker 7 (11:27):
Yeah, stable, that's it, and I just it's just laying
on the ground though it is.

Speaker 6 (11:33):
Okay. So let me ask you a question. If you
when you took those pictures of the tree, what compass
direction were you facing.

Speaker 7 (11:44):
I was facing h east, mostly east.

Speaker 6 (11:49):
East. Okay, Yeah, that is a that is a what
we call southwest injury. It's on the southwest side of
the tree. And the reason did I already explain this
one to you? If I did?

Speaker 10 (12:01):
Well?

Speaker 7 (12:02):
Anyway, we talked about the possibility of the sun's called.

Speaker 6 (12:07):
But yeah, yeah, and that's true. There's a good chance
that's what it is. But it could just be physical
injury of some type. You know, anything that nicks the
bark and stuff potentially can do that. But for the
sake of folks that are listening that may also have
similar situations right now, our trees are dormant, folks, And

(12:30):
in the hottest part of the day is around three
or four o'clock, maybe three o'clock now four o'clock, and
at that point, the sun is in the southwestern sky
and it's directly shining on the southwest side of the
tree trunk. So a tree that's dormant, it's it's bark
is tight, the sap isn't flowing, it's it's it's dormant.

(12:51):
It starts to warm up and so then like let's
say yesterday, you know, it got to warming up and
flowing on that hot side where the sun was directly
shining against the trunk since it's traveling low in the
sky the sun and it warms up those tissues flowing.
Then that night you drop down, you get a cold
spot and it cold damages that one spot, whereas the

(13:11):
rest of the tree is fine. So I think that
could have happened in the past. This is not new injury.
This is older injury. It's at least a year or
two ago. It could have been longer, but at least
a year or two ago. So right now I am
seeing some attempt of the tree to try to close
back over. There's nothing to spray on it, there's nothing

(13:32):
to paint on it. It just is what it is.
But when trees are young like this, I think that's
a water It looks like a water Let me see,
is that a water oak?

Speaker 11 (13:44):
A water oak?

Speaker 6 (13:46):
Yeah? Okay, so that the trunk tissues are righted then
on a young tree like that, not like when it
gets older and it has good thick bark to insulate it.
So for right now, about all you could do would
be to shade it. You could put like a any
kind of a wrap around the tree, just to shade it.

(14:08):
Generally we don't use raps a lot for this purpose.

Speaker 7 (14:13):
I bought some wraps after I talked to you about it,
so I just haven't put it on yet.

Speaker 6 (14:18):
But okay, well that it's just a matter now at
this point, Steve, it's just a matter of Steve of
water and infertilizing it as we go into this year.
Just continue to feed it. I'm going to make a
wild guess. It looks like that tree maybe about two
and a half inches in diameter of the trunk. Is

(14:39):
that close or.

Speaker 7 (14:42):
I would say, yeah, that's probably pretty close to what
it is really.

Speaker 6 (14:48):
Okay, so for every inch, give it a cup or
two of blond fertilizer. So let's just say that would
two and a half inches. That would be two to
five of cups of fertilizer somewhere in there, a cups.
Sprinkle it all around, not at the base of the tree.
Well then, okay, on microlife, you're gonna want to double that, Yeah,

(15:12):
you and double or triple that because because of the
concentration in the microlife and the fact that it releases
slowly slower. Okay, so sprinkle it all around that tree,
not just at the base. Yeah, just start just think
of it this way. I would look at the base

(15:33):
of the trunk, where where the base enters the ground sprink. No, No,
I'd go three feet out in all directions, so a
six foot circle that spread it all evenly through that
whole area. Scratch it, take a rake or something kind
of scratch it into the mulch, and then water it
in really good.

Speaker 11 (15:54):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (15:54):
And that then I'd repeat that again, probably in May.
Uh and and uh. Just we just want to get
it growing. And then the main thing, most important thing
is you keep it moist. When we get into summer
and it's blazing hot and it forgets to rain. Yeah,
that that's when you can do the tree the most
good with some watering.

Speaker 7 (16:14):
Okay, okay, now shall do the first fertilization now or
wait a little longer.

Speaker 6 (16:23):
Well, it's not not much is going to happen right now.
But if you if you want to, if you want
to do it now, you can. I'd probably wait what
are we engine? Yeah, I'd probably do it in March.
I'd probably put it out in March.

Speaker 7 (16:35):
No, when you say the micro life, I should do
two or three times as much with it. You tell
me you get any cups that would be.

Speaker 6 (16:43):
That's sue, so so make it. Make it four to
six cups per inch of trunk diameter. For for the
micro life, I would use the green the green bag,
green bag.

Speaker 7 (16:58):
Yeah, okay, you mentioned off soo the last time you
talked about using the blue bag for something.

Speaker 12 (17:05):
Is that does that make that.

Speaker 11 (17:07):
Makes the blue bag the blue bag?

Speaker 6 (17:11):
Well, the blue bag is a hybrid. The blue bag
is a hybrid. It's got uh, it's got the standard
organic and then it's got some synthetic in it is
a mix for a faster boost. You can use the
blue bag if you want. That's fine. There's nothing wrong
with that that. I mean, they give a little faster boost,
so that'd be fine and you don't need to worry
about changing the right.

Speaker 7 (17:35):
But yeah, I know you say a long fertilizer. What
I've been using is I mean I use the nitro
fass a lot.

Speaker 6 (17:46):
That's fine, okay, Yeah, yeah, you could use.

Speaker 7 (17:50):
That two to three cups for the microflass.

Speaker 6 (17:57):
For this tree with the nitre f Uss Imperial that's
the red bag fifteen five to ten. Because there's a
bunch a bunch of night fuss products. For the red
bag fifteen five ten, I would I would use one
or two cups so per inch, so this would be
we're going to say that is two to three cups

(18:17):
of the Imperial. But again, don't dump it at the base.
It's a salt based fertilizer, and you don't want it
to all dissolve. And you know, Bernard root or something
scattered out in a three foot in all directions circle
around that tree.

Speaker 7 (18:31):
And it's a red bag.

Speaker 6 (18:32):
All righty is that the red bag Imperial? Yes, sir,
it's on my schedule if you look at it. Listen,
I've got about a minute before I have to stop talking.
So did you want to ask about that, Guardina? I believe, Yeah,
I did.

Speaker 8 (18:45):
I did.

Speaker 7 (18:47):
I mean some of the leaves are a little bit yellow,
and there's a brown tip at the end of this,
so that's only maybe that's maybe five or six percent.

Speaker 6 (18:57):
Yeah, I see it. So what's what's happening there is
it's a combination of things. It probably got a little
dry or too wet either one where roots couldn't get
oxygen when they're too wet, they can't get water when
they're too dry. One of those happened. It's not very severe,
but what I do see on it is a nutrient deficiency,
and I would get a fertilizer that has all of

(19:18):
the nutrients, micros and everything. If you wanted to get
Microlife's red Red bag for acid loving plants, for acid
loving plants, the red bag, I would put that on it,
and I would continue to fertilize it about every month,
month and a half in moderate doses on into the

(19:38):
season and see if that cures up. If it doesn't,
we'll have to switch to something else. But I got
to tell you, Steve, I'm literally having to go here.
So just Microlife Red Bag, follow the label. You take care,
appreciate you've got appreciate, appreciate your call. All right, folks,
we will be right back after this bit from the news.

(19:59):
You got a question seven one three two one two
fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one two
or you want daball letters then kt r h.

Speaker 13 (20:13):
Oh.

Speaker 6 (20:14):
That's a fact. You know, the older you get, the
more you realize how little you know listless unless you
have a bad case of foolishness. Oh man, when I
was young, I knew everything. Just ask me. Uh here
we are, hey, welcome back to garden. Line. Let's run
out here to Houston and talk to Steve this morning. Stephen,

(20:36):
Hello Stephen, welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 5 (20:39):
Thank good morning.

Speaker 10 (20:41):
We just had some dozer work done on our pond
and I got a lot of bare ground, and I'm
wondering if I could throw some rye grass out now, or.

Speaker 5 (20:52):
Late ride grass.

Speaker 6 (20:55):
Well, it would give you a little benefit for a
little while. We you know, you'd get a few months
to grow out of it before it just got too
hot and started to die back. So it will be
it'll be worth a try, you know how it is.
You get we're gonna get some spring rains in here,
and you don't want to get big old erosion gullies
coming down the side of that pond.

Speaker 10 (21:17):
Okay, great, all right, thank you.

Speaker 6 (21:20):
Yeah, put about when you do it, figure about ten
to twenty pounds per thousand square feet. In fact, I'd
probably go on the twenty pounds end, since there's no
turf grass or anything in there.

Speaker 8 (21:33):
Say that again, how many pounds per square feet?

Speaker 6 (21:36):
How about twenty pounds per thousand square feet would be
about right for your situation, right, yeah, what part of
Houston are you in?

Speaker 10 (21:47):
It's the properties that here Fay mil Tex.

Speaker 6 (21:52):
Okay, okay, well you got feed stores or stuff out there.
I know Southwest Fertilizer carries ry grass like that for overseeding.
By the bag. You can buy ten pounds or whatever.
Har very many pounds you want to buy.

Speaker 5 (22:05):
Bag out here?

Speaker 6 (22:07):
Oh you're serious? Okay, there you go. All right, Well,
good luck with that, Steven. Now when just when you
know how, you know how I say on guardenline, my
advice is free, but you just have to bring me
half the tomatoes or whatever in this case, when you
get it stocked in the fish or about three pounds
in size, give me a call. Yeah, yeah, well we

(22:34):
we there's a way to fix that. Thank you, sir.
I appreciate your call. All right, there you go, first
time I use that one. All right, folks. Oh, I
want to make tell you a couple of things. I'll
try to remember say the again later. Different people listen
different times of the day.

Speaker 9 (22:54):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (22:54):
The annual Fort ben Regional Vegetable Conference is Tuesday February seventeenth.
Tuesday February seventeenth next month, and they are going to
have a day full of speakers. It starts at date
in the morning, goes through four point thirty. There's several tracks.
There's a track for backyard gardeners, so if you're just
interested in backyard gardening, lots of good information. I'll be

(23:15):
speaking in that track from one fifteen to two fifteen
on raised bed and container gardening and just some simple
tricks for that. And then there's another track that there's
a number of them. I'm telling you ones I think
you might be interested in unless you're happen to be
a teacher or a professional grower. There's one for small
producers and market gardeners, a track for that small scale commercial,

(23:39):
and there's one for food preservation with safety and recipes
like what about canning? What about drying food or other
ways of preserving food? A lot of good information in
those tracks. Now, this is going to be at the
Fort Ben County Epic Center on Southwest Freeway, Rosenberg, Texas address.
So what I would recommend you do is go to

(24:01):
the Extension office website in Fort ben County, that's Fort
Bend website is Fortbend dot agralife dot org or give
them a call two eight one three four to two
thirty thirty four to eight one three four to two
thirty thirty four. You can register for that. It is
a forty five dollars cost to attend for the day.

(24:23):
But again you get all these talks and they're gonna
have a barbecue lunch included ever break. There's some nice
refreshments that they have. There'll be sponsors and exhibitors and
door prizes and all kinds of stuff. So this is
a really good deal. Fort ben County Regional Vegetable Conference Tuesday,
February seventeenth, and I'll be there giving a talk myself.

(24:45):
Courage you to go do that. By the way, everyone
listening to my voice has a county Extension office in
their county, an agrolife extension office. That's where you'll find
like an agriculture agent. We just had a question about
farm ponds, and if you had a question about pastures
or cattle or lots of different agg related things, there's

(25:08):
an agent in there for that. Some of the counties
have a horticulture agent. Montgomery County, mister Michael Potter's up
there in Brises County, Stephen Brugerhoff that we just have
them in ever County, Galveston and Orange and Harris and
what am I see? Fort Bend and I'm probably leaving somebody.

(25:28):
I'll do them. I forgetting Well, County of Afrigaanting, Oh, Brazoria,
Bresouria County. Of course, there are horn agents in all
those counties, and so you can call and ask a question.
If you don't have a hort agent, you can call
and ask the egg agent because they're trained in horticulture
as well. And it's good advice. If you're wanting to
have your soil tested, give them a call. They'll tell

(25:48):
you all about how to go about doing it, and
you can do that. By the way, you can also
go to my website. There's a publication on soil testing
and it gives a link directly to the soil test lab.
But your county extension office is there for that purpose.
All two hundred and fifty four counties in Texas are
served by an agro Life Extension office. Now for some trivia,

(26:09):
here we go. That's early on a Sunday morning, But
here we go some trivia. Way back in the day,
there was a time when you know, if you want
to go to college, your family, you know, you might
have to have a whole lot, whole lot of money
to attend one of the universities, and when you went there,
you didn't learn anything about coming back and taking care

(26:29):
of the farm and family operations and stuff. A fellow
named Abraham Lincoln signed a law into practice. In fact,
there were three laws. There was one that created the
extension services, the extent the agro First was the law
with the agriculture colleges. Ever state got a langrant university,

(26:50):
so around our region that would be Oklahoma State, Texas
A and m LSU, Mississippi State, Auburn. You know, you
get the idea of New Mexico State. And then they
created one that created the extension services. That was the
one I believe Abe was involved in. And what that
basically was was something to take the university to the people.

(27:11):
It's all fallen, fine and well that you've got a
university there that's doing research on agriculture, but what about
letting people know what about the farmers out there? How
did they know there's this new type of corn that
produces three times as much as the old one dead,
or how did they know a better way to farm
without wasting water?

Speaker 11 (27:29):
And so on?

Speaker 6 (27:30):
And so that's what that was all about. They also
had a law that was passed there was a law
that was past. The created what we call the eighteen
ninety institutions, and those would be institutions like Prairieview for example.
Here in Texas. Each state has one eighteen ninety institution
as well. And again the purpose was to do research
and to disseminate the information out to the community. I

(27:55):
started off with agriculture and home economics, how do you
can and how do you sew? How do you you
know all of the issues with family and household and things.
And now it's expanded way way beyond that, everything from
engineering do you name it. Of course all the Lane
Grant universities have all that, but it started that way
and in creating the Extension Service, now there's one here. Actually,

(28:18):
Texas was a first county agent in the whole country,
and we now have agents that serve every county in
the state. So kind of oh it. On the coast,
we also have something called this the it's like a
sea grant program. It's the fisheries, the wildlife, the fisheries
that go on down there, from shrimp fisheries to you

(28:40):
name it, to the estuaries and transforming the health of
our estuaries along the coast which does drive the fisheries
industry as well. So there's a lot of cool stuff
going on throughout the state and it's there for you
to call, or to go to the websites and check out,
or to go online and get the free publications. There

(29:02):
are a lot of publications at tex A and m
on what's called the Agrolife Bookstore if you just do
a search for agra as in Agriculture, Life as in
Life Science Bookstore, Agrolife Bookstore, dot t A m U,
dot ed ub. The other day someone had a question
about roof rats and dealing with roof rats and possums

(29:23):
and things, and there's wildlife publications up there how to
deal with that, gophers and whatnot. And then of course
all kinds of things about gardening and growing and loans
and whatnot. The publications are all there. Most of them
are free. You can just download them. So there you go.
There's your tip for the day. And I have talked
past a break, so let's keep Let's take a break
here and we'll be right back. I do know that

(29:46):
about all right. What a wonderful world it is, and
a great time for gardening. We are on the doorstep,
doorstep of spring. How exciting that is. I love this
time of year. I always say, if you have a pulse,
you ought to be a gardener in the spring. I'd
like to talk more people into being gardeners in the

(30:07):
fall as well. But at least for now, this is it.
Spring is about to spring, or it's not about to
spruing that would have been had already happened. It's about
to spring. The roadways are going to be filled with
wildflowers before we know it, and everybody's going to want
to be gardening. But the important thing to remember is

(30:30):
it's the stuff you do ahead of time that sets
you up for success or failure when it comes to gardening.
I do not want anybody to fail at gardening. There's
no reason to have to fail at gardening. Let's do
the prep work we need to ahead of time. Let's
be wise. So what does that mean? Well, that means
if you want to grow your own transplants, you ought

(30:50):
to be putting seats in a little pot inside underneath
the light and getting those things going. It is time
to do that. That means out wherever you're going to garden,
maybe if you've already got a guard and get the
soil worked up. Mix some composts into it, mix it
in real good, get it ready to go. Cover it
up with some molts so weeds don't come up. So
when it's planting day, even if it just got through
raining a bunch, you're ready to go. Your soils already worked.

(31:13):
You can't work wet soil, but you can work whenever
the soil is moist. That's a great time to get
the soil ready. Soil is the secret to success. There's
gonna be a day coming on a Saturday. You look
up and you see the sunshine and oh my gosh,
you got an itch to go get plants and come home.
And if you come home and there's no place to
plant them, nothing ready to go, you're missing an opportunity.

(31:36):
Get it done. Now, make hay while the sunshines, Make
soil while the sunshines. Get the soil ready to go.
If you don't have a garden, now'd be a perfect
time to do that. Come out to enchanted gardens nursery.
You don't have space for gardening, that's okay. Do you
don't want to get on your hands and knees and
be digging in the dirt and breaking up the soil,

(31:58):
trying to plant and stuff like that. That but you
want to grow stuff, you want to grow some some groceries. Well,
I'll tell you how to grow more per square foot.
Raised beds and containers are one of the best ways
to garden. Now, if you never if you don't have
a spot for gardening, it is the way to garden.
You drop a box on the ground, you feel it
full of good quality soils, and then you go to

(32:19):
town and I mean you're gardening at the end of
the day. Literally, it's that fast and easy. If you
maybe have space but you just don't want to go
through those extra kinds of work and stuff breaking up
the soil and whatnot, it's still a great way to go.
I'm gonna teach you how to container garden, and I'm
gonna teach you how to raise bed garden. And I'll
be at Enchanted Gardens on January thirty first at twelve

(32:42):
thirty that's noon, twelve thirty noon after the show. Okay,
I'll finish the show ten o'clock and get my stuff
together and head over to Enchended Gardens and give you
a lot of tips on easier vegetable gardening. Even if
you don't have any space, because you can garden at
your house. Even at that garden is some containers on
the patio. We'll tell you how to do it. So

(33:03):
come on out there. I'll be giving away products from
Medina agg I'll be giving away some stuff that in
Chenny Gardens is providing as well. But mainly we're going
to learn and have a lot of fun. I like
cutting up. I guess you may have noticed that on
the radio some but we're going to have a real
good time. I'm going to even show you a lot
of pictures and give you some inspiration that way. And

(33:25):
oh my gosh, and Jenny Gardens is going to be
bursting at the seams with seeds and transplants and all
kinds of cool stuff everything you need for success. How
about this year is the year you start a garden,
never garden before. Maybe you're a parent and you've got
some little kiddos around and you would like them to
get involved in this. Come on and see me. We'll

(33:47):
talk about that. I can't wait to help you do
that again. Wedn's the date, January thirty, first, Saturday, at
twelve thirty am at Enchanted Gardens, which is on the
Katie Follshier side of Richmond. Head out to Danbury area.
Now we're gonna talk to Ronnie this morning. Hey, Ronnie,
welcome to Garden Line.

Speaker 8 (34:06):
Yes, sir, I appreciate you taking my call. Love your show.
Got a quick question. I do garden a lot, especially
in I'm a spring gardener, not.

Speaker 11 (34:16):
A fall garden.

Speaker 8 (34:17):
But I'm working on that.

Speaker 6 (34:19):
Okay.

Speaker 8 (34:21):
I had some squash plants in and the bores that
eat in through the stems, the main stem and kill
the plant or huh do you aware what I'm talking about?

Speaker 14 (34:33):
In any way?

Speaker 9 (34:36):
I am?

Speaker 6 (34:37):
I absolutely am. So we can talk for a little
bit here, Ronnie. We're hitting the top of the hour
news and so I'm going to end up answering you
after we come back. But I do know about the
squash of aynbor. Is that the main challenge you're dealing with? Yes, sir.

Speaker 8 (34:51):
And can I pre treat my soil to kill the eggs?

Speaker 6 (34:56):
It's a question, okay, there's there's really not a good
pre treatment right now. If you've had borers in past
years in the soil or some pupa they're little brown things.
Oh how big are they? About the size of a
pumpkin pumpkin seed maybe or something like that. Uh, But anyway,
they're they're pupa in the ground and and they're gonna

(35:17):
they're gonna wait and at some point in the spring
they're coming out as the flying around version, which is
an orange and black moth. But I'm gonna go to
break here. You hang on, and we're gonna come back
and we'll we'll dive into the squash of iron bore solutions.

Speaker 1 (35:32):
Welcome to kt r H Garden Line with scip Rickards.

Speaker 3 (35:44):
Just watching as a sign.

Speaker 2 (36:06):
Sand between.

Speaker 3 (36:15):
Starting.

Speaker 6 (36:18):
Alrighty, already, we're back. We ended the last hour in
a conversation with Ronnie out there in Danburry, and so
we're gonna go pick that up again at this point
right here, Hey, Ronnie, So the squash vine bore is
actually a type of clear winged moth. It's black and orange.

(36:38):
The mama moth is uh. And you'll see them sitting
out there on the plants. And whenever you see the
first one you got in the morning, when it's cool,
they tend to be a little less spooky, a little
less spooked. Rather, they're a little bit more sluggish and
when you know you got mom out there. You know,
you got eggs being laid, and so you got to
take steps at that point to do something about it.

(36:59):
What I will offer and do is cover my squash
plants with row cover fabric, very thin, lightweight, like half
ounce per square yard row cover fabric. Get can see
through it, it's so thin, and that's like a screen
porch that blocks them out once the when squash starts
to bloom, typically you get male blooms first and then

(37:19):
you begin to get the female blooms, the ones with
the fruit on the bottom of the bloom. And so
I'll leave it on until that happens. And then you
have two options. You can if you just have a
few squash plants, you can lift it up, get out
there in the morning, you know, with a little artist
brush or something, just to move pollen from one from
male blooms to female blooms, pollinate yourself, close it back down,

(37:41):
and you just keep the vine bore out that way.
The other alternative is just to pull it off at
that time, in which point the vine bore will begin
to lay eggs, but you'll still have time to get
somewhat of a yield before the vine bore shuts things
down before the vine start to die, as you've had
happened before, So that those are options. The other thing

(38:01):
would be to spray. You gotta be real careful though,
because if you get spray on those blooms, you know,
in the morning, the bees are out there doing the
work for you, and you'll kill them. The things that
kill squash, vine borg kill bees. So I generally avoid
the spray for that reason. Although if you were very
very careful and you were to spray, you know, maybe

(38:23):
the day before when the vines the blooms are all
closed up, uh, and so that in the morning those
blooms open and the inside of the bloom doesn't have
spray on it. You can make a case for that
being an okay option.

Speaker 8 (38:37):
Well, one other quick question on this, of course, I'm
not planning new squash plants on top of where the
old ones were. I'm thinking about planning cucumbers, which is
also a vine plant.

Speaker 6 (38:49):
Do they attack cucumbers, Okay, they can, but not generally
members of that We call it the Q curbit.

Speaker 8 (39:00):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (39:00):
Squashing cucumbers are all in that family.

Speaker 12 (39:03):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (39:03):
They can attack other members of it, But squash is
the main thing that they deal in. Uh, here's the
thing when when they finish off a vine, that caterpillar
that's inside it goes out and falls into the ground,
crawls down a few inches to maybe two inches below
the surface, and that's where it pupates to wait for

(39:24):
next year. If you keep moving your squash planting from
one spot to another, then when they come out, they're
not coming out underneath your cover or coming out right
among the plants that you just replanted the squash. So
by rotating that covering is a pretty good option that
you can use.

Speaker 8 (39:43):
Okay, all right, I appreciate time and your information. Skip
enjoy it. Thank you, sir.

Speaker 6 (39:49):
All right, you take care of good luck with that. Yeah,
the vine bore is a is a problem. I sometimes
I feel like was a guy im Obi Dick, Captain
Aheb Captain Ahab, you know, was was obsessed with the
big white whale and that the splash vine bore is
my big white whale. And I'm Captain Mayhab. Hopefully it

(40:09):
ends better for me than it did for cup than
I have but anyway, it just I've tried all kinds
of things. I read stuff that says, oh you can
do this, you can do that, and I try it
and it sometimes works ish not really, so it's it's
a tough one to get control over.

Speaker 2 (40:29):
I have.

Speaker 6 (40:29):
I've tried injecting the vines, which you can do, but
I mean, who wants to sit there and draw BT
up into a needle syringe and squirt it into the vines?
And I can tell you this a lot of vines,
it's hard to find a hollow space to squirt it in.
We tried a bunch of variations on that. I have
tried attracting them in. Some people say the yellow solo

(40:50):
cups you can spray something called is it tanglefoot? I
think it's called tanglefoot. It's a sticky spray and you
sprayed on the cup, so when the vine borer goes
to land on the cop that it would stick on there. Well,
so do bees. So who wants to do that? Yeah?

Speaker 13 (41:09):
Right?

Speaker 6 (41:10):
And you know, we tried a lot of different things
to control them. It just it is what it is.
So I have some other ideas, but I'm not going
to sit here and drone on the radio about them.
But I've got a new plan for next year that
I'm gonna try some new stuff on to see if
it works. Who knows. That's part of gardening, right, just
part of gardening also, and I should have mentioned this

(41:33):
to Ronnie. They do emerge at a certain point in
the season, so if you can get in ahead of them,
you have a better chance of getting some yields before
they show up. So that would involve something we don't
normally do, and that would be starting squash transplants indoors.
And you only need to grow a squash transplant about

(41:55):
two weeks. I mean, I guess you could go as
far as four weeks, but you don't want them to
get stressed and a small container, and squash grows fast,
much faster than peppers and tomatoes and stuff. So you
would just start a transplant indoors, plant them out as
early as you can, put a cover over them, maybe
a clear plastic cover that's opened on the end so
he escapes during the day, and get those things growing

(42:17):
as fast as you can. Get squash going as fast
as you can, so you get a few more harvest.
You harvest a few more squashed before the vine bore
takes the vine down. So there you go. What we're
doing is we're giving little things that help a little bit,
but nothing that solves the whole problem. There is a gosh,

(42:38):
why am I droning on about this anyway? One last thing.
There are pheromones that attract the male squash to the
female squash. Pheromones are insect like hormones that are attractive.
In a pheromone in this case would be a sex hormone,
a sex pheromone that attracts. And you put those out

(42:59):
and it messes them up. It disrupts them. You know,
there's this little thing over here giving off the pheromone,
and they're getting confused. And there's even a little sticky
trap over there where they go thinking, oh there's a
female squash, fine bore, and they land on it and
they're stuck like flypaper and they can't go anywhere. So
if that sounds fun, you might want to give that

(43:19):
a try. They're not cheap though, to put those things out.
See can you tell I've thought about this a while.
I am cup than they have when it comes to
squash mine bore, with hopefully better results than the old
Cup than himself had with Moby Dick. All right, our
phone number seven one three two one two fifty eight
seventy four seven one three two one two five eight.

(43:40):
So I saw y'all rolling your eyes out there, I
could say, So, really, is he going to make another
round through talking about this? Yeah, I saw you rolling
your eyes out there. All right, Well you get the idea. Hey, uh,
you are listening to guard Line. We're here to help
you with your gardening questions. And one of the things
we do here on guarden Line is points you to

(44:00):
good products and places to get them. And ACE Hardware
is an example of those kind of places.

Speaker 5 (44:06):
You know.

Speaker 6 (44:06):
I was in an ACE just the other day, in fact,
one of the new ones that opened up, that is
the ACE at Spring Branch kind of off Work Road
right up there in Spring Brand, and just looking at
the products that they have. They're about to get a
whole bunch more stuff in now that Spring's arriving. And
so the fertilizers I talk about on Guardline, the pest
weed disease control products that I talk about, they're going

(44:27):
to be found there at your local ACE Hardware store.
There's a whole bunch of them all over the greater
Houston area. You can go to ACE Hardware Texas dot
com and find the stores near you. Stores like Spring
Ace on Spring Cypress up North Crosby ACE on FM
twenty one hundred northeast. We can go to the west
side to Langham Creek ACE on five twenty nine, just

(44:48):
on the backside of Copperfield Plantation ACE on Mason Road
done in Richmond, Rosenberg. And there's also Champions Ace on
Spring Cypress up in the Spring area kind of northwest.
Those are just a few of the many A stores
you find at ACE Hardware Texas dot com. Take a break,
we'll be right back. Wonder well, Louis. It is a

(45:13):
wonderful world, a wonderful day for gardening too. By the way, Yeah,
I know it's not gonna be all day though, we'll
get outside. Just enjoy it. Gardening without sweat. We'll take it.
It's a good thing, trust me, it is. We're gonna
head now out to Magnolia, Texas this morning, and we're

(45:33):
going to visit with Kyle. Well, Hello, Kyle, Welcome to
garden Line morning.

Speaker 12 (45:38):
Skip. I got a question about an oak tree up
by my chicken coop. It's hollow down at the base
and I want to take some concrete and fill it up.
I got rats living in there, and I want to
not give them a place to live. Okay, is there
any damage I could expect that I'll do to that
tree or shorten its life by sealing up that hole

(46:00):
in the front.

Speaker 6 (46:02):
The only thing is, if you ever have to take
it out, that concrete is a big problem on chainsaws
or whatever you have to use try to get that
thing out of there. That's the biggest drawback. Some people
will spray expendable foam in those, and you know it's lightweight,
and again, it's not gonna be a problem later if

(46:23):
you try to take it out. You just would have
to kind of get a little trial, like you're doing
concrete work or something, just to smooth it off, and
then you would probably spray paint it a color just
so it's kind of dark like the tree trunk is
supposed to. But the concrete itself is not doesn't blend
in with the tree trunk either, So that would be
the only thing I would say on it.

Speaker 15 (46:45):
So as for the health of the tree, why even
though you know it's probably only got another ten years
left in it, but it wouldn't degrade it any further.

Speaker 6 (46:58):
No, not really, it would. We don't. We don't recommend
it because you know, like if it were up on
the trunk and you had a cavity and people used
to put like semen over that to seal it. Well,
now you're holding all the moisture behind it, and so
the decay is even faster because it doesn't dry out

(47:18):
between rains. Uh and and so that would be a negative.
But down on the ground like that, it's not not
quite as quite the same effect. Not recommended, but not
the end of the world if you want to do it.

Speaker 15 (47:30):
I like the I like the foam idea, but the
reds are already making a home in there. I know
they'll they'll chew in that and make a little tunnels.

Speaker 6 (47:38):
Well, and another thing you can do is people will
get like a half inch hardware cloth. I know the
arborist having a cowbody right now listening to this, because yeah,
and you just put the hardware cloth in there, kind
of tack it into the sides, and then spray the
foam in it. So if they try to chew through
the phone, they're going to hit that wire and that's
that's the end of that. So that'd just be another option.

Speaker 15 (47:59):
Well, definitely sounds easier than a hauling eighty bound bag
of concrete out there and mixing it up.

Speaker 6 (48:07):
Yeah, and trying to get it to go up, you know,
like you could pour it in, but you know, trying
to smooth it up. Yeah. I wouldn't do the concrete myself.
I would either live with it and ignore it or
do the other thing.

Speaker 15 (48:22):
Well, I killed three out of there last month, and
I'm trying to pull them.

Speaker 6 (48:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 15 (48:29):
The chickens are quite attracting.

Speaker 6 (48:34):
All right. Well, good luck, Kyle, thank you, good luck
getting it done. You bet you take care. Good talk
to you. Yeah. There used to be a day. In fact,
I grew up in south central Texas. There's a little
town called Pleasanton that's just not too far away from
where I grew up. And there used to be kind

(48:55):
of right in the main drag where the highway went
through town and main street, this big, beautiful giant oak tree.
And they went in there and they put bricks in
this giant gap in the tree. I don't know the
history of how it happened, but I just know when
I was a kid, i'd walk up there and there'd
be a brick wall and in this what used to
be a hole in the tree. Uh, And it looked

(49:16):
kind of cool until you go to take that tree out.
But that doesn't help the tree. It's just what used
to be done and we we kind of don't do
that anymore. There's a bora cultural practices that we generally
try to follow. But you know, your plant, your choice.
Just be aware of the consequences as we do things,

(49:36):
and so no no benefit of the tree to doing
that to speak of. You're listening to Guarden Line, here's
the phone number seven one three two one two fifty
eight seventy four seven one three two one two five
eight seven four. Have you been out to Nelson Nursery
and Water Gardens. That is our destination garden center out

(49:59):
there in Katie, Texas. So you go out west of
Houston out I ten. When you get to Katie Fort
Ben Road. That's assuming you're listening to me. From east
of Katie, you turn north on Katie Fort Ben Road.
Just upstreet a little bit on the right is Nilson
Nursery and Water Guards And I'm telling you they have
just absolutely cool water garden supplies. Whether they'll come out

(50:25):
and they can do this giant beautiful pond with a waterfall,
rock waterfall and all of that. I mean that's the
taj Mahal version. It is unbelievable. Totally changes the whole
environment in your backyard or front yard if you don't
do that. And then they've got all the way down
to little fountains that are in containers that just bubble

(50:47):
over the sides and recirculate back around, and then everything
of course in between. If you can't do it yourself,
they'll tell you how to do it. If it's a
bigger job, I would say have them do it for sure,
because they're professionals. They know what they're doing. They're nationally known.
When it comes to water, one of a kind, fish
and fountains and plants and pots. You should see the
pot collections that they have, the containers that are glazed,

(51:09):
and all kinds of beautiful things. One of my favorites
a container of little pebbles on the side, so whence
the water ripples over the side, it just creates a
sparkling effect in the sunlight. It is really beautiful, kind
of cool. But just go by there and check out
what I'm what I'm talking about. It's cool. So when
it comes to plants, though, this is a full fledged

(51:32):
plant nursery, you're gonna find your fertilizers. You're gonna find
your plants, from houseplants to vegetables, to herbs, to flowers,
to shrubs, to trees, to fruit plants, ornamental grasses. They
have it all there. It is a really really nice place.
Nelson Nursery and Water Garden. Go by and say hi
the folks there and let them talk to you about

(51:54):
how they could bring the wonderful, calming sound of water
into your landscape. Nelson Nurseringwatergardens dot com. Excuse me, Nelsonwatergardens
dot com. Nelsonwatergardens dot com. You're listening to garden Line
and we are here to help answer gardening questions, to
help you see things from a plant's point of view.

(52:15):
If you would like to give me a call seven
one three two one two five eight seven four seven
one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.

Speaker 10 (52:24):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (52:24):
If you have never subscribed to Texas Gardener magazine, you
ought to do that. This is a magazine I have
written for Texas gardeners since I think my first article
was nineteen ninety eight. That's been a while, right, regularly
written for him since early early early two thousands. Uh
and uh This is a magazine. One of their little

(52:45):
mottoes is written by Texas Gardeners for Texas gardeners, and
that is the truth. I know about ninety percent of
the folks at write uh for Texas Gardener quite well.
UH know of the others. And there they are people
who get their hands in the dirt here in Texas.
They grow things. There's not just a coffee table magazine

(53:07):
you put down there to look at pretty pictures that
could have been taken in England or some other place.
This is a This is a magazine for people who
deal with Texas conditions, soils, climates, finance, you name it,
and gardens successfully here and it is inspiring. It's a
wonderful magazine, absolutely wonderful magazine to do, to subscribe to.

(53:29):
And you can do it in a print form. You
can also do it in a digital form where you
see it online. I like that because in the digital
you can go back way back number of years and
see past issues, so you get access to a lot
of articles that way, you don't have to go find them,
you know, in a pile of magazine somewhere. Now they

(53:51):
have a thing called the Texas Gardener Planning Guide and
if you're new to Texas gardening, or if you're new
you know, to the air where you're living, you really
need to get self copy of the Texas Gardener Planning Guide.
The Planning Guide is an incredibly helpful resource throughout the year.
So it's just like you go month by month and
it tells you what to be doing, what you need

(54:12):
to get out there doing. Plus it has a lot
of other helpful things as part of the guide, a
lot of not just what to do today, but there's
much more to it. So if you go to the
website Texas Gardener dot com texasgardener dot com, find the
guide there and get you a copy. They are available,
and you know Texas Gardener, you'll find it too magazines

(54:36):
at the various garden centers we'll carry it and they'll
keep some on hand there. So that's another way to
pick up your copy, or just subscribe like I do.
I mean I get them every month. They come every month,
every two months, comes out every two months, six issues
a year, and really really helpful information. And like I said,
I write for it, so I'm a little bit biased,
but that don't mean I'm wrong. That's right. You may

(54:59):
be wrong if you're buy a but you also may
not be well anyway. Texas Gardener Planning Guide, get your copy.
I like those too because as you go through the year,
you can make notes in it, so like you're out
in your garden and it says, oh, you need to
do such and such in your tomatoes, or watch with
its pest or whatever's going on in there. And when

(55:20):
you're out you can just write a note, you know,
planted my pepper plants today, or saw the first stink
bugs on the tomatoes today or something, and then it
becomes kind of a resource of the history of things
going on in your garden, and it guides you in
future years as well. So something to think about. Kind

(55:41):
of cool. Well, we were talking earlier. I was kind
of going in about fruit trees and chilling hours and
the importance of that. I just when we come back,
I would like to talk a little bit about color
in the flower beds and in the landscape and a
little bit of information on that, and a little bit
later this morning, we're going to go into lawn care tips.

(56:05):
We are on the doorstep of everything exploding in the
lawns as well. And if you have my schedule you
know what I'm talking about. If you don't during this
break we're about to take, would you go to gardening
with Skip dot com and look at my two lawn schedules.
One is lawn care how to grow a pretty lawn,

(56:26):
bow water, fertilize. The other is lawn Pest disease and
weed management schedule. And that's everything that goes wrong and
what to do to avoid them. Both organic and synthetic
options are both there on the schedule. All right, stay tuned,
don't go away. Let you and me get us a
cup of coffee and meet right back here in just

(56:46):
a bit. Here we go, all right, said, Let folks,
let's do this. We got another hour and a half
of Wait eight nine, Yeah, that's it. At two hours
of gardening. I can't even keep track of the clock.
And I'll tell you what I'm gonna I'm going to
talk about gardening until they push me off the microphone.

(57:07):
How about that. That's how we'll do this. I'm your host,
Skip Ricker. You're listening to garden Line, and we're here
to help you have a bountiful garden, a beautiful landscape
and more fun in the process. That is what we're
all about here, look forward to visiting with you. You
got a question seven one three two one two seven
one three two one two five eight seven four seven

(57:27):
one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. So
I was going to talk a little bit about some
flowering flower beds and flowering plants and things for our gardens. Uh.
Here in our area, we have a winter time that
we don't know what day it's going to be. It's
gonna be about two or three days a win winter typically,
but we don't know which days those are, so that

(57:49):
kind of messes things up a little bit. Otherwise, we
would just grs straight through the winter and wedn't have
to worry about anything. We have a few days right
at the cover stuff up, but we can grow a
lot of cool season color all through the wintertime. Then
spring comes and we have plants that love to bloom
in the spring. But then Texas summer arrives and they
go what the companies that sell plants and say this

(58:10):
is heat tolerant. It's like, yeah, heat tolerant New Jersey
or Wisconsin. Maybe. I mean, if you think you got
a heat tolerant plant, and you're a seed company or
a plant production company. Send it to me next time
I'm out barbecuing. When I got the burgers on the grill,
I'll throw the plant on there as well. Close the lid,
wait about five or ten minutes, open it up, and

(58:32):
if the plant looks good and I stick it in
the ground and it grows, we'll talk. Otherwise it's not
ready for Texas. So we need good hot weather plants.
So when we go planting this time of year, there's
a lot of wonderful plants we can put in. You're
going to go to your garden center and you're going
to see color from sea to shining sea. I mean
it's everywhere. Color, beautiful, beautiful color, wonderful plants. Some of

(58:56):
those are going to be good for a while, but
not when you get hot. Others will carry you on
into the summertime when it is hot. Does that mean
you plant one or not the other, No, not at all.
But just be aware that especially the old times of petunias.
For example, old kinds of petunias, they tend to be
a little whimpy and it gets real hot and they
just kind of they're alive, but they're not happy and

(59:18):
they're not blooming like you want them to bloom. Plant
breeders keep coming up with ways to make plants more versatile,
and we have a lot of new petunias. Now we've
got the wave petunias and the super called supertunias. They're
smaller flowers, but there's so many of them. You can't
even see a green leaf on the plant because it's
covered with flowers. Those are all good choices and they'll

(59:40):
carry you a little bit further in. And then when
it comes to the hot weather, if you want to
save a little bit and just do one spring planting,
plant it with things that are going to be more
tolerant when it gets hot. Salvias in general or a
good choice and a good example of the plant that
can take that kind of heat quite well. There are

(01:00:03):
a type of impatient called sun patient that actually puts
up with more direct light than normal impatients would. You
could put them in a little less shade, you can
put them in a little more sun. They'll do fine.
They do really well. There do good in those example spots.
And then we have a number of other plants that

(01:00:24):
have come out, and I'll talk about these as we
get further into spring. But things that are new on
the market, new breeding lines that just go and go
and go and go despite the heat. So when you
talk to your local mom and pop garden center, your
independent garden center, ask them about these kinds of questions.
You know, how heat tolerant is this going to be?

(01:00:44):
Do you have something that would be more heat tolerant?
Carry me a little bit further into that season, and
they'll be happy to help you with that. But to
do that, you gotta go to an independent garden center.
The ones I talk about here on garden Line, there's
a reason that I talk about them and not about
the others. I'm not going to do a spot for,

(01:01:06):
and I'm not going to name specific companies. I don't
have to do that, but I'll just say that there
are a lot of big chains across the country that
sell things, a lot of things and don't necessarily have
plants or advice for this area. And so when I
talk about a place, the garden centers we talk about
here are ones that are from here. This is all

(01:01:28):
that they do. Their people are trained. You go into
a garden center like that, you talk to staff, they
know what they're talking about, and they'll shoot straight with you.
They want you to have success because you're going to
come back. Okay. They know that when they treat you right,
you're going to come back and they take care of
you like that. And that is important because remember I

(01:01:48):
said that we want you to have success. We don't
want you to fail or feel like you failed at gardening. Well,
that's the whole deal. You want to have success with it,
and you've got to go to those kinds of place
to do it. And I know a lot of people
will tell me, well, I saw this plan, it was
un sale. It's such and such place. It's like I'm going, okay,
well did you go there to buy a new washer

(01:02:11):
and dryer or did you go there to your plants?

Speaker 1 (01:02:13):
You know?

Speaker 6 (01:02:13):
I mean, it's come on that. A good deal is
a plant that will grow well and continue to do
well at your place and where you can go back
and get advice with people that actually know what they're
talking about. That is a good deal. That is a
good plant. You bring them a bug, you bring them

(01:02:34):
a picture. You know what's going on here? What's wrong
with this? Or here's a picture in my neighbor's yard
And they got this plant?

Speaker 11 (01:02:41):
What is that?

Speaker 6 (01:02:41):
And they're going no, they're going to absolutely know what
it is and they'll get you started on it. And
I know I'm going on on this a little bit,
but it is so important to do that. It is
if you want to have success. Plus it supports our
local businesses. That's another thing that's important. But this is
a relationship that you have up with people. And I'll
just say this, You get what you pay for. That

(01:03:03):
is for sure the case, uh not. Everything that seems
like a good deal is a good deal. And you
know that about all kinds of other stuff you bought
over your life, like cheap printers. You know, cheap printers. Yeah,
they cost less money when you buy them, costs more
when you're in your third pair because the first two
you had to throw away because they weren't worth having anymore.
That's what I'm talking about. All right, let's take another

(01:03:26):
little break here and we will be back if you'd
like to give me a call. Seven one three two
one two five eight seven four. All right, welcome back.
We go back to the dartline folks.

Speaker 11 (01:03:38):
Good to have you with us.

Speaker 6 (01:03:40):
You got a gardening question, Well write this number down
seven one three two one two five eight seven four
seven one three two, two fifty eight seventy four. So
I was talking about flower beds and the types of
color plants that can carry your color on further in
to the season. When it gets blazing hot. It's important

(01:04:03):
that you know we have things that can survive in
that kind of heat. Very important to do that. So
now it might be a time to begin thinking about that.
Do you want to do a temporary color and then
switch over to a heat tolerant color. There's a thing
in a landscape industry we call color changes, and that
basically means it's how many times a year do you

(01:04:24):
go into a flower bed and change it out? So
the short color change options are a cool season color
and a warm season color. That's two changes a year
or one change however you want to count it. But
then you can do up to five changes a year
if you want to. I mean, I guess you could
do more. But the bottom line is how much money
do you want to spend, how much work do you
want to do, and how good do you want it

(01:04:45):
to look? Constantly? Right? Can you put up with a
little bit of No, it's okay, but not much there
to write home about. But that's up to you whether
you do seeding out, which creates a longer gap in
between beauty periods. In other words, now you got dirt,
Now you got some seedlings, and now you're waiting there's

(01:05:05):
some plants, and oh, there comes some flowers, or do
you want to do transplants for you get a faster transition.
Either way you want to go. It doesn't matter your yard,
your garden, your pocket book, so you decide how you want.
But the possibilities are there to kind of create some
pretty special stuff. So that's color. Fertilizer is important. And

(01:05:27):
I don't have time to go into all the nutrients
and what they do in wine stuff, but we make
some generalizations that can be misleading, and one of them
is phosphorus is important for blooms in and of itself.
Is a statement that is true. Phosphorus is also important
for roots in and of itself, that is true. But
what happens to us as we go on into the spring.

(01:05:50):
Let's say you put some petunias out and they're blooming.
They look so good, and then as the plants get
a little bit older and the vine of the plant
is the branches out, it gets a little longer and lankier,
you end up with not a lot of leaves and
a sparse amount of blooms because it essentially takes a
lot of energy to make a bloom, and certainly even

(01:06:12):
more to make a fruit on fruiting plants, and so
it sort of just peters out there and it's not
really looking that great. And so if you go in
and do a little shearing on them and then fertilize
them with a nitrogen fertilizer like a lawn furtized one
that's higher in the nitrogen, you can get a boost
of growth, and with that boost of growth comes new leaves,

(01:06:34):
leaves or solar panels. Solar panels make energy, energy makes blooms,
and you're back in business, see what I'm talking about.
So don't assume that all you do is fertilize flowering
plants with high phosphorus fertilizers. That's not necessary. And most
of them anyway have a decentu a nitrogen in them,
So you can push things along like that and get
them blooming and looking good, but you just kind of

(01:06:56):
have to plan for it. Those a few tips there
for beautiful color beds. Another tip for color beds is
use large swaths of color when viewing from a distance,
you can use multiple colors mixed in when viewing from
up close. And do you I remember reading the newspaper
and the color comics section typically I guess those are

(01:07:17):
on Sundays. And if you've got a magnifying glass and
you went up to those color comics, it's like what
looked like a certain color from a distance, when you
get up close, it's like, oh my gosh, there's a
whole bunch of little pixels of color in there. If
you're looking at a flower bed that has fifteen different
colors of flower in a small area, and you're up close,

(01:07:39):
you can appreciate those, But you go all the way
up to the street and look at that bed in
front of the house, and it just sort of blends
together into pixelization. The further away you view color in
your landscape, the more effective it is to use large
swaths of color. So maybe a giant swath of red
blooms that are a little taller in the back and

(01:07:59):
a swa of white ballooms that are a little shorter
in the front. That would just be an example, you know,
of color combos. But the large swaths tend to hold
up in terms of visual impact a little bit better
from a distance. So there's another little tip for you
on those kinds of things. One other thing I did
want to mention about the color and whatnot is, just

(01:08:22):
like with vegetables, there are some things that you have
to buy the seeds to grow because you know, let's
take let's take sunflowers as an example. There are one
hundred plus types of sunflowers you could grow. Some are tall.
There are the kinds that make the sunflower seeds you eat.
They get giant, big, old, giant sunflower heads on them,

(01:08:43):
not very pretty intle flower bed, but it's a sunflower.
And then there's some kind they get a foot high.
That's it. The little stalk comes up, it's a foot high.
And then there's some kind they get a little taller,
but they have multiple branches, so it's more of a
sunflower bush than just a straight up stalk. What kind
do you want, it's up to you. It doesn't matter
what kind of plants. It's up to you esthetically, but

(01:09:05):
those are all kinds of options for putting them in
to achieve the success for what you're wanting to do.
And now with plant breeding, we have the same as zenias.
We have beautiful cut flower types of many flower forms,
many different flower forms, and then we even have the
little short compact, little mounded bowling ball size mounds of

(01:09:27):
zenias as well. So you got options out here. You
can plant the kinds you want, but for some of those,
you're gonna have to buy seeds yourself to grow them.
It just depends on where your shop. Some garden centers
carry a wide variety, but nobody carries everything, and they
can't it wouldn't be feasible for them to do that.
Same would be true like of a tomato. You want

(01:09:47):
some obscure tomato that I don't know, almost nobody has,
You're gonna have to buy seeds and grow your own
transplants to that. That's okay, that's fun, that's still gardening,
but that's what you're gonna have to do. Otherwise, you
go to a quality nursery, a garden center that is local,
that is independent, and you talk to the folks there
and they are going to have on there on their

(01:10:09):
tables some beautiful transplants, whether it's vegetables or flowers of
things that you can depend on that'll do very very
well here. If that makes sense, I hope it does
all right. Well, I'm looking at my clock, which is
telling me Skip, you better quit talking here pretty quick
because we need to go at the top of the hour.
We're about halfway through the show today and we got

(01:10:31):
another couple of hours left in US. I got plenty
more to talk about. I mentioned some things that are
going to be coming up here in the show. We're
going to visit about that. I do want to get
into lawns. Definitely want to get into lawns to talk
about some tips for early season success. So during this break,
if you didn't during the last break, go online to

(01:10:53):
Gardening with Skip dot com. Download Skip Richtor's lawn care schedule,
Skip Rictor's lawn pest Disease and we'd management schedule to
multi colored charts from January to December to tell you
everything you need to know to grow beautiful ones and
then to deal with the issues that kind of get
in the way of you having that one of your dreams.

(01:11:15):
And I'm gonna come back. I'm gonna go into that.
I want to talk to you about some timely activities
that are very important to be doing now and over
the next.

Speaker 1 (01:11:22):
Couple of mons, Welcome to kt r H garden Line
with Skip Richard.

Speaker 3 (01:11:30):
It's crazy just watch him as.

Speaker 4 (01:11:46):
Many to supposa again, not a sad.

Speaker 2 (01:12:01):
Starting out.

Speaker 6 (01:12:16):
Hey, welcome back to guard Line. I am fully fueled
on a cup of coffee. I'm ready to go. How
about you? What are we going to talk about this morning?
Seven one three, two one two five eight seven four.
One of the things I like, Uh, well, there's a
lot of things I like about doing Guardenline. One of
them getting to visit with gardeners. That's just always fun

(01:12:38):
talking to people who are wanting to have more success
or just more fun in their gardening activities. That is
a blast. I like to visit with gardeners. Been doing
it for a long career, thirty five years with Texas
A and m Agrilife Extension Service as a horticulturist.

Speaker 11 (01:12:54):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (01:12:54):
Just in case you are curious, I spent three years
prior to that, when I first got out of my
master's went to Missouri for three years as a state
fruit grower advisor around the state of Missouri. That was
a lot of fun. Enjoyed that and then had an
opportunity to come back to Conroad, Texas, Montgomery County I
spent a few years there, almost eight years in Montgomery County,

(01:13:16):
went over to Travis County, where Austin is located, and
spent a number of years as horticultures about a dozen
years there, part of which was in administration, in which
I discovered real quick that I liked horticulture, not administration.
After a few years of that, I said, all right,
let's do something different. We came back to Houston to
Harris County. Spent about about eight years here in Houston

(01:13:39):
Harris County, and then finished up in Brass County Brian
College Station my career before I retired there doing little
radio up there as well, and then the opportunity came
for me to come down and do this show. So
here we are. That's the whole nine yards if you
were writing all that down. Basically, I ran around the state,

(01:14:01):
so I enjoy visiting with gardeners, I enjoy helping educate people,
and I most enjoy helping you have success. That is
my goal. I know, I know, I know, I'm certain
of the fact that gardening is a very fun hobby.
It is a blast to do, and if we can
help you find the way to do it successfully, then

(01:14:21):
you're going to enjoy yourself and it's just going to
be a win win all the way around. And so
it breaks my heart to hear somebody say, I got
a brown thumb. I tried to grow stuff. I kill
everything I touch. It's okay, Calm down, Set down the prunters,
step back, put the hoe out of your hands, set
it down, Sit down, come over here, let's sit down.
I got a glass of iced tea for you. We're
gonna sit down and we're gonna talk. We're gonna work

(01:14:43):
this out. And that's what we do here on guarden
Line is to help you have success, whatever kinds of
questions you might have. So if you'd like to give
me a call seven one three two one two five
eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty
eight seventy four, Medina has a number of the good
quality products out there that you know. Medina's been around.

(01:15:03):
In fact, I think Medina may be the longest running
sponsor of garden Line. And we're talking about before my time,
before Randy Lemon's time, before Bill Zach and John Burrow's time,
going all the way back to Dewey Compton days back
in the nineteen fifties when it was called I believe
that what was it the ranch? Oh gosh, I can't

(01:15:25):
even say I know the name of it. Anyway, it
was called a farming ranch Show or something like that.
Medina was a sponsor back in those days. Menins have
been around a long time. People love it. People swear
by it because they've used it and they've had success.
And when you consider all the different products the Medina
offers liquids and solids and things that are microbial in

(01:15:47):
nature of various types, you just see a really nice
blend of product. There's one I was telling somebody about
the other day called Growing Green. It's a three two
three fertilizer solow bag of fertilizer three two three growing Green,
And that one can be used on any kinds of plants.
You can mix it in flower beds, you can, you know,

(01:16:08):
put it in whatever kind of plant growing you want
to do. It is a lower concentration, the three two
three being a lower content, You're not going to burn
your plants with it. I mean, unless you just stuck
a seed on a bag of three two three straight.

Speaker 9 (01:16:22):
It is.

Speaker 6 (01:16:23):
It is a very safe, easy to use product that
works really really well, they also have liquid fertilizers. And
we're about to enter the lawn care season now, and
in the lawn care season, there are a couple of
fertilizers that you can spray on your lawns that are liquid.
It's fast and easy to go across the lawn with

(01:16:43):
the hose en sprayer and just do a quick treatment
of the lawn. You can do that periodically as needed,
you know, to your lawn. One of them is has
to Grow twelve four eight. Has to Grow Lawn twelve
four eight, and it's available as a gallon. You can
buy a gallon. You can also buy the low quart
size applicator bottle that hooks up to the hose. And

(01:17:04):
so what I would recommend is once you buy an
applicator bottle that hooks up to the hose, then the
next time just buy the gallon and you can fill
your applicator bottle and just keep going with it. It's
an economical way to go about it. Same good product
in both of those, you hook them up to the hose,
you follow the label, you take care of the lawn
and a twelve four eight why twelve four eight, Well,

(01:17:25):
if you do, if you talk to a turf scientist,
people who really no turf, they will tell you that
if you were to take grass samples and chop them
up and send them into the lab and say what
nutrients are in these, there's going to be a three
one two or four one two ratio of nutrients in turf.
So if you want to supply turf with what it

(01:17:46):
is using in the right ratio, you don't put triple
thirteen on it. You put a three one two or
four one two. So I know, I'm throwing a lot
of numbers out to stick with me here, twelve four eight,
twelve four eight, four times as much nitrogen the first
number as phosphorus the middle number twelve and four, and
there's twice as much of the third number potassium eight. Okay,

(01:18:10):
twelve four eight is a four to one two excuse me,
a three one two ratio of nutrients. And so with
that kind of ratio, you're feeding grass what it's using
to build more grass density and beauty and everything like that.
And that comes from the folks from Adena has to
grow lawn twelve four to eight. All Right, You're going

(01:18:31):
to find medina all over the place, not hard to
find here in the Greater Houston area. Let's heart out
to the woodlands now and we are going to visit
with Vic this morning. Hey, Vic, welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 8 (01:18:42):
Good morning, Skiff, Good morning Skip.

Speaker 11 (01:18:45):
Thank you for taking my call.

Speaker 6 (01:18:46):
Good morning.

Speaker 13 (01:18:48):
I plan on picking up a little dog wood tree
at the arbor day in the woodlands at the end
of the month, and I was wondering.

Speaker 8 (01:18:57):
Please could you, okay, give me a few tips.

Speaker 13 (01:19:00):
On how to plant it.

Speaker 6 (01:19:03):
Okay, dogwoods in our climate want to be where they
get a little morning sunshine on their face and then
some afternoon shade. That's what they prefer. So if you
can find a spot in the landscape to provide them that,
that is step one. Step two is mixing a lot
of composty material into the soil. You know, verse taps

(01:19:27):
of compost or whatever. Mix it into the soil, create
what the dogwoods will think is a forest floor environment,
you know where for decades leaves have been rotting on
the surface and building the soil. That is important. If
you know anybody that has a dogwood that is doing well,
or if you see one in the woods somewhere and
you could go out and scoop a little bit of

(01:19:48):
soil from around that dogwood. Now what I'm telling you
right now, I can't prove it, but I am ninety
nine percent sure it's right. I think that there are
some microbial components that help a dogwood to establish and survive. Now,
maybe it's coming in with the tree that you're purchasing
or getting from the arbor gate in this arborgate arbor

(01:20:10):
day in this case. But I think I've had several
forticulturists that long time know what they're done. I'd just say, yep,
get a little soil from around that tree and put
it with your tree, and you'll sort of inoculate the
root system, I guess. So I'm just being real clear
that I usually try to stay strictly with, you know,
research based information. This is not one that I can prove,

(01:20:32):
but it's one I think. So the final step would
be if you can get a little bit of soil
from around a successful dogwood tree, mix it in when
you're planting in the planting hole of that tree. I
think that's that would be the final step. But mainly
morning exposure, good organic soil and consistent soil moisture with
a good mulch on the surface.

Speaker 13 (01:20:53):
That's that's really interesting. I have never heard that before.
One of the quick last look, quick question so I've
got is that they say to keep the compost that
you put around the tree after the planting, to keep
it off of the tree body itself. But do you

(01:21:15):
make a little well for it like that so that
it gets water a little more frequently?

Speaker 6 (01:21:25):
I do the I call them a doughnut of soil,
a little dam that's a circular dam around the tree,
you know, just a little bigger than the roots that
came with the tree. If you wanted to make this one,
let's just say make it two feet a foot out
in all directions, a foot diameter circle. Then when you water,

(01:21:47):
you can fill that little earthen dam with water, and
it all has to soak straight down in the root system.
Otherwise it tends to run off. You think you're giving
it a good soaking, but it really isn't going down.
It's kind of went off the top mostly more than down.
So the berm could be helpful for that. As far
as piling stuff against the trunk, you know, just the

(01:22:09):
t an inch or so up against the trunk isn't
gonna hurt anything of a compost or mulch, but you
don't want to just pile it up, so the base
of the trunk stays wet all the time.

Speaker 9 (01:22:19):
Yeah, I got it.

Speaker 11 (01:22:20):
Thank you, Thank you so much.

Speaker 13 (01:22:22):
I'm looking forward to planting it.

Speaker 6 (01:22:25):
Yeah. Good, well, I hope it does well for you.
You take care of Vic, and thanks for the call.
All right, folks, seven one, three, two, five eight seven
for you. I can't I'm going to. I made a
note to myself as I was visiting with Vic, I
gotta go check into this and see if I can
find any research that supports it. It makes sense. Trees
have associations with microbes in the soil, both bacteria actinomy

(01:22:51):
seeds and fungi fungal strands. There are fungi that are
called my micro riza. That's the association between a funk
organism and the root of a plant. And the vast
majority of plants have microhizal associations in their roots and
they connect. They can even connect one plant to another.

(01:23:12):
You know, you got to plant over here and a
plant over there, and the fungi on that plant go
beyond the root system of the plant and they actually connect.
And so it's almost like you now have a telephone
line between the plants where things can move, not just communications,
but other substances can as well. But anyway, the benefits

(01:23:36):
to a plant to have a microriza on it is
very significant, all right, real quick nerd alert. Fun fact,
if they do a strip mine where they literally just
turn the soil upside down big time. I mean they
strip it all off and then they flatten it back
out again. And now what's on the surface isn't good

(01:23:56):
rich you know, forest floor soil, it's some soil they
got dumped over it when the bulldozers moved everything around.
You replant pine trees in that to reforest. Let's say
this is in the southeastern US and you want to reforest.
You plant pine trees in it, and they're going to
struggle because they don't have that association. But if you

(01:24:16):
dip them in a micro rhizal or included in the
planting hole a micorhizal fungal organism that's known to associate
with pine trees, they establish really well because it makes
the roots more effective, more efficient. You can go if
you care about this and want to nerd out, go
online and do Mike Riza and you just have to

(01:24:40):
look up how to spell that, uh Mike Eriza pine
root and get an image of it, a picture of it,
and you'll see this. It looks like a member of
ant Farms where you had that little plate of glass
and you could watch the ants dig down. It looks
like that, and you see the pine reats going down,
but there's just this billowing white cloud all around them.

(01:25:01):
And those are all the micro risis strands that are
making those roots many many, many many many times more
efficient at get me water and nutrients. All right, So anyway,
I think that may be what's going on with the dogwood.
We'll see. I'm gonna hunt it down because I hate
to sit here and tell you stuff that I don't
know is true. But if I do, I'll tell you
I don't know. I think I don't know who was

(01:25:23):
it that said it's not what I don't know, it's
what I know that ain't. So that concerns me. Then
that sound like Will Rogers could have been Mark trained.
Probably Will Rogers. Yeah, we have a lot of things
we think we know, but you know they ain't. So
and that gets us in trouble. Let's take a little break.
We'll be back there you go. Good morning, welcome back,

(01:25:46):
Welcome back to garden Line folks. Good to be with you. Hey,
you've heard me talk about plants for all seasons A
bunch I know, talk about them all the time. At
the garden center, where you can go and get good advice,
you can get assistance, you're gonna find plants that want
to grow here. I mean, these people have been around
since nineteen seventy three. That's right, Flowery family. And where
is it located, Well, it's right on Tumball Parkway with

(01:26:07):
him twenty I excuse me, two forty nine. Sorry, I
had the right numbers, just not enough of them. Highway
two forty nine, right where lou Wette comes in, just
north of that. Okay, now you know the plants. You
know they're going to sell you stuff that wants to
grow here and give you good advice. But did you
know the services they offer. For example, they'll come out
and plant a tree for you. Of course there's a

(01:26:27):
fee for these services, but you buy a tree from them,
And by the way, why not do that? Now you
get a whole nother start on a brand new beautiful tree.
Could be a blooming tree, a shade tree. Why not
have them come out and plant one for you. Now
you don't have to dig that hole. How about some
other advice. How about delivery. That's another thing that they

(01:26:48):
can do. There is a charge for delivery, very nominal fee,
but they can bring plants out for you so you
don't have to carry all that stuff in the back
of your car and get it home. And then there's
another service and that is their container custom containers. Now,
maybe you have a beautiful container and you want it
filled with flowers. Take that container to Plant for All Seasons.
They'll you can pick out the flowers, or they'll hope

(01:27:09):
you pick out the flowers, and they'll plant it for
you and it'll be ready to go. You need pay
them to deliver it too, if you want to take
it right to the house, or go by there and
buy container from them. They got some beautiful containers at
Plants for All Seasons Plants for All Seasons dot com
two eight one, six, seven six, sixteen forty six. Let's
set out to Clearlake. Now we're going to visit with

(01:27:30):
Allen this morning. Hey Ellen, welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 14 (01:27:35):
Thank you a good morning to skip. My question is
about an area behind my garage. It's about twenty five
by twenty feet. A couple of years ago, they did
some utility work back there and destroyed all the grass,
and they came back in put in new sod. It
was looking better than the rest of the yard for
two or three months, and I followed your advice about

(01:27:56):
watering frequently and all of that. Well, then all of
a sudden it just died. I don't know if we
got too much rain flooded it back there, although I
think there's good drainage. But bottom line is, I've had
it covered with thick black plastic for about a year
now because I couldn't get to it and didn't want
it covered with weeds. So what should I do after

(01:28:19):
I take the black plastic off?

Speaker 6 (01:28:22):
All right, so grass really wants to get growing. Once
we get into you know, mid to late March somewhere
in there, it really takes off. So you can soid
it now. It's not going to do a lot of
root establishing right now. That don't mean you can't do it.
It just means you're gonna have to be a little
careful taking care of it. So I would wait, since

(01:28:42):
you already got it covered and everything, and I would
use this time to get that soil a little more ready.
Maybe when they did the utility stuff they ended up
bringing some soil from a little down lower over the top,
or compacted the soil, or who knows what they did,
spreading a little bit of an organic e soil mix
to level it out, get it like you want it,
mixing it in a little bit to the surface, getting

(01:29:02):
it all ready to go, so when you lay sod,
that sid can hit the ground running. When you put
the sod down, you want to water it once or
twice a day initially for about a week, and then
about every other day for about a week uh and
backing off to a normal watering schedule over a few weeks.
But that would probably be your best bet if you

(01:29:25):
I doubt that it's a nutrient problem because there was
sod there before. But if if you wanted to have
a soil test, now would be a good time to
have that done so you're ready to go and you
know how to amend it. And then that is basically
my suggestion. If you feel like it's a little compacted,

(01:29:45):
you can do some nration on it and help help
a little bit with that but mainly once it gets down,
then begin to follow the proper care schedule. You don't
need to fertilize it the first month after you lay
it down. It's got enough nutrient to get it reach
downs and get established, and then you begin to fertilize
it according to my schedule. Okay.

Speaker 14 (01:30:06):
And where is the best place to buy sod?

Speaker 6 (01:30:10):
Oh gosh, there's a lot of a lot of different
places they will sell you sod around this area. There's
a place called All Seasons turf Grass that's out there
in the Brookshire kind of area north of Berkshire, up
in the country there just a bit. They're close and
they can they they would probably be the ones that
I would talk to, you know at this point if

(01:30:32):
you're if you're looking to purchase some sod and bring
it in. They've got some good Zoysias, they've got some
good Saint Augustine as well, and of course Bermuda.

Speaker 14 (01:30:45):
Okay, Yeah, that's what I want. Yeah, that'd be great.

Speaker 6 (01:30:51):
Thanks, all right, it's two eight one three seven five
seventy five five two eight one three seven five seventy
five five telling them you talk to me and let
them tell you about some of the turf options they have,
because they got some good ones.

Speaker 14 (01:31:12):
The rest of the yard is Saint Augustine. Should I
stick with Saint Augustine?

Speaker 6 (01:31:18):
I would unless there's a natural break between them, because
you don't want one grass crawling up on top of
the other one. So there's a sidewalk or something that
you know is separating them. I think for the same
consistent look, you probably are gonna want to You're probably
gonna go go with that. I think they carry the
Raleigh variety of Saint Augustine out there, and that's a

(01:31:39):
good one. Been around for a long time. People, I've
been using it for decades, so that that might be
the one. But talk to them and see what they see,
what they have. They may have some suggestions for you
of some other options. All right, Hey, I'm up against
that absolute heartbreak. Ellen, good luck with that, and thank
you very much for the call. Folks, will be right back.

(01:32:02):
All right, folks, welcome back to the garden line. Hey,
you going to any rodeo concerts this year? Parker McCollum,
you're listening to him second to last day of the rodeo.
Just a word to the wise. I've seen the other

(01:32:23):
day I think at least three shows have already sold out.
Don't delay get your tickets because you don't to miss
this stuff. Rodeo is some of the best entertainers that
we have out there. Let's head out to the Shoreland
area and visit with James this morning. Hey, James, welcome
to garden Line.

Speaker 10 (01:32:39):
Hey, good morning, Good morning, Skip.

Speaker 6 (01:32:41):
How are you good morning?

Speaker 10 (01:32:44):
Do I have a question, well two questions actually, one
of it's about water trees. I've got a place in Belleville.
We've only had maybe five to six inches of rain
in the last sixteen eighteen weeks. How is how important
is it to keep watering trees when they're supposedly going
into the dormant.

Speaker 11 (01:33:06):
Days.

Speaker 6 (01:33:07):
Yeah, if there are no leaves on the tree, it's
essentially not using any water. How long have these trees
been in.

Speaker 10 (01:33:14):
The ground, Okay, they're not They're they're old trees.

Speaker 11 (01:33:24):
You know, they're well so basically.

Speaker 6 (01:33:30):
All right, So they've they've they're well established. I wouldn't
worry about them if you wanted to give them a
good soilacs. I'm a hurt anything for sure, and it
might help. But if they were younger trees and the
root system hadn't established itself. Well, I would say definitely
be giving them some water just to help keep those
roots moist because roots grow during cool season, when the
top is not the it's not a lot of root growth,

(01:33:52):
but there's a little bit when the soil is warm
enough for the roots to develop, and so in order
for them to come out of winter strong, you do
want that root development to continue on. So a little
bit of moisture is hopeful for that if it gets
too terribly dry. A tree the age you're describing, has
a pretty darn extensive root system. So I'm not worried
about the tree dying or anything just yet.

Speaker 10 (01:34:15):
Especially I've lost enough trees already. I mean last year
I had over forty five cut down. So you know
that the drought has just been terrible for the last
several years.

Speaker 7 (01:34:26):
So okay, second question, then you're right there.

Speaker 6 (01:34:31):
Give them about hey, James, give them about an inch
or so of water, maybe more, give them a little
over an inch so however you want to measure that
with a rain gage or something, but give give them
a good soaking. Let's take care of them. Because another
thing to remember about trees, it's not just a matter
of them getting too dry and dying. It's a matter
of them getting too dry and getting stressed, and then

(01:34:52):
stress leads to other things that end up killing the tree.

Speaker 10 (01:34:56):
Right, Okay, next question, how do I kill yo pond
that grows up around the base of the trees without
hurting the trees.

Speaker 6 (01:35:09):
What you would do is you would cut off the
yopond a couple of inches above the ground and immediately
dab a product containing triclopere on that cut surface. You're
not spraying it, You're not drenching it or anything. You're
just dabbing it right on the cut surface. And I
use like a little foam brush like those little foam

(01:35:32):
on a wooden stick you see for painting at the
paint store. Just dab. Get you a product, the triclo
Peer products. If you go to my website, there is
a publication on my website and it is on controlling
woody weeds in the landscape. Is basically what it amounts to,

(01:35:52):
and it's called controlling woody Weeds in the Landscape and
Garden and it's at Gardening with Skip dot Com. It
tells you exactly how to do it, and the reason
I'm sending you there is if you're looking for triclepere.
It names the products that contain it from high yield
and bow knit and fertile loam and Monterey and so on,
and you just use it straight out of the container

(01:36:14):
and dab it right on that fresh cut service. Not
the day after you cut it, but cut it dabit,
cut another one dabit and that'll move down in the
plant and it will work pretty well.

Speaker 15 (01:36:26):
Okay, all right, thank you.

Speaker 5 (01:36:28):
I appreciate your help.

Speaker 6 (01:36:31):
Good luck, all right, take care, thanks, James, appreciate you
call very much. Houston Powder Coders Houston powder Coat has
been around for a while now and they are the
largest powder coder in this whole region. They service a
huge area. If you hear my voice, Houston powder Coder
service is your area. Basically, they can take a piece

(01:36:52):
of metal that's rusty or corroded or just not yet
rusty but needs to get coated quick and they bring
it in and basically powder coating is like a painting process,
but it's not a wet paint that's sprayed on them.
It's a powder that adhars because of an electrostatic charge
that they put on the metal and it goes into
all the nooks and crannies. It sort of melts into

(01:37:14):
the surface there, onto the surface there rather and it
forms a very hard, durable coat and no drips and
runs and things like that from spray painting. Over one
hundred colors that they can do, so I don't care
what it is. Whether it's a big old goose neck
trailer you want to run in, they can handle that,
or whether it's just a small piece of patio furniture

(01:37:35):
or a barbecue pit or anything in between. If it's metal,
cast iron, wrought iron, aluminum, patiofornature. If it's metal, they
can coat it and they can make it brand new.
You got rusty bolts and things holding those chairs together,
It's okay. They'll put stainless steel bolts on there and
when they and part of their process as they get
that'll get that rust under control and then coat it.

(01:37:55):
Houston Powdercoats dot Com two eight one six seven, six
thirty eighty eight. Find them on Facebook. Houston powder Coders
on Facebook. Look at the work they do. You be impressed.
You'll be driving them down the street like I do,
looking for old pieces of rusty furniture. Somebody stuck out
at the curb side, so I can take them and
get them coated and make them like brand new. I'm serious,

(01:38:17):
I really am serious. You know, back in the day,
they made really quality metal furniture. I mean quality metal
furniture worth coating and taking care of and lasting forever
if you havelway take care of it. Now, lately we
got this, especially since COVID. Really I was talking with
the folks at Houston Powder Coaders this past summer and

(01:38:41):
it's basically about sense COVID. We just got this cheap
furniture now that's made and it's it's so dinky that
you know, Yeah, I think can code it and stuff,
but it's not like finding the old good stuff. So
you find somebody who's getting rid of some old quality metal,
you that is a fine and when you code it,
it's like, can't tell the difference. It was brand new.

(01:39:03):
That's how good they are. Take a little break, we'll
be right back for the last segment of this hour. Well,
well else, welcome back to our line, folks. Good to
have you with us. How can we help got a question?
I think I might have an answer seven one three
two one two fifty eight seventy four. Someone was talking

(01:39:28):
to me the other day about a particular product. It's
kind of hard to find, and we were just guessing.
I was telling them, well, you got to go to
Southwest Fertilizer because they're the ones that have it and
they've never been there before. I was like, what, man,
you gotta go. I don't care where you live. It's
in Southwest Houston, corner of Busine and Runwick. But let
me tell you something. If you're looking for a product,
especially one it's just not going to be found everywhere,

(01:39:49):
don't run everywhere looking here and there, and yonder being
told no everywhere. Just head down Southwest Fertilizer because Bob's
probably going to have it there if you want to
give him a calt seven one three six six six
one seven four four. But it could be a quality tool.
They got a ninety foot long wall of quality tools.
It could be something to manage weeds or diseases or pests,

(01:40:09):
or it could just be a quality fertilizer. It could
be an organic product. Largest organic selection in the region
period Southwest Fertilizer corner abyssin Ut and Runwig. And I'll
tell you this. When you go in, you're going to
be greeted with friendly service, and you are going to
find a selection of products like nowhere else period. If
they don't have it, you don't need it, because they

(01:40:30):
have it. And you're going to find quality products, stuff
that really does work. Not everything that says it controls
this lot or the other is equally effective at controlling
this DoD or the other. You go by Southwest, let
them talk to you. They'll tell you what works. They'll
tell you how to work, how to use it. Southwest

(01:40:50):
Fertilizer corner Bisinut and runwing by the way. When you're
by there, tell them happy seventieth. I guess they're about
to have their seventy firth and a first tree here.
Now been this long enough, good place to go, save
yourself the trouble stop once get it done. Southwest Fertilizer.
I mentioned that I want to talk a little bit

(01:41:11):
about lawns earlier today, and why not do it now
since we're winding up this hour. We'll got another one
left in us here today. So lawns. If you look
at my schedule, my lawn care schedule, that's how to
grow a beautiful lawn. It's got fertilizing, it's got aerrating, mowing, watering.
It's all there on the lawn. It also has trace

(01:41:32):
mental supplement listed there on the lawn. If you look
at that, you will see that fertilizing with an early
green up starts in late February on through about three
weeks of March. Now that is an optional application. It
is not going to make your lawn take off growing
and just you know, get all deep, so you got
to mow it. It's going to green it up. That's

(01:41:54):
what it's going to do. Because the temperatures are still
cool at that point in time, it'll start growing. But
it's an early green up and it's optional. I want
to be clear about that. Starting in April, we begin
our warm season growing season, fertilizations of lawns in earnest,
and that would be where we start talking about slow
release nutrients, so that when you put those nutrients down

(01:42:16):
for weeks and weeks and weeks, if not months, several months,
they're going to be releasing those nutrients gradually out to
your turf grass. But that comes in April. The way
you know, this is a calendar. My lawn care schedule
is basically a calendar goes January December. But another way
to put it is when you mowed your lawn twice.
That's what I tell people a lot of times is

(01:42:37):
if you've gone out and mowing weeds doesn't count, don't
count mowing weeds. When your lawn has grown enough to
need to be mowed twice, you need to be fertilizing
by then. For sure, that is the time when it's
going to take it up. It's going to hit the ground,
run and do a lot of good. So there you go,
that is something to be looking to. I still see

(01:43:01):
bags of leaves being put at the curb side. Just
know this, in every bag of leaves is three pourts
of the nutrients that tree took up during the year.
There are way more leaves, and there are way more
nutrients in the leaves than there are in the wood,
the trunk, the branches of the tree. Primarily it's in
the leaves where most of the nutrients are. So when
you look at them sitting there a curb side, it's like, Okay,

(01:43:23):
Nature's own free organic fertilizer and maltz right there in
the bag. You can hauler it off to some dump.
Are you gonna take that stuff and use it? In
the lawn, and I would hope you'd take that. I say,
in the lawn. In the landscape, you can mow over
leaves with a good shredding mulching mower and drop them

(01:43:44):
down in the turf. If your turf is a standard
type of lawn, you know, like saying Augustine mode, a
little higher, a little looser. If your lawn is a
golf course green mowed down half inch high, no, you're
not gonna get leaves to go down in that. But
why not gather them with your mower and a bag
bagger and then take them to your fire beds and
put them in there, or run the shrubs or compost them,

(01:44:06):
make good quality material out of them. So just some
things to be thinking about on that. Generally, we don't
worry about watering our lawn until we get into March.
That is the first month where historically, historically we need
about one half of an inch of water per week

(01:44:26):
for the month of March, So that would be what
four weeks two inches for the month of March. January
February historically don't hit that level yet. Now, what happens
when this cole weather goes away and we get up
to eighty eighty five for three or four weeks. Okay, yeah,
you can talk me into water. That's probably it, but
that's probably not going to happen either. Now. I also

(01:44:49):
want to talk about the other schedule, which is pest weed,
a disease management schedule. This one again, both of these
are free for downloading. I would encourage you to do
yourself this favor. Go to the website, download them, print
them out, print them out, and just have them there
with you. I have mine printed on a little card

(01:45:10):
stock paper, so one on one side, one on the other,
one piece of paper to flip it upside down when
I need to take it with you when you go shopping.
Because what you're going to find, for example, is starting
in mid January, which guess where we are mid January.
If you're going to do a pre emergent herbside to
prevent weeds, that's done from mid January through February. If

(01:45:34):
you live down south, if you're listening to me in
Galveston or down south, somewhere down south, well Santa Fe
or wherever, you need to go ahead and consider getting
started on that pretty quick. As we get into warmer weather,
we can have warm season, weeds sprouting in the winter. Here,

(01:45:55):
we just live in this zone where we're kind of
caught in between the two. The pre emergent has to
be down before the weeds germinate to do its best work.
That's how they work. So that would be done now.
Now does eBoy need to do that. No, if you've
got a nice dense lawn and you have a weed problem,
you don't have to treat it just in case the
weed might show up someday. But most lawns have some

(01:46:16):
thin spots. Most lawns had to deal with some weed problems. Nature.
It can be. It can throw us a curve. So
if you're gonna do one, do it ahead of time,
don't do it after the fact. Kind of playing baseball,
you need to not wait until the catchers holding the
ball to start swinging the bat, right, You got to
you gotta start before the ball gets there so that

(01:46:39):
you get you can get to hit your home run.
So the same is true with weed management. With premergents,
you got to do that ahead of time, but it's
on the schedule there now post emergence, this is prime time.
If you've got weeds in your lawn, now those are
cool season weeds and you can spray them now to
get the best effect. Don't go away because when we
come back at the top of this hour news, I'm

(01:47:00):
gonna explain post emergent week control and why it's so important.
Right now, welcome to Katie r.

Speaker 1 (01:47:07):
H Garden Line with Skip Ricordes Crazy.

Speaker 3 (01:47:15):
Grim. You just watch him as.

Speaker 4 (01:47:25):
Many good things to see black crazy ways as.

Speaker 3 (01:47:33):
Again not a sign gas.

Speaker 2 (01:47:40):
Samone.

Speaker 6 (01:47:49):
All right, folks, we are officially entering our final hour
of garden Line today. You got a question that would
be a good time to call. We'll be back next Saturday, though,
if it can hold till then. By the way, I
hope you have a wonderful day out in the garden
and landscape. It has been a really, really nice weekend.
I enjoy it. I like cold weather, by the way,

(01:48:11):
so I'm good with that. But today's gonna warm up
enough to get outside this afternoon, get a few things done,
and this week's gonna be a good one. We've got
a really nice, pleasant week coming, so you good time
to go out and visit your garden centers. Good time
to pick up your supplies, your fertilizers and things for
your lawn and just be ready to go, ready to
go on that. I was talking earlier about things to

(01:48:33):
do and whatnot, and someone called me and was asking
about a Microlife. The green bag is a six two
four of Microlife. We were also talking about some others.
They have a number of different quality products you know
that you're going to find from the folks at Microlife.
It's it's just what they do. They have an excellent
line of both liquid and solid products, granular products as well.

(01:48:57):
For example, there is the Hybrid product, which is a
twenty zero five lots of nitrogen in that one, and
it's a hybrid between a sor released type of a
nitrogen that is called nutrileene in it and the regular
organics that are in all Microlife different products. They also,
by the way, have a really nice quality one called

(01:49:19):
Microlife Ultimate that's an eight four six. It's a little
stronger in concentration of nutrients than the green Bag sixty four.
Microlife Ultimate gives you that extra boost, and all Microlife products,
by the way, are going to provide you over one
hundred plus of the nutrients, the minerals. It's got vitamins,
natural plant hormones, natural plants stimulators, just all kinds of

(01:49:43):
things to help that plant thrive. That's what nature does.
You know, Nature creates a lot of things in addition
to what it creates. The presence of microbes does so
much to help plants thrive. It is we could do
a whole show sometimes just the surface of the benefits
of my micros. And that is exactly why they call

(01:50:05):
it micro life. Microlife fertilizers provide that kind of boost.
You can find them all over town. For example, if
you want to go to the website microlifefertilizer dot com,
you can find out more about all the products, liquid,
grand to learn and so on, as well as the
places where you can buy them. And I can just
tell you this, You're going to be hard pressed to

(01:50:25):
find a good quality garden center, feed store, ace hardware
stores places like that that don't carry microlife products because
they are widely widely available. You got a question we
can help you with seven one three two one two
five eight seven four seven one three two one two
fifty eight seventy four. I was talking about what to
do in the lawns right now, and I ended with

(01:50:46):
talking about broadleaf weeds. All right, so let's let's talk
a minute. Walk outside, and I think you're going to
be hard pressed to look at your lawn and not
see some broadleaf weeds growing. It could be chickweed, It
could be handbit, It could be clover. It could be
that velcrow weed that they call cleavers. You know when
you touch it at like stix to you. It can
be a lot of different things. Right now, dandy lyons

(01:51:09):
another example of that. I think I mentioned hinbit. It's
a real common one. But these weeds right now are
in their pre bloom stage oil some of them are
actually about to start blooming here. This is a stage
where they're easiest to control with the least application, just
a little spray with a post emergent herbicide or hand pulling.

(01:51:31):
I was out in my yard yesterday, as a matter
of fact, walking by, and I see this little patch
and I reached down. Just hand pull them up, carry
them with me, throw them in the trash. I mean
you can do that. If you got quite a bit
of it, you're going to probably want to spray unless
you just won't spend a lot of time on your
hands and knees pulling them up. But the main thing
is get them out of here, and here's why. When

(01:51:51):
they start blooming and setting seeds, the products that killed
them so easily now will not be as effective at
that time. So now's the time more effective spraying simple,
easy to do. Plus they don't have seeds on them yet.
If you wait until they have seeds, even if you
hadn't pull them, you're going to shake loose a bunch

(01:52:13):
of seeds, even if you're careful. You don't want to
do that. And if you spray them and kill the plant,
that doesn't mean you've gone in and killed the seed
that is already formed in the plant. So don't delay.
Timeliness is critical on broad season of broad leaf cool
season weeds, and now is that time. And if you
look at my schedule all the way down to the

(01:52:33):
weeds kill existing row starting January first, it says apply
a post emergent herbicide before cool season weeds bloom, and
that would be now. And if you kind of are
wondering how do I know when they bloom, Well, think
about bluebonnets on the roadside. Right now, You've got blue
bonnet plants on the roadside that are probably about four
four inches across something like that, depending on growing conditions

(01:52:58):
and they're just sitting there. They're flat, not doing much,
but they're there. But when we get to early April,
boom everywhere. See of blue all through the pastures and
roadsides from blooming blue bonnets. That's what your weeds are doing.
They're sitting there now, they're about to start growing, and
in fact, in the southern parts of the listening area,
they already are starting to really put on some growth.

(01:53:19):
Don't delay, get it done now. If you're going to
do it, if not, hample, if not, at least mow
and capture as much of that as you can to
prevent receding your lawns so badly with those weeds. Let's
go out to Paarland now and we are going to
visit with Bill this morning. Hey Bill, welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 5 (01:53:38):
Thank you, good morning. I had a friend of Katula
to just showed some figs heat planned or grafted or
what have you, a strawberry sig and I'm looking for
something like that.

Speaker 6 (01:53:53):
Okay, first of all, I bet I'm on one of
three people listening that knows where Catula is. The Cartula Cowboys,
Katula Cowboys. So yeah, yeah, So strawberry fig off the
top of my head. I don't know where to get it.

(01:54:14):
Let me think a minute here. I know our garden
centers that you hear me talk about all the time,
they're pretty good at carrying various types of fruit trees,
and I would probably start by calling one of them.
You know, Arbigate has figs and fruit year round. That's
an example. But a lot of other good garden centers
must nursery done and kind of close to your area.
Maybe even Jorge sitting gardens over there now, then he

(01:54:36):
may have some of those or know where he can
get them, and I would start there after that, specifically,
going after that one fig. It's not a common one,
strawberry is It's not like you see it in garden
centers all the time, so you may end up having
to do a mail order on that one. And I
hate to send you off male ordering fig trees if

(01:54:59):
someone local has them, so that that would be my
suggestion is give some of those garden centers a call
and see if they have them or if they can
get them in. If you're willing to do a little
bit of a drive. If you're going to head to Katula,
you got to go past in Channing gardens and in
Channing Forest, for example, on the word in that way. So, uh,
you might want to try something like that. If not,

(01:55:22):
what you can do is if you will, if you
will hang on as we wind this up, I'm going
to put you on hold, and if you want, just
hang on, my producer will give you an email. If
you'll send me an email, I will find that fig
for you and send you a location for it. So
I'll leave that up to you. I'll do I'll say
I'll find it. I'll do my best to find it

(01:55:45):
email all right, Bill?

Speaker 8 (01:55:46):
Great?

Speaker 12 (01:55:47):
Thanks?

Speaker 6 (01:55:47):
All right? Not the only deal is here, your friend,
your your friend in Katula. I'm not going to ask much.
I just want them to pick half the strawberry figs
off the tree when it finally produces, and drive them
all the way to the kter H station for me.
And I'll call it even. How about that.

Speaker 5 (01:56:01):
I've already got dubs.

Speaker 6 (01:56:02):
On that, and that's unreasonable. Okay, well then I'll take
the other half. I'll take the other half.

Speaker 11 (01:56:10):
See you, Bill, Thank you, Sorr, thank.

Speaker 6 (01:56:12):
You, Bye bye, there you go for sure. Hey, Wildbird's Unlimited.
What a great place you have got six wild Birds
Unlimited stores here in the Houston area to choose from.
That's that's amazing. If you live in clear Lake or
anywhere near clear Lake. There's the one on Eldorado up

(01:56:32):
in Cypress on Barker Cypress in Houston on bel Air
Boulevard that is kind of off south and west a
little bit mostly west, and on Moborial Drive West in Houston.
Do west is another one epin Kingwood on Kingwood Drive
and down in Paarland on East Broadway Street in Pairland.
Now you can go to wubu dot com forward slash

(01:56:53):
Houston w b U dot com forward slash uston find
your wild Bird's unlimited store near you. Wonderful selection of feeders,
wonderful selection of bird houses, and probably best of all,
the highest quality bird seed. You're gonna find high efficiency,
not dumped on the ground, not kicked off because birds
don't like it. But kind of like me when I

(01:57:17):
eat a mixed nuts, the brazil nuts are not going
in my mouth. I just don't like brazil nuts, but
I'll pick to all the cashews. Get the cashews and
peanuts out of there. Seriously, though, those red bird bebees,
they don't both birds don't care for them. But at
wild Birds Unlimited, you get stuffbirds want to eat, so
your dollars are well spent, more efficient way to purchase
a quality, quality bird seed. And they even have no

(01:57:38):
mess blends that don't have shells on them. Sunflower seeds,
for example, are already shells, so you don't have that
all over the yard either. Wild Birds Unlimited. Let's go
to Cleveland now and we're gonna visit with Ron this morning. Hey, Ron,
welcome to garden Line. All right, I'll tell you what

(01:57:59):
I'm going to put Ron back on home. We need
to take a little break here. Let's take a break. Ron,
hang on. I'll come back to you as soon as
we get back from break. All right, we're back, folks,
welcome back. Let's head out to Cleveland, Texas now and
visit with Ron this morning. Hi, Ron, welcome to the
guarden Line.

Speaker 9 (01:58:18):
Good morning.

Speaker 6 (01:58:19):
Can you hear me now, yes, sir, I can.

Speaker 9 (01:58:23):
Good.

Speaker 6 (01:58:23):
We get glad we got a good connection.

Speaker 9 (01:58:26):
Yes, sir, thank you. Quick history. I got this nine
foot tall Texas mountain Laurel. Last year I had lost
all the buds I had talked to you. I was
really disappointed. We determined it had gotten too wet. So
it's into like a five fall trunks that come up,
and I got two that are rubb and I was

(01:58:47):
gonna take and cut one out, but that one's got
all these buds and starting to come out. It seems
kind of.

Speaker 6 (01:58:53):
Early for that.

Speaker 9 (01:58:55):
But if I take and cut that one one out,
is this thing's still going to push the energy into
making new buds and the rest of the plan or
any thoughts on that?

Speaker 6 (01:59:06):
Yeah, good question.

Speaker 8 (01:59:07):
Ron.

Speaker 6 (01:59:08):
The buds have already been produced wherever they're going to be.
There's no bud production to come yet. This spring's buds
will produced last fall and a late summer and fall,
so you're not going to change anything there. If the
branches start off, let's say the two trunks start off
a little bit of a distance apart, but then the

(01:59:29):
branches are leaning together. You could tie like a rope
around them and pull those branches out to the angle
direction you want them to be gradually, and after a
few months you can take those ropes off and they're
gonna have formed back in that direction. You know, you
lean them out a little past where you want them
to be, so when you let go, they're going to

(01:59:49):
come back a little bit but it's gonna take a
few months for that to happen, so that would avoid
the need to prune. If you like having those trunks,
you could do that. And if the trunks are right
together at the bottom, well I don't know that that
would have come to show a lot, but anyway, that
that is an option short of printing. A texamunt laurel
grows rather slow compared to other shrubs, and so it'd
be nice if you can open it up and just

(02:00:10):
make a nicer, bigger, broader bush. That may be a
plus for you to avoid printing.

Speaker 9 (02:00:15):
Okay, all right, all right, well that answers, I'm gonna
let this thing go ahead and butt out this year.
I'm glad to have some and like say, last year
I talked to you, it had hundreds of them that
just dropped off and apparently it had gotten too wet
from that we had talked about. So all right, well,
I'm we'll let this ride until the buds are gone

(02:00:36):
and the flowers right and aroma has gone, and then
we'll go from there.

Speaker 6 (02:00:42):
You know, when when we use the word gaudi ron,
we're usually talking about something our eyes are seeing, you know,
like a pink flamingo in the front yard. But if there,
if you could use Gotti to describe a fragrance, it
would be Texas Mountainlaurel.

Speaker 5 (02:00:57):
That is.

Speaker 6 (02:01:00):
Gaudy, it's wonderful, but it is syrupy sweet. All right, man,
thanks a lot. I appreciate that. All right, there you go, Yeah,
that's true. Texas mount Law. We did a when I
was working dragon Life extension. We had a nationwide extension
event in San Antonio and we were at the Botanical

(02:01:21):
Garden there and we were giving people a tour, and
we had people from Wisconsin and all over the place,
and we walked around the corner of one of those
little rock buildings, you know, the little white limestone rock
buildings like you see in the whole country. Walked around
the corner of that and all of a sudden, people
are going, what is that smell? And they were looking around.
They couldn't see blooms anywhere, and it was a Texas
Mountain lauril r on the other side of the building.

(02:01:43):
The wind was blowing the fragrance around around the side
where everybody was standing, and they'd never smelled anything like
that in their life. If you have never smelled Texas
Mount Laura, what you need to do. Do they still
make super bubble bubble gum? I don't know. I don't
know if they do or not. Nicholas, do you know?
Do you know they still make that super bubble that
wraps up and I mean it fills your mouth with

(02:02:04):
bubble gum. Anyway, there's a great version of it. Some
people they say they smell like grape kool aid. I
think they smell like great super bubble bubble gum. That's that, sir,
syrupy great fragrance anyway, that's what they smell like. I'm
telling you. That is a fragrant plant for sure. In
the spring. In the spring, native native to central Texas

(02:02:25):
grows out of cracks in the limestone rock in the
hill country. So you bring it over here to Houston,
get it up out of the out of the wet soggis.
It doesn't want to be in a swamp. It will
not tolerate that. So plant it high and dry where
the water drains away, and you can grow them here
just fine. Slow grower boy. When they bloom, stops trafficking.

(02:02:46):
That's probably a control substance. The fragrance of Texas and
Mountain Morral blooms because it is intoxicating for sure. There
you go. Hey, I want to remind you again that
two Saturdays from yesterday, Histery, I'm going to be at
the Enchanted Gardens Nursery just north of Richmond Rosenberg on

(02:03:08):
the Katie Foster side of Richmond Rosenberg. They're on FM
three fifty nine up there. I'm going to be giving
a talk on container and raised bed gardening. So if
you don't have space for gardening, if you don't like
getting out there and trying to break up the soil
every year, you know, the rototiller or spading fork and

(02:03:28):
trying to get your garden spot ready for it, raised
beds and containers are a great way to go. And
even for people that have space, raised beds and containers
are a great way to go. If you live on
the fifteenth story high rise and downtown Houston or whatever,
you got a little balcony out there, as long as

(02:03:48):
you get sunlight, you can grow vegetables in a container
out on your balcony. You can do that. I know
people that do that. My daughter, one of my daughters,
has done that. So you just got to know how
to do it. I'm going to provide you a lot
of hopeful tips out there at Enchanted Gardens FM three
fifty nine Richmond Rosenberg on Ready for this, write this
down Saturday, January thirty, first last day of the month,

(02:04:12):
from twelve thirty to one thirty. I'll be out there.
They are going to be loaded up on vegetables and
seeds and soils for planting and everything you need to know.
I promise you this will be inspirational. We're going to
have fun. I like to cut up. I don't like
to be too serious when I'm giving talks. We're gona
have a lot of fun. Come on out. I'd love
to meet you. We're going to be giving away some
Medina products. They're providing some forgiveaway. We've got some Enchinned

(02:04:35):
garden products that are going to be there for giveaways
as well. So all you got to do is show up,
but make sure and show up with room in the
car because you're going to want to take some cool
stuff home to get vegetable guarding. By then, people are
going to be so addicted to vegetable spring gardening that
I don't know. We meant to squirre them off with

(02:04:55):
the water hose. Just calm them down a little bit.
I get so excited in about gardening. I don't know
what to do. I'm serious. I just if I could
sleep in the garden, I think I would. Maybe I
can sleep in the garden. I don't know. Anyway, I
love being outside in the garden. And so here we go.
You don't have a spot to garden, Come see me.
I'm gonna tell you how to garden anyway. You got room,

(02:05:17):
but you don't apply off the back forty Come see
me tell you how to do that. I got some inspiration,
I got some fun some funny photos too. People will
do crazy things in order to be able to garden.
So I'll just leave that as the teaser. Come see me.
I'll show you what I'm talking about. Channy Gardens on
the thirty first of January. All right, that sounds good enough,

(02:05:39):
I hope. So looking forward to seeing you. Always like
to meet people that listen to garden Ice my first
appearance of the year. It's an early one, early one,
getting out there early on. If you've never been doing
chan died, I don't care where you live, you need
to drive over there. I was enchanted a while back.
It was a couple of years ago. I guess I
was walking through it. They have people that they come
from Austin, Texas to try, not Austin County, Austin, Texas,

(02:06:02):
to drive over to go to in Chaney Gardens because
they knew how cool of a place it was. That's
what we're talking about. Alrighty, that sound good. Well, let's
see here, we're about to have to take a break here,
and so I'm not going to start a big new topic.
But I do have some more things that I would
like to talk about. And I mentioned earlier about my

(02:06:22):
schedule the long pest disease and we'd management schedule. I
didn't tell you though that at the bottom or options
for controlling insects, diseases, and weeds, both preventing and killing
existing ones, both synthetic options and organic options. So if
you're an organic gardener, there are things you can use
to manage issues organically, and on the schedule you will

(02:06:42):
find those things as well as the perfect timing to
do them. So download a copy from Gardening with Skip
dot com Gardening with Skip dot Com, be right back
and propose the name of that move in that that
was in space Cowboys I think it was oh my
to the now older actors ton of E. Jones folks, And.

Speaker 4 (02:07:05):
There you go.

Speaker 6 (02:07:07):
Hey, welcome back to guard Line. Guess what we got
about just under half an hour left here today. You
got a question, We'll be happy to help you. Otherwise,
hold your peace until next Saturday. In the meantime, I
hope you have a really good week out in the garden.
It's going to be a good one. Lots of good
information out there.

Speaker 7 (02:07:21):
Boy.

Speaker 6 (02:07:22):
I was starting to run around some of our garden
centers here lately checking them out. Boy, they ever ready
to go rare and to go for springtime to arrive.
And I hope you have that same excitement as I do,
because that is a cool thing for sure. Absolutely, you
are listening to garden Line and the number here is

(02:07:43):
seven one three, two one two five eight seven four,
seven one three two and two fifty eight to seventy four.
Give me a call. Let's help you to have success
with the things that you want to accomplish in your garden.
You know, one of the ways that we have success
is by having quality ingredients to make our plants happy.
That would be like fertilizers. And you go to your

(02:08:05):
local ACE Hardware store, and you're gonna find products that
you hear me talk about here on Guarden Line, product
brands that are quality, from synthetics to organics, you name it.
Quality tools to help you have success in your garden.
If you're dealing with pests and weeds and diseases, that too,
you can find at your local ACE Hardware store. If

(02:08:25):
you're do it yourself and it's time to get out
this spring and get going, maybe you need to do
some painting, maybe you need to restain the deck, whatever
kind of tools you need, What are kind of products
you need, they're there at your local ACE Hardware store.
And for hand tools, Oh my goodness, all these wonderful
I'm I'm a d Wault fan myself. You know, the
black and yellow tools, but they've got de Walt, they've

(02:08:47):
got Stanley, they've got black and Deck or they got Craftsmen,
they got their ACE brand themselves, they got Milwaukee tools,
and then a lot of ACE hardistres. You're going to
find the Ego or Ego lawnmower, Ego lawnmowers, which I
also have one of those. I like my Ego lawnmower,
battery powered lowmer makes it real easy. Just hit the
ground run and don't have to worry about oil. I

(02:09:08):
used to have a gas powered more and those are great,
I mean lots you know good, used them forever, but
I never would take care of draining the gas out
and doing the things I needed to do. So note
the next spring, I'd try to start it and it
wouldn't start, and I'd take it to the shop and
so on. Now I just got my electric power to
go and just go to town on it. They have
other brands to not just Ego Moors. But I was

(02:09:30):
in an ACE hard restore at the other day look
at some of the new new versions of Ego and
the other power tools that come from them. That's typical
of ASE Hardware.

Speaker 5 (02:09:38):
You know.

Speaker 6 (02:09:38):
Each store is independently owned, so they can carry the
things they want. Stuff that people are clamoring about right now.
The turtle Box speakers. That is one that I had
to have. An ACE Hardware store explained to me about
the turtle box. Okay, what's the deal? Why are these
so popular? And oh my gosh when they got through,

(02:09:59):
is like, yeah, I get it. Those are cool. That
sounds like Aceardware though Asardware Texas dot com. That's where
you find all my garden line. ACE Hardware stores from
Beaumont all the way down to Corpus Christian everywhere in between.
ACE Hardware Texas dot Com stores like K and M
and Kingwood on Kingwood Dry, Kilgore's Clear like Lumber on

(02:10:20):
East Main, Katie Hardware on Pinoak and Oldtown Katie Port, Lavaca,
ACE on Calhoun Plaza, Victoria Ace and Navarro Street, All
Star ACE in Magnolia and Lake Conroe ACE up on
Highway one oh five West outside of Conroe up TOURD
Montgomery direction. No excuse me, Yeah, that's right, like Conroe West.

(02:10:43):
I'd stop think for a minute, been by there one
hundred times. All right, let's got friends wood and talk
to Mike this morning. Hey Mike, welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 11 (02:10:53):
Hey Skip, good morning.

Speaker 6 (02:10:55):
I've got a couple of Cycloman's and a hey, I
got a couple of sid Clemens in uh window boxes.

Speaker 11 (02:11:03):
Yeah, obviously bray made when it gets real cold.

Speaker 8 (02:11:07):
But I'm thinking that I haven't gotten any blooms lately.

Speaker 6 (02:11:10):
I've got some potentials that just aren't gonna bloom.

Speaker 11 (02:11:13):
Do I go ahead and deadhead.

Speaker 6 (02:11:15):
Those and wait for spring. Well cyclemen's kind of a
cool seasoned flowers, you know, like plant like planting pansies.
They're not gonna make it when we get real hot
and stuff. So uh, you could try fertilizing them a
little bit, get a little growth on them, make sure
they stay adequately moist, and get plenty of sunlight or
plenty of light. They don't need direct sun, but a

(02:11:37):
but a good brightness to the leaves. Uh, and see
if they'll produce some more for you. It may be
that they're kind of wound up and done, which I
guess time will tell.

Speaker 3 (02:11:47):
On that one.

Speaker 6 (02:11:48):
Mike.

Speaker 7 (02:11:49):
Oh, okay, Now, I was just hoping for some color
before you know, June.

Speaker 11 (02:11:54):
But well, we'll see what.

Speaker 6 (02:11:55):
I can do with it. Yeah, if you got window boxes, okay? Good? Six?
So six?

Speaker 11 (02:12:03):
So?

Speaker 6 (02:12:04):
Uh does the sun shine directly on that window box
any or is it is it shaded through the day?

Speaker 11 (02:12:10):
Just make it most of it is shielded or dappled.

Speaker 6 (02:12:15):
M Okay. So maybe at some point you may want
to switch over to a plant that likes bright shade,
you know, Terurinia or wishbone flower does well in that
kind of area, kind of spreads out it's not totally cascading,
but it'll spill over the sides a little bit.

Speaker 12 (02:12:37):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (02:12:37):
That may be one that is of interest to you.
There's a lot of other good ones out there. But
if you don't see some blooms on those things in
the next two or three weeks starting to form, uh,
then I might get ready for spring transition to something else.

Speaker 11 (02:12:52):
Well, let me ask you something. These these cyclemen will
come back next year.

Speaker 9 (02:12:57):
Right.

Speaker 6 (02:13:00):
If you could keep them alive. If you can keep
them alive, if I'm gonna swap it out with I'm
gonna swap it out with something else this summer because
I know it's going to be too hot, but I.

Speaker 11 (02:13:11):
Was going to put him inde I think, so.

Speaker 6 (02:13:14):
All right, Okay, well, yeah, we'll try it and see
if it works for you. I'd like to know because
I've never I said, try the you're swapping it out
and trying to keep it alive. Let me know if
that works for you, because I'd be curious. I've never
I've never known anybody to carry them through like that.
So but I'm open minded, willing to hear if it works.

Speaker 11 (02:13:38):
If you can get it to work, I hate to
waste money.

Speaker 8 (02:13:44):
I get it.

Speaker 6 (02:13:44):
I get that you're singing my song. Thanks, Mike, I
appreciate it. You tell you bet you take care well.
Of these days. I'm gonna write a book on tight
wide gardening because I got a lot of ideas on that.
All right, let's go to an Ansota, going to talk
to David. Hey, David, welcome to Garden Line.

Speaker 11 (02:14:04):
Morning.

Speaker 6 (02:14:04):
Skip.

Speaker 11 (02:14:05):
So the weather Chamtel lived last night. They said it
was going to be twenty nine, and it was twenty
five at my house. I did wrap my bank, but
I didn't. That's that's what my affirmis.

Speaker 6 (02:14:19):
Are you kidding me? Wow? Okay, okay, So I don't
know a.

Speaker 11 (02:14:28):
Tree around the trunk, but I didn't put a heat
source on it.

Speaker 6 (02:14:34):
What do you think is it's it? You said it's
in the ground or container. I missed that.

Speaker 11 (02:14:41):
Oh it's in the ground. It's seven years old, eight
inches around the trunk.

Speaker 6 (02:14:50):
Okay, I think, well, I don't. It's not going to
be dead. I think if you had the trunk wrapped adequately,
that slows the cooling can considerably, and so it dipped
down cold. I'm not calling you a liar. I just
don't think it got as cold as you're reading there
said it did. But either way, if you have anything

(02:15:14):
survive above the graft, then it'll come right back. I
have a feeling it's going to do a little better
than you fear. But I would like you to let
me know if you don't mind when it comes back
taking a picture of it or something, send it to me.
I would like to see that, because is this a
Meyer lemon?

Speaker 11 (02:15:33):
Improved Meyer?

Speaker 6 (02:15:36):
Yeah? So improved Meyer is actually a cross between Yeah,
it's a cross between an orange and a lemon. And
even though it's very tart and lemony, it is heartier
than a real lemon. A real lemon would be in
bigger trouble than the improved Meyer would be. That doesn't
mean it's fully hearty and it's going to take twenty
five degrees. It's just to say that you have a

(02:15:58):
little more heartiness there than a real lemon and would have.
So let's wait and see see how it does.

Speaker 11 (02:16:05):
I was able to keep it alive through Yuri, so maybe.

Speaker 8 (02:16:11):
Okay, all right, thank you for your time, all right, buddy.

Speaker 6 (02:16:15):
You bet let me Let me keep me posted though,
because I'm always curious how these things do. But thanks
a lot for your call. Will you take care appreciate that?

Speaker 11 (02:16:23):
Thank you?

Speaker 6 (02:16:24):
Hi mm hmm, bye bye citrus. We love our citrus.
I've got a satsuma, which is one of my favorite centris.
So they're also very very hearty, uh, compared to most
citrus types. Not the heartiest citrus, serious, but they're hardy.

(02:16:44):
I've got one of those, and so it's gonna do good.
Didn't even cover it up last night. I think it'll
be fine.

Speaker 13 (02:16:50):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (02:16:50):
And then I've got a blood orange and I put
in about a year ago, and it's it's a young tree.
So young trees don't have the same heartiness that are
established version of that same tree would have. So I
threw a cover over the top of it, and I
think we'll be okay with some warmth rising up underneath it.
We'll see, we will see for sure. All Right, you're

(02:17:11):
listening to garden Line. Let's see here. I believe I'm
due for a break, aren't I, Nicholas. Let's take a
little break and we'll be back for our final segment.
We'll back. Welcome back to guarden Line, folks. We got
a little bit of time left. That means I got
time for a call. Gonna give me a shot, we
can get your questions answered. What do they say?

Speaker 12 (02:17:31):
Uh?

Speaker 6 (02:17:32):
Speak now for I hold your piece? Speak now or forever?
Wait until next Saturday to ask your question. Seven one
three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one
three two one two five eight seven four. As we
were talking about earlier, spring lawn care is upon us.
If you have broad leaf weeds in your lawn, you
have two options. I actually have three. The third one

(02:17:56):
is no good. The third one, by the way, I'll
just go backwards here. Third one is don't do anything
about it. Let them grow, let them bloom, let them
set seed, let them sentence you to a lot more
weed problems next cool season. The two options that I
was referring to are one hand pull them, get on
your hands and knees. Make sure the soul is moist.
Because it hasn't been raining. You probably need to water
to loosen up that soul. Help get the roots out,

(02:18:18):
pull them out, get rid of them. If that is
not acceptable, if you've got too many weeds, or you
don't do that, then you need to spray them, and
spray with a post emergent weed control product. There are
a number of them out there on the market. But
this is the best time of the year to use them.
And here's why. Once weeds bloom and set seed, they
become as we say, reproductive, and they are not as

(02:18:42):
easily controlled with sprays at that time. They just aren't. Plus,
if it's gone far enough, they may have viable seed already.
So even if you did kill the weed, the seeds
are going to drop to the ground. The weed seeds
are not affected at that point, then they just you
still have the same problem. So what I would recommend
you do is do those treatments now because they're about

(02:19:04):
to start blooming and setting seed. In fact, I saw
some chickweed the other day that already had seeds setting
starting on it. But it's gonna get a lot worse.
Think of the blue bonnets on the road side. They're there,
they've been there all winter growing little plants. Soon here
comes the growth on the plant, the blue bonnet blooms,
and the blue bonnet seeds. That's how nature does, and

(02:19:25):
blue bonnets are in a sense a cool season weed.
They take the same path as chickweed and hen bit
and cleavers, or the belcrow plan and many others that
we have in our lawns. So do it now if
you're going to do it, and now's the time once
it gets hot, and hot means upper eighties, which for

(02:19:48):
us in Texas here we don't even think of that
as hot. But once it gets in the upper eighties,
these products will weaken your Saint Augustine, and you know
you don't need that, and they open the door for
things like that call root rop because the grass is
getting weakened, it's defenses or hampered. Now is the time
because the effect of that is not gonna happen as

(02:20:10):
much now. It's when it warms up. So it's a window.
I just keep saying. It's a window. It's a window.
It's when it's like playing baseball. It's an analogy I
use every time. But you're a batter. You're standing at
the batter box, the pitcher throws the ball. When do
you start swinging before the ball gets there on time?
When the catcher's holding it. You can swing away like
Babe Ruth, and you don't accomplish anything if you wait
to apply these products. It's the same thing that I

(02:20:33):
just describe. So you gotta get out there and get
it done. If you're gonna do it. I was pulling
weeds in my yard. I just have a few here
and there, and I just kind of go through. I'll
drop down, pull a few weeds, carry them with me
to the next trash can and drop them off. You
can do that, that's fine. But if you got a
deal a number of them and it's a big area,

(02:20:53):
or you're physically unable to get out and do that
weed pulling thing, then you might as well get out
and spray them, because it's time to get that done,
all right. That makes event. So that information a lot
more you're going to find on my website, Gardening with
Skip dot com. There you will find the lawn care guide,
how to mow, water, fertilize, and care for your lawn.
It's about time you need to buy the products now. Secondly,

(02:21:15):
the weed, pest and disease control. It's coming as we'll
get out there, do your shop and get those things
products ready. So when you got a little nice today
you want to get out and get some done. You
don't have to then stop and go find products. You've
already got it at the house. They'll be ready to go.
On the website controlling all kinds of issues that you
have around the landscape. There's tips on many different things,

(02:21:38):
as well as how to protect plants from frosts and freezes.
I was talking to someone earlier this morning that had
woody weeds in the landscape, poison ivy, wild hackberryes coming
up in the fence line. I've got a publication on
woody weed controlling the landscape. It's all there on the website.
Have some fun, talk to you next week.