The Decaying Disaster

Skip Richter answers your questions all morning  long!

Episode Transcript

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

Speaker 2 (00:06):
The bases the gases like gas. They can use trim
just watch him as world goes.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
Gasses and gas became you das many things to seep
backs in the way the basses like gas, and again.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
You date the samos doubles back tacking not a salmon
in the glasses and.

Speaker 4 (00:32):
Gas and.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
The sun beaming down between the gasses like gas. Maybe
can you starting out of treating the gasses like gas became?

Speaker 1 (00:48):
You did everything is so clean and see and never thing.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
Is Sunday had its ray so red, so reddy so mammy.

Speaker 5 (01:03):
So you st whoa whoa.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
Mean nigga shicken? Do you think you.

Speaker 6 (01:13):
Can do?

Speaker 2 (01:14):
The baby dig shicken nign dog thinking?

Speaker 7 (01:21):
Can you do.

Speaker 6 (01:39):
So?

Speaker 2 (01:40):
Beaming down that's on the basis like gas, bady, can
you dan it's starting in the dreaming. That's all the
glass like gas.

Speaker 3 (01:51):
Maybe called you dag?

Speaker 2 (01:54):
How the thing is something?

Speaker 6 (01:55):
You can see?

Speaker 2 (01:57):
Everything is something?

Speaker 3 (02:07):
Morning, gardeners, Good morning. Hehe getting rain yesterday? Few areas
did we could use it? That was nice. We've got
an interesting week ahead. Weather is going to warm up.
I'll tell you what everybody's going to get the itch
to get outside and get a little bit of gardening done.

(02:28):
There's plenty plenty to be done out there too. So
I was talking to some folks yesterday when I headed
out to the Home and Garden show, actually the Home
Montgomery County Lifestyle Home show up at the Conra Hyatt.
Thanks to everybody that came out there. We enjoyed visiting
with you. We had a group that stuck around for
a while and had a lot of questions, and that's good.

(02:50):
I enjoyed that. We got to visit about a lot
of different things. Had quite a few folks that had
moved in. Of the group, at least the percentage wise,
there's more than I expected people that have moved in
from outside the area, so that was that was kind
of cool. You know, when you move here from another
part of the country, things are a little different here
as it would be vice versa. So we talked about

(03:12):
the soils and climate and things that we have to
deal with here and how did it go about doing
that successfully, which is kind of what we talk about
on Guardland. How do you how do you know how
to have success? What do you do to make a
plant just perform like you dreamed it would when you
were buying it. You know, nobody buys a tomato plant
and thinks, well, I'm gonna have a big green bush,

(03:34):
but probably never see any red tomatoes. When you buy
the tomato plant, you can already taste the tomatoes you
know in your mind's eye. And how do you realize that? Well,
the answer is you learn to see things from a
plant's point of view. It's as simple as that. If
you want any living thing to thrive, you provide it
the things it needs to thrive. And that's what we

(03:54):
talk about here on Guardline, how to have success, how
to have a more boutiful garden, a more beautiful landscape,
and more fun in the process. So if you have
a gardening question, well grab that phone, jump right in
seven one three two one two five eight seven four
seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.

(04:16):
Be happy to visit with you and help you have success.
So we've we've we've kind of hit the point now
where we're at the end of our winter season, at
least that's what we think. I'm a little concerned about
how warm it's going to get this week now, as
far as gardening, it'll it'll be great. I'd be fine

(04:36):
to be out there. Everybody's itching to go and get
things planted. My concern is, as we have some eighty
degree weather for a number of days, plants are gonna
wake up and you're going to see new growth, You're
gonna see blooms popping out and everything like that. And
if you look at the last average frost date, we're

(04:57):
not there yet. Maybe by the time we get the
end of the week we will be, certainly for the
southern most parts of our listening area, but for the
northernmost parts, no, not at all. And so if we
were to have another hard freeze or significant freeze, not
necessarily a hard freeze, what we're going to see is
some significant damage because when the plants come out of dormancy,

(05:19):
they're way more susceptible than they are while they're fully dormant,
and they're already coming out of dormancy in a number
of ways. So just kind of hang on, don't put
up the frost cloth just yet. Hopefully we're done. Hopefully
we're done. I'm my gut feeling, I don't know. I'm
kind of fifty to fifty on whether we're going to
see another colpron come in or not. My concern, as

(05:42):
I said, though, is just this this unseasonably warm weather
that we're going to have this week, that that sets
us up for problems should we have another freeze still
yet in us. And I know that it happens to
me too every time this year to get a little
warmer and you feel like, okay, look we got to
be done. And we're out there planting, and that's okay.

(06:05):
I'm not saying don't plant. In fact, I'm planting myself,
but I know that one or two things are gonna happen.
Either if we have a freeze, I'm going to replace
some plants, and that's okay. I can do that, you know,
tomato plant and even I'll send you to the poorhouse
and the cost of replacing it. But the other thing
that may happen is I mean need to cover them up,

(06:26):
and that's okay, I know how to do that. You know,
when we have these late freezes, if we have one,
when we do or if we do, they typically are
very brief. So we had to freeze. You know, just
most recent significant freeze we had, it was like below
freezing for over twenty four hours for sure, depend on

(06:47):
where you live, maybe day and a half. Well, that's
a long time to protect a plant from cold. But
the kind of freezes we probably would experience, if we
experienced one at this point, are going to be more of.
You know, the temperature dips down, gets to below freezing,
stays there for about an hour or so, and then

(07:08):
goes back up again in the morning. And that kind
we can certainly tolerate with just a real quick covering
over the tops of the plants. Well, let's see this.
Let's head on out to the phones. We got Mel
and Tomball here, so let's let's see what's up with Mel. Hey, Mel,
welcome to garden Line. Hey, good morning, good to hear you,

(07:30):
good to be here.

Speaker 8 (07:33):
I sent you three pictures. I hope it made it through.
I'm not quite good at this stuff, but I sent
you three pictures on email. You see if you got
it or not.

Speaker 3 (07:45):
I did get them. Uh huh, yeah, let's talk about them.
What's on your mind?

Speaker 8 (07:50):
Well, the social garlic, for one, I know, we had
to freeze on it, and last year too. You see
the white stuff on it, the white leaves coming out.
Uh to me, I thought those were those were all
those were all dead stuff. So I've been pulling them off,
but I'm wondering, did I do the right thing or
is that something that's still going to come back. Last

(08:12):
year he didn't come back all that great pulling those white.

Speaker 3 (08:21):
Yeah, no, that's fine. The white leaves are just frozen,
frozen things that the frost got them, and the bulb
itself still should come back from down below the center.
I tell what would help, though, is if you could
mulch that area going to the next winter. Mult it
really good. Put two or three inches of mulch over it,

(08:42):
and it'll help protect the base of that plant really well. Uh.
And it also helped keep down weeds and stuff. I
see you got some mulch in there, but a little
thicker on that. I think it's gonna be just fine.
I think it's going to come back. Okay, I'm not
really concerned about it. But that's your society garlic we're
talking about. Yeah. They had some other pictures though, Yeah.

Speaker 8 (09:05):
Well it's just real quicklyess society Gordic. So just leave
it white there or put it off.

Speaker 3 (09:10):
Yeah, you could, you could cut it off. It's a
little tedious to get the white out without the little
green sprouts that are trying to come back out. But
if you wanted to look better, you could take the
white out of there and have all the fresh at
the bottom, or just throw a bunch of mult around
the base of it and it'll push new growth up
through it.

Speaker 8 (09:28):
Very good is they've been kind of scrawny on the
you can see that one bit if I finished it
up yesterday a little bit with I put some compost
on top, and the other ones they just don't bloom
very well. They're just a little couple of flowers and
then that's about it, and they get kind of skimpy.
What I'm going to do was keep the compost on

(09:51):
there and also fertilizer. I put down some microlives acid
of fire already. Yeah, my question can I combine that
with medina has to.

Speaker 3 (10:02):
Grow or is that too much? Not too much? The
medina has to grow? Is you know it's not a
super high nutrient level product. So uh, what it's going
to do is provide you a lot of other things.
Got some good trace mentals in it, and it has
some other compounds like vitamins and hormones and things for plants.

(10:22):
But you can use both of those with the both
of those that are going to be on the organic
end of the spectrum, and therefore they're they're going to
release a little more slowly. And uh that ought to
help both of them. Ought to help your azilias get
them back in shape again.

Speaker 8 (10:37):
All Right, I appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (10:40):
All right, thanks a lot. I appreciate you call this morning.
Yeah you have a picture. Okay, you as well. Thank
thank you very much. I appreciate that. Uh yeah. The
the fact that you know, we've got these kind of
new growth ready to come out and go and trying
to get everything in shape again. It just it's all

(11:00):
about soil, folks. So when you put nutrients down, when
you put composts down, when even when you put mulch
down and let it decompose over time and add new
mulch on top, it just keeps getting better and better slowly,
and your results are going to get better. Let's take
a quick break when we come back. Roger and Tumball,
you're our first up. All right, we're back. Who is

(11:21):
that singing? I should know that, but I don't. All Right,
there we go. Hey, Uh, it is springtime. It is here.
We're going to say, we're calling it. It's here. So
look at the landscape. Is it a little gloomy looking?
I mean, I know we just came through winter, but overall,

(11:43):
is it like you drive up and you just go wow,
I love this. I love the look of this just
driving into the driveway. What would you like to see
it revamped in a way that really looks good? Well,
you ought to call Pierscapes. Pierce Capes knows exactly how
to do just that. They've been transforming landscapes here in
the Greater Houston area for a long long time, since

(12:03):
nineteen eighty eight. They have the expertise, they got the folks,
they got the training. They can do everything from design
to just basic maintenance kinds of things. All yeah I
do is give them a call. Go go to the
website first pierscapes dot com, piercescapes dot com and check
out the work they do. And then pick up that

(12:23):
phone and say, uh two eight one three, seven, oh
fifty sixty and let them take a look, take them
some pictures in. They'll arrange for you to, you know,
come in, sit down perhaps, or they'll come do some
evaluation with you. But whatever, however you want to go
about it, just get a hold of them, because hey,
spring is too good to waste on a gloomy landscape.

(12:45):
Let's get some work done and really make things look
good like you want it to look something you're proud of.
Let's go out to Tomball. Now we're gonna talk to
Roger this morning. Hello Roger, welcome to Guardenline.

Speaker 9 (12:56):
How you doing, mister Skip.

Speaker 10 (12:59):
I got a quick Where can I.

Speaker 11 (13:00):
Rent a good?

Speaker 3 (13:04):
Oh? Well, I that I don't Yeah, I'm here, can
you hear me?

Speaker 11 (13:09):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (13:10):
Yes, sir, Yes, sir, Okay, I'm here. Uh so I
would Uh, I don't know. I mean there's a lot
of rent all places, you know, in each community, there's
places where you can run equipment and stuff. Sometimes you
can get equipment like that at a big box store.
Just try to get one that does a core aerator
that has a hollow time that goes in the ground

(13:31):
and pops a core out of the ground if you can.
That's the better kind of errator to use. So that
that's what I would recommend you look for. But the
main thing is get out there and get it done.
Make sure before you do the Roger you flag all
your irrigation heads. You know, turn on the irrigation and
see where the heads are popping up, because you can.
You can make a lot of work for yourself with
an errator and an irrigation head if you don't know

(13:53):
where it is.

Speaker 9 (13:55):
I concur Thank you very much, sir.

Speaker 3 (13:58):
All right, yeah, you bet, thanks for the call. Appreciate that.
I was talking to some people yesterday out at the
home show about a rating and why we airate and
when we airate and how often we air ate and
all those kinds of questions, and you know, as we

(14:18):
as we're visiting about it, making some points is well,
aeration is most important on a heavy clay soil. If
you've got a heavy clay soil, it's more likely to
be compacted. Any soil that's compacted, it's going to be
going to benefit from aration. Clay itself in and of
itself benefits from araation more so than like a sand

(14:40):
or a loamy type soil might. But the bottom line
is you want to make sure and get that soil
in its oxygenated condition as you can. And so what
I'm saying when I say that is I mean that
you want the soil to have the root system of
the plants to provide the root system of the plants

(15:01):
enough moisture and enough oxygen so that grass plant can thrive.
And so that's kind of what we're all about when
we talk about air rating. And so the more compact
that it is, the more benefit aeration is going to
give you. The more you can get that aeration done
in a way that gets a good hole down into

(15:22):
the ground for oxygen to reach down in, for rainfall
to capture in. It even helps with a moderate amount
of rainfall, especially on a clay, it tends to just
wash off the surface, but you can capture a little
bit more because you got all those little holes out
there that are captured a little bit and then the
organic meta goes down in the holes. All of that
is beneficial. It's like you're plowing the yard in a

(15:43):
way that's minimally damaging to the turf. That's kind of
what you're going after when you're doing that air rating.
So good time to be thinking about what do you
want to do to make your lawn better this year,
and that is There's a few keys to success with law,
but that that is one that is one ace. Hardware

(16:05):
is ready to go for your spring gardening activities. Do
you need tools, you know, do you need some garden
hoses and wheelbarrows and rakes and shovels and hose and
all that kind of thing. Of course, they've got that
at Ace Hardware. They've got the supplies. They're set up
for your pre emergent and post emergent herbicide applications. If
you're going to do those, and if your fertilizations of
various types, Ace is stocked and they're ready to go,

(16:28):
just head to your local Ace Hardware. And how do
you find them, Well, you go to Ace Hardware Texas
dot com, Acehardware Texas dot Com and fine stores such
as K and M in a Taskasita, All that's out
on Timber Forest by the way, All Star Ace and
Spring on Rayford Road, Cypressace on Jones Road, Patco Ace

(16:49):
on West Willis Bay, Cliff Ace down South Akema and
Grand Avenue, Hamilton Ace on Highway six, and the Bear
Creek area, Fullsheer Ace down there on three Pot fifty
nine in Fulshure and Brenna Mace on North Austin Parkway.
Visit your local Ace Hardware store. They're ready for you.
So get the supplies that you need, get back home,
and let's have a good week. It's going to be

(17:11):
a great weather week out there in the garden. You're
listening to garden Line. The phone number if you'd like
to give me a call seven one three two one
two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one
two five eight seven four, or to make it easy
to remember, seven one three two one two ktr h

(17:34):
ktr H seven forty am.

Speaker 12 (17:36):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (17:37):
I'm curious how people listen to garden Line. I suspect
there are a lot of people have a radio because
it's a radio show, but a lot of people listen
on their computers. A lot of people listen on their
cell phones.

Speaker 13 (17:50):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (17:51):
Some people will even listen on their speaker in the house,
you know, the speakers that listen to us all day.
That one. No, I'm not paring, but I'm just saying,
why do you listen to Guardline. I'm kind of curious
about that. I guess we need to do a pole.
I want to tell you where I'm going to be
next Saturday, and I hope you make plans to come

(18:11):
and see me. That is Saturday, the twenty first. By
the way, I'll be there from twelve to two at
D and D Feed west of Tombull on twenty nine
to twenty. So that's D and D Feed west of
Tomball in twenty nine, twenty twelve to two. If you
haven't been to D and D here's your chance to
come see it. I talk about it all the time.

(18:32):
It's a great place, great great feed store, lots of
cool supplies when you need. If you need products that
are kind of hard to find in other places, they
probably have them at D and D Feed. They have
all the standards. You know, you hear me talk about
fertilizers and whatnot. They've got that, they got, the soil
blends from airloom soils and whatnot to and really cool

(18:53):
supplies for pets as well as a livestock. But for
those of you that are in it for the gardening,
you just you just need to come out next Saturday. Now,
I'm going to be giving away some nitrofoss products. It
is coming up for that early Optional green up that
we do, and it's on my schedule. The early Greenup
that's Nitrofos Imperial, the red bag. I'm going to be

(19:15):
giving away a couple of bags of that also gonna.
I'm giving me more than one nitrofoss product. But you
need to come out to see so that we can,
you know, talk about what else you need to do.
Barricade season this year or we got some barricade on hand.
Definitely good supply out there. Come on out and take
a look. Let's let's meet, let's talk as always, bring samples.

(19:38):
We can do all of that. Uh, just real easy
to do.

Speaker 11 (19:42):
Hey.

Speaker 3 (19:42):
Uh, if you've got outdoor, excuse me out of our
furniture that's looking really worse for the wear. You need
to call the folks at Houston powder Coders. That's Houston
Powdercoders dot com. If you want to go by the website,
and I would recommend you do that both the website
and they've got a really good Facebook page as well.

(20:05):
What you'll see is the kind of work that they
can do. And you're going to see things and go, oh,
they can do a gooseneck trailer. Yes, they got a
giant room that they do powder coating on a goose neck.
Things that are that big and all the way down
to I just have a little patio furniture, you know,
to sit down in there, maybe a couple of chairs
or a beautiful glider that's metal out in the backyard

(20:27):
getting kind of rusty and not looking real good. Give
them a call to eight one six seven six thirty
eight eighty eight, or go to the website Houston Powdercoders
dot com. They will come get it. If you hear
my voice, you may be nah, but I'm in Flatonia, Texas. Well,
they'll come get it. They'll bring it back when they're done.

(20:49):
If you just go ahead and contact them, you can
email them a picture and get a quick reply on
a quote what that would cost to get that done?
So many beautiful colors, and I'm telling you it turns
metal into the brand new look of what you originally bought,
from barbecue pits to furniture, to iron railings to anything metal.
Outside Houston powder Coders dot Com. Let's take a break

(21:13):
for the half of the hour and we'll be back
with your calls. Seven one three two one two five
eight seven four. Go back to the guard line. We
got some the beatles from behind the stage going on
right there.

Speaker 8 (21:27):
All right.

Speaker 3 (21:28):
Glad to have you with us today. How can we
help you have success in your garden and landscape? Well,
whatever you want to talk about let's talk about it
seven one three two one two five eight seven four
seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.
Be happy to visit with you and help you to
have success in your garden and in your landscape. In

(21:49):
Chanty Gardens. Wonderful garden center down there in the Richmond
Rosenberg area. They're actually on the Katie Fulsher side of
Richmond Rosenberg. You need to go check them out. They
have got plenty of stock in I mean you walk
up and look at it. It's obviously spring. Things are
growing and taking off there, beautiful color plants, lots of vegetables.

(22:13):
They always have an excellent selection of like peppers and
tomatoes and whatnot. I mean, you know there's the standard
things like I want to bell pepper, Well, what kind
of bell pepper? Do you want a big birth of?
Do you want a California wonder? What are you looking for?

Speaker 14 (22:27):
Well?

Speaker 3 (22:27):
I want to hot pepper. All right, we can burn
your lips off with a Carolina reaper that thing, I mean,
put it in a glass bottle. It'll melt the bottle.
Those things are so hot. They're really good. Lots of
different kinds of things from Hallopenias to Anchi Pepper's, Anaheim's
Green Chili's just lots lots of peppers options. Same thing
with tomatoes. What kind of tomatoes do you want? They

(22:49):
have so many options. I'm telling you they do dozens,
dozens of different options. You gotta go check them out.
I grew up eating these little chili pekins. That was
little bush that the birds ate the peppers, and wherever
the birds landed, they planted a chili pequin pepper, if
you know what I'm saying. And those boogers are hot.
They actually had those. You don't see those for sale

(23:10):
in the garden center's much any but they have lots
of tomatoes, squash, any kind of vegetables you're wanting to plant.
They're there. They're waiting for you. What a week to
get out and grab some at a Chenda Gardens Ingented
Gardens Richmond dot Com on the Katie Foster side of
Richmond up there on Highway or FM three point fifty nine.

(23:33):
Let's now head out to Rick in Spring Branch, WELLO Rick,
Welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 9 (23:41):
Hey Skip, I talked to you about two weeks ago.
Re Murmer and potatoes are up plant a little early,
but I think.

Speaker 14 (23:50):
I hope I made the right decision.

Speaker 9 (23:51):
I hope it don't breathe.

Speaker 3 (23:54):
Well if it does, pretty hardy and it won't. It
won't kill them if it freezes. Yeah good.

Speaker 9 (24:02):
I heard you talking yesterday about like giving a plant
to somebody and you know, playting that form or whatever.

Speaker 13 (24:07):
That that is a nice gesture.

Speaker 9 (24:09):
And that reminded me. My brother played football at Ain't
m and in nineteen seventy seven he signed and they
actually came to our house. It was Emory Ballard and
Treasure what is a defensive guy, and they gave him
They sit right here in our kitchen table. I then
aired at this out and they gave him an oak

(24:31):
tree the plant and it was about a foot really yep.
And my brother don't even know it. I talked to
him about it. He doesn't even know it. But me
and my dad went and planted that tree in front
of this house. And that tree is forty foot tall
and it's it's rolling right in front of this house.

(24:54):
I'm wondering if it's from that. I don't know if
you ever heard of they have a sentry tree a
clippings from that, but it's too old to get clippings
from that.

Speaker 11 (25:05):
I think, I don't know.

Speaker 4 (25:06):
I was gonna ask.

Speaker 3 (25:07):
They collect seed, They collect seed from it, uh rick,
they collect seed from it, and they oh, yeah, yeah,
that's what it is. Called the kissing tree too, that's
another name for it.

Speaker 11 (25:19):
They still do.

Speaker 3 (25:21):
Oh yeah, they still do some A while back, somebody
was getting rid of seedlings from earth, getting rid of
they were selling seedlings from it. I don't I don't know,
you know how you go about finding what finding it now?
But yeah, they still do. That's that's true. That's an
interesting story.

Speaker 13 (25:36):
I asked you.

Speaker 14 (25:36):
That was my question.

Speaker 9 (25:37):
Did they have you ever been to the greenhouses.

Speaker 4 (25:40):
At a m.

Speaker 6 (25:45):
Oh you have?

Speaker 9 (25:45):
And they got it.

Speaker 11 (25:46):
They got that.

Speaker 9 (25:47):
They got that new one. It's like a three million
dollar greenhouse. It's hydro pronic or whatever, and they can
go in any environment. I think I'm gonna go see
that thing when I go visit the.

Speaker 3 (26:03):
All right, we'll go go see the gardens on campus.
They have a gardens have been developing on campus their Yeah,
those are nice, they're just starting.

Speaker 9 (26:14):
I knew the daughter of the uh of the head guy,
horticulture guy, and she she used to give me plants
and everything, but I don't know her anymore.

Speaker 3 (26:24):
Yeah all right, Hey Rick, thanks thanks for a trip
down memory lane. I appreciate that you take care good.
I'm telling you I agree. I know what you mean
by that. That is that is Uh, we're gonna say
it's not gonna freeze anymore. And not not because I know,

(26:44):
not because I you know, I'm I'm not afraid of
being wrong. So I'm just gonna go ahead and say
what I want. I want it to not freeze anymore.
Therefore we're done with freezing. As I said earlier, that
may not be true. That may not be true. Nature's
way resource up in conr I went right by it
the day I was up. Yesterday, I was up heading

(27:05):
to the Conra Hyatt for the The Lifestyle Home Show
and just right by almost pulled in, but I had
to get to the show. But when you go into
Nature's right resources, you go into a place that historically
has been a leader in soil products, quality soil products
products like leafmol compost and rose soil and vegetable and

(27:29):
herb soils and all kinds of source for whatever you
want to grow. You know you got a Ceterus tree,
You go in there and say look, I need something
that's going to be good for free tree and putting,
et ceterus out and they can get you set up.
You can buy it by the book, you can buy
it by the bag. You can go around town. There's
places around town that I have this all seasons Ace Hardware.

(27:50):
Ben Willis Ace in the Woodlands has it Plants for
all seasons on two forty nine. Ace Hardware a memorial
drive Nelson Water Gardens and Katie carries it and then
up north the East she got JR. Importer Ace Hardware,
a Task as to Ace and k and m Ace
and Kingwood all carry it, as does Southwest Fertilizer, Enchended
Forest and Encented Gardens. Down in the Richmond Rosenberg area.

(28:13):
A number of places carry the ACE, the Theys, the
Nature's Way Resources, bag products, or you can just have
them deliver it to you however you want to go
about it. The main thing is go about it. Get
that quality stuff, get it on the ground, get the
soil ready so when you put the plants in that
plants can thrive. I like to say they hit the
ground running, they're ready to go, they're happy. It's all

(28:37):
about the soil. Crummy soil, crummy performance, wonderful soil. Everyone
thinks you have a green thumb because things grow like crazy.
Nature's Way Resources. Nature's Way Resources dot Com is a
website if you'd like to go check them out there.
But yesterday they redid that. Excuse me, yesterday I told

(29:02):
you about that. At Arburgate they were redoing a second
round of rose pruning by Gay Hammond, Gay Hammond's former
president of the Houston Rose Society. Very knowledgeable lady, very
entertaining as a speaker, very informative. And I don't know
if there's still openings or not, but I'm just telling

(29:24):
you because it's today. The second round is today. It's
at one pm today, Sunday, February fifty and so what
you need to do is you need to call Arburgate
and make sure that it's limited to just forty attendees.
And they they went way past interest on the first round.
So two eight one three five one eighty eight fifty one.

(29:46):
Always keep a pen and a paper around when you're
listening to Guardline, because give you out important information you
need to write down. Two eight one three five one
eighty eight fifty one cost ten dollars a person. I
believe me you will. It will be the best man
you've ever spent in terms of the value to you
and having a beautiful garden and landscape. Now, Arburgate, for
those of you who aren't familiar, is out twenty nine

(30:08):
to twenty just west of Tumbull, just out on the
outskirts of town there. And I'm telling you, when you
go in there, you bare leave room in the car
pick up because you're going to find a lot of
wonderful color vegetables, herbs, and fruit trees. They have so
many kinds of fruit trees on hand and expert advice
so that when you pick a plant, you're picking a

(30:30):
good plant that's going to do well her They're going
to point you in the right direction. They're going to
help you have success. You can go back in again
later and ask questions about it and so on. That
is a full service garden center that just make sure
you are happy with the results by giving you good plants,
good advice and service after the sale in terms of

(30:50):
you know, come back in and well, I'm seeing this
or that, or how do I fertilize it? Or on
and on down the line. That's what they're all about, Arburgate.
Let's take a little break. We'll be back with your call.
Seven one three two one two k t r H.
All right, welcome back on a wonderful Sunday. Good have

(31:13):
you listening in today. We're gonna do this week. It's
gonna happen not in your garden. We're gonna work on
in other words, got some planning to do, soul prepped
to do. Maybe you're maybe you're gonna get out there
and take care of that. Long listen. With the weather,
we're about to have warm season, weeds will be sprouting,

(31:33):
and if you're gonna prevent them, you gotta prevent them.
You got to get a pre emergent down your product,
like nitrophosis, barricade. Get it down to the ground, get
it watered in. Always have the water a pre emergent
down into the soil surface so that it can do
what it does. But don't wait. I'm telling you, if
you wait until the week after this, uh, you're already
gonna have some weed seeds that are up and growing

(31:54):
and some some areas done. South part of my listening area,
we've already got some weat seeds that are sprouting and growing.
So don't delay get that done. All it takes is
a few days. We're a temperature of the soil is
above fifty five degrees And here they come just to
kind of a word to the wives on that get
that done soon. I want to get that done. I

(32:17):
was talking to some folks out at the Lifestyle Home
show yesterday there in Conra and we were talking about
Nelson Genesis. Genesis is part of the nutri Star line
from Nelson and it's the first product they put out
that incorporates microza, bacteria and other fungi that helped that

(32:38):
soil microbiome. What does that mean, Well, the soil is
a jungle of life, okay, and a good healthy soil
at least is and all of those microbes that we
want to have around are helping our plants. The microbes
do a lot of things. Some of them fix nitrogen
in the soil, in other words, take it from the
soil air and make it available to plants. There's fight

(33:00):
against diseases of your plants. Others stimulate plant growth and productivity.
There's a lot of good things that they do. Others
make it more efficient for the roots to get nutrients
that they need and Nelson's plant food nutristar genesis just
say genesis. That's basically what we're talking about. These granules

(33:21):
should always be mixed into soil when you are planting.
If you're putting a rose in the ground, mix some
Nelson Genesis into the soil that you're going to put
back in around that rosebush you just put in the ground.
If you are going to bump plants up to a
bigger container, or you're going to grow some things in
a container, maybe you're going to have a beautiful vegetable
or flour container this spring, get the soil that you're

(33:42):
going to be using mixed genesis into it. It will
not burn your plants and water it in well and
you will be surprised how well it does. I've even
seen reports. TEXA, A and M did a report recently
where they studied a bunch of sycamore trees and a
landscape out there at the Houston Community College campus and
they evaluated the Nelson plant food nutristar genesis transplant max

(34:07):
compared it to the same nutrient content of fertilizer. So
you're comparing apples to apples, and the trees treated with
Nutristar Genesis showed significant improvements in both the height growth
and the trunk caliber growth how big the trunk was
compared to the conventional fertilization program. So the stuff works,

(34:28):
and I've seen it work myself, but you got to
go get it. Comes in little jars. You can buy
a number of garden centers all over town and just
try it out. I promise you you will like the
results that you see. So you don't put anything in
any ground, whether it's potting, soil ground or soil ground
out in the yard. Nutri Star Genesis goes in the

(34:48):
hole with the soil mixed into the soil that you're
about to plan into. All right, hope that makes sense.
I'm always skeptical. I'm a skeptical person because I've seen
so many claims of products over the years. I mean,
good night, just so many things. You know, if you
use this product, you're not gonna have any aphids, your

(35:12):
roses won't get black spot, and your true babies won't
have cradle cap. You know, It's like, come on, man,
let's stop a little short of that one.

Speaker 6 (35:19):
Right.

Speaker 3 (35:20):
And so when I try these products before I talk
about them, I tryump and when I see that they work,
that's I'm sold. But I'm skeptical until I see that
they work or see research showing that they work. And
so it's I get excited about stuff that's coming out
on the market or that's been on the market, and
when I see the results from it. So that way

(35:43):
I can confidently put my reputation on the line by
saying to you, yes, it will work for you. Very
important to me to make sure I'm telling you the
truth and then I'm accurate. I think it was Will Rogers.
I've said this before. I think I need to find
out who said this, Either were Rogers or Mark Twain.
I think is Will Rogers anyway said it's not what

(36:04):
I don't know that worries me. It's what I know
that ain't so. So in other words, yeah, there's a
lot I don't know out there that I hope to
learn someday, you know, as time goes on. I probably
don't not even aware of what all those things are.
But there's things that I think are right that come
to find out yeah not really, Okay, not really, And

(36:26):
that is what concerns me most of all. So I
want to make sure that if I think something is right.
I'm sure it's right. Don't you feel that way? I
wish everybody did. There's a lot of information given out
that's like, yeah, here, this is true. Maybe it's not
all right. Well, there I go pontificating. It's a little

(36:48):
early in the morning for my brain to go there,
so I'm gonna I'm gonna avoid pulling a muscle up
in the head there and instead just talk about gardening stuff.
We're gonna take a little break here in a second.
We got the top of the hour news coming up,
so I'm not going to take any calls right here.
But when we come back, if you'd like to be
first up, you can give me a call seven one

(37:09):
three two one two five eight seven four and we'll
talk about the things that you're interested in. I want
to remind you that next Saturday, the twenty first, February
twenty first, from twelve to two pm, I'm going to
be at the D and D Feed in tumble It's
out west to Tumbull on twenty nine to twenty. A

(37:30):
great store. I always love going in there. Good supplies.
They carry products from the fertilizer companies. You hear me
talk about here on garden Line, and nine to five
is going to be providing some giveaways. We're going to
give away some bags of Imperial that's the red bag
fifteen five ten. It's an immediately available fertilizer you put

(37:51):
out there in the lawn.

Speaker 15 (37:53):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (37:53):
They're also going to be giving away some barricade, some
barricade season folks. Get that done, asa, you put it down,
you water it in. The weed seeds try to sprout,
they can't establish, and no weed plants show up as
a result of that. Very good, but timing is key
on that. So come on out. Maybe you want to bag.
If not, you can grab a bag there. Dndfeed carries

(38:16):
all these products and more, and bring me some weeds
in a bag that you want identified. Bring me some
plants that are a little sick. Bring me some pictures
from your phone of I don't know, areas of the landscape,
places you want to put in a garden. A tree
that isn't doing too good. We'll take a look. We'll
get to the bottom of it.

Speaker 1 (38:39):
Welcome to kt r H Garden Line with Skip Rict.

Speaker 2 (38:43):
It's just watch him as the world.

Speaker 3 (39:13):
Sud Hey, good morning morning, gardeners. It is a good
week for a gardening coming up here. Oh my goodness,
the weather, the weather, the weather is so good, and
everything's gonna be jumping out of the ground. You gotta
be careful, they're gonna be. Everything wants to grow. When

(39:34):
the temperatures gonna up in the load of mid eighties.
That is yeah, that is high, uh, plenty high for
this time of year. In fact, unseasonably warm for this
time of year. But it's time to get out. It's
time to winter's done for now. If we have another
winter blast through, that's fine. I'm not gonna sit around
and wait for it. I got too much spring fever

(39:56):
going on in me and it is. It is time
to get out there and enjoy it. Time of plant vegetables.
By the way, if you're out there in the Katie direction,
our West Houston destination garden center is Nelson Water Gardens
and Nursery out there in Katie on Katie Fort Ben Road.
You just head north of it Katie Fort Ben Road,

(40:16):
just a little bit upstreet on the right. They've got
lots of vegetable transplants. They've got beauty, just a really
nice selection too. By the way of herbs, super super
and if you're looking for some really quality house plants.
The selection they have gotten in is just stunning, very
beautiful and unusual things as well. So you need to

(40:37):
get out there and make that indoors. You have also
a tropical paradise when you walk into to the shop
there the store, when you walk into Nelson Water Gardens
and Nursery, you're just going to see a scene that
makes you go, oh man, half the stuff needs to
come home with me and be in my house because
it creates this wonderful tropical paradise. When you got plants

(40:59):
around you, it is just wonderfully just it's so soothing.
It's time to get those petunias out pretty quick here.
You know, we don't want them to get frosted. But hey,
what are you gonna do? You're gonna wait? Are you
gonna go ahead and get them out and throw a
little blanket over them or cover over them if you
have to. Hopefully we won't have to do. You need
some quality quality water gardening plants and fish and containers

(41:27):
for the recircling fountains. They've got them all there. They
got the pumps. They can they can show you how
to create your own disappearing fountain, which I think are
just one of the coolest things on earth and it's
easy to do. Are they build it for you? Are
they come out of your house, you know, and set
it up for you. They do water garden installations too,
so you tell them what you want to do, make

(41:49):
sure and do stop in though. They're hours are Monday
through Saturday nine to five and Sunday from eleven to four.
So today, an hour after I quit talking on garden line,
they're opening up ten or eleven to four out at
Nelson Nursery and Water Gardens, our West Houston Destination Garden Center.

(42:10):
By the way, they also have potatoes ready to go
into planting, so and it's time to get that done.
Don't delay any more on that, all righty, 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. Right now, when you
look in your lawn and you see weeds, those are

(42:31):
cool season weeds. The warm season weeds are just starting
to germinate. Cool season weeds, so what's there? They are
about to become reproductive, some already have, meaning they're starting
to bloom and set seed. When they bloom and set seed,
you are being sentenced to hundreds more of what you
had this year next spring. They actually they sprout in

(42:55):
the fall, but they show up. You notice them in
late winter and spring. Lay winters is a time to
get those things knocked out if you're going to spray
spray then otherwise they're already developing seeds and it's a
little late to accomplish anything with a spray. I'm doing
some hand pulling in my yard. I've got a few
here and there as I walk around. In fact, I've
probably head out there with my little kneeling bench and

(43:16):
a five gallon bucket and my little weater tool. Makes
it so easy to get them up. It's not that
difficult to get those things up. But if you're going
to spray, you gotta do it now, or you just
might as well save your time and money and not
bother because if you wait too long, you're not going
to get results from it. So there you go, like

(43:37):
a warning, I guess, or our heads up. Maybe it's
a better way to put it. If you have fruit trees,
it's time to get those pruned. Make sure you know
how to prune. How do you prune a peach? How
do you prune a pair? How do you prune an apple?
Let me give you a really simple way. Sometimes when
we oversimplify, you can oversimplify too much, you know where

(43:58):
it becomes a little bit of accurate in some situations.
But a good simplification that holds water. For pruning fruit
trees that are deciduous, okay, if it is inside the fruit,
if there is one big seed, a pit like a peach, apricot,

(44:20):
plum pluodds, any of those pit fruit, you want to
prune those to an open bowl shape for the tree.
So the branch comes out and it goes upward like
a bowl or a chalice, think of a wineglass. Isn't
quite shaped right, But you got a little stem that's

(44:40):
the trunk, and then it comes it opens up and
makes a bowl. That's what you're aiming for, okay, And
for those trees for stone fruit, for fruit with a
pit inside, if it's got a bunch of seeds like
an apple or a pear, you're going to prune it
to a central trunk with whorlds of branches as you
go up the trunk. So you may have branches going

(45:01):
out in three different directions, and then you go up
the trunk about a foot and a half or so,
and then you have another group of branches going out
in three different directions. And that's the style. If you
want a visual for this, go to the eggy or
the culture website click on the fruit and nut link
on the front page Fruits and Nuts front page, and

(45:25):
it will be a public There will be a publication
on every kind of fruit you want to grow, and
it will also show you what it should look like
when you print it. And that's very helpful. I recommend
you take a look at that. Let's head out to
Tomball now and we're going to visit with Mike this morning. Hey, Mike,
welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 16 (45:41):
Hey, good morning, Skip. I fertalized yesterday and put out
the barricade, but I got over two inches of rain
last night. I'm just wondering if you think.

Speaker 3 (45:52):
I need to redo it, Mike. I'm going to say no.
Barricade is pretty good about washing down into the soil
and sticking to the soil.

Speaker 13 (46:03):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (46:03):
And that's one reason I say no. The other reason
is if it does that and then you do it again,
that is doubling the rate, and that's too much to
put out. So in the future, you know, maybe look
at the weather for the next few days, but in general,
gonna I'm gonna suggest you hold off. I think you'll

(46:25):
be fine, but it's better to be safe than sorry.
And because doubling up is not a.

Speaker 16 (46:31):
Good thing, right, So, and the fertilization, I put out
the the red bag of nitroposs Okay, greenup, And what
do you think about that?

Speaker 3 (46:45):
Do you think that, yeah, now, that that will dissolve
and move with water. It can move down into the
soil if you have a fairly good internal drainage, or
it moves off the surface and runs down the street.
So that one you could make a case for coming back,
maybe with a half rate, to do it again if
you want an early green up, or uh, you know,

(47:06):
for too long we're going to be doing the summer fertilizations,
and you could just kind of wait and see on
it and then do your your slower release fertilizer not
too long from now. Probably let's see you were in Tumball,
probably for you would be about early to mid April
that you would put down your your slow release. So

(47:27):
I would say, flip a coin on that one. If
you want to touch it up a little bit with
maybe a half application, that's fine. Or I could certainly
see a case for just waiting and doing the slow release.

Speaker 16 (47:37):
Then okay, that sounds good. I'll keep an eye on
it and see how it's doing and refertilize if I
need to half rate.

Speaker 3 (47:49):
Yeah, boy, two inches, that's a that's a gully washer.
I didn't get near that much, but it sounds like
you got you got plenty of rain.

Speaker 11 (47:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 16 (47:57):
My ring gags is two point one point six, so yeah,
I came down pretty heavy.

Speaker 3 (48:03):
Wow. Okay, all right, we'll good to know. Any other
questions or was that basically it?

Speaker 16 (48:12):
Uh, that's it for now, Thank you very much.

Speaker 3 (48:15):
All right, all right, Mike, you take care. By the way,
I'm going to be out at D and D feed
and Talma on next Saturday from twelve to two, so
you get a chance come on out. Okay, yeah, I
may do that, all right, you take care. All right, folks,
Time for me take a little break. We'll be right
back now, all right.

Speaker 13 (48:35):
Down three day.

Speaker 3 (48:39):
Welcome back to the guarden line, folks. Good to have
you with us. Kind of gardening questions do you have today?
Give me call seven one three two one two five
eight seven four. We'll talk about it. Help you get
to the bottom of this. I was just looking through
the emails. Got some folks gonna be calling in here
on following up on emails. By the way, if you
have a gardening question and you haven't heard me say

(49:01):
this before, the way I do email is if you
call the show, call the producer. He'll give you my
email and you can send me a photo, photos or
a question and so on. But I asked that you
follow up with a phone call just due to the
other horticultural endeavors I have through the week, just not
able to tackle the emails and an area full of

(49:24):
ten million people here in the listening area of garden Line.
So I just asked it you send me some photo
whatever you want to send, and then follow with a
phone call. We'll be happy to visit with you about that.
Photos help if we're diagnosing something. Maybe there's a weed
in your lawn, Get that weed and pull it up
out of the lawn and set it on something dark
and take a picture of it and send that. Sometimes

(49:47):
I got a picture of lawns and the photos taken
a little bit at a distance, and I'm kind of
looking through all the green things in the picture trying
to figure out which one are we talking about here,
So pull it up where I can get a good
clear look at it and be happy to help with that.
Same is true with insects you see, or even questions
that you have about an area you know that you

(50:09):
would like some advice on. But I'm very happy to
do that. And the better the photo, the better I
can help you. The way I like to put it is,
fuzzy photos give you fuzzy answers, and you want a sharp,
crisp answer that's accurate. So don't send me a fuzzy photo,
send me one and good focus. The closer you get
to a lot of these things, the better off the
photo will be. You know, if you're taking a picture

(50:32):
of a bug and you stand ten feet away, it's
gonna be kind of hard for me to help on that.
So bring it in real close. Check the photos. Make
the sure they're good and sharp. Our cameras sometimes focus
on something behind what you're wanting it to focus on,
and so make sure it's a good photo. But I'll
be happy to help you with that, just follow it
up with a call in the garden line. I was

(50:55):
discussing that now it's time to get your fruit trees pruned,
and it is. There's no need to use woon treatment
on our woody plants when we're pruning them.

Speaker 15 (51:08):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (51:08):
It just those woond sprays don't help. They don't help,
and then they can hurt. If you're if you're sewing
a pretty good sized limb off a plant and you
and you were to put a woond dressing, a woond
paint on it, what will happen? You're thinking, well, I'm
sealing it, And yes, you are initially sealing it, but
then as it begins to grow and callous and things,

(51:30):
it opens uh access for moisture to get in behind
that sealant. And now the seialant is keeping the wood
wet longer, and then decay increases faster because of a
sealant you put on to initially keep the water out.
A fellow named doctor Alex Schigo years decades ago, did
studies on forest trees and how they compartmentalize wounds and

(51:54):
close over wounds. Uh, and that pretty well put to
bed the idea of spraying wound dressings or painting wound
dressings on pruning cuts, but still gets talked about and done,
but it shouldn't be. There is one time in Texas,

(52:15):
one time when we would use a wound dressing, and
that is if you have an oak tree that you're pruning,
especially during a time of year when the beetles that
transmit oak wilt are out, which is most months of
the year except the hottest and coldest, and then you
would treat the wounds. But the way I put it,

(52:36):
to make it a crystal clear picture of do it
right away is prune with a saw on one hand
and you're pruning paint in the other hand, meaning you cut,
you paint, you cut, you paint like that, but that's
only to take that fresh wound that has aromatics that
attract a beetle that can carry the oak wilt from
an infected tree to your tree. That's only to close

(53:00):
that wound off before the beatles are attracted and have
now access to feed on your tree and therefore infect
it with oak quilt. It's one of the two ways
oak wilt comes into a tree, and so most of
the Houston area does not have active oak quilt in it.
There have been oak wilt centers around the Greater Houston

(53:21):
area and off and on for some time, but it's
not like Central Texas, where you almost assume oakuilt is
in the area because there's so much of it around.
So for us here, I don't tell people to brune
to paint period, even on an oak tree. But if
you know there's oak wilt around, well yeah, it would

(53:44):
be advisable for that one reason. Other kinds of uses
of paint for disease prevention like that, we just don't.
We don't deal with them so much here. Chestnut blight
or something like that could be I guess you could
make a case for it, but we just don't have
that problem here oak tree. So that's it, all right.
I hope that makes sense now. I was talking to

(54:07):
the folks out at the Lifestyle Home show yesterday and
we were talking. We're talking about pruning and different things
like that, and I made a statement that I could
watch the eyebrows kind of go up, and that is
that when you if you have planted a tree, it's
not like you moved into a house and there's a
thirty year old tree in the yard. But if you

(54:28):
planted a tree and you end up at some point
in the future getting a saw to prune limbs off
that tree. When you grab a saw, it's an admission
of guilt. I want you to stick with me on this,
just for a minute. If you, from the time you
plant a tree, begin proper training. You can do that

(54:50):
with hand pruners or with loppers. But when a time
arrives where it's like, ooh, these two limbs are very
narrow angles, I've got to take one them out, or
some other thing like that, you should have printed that
long before a saw was needed. Now I'm going a
little over the top by saying every time you grab

(55:11):
a saw it's a mission of guilt. It's not true
if you inherited a tree, if you bought a property
with a tree on it that has narrow angles, that
you weren't there to make the printing cut earlier on
when it should have been. But if you've allowed it
to grow like that, then that's on you. And when
you use a saw, you're making a bigger wound. When

(55:32):
you make a bigger wound, it takes longer to close over.
Trees don't heal, They compartmentalize and callous closes over the wound.
It still slips out of my mouth the tree heel,
you know, but it's not what happens. But by carefully
thinking and understanding how a tree should be pruned, learning
how you can go online and learn how to do

(55:53):
it properly, and when you do it right, it's just
almost you're just almost not going to need a saw
unless weather, you know, storm breakage and stuff like that.
I see it. But I'd like you to think about
in terms of using a saw as an admission of
guilt and that way. That way it will encourage you
too early in the life of a branch to look

(56:17):
at it and make some decisions and take it off
when it needs to come off. And so that if
you think of it that way, I think that'll be
helpful for you. You know, it's not an absolute black
and white law like throw away your saws or you're
doing the wrong thing. No, there's times and saws are needed,
but typically that time is when proper training was not
done earlier in the life of the planet. Like you've

(56:39):
got two branches on a tree and they're let's say
five inches apart. Well, when those branches are each the
size of your thigh. They're going to be, you know,
pushing against each other, and it's like they're not far
apart at all. Fact, it's hardly possible to even see
that they're any distance apart because they've already pushed together.

(56:59):
So you could take those off earlier on and give
some spacing to your branches. And I can't on the
air sit here and describe proper tree pruning completely. There
are great resources to help you. The International Society of
Abora Culture ISA has free information on tree pruning, little
publications you can look at online. The Texas Forest Service

(57:24):
has something called the Texas Tree Selector that is very
helpful and some of the types of trees that do
well in various areas of the state. And the Texas
Forest Service also has for homeowners resources on how to
plant a tree and how to prune a tree. And
so if you're going to go out and do some
of that, spend a little bit of time learning how

(57:45):
to do it before you head out, because once someone
doesn't know really what they're doing, goes after a tree
and starts chopping on it, you're gonna create problems that
are long term problems with the tree. That's why hiring
an arborus that knows what they're doing is very important
because you need somebody that knows what they're doing. But

(58:06):
you can be that person from that young tree you're
planting on how to start it off right, how to
train it right, and take care of it once it
involves climbing in trees and using chainsaws and things. Probably
better to hire professional on that for sure. But anyway,
just some thoughts, just some food for thought. Sanamaltz is

(58:27):
a wonderful place to get quality malts. Listen, if I say,
all the time, bronze stuff before green stuff. Success begins
in the soil. Plants live in their roots, makes soil
that makes the plant hit the ground running when you
plant it. All those little things I say, Sanimals has
got you covered on all of it. They carry all
the fertilizers that you would possibly want to have success

(58:49):
with plants for microlife and medina and nitrofoss and nelson asamite.
They carry products from heirloom soils and many kinds like
from composts to bed mixes of various types, mulches. It's
all there. South of Houston on FM five point twenty one,
Sienna multch dot com. Now you can order stuff in

(59:09):
if you're within twenty miles, so come deliver it for
a fee. You can go get it. I would recommend
at least once go there and see the place. Look
at all the cool stuff they have. They got vego
bed set up where they sell them by the way
where you can see them growing. They have metal artwork
for the garden design outdoors. They have beautiful indoor things
and gifts and whatnot. Ciena Malts dot com. That's the

(59:31):
main thing is just go and check them out. I
love that place and I promise you you will love
the people that are there, the whole team. Everybody friendly, cheerful,
It's just a blessing to be around them. Really enjoy it.
And by the way, on March fourteenth, I'm gonna be
out at Cienamulch. Next month, mid month, I'll be out

(59:51):
at Ciena malt So come out and see me when
I'm out there as well. All right, And speaking of
out and about this coming Saturday at D and D feed,
I'll be giving away Nitrofoss Imperial the Red Bag and
barricade and barricade bags to lucky winners who come on
out that is D and D feed on twenty nine

(01:00:13):
to twenty west to Tomball from twelve to to next Saturday.
I hope you can come on enjoy me. Let's take
a break. We'll be right back. All right, we're back.
Welcome back to guard Line. Yeah sounds good day. Have
you joined us this lovely Sunday morning. What a great day, boy.
I was surprised to hear how much rain some of

(01:00:34):
you guys got, you know, got of know what's happening
in my house. But we got a decent amount, but
nothing like some of the areas got. So we'll be
grateful whatever we get, because nothing like rain when it
comes to gardening plants. You know, we pay money for
drinking water and squirt it on our lawns and our

(01:00:56):
plants and things like that, and it's important because you
got to keep them alive and happy and thriving. But
nothing like rainfall. If you don't have a rain collection system,
you ought to think about maybe doing one. It could
be something as simple as taking a down spout and
diverting it into a series of rain barrels that are connected.
There's information online.

Speaker 11 (01:01:14):
How to do that.

Speaker 3 (01:01:15):
You can hire somebody to come out and do it
for you, or maybe putting in a full fledged, you know,
rain collection system. There's there's some pretty heavy duty. I
was at a place in outside Austin, Texas a number
of years ago, and this guy had basically created this
giant underground swimming pool. It was what it amounted to.

(01:01:36):
It wasn't square rectangle, was kind of rounded, but it
just imagined this huge area about six feet deep.

Speaker 6 (01:01:43):
It was.

Speaker 3 (01:01:44):
It was deep, and it a roof over it had
a cover over it, so and then it had soil
on top. So he didn't know it was underground, but
it was right there. And I don't know how many
thousand gallons it held, but every bit of his property,
I mean it was capturing from the house, from the rode,
from outbuildings, from everything, and all the water that fell
on that went into this underground and it got a

(01:02:07):
bump and had lines going everywhere, and his whole irrigation
system ran off the rainfall. And it doesn't rain as
much in Austin as it does in Houston. But let
me give you fun facts here. For every inch of
rain that falls on one thousand square feet, for every

(01:02:28):
inch of rain that falls on one thousand square feet.
You can capture about six hundred gallons of water. Now,
actually it's more gallons if you take an inch over
a thousand square feet, but some of it is going
to be lost for various reasons in the capture process
and flushing and stuff like that. But six hundred gallons

(01:02:49):
per inch. So let's say you have a two thousand
square foot home, and it doesn't matter if your roof
is flat or if your roof is very pitched. The
point is the footprint of your home. For one inch
of rain that falls in two thousand square foot home,
that's twelve hundred gallons of water. So it rains a
lot here in the Houston area. But I'm gonna make
it easy to figure. Okay, So let's say you we

(01:03:12):
only get forty inches of rain in a year. I'm
just I'm shooting low here, Okay, twelve hundred times forty
is forty eight thousand gallons of water a year that
could be captured from a two thousand square foot home.
That a lot of water. A lot of water. Now, unfortunately,

(01:03:32):
it doesn't rain evenly through the year like we would
like it to. But and you can't build it. You
don't have to have a forty eight thousand gallon capture.
I mean, you could have a thousand gallons, you got
have five hundred gallons. But my point is that there's
a lot of free water that's the best water in
the world for plants, that's falling on your property and
running off somewhere. So why not capture some, even if

(01:03:56):
it's just a few fifty five gallon barrels or fifty
gallon barrels whatever, I don't know, makes a lot of
sense to me. Best best water on earth. I know
a fellow that lives out in Marfa, Tech not Marfa.
Is it not Marfa?

Speaker 13 (01:04:10):
What is it?

Speaker 3 (01:04:11):
A Minard, Minard, Texas, And he was an extension specialist
on rainwater capture. And his whole house is on rainwater.
And it does not rain much in Minard, Texas. I
don't know how many inches they get, but I know
it in over twenty. It's way less than twenty, way
less than twenty probably, But anyway, he captures it all.
His landscape is very xeric. It's a zero escape. It's

(01:04:34):
designed for that. It's designed to capture water so it
doesn't run off too But he actually even they're showering
and indoors. They have it a water go through a
UV system that treats it, and so they live on
rainwater out there. Now, you can't waste You can't take
twenty minute showers or let the shower run for five
minutes to get hot before you jump in it. But seriously,

(01:04:56):
it can be done so and we're we are just
rich with rain fall over here. Even when we have
droughts and stuff, our rainfall is so much higher than
a lot of other areas to the state. Anyway, something
for you to think about. Southwest Fertilizer where you go
for everything you need. I mean, it doesn't matter what
the supplies are, what the tools are. They got a
ninety foot wall of tools. And even for advice, take

(01:05:18):
them a sample or a picture in say hey, I
got this weed or I got this problem on this plant.
What do you recommend? They are going to have the
products there organic and synthetic. Southwest is the corner of
Bissinet and Runwick and Southwest Houston. Southwest Fertilizer dot Com.
Here's the phone number seven one three six six six
one seven four to four. You need to give them
a call. Uh and Bob and his whole team there. Uh,

(01:05:42):
they can direct you what you need to do. Uh
in terms of bring us this kind of sample, let
us take a look at it or or whatever. I'll
just tell you this. When you go in there, you're
not going to go home empty handed. They're going to
have what you need. They specialize in having everything that
you need ready to go right there. Yesterday up in Conro,
we were talking about Growers Outlet. I'm telling them, you

(01:06:04):
guys got a great nursery just up the road here
toward Willis. It's south of Willis, north of Conroe on
seventy five. Growers Outlet in Willis is the name of it,
and the email or the website Growers Outlet in Willis.
You can go on and find a lot of good
information there. They put their their you know what they
have in stock on the web. If you go to

(01:06:25):
that website and tomorrow morning, Tomorrow morning, February sixteenth, at
ten am, Andy is going to be there. Andy jed
Ester with Medina at AGG Medina Agg Products are going
to be there talking about revitalizing your garden beds for success,
getting a jump shart jump start. I can't talk this
morning on your lawn and garden after a long winter season. Well, Andy,

(01:06:49):
you'll be there. There's fifteen seats available because you can
go stand if you like, but you need to get there.
Didn't cost anything to go. Growers outlet in Willis on
Highway seventy five, just south of that Willis area on
seventy five. You gotta go and keep going through the season. Boy,
they do they have hanging baskets right now, but they're

(01:07:10):
gonna have like fern baskets in summer of the macho
fern that those boogers are like five or six feet
across it. Unbelievably huge ones that also are there. It's
a cool place. Let's take a little quick break and
we'll be right back.

Speaker 2 (01:07:26):
Means you wake on us.

Speaker 3 (01:07:27):
All right, we're back. Let's do this. We got gardening
to talk about today. Just jump right in. You know
one part of gardening that I say, this is one
of the later things about gardening that I have gotten into.
And there's just so much. I mean, you spend your
whole life, you live one hundred and twenty years and
never finish all the areas of gardening that you can
get into. But birds, it's the birds. Yesterday I was

(01:07:50):
looking out the window, and these little birds were there,
and actually I think they were trying to tell me
that I had a feeder that was a little low
unfeed because I did. In fact, I do. I need
to get out there today. The folks at Wilbird's Unlimited,
they specialize in success for you because when you have
songbirds in your landscape, they want to be there. They're

(01:08:12):
hanging out there. You get to watch their antics, you
get to hear their songs, you get the benefit of
their insect feeding activities that they do, and that's a
huge thing on birds. In the spring, they're going to
be having nests full of babies, and do you know
what the number one thing babies need, high protein, high
fat food, caterpillars. That is the number one thing birds

(01:08:32):
are bringing home to the nest to feed their babies, caterpillars.
So that's a good thing they do for us. Wilbirds
Unlimited has high quality feed bird seed, meaning that the
birds want to eat. It's the stuff they like. And
you can if you wanted to attract let's say, cardinals
or orioles or any kind of a bird that is

(01:08:54):
anywhere you're listening to my voice, they can tell you
what blends are going to attract that kind of bird
in and when to do it, and when they're here,
and when you know, like I want purple Martins. Well,
you got to get your houses up now pretty much.
I mean they're already out scouting, and wild Birds Unlimited
has wonderful equipment, houses and feeders, stuff that really really works.

(01:09:17):
I've got their little hopper feeder that's got an extra
large lid on it so when it rains like last night,
you're not so likely to get so much water or
wet and they're ruining the feed that's sitting out in
the tray. That's just an example. I have the squirrel eliminator.
It's called the eliminators, not squirrel eliminador, but the eliminator.
It keeps the squirrels out and it works so well.

(01:09:37):
That's typical for wild Birds Unlimited. Six stores in the
Greater Houston area. Houston West, a Memorial of a Houston
on bel Air, Cypress on Barker Cypress, Clear Lake on
El Dorado down to the southeast, and then we got
the Kingwood Strong Kingwood Drive and the Pearland Store down
southeast on East Broadway. Find your local Wildbirds and limited

(01:10:00):
sort of go in there pick their brains. I'm telling you,
these guys are experts, their products are excellent, and you
will really find yourself. I got to warn you you
find yourself getting addicted to it because it is just yeah,
I'm into it now and I never consider myself a
burder before. But it's so much fun. Another wonderful aspect
of gardening. I talked to some folks yesterday that their

(01:10:23):
lawns were just well, I didn't see the lawn, but
they didn't bring pictures. But when they described that, it's like,
I don't know, pretty bleak out there. Last year took
a toll insects, drought, disease, is compaction, all those kinds
of things. If you need to redo some lawn areas,
I want to tell you a place where you will

(01:10:45):
get top quality turf, the species, the varieties, and the
fresh condition and that is all seasons turf. What do
I mean by fresh condition? When you harvest sod from
a field, you are cutting off most of the root
system because you know, what do you get about a
three cars of an inch of soil with that sid well?

(01:11:07):
All the rest of the root system is lost. Now
you pile it up in a pallette and set it somewhere,
and that stuff needs to get to the ground, hit
the ground, get watered in, get roots down to thrive.
If it sits in a pallette for a day or two,
it's going downhill from right away. So all seasons turf
they specialize in not letting it sit there. They don't

(01:11:28):
cut it until you need it, so you can give
them a call at two eight one, three, seven five
seventy five O five the field where you'll go get it.
They have over six thousand acres in the area of turf,
but it's ten miles west of ninety nine. You can
call them up say i want to pick up turf
on Friday, I've got a project I'm working on, or

(01:11:48):
early early early, early in the morning. Whatever they open
up to say, your turf, get there, grab it, bring
it home and get to town if you want it
can be delivered. There is a palette limit on that
how many palletts you need. They can't drive to timbucktoo
for one pallette. And then they also have association with
people that do planting, so they can make sure and

(01:12:10):
get somebody there to get it planted fresh, brand new turf.
It's their first thing in the morning. You are busy,
you are going to town getting a nice new lawn
that you've built from All seasons turf, all seasons, turf
dot com, Zoisias, bermudas Saint Augustine's, They've got it all.

(01:12:32):
I have several there of what they carry in my
yard and I you know, you're a couple of three
years ago, I bought a number of different turfs to
do an experiment see how they do. And I'm telling
you there these are good species, and these are good
varieties that do well all seasons. Turf dot com. Again,
you can just head out there to Brookshire, tim Mills

(01:12:52):
Western ninety nine, pick it up yourself, have them deliver
it whatever you want to do, however you want to
go about it. Just know this get fresh from them
because they cut it that morning, the day that it's
going to get sent out, so it's ready to go,
all right. That is important. Everybody likes a good lawn,
you know. That is the number one thing that makes

(01:13:14):
the phone ring on garden line is turf. Turf. Questions
all kinds of things about launch from insects to diseases
to what's a good grass, to type to plant, When
do I plant it, how do I plant it, how
do I fertilize it, how to water it. It's all
about turf. I'm telling you, that's a number one topic
we hear about here. One of my favorite garden centers

(01:13:35):
is Enchanted Forest out there in the Richmond Rosenberg area.
It is on FM twenty seven fifty nine. Enchanted Forest
is it's a good name for it, enchanting. I love
going out there and from the time I drive up,
I don't know. It's just the rustic buildings and things.
It just it's like going back to another time. They

(01:13:55):
are stocked up on roses. Oh my gosh, they have
roses all over the place. And you should see their
vegetable transplants. They're ready to go, shrubs and trees. If
you ever seen a Japanese magnoia, if you haven't, go
out there and say, skip us talking about the Jane magnoia,
that's just a variety. There's lots of varieties of decidious magnolias.

(01:14:18):
I need to see it and let them show you,
from house plants to gifts to everything you can imagine
wanting for lawn and garden care, including fertilizers and other
products from quality companies. Enchanted Forest, Richmond, TX dot com.
That's the website, Enchanted Forest Richmond, t X dot com.

(01:14:41):
You need to go check them out. So cool. Love
going to that place, visiting with Clay and Danny and
the whole team out there. These folks know what they're doing.
Just really enjoy going out to that place, and you
will too if you haven't been there before. In fact,
you know what, this afternoon, it would be a good
time to head out there. Weather now we got time
to get out, all right, leave room in the car, though.

(01:15:05):
You're gonna fall in love with a lot of stuff. Well,
if you like bringing in butterflies and pollinators, say I
want to see plants that attract butterflies. What kinds of
plants do you have? And they just keep getting more
and more in through this season. But they they'll even
sometimes the plants could they go home with? You will
already have a caterpillar from that butterfly on it and
they don't charge extra free caterpillars while supplies last at

(01:15:28):
Enchanted Forest. All right, folks, well we're running out of
time here. We are about to put it up for
the eight o'clock. Get ready for the eight o'clock hour
and the news. If you have a question, we want
to be first up during the break. Here would be
a good time to call seven to one three two
one two five eight seven four seven one three two

(01:15:52):
one two fifty eight seventy four. A little music coming
up to get you ready for the rodeo when we
get back into the next hour. Rodeo is coming up.
Barbecue Cookoff. You heard about that a little bit earlier. Yeah, yesterday,
I guess I had folks from Barbecue Cookoff talking about
that coming up. That is that is well Internationally, there's

(01:16:16):
nothing like the Houston Livestock showing Rodeo, Barbecue Cookoff. I'll
be out there for the plant contest. We have a
number of different contests for youth and horticulture. Stop in
and watch those in pro progress. About Sunday afternoons is
when they do those Sunday mornings.

Speaker 1 (01:16:35):
Come on out, Welcome to k z r H Garden
Line with Skip rictor.

Speaker 2 (01:16:49):
Just watch him as.

Speaker 7 (01:17:06):
Sid Hey, Hey, hey, welcome back.

Speaker 3 (01:17:19):
Welcome back to the Guarden Line on a wonderful Sunday.
Oh my gosh, this afternoon. You need to get out
get out and go visit a garden center. Maybe just
do a drive around some neighborhoods for some inspiration on
how people have landscaped. You know, I do that a lot.
I when I go around different places, often I take
different routes so that I can see different things. I'll

(01:17:40):
drive by and look and go, oh wow, look how
they designed that, or what is that plant that they
put in? Or other kinds of inspiration. That's how you
get good ideas for your own. It's okay to steal
steal people's ideas, bring them home, do that same thing yourself,
or some version of it that you particularly like.

Speaker 15 (01:17:56):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:17:57):
Medina has so many good products. Know where to start
on them? I want to just right now, I just
would like to talk about Medina's has to grow six
twelve six plant food that is a high phosphorus plant food,
and phosphorus is important in root development of plants. Now
you can use it as a fertilizing ingredient to mix

(01:18:18):
in a watering can and take existing plants and give
them a boost of phosphorus. It's important for things like
blooming and fruiting and whatnot. But I like to use
it in planting transplanting. Put the plant in the ground,
you drench it with a watering can with a mix
of has to grow six to twelve six plant food
from Medina. Finish your planting, drench it again, and then

(01:18:41):
maybe even once or twice more about a week apart,
and give that plant its best shot at getting a
good rich system established and getting off on its way
to success and beauty or whatever. You're growing that plant
for Medina all over town. You're going to find these
at garden center, speed stores, as hardware stores. Medina products
are widely available and they are excellent and they work

(01:19:04):
simple as that. Let's go now to the phones. We're
going to head to Kingwood and talk to Joe this morning. Hey, Joe,
welcome regarding good morning.

Speaker 17 (01:19:12):
SKIP had a question regarding Japanese US, and I sent
you a couple of photos. I don't know I've had
a chance to pull them up yet. I just sent
them a few minutes.

Speaker 14 (01:19:22):
Ago, and I did.

Speaker 17 (01:19:27):
As you see, the one on the left was damaged.
It was I had a contractor doing some work on
my house and he broke off the big center stem
and so I've got the two side by side there
at the front entrance of my house, and the one
on the left is obviously damaged. Do you recommend that

(01:19:48):
I keep the one on the left, just allow it
to fill in if it will, or should I replace
it with a new one as large as I can get,
or replace both of them so that they're the same side.

Speaker 3 (01:20:01):
Hey, Joe, about how long have those been in place?

Speaker 6 (01:20:04):
Uh?

Speaker 17 (01:20:05):
I'm going to say three or four years. It's been
a few years.

Speaker 3 (01:20:10):
Okay, Okay, they look pretty good. I think now you
certainly could replant and all that. I think you'd be
if it were mine. Here's what I would do. I
would put a steak in the ground beside the damaged
one and try to pull that branch toward the steak.
You may tie it a little lower and then tie
it again a little bit higher, So in other words,
you're moving that what will become the new central trunk

(01:20:32):
toward the center of the plant a little bit. Does
that make sense?

Speaker 11 (01:20:36):
Okay?

Speaker 17 (01:20:36):
So you just put the steak in the center of
the of the plant and then.

Speaker 3 (01:20:41):
Yeah, yeah, I mean you could use you could use
some twine or whatever you want to use. If you
want to go with something a little softer to pull
it in. You could use a strap of some sort,
but it's not real important. The main thing is we're
just trying to Right now, it's leaning over toward that window,
and so you want to it more to the center.

(01:21:01):
And if you leave a tied like that for oh,
I don't know, probably several months, it's going to stay
in that place better. And then I would just start
fertilizing those things, and through the course of this twenty
twenty six growing season, probably fertilize them in small doses
three or four times. The one that is undamaged, you

(01:21:22):
can do some little pruning to kind of hold it back,
you know, to kind of keep it from continuing to
get bigger faster, while the other one has a chance
to catch up a little bit. And I would do
the extra fertilizing on the one, by the way, that
is needing to do the extra growth. And I think
within a year or so they're going to be pretty similar.

(01:21:44):
Maybe a year maybe two, but you'll get them pretty similar,
and you'll be better off than starting off with a
new little root ball stuck in the ground out of
a pot. And so I think you can I think
it'll fill.

Speaker 11 (01:21:56):
In just fine on it.

Speaker 17 (01:21:58):
I appreciate you by it.

Speaker 11 (01:22:00):
Uh.

Speaker 17 (01:22:00):
Every you say fertilize, what what do you recommend? I
fertilize it with.

Speaker 3 (01:22:06):
Well, simplest thing gives you some lawn fertilizer as long
as it doesn't have weed control in it. You could
do that, or you could buy a fertilizer you know,
Nelson's makes one that's for trees and shrubs that could
be used. But basically you're needing nitrogen. That's the main
thing that is going to make things happen with that
Japanese youth.

Speaker 17 (01:22:24):
So just like some left over a nicopas super turf
for example.

Speaker 3 (01:22:30):
Yeah, that'd be a great one. And though that's a
slow release already, so you could you could do that.
I might start with something a little bit faster release
in the spring and then when we get to you know,
April or so, then then do the super turf on it.
But if you want to fertilize right now with the something,
if you buy Nitruss products, they've got the red bag,

(01:22:51):
the Ntofos imperial. Uh, you could do that. Just go easy,
don't overdo it. You know, a shrub like that, I
would say probably a if you took about about a
quarter cup of imperial and spread it in a circle
that reaches out as far as the branches and about
fifty percent beyond that. So, in other words, from your

(01:23:12):
sidewalk over to the next bush there and sprinkled about
about a quarter cup or so evenly over there, watered
it in real good. That'll do it. And then come
back in April. What you mentioned the super turf, and
do it in April. Do it again maybe in June.
I wouldn't fertilize. You could do it again in August,

(01:23:38):
but I would probably use a little faster release at
that point. I don't want to fertilize them too late
in the season.

Speaker 17 (01:23:44):
Okay, back to the imperial maybe in August then.

Speaker 3 (01:23:49):
Yeah, something like that.

Speaker 17 (01:23:50):
Yeah, all right, all right, thank you for the advice.
I appreciate it, you bet.

Speaker 3 (01:23:56):
I wish you well there. Joe Warren's in Kingwood Gardens.
They're open, do you know? They're open today from ten
to four. They're open Monday through Saturday from nine to
to four, nine to four, Monday through Saturday, ten to
four today on Sundays. Now, beginning tomorrow they're going to
extend their hours to five o'clock, So get an extra
hour shopping in there. You need to get by huge

(01:24:19):
pottery cell there forty percent off a very large selection
of the different shapes and sizes and colors of pottery
that they have, and they are loaded up at both
Warren's and Kingwood Garden Center with citrus and fruit tree
inventory as well as all the other plants they carry.
Just remember Warren's Southern Gardens is on North Park. Kingwood
Garden Center is on Stone Hollow. Main thing is get

(01:24:42):
on over there. This is going to be a week
to have a great time getting supplanted out there in
your garden. Let's go now out to Victoria and we're
going to talk to Tim this morning. Hey Tim, welcome
to garden Line.

Speaker 4 (01:24:55):
Hey how are you this morning?

Speaker 5 (01:24:58):
I have a w I was wondering if you pull
out your crystal ball would tell me if it's too
early to prune it.

Speaker 4 (01:25:04):
It's got some low hanging limbs.

Speaker 18 (01:25:06):
I need to prune it.

Speaker 3 (01:25:08):
You know, I would just be a little careful. A
worry is a hearty satsuma. But let's not tempt fate
by pushing. You know, we're gonna get eighty degrees. You
prune it, it's gonna think it needs to start growing
in response to the pruning. So let's hold off. If
you can wait a month to do your pruning on it,
then you can begin to do any kind of cutting
here and there that you might need on your satsuma. Okay,

(01:25:32):
all right, how about the pomegranates.

Speaker 5 (01:25:33):
Are they kind of the same, same time.

Speaker 3 (01:25:37):
Kind of the same Yeah, well, palm grant that you
could go ahead and prune them.

Speaker 2 (01:25:41):
There.

Speaker 3 (01:25:42):
They're a heartier, a little bit harder plant. But I would,
you know, I don't know, if it needed major pruning,
I would wait on it. If it's just a little
bit of pruning, go ahead and do it now. I
just hate to push late growth when we could have
one more freeze, and that's just making an extra conservative.

Speaker 4 (01:26:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:26:01):
Yeah, I've my daughter got married in early April once
and it was like the coldest the cold all winter.

Speaker 3 (01:26:09):
There you go lighting, uh, wait until spring growth, trees
waiting when spring start fertile Okay, yeah, when spring growth,
both of them, all your shrubs and trees. When when
spring growth begins, you can go ahead and start your fertilize.

Speaker 18 (01:26:27):
All right, all right, okay, super, thank you, good much.

Speaker 14 (01:26:29):
I appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (01:26:30):
All right, Now you know that you know the rural
on garden Line. My advice is free, but I expect
satsumas and palm granite to show up sometime here. Thanks Tim,
stay out of trouble. We got to go to a
break bill and spring your first when we come back.
Good morning on a really nice Sunday morning. It's gonna
be a great week. It's gonna be a great afternoon, fach.

(01:26:52):
Good time to get out there and garden and talk
about gardening here on garden Line this morning. Hey, the
ground Up three low around the west side of Houston.
There is a Britmore location where it is open to
the public. The other locations will they will ship out
of in other words, they'll haul the materials out for
delivery to you. But the Britmore location is open to

(01:27:15):
the public on Saturdays from seven am to noon seven
to noon on Saturdays. Here's the website, the ground up
dot com. Go look at the products. They have so
many good products. Leaf more compost, organic compost or organic compost.
It's been double screened. Veggie and herb soils. They're potting soil,

(01:27:37):
the Bohemon potting blend, lots of good products, mulches, all
kinds of things from the ground up. Now, if you
head out to Britmore on a Saturday from seven to noon,
you will be able to pick up products bulk or
buy the bag and if you want to have them
deliver it, there is a minimum on delivery. Of course,
you can't just haulo one yard of soil all over creation,

(01:28:00):
but talk to them about it if you want to
go to where you shop locally. The number of these
retailers around town carry their bag products like Moss Nursery
down in Seabrook, ce in them Alts down south of
Houston RCW where Beltway eight and two forty nine Tomball
Parkway come together, Ace Hardware which is on Memorial Drive,
Ace Hardware up in Champions North Houston, and then just

(01:28:22):
go to the website The ground up dot com and
find all the locations that are available like that. Now,
they've got a great calculator on their website and they
they're very active too, by the way, on Facebook and Instagram,
so you ought to check them out on there if
you need to give the call. Two eight one nine
seven zero zero zero zero three. One more thing. Their

(01:28:45):
plant selections are incredible. They carry a lot of plants
that are very hard to find around here. And so
when you're heading in to the Brentmore location on a Saturday,
you need to check out their plants because I'm telling
you you're going to find things, and this is prime
planning season. You're going to find things that you want
to bring home. And they have a great selection. Aaron's

(01:29:07):
done a great job putting all that together. Let's head
out to Spring now and we're going to visit with
Bill this morning. Hey, Bill, welcome to guarden Line.

Speaker 12 (01:29:15):
Hi Skip, thank you for taking my call. I have
a question about a pine tree in our front yard.

Speaker 14 (01:29:22):
It's really quite large.

Speaker 12 (01:29:23):
I would guess about three feet in diameter at the
base and it goes up about I don't know, sixty
or seventy feet the needles way up on top looked
very green and vibrant. But I was out picking up
some pine cones and I picked up this section of
branches probably two inches diameter by a couple feet and

(01:29:49):
obviously very dead.

Speaker 11 (01:29:50):
And it's just.

Speaker 12 (01:29:52):
Riddled with little holes as if it had been under
attack by some kind of wood boring critter. Now, okay,
I've lost a couple of trees due to woo boring things,
but they always started at the bottom and worked their
way up. I tried to spray for them, but it

(01:30:13):
didn't work anyway. My question is, okay, if I find
and I have found branches like this before, but if
never looked at them for any kind of infestation.

Speaker 4 (01:30:25):
If I.

Speaker 12 (01:30:27):
Is this something that will be going on up there
on the top and work its way down and caused
me to lose this tree? Or is this just a
one off? And I don't know? Well what would be
your guess?

Speaker 3 (01:30:40):
Yeah, not being there and seeing the whole situation, I
can't give you a definitive answer. My gut feeling is
you're probably not looking at something that's going to work
its way down from the top and cause problems. You
get have come look at it, and Martin Spoon Moore
at Affordable Tree would be someone to call. Do you
have a pin or handy? I'll give you his.

Speaker 4 (01:31:00):
Phone number, Yes, sir, I do, okay?

Speaker 15 (01:31:06):
Uh?

Speaker 3 (01:31:06):
Martin Spoon Moore at Affordable Tree Service it's seven one
three six two six six three seven one three six
nine nine two six sixty three uh and uh if
you don't go to his website, it's a ff tree
service dot com He does everything from pruning, deeper feeding,
some grinding, uh you know, all kinds of stuff. He

(01:31:29):
can take a look at this and tell you what
he thinks based on what he sees there. Don't throw
the branch away that you found on the ground. If
you still have it, hold on to it and have
him take a look at that too, uh so he
can kind of see what's going on, uh not picturing it.
It's hard for me to say what's going on. It
could be stress from lack of water. It could be
some other issue going on down that's just stressing the

(01:31:51):
tree in the soil. But it also could be something
that needs treating. So have Martin come out and take
a look at it. That'd be my best guess. Sounds
like that is a legend legendary tree you definitely don't
want to lose.

Speaker 12 (01:32:03):
Sure, Okay, all right, thanks Skip. I surely enjoy your show.

Speaker 3 (01:32:09):
Thanks Bill, appreciate that you take care absolutely uh RCW Nurseries.
When it comes to roses, it's I I just almost
laugh every year because it's like six pages, single space
of rose varieties that they get in and listen edby

(01:32:29):
and their dog knows about it all the Rose Society.
Folks know about RCW for sure. Uh And and they're
gonna head out there. They're gonna get roses. So you know,
if every week you wait, there's less and less that's
gonna be available because people come out and clean them out.
But right now they still have an outstanding selection out there.

Speaker 15 (01:32:47):
Now.

Speaker 3 (01:32:47):
They're at Tomball Park with about way eight. And you
know RCW they grow their own trees and shrubs up
there in Plantersville at Williamson Tree Farm. Uh And at
least a lot of the ones that they say they
grow themselves up there, they can come out and do
planting for you. I mean they are a full service
professional nursery and lots of other great plants. Of course,

(01:33:09):
you know when it's time to put in vegetables and
herbs and flowers. Place to go RCW Nurseries right now, boy,
roses are the thing it's about. It was Valentine's Day yesterday.
You can still plant roses today, by the way, all right,
but you got to head out to RCW Nurseries rcdew
Nurseries dot com. Check them out. I love going out

(01:33:30):
there visiting with the group. David and the whole team
really really out there. It just these folks have been
doing They've been in business a long time. They know
what they're doing. David and Kathleen just friendly and helpful,
and if you ask him a question, you're going to
get the correct answer because they are experts at what
they do, all right. I was visiting with someone from

(01:33:55):
Microlife two or three days ago and we were talking
about some of theirs and things that they carry. You know,
they carry the liquid products of various types. The ones
that are fertilizers, like the orange label Biomatrix. It's a
seven pine to three high boost and nitrogen. I use
it indoors, just no fragrance to be you know, concerned

(01:34:18):
about or anything. It's organic and it just really provides
that foliage growth boost for your houseplants. I use it outdoors.
Anything that needs a boost of nitrogen is going to
benefit from that. They've got the blue label which is
Ocean Harvest, a fish based fertilizer. I use that one
outdoors as well. And then they have their inoculants, the

(01:34:39):
bio inoculant types of products that have the right blends
of microbes that stimulate the plant growth, but they also
protect the plant. So there's the Microgrowth Supreme is used
in some of the products that they for example, the
acidifier you know, the red bag sixty two four, asset
of Fier, the regular green bag Microlife six y two four,

(01:35:02):
the Citrus for Microlife, they all have the micro Growth
Supreme in it. It's got a complete endo and ectomicro
rhizoal package, good good disease fighters in it. And then
there's other products. You know, we talk about brown patch
in the fall and the micro Grow bioinoculant that's a
different package that's even higher boosted with the disease fighting

(01:35:23):
microbes that are in it. Listen, they call Microlife microlife
because it's all about microbes, because microbes rule the world
and they run things in the soil, and plants need
and thrive when you've got the good microbes present. So
grab you some Microlife fertilizer. Follow the label, use it.
You get the nutrients those numbers on the bag, and

(01:35:46):
then more numbers that aren't on the bag, lots of
micro nutrients in them as well. But the main thing
is you're stimulating and building the soil over time for
better success with your plants. From the folks at Microlife
simple as that. Let's see here, we're going to take
a break in just a bit. I did want to

(01:36:07):
talk just a little bit about success with vegetable gardening
and flowers. And this is real brief, but in order
to have success, when you bring those new plants in,
typically it's small containers, you know, maybe it's a little
six pack of tomatoes or four inch pots or things.
That is a very limited root system, and when you
first put it in, you want to water it in.

(01:36:27):
I would use solutions, microbial solutions, nutrient solutions to water
those plants in, help them get established. But then you're
gonna have to water them regularly because in one day
it pumps out a little bit of soil dry if
it's a warm day like the eighty degrees we're gonna
have this week. So water m pure, you know, pretty often,
to keep them moist, not soggy wet, and then you

(01:36:50):
gradually back off. But just remember it takes a while
to get that root system established, and you do not
want that plant to go on hold due to minor
draft stress. You want it to keep growing, to hit
the ground running. So always water your plants in with
the nutrient solutions and continue to keep them moist, at
least for the first couple of weeks. Touch and go there,
and then you can back off a little bit. Let's

(01:37:12):
take a break and we'll be right back. We're coming
up on the rodeo. Oh yes, playing at the world's
biggest rodeo. That's it. Are you ready? You're ready to
go to h LSR this year. Got to get your tickets.

(01:37:32):
Lots of good entertainment coming up. You don't want to
miss any of that. Oh and the barbecue. You got
about ten days to make space for pigging out on barbecue.
I love the barbecue contest. This is a world Championship
barbecue contest. They have teams coming in from several other countries.

(01:37:55):
I mean a number of other countries coming in and
it is this is a big deal, a big big deal.
Thursday the twenty sixth, Friday the twenty seventh, Saturday the
twenty eighth. That's what I said. You got a little
over ten days to get ready for this. Get yourself
in shape because you've got some heavy duty barbecue and
munchon to do when it comes up. With that, wander

(01:38:15):
for Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo all the events that
come with it. What a big deal. They ain't nothing
like it all over the world. There's nothing like it. Well,
you're listening to guard Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter,
and here is a phone number. Let's talk. Let's figure
out what we need to do to get you success
in any aspect of your lawn, garden or landscape. Seven

(01:38:37):
one three two one two five eight seven four seven
one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. I
was visiting with folks at Pestpro's the other day. They
were out here. We were doing some termite work. I've
got a new termite treatment that I put down that

(01:38:58):
is just it's the way to do it. And what
am I talking about? I'm talking about it. They come in,
they put a trench in around your house. There's a
number of different options that you can have done for
termite treatments. This one I like it, and I'll tell
you why. Pest Pros comes out, they dig a little
trench around your house and they put it down in
the trench. Just it's not a deep trench, it's just

(01:39:19):
very shallow trench. But they get it below the surface,
they soak it in and they cover it back up
again and you're done for ten year guarantee. No termites.
This stuff is down below sod. My dogs walk along
there and lay on the ground or whatever. It's not
like they're laying in pesticides and things. But this stuff

(01:39:39):
really really does work, and it shuts them down. They're
not able to get in.

Speaker 4 (01:39:43):
Now.

Speaker 3 (01:39:43):
Pest pros is about anything on four legs or six
legs that's bugging you, and that would include rats and
raccoons and possums, whatever gets up in the attic and
goes bumping the night. They know how to find where
they're getting in. Shut that down, get that in control,
for it keeps them busy in the wintertime, a lot
of calls on that, and then here comes spring and

(01:40:05):
the six legged creatures are crawling around, from cockroaches to
silverfish and doors, pantry pass You know, we have all
kinds of things we deal with indoors outside we got
fire ants, oh my gosh, And of course I already
mentioned termites. Lots of different things that we have to
deal with, and pest Bros. Is equipped and ready and

(01:40:25):
knowledgeable about how to do it effectively and in the
safest possible manner. So you get those long term results,
like I'm getting on my termite treatment without any worries.
You don't want to have to sit there and go, well,
you know, I've got kids and stuff. What are they
using and all that kind of thing. Pest pros is

(01:40:46):
how to do it right? Talk to them, they're professionals.
Two eight one two oh six forty six seventy two
eight one two o six four six seven zero dpestbros
dot com the pest bros dot Com. I uh, visiting,
I always have to ask questions.

Speaker 2 (01:41:05):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:41:05):
I guess people that do servicing probably hate to come
to my house because it's I always wondered. I don't
want to help them, you know, I'm not there like
bugging them. You know, Okay, hey you need to borrow
my ranch. I'm not that guy. But I do want
to know, like what are you using? How does it work?
You know, why are you using that? And stuff like that,
and so I'm a what do they say? Inquiring minds

(01:41:25):
want to know. I want to know. It's my house,
my property, and you should too. That's why. So I
think it's so much of folks at pest Bros. Jorgees
Hitding Gardens. You should see the fruit trees this guy's
gotten in Jorge has got oh my gosh, what do
you want? Blueberries? Do you want citrus? Do you want peaches?
Do you want pears? Do you want?

Speaker 6 (01:41:44):
On?

Speaker 3 (01:41:45):
And on and on and on down the line. He
has a wonderful selection down there in the Alvin area.
It's it's actually an Alvin address, Elizabeth Street. It's betweens
between Alvin. Well, just just do this, give him a
call seven to one three sixty three to two fifty
two ninety seven to one three sixty three two fifty

(01:42:07):
two ninety just right there between Alvin Santa fe uh.
And he has a good selection. Now he's getting the
vegetables in and he's getting all kinds of other plants,
herbs and things that you want to put in the garden,
shrubs and trees. He has an excellent selection of all
kinds of trees that do very very well here and
roses roses roses roses at Orges hidden gardens down south.

(01:42:29):
You need to make sure and check him out. Has
his own special line of fertilizer that Nelson Plant Food
has put together for him, and it's excellent product. Why
are you there? Grab some of that too, because you're
going to want to go out there and make sure
you are taking care of feeding the plants that you
have to get the optimum growth health and in the
case of fruiting plants, productivity from them orges hidden gardens.

(01:42:55):
I am gonna visit with you a little bit before
we Oh, I got a good, good amount of time
here before I have to go to another break. I
want to talk about success in diagnosing identifying problems that
you might have a couple of thoughts when you're dealing
with insects. Insects basically have two types of mouth parts. Basically,

(01:43:20):
they've either got chewing mouthparts or they have piercing sucking mouthparts.
Now chewing mouth parts that would be beetles and caterpillars,
and it's not an insect, but slugs and snails have
chewing mouth parts. They rasp their way in there. There
is piercing sucking mouthparts. Those would be things like stink bugs.

(01:43:40):
They stick their little mouth beak if you will, down
in their plant. They spit caustic spit and slurp up
the contents. Doesn't that sound appetizing to your tomatoes or
peaches or whatever they're doing?

Speaker 6 (01:43:53):
It?

Speaker 8 (01:43:53):
Too.

Speaker 3 (01:43:54):
There's one other kind of mouth part that's a rasping
mouth part. And the way here's a good analogy. It's
like you know what a reciprocal saw. It's got that
blade that goes up and down and you just use
it to chew your way through whatever sheet rock or
wood or whatever it is. Well, the threats have that
kind of mouth part. They just rasp through the tissues

(01:44:15):
of your plant. If you've never seen threat damage before,
If you have onions and you look at the leaves
on onions and have the little white streaks on them,
that's threat damage. If you have roses, open up a
rose and you see these little tiny insects crawling around inside,
those are threats. If you know what, I grew up
calling them buttercups, but they're a pink flower grows on

(01:44:40):
the road side. You go look at one of those,
and you will see threaps in the spring when those
wildflowers come up and those That kind of damage is
damaging too to plants. When something is chewing on your plants.
Here's what I do. First of all, I look for
the trail of a slug or snail. That's easy. You

(01:45:02):
see the slime dried trail on there, you know what
did it. Second thing is I look at where the
holes are. If they are little round holes in the leaf,
it's probably a little tiny beetle. If it's been eaten
from the sides, like little chunks have been chewed out
of the side of the leaf, it's probably a caterpillar.
But those are not the only two ways beetles and
caterpillars can do. Look for them. Turn the leaves over

(01:45:25):
during the day. Caterpillars sometimes hide underneath the leaves. And
another thing you can do is go out at night
with a flashlight. Some plant pests are nocturnal. They feed
at night and then they're gone. You don't see them.
Go out at night and check for them. That's one
way you can diagnose and get into what is the
who done it? Of the holes in my plant that
I'm dealing with here. So there's a tip. Maybe we'll

(01:45:48):
talk diseases a little bit when we come back. Let's
go to a break right now, all right along? Ten together,
Andy Grammar with a little upbeat for our Sunday morning. Hey,
welcome back, Let's talk gardening. You got a question. Here's
the number seven one three two one two k t

(01:46:08):
R H. Let's head out. We're gonna go to a
Taska Sita and talk to Thomas this morning. Hey, Thomas,
welcome to garden line.

Speaker 6 (01:46:17):
Good morning.

Speaker 3 (01:46:17):
How are you doing good?

Speaker 11 (01:46:23):
Number one?

Speaker 6 (01:46:23):
I'm still killing plans and learning.

Speaker 3 (01:46:26):
Good. You gotta kill a lot of plants to be
a good gardener.

Speaker 6 (01:46:31):
And also my lemon, my, my, my lemon tree is
flowering already, and I'm a little worried about that. Should
I keep those boats to cut them?

Speaker 3 (01:46:43):
No, don't cut them. How old is your tree? How
long has it been on the ground.

Speaker 6 (01:46:47):
Oh, it's it's the uh third year. It's very healthy.
I had my first clop last year.

Speaker 3 (01:46:55):
Yeah, no, don't don't. Don't mess with the balliomes uh.
Since it's planted, you can't move it. Just get ready
covered up. If we have a freeze, it's probably not
going to be that hard and not that long. So
I think you'd be all right if you've got it
through the phrases we've already had. Yeah, you're good.

Speaker 6 (01:47:13):
Yeah, well I do. I made I made the drop
cloths a couple of years ago with the frost cloth,
and I siliconed plastic over it, and I put a
heat lamp a file away, so it keeps everything at
about forty degrees.

Speaker 3 (01:47:27):
Wow, sound like you're you're in business. Send me a
picture of that sometime when you put it up. I'd
like to see your your setup. That That sounds good.
But did you call with a question about just the
lemon or do you have other questions?

Speaker 6 (01:47:41):
Oh? That was basically it. I was just I was
surprised to see them blooming so early.

Speaker 3 (01:47:47):
Yeah. Yeah, well, uh, get ready to have lemonade. Drop
drop a little lemonade off at kt r H and
we'll call it even got it.

Speaker 6 (01:47:56):
I appreciate it, enjoyed it, so keep.

Speaker 3 (01:47:58):
It up you bet, Bye, sir, I appreciate that. Bye bye.
All right, let's go now to West Euston and talk
to Randy. Hey, Randy, welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 10 (01:48:07):
Hey, good morning.

Speaker 17 (01:48:08):
How are you doing this morning?

Speaker 3 (01:48:10):
I'm doing I'm doing good.

Speaker 6 (01:48:12):
How can we help excellent?

Speaker 10 (01:48:14):
I have a number of citrus trees that are in pots,
and during the freeze, I took them inside and I
uh brought them back outside and now I believe I
have aphids on them. There's small little black bugs on
the on the leaves. Does that sound about right?

Speaker 9 (01:48:34):
Huh could be and I used I used yesterday bet
on them.

Speaker 14 (01:48:40):
Should I have used oil?

Speaker 3 (01:48:44):
Une oil probably would have helped better. BT is not
going to work on aphids at all.

Speaker 14 (01:48:52):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:48:52):
Beatneem oil and insecticidal soap or two options that you
could use on them when it warms up a little
bit this week. Get out one morning and give them
a little bath and soap or use the knee oil
either one.

Speaker 5 (01:49:06):
All right, sounds very good, Alan Stomb.

Speaker 3 (01:49:11):
Yeah, and ready, remember coverage is key, So any aphid
that doesn't get a bath in the soap or the
kneem oil is not going to be killed. So be
ready to make sure your coverage is optimum as you spray.

Speaker 11 (01:49:23):
All right, absolutely, Hey, thank you very much.

Speaker 3 (01:49:28):
All right, thank you. Appreciate your call very much. Appreciate that.
I love going to Buchanans because at Buchanans, you find
it takes me a couple hours to get through Buchanans.
It just does because I got to go look at everything.
And right now they have an excellent group of fruit
trees that they brought in, really nice tomatoes and herbs.

(01:49:51):
They are loaded up on everything you need for spring.
It is time to get out there to Buchanans and
do that.

Speaker 16 (01:49:57):
Now.

Speaker 3 (01:49:57):
You know they're famous for the native plants because nobody
has selection of natives it begins does, but so much
much more. You need to make time. Fact, this afternoon
would be a good time to head out to Buchanons
and get yourself set up. While you're there, pick up
the they carry the fertilizers. You hear me talk about.
They carry a number of soil blends, including their own

(01:50:19):
their life below and they've created their own blends as well.
That work excellent while you're out there picking it up.
But don't delay, because you know every time you, every
day you delay, people are coming out and buying their
nectarines and apricots and peaches and plums and blueots and
pears and all the other things, citrus, all the other
things they carry. Their have Buchanans on eleven Street and

(01:50:41):
the heights. Let's see, we are now going who have
I not talked to? Were just going to Charlie and
west you. Hey, Charlie, welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 4 (01:50:56):
Thank you. I sent you a picture of Drossina that
got too cold three weeks ago or so.

Speaker 3 (01:51:05):
Is it right?

Speaker 4 (01:51:06):
Is there any hope for this. There's something I can
do for it.

Speaker 3 (01:51:10):
Actually, I have a couple of probably yeah, probably not
above ground. But if you move those leaves out of
the way and take your thumbnail and scratch into the bark.
If it's mushy not firm, like, you can even grab
the stem and press on it a little bit. If
it's not firm, it's dead and you just got to
cut it back. It may be that down near the

(01:51:31):
ground line you could get a bud sprout that comes out.
So I'd give it a little bit of time, let
the temperatures warm up, and see how it does. My
best guess is the prognosis doesn't look good at all.
It could be that there's a little bit of a
live bud at the bottom. That may prove me wrong.

Speaker 4 (01:51:51):
Okay, all right, So what I need to do then
is kind of feel or scratch into that trunk and
see if it's if it's for a all, If that's mushy,
uh all the way all the way down, then I
just need to kind out of the ground and hope
and hope something comes back.

Speaker 3 (01:52:08):
Yeah, cut it in the ground, give it a few
weeks of warmer temperatures. It's not going to want to
grow when it's cool. But this week we're going to
have the temperatures. It should wake it up. If it's
got anything alive down there, I'm doubtful, but I wouldn't
give up quite yet, all right, cha, okay, okay, all right,
thank you, good luck with it? Yeah, you bet glad

(01:52:30):
to help. All right, folks, we're gonna have to go
to a break here. We'll take your calls when we
come back. Seven one three two one two five eight
seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight
seventy four. I want to remind you that if you
are out and about next Saturday, come on over to

(01:52:51):
D and D feed and Tomball. I'll be there. That's
on FM twenty nine to twenty out in Tomball area,
and we're going to be given a some night foss products,
the red bags of Imperial. I got some of that.
I've also got some barricade. So throw your name in
the pod for the drawing. You might get lucky. And
when one I'll have copies of my schedule on hand.
I'll have some copies of Texas Gardener magazine. For those

(01:53:14):
of you who don't subscribe, you need to get a
copy in your hand. Look at it. I'll even have
another drawing for a copy of Texas Gardener's Garden Planning Guide.
This is a like a calendar through the year that
has information like every day to year, what do you
need to do? It also has some other helpful information

(01:53:34):
in it beyond just the what to do today for example.
But if you know anybody that's a new gardener in
this area, you need to get a copy of that
for them and give it to them as a gift.
Texas Gardener Magazine can be found at Texasgardener dot com,
Texas Gardner Magazine dot com, Texas Gardener. So what I

(01:53:55):
would do is go to the website. If you don't subscribe,
you need to subscribe, all right, you do. It is
a wonderful magazine written by Texas Gardeners for Texas Gardener.
I think a while ago, I said, Texas Gardner Magazine
dot com. It's Texas Gardener dot com. But subscribe to
the print, subscribe to the digital, subscribe to both. They

(01:54:16):
get you a copy of the Texas Gardener Planning Guide. Again,
a great gift to new gardeners in the area.

Speaker 1 (01:54:25):
Welcome to k t r H Garden Line with skin Richter's.

Speaker 2 (01:54:38):
Just watch him as.

Speaker 15 (01:54:45):
They do.

Speaker 3 (01:54:56):
We uh, we need to get rolling here. We got
some phone call and a lot more stuff to cover
here today on guard Line. By the way, thank you,
thank you for listening, and I appreciate that. Let's go
to the East Houston area. We're going to talk to
Andrew this morning. Hey, Andrew, welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 9 (01:55:14):
Thank you.

Speaker 6 (01:55:14):
Skip.

Speaker 19 (01:55:15):
This is a d Y I. I got a question
root barrier. I live out in the East End in
Denver Harbor, and what I was wanting to do is
the d y I root barrier. I wanted to find
out about some quality barriers. I I see so Benny,
but I'm still questioning the quality. And then two again,

(01:55:35):
finally is where to find this quality root barrier?

Speaker 3 (01:55:41):
Yeah? Good question?

Speaker 4 (01:55:43):
Where man?

Speaker 19 (01:55:44):
Again, I've got some roots I've got I can see
some roots above ground, but I want to take action
before it damaging.

Speaker 3 (01:55:54):
So you're wanting to put a vertical wall down in
the soil. Is that what you mean when you're saying
root barrier?

Speaker 11 (01:56:00):
Yes, sir, yes, sir, Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:56:02):
Just want to make sure we're talking about the samething. Uh, yeah,
I don't I don't have sources and stuff for that.
There are professional supply companies that provide various types of
things for plants. I would, uh, you know, I might
talk to someone like I would give Bob a call
in Southwest fertilizer. I don't know that he carries it,

(01:56:23):
but he has so much of everything that I would
give him a call. He may know where you can
get it if he doesn't carry it. The companies that
do it typically you know a company that has bamboo,
a company that does treework and stuff. They're going to
do that type of thing. I would also try calling
Ty Stricklet at fixmislab dot com. Now I don't I

(01:56:47):
don't know for sure that Ty does the barrier work,
but he might and he may be able to help
you with that. And he's over. Let me give you
a phone number for Tie. It's too eight two eight
one two five five fortnine. And again I'm not telling

(01:57:07):
you that he sells it and all that kind of
stuff for you, but I know he knows about that stuff.

Speaker 19 (01:57:14):
Pardon right, I just need to know again.

Speaker 16 (01:57:17):
I want to say thank you for the show, thank
you Skip for being there.

Speaker 19 (01:57:21):
The fact of the matter is is that I'm looking
at doing this, DYI at cost. But the thing is
is that it is the barrier. I will give fix
my slab call and we'll go from there. But then too,
I mean, this is what the program is all about.

Speaker 11 (01:57:38):
And I thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:57:39):
I thank you very much for being the sure sure.
I'm just trying to point you in the right direction.
I'm not everybody listening. I'm not saying anybody called tie
because he sells rupberry at all. I don't know that
at all. Doubt I doubt that in general, but I
think he can point you in the right direction. I
do know companies though that are really into bamboo, that
that's kind of their focus, and they will do root

(01:58:01):
barriers because running bamboos have got to be stopped from
running or they'll take over. Uh And and so that's
one application, and that is that is a very strong
thick barrier. You don't want just some dinky little ground
cloth to try to stop them. It takes a good
thick barrier. Uh So that that's where I would point
you for now. Andrew, thank you though for the call.

(01:58:22):
Appreciate that very much. Let's now run out to Cypress
and talk to Melanie. Hey, Melanie, welcome to garden line.

Speaker 6 (01:58:30):
Hye, beautiful morning this morning.

Speaker 15 (01:58:34):
I'm going to try putting some weedin out since it's
already gotten good water on grass, and I is that
enough fertilizer when I use the.

Speaker 6 (01:58:48):
It's supposed to be use.

Speaker 3 (01:58:51):
If you use it according to the label, you will
be putting enough on fertilizer. That's a product. Yeah, that'll do, okay, Yeah.

Speaker 15 (01:59:02):
And one other question to now have a rental home,
I'm going to do something different on it, weed beater.
Would that be okay to use now? To get it's here,
it's a pre emergent and a post emergent.

Speaker 3 (01:59:19):
Weed beater if I let me check, But I would
say it's a post emergent. I don't know that there's
pre emergent in it. There's so many products out there,
I don't have them on the top of my head.
But I don't believe. I believe weed beater is. I'll
check when I get a break here in the show.
I'll do a quick check and I'll talk about it
on the air.

Speaker 8 (01:59:37):
Okay, Okay, that sounds good.

Speaker 15 (01:59:40):
Thank you very much.

Speaker 3 (01:59:42):
Hey, thanks Melanie, appreciate your call. Appreciate that very much.
Listen to your ACE Hardware store has got the supplies
ready to go for spring garden success. Do you want
a beautiful lawn, Do you want beautiful flower beds? Do
you want a productive vegetable garden? Go to Ace Hardware.
They've got the supplies you need to control pests and
weeds and diseases, things to fertilize your plants, to stimulate

(02:00:06):
growth that They've got a great selection of those available,
and mini tools that you will need as well. Now,
if you want to turn your outdoor area into something special, Hey,
spring is coming. Oh my gosh, can you smell barbecue?
I can't. I can already smell it. You will find
the top brands of barbecue pits at Ace Hardware and

(02:00:26):
lots of things to go with it, All the things
that go along with barbecue, from pit covers to various
types of you know, spatulas, grow cleaners, and on and
on and on down the line. They've got you covered
brands like Webber, brands like Rectech, brands like Tragger for example,
and many many more Big Green Egg. Like I said,

(02:00:47):
the top ones are there at r Ace Hardware store.
Go to Ace Hardware Texas dot com find the store
close to you. Stores like Child's Building Supply in Orange
on sixteenth Street, Deer Park on Center Street, east side
of Houston. Uh, the Wharton Feed and ACE on North
Richmond Road down in Wharton Bay City, ACE on seventh Street, Rockport,

(02:01:11):
ACE on Highway thirty five North down in Rockport, Brenna,
MACE on North Austin Parkway. Just a few examples of
the mini ACE hardware stores in my group at ACE
Hardware Texas dot Com. Okay, we're going to go now
to Steve in Houston. Hello Steve, Welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 18 (02:01:34):
Hey Skip, I've got some box fluids. I'm gonna do
a hard pun on and this is going to take
off about sixteen inches off the top, and my little
electric burners aren't going to do it. Can I just
use the chainsaws or just kind.

Speaker 4 (02:01:51):
Of go and cut across?

Speaker 3 (02:01:54):
Oooh, I wouldn't. I can't. I don't think that would
work at a little twiggy of a lot of the box,
would growth? I would use. Get you a pair of loppers,
the long handled That seems like it wouldn't work. Yeah,
looppers would work if you're chopping the bigger stuff and
little hand prunters do this monthing little handprunters will do

(02:02:16):
your little tremors will probably do the twiggy stuff. I
don't know what kind of tremors you have, but most
of them will do the twiggy stuff. But looppers probably
the best way. You want to make nice clean cuts
and get them cut back like you want, and you're
right to do it.

Speaker 13 (02:02:30):
Now.

Speaker 3 (02:02:30):
Get it done so that fresh new growth can come out.
Just remember this when you print it back that heavily,
it's going to come back with vigorous regrowth. So after
you get about four to six inches or so, maybe
four inches on that regrowth, I would share them again
to cause that regrowth to branch and to continue to
build thickness, because the first thing with that heavy of

(02:02:53):
pruning is you're going to get a bunch of vigorous
growth and you're going to have a loose, open growth
to the shrub. And so with each sheer and it
gets denser. Just always keep the tops of your box
woods more narrow than the base, and that way you
get good foliage all the way down. The top doesn't
shade out the base. Okay, all right, already, thank you,

(02:03:15):
sir Thomas or Steven. I appreciate your call very much.
All right, let's go to a little break here and
we'll be back with your call. Seven one three two
one two five eight seven four and they welcome back
guard line. Hey, let's do this. We got some time
left today in the show. You got a question, here's
the phone number seven one three two one two five

(02:03:36):
eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty
eight seventy four. D and D Feed is west of
Tomball and you need to go there. It is an
outstanding feed store that carries all the brands. You hear
me talk about fertilizers all the time. They carry those,
they car They have some of the heirloom soils products
as well by the bag. And next Saturday, I'm gonna

(02:03:57):
be at D D Feed from twelve to two. Twelve
to two next Saturday. For those of you who like
calendar numbers, February twenty first, there you go, Come on
out and see me. Bring me samples, let's diagnose, let's identify,
let's help you have success. Take some pictures with your
phone things that maybe would help me, you know, suggest

(02:04:17):
plants for a particular area or whatever you're looking for.
We want you to have a better, better garden and
a more enjoyable time in the process of doing it.
And all you gotta do is show up in Da
Defeed next Saturday, twelve to two. Come on out. Look
forward to visiting with you, answering your gardening questions. Let's
go to Cold Spring and we're going to visit with
William this morning. Hello William, welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 14 (02:04:41):
Good morning. Hey, I have a question. I'm trying to
see if there's anything I can do to the flower
beds in front of the house. Every year we get
overrun with boys and ivy and we of course grass.
But I put down the landscaping cloth, the fiber stuff,

(02:05:04):
I've covered it with bults. I mean, I've poured everything
on top of it. I can to try it filter
out the sunlight, but.

Speaker 9 (02:05:14):
I'm not winning.

Speaker 3 (02:05:17):
Yeah, William, is this poison ivy? Is it little small
plants coming up by the ground or does have a
trunk on it? You know, some some diameter to the trunk.

Speaker 14 (02:05:27):
Now they're still pretty small, maybe a quarter of an
inch something like that, and they're running all over the place.

Speaker 3 (02:05:36):
Yeah, yeah, I understand that. So there's an ingredient called
trichlope here t r I c l O p y
r triclip peer. It's found in products. It's a poison
ivy killer or brush killer and things like that. What
you want to do is get some of that and
get you a couple of ways to do this. You

(02:05:59):
can cut off the poison ivy, take a little printers,
chop them off, and then dab that fresh cut with
the straight tracle pier. Gets you a little foam brush
from you know, paint store or whatever, and just use
that straight trackle pier out of the bottle and just
dab it just a little bit, just a few drops
right there on the fresh cut. You can also mix
it with a little bit of diesel fuel and I

(02:06:23):
mean we're just talking. It can need much of this,
you know, so like a quarter cup will go forever,
way more than you need. But just a little diesel
fuel in it. That helps it stick. And you can
use that brush to sort of paint it along the
sides of that little stem coming out of the ground.
If you can do that in a way, it keeps
you out of the poison ivy and it'll soak in

(02:06:44):
and it will kill the poison ivy. Now, you typically
don't get it all with one try because you miss some,
but when it comes back again, you just do that again.
And if every time it's coming up you get it
on the stems, that's fine. You can spray it on
the leaves, but then typically the track copier is going
to end up. Number one, you got to put more
in a sprayer to actually be able to spray it,

(02:07:04):
and it's going to get on things you don't want
to kill, and you don't want to do that. That's
why I use just a little dabber applicator right to
the fresh cut stump, cut it and then immediately dab
it or using with a little diesel. It helps it.
Diesel oil helps it stick to the stem. You can
sort of brush it along the stems even without the

(02:07:25):
cut and it'll soak in. Now, if it's big, old,
you know, golf ball sized poison ivy stem with bark
on the outside, the diesel is probably not gonna cut it,
but the little stems it will.

Speaker 14 (02:07:36):
Okay, yeah, that's going to be sure. But that's I've
got to get it done because it's out of control.

Speaker 3 (02:07:42):
Well, let me let me give you another option. If
you go to my website gardening with Skip Gardening with
Skip dot com There is something on there in the
publications section called Skip's Weed Wiper, and it's a grabber
tool that you attach kitchen sponges too that then you

(02:08:03):
don't even have to bend over. You just reach you
you wet the sponge with the tractor beer, reach down
there and just squeeze it onto the sides of the
stem or onto the leaves even in that case, and
it'll move down and you never have to get down
around the poison ivy.

Speaker 14 (02:08:20):
So good sounds good, Well, I appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (02:08:23):
Triclo Peer, you bet, Triclo pier is the ingredient you're
looking for? Yeah, you bet? Bye bye. While those of
you who are listening are curious, there's also a publication
called Herbicides to Use in My Weed Wiper, and it
basically it's herbicides for plants based on the plant you're
trying to kill. So if it's a woody plant like

(02:08:45):
poison ivy or hackberry coming up in your fence line,
that that's Triclo Peer. And it tells you the products
on this publication that's free to look at or download online,
it tells you the products that contain tracle Peer. They're
typically sold in the area, so you can go find
an actual product itself. Uh, if you have a grassy
weed and you only want to kill grass and not
broad leaves. Maybe you've got grass coming up in your petunias,

(02:09:08):
for example, or your Asian jasmine. They're products that do
just that and they're listed there. And it's a one
page sheet that I think you'll find helpful. She had
to go and print that out. And it also is
at gardeningwith Skip dot com. Gardening with Skip dot com.
If you have a gardening question, here's the phone number.
Seven one three two one two five eight seven four

(02:09:30):
seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four,
give me a call. Let's talk about it. Moss Nursery
done in Seabrook, Texas. Wow. If you took a here's
the way I look at moss nursery. If you took
a botanical garden and you combined it with the museum,
and then you filled it full of gorgeous plants of

(02:09:50):
all types and an incredibly broad selection of pottery, you'd
have moss nursery in Seabrook, Texas. In addition to all
all of these plants, there is a wonderful Houseplants section.
It's a greenhouse. You go in if you want blake.
This is a place for even the exotics and things
like maybe you want a giant staghorn ferm that is

(02:10:14):
so big it hangs from a chain out of a tree.
You can go to Moss Nursery by staghorn ferns too.
It's just a great place to go.

Speaker 11 (02:10:21):
Now.

Speaker 3 (02:10:21):
It's on Toddville Road in Seabrook, Texas Toddville Road. And
here's the website, Moss Nursery dot com. How do you
spell moss m a as Moss Nursery dot com. Go
buy there, check it out. They just got in herbs
that you wouldn't believe. For example, are you ready learn

(02:10:43):
your seablt Africa basil, lemon basil, spicy globe basil, sweet basil, garlic, chives, onion, chips, coriander, solanto, curry, deal, fennel, opizote,
French lavender. Ha ha, here we go more. I'm skip
a whole bunch of lavenders that they have mins like
apple mint, ginger mint, orange mint, umperment, oregano, hot and
spicy oreguo, Italian oregano, Greek oregano, prostrate, rosemary, roue saved

(02:11:07):
silver thyme a niece. He'sap bay laurel boris, car catnip.
Oh your catsil like that. It's catcrack, uh, camomeal, eucalyptus
and more. See what I mean. Now, that was one
thing that was herbs. You don't do that for I
don't have time to do that for vegetables, to do that,
for flowers, to do that for shrubs. Moss nursery. You
got to go by there, Toddville Road, Seabrook, Texas mos

(02:11:30):
Nurserymaas Nursery dot Com. Let's go out to Montgomery. We're
gonna talk to Jim. Now, Hey Jim, welcome to garden.

Speaker 11 (02:11:39):
Heybo, it's my birthday today.

Speaker 3 (02:11:43):
And it is happy birthday, Jim.

Speaker 11 (02:11:46):
Well, thank you, and uh yeah I made it anyway.
I got these big ficus trees. I got these huge
ficus trees that are taking up all my living space
in the house, and I want to move them out.
Can can if I move them out today? And we
do get it, like a light frost or something. Is
that going to hurt them.

Speaker 3 (02:12:09):
Ficus frost? Yes, it will hurt them. Okay, yeah, any
kind of a any kind of a tropical all those
things we call house plants, almost all of them are
tropical type plants. And then they're not going to take
the cold. Once I got a nice you got a
nice week. You don't want to move them twice.

Speaker 11 (02:12:31):
Once I move them, that's it because I don't want
to have to deal with it again because they're huge.

Speaker 3 (02:12:38):
All right, Well, yeah, you big one?

Speaker 11 (02:12:47):
Mm hmm, I got three big ones. So I'll maybe
I will just move to a mountain. See what happens.

Speaker 3 (02:12:55):
Yeah, you know your last average frost state up there.
It's right up close tomorrow there in March, early March. Mabe.
I would uh, I don't know, it's a gamble. If
you only want to move them once, then I would
just try to tolerate them for another couple two or
three weeks and then move them.

Speaker 11 (02:13:11):
Yeah, I met you. It's killing me on my light
bill with the grow lights, all.

Speaker 3 (02:13:18):
Right, Yeah, yeah, I get that. I get that. Hey, Jim,
you know how I know it's gonna be a good
day every day I get up in the morning, first
thing I do is pick up the newspaper and go
straight to the obituaries. And if my name's not in there,
it's gonna be a good day. It's gonna be a
good day.

Speaker 11 (02:13:34):
Yeah. I don't have a newspaper because I don't have
birds or anything.

Speaker 3 (02:13:37):
All right, you're not a fisherman. Wrap it. You gotta
wrap your bass and in newspaper. Hey Jim, happy birthday
and thanks for your call.

Speaker 11 (02:13:47):
You bet you over and out.

Speaker 3 (02:13:49):
All right, bye bye.

Speaker 11 (02:13:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:13:53):
I always read. I always read the obeits first, even
if you got to go online to do it. You
know it's gonna be a good day.

Speaker 11 (02:14:00):
Hey.

Speaker 3 (02:14:00):
Greenpro. What a great company. They are experts in providing
top quality compost, top dressing, and core aeration and fertilization
for your lawn. So you want your lawn to look good.
Maybe it went into winter kind of maybe it's been
kind of scraggly, so you're fighting weeds all the time.

(02:14:21):
Called Greenpro eight three two three five to one zero
zero three to two. Now they cover about forty five
miles from Magnolia, so Spring and Cyprus and the Woodlands
and Conroe and Willis up there out west Mongnolia, Montgomery
and then down south the Kadie and west side you
know of Houston there.

Speaker 13 (02:14:41):
Think of it.

Speaker 3 (02:14:42):
I like think of it this way. I ten in
Interstate forty five makes a little X right through Houston
Northwest Quadrant. That's green Pro green Proland Northwest Quadrant. Greenpro
Texas dot Com is a website, greenpro Texas dot com.
If you thatch problem, compost top dressing with a corporation

(02:15:03):
is the way you go about fixing it. But if
you just want your long to look good, called Greenboro. Yeah,
and now we're talking about to be ready for the
rodeo and all that goes along with it. Good luck
to all those kiddos out there that are working on
their horticulture projects. We have the Petite Container Grown Plants competitions,

(02:15:26):
a little container that the kids put together with a
group of plants they grow together over a period of
time and then enter them into the contest. That's kind
of cool stuff, right. Also, we've got different floral arrangements
ors that there is the floral Arrangement contests three different ones.
There is a contest where they put a floral arrangement
together and bring it with them and enter it to compete.

(02:15:49):
And there's two where they actually make the arrangement there
and the kids don't even know what the setting or
scene is going to be. For example, you know, like
they'll get there and they'll say, well, we're going to
have a fireman's ball and you need to make an
arrangement for the tables for the fireman's ball or whatever.

(02:16:09):
I just made that up so kids don't be thinking
that's what the contests gonna be about. I don't even
know until we get there. But it's really cool. You
can watch the kids at work doing it, so you
get a chance come on out the Energy Center second
floor and we'll be doing that on three consecutive Sundays
in the month of March. Another good reason to go

(02:16:32):
to the radio. Right there you go, there you go.
Microlife fertilizers come in so many different forms. I want
to talk about the granular form. You know, they got
the liquids and they got the granules. Lots of quality
products from the folks at Microlife, and the form of
granules not the standard. The like number one fertilizer organic
fertilizer in Houston is Microlife six two four. It's a

(02:16:54):
green bag.

Speaker 13 (02:16:56):
It is.

Speaker 3 (02:16:57):
It's exceptional. It has the new the three numbers, nitrogen, phosphorus,
and potassium, but it has way more than that. It's
got micronutrients in it as well, because that's part of
having organic matter. Anything organic. You pick up a leaf
off the ground, hold it up, it's got micronutrients because
it was essential to build that leaf to have micronutrients,

(02:17:18):
so they're in there. So when you have anything that's organic,
it's going to have micros in it as well. Microlife
also has something called humts plus. Now it's got a
little bit of potassium in it, but the main reason
we're putting it down is for the soil building qualities
that it has. And humts plus is a purple bag.
It's a zero zero for purple bag. You put that
on your lawn and you cannot overuse it. I mean,

(02:17:40):
you can put it on three times a year if
you wanted to, but you basically you put it down.
So think of it as a supplement to your fertilizer,
not in place of your fertilizer. And granuas go down.
What is humus, by the way, it is the final
decomposition stage of organic matter. So if you have organic
matter that let's do it this way. If you got

(02:18:01):
leaves and grass clippings, that's organic materials. They compost away
down into what we would call composts. Then they keep
decomposing down to what is called humus. Humus is the
final decomposition stage. It's got organic acids in it, like
fulvic acid, just being one example of what you'll find
in humus. There's humic acid as well. These are all

(02:18:24):
part of what nature was designed to do to the
soil to make it richer and richer, and richer and
richer every season that goes by. You can shortcut that
and buy you the co concentrated compost in a bag
Microlife humans plus. Put it in your lawn, put it
in flower beds. Where have you got it? If you
got a clay soil, you really need this stuff because

(02:18:45):
it does help loosen up a clay soil. That makes sense.
Where do you get microlife everywhere? Anywhere? Garden centers, feed stores,
ace hardware stores, Southwest Fertilizer, lots of places carrying microlife products.
If you want to go online, go to Microlife Fertilizer
dot com and look at all the places they'll tell

(02:19:05):
you where you can buy it all over the place,
as well as all the products that I don't have
time to talk about, and I'm talking about microlife here
on garden Line. The main thing is just do it,
just get it done. All right. Let's see you are
listening to garden Line. If you have a gardening question,
here is a phone number seven one three two one

(02:19:26):
two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one
two five eight seven four. I think that let's see,
let's go on. We're going to go with the phones
here in just one second. I did want to mention
something I was talking talk about a number of things today,
just general gardening tips and advice. Uh, if you're going

(02:19:48):
to do seeds starting indoors, you still can do that,
by the way. Uh, some of our plants that like
warmer weather, like peppers, for example, they don't have the
cold tolerance. You could start some still if you want.
You can start things that we normally plant direct out
in the garden, like squash, cucumbers, whatnot. You can start
those indoors, but only a couple of weeks before you

(02:20:10):
plan them. They don't like to grow in a container
for a long time before they get transplanted. And so
when I say a container, I mean the little seed
starting cells that we start them in, but a couple
of weeks before it would be a good time to
start them. So for those of you down south the
Galveston direction, down the coast, you be starting those things
now because your average frostate is going to be passed

(02:20:32):
by the time we get down into March just a
little bit. And for the rest of you a week
or two later, go ahead and start them indoors. The
key to success with starting seedlings is keep them moist
from the time they germinate on. They have to have
moisture to germinate, and if they dry out just right
after they germinate, the seedling dies. It has no resilience

(02:20:53):
to drought, zero resilience to drought. So keep them moist.
But the most important thing give them sunlight or give
them bright light. If you've got a plant light that's good,
keep it bright, keep it on the ceilings. Otherwise they
get leggy, they don't perform well, they don't transplant well.
Lighting is key. I've got a publication on my website,

(02:21:15):
another free publication out there on the website for you.
Go to Gardening with Skip dot com Gardening with Skip
dot Com, look for the publication grow Our Quality Lighting
for Growing Transplants, and it tells you everything you need
to know, and you need to get your good quality
light if you're going to be a gardener, so you
can start your own ceilings of all kinds of things,

(02:21:37):
including the seed that you saved yourself. Let's go down
to Baytown now we're going to talk to Randy. Hello, Randy,
welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 5 (02:21:46):
Hey, yeah, it's good morning, Skip. I have a question
about oleanders. I they're in the freeze. I went ahead
and covered them and it looks like they're green at
the bottom, still got some green.

Speaker 11 (02:22:02):
But when can I cut them back?

Speaker 15 (02:22:07):
Well?

Speaker 5 (02:22:07):
Good time too.

Speaker 3 (02:22:08):
So yeah, so if you're just cutting dead wood, okay,
you're not cutting into greenwood. You can cut them back
right now, it doesn't matter. That's fine. If you cut
back into the green, which inevitably is going to happen
as you prune them back, that is a stimulating thing
and they're going to try to grow. Now, should we
have one more decent freeze in us, that's not a

(02:22:30):
good thing, right And if that were to happen, if
you want to prune them now, go ahead. But if
if we have a frieze that's threatening, throw a bag
of mulch over the top of them. Let's just make
a little mound of mulch over the crown of that plant,
and then after the freeze, pull the mulch away and
the plant will appreciate being mulch but not having it
piled up. So that's your hedging, your bet, that's your insurance,

(02:22:52):
is to throw that mulch over the top if a
frieze were a threaten. Otherwise, you can go ahead and
prune them down in your area. You can prune them
back now if you like, or you wait. Either way,
plan doesn't care.

Speaker 5 (02:23:02):
Okay, do you think we need to wait a couple
more weeks or.

Speaker 3 (02:23:08):
Well, if you're going to be conservative, if you're going
to be conservative about it, yes, if you uh, you know,
if you don't mind getting out there and should we
have an unusually late freeze come along, then I would
wait instead, if you're going to be conservative about it.
So there's not a writer around, Kay, this is Randy.
It's it's up to you. Yeah.

Speaker 13 (02:23:29):
Right.

Speaker 5 (02:23:29):
I did put straw over the top of them, uh,
you know, for the for the winner. So there's still
some straw down in there.

Speaker 3 (02:23:36):
So that's good. That's good. Okay, Now let me ask you.

Speaker 11 (02:23:42):
I have one other question.

Speaker 3 (02:23:45):
Real quick, I'm about to hit a break.

Speaker 11 (02:23:47):
Here, okay.

Speaker 5 (02:23:49):
Is it good to cover a leanders or just let
them try to make it on their own?

Speaker 3 (02:23:57):
If you got the time, you know, if you got time,
and you can go to some links to protect them.
When we have those hard freezes and we'll kill them back,
that's good. But there's nothing wrong with if they freeze
back and you cut them back and they come back
out again, that's all okay too. But I do like
to mulch the crown just so the freeze doesn't kill
them too far back there. You know, you'd like a

(02:24:19):
little bit of green above the a few inches above
the ground if possible, and the mulching of the base
will do that for you, all right, sir, Well, good
luck with those. Thank you for calling. We'll be right back. Folks.
There you go, all right, welcome back to garden Line.
We got a few minutes left here. Let's do this.

(02:24:42):
Heirloom soils products available by the bag, big old colorful bags.
It's hard to miss them all over town. Available. You
can buy their fruit berry and citrus mix. You can
get their veggie and herb mix. One of their favorite ones,
the roses and bloomers blend another favor ones. They have
a blend for cacti and succulents, nice and gritty, drangerly

(02:25:04):
extra specially well. They got the works, which is their
potting soil. They have got a landscape bed mix, a
composted hardwood malts, composted cocoa char. You can get leaf
moll compost. You can get expanded shell, you can get
expanded show mixed with compost. They know what makes plants grow.
They make products that help you have success. These products

(02:25:25):
make you look good. They make people gonna go. You
got a green thumb and you go No. I just
got Airloom Solce products in the ground. That's why my
plants are happy. Heirloomsoils dot com, Airloomsauce dot com. Go
check them out, easy to find and they work. They
absolutely do. Let's go to League City now and we're

(02:25:46):
gonna visit with George this morning. Hey George, welcome, Hey,
good morning.

Speaker 13 (02:25:50):
Good morning, appreciate it. Got a question about the post
emergent herbicide to put down the pre emergent yesterday and
I really got a wheat problem, and looking at the
post emergence I have on my shelf, I got wheat
better ultra and both for long weat out and both
say something about do not apply during the spring green
up or during the emergent from dormership period. Should I

(02:26:10):
avoid those pots a better one or what.

Speaker 3 (02:26:14):
It's better to avoid them during the time when the
grass is trying to get growing. We're kinda you know,
I don't live down as far south as you do,
so I just don't know what the grass is looking like.
Mine is still dormant and after I wouldn't worry about it.
I'd put them on. But if you can avoid that period,
it's a little better. But here's the thing. The weeds
you have now to spray are all cool season weeds

(02:26:37):
and they're about to set seed and die, and so
there's no waiting to spray them. You either spray them
now or you don't. You can handpull them, you can
mow with a lawnmower set download, or try to get
as much of the seeds out as you can. I
think I would go ahead and use the products, just
follow the label carefully, don't overdo it, but do it asap.

(02:26:58):
I think you would be fine to go ahead, and
that a lot of people put these things on during
that green up period. It's not the best thing to do.
Most products tell you not to do that, but I would.
I would probably if it were mind, go ahead and
do them. I think you'd be all right.

Speaker 13 (02:27:12):
You got a preface point to two lead to beat
Ultra or fertilan. Are they about the same.

Speaker 3 (02:27:15):
Or uh, there's several products by Fertiloan. The weed beater
Ultra is good and using it before it gets hot
is important. You know, once temperatures warm up, the weed
beater Ultra is going to be a little bit hard
on your on your Saint Augustine turf. So uh, I would,
but now would be it?

Speaker 6 (02:27:32):
Now?

Speaker 3 (02:27:33):
Is okay to go ahead and do it now? Okay,
don't delay do it?

Speaker 13 (02:27:37):
Do it?

Speaker 3 (02:27:38):
Do it either? Uh yeah, do it yesterday or today
if you can. Yeah, I will, all right, George, thanks
for much, Thank you.

Speaker 6 (02:27:48):
I have a good one.

Speaker 3 (02:27:50):
Give it, take care.

Speaker 13 (02:27:52):
There you go.

Speaker 3 (02:27:52):
Hey, I got time for one quick call some make
guy quick one seven one three two one two five
eight seven four seven one three two one two five
I have eight seven four. Let's talk about the things
that are of interest to you on Guarden Line. You
know we're here every Saturday and Sunday morning. For those
of you knew to listening, I ran into some people
yesterday that had never heard garden Line. I mean through

(02:28:13):
all the years and stuff Randy was on and whatnot.
Oh my gosh, welcome, Glad you're here. Now, come on,
let's join us. We're here every Saturday Sunday morning from
six am to ten am. You can listen to past shows.
So maybe earlier today you heard me give out a
phone number, you heard me talk about something you didn't
write down, Well, go to the past shows. Go to

(02:28:35):
KTRH website, KTRCH website, or if you listen to the
shows on like the iHeartMedia app or one of the
apps that plays podcasts and things, you can also listen
to past shows on that. That way, you got it
on your phone, and you know, if your phone talks
to your car, well then all the better. You can
drive down the road listening to guard Line. Anyway. Oh
I told people to call. Here we go. Let's see

(02:28:55):
how far we can get in this nick. As soon
as you get one of these loaded up, we will
try to get all these folks in. It's gonna be
pretty tight, though, So I'm just sitting here. You can
hear the Jeopardy music there we go. Oh by the way,
don't forget I'm going to be at the D and

(02:29:15):
D Feed on Saturday this coming Saturday, the twenty first,
from twelve to two. D and D Feed is east
or west excuse me of Tomball, west of Tombul like
you head not to BUCkies if you're going to go
to BUCkies that way, but Dan D Feed and I'll
be there giving away some night frust products. We got
some Imperial the Red bag, and we got some barricade

(02:29:37):
that they're providing for us to give away. Still don't
can't click on that collar yet. See if we can
get them on here asap. Try to do it for
a run out of time. But anyway, come on out
to D and D Feed. I've also got some Texas
Gardener magazines that I'm going to put in your hands
for you take a look at. You need to see those.
I'll have an example of the Texas Gardener Planning Guide

(02:29:58):
that will include in our drawing, just like the nitrofoss
products are included in our drawing. And so you'll definitely
want to get a shot at one of those, or
just put it in your hands. Take a look at
it up and everybody's off the phone. All right, Well, Guesse,
we're not going to do a caller, so come on
out and we will be glad to get you all
set up with the advice, the diagnosis and things that

(02:30:22):
you need to happen.

Speaker 6 (02:30:23):
Now.

Speaker 3 (02:30:24):
This week's going to be warm, and warm means everything's
moving fast. So suddenly spring that was on its way
is in our lap. If you got any printing to do,
get it done. If you got those plants that were
frozen to death and you're trying to decide, well, can
I cut them back now or not? The answer is
yes and no, but you pick your answer yes or no.

(02:30:44):
It doesn't matter. If you cut them back now and
you cut into living growth. It is a stimulating thing.
And with the eighty degree week we're having eighties degree
week we're having, they're going to start to be ready
to grow. If we have a late hard freeze or
late freeze of significance, you're gonna get some extra damage
from that. So were it me, you're gonna be conservative,

(02:31:06):
I'd wait. On the other hand, if you cut him
back and we do get a freeze, you can just
throw a cover over him. You put a little mound
of multi compost over the base of your perennials, plants
and so on, So it's not the end of the
world to cut them back. Even if we do get
a pheze. I would just say, from my standpoint, it's
how much trouble are you wanna go to? If you

(02:31:27):
if you don't mind waiting, just wait and cut him back.
If you want to cut him back, cut him back,
just be ready because according to you know what I'm
gonna grab. I'm gonna grab this here. I've got a
I keep track of records and stuff for the weather.
All right, So the last average freeze date for hobby

(02:31:47):
is February, the eighth. We're out of the We're out
of the average. Didn't mean it couldn't happen again, though,
and Bush inter Continental March first as the last time
I gathered all the last twenty years of weather down
and figured out where things are. So do you want
to be a gambler, go for it. You can always
get a new plant, you can always go out and

(02:32:08):
protect the ones you have, all right, Thanks for listening
to Guardline. Good to have you with us. UH visit
my website Gardening with skip dot com. All these things
I've been talking about all morning, they're there. They're free.
You can't be you can't talk me down on that price. Free.
Have a wonderful week in the garden. It's going to
be a good one for it, and get out to
visit a garden center this afternoon