The Freeze Frenzy

Skip Richter answers your questions all morning long!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Katie r. H.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
Garden Line with skip rictes.

Speaker 1 (00:06):
The bases here. The gas baby can use a shrimp.
You just watch him as well.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Go basis and gassaw many things to seep back basic
in the bassies like gas by can you did? Sables
tubbles back kicking but not a sign credit the glasses
and gas and.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
The sun beamon down between.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
The basses.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
The gas baby, can you jam starting in and out
treating the bases.

Speaker 4 (00:47):
Like gas became you did?

Speaker 5 (00:50):
Everything is good.

Speaker 6 (00:51):
Morning, folks, Everything is welcome the guard Line. I'm your
host director, just sitting here wondering what we're going to
talk about today. I think I know, so let's do it.
What you got to do is give me a call
at seven one three two one two five eight seven four.

(01:13):
I will be happy to visit about all kinds of
plant protection types of questions, or if you just want
to talk about something else, we can do that too.
I have been working on seed starting and doing some
transplant or excuse me, some plant transplanting into larger containers.

(01:34):
I've got a video coming out, just a real brief
brief one, just talking about you know, what do you
how do you do? How do you know when to
move a plant to a larger container, that sort of thing,
and whatnot. In the process of that, it's been really
interesting to me. We've had a number of containers that

(01:55):
we were up moving it up to when of my
daughters was over my wife here, and we were just
you know, getting all these containers out from various places,
her plants, my plants, and bumping them up and plants
that had been a little overwatered that it just sat
too wet. And there are a number of reasons for that.
One is too much water too often, and it's cooler temperatures,

(02:19):
the plants aren't using it as much, so it's easy
to overwater. When the same amount of watering in the
summertime it was a little warmer, a lot more light
intensity for those plants would not be overwater anyway. That's
one reason. Another reason is very very fine textured. I
like to use the term mucky soil, you know, muck

(02:40):
just that soggy organic y good that happens when organic
matter decomposed is fat further and further along the way.
And that is another reason. Because hosemore soa doesn't have airspace,
and the effect on the roots you know, you pull
the plane out of the pot and there's no living
roots around the outside. Are there there, but they're kind
of brown, and some of them are even looking gray

(03:03):
very water soap. That's a root, that's a gonner, And
so it was interesting looking at that. It's always good
to use a very loose container mix. Now almost all
potting soils are very fine textured. They just are. It's
the way things are done. And if you water right,
that's fine. You can do that. If you will create

(03:24):
a looser textured soil that drains out easier, you're not
going to have the overwatering issues. And we do that
with larger chunks of organic materials. I'll just exaggerate that
a little bit. Instead of a fine, fine textured potting soil,
you go to something that's got something like bark chips
in it, very tiny bark chips, or it's got large

(03:46):
chunks of pearl lighte instead of little tiny bebe size ones.
Things like that help to loosen things up a little bit.
If you look at orchids, they do not want to
be underwater at all. They grow on the side of
a tree, attached the bark, with air all around them
and so when you pot up an orchid, you need
a really chunky mix, so you use sizeable bark chunks

(04:09):
or chunks of coconut core. When it's ground up, it's
a lot like peat moss, but you can get it
in a chunky form, and then big chunks of par
light too. One other thing we did, and this may
be something you haven't thought of before, I put when
I have a container, I put charcoal in the very bottom,

(04:31):
and I often will have a little charcoal mixed in
the mix as well. A little bit. What charcoal does
is it, I don't know, you know, instead of water
sitting in the bottom of a container and just kind
of going sour on you, it keeps it fresh. It
It just helps with that kind of thing instead of
the old stagnant water. And so if you may have

(04:54):
noticed that aquariums have charcoal filters a lot of times
for the water going through them, So I'll put some
of those in the bottom. Now, it's always important when
you're gonna use a some sort of container for a pot.
Usually we pick indoor plant containers because we think they're
pretty and that's that's legit. But when you're using a container,

(05:18):
it's important to have a container that drains. It has
a hole in the bottom or holes in the bottom
that of course helps drainage. But I have a few
containers that we just love the container and it does
not have a drain hole, So those get charcoal in
the in the bottom, you know, not half the container,
just a little air down there to help. And then
when I water them, I'm very conscious of the water

(05:41):
quantity I put in. You know, think about how much
water would it take to soak this much soil, and
that's about what you put in, or even a little
less than that. If the container doesn't have holes. You
can grow in a container with that holes, but it's
not preferable and you gotta be careful when you do it.
So that's that's what that was all about. I was
looking at the fertilizers that Microlife carries, and my goodness,

(06:03):
they have so many options online and just a lot
of really good options. Now I know, right now we're
hold up inside. The thought of fertilizing your lawn is like, okay,
but wait until we get into next week. It'll start
to at least break a little bit for a day
and then it gets cold again. But when it comes
time to start doing lawn fertilizing. It's it's important to

(06:28):
use one that has a good ratio of nutrients, and
a three to one to two ratio is what turf
scientists tell us is the ratio that nutrients are taking
up in the grass plant. So you're feeding grass what
the ratio grass eats if we can use that word
eats for it. Microlife six two four is exactly that.
It's a green bag and a lot of the microlife

(06:49):
fertilizers are in that range, that three one two range.
The sid of fire fertilizer. I love that one because
we have a lot of plants it would prefer to
be a little a little more acidic, or maybe your
soil is a little higher and you're trying to get
a plant that's not real happy about that to grow.
Use the acid of fire and over time you can
create a really nice environment for those plants. Those are

(07:12):
available by the bag, of course, and the many others.
The one for fruit plants and other microlifs like the
humates plus very important. But that's not just fertilizing. That
is creating the perfect, the absolute perfect soil condition. That's
what nature does. Listen nature takes tree leaves that have

(07:34):
fallen on the ground and it decays them into a
composting material, and then the composting material keeps decaying until
it becomes humus. So when you put humus on, basically
what you're doing is saying, I want to take a
shortcut to get to the best stuff for soil and
the root environment. And that's what micro hum mates plus is.

(07:57):
Let's take a little break here and we'll come back
with your calls. Seven one three, two one two five
eight seven four. Welcome to garden Line on a day
that is going to get more interesting, in fact, a
weekend that's going to get more interesting day by day
as we go along. Let's start off with the phones.
This morning, we're going to go out to Port Natchez
and we're going to talk to Eric. Hey, Eric, welcome

(08:19):
to garden Line.

Speaker 7 (08:21):
Thank you, skip for you don Well, okay, my question
is I have two sweet crisp blueberries that last year
during the freeze. These are in above elevated beds and
they measure probably probably eight foot by four foot deep,

(08:46):
and I built a complete framer. I look more like
a chicken coop, and I rapped the last year with.

Speaker 8 (08:51):
Blue tarp.

Speaker 7 (08:53):
And then I wrap them with the burden eating for
the generally start the fruit. I've got blue all over them,
and I put the tart back up. I've got two
heat lamps in them. My problem this year is I'm
going to be going out of town Wednesday and saw
it was supposed to the temperatures are supposed to drop again.

(09:15):
Can I put a grow light inside of it?

Speaker 6 (09:22):
There's not going to be a problem leaving those covered
up for a week. Don't worry about a grow light.
It's not going to need that right now. We're just
saving the plant, and uh, yeah, it'll be fine. It's
good that you're covering them. Sweet crest is a southern
high bush and those are a little more cold tender

(09:43):
than some of the other blueberries that are out there
on the market, like most rabbit eyes. It's a good
thing you're covering them like that. And sounds like you've
got a way to keep it at least reasonably mild
underneath there, so it doesn't have to stay warm, just
to you know, even if it was in the low
lower thirties, uh than than freezing that that would be fine. Uh,

(10:04):
they'll make it through that.

Speaker 5 (10:05):
Yeah, last year.

Speaker 7 (10:06):
Last year, I actually salvaged when I did it, and
I've got three gallons of blueberries off of it. It
was the same same thing. We'll get those real cold temperatures.
So I was able to save the blues. And that's
what I'm trying to do this year.

Speaker 6 (10:20):
Yeah, do you like them?

Speaker 7 (10:21):
Questions?

Speaker 6 (10:22):
Do you like flavor?

Speaker 7 (10:23):
And oh yeah, yes, very very nice, very nice.

Speaker 6 (10:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (10:27):
So my biggest question was to grow light. If I
don't need that, if they will, if they'll stay the week,
I'm in good shape.

Speaker 6 (10:34):
Okay, that's true, it is yep, they'll be fine.

Speaker 5 (10:38):
Uh you know that.

Speaker 6 (10:40):
It would be nice if you had something, you know
that would come on more you know, late and late
in the day and go off in the morning. I'm
thinking about the the the temperatures under there. I hope
it doesn't get too warm when the weather gets a
little warmer, but you'll be back before before that.

Speaker 7 (10:58):
I guess, well, I haven't put up all my Christmas
lights back into the attictte, so I can get one
of my timers from that and do that.

Speaker 6 (11:07):
Okay, well, and actually had a cycle just I guess time.
Sorry I didn't catch this, but tell me when you're
leaving Wednesday, Wednesday, okay, yeah, it's by Wednesday. We're not
scheduled to get in that cold. Really, what.

Speaker 5 (11:30):
What I saw I saw.

Speaker 7 (11:34):
I saw some tents in the low thirties for the
following weekend Fridays and Saturday next to the following weekend.

Speaker 6 (11:44):
Well, you won't need heat lamps or any warmth much
on that. Just to cover over them would be adequate. Okay,
So what.

Speaker 7 (11:53):
I'll do before I leave, I'll just unplug everything. If
it does freeze up, I'll just have my wife plugging
back in periodically.

Speaker 6 (12:00):
Right right, as long as we get past you know,
the Monday stuff. They can take a little cold, I
mean it. And what I've seen in the forecast, and
by the way, I'm advising you based on what we
think the weather's going to be, and it could always
throw you a curve, but it should be fine just
with the cover. Okay, thank you? Good? All right? You bet.

(12:27):
Predicting the weather is so hard. It changes so much,
and you know, people like to pick on the weather
man for the forecast sometimes not being right. But it's
it's hard to do. There's a lot of there's a
lot of factors that go in to what is going
to happen, and as far as we've come and being

(12:49):
able to forecast weather, it's still it's still a matter
of yeah, we gotta we got to do our best
job at it, and then just realize it's not going
to be perfect. That is the case. Unfortunately. You're listening
to Garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter, and we're
here to help you have a beautiful garden, a bountiful landscape,

(13:11):
and hopefully get those plants through this really hard freeze
that a lot of you're going to experience in these
coming days. I know, as you get up to the
you know Conroe and even College Station and above that,
you're we're going to be looking at mid teens, mid
to upper probably upper teens for the for as far

(13:32):
north as College Station and Huntsville. When you get down
further towards the coast, the freezes aren't that significant, but
it's still going to be an issue, especially for those
plants that are tropical in nature, you know, things like hibiscus,
things like boog and villia for example. Those would be
plants that are not going to take the cold that

(13:54):
you're going to get. Also, another factor is when plants
are in a container, they roots get way colder than
in the soil, and the soil around here typically you know,
we're in the fifties in terms of temperature. Of course,
the very surface inch is going to be colder than
down you know, four inches or six inches in the soil,

(14:16):
but there's a certain warmth that's there to protect them
when you put them in a container. Now, almost all
sides of that container are exposed to the air. So
let's say it gets twenty five where you are, or
it gets twenty two where you are, Well, that's going
to really make the roots of some very very cold,

(14:39):
and so grouping containers together, if you have a bunch
of containers, putting containers up against ideally the south side
of your house where there's low break from northern wind
and the rapid cooling that brings on, those are all helpful,
and so you might want to consider that, make sure
that you've done what you can to protect your plants.

(15:00):
I have in my area dining area that we have
a hardwood floor in there, and it's we've got some
stuff down on the floor, and there's a whole bunch
of plants from outside that are just going to spend
a few days inside in the house. The garage has
its own set of plants in there, so it's kind
of interesting, kind of like a jungle starting to happen

(15:24):
there in the house. I know some of you have
already done a lot of bringing those plants inside. The
folks at Houston Powder Coats, I just am amazed by
their work. You know, I've been there, I've toured the shop,
I've visited with them weave and had them on the
air this past summer talking about the details of powder coating,
and I learned a lot from that. And I already

(15:46):
thought I knew a lot about powder coating after visiting
with them previously. But there's so much They have over
one hundred colors in stock. So if you're looking at
outdoor furniture, if you're looking at metal art, maybe that
hangs on the wall and you don't want to or
rust and just the rust run down your bricks and
stain them. Maybe you're looking at a port railing that's metal.

(16:06):
Anything metal could be a lamp post out in the
yard and those little gas lamp posts. If you have
one of those, whatever is metal. A barbecue pit, there's
another one they can take it and get rid of
the rust that's on it and then put a powder
coating on it. That is an incredibly hard, durable surface
that reaches into every nook and cranny and you've got

(16:26):
a brand new metal item. When they get through, they
come pick it up, and they bring it back when
they're done. And if you're hearing my voice, I don't
care if you're you know, one hundred miles away, they
will come get it and they'll bring it back though
when they're done with that. Now, if you've got one
of those, maybe it's a glider that has some some
sling fabric, or maybe it's a chair that has sling

(16:48):
fabric or vinyl straps on it or something, they can
do that. They can also put that on. They're not
just putting the powder coating on there. They do like
stainless steel, hardware, bolts, nuts to replace the old rusty
ones that were there. They can It's just amazing what
they can do. Now, you got to give them a
call seven or excuse me two eight one six seven

(17:10):
six thirty eight eighty eight two eight one six seven
six thirty eight eighty eight, or you can go to
the website Houston powdercoders dot Com and that tells you
everything you need to know. So get a picture of that.
You can email the picture to them and they'll take
a look at it. They'll give you a quote and
then you'll know. So if you've got a piece of

(17:31):
metal that's quality, you know, not some of the little
thin junk that's come out since COVID especially, it's not
worth powder coating that. I mean, it's just it's just
the furniture itself isn't gonna make it or whatever it is.
But if it's got some solid quality to it at all,
I would consider getting it made new again with powder

(17:52):
coating from Houston Powder Coats. That that is a cool process.
Now that I've, you know, met with them, seeing the
work they do and things. Now I see powder coating everywhere.

Speaker 7 (18:04):
You know.

Speaker 6 (18:05):
You're you're in a park and there's one of those
little metal trash can things with the little metal flat
straps coming out like a lily bloom at the top,
and you look at it. That's powder coated. I was
in a restaurant the other day and there are chairs
all around, these outdoor tables, and they're beautiful color chairs,
and I looked at them Yep, that's a powder coated chair.

(18:25):
I mean it's everywhere. The powder coating is done everywhere,
and it's a way to make something you spent some
money on, invested in brand new and lasts a long,
long long time to come. If you're ready to get
you if you haven't gotten ready yet for the cold
and you're ready to get ready, you ought to be.

(18:46):
By the way, Ace Hardware still got the stuff you need.
You know, do you need heat lamps? Do you need
the bulbs that go inside of them? Do you need
those little metal fixtures, you know, the flare kind of
aluminum shield with a clamp on. Those are convenient ext
ancient cords. Do you need other things to cover plants with?
You know what is what are you going after? You're

(19:07):
going to protect your pipes. You need some covers over
the faucets. Maybe you are needing some of the foam
that goes around the pipes. Whatever it is, Go to
your local Ace Hardware store. You can go to Ace
Hardware Texas. Don't forget Texas Ace Hardware Texas dot com.
Find all my Ace Hardware stores stores like All Star Ace,

(19:29):
which is in Spring on Rayford Road, Deer Park. Ace
on Center Street, Cyprus Ace on Jones Road. I saw
they just got a huge truck shipment in the other day.
I mean it's yesterday. I don't know there's real real
reason of all kinds of stuff they're stocked up. Can
m Ace in a Tesca seat on Timber Forest, Patco
Ace on West Willis down there, Alvin or Single ranch

(19:50):
Ase on South Mason Road, and Katie just a few
examples of the many Ace hardware stores. They're ready if
you've waited too long, get over there quick before someone
else does. Get those plants and pipes and everything protected
for the outside. Take a little break here for the
half hour news, and when we come back, maybe some
of your calls. Seven one three, two fifty eight seventy four.

(20:13):
Welcome guard Line Jepsen.

Speaker 1 (20:16):
We I I'm back here.

Speaker 6 (20:18):
We are sitting on the front end of some cold, cold,
cold weather. It always is a sobering to remind ourselves
that this can happen. I remember back when URIs storm,
the what do they call the tornado storm?

Speaker 9 (20:33):
Uh?

Speaker 6 (20:34):
Anyway, that was unbelievable. I learned a lot about cold
heartiness of various species at that time. Some things surprised
me and uh, that's good. It's good to learn. If
you're a gardener, you'd better be learning every day because
there is a lot of information out there and some
things we don't experience that often. It helps to know,

(20:55):
helps to know, so you know what to do. Our
Houston soil is being clay. We're gonna be getting these
rains and stuff here as this storm comes in and
it just wets the soil. Nice slow rain, fill that
soil full of moisture, which is good for the plants,
but not for the houses on the foundations and the
sidewalks and the driveways and things, because that clay swells

(21:15):
when it gets wet, and when it gets dry it shrinks.
Have you ever in a backyard out of clay soil
when it was really really dried, or in a drought
and you had cracks so big you could lose a
toddler and a small dog in them. And you know
what I mean? That is shrunken soil from dryness that
wrecks havoc on a foundation and fix my slab foundation repair.
They know how to fix it. Ty Strickland hate the

(21:36):
guy's been doing this twenty five years now. He knows
what he's doing two eight one two five five forty
nine forty nine. Let me give you that again two
eight one two five five forty nine forty nine.

Speaker 3 (21:47):
Go.

Speaker 6 (21:48):
They are a great website, very helpful. Fix myslab dot
com Free estimates for garden Line listeners. Tie he shoots
straight and the thing is the thing I like about
Tie and hit the way business. He shows up on time.
When he tells you he's going to be there, he's
going to be there, and he charges a fair price.
And when he fixes it, he does it right. And

(22:09):
I'll add one more thing to it if it doesn't
need major repair stuff right now, he's not going to
try to say that he's going to tell you what
you need or what you don't need. Just give him
a call to eight one two f I five forty
nine forty nine. We're going to go now out to
Stafford and talk to Mary this morning. Well, hello, Mary,
welcome to Guardenline.

Speaker 10 (22:30):
Thank you have a question about fence builder dumps some
gumbo pope from his post holes on top of my
compost pile. Should I try to work that in or
take it out?

Speaker 6 (22:51):
Well if you can, when it drives up enough to
be crumbly. Where it's not like gooey clay, and it's
not dry like concrete. But in between them, you could
put it in there, break break it up a little bit,
and get the clay and the compost kind of mixed together,
and then use that as a soil blend for for

(23:13):
filling in holes in the in the yard, or for
you know whatever. I I don't know how much there
is and much work it would be to get rid
of it, but I like composts to be composts so
I can use it accordingly. Uh So it's really not
a right or wrong way to do this. I guess.
The only thing that perplexes me is why on earth
would he throw clay soil on top of your compost that?

(23:35):
That doesn't make sense.

Speaker 8 (23:37):
I don't know.

Speaker 10 (23:39):
There's not a whole lot. I wondered if I put
gyps and doin it, if I could, if that would
break it up? Might I mean I could lift?

Speaker 6 (23:51):
Yeah, Gypsum's not going to help uh in your clay.
You don't have soft water like when you when you
UH use water from a garden hose or something. It's
not like that slippery soft water that you can't get
soap off your hands. Or it feels like you can't,
is it.

Speaker 4 (24:12):
No, I don't think so.

Speaker 10 (24:13):
But if I if I should get it incorporated, it's
not going to be if I put it on my garden,
into my garden, it's not going to be a problem,
is it if I get broken up?

Speaker 6 (24:24):
No, not not at all. Just like I said, wait
until you got the right uh concentrate uh content of
moisture in it. Because clay either is concrete or or
it crumbles or it's goo gumbo, and you want to
be in that middle before you start messing with clay
as a soil.

Speaker 10 (24:43):
Okay, thank you.

Speaker 6 (24:47):
You bet Mary, thank you. I appreciate I appreciate your
call very much. I want to I want to make
some comments about the the use of gypsum. There is
a general conception out there that gypsum helps a clay soil,
and there's there can be truth to that. There are
situations where it is very helpful in a clay soil.

(25:11):
When a clay soil gets something like sodium in it,
and some water systems around the listening area have high
sodium water and when you put that on a clay,
it causes a clay structure to just kind of basically
go to a solid like I think of modeling clay.
You know where you whatever you do pushing on it,

(25:32):
you in create a little bowl that holds water with
it and stuff. That's what gypsum excuse me, that's what
a sodium does into a clay, and when you put
gypsum on it knocks the sodium off the clay molecule.
I know I'm nerding out here, but it helps understand
this and that that soil can form a better structure internally.
Clay soils with a good structure are excellent soils. That's

(25:55):
a good soil. It's just fine. But that's a gypsum does.
But if you just have a clay and you don't
have sodium, for example, as something that's causing it to
have no structure, then gypsum is not help. You're adding
calcium and so you know, if it's low in calcium
it would be a help. But in general, gypsum is

(26:17):
for clays that are gooey, gumbowie, sticky for reasons of
things like sodium that are in there for them. So
it's not for all soils. It's fixing not all clay soils,
fixing them, but it can be very helpful. And then
I know we got listeners up in College Station, and
the water supply up there has a lot of sodium
in it, and for those kind of soils, gypsum is

(26:41):
a very helpful thing. All right, let's I'm going to
go out to Lisa.

Speaker 4 (26:50):
Good morning.

Speaker 6 (26:51):
Hey Lisa, welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 4 (26:54):
Thank you. I have some landscaping with drift roses, and
then I had a lot of annuals like Zinka's and
some perennials Angelonia, and I'm just trying to understand will
a frock blanket help that? Or what should I do?

Speaker 11 (27:15):
Well?

Speaker 6 (27:15):
Angelonia is not very cold hardy at all, and okay,
it just depends on you know, cool seasoned flowers like
like viola and pansies and whatnot. They're going to be
pretty hardy, but they won't take the cold we're about
to get. You're down in Seabrooks, so you're further south.
What's the forecast for you on like the coldest Monday morning?

(27:38):
Let's say, do you know.

Speaker 4 (27:41):
It's shifting around. I've seen twenty eight, I've seen thirty.
I'm not sure and I haven't had a chance this
morning to you know, to see what they're saying.

Speaker 8 (27:50):
Okay, it's not entertainment.

Speaker 6 (27:54):
Well yeah, right, if it's going to be you know,
in the upper twenties, just anything that covers over the
top of those flowers and goes to the ground with
something to weigh it down. So it's sort of like
you're trapping some dead air in there. A little bit
that would enough to get them, get them through, get
them through twenty eight degrees for example. Now some of

(28:17):
the warmest season things may not take that, but in
general that would be enough. If you're going to get
down in the mid twenties or the low twenties, then
we're needing a lot more than that. We're needing even
some cases some heat when it gets down low enough.
But it sounds like for your area you're perform enough. South,
I just don't think it's going to be as big

(28:38):
of an issue. So I'd get to cover over them
and keep your fingers crossed.

Speaker 12 (28:44):
What about like a small tree like I have a
Chinese shrinch, a couple of Chinese fringe tree week and
some little gem Well they're pretty big, Like, notice that
we plant it a few months ago.

Speaker 4 (28:55):
Can I just cover the do you cover the whole
trunk of the tree are just where the leaves are well.

Speaker 6 (29:05):
And I, since I have listeners in Galveston and listeners
in Huntsville, for example, I need to be real clear
when I answer your question that they don't think I'm
answering theirs. So you're down south, and I wouldn't worry
about those trees where you are now. There is a
thing with young trees like your what was the first
one you said, was it Chinese friends? Yeah, young trees,

(29:31):
red oaks, red oaks, Chinese friends. Young trees have a
very thin bark. And what happens is as we go
into winter here, if you have a warm period and
the sun in the southwest sky is shining on that bark,
even though the trees dormant, the bark starts to wake
up a little bit, and then that night it goes down,

(29:51):
it freezes hard, and it kills the bark only right
there on that side, and you have these big splits
and gaps in the tree. So if you wanted to
put paper wrap around that trunk, or there's plastic wraps
around the trunk, anything, what you're doing is you're keeping
the sun off the trunk from the ground on up
until you start getting into the branches. That would be helpful,

(30:13):
just as a general rule, and then take it off
once we're past winter, take it off. But with those
young trees, that's the cold problem that we see. And
it's because the warmest time of the day, even if
it's a cold ay, it's going to be around three o'clock,
four o'clock, so two o'clock. It depends on the day,
and that's when the sun is low in the sky
about four o'clock. And you don't you don't want it

(30:35):
doing that to your tree.

Speaker 4 (30:37):
And with a juniper like junipers in pots will they are?

Speaker 13 (30:41):
They cold hardy.

Speaker 6 (30:44):
They're cold hardy as long as it doesn't get too cold,
you know. And with where you live again, you're down south,
I wouldn't worry about my junipers and my pots with
the temperatures you're getting.

Speaker 8 (30:56):
All right, thank you so much.

Speaker 6 (30:57):
Okay, all right, take care. You got to be real
careful with that, folks. I know I got listeners. I'm
nervous about this, if you will, because I know people
don't listen to me. I know they don't. He don't.
And somebody goes, yeah, I heard you say. I didn't
need to cover everything. Well I didn't for your area.

(31:20):
All right, I think I made my point. Let's take
a little break. We'll be back, all right, all right, folks,
we're back. By the way. Do you hear that Nelson
Plant Food Genesis commercial? That was Texas Garden Guide Dell
Testin friend of mine. You probably follow him on social

(31:41):
media if you shouldn't, you ought to. He's a very
prolific social media active person. But anyway, it's good to
hear his voice. Medina products and the wide range of
options they give you are just they're just really amazing.
For example, you know you've got standard forizer type products.
You have things like seaweed as well. You've got all

(32:04):
kinds of plant supportive compounds too. You know, we talk
about hormones and plants, we talk about vitamins and plants,
we talk about microbial concoctions for plants, and that's what
nature does. And it just really is wise to take
care of things that you have by providing the things

(32:28):
that nature provides. And the folks at Medina have done
a number of really outstanding products that do just that.
I always enjoy seeing the different things when they come
out with something new, visiting with about Okay, what are
we doing here? How do we take care of this?
And that's exactly what we're talking about. When you look
at Medina, I don't care what the kind of product

(32:49):
is you're using. You're going to get a quality product.
That is what they make there. That is what they
make at Medina. And you find their products all over
the place, easy to find Medina products out there. I
was noticing the other day Plans for All Seasons. It's
just a solid garden center. I mean once they solid,

(33:09):
I mean you know you're looking at an independent garden
center with folks that know what they're talking about. They
give you good advice, that sell you plants that grow here,
that tell you how to take care of them. When
you have problems, you go in, they tell you what
to do about it. It's just full service, absolutely full service.
That is the cool thing right now. Plants for All
Seasons has stocked up on seed like you wouldn't believe. Hey,

(33:33):
that'd be a good thing to do today for the
weather gets bad, go grab some seed. They have the
little seed starting materials. You know, you need a heap
mat mat, you need a little tray with a little
plastic cover over it. You need some seed starting soil
and seed. Then when the cold hits, you got some
fun gardening to do indoors. They carry those products also

(33:55):
at plants for all seasons. Why not stop by there?
They are just north Lueta where at where it comes
into two forty nine, So they're on Tomball Parkway, just
north of Luetta two eight one three seven six sixteen
forty six. I want to make a couple of comments
about cold weather a protection for plants. When we are

(34:19):
protecting plants in cold weather, there's several factors that determine
whether that plant is going to be injured or not.
One is a species of plant. Some things are just
they can't take it cold at all. You know, basil
doesn't even want fifty degrees. And then there's there's also
the condition of the plant. You know, I don't recommend

(34:40):
fertilizing after late mid to late summer. You don't want
to push a plant into growth, you know, with fertilizer
and water and then boom, here comes a coal spell
and that plant wasn't ready. They need to slow down
and harden up. Another factor is the age of the plant.
If you take a brand new citrus, you just put
in the ground versus one that's been established for three

(35:01):
or four or more years. There's a difference in cold heartiness.
The young ones aren't going to be as cold hearty,
so you have to pamper them a little bit more
just to be sure. Those are some of the examples
of differences. So when we say how coal is it
going to get, you know, and what are you going
to plan or what do you have growing? There's a
lot of factors there, and we give our best estimates

(35:22):
on it, but it really comes down to that. Another factor,
is the plant drought stressed or is it adequately moist?
Is the soil moist, not soggy like a swamp, but moist.
That's some things to think about in terms of determining
how hard are your plants are going to be. Let's
take a little break here and we'll be back after

(35:43):
the news with your calls and a lot more information.
I want to remind you the annual Fort ben Regional
Vegetable Conferences Tuesday, February seventeenth. They'll be talks all day,
so you need to register for this. I'll be there
speaking on raised bed and container gardening from one fifteen
to two fifteen on Tuesday. But they're gonna be a
lot of other great talks things for backyard gardeners. If

(36:06):
you happen to be wanting to get into the growing
business a small producer, market gardener, there's a track for you.
There's even a track for food preservation, safety and recipes.
So what do you do with that produce you just grew?
You gotta go. Annual Fort Ben Regional Vegetable Conference Tuesday,
February seventeenth, Call the Fort Ben County Extension Office.

Speaker 1 (36:29):
Welcome to kt r H Garden Line with Skip Richard.

Speaker 3 (36:33):
It's just watch him as stay not a sound.

Speaker 6 (37:05):
What about the guard line. Good to talk to you
this morning. Hey, We've got a lot to talk about.
There's a lot of variations on this cold weather and
what to do, as well as things we can be
doing during the time we're hold up inside. Do you
know gardening doesn't stop because of the weather, No, it
doesn't at all. For example, you know, know, plant potatoes

(37:26):
this year if you've never done it before, you can
do it in a container even actually you can a
very large container and it's not that hard to do,
or put it in the ground in your beds. So
what you gotta do is you got to buy the
seed potatoes. That's what they call them. It basically just
the potato and you cut it up with a couple
of eyes on each potato piece that you have. You

(37:46):
set those out and you let the surface dry. Some
people dust them with sulfur dust that helps cut down
on decay in the cold, wet soil. And you can
do that and then leave them for just a few days,
a couple of days, and they'll be just fine and
ready to go when it's time to get them planted
now and Channa Forest has got those. By the way, Oh,
I need to tell you a lot of our garden

(38:06):
centers are closing up for this weather. Or Number one,
you're not gonna be out shopping. You don't need to be.
But in Chenne Forest is going to close up around
noon today, somewhere around noon today. They'll be closed tomorrow
and Monday and then open again on Tuesday. And that
pattern is really common. Not every garden center is the
same schedule during this cold but just call first to

(38:26):
any garden center you're thinking about going to call them
first find out when they're going to be there. If
you want to run out there this morning to enchanted forests.
They may still have some of the insulate frost protection fabric.
You know how that at a time like this, I
always kind of go, yeah, it's probably they've probably been
picked over on that because people run out there. But

(38:48):
you can call them and ask them do they have one,
and get you some Redlea soda, Pontiac, red Kennebec white
or Yukon go to love yukuon gold potatoes, and now
something to do during the coal weather inside or grab
some seeds and do the same thing. Start seeds in
this coal weather enchanted forest. By the way, for those

(39:09):
of you who have not been out there, it's located
out in the Richmond area, but it's on the like
if you're in Richmond and you head towards sugar Land,
it's to the right down south of fifty nine to
the right. The actual address is twenty seven to fifty
nine FM twenty seven to fifty nine, Richmond, Texas. Here's

(39:29):
the website that'll get you directions. It'll get you the
phone numbers so you can call them and check make
sure they're open. Enchanted Forest Richmond, TX dot com, Enchanted
Forest Richmond, TX dot com and I want to tell
you something. These garden centers, all these garden centers, especially
the mom and pops that are especially conscientious about the

(39:52):
plants they offer, in the condition of the plants. The
independent garden centers, they are working their tailoff. I mean,
every time we get a freeze like this, they are
having to group plants together. I'm going to cover plants there.
Back when we had the uri storm and they're bringing
plants inside, I knew one that they their house was
full of plants, just trying to, you know, some place

(40:15):
to protect these plants. That was the worst cold than
we're having now. But they do a lot of hard
work during this time, and so that you when the
sun you know, once the cold is over, you're going
to be like, hey, let's go, let's shop. And they've
worked hard to make sure the plant you purchase is
a plant that's still in good condition. There's a lot
of good quality inventory there. So just keep that in

(40:36):
mind and be aware of the fact that while while
we're kind of holding up inside, their work just tripled
while they're trying to put all these things together, protect
them and take care of them and so on. So
I just thought i'd mentioned that the folks at Pestpro's
they typically, you know, during the season, they're dealing with

(40:58):
fire ants out in your yard. They're dealing with things
in your house, whether it's termites or whether it's silver
fish and all the other creepy crawleys that come through
and need some indoor treatments. They do all of that.
When the cool season comes, it's the things that go
bump in the night in the attic that they are
healthen focusing on. You know, rats can go through a

(41:19):
hole about the size of a dime and you go,
no way, they're bigger than that. Well, they're fluffy, that's
why you don't know how skinny there, but they can.
And whether it's a dryer vent going outside, whether it
is where a faucet goes into the house, into the
brick and stuff, they can crawl through there and they
come in. And then there's the bigger things, you know,

(41:40):
the larger like squirrels or even a raccoon bumping around
in the attic. They're looking for a warm place and
you can call Pestpros. They will come out. They'll do
an assessment of your house and they will make sure
and find those places where they know how to look
for them, whether the critters may be getting in and
seal that up so you don't have to deal with that.

(42:02):
You can call them at two eight one two oh
six forty six seventy two eight one two o six
forty six seventy or go to their website thepestbros dot com.
Thepestbros dot com. They cover the whole region that we're
in right here. I'm talking about from on the east
side or from south rather down in Texas City up
to the woodlands, from over in Baytown on the east side,

(42:25):
all the way west to the Kadi area. And it
includes any kind of thing, whether it has four legs
or six legs, they can deal with it, and they
know how to do it in the safest possible manner,
so you don't have to worry. That is true, Wanda,
I want to talk before break. I talked about what

(42:45):
makes a particular plant hardy or not hardy, even within
the range of that species. And there's things like right
now it's a little late to go back and not
fertilizing water. I'm late in the season, for example, but
it at least knowing that you know next year that
is we're a couple of months away from some cold weather,

(43:07):
three or four months even away from cold weather. Things
you're doing then help prepare that plant for cold weather.
Plant needs to be in good health. Then it needs
to not be pushed into succulent early or late season growth,
and that really matters. I want to talk about the
concept of protecting plants from cold, not sort of the
physics of it. If I say that, you're going to

(43:28):
quit listening. But anyway, it does come down to the
physics of it. When air gets cold and comes down
our way, that kind of air is what we see
as the cold front that threatens our plants. But there's
more to it than that. For example, depending on how

(43:48):
cold it gets and how hardy the plant is, Like
you know, bougainvillia can't take as much cold as an
azalea can, for example. That is a fact, and how
fast it gets cold and how warm it was before
that as a factor. A few years ago I was

(44:10):
I noticed up in the College Station area that there
were crape myrtle trees frozen to the ground. Now, crpe
myrtles can grow way north of here. There are lots
of crape motles up in Dallas, for example, and even
further north. Crpe myrtles are hardy. But what happened was
we had a warm period and the crapes weren't going

(44:31):
into dormancy. They just it wasn't the temperature that was
pushing them down that direction. And then the cold hit,
and when it hit, they weren't ready and cold that
they normally could have survived, they didn't because of the weather.
You can't control the weather going into a freeze. But
just know that if we've had a warm, balmy period,
Let's say we still got some winter left. Let's say

(44:53):
we get a period where it's you know, seventy five
seventy eight degrees per week, and then here comes a freeze.
Done in the twenties, your plants are going to be
more susceptible, and you just kind of make those adjustments
to oh, they made twenties last year, I won't worry
about it. Well, think about the weather going into them.
That's another factor about cold weather. Let's take a little

(45:13):
break here. We will be back with your calls at
seven one three, two, one, two fifty eight seventy four.
Since you're not going to get to see the sun
until tomorrow, morning. I thought I would let the sunny
little music of Kobe Kella come in and cheer us
up a little bit this morning. There you go, Hey,

(45:36):
if you'd like to give me a call ask a
gardening question, here's the number seven one three two, one
two fifty eight seventy four seven one, three, two and
two five eight seven four. Earlier you heard the aed
for Nelson plant Food destined Noack, Texas garden guy. He
was talking about the product called Genesis, and boy what

(45:58):
they said about it is one hundred and true. I've
had exactly that kind of results when I've used it.
It's a good one. You know. The Nelson family, they
have spent forty two years in the horticulture industry for generations.
Three generations right now are involved in the family business
out in Belleville, Texas, which is where their products are made.

(46:21):
So it's a local company in the scenario, professional grade
products for homeowners, for growers and landscapers. You know, it's
just not the retail garden center that uses the ursells
the Nelson plant food products. It's people that are in
the commercially that use Nelson plant Food. They specialize in
horticulture fertilizers. They use only the highest quality ingredients and

(46:42):
they have the chemistries that provide controlled release in a
very very excellent way. For example, you know, you put
a fertilizers basically a synthetic furtilizers basically as salt by
the way Nelson sells organic cancer, but it's assault so
when it gets wet, it dissolves in. The nutrients are

(47:04):
there for the roots, but there are ways to put
like a form of nitrogen in that's going to give
a real slow release over months, really uh, And they
know how to do that and they create these blends
that give incredibly good feeding over time. That's just an
example of the kind of thing that they do. But

(47:24):
the whole family, Dean and the then so active in this,
very support supportive of their community schools and things like that.
And I don't know, it's a special company. I just
thought i'd mention that you're listening to Guardline our phone
number seven one three two one two five eight seven

(47:46):
four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.
Southwest Fertilizer is down south and West in Houston, as
the name would suggest, on the corner of bisin Nutt
and Rnwick and if you have been there, you need
to go. You just need to go check it out.
Sometimes you hear me talk about it all the time
and say, if they don't have it, you don't need

(48:06):
it because they have everything. You hear me talk about
the service. You hear me talk about the selection. You
hear me talk about the quality products that they have,
the fact that they've got a ninety foot wall of tools.
Oh my gosh, you need a tool, a quality tool,
not a piece of junk. They've got it there. You
need a fertilizer spreader, Do you need a little hand
crank fire ant bait spreader you walk around the yard with?

(48:29):
Do you need to have your small engines serviced and repaired?
They've got a little shop in the back for that.
Southwest Fertilizer I've been around for seventy years because they
treat people right. And when people walk in there, they
don't come out going yeah they were out again, No
they're not. They have everything you need. So go buy.
Say hi to Bob, say hi to Aaron and the

(48:51):
whole team there at Southwest Fertilizer, and see what I'm
talking about. Go see what I keep bragging about and
just in case you haven't heard me talk about them.
If you're organic and go I don't use chemical. They
have the biggest organic selection in the greater Houstonario. So
that both synthetic, organic, you name it, they've got it
at Southwest Fertilizer. And you need to get by there

(49:13):
corner of Bisinett and Runwick seven to one three six
sixty six one seven four four. Let me give you
that again seven one three six sixty six one seven
four to four. So we've been talking about cold protection
this morning, surprise, surprise. I want to give another principle
of cold protection that I think is important to understand,

(49:34):
very important. When you're protecting a plant, you're doing, uh,
basically two things. Number One, you're slowing the cooling of
that plant by having some sort of a wind break
around it, that cover over the top of it, whatever
you use for a coverover plants is deflecting the wind.

(49:55):
Which I mean, would you rather be outside when it's
cold and it's perfectly still, or would you rather have
a fifteen mile an hour wind blowing on you see
the difference. That's how it is with plants. It slows
the cooling of the plant. The other thing is you
want the cover to drape down to the ground. That
gives you the maximum benefit. And here's why you see

(50:16):
landscape lollipops all the time. A cover goes over the top,
wraps around, tied to the trunk. That's called a lollipop
and there is some slowing of cooling benefits for that.
But plants don't produce heat like our bodies do. If
I wrapped in a blanket, I would be out there
and I would be warm because my body is producing
heat and the blanket is holding it in. But a

(50:38):
plant isn't like an animal body, and it doesn't produce
a lot of heat underneath the cover. What you need
is the soil warmth rising up for the heat. And
when I use the term heat, when it comes to
coal protection, heat means above thirty two degrees, So thirty
three degrees is warmth when it comes to a plant,

(51:00):
not freezing. That's kind of what I'm talking about to
over exaggerate. But so we put the cover over, we
go to the ground, we weight the cover down, and
now we have this large space underneath where warmth can
rise up and protect the plants. And that is what
we're doing when we cover plant. That is the goal.
Whenever possible, have that cover go all the way to

(51:22):
the ground and protect those plants. And when you do,
you make a significant difference. Now, some covers are very
porous in the wind or air can move through them.
Others don't allow any movement. You know, if it's a
tarb or plastic or something, it's not going to allow
any movement through it. And then you have some very
heavy frost covers that are a heavier weight that yeah

(51:44):
there's some air exchange, but not like wind blowing in
it or anything, and they do a better job. The
lightest weight of row cover is used for seed starting
and protecting plants from bugs. It's like a little screen
over the plant. You can see right through that thing,
and it's very light weight. It makes it gives you
about a degree of protection. You get something that's up
in the four ounce range or an ounce and a

(52:06):
half range, let's go to their first, and then you've
got maybe three or four degrees of protection when you
get to an ounce and a half, and if you
get up to four ounces, it becomes even more. And
heavier covers are not as easy to find everywhere. But
I'm just saying when you get a cover, don't get
the thinnest of the road covers. Get us thick of
a rod cover as they have where you're purchasing it

(52:27):
to get the most benefit out of it. All right,
just a few thoughts about cold weather and protecting plants.
I'm gonna talk a little bit later about using warmth
underneath the cover, so stay tuned for that. RCW Nurseries
has been having their sale for a while a number

(52:50):
of weeks now and depending on the supplies that they have,
it continues on so some things people don't come and
buy them out, so you just have to go there
and check it out. Ten percent off all their trees,
azaleas and camellias fifteen percent off and citrus trees forty
percent off at this point in time. So they're located

(53:12):
if you haven't been there, Highway to forty nine right
where it comes into belt WAGH eight. It's easy access
to get in get out of there, and it's very
it's a nice and kind of central location for a
lot of parts of the greater Houston area. That is
a garden center that has for a long time been
well known and loved because of the quality products that

(53:34):
they have because of the the fact that they absolutely
know how to take care of plants, to grow plants.
They sell stuff that goes here and they provide you
with excellent advice. So it looks like they still have
the citrus trees. Checking their website here, it looks like
they still have the citrus trees available. They have been
offering a lot of it, you know, when it comes

(53:56):
to spring. The roses at RCW Nursery is just like
pages of One time. I when I asked David, I said, hey,
we you send me your list of roses, and I
got six pages, single spaced. Okay, I get it. You
have roses, you have roses. But there's a lot of
really good helpful information there from those folks. That's a

(54:19):
good thing about an independent garden center is you get help.
You get help, not just here's a plant. I hope
it grows here. But it's good stuff. So stop by there.
It's a great deal, great opportunity. And winter is one
of the best times to plant woody ornamentals and perennials too,
by the way, because it gives plants a little bit
of time before the hot weather arrives and the demands

(54:41):
on the root system go up. So that's what you're
aiming for. RCW Nurseries again, Tomball, Parkway and Beltway eight.
Call before you get there and check and see what
the hours are going to be. A lot of our
garden centers are having to close down a little bit
and they should shouldn't be able shopping at those times,

(55:02):
but anyway, give them a call and the number two
eight one four four zero fifty one sixty one two
eight one four four zero fifty one sixty one. I
have a setsuma tree that I was protecting.

Speaker 13 (55:20):
And.

Speaker 6 (55:22):
Well, let me just go into that another plant protection tip.
When you have a grafted citrus tree, there's a rootstock
that tends to be very thorny, and then there's a
grafted thing that you bought the tree for. Maybe it's
a mere lemon, maybe it's a setsuma, maybe it's an
orange or grapefruit. Those graft parts are not as cold

(55:44):
hardy as they need to be when we get this
kind of cold weather. So if you can't cover your
tree adequately and save the tree, then what you do
is you pile soil up or compost or of a
multch a good thick mulch all up the truck in
a big cone. I know, I say all the time,
don't do the landscape volcanoes, you know, the multi volcanoes

(56:09):
that that's done around town, and you don't want to
leave that on all the time. But for a couple
of nights there's no problem with that at all, and
in fact a week there's no problem at all. Just
pile it up a way above the graft union. And
if that tree gets killed all the way back to
the essentially what is now the soil line that you've
piled up there, if it gets all killed all the

(56:31):
way back to there, you have buds below that that
are above the graft. You're gonna get rootstock sprouting, and
you got to cut those off. But the buds, buds
above the graft now have this big root system that
didn't get killed out, and you're going to get fast
growth in the spring when it warms up and that
thing starts growing again, and if you take care of
it and prune it and guide it, you can end

(56:52):
up with a nice plant and a shorter time than
you think, and you saved yourself the loss of that plant.
All right there it is we're going to take a
little break and we'll be right back. Welcome back to
the garden line, if you expect. In line, we are
talking on cold today, as you might expect, and we'll

(57:12):
talk about anything. You've got a question about growing Okra.
We'll feel that as well today. Although I will say
that Okra is about as far away from this weekend
as you're gonna get in terms of the warmth that
it likes. Maybe Basil's even worse than that. I keep
picking on Basil, but oh my gosh, you say, you
know you get a forty eight degree day in Basil's

(57:34):
like I'm getting spots on my leaves. I think I'm
gonna die. But it is a wonder. It's probably the
most popular herb. I wonder what the most popular herb
really is. I bet it's Basil in terms of growing,
growing in people's gardens and things. That's a good question.
I've looked that up. But I love Basil, and there's
so many kinds, and here I am talking about Basil.

(57:56):
I'm gonna do a little video club. By the way,
I know I'm jumping all over the place here. If
you do not follow me on Facebook and Instagram, I
would suggest you consider it. Garden Line is the Facebook page.

(58:16):
Garden Line, no surprise there, and the Instagram is a
little different. It's garden Line with Skip is the Instagram page,
and I've been posting things to it. Did some yea.
I was talking about piling up the soil around a
citrus tree. If you've got Instagram, find gardening with Skip
and go look. I do a little quick video just

(58:37):
showing you what I'm talking about on how to do that.
It's on there, and the Facebook page has got a
number of different videos on it that are I think
very helpful. Also. The one is on Facebook by the way, too,
about protecting the base of a citrus trunk. I've got
a couple more coming on today. Some of these super
cold hardy are cold tender plants that we have like

(58:58):
Pride Barbados or it's also called redbird Paradise. I talk
about how I protect mine. Someone asked me about what
do you do that with Esperanza too, and the answers, yes,
that's what I do with Esperanza as well. And so
those are helpful videos that you'll find on They're also
links to the publication on protecting plants from frosts and freezes.

(59:21):
Those links are also posted on the garden Line Facebook
page in the Gardening garden Line with Skip Instagram page.
Affordable Tree Service has been around for a long time.
Martin has been in this business just for decades and decades.
They know how to take care of trees, is the

(59:41):
bottom line. You've heard about Affordable Long Garden Line for
a long time, back way back into when Randy Lemon
was in the chair doing the show. Affordable Tree Service
has been one of our main key sponsors, and I
just enjoy seeing the kind of work that they do
and the kind of services that they offer. Now right now,

(01:00:05):
everybody knows winter's pruning time, but spring is coming soon
and you'd like to get this pruning done sooner rather
than later. So give them a call, have them come
out and look at your trees. If no one's looked
at your trees in the last two years, you need
to have somebody to look at your trees. Because whether
it's a young tree that's being trained into a good,
strong form or an older tree that's dealing with problems

(01:00:29):
from lack of proper training when it was young, they
can come out. They know, first of all, there are
no leaves on deciduous trees right now. So you're oaks,
and you know, for example, and elms and all of
these they don't they don't have leaves on them. So
it's easy for an arbor person to look at the
tree and go okay, I can see the problems very

(01:00:50):
clearly right now. And by pruning right before the spring begins,
which we're there now, you get the fastest time of
healing for the whole year. Right after you prune. A
springtime is when wound closure. I shouldn't use the word healing,
because trees don't heal, they close the wounds. But when
wound closure is the fastest in the spring. So this

(01:01:14):
is a good time to get that printing done. Cal
Martin spoon more at Affordable Tree Service seven to one
three six ninety nine two six six y three. Get
your trees trimmed the right way, the right time by
an expert. Call Martin now, get on his schedule. It
always fills up. But tell him you're a guardenline listener
for any tree that he prunes this spring, which means

(01:01:35):
now he will also provide a free deep root feeding
on that tree. So you have a tree pruned, that
tree gets a free deep root feeding. That's kind of
how that works. When you call Affordable make sure you
talk to Martin or his wife Joe or his mom Judy.
Those are the three to answer the phone at Affordable
Tree Service. If you don't get one of them, you
call the wrong place. Seven one three six nine nine

(01:01:57):
two six six three. If you want to learn more
about the services that they offer, go to a f
F tree Service dot com. Aff Tree Service dot com.
Let's go out to Tomball now and we are going
to visit with David this morning. Hello David, welcome to
garden Line. Good morning, sir.

Speaker 14 (01:02:20):
Hey, I just climbed out of bed. You might have
already mentioned this, but when you have citrus trees that
are just a little bit too big to put sheets over,
how do you protect them in this cold weather?

Speaker 6 (01:02:36):
What you do is you you do what you can.
If there is any part of the tops and trunks
and stuff you can wrap, go ahead and do that.
That helps a little bit. But down at the base
of the tree there is a graft union, usually within
a few inches of the ground, where they grafted that

(01:03:00):
fruit or orange or lemon or whatever you have onto
a rootstock. If it gets killed all the way to
the ground. You're gonna have rootstock, thorny rootstock that reach sprouts,
and you don't have a tree. But if you pile
a huge pile, a huge cone shape, you know, pile
of soil or compost or multch around the base of
the trunk and leave it on during the time when

(01:03:23):
this winter freeze you know, is predicted to last, then
you can pull it back out of the way. We
normally don't pile soil on the trunk of trees, but
what it'll do is it'll protect above the graft for
a few inches. And should you lose that tree, you're
going to get a lot of resprouting, some from below
the graft. You got to take those off their their rootstock,

(01:03:44):
and then of the ones that come out above the graft,
you can choose one to make the new trunk. And
I'm telling you, with that strong root system it has,
it'll grow lots faster than you would expect because there's
a lot of good support for it, and it won't
be too long before you're back into a decent tree.
And you don't have to buy another one and put
it in now if you want to. That's not acceptable.

(01:04:05):
You just go get you another tree. But I think
you can do a lot to save your trees that way,
with that cone of soil piled up well above the
graft union.

Speaker 14 (01:04:15):
Okay, now when you say the graph union, I'm not
real familiar with that. I bought this tree from Marshy
w planet it and it's it's it's it's fairy new tree,
but it's got it's probably about it's probably about seven
eight feet tall now and this this come in the spring,
right before at the end of the winter. I was

(01:04:36):
gonna go ahead and start doing some pruning to give
it the shape so I'll be able to reach the
fruit when they start producing. I'm not sure what you
mean by that union.

Speaker 6 (01:04:45):
I would wear their Okay, that's that's fair enough. Let
me I'll tell you, Uh, first of all, hold off
on the pruning until we get past all the frosts
and freezes. Pruning is a stimulating process, and if we
got some warm weather, you'd get tender new shoots coming
back out, and then a hard freeze could still hit
and we don't want that. So just wait on the
If you go to the ground, okay, get down low,

(01:05:09):
look at the trunk of the tree. Where it comes
out of the ground, it will come up and often
there's a little a little bit of a it kind
of goes to one side and then goes up. It's
not just perfectly straight all the way out of the
ground to the top. That's the graft union. You can
just see just a little bit of a a zigzag
in it right there. And that's the spot where the

(01:05:31):
rootstock and the variety you purchased come together. And so
as many inches above that as you can protect. I
have some multch that I'm using on it on mine
because just because I had it handy and I didn't
want to go find soil or something to pile up.
But even even compost a bag. You can go buy
some bags of composts. The nice thing about that is

(01:05:51):
when the freezes are over, you just spread it out.
Now you've got to moult in your soil over well.

Speaker 14 (01:06:00):
Thank you, thank you, sir.

Speaker 6 (01:06:03):
You bet now, David, I don't charge on garden line,
but I do expect half the citrus you get out
of this gig well to be dropped off at the
station for me.

Speaker 14 (01:06:14):
As soon as I get.

Speaker 4 (01:06:17):
I'm waiting myself.

Speaker 6 (01:06:22):
Understand that, all right, man, You take care. There you go.
Let's take a little break and we'll be back. Oh
my gosh, outside, how many of you are big Neil
Diamond fans. My wife and I watched a show I
don't know Netflix poem in one of those services called

(01:06:44):
Song Sung Blue and so it's a good show. It's
a kind of a true story. So it's about a
fellow that is a Neil Diamond cover guy. He sings
Neil Diamond and it's played by who's the guy that
played Wolverine? Nicholas? Do you know who's the guy that Wolverine?
And oh gosh, anyway, he plays the Neil Diamond cover

(01:07:06):
singer uh and Goldie Hans's daughter. I'm blanking out on
all these people's names. Anyway, she plays another singer that
was with him. It's a it's a pretty good show.
But listening to it and watching the show and it's like,
I don't know that I'm not sure anyway.

Speaker 2 (01:07:25):
The the.

Speaker 6 (01:07:28):
Music in it just gets in your head.

Speaker 15 (01:07:31):
You know.

Speaker 6 (01:07:31):
It's like when you hear an ice cream ice cream
truck come by and it's plays It's a small, small
world over and over and over again, and he can't
get it out of your head. What they call it
an earworm. Well, anyway, we now can't quit thinking about
Neil diamond songs because you know there were songs of
our past and a lot of you as well. If
you don't know who Neil Diamond is, go find his music.
It's awesome song sung blues anice one. All right, enough

(01:07:54):
about music. I think we're a gardening show. Let's go
to Beaumont and talk to Gordon this morning. Hey, Gordon,
welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 5 (01:08:03):
Thank you. I'm asking about some ginger. What's the best
time to harvest ginger and how do you cure it?

Speaker 8 (01:08:12):
Do you just boil it?

Speaker 5 (01:08:13):
Or I want a ginger juice out of it?

Speaker 6 (01:08:18):
You can, yes, sir, I do. You can harvest ginger anytime.
It typically in the spring it comes out and it
begins its growth, and you want it to create as
many rhizomes, those underground things that we eat that when
you buy ginger in the store, that's a rhizome you're buying.
You wanted to create as many of those as possible,

(01:08:40):
and so we typically harvest it at the end of
the season. But you don't have to wait to the
end of the season on it I've got sim and
I haven't harvested it yet. I probably ought to get
out there. I'm going to cover it up with a
good thing moult though.

Speaker 5 (01:08:53):
Yeah, end of the what season, end of what season?

Speaker 6 (01:08:58):
The growing growing season, you know, you get into fall
sometime and you harvest it. The ornamental types of ginger,
I just leave in the ground year round. And when
we get this, it's getting really cold for ginger, and
some of those rhizomes are up near the surface and
they'll get cold damage. So you do want to give
a good mulch over them.

Speaker 5 (01:09:17):
Okay, my mine's above ground. I got two large patches.
I just do you cure? Do you just burn it
or what?

Speaker 6 (01:09:28):
No, you just put it out on the counter and
it will dry. A lot of people use ginger fresh,
though the grocery store doesn't typically sell it fresh, but
you can just take the fresh ginger. The little rhizomes
are very white. They haven't taken on that tan rough
look like the outside of a russet potato looks.

Speaker 4 (01:09:48):
You know.

Speaker 6 (01:09:48):
They're still white and plump and have some pink on
them where the buds are coming off, and you can
use it at that stage as well. Now I've never
tried juicing it before, but I know that you can.

Speaker 7 (01:10:00):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (01:10:01):
Gingers used in products like ginger ale for example.

Speaker 5 (01:10:04):
Yeah, yes, that's what I wanted a ginger. But okay,
on the ale of airting, you just color cover them
with bowl app for protection in the cold, and then
a tarp on top of the bowl app.

Speaker 6 (01:10:20):
That would work. Are you is your aloe in a
container or in the ground both.

Speaker 13 (01:10:26):
I have a large place in the ground and I
wanted to keep it okay, bloom and I'd like to
keep booms okay, okay, and free tree.

Speaker 6 (01:10:38):
Just cover it, cover it up. Don't wait down way
down the edges of that cover garden because you don't
want any air to blow up underneath there. That's cold, okay.

Speaker 5 (01:10:49):
And then fake tree basically the same.

Speaker 11 (01:10:54):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (01:10:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:10:54):
Figs are large. Yeah there, if it's small enough to cover,
go ahead and cover it. What some people do is
they'll put like a wire cage around a fig. I'm
talking about a mesh wire of whatever size, mesh enough
to hold leaves, and they'll just fill that full of
all the fallen I collect leaves from the neighborhood for

(01:11:16):
the things like that, and they'll just create this big tall, thick,
round mass of leaves to protect some of the above
ground parts of the fig and avoid losing it all
the way to the ground in a cold cold weather.
Another thing you can do is pile mult up around it,
pile a compost and mulch up around it, and once

(01:11:36):
we get through the cold weather, you can just pull
that back and it just makes a nice little mulch
around the tree and it'll be happy with that anyway.
So that's another way. And all you're doing is protecting
the base for getting good sprouts when the weather's over
and it warms up.

Speaker 8 (01:11:51):
Okay, thanks your sir, You bet good luck.

Speaker 6 (01:11:54):
With that now, Gordon. You know we asked for half
the produce if I help you to actually grow more produce,
so I know you don't mind bringing me half your
figs and half of your alo. Okay that excellence, Yes, sir,

(01:12:21):
how about hand delivered and planted for me? If it's alo.
I'm not asking too much, am I.

Speaker 5 (01:12:29):
Get it here?

Speaker 6 (01:12:33):
Gets you?

Speaker 5 (01:12:34):
All right?

Speaker 6 (01:12:34):
Well, that's gratitude for you. Hey, have fun, stay warm
there you go, all right, folks, looks like we're putting
another hour in the books. Hey, do you got a
gardening question. Let's talk about it. Seven one three, two
one two five eight seven four. I never had that
much pushback my request, my reasonable request to get half

(01:13:00):
what someone worked hard to grow. We'll be back. Welcome
to Katie r. H. Garden Line with Skip rictor.

Speaker 2 (01:13:12):
Esmell basy here in the bassis, gas baby, Can you
a shrimp?

Speaker 1 (01:13:20):
You just watch him as well? Got gasses and gas?
Can you as many.

Speaker 2 (01:13:27):
Broad takes the seatbacks in the bay bringing the basses
like gas baby?

Speaker 1 (01:13:32):
Can you dad sables globs back again? Not a sign
credit the gassies and gas and sun beamon of.

Speaker 2 (01:13:44):
A tweeting mobs the gasses like gas baby?

Speaker 3 (01:13:48):
Can you jam the.

Speaker 2 (01:13:50):
First starting and treating the gasses like gasca?

Speaker 15 (01:13:55):
You did?

Speaker 6 (01:13:57):
Everything is so?

Speaker 1 (01:13:59):
And see.

Speaker 6 (01:14:02):
All right, we're back. Welcome back to Guardenline. Good to
have you with us. I always enjoy hearing from our
listeners too, if you would like to give me a call.
Seven one three two one two five eight seven four
seven one three two two fifty eight seventy four. Maybe
I need to do a little talking today about what

(01:14:24):
to do while you're a hole up in the house
and you can't go outside and garden. There's a lot
of indoor things we can do, that's for sure. Nature's
Way Resources they have a wide variety of soil and
mulch based products that have been designed over the years

(01:14:44):
by they're a leader in the industry. By the way,
a lot of the original things that were designed that
we talk about now in Houston all the time, like
roat soil and the lethal compost kinds of things that
that started there with Nature's Way. But they don't just
have bulk. You can order bulk for them to deliver.
You can go get it with your truck and trailer

(01:15:05):
if you want. But they also have bag products that
are available of course at their location, but at places
around town. Plants for All Seasons carries Nature's Way Bags
All Seasons Hardware in Willis that's an ACE All Seasons
Ace and Willis and another Ace the Ace Hardware the
Woodlands up north they both carry Nature's Way products by

(01:15:25):
the bag done kind of off to the northeast, J
and R's Ace and porter A, Tascacida, Ace K and
m Ace Hardware in Kingwood all carry Night the Nature
Nature's Way products. On the west side, Ace Hardware, City
A Memorial Drive and Nelson Water Gardens out there and
Katie carry ace hard what I keeps saying, there's so

(01:15:48):
many aces that carry it. That's why Nature's Way products
by the bag. And then Southwest, well, of course Southwest
Fertilizer does they have everything in Chennet Forest in Richmond
and in Chenet Gardens in Richmond. So down south and west,
you got several places that carry Nature's Way Resources products.
If you want to see their full list of products,
go to Nature's Way Resources dot com Nature's Way Resources

(01:16:13):
dot Com and you can find it there. And boy,
do they ever have a wonderful line of products. I
know I use them. In fact, the other day I
was doing my little video that is on Instagram and
Facebook and it talks about protecting the base of a
citrus tree. And I've got a bag of Nature's Way
products there because that's that's what I like to use.
Very good, very good stuff. Let's go out now to

(01:16:34):
Dickinson and visit with Tony this morning. Hey Tony, welcome
to garden Line.

Speaker 7 (01:16:39):
Good morning, big Skip, Good morning Skip.

Speaker 5 (01:16:41):
How are your shirt?

Speaker 6 (01:16:44):
I'm good. How are you staying warm? Fabulous?

Speaker 5 (01:16:48):
Stay warm?

Speaker 8 (01:16:48):
Yes, sir, I'm skinny. When it gets below seventy I'm
putting on a neck warmer.

Speaker 6 (01:16:53):
Yeah, there you go.

Speaker 7 (01:16:59):
Well, so I was one think you're supposed to water
water trees, you know, before the freeze, that the water
helps insulates grande, which doesn't make any sense to me,
but that's what.

Speaker 6 (01:17:08):
I've always heard.

Speaker 8 (01:17:09):
When you're talking about molting above the graf.

Speaker 7 (01:17:13):
Should that be kind of watered in a little bit
or just put it on dry and leave it big.

Speaker 6 (01:17:21):
Now, just the idea there is to try to retain
that soil heat higher up on the trunk. That's what
you're doing. So you're creating a large cone of molten
soil that goes well above the trunk to protect as
much of the trunk above the graft as possible. There's
no need to water it. Let me let me tell

(01:17:41):
you why you're saying it doesn't make sense that watering
makes it stay warmer. Here's here's an example that explains
what's going on. If you go down to the coast
and stand on the beach. During part of the day,
the air is blowing in off the ocean, and during
the other part of the day, the air is blowing
toward the ocean off the land. And that's because the

(01:18:01):
soil and water heat up and give up heat at
different rates. They don't do it as fast. And so
that's what we're doing. We're making sure the soil has
plenty of moisture in it because that does slow the
cooling down of the process. Uh, And that's what that's about.
But the steak people make is they think that means

(01:18:23):
you got to turn it into a swamp, and you don't.
You just want adequately moist soil, which you may already have.
And in fact, you know what, with the rain that's
coming in things, you probably don't need to water. Your
soil is going to be adequately moist I.

Speaker 5 (01:18:36):
Think very bad. Yeah, save me some time today for sure.

Speaker 8 (01:18:42):
There you go, all right, y'all, have a great day
and stay safe.

Speaker 6 (01:18:50):
Yeah, you stay wrapped up, keep yourself warm. Thank you
for the call. We'll hopefully talk to you again sometimes.

Speaker 5 (01:18:57):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (01:18:59):
This principle of watering the soil, that's really what it
amounts to is soil can literally get colder faster than
water can, but can water freeze. Absolutely, got a dog
bowl outside a freezing night. Yeah. Water is not like
an insulator so much as it is a heat sink.

(01:19:21):
So when you've covered up the plant. The moist soil
underneath that cover. This is why we don't lose lollipops.
We do covers that go all the way to the ground.
The moist soil under that cover will be giving up
heat at night, and therefore as that heat rises, the
plant is kept a little bit warmer. So that's that's

(01:19:42):
the physics, the science of it. But bottom line is, yeah,
don't worry about it. I don't think you need to
worry about it this time, just because I know we've
already been getting some moisture and my house and that
will continue. There's plenty more of that coming, all right.
Arborgate Garden Center. I love going to Arburgate for a

(01:20:04):
couple of reasons, well, a number of reasons. Number one,
the people Beverlee and Kennon and the whole team out there.
They're friendly. When you go out, they help you, you know,
they walk with you. They don't just point it stuff
and go out of that plant maybe over there, good
luck now, They walk you through it. They help you.
You know, you you don't have to know everything. Don't
be afraid of asking dumb questions, you know. If you

(01:20:25):
go I want to plant a container with flowers, but
I don't know which ones are best. They love that question.
They'll help you and they'll they'll walk you through it.
That's that service that you just can't beat. Secondly, there
are plant selections incredible beig ause anybody around when you
go out to Arbrogate, which by the way, is a
mile and a half west of two forty nine on
twenty nine to twenty and Tomball, So if you're in Tomball,

(01:20:48):
just head on twenty nine twenty out to the west
just outside of town there. Now, their winter schedule for
the storm is they're going to be open today until
two pm, and then they'll be closed Sunday and Monday
and Tuesday till noon, and they'll open on Tuesday from
noon to five. So this weekend they're going to be closed.

(01:21:10):
But just on all our garden centers. I've been telling
you this before call before you go. You never know.
It's called it'd be a shame to drive a distance
and people, by the way, people drive a distance to Arborgate.
That's worth the drive. Alrighty, let's take a little break
there and we will be back with your questions in
just a bit. All right, folks, welcome back. To the
garden line. What do you want to talk about today?

(01:21:35):
You can set an agenda former here seven one, three, two,
one two, five, eight seven four. I got plenty to
talk about. If you don't have a question, I've got
some things because I know the kinds of questions people
are going to be having. Uh. It is really common
to uh go through the season and hear similar kinds
of questions through the year, and that is okay. I've questions.

(01:21:57):
I've answered a thousand times, I'm sure over thirty now
seven years of gardening advice. And that doesn't bother me.

Speaker 15 (01:22:07):
I did.

Speaker 6 (01:22:07):
It never gets old, So go for it.

Speaker 8 (01:22:09):
You go for it.

Speaker 6 (01:22:11):
Cienamaltz is a place down south of Houston that is
where you're going to find not only friendly service and
that is very very fun friendly service, but you're going
to find a selection of quality soil mixes and mulches.
You're gonna find riverstone and those flat rocks you do
for walkways and pathways patios. Rather, they've got everything that

(01:22:35):
you're going to need there. And when it comes to
the soil in order to get that soil right, and
by the way, before you plant, you want the soil
to be right. That's why I say brown stuff before
green stuff. You can find it there as well as
the nutrient products, the fertilizers I talk about. You hear
me talk about microlife. You hear me talk about medina.
You hear me talk about nitrofoss. You hear me talk

(01:22:55):
about Nelson. You hear me talk about azamite. You hear
me talk about early soil products. They carry these things
at Ciena Maultch.

Speaker 8 (01:23:04):
Now.

Speaker 6 (01:23:04):
They are located on FM five twenty one Southeuston. The
website is what you need to go to Sienna Mulch
dot com. Sienna Mulch dot com. When you go there,
you'll find out everything that you need to know, how
to get their phone numbers, all that kind of stuff,
and I'm telling you you will enjoy it. Check out
their outdoor decorations, the boy. They have wonderful, really cool

(01:23:26):
stuff for the landscape. You go in this inside. Check
out the tool supplies that they carry there and also
the gift and uh, let's just say unusual little items
that you will use for decorating indoors and outdoors. Cnamlts
cnamlts dot com. Uh, you are listening to gardenline. If
you have a question seven one three, two, one two,

(01:23:49):
five eight seven four will be glad to tackle it
and come up with an answer that's true. Today we're
talking about cold so I'm gonna I'm gonna launch into
another little uh spiel on cold weather protection for plants,
and this time we're going to talk about the things
we do to provide warmth for plants. When you cover

(01:24:13):
a plant, you get so many degrees of protection, and
then there comes a time when a cover alone is
not enough. And for some of you, especially as you
move north in my listening area, a cover for many
things is not going to be enough. Now, something growing
low to the ground a cover works pretty good because
there's not much air underneath there to try to keep warm.

(01:24:34):
But if it's taller, like a small citrus tree, then
we're going to need some more on something like that
with the weather that's happening further north in the area.
So what you do underneath the cover you put a
source of heat. And there's a couple of simple practical
ways to do it. One of them is to string
the tree or shrub with Christmas lights. And I do

(01:24:57):
not mean the little LEDs, the little tiny twinkly things
you put on the Christmas tree. I'm talking about the
big bulb lights, the incandescent bulbs. They come in different sizes.
They have designations see this or that or the other size.
But you want the kind that when it lights up,
it gets pretty warm. And because you're wanted to produce heat,

(01:25:21):
and you just run those things all through the plant
underneath the Cover'll run them through a plant, cover up
the plant. That source of heat will provide a significant
benefit on a cold night, if it's in an area
where the wind can't blow underneath there and just blow
the heat right out of there. So that helps another thing.

(01:25:41):
This is what I'm going to be doing. I've got
a blood orange tree. They're not that hardy, not as
hardy as my setsuma, but the blood orange has cover
over it. And I have some heat lamps. They come
with the little clamps and the aluminum shields. Now, with those,
they produce quite a bit of heat. And you put
them low, shining downward toward the ground, warming the soil,

(01:26:04):
but with the heat from the lamp also rising up
underneath the cover. Don't point them at the trunk, don't
point them at branches, don't get them too close to
those tissues because they're hot. They get very hot. And
if you do that, you provide even more warmth. And
if it were a situation that needed more, you could
put two of those things in there. But the bottom
line is some source of warmth underneath there makes another

(01:26:27):
huge step in cold protection. What we would like on
a cold night is for it to be very still
and not windy. We can't control that. When the wind blows,
it's harder to keep things warm, but in a still
night we have a little more control over it. But anyway,
just some thoughts tips. Actually, let's got to Kingwood now

(01:26:47):
and we're going to visit with Mary this morning. Well, hello, Mary,
welcome to garden line.

Speaker 15 (01:26:51):
Hie, car are you this morning?

Speaker 6 (01:26:55):
Good? How can I help you?

Speaker 5 (01:26:59):
Bet?

Speaker 11 (01:26:59):
I had last week when we had the breeze, I
covered my plants and just left them without being out
of town. Well, I'm heading back to town now and
I know those covers are going to be wet and
they're going to freeze and get icy. I don't know
should they be removed or should I leave them?

Speaker 6 (01:27:24):
Okay, you leave them, You leave them because that ice
over cover is holding. Uh, it's it's holding that dead
air in even better than a lot of covers do.

Speaker 11 (01:27:35):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (01:27:36):
And so if you if you were to have an
ice shell over a plant and the warmth is rising
up underneath there from the soil or a light or
whatever you put under uh, that that is fine Eskimos
living igloos. That's a house made of ice.

Speaker 9 (01:27:50):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (01:27:51):
And so yeah, it seems like if it was covered
with if it's ice all around you, you you couldn't
stay warm. Well, yeah, it keeps it keeps some of
the wind blowing cold air in there out.

Speaker 11 (01:28:03):
So yeah, well great's I didn't want to have to
go redo all that, so that I.

Speaker 8 (01:28:09):
Appreciate that, all right.

Speaker 6 (01:28:13):
All right, well, thank you, Mary, appreciate your call very much.
You take care and stay warming, all right?

Speaker 1 (01:28:21):
You bet?

Speaker 6 (01:28:23):
There you go, hey, Enchanted Gardens down on the Katie
Fullster side of Richmond. Here's the website. First of all,
you need to go there. It's an awesome website, tells
you everything you need to know. Enchanted Gardens Richmond dot com.
Enchanted Gardens Richmond dot com. This is a wonderful garden center.
I mean, just outstanding selection of plants and everything else

(01:28:45):
under the sun. They do a very good job of
taking care of everything that they have. Now I want
to give you their cole's schedule coming up. So they're
going to be open today about noon ish. It's not
a hard open clothes line line on the time, but
we're roughly noon, so if you need to get out
there real quick, you can do it right after the

(01:29:07):
show close Sunday close Monday. That's their plan. Now they
plan to open on Tuesday, first thing, but just just
wait and check. Go to their website Enchanted Gardens Richmond
dot com and find out more information or give them
a call to eight one ninety three seven ninety four
forty nine. Now, I'm gonna be at Enchanted Gardens on Saturday,

(01:29:31):
the thirty first of January. That's coming up. That's next Saturday,
Saturday thirty first. I'll be there from twelve to two
and I'm gonna be given a talk, but you need
to come. We're gonna have a lot of fun. When
I give talks, they're educational, but they're also fun. I
gotta have fun with you guys, so we'll crack some
jokes and have a good time. We're gonna be talking

(01:29:52):
about container and raised bed gardening, gardening and beds and containers,
and if you don't have space for a garden, I'm
going to tell you how to grow as much as
you could if you had space. If you don't have
room for a garden where the sun shines on the spot,
I'm going to tell you how to grow stuff where
the sun does shine. You don't have to rototill, you
have to bend over, you have to turn over the soil,

(01:30:13):
throw your back out, or any of that kind of stuff.
Containers and raised beds are an easy way to garden.
And the cool thing about it, you know, if I
were going to put a garden in the soil well,
I'd have to get out there. I had to wait
till the soil was dry or drying, and then rototail
or spade it up and mix in composts and do
all that, and some point in time I'm going to
get the plant. With a container or a raised bed.

(01:30:37):
You just drop that thing on the ground. A raised
bed being like one of those corrugated metal surrounded beds,
or maybe you've got cinder blocks or something making a bed.
You just drop it on the ground and then fill
it up with a good quality mix you know something
from one of our good suppliers here on Nature's Way
for example, or the folks at Heirlooms Oils are down

(01:31:01):
at I just said it is that my brain just
went blank. That is that is really funny. Ci animals.
Those are examples of quality mixes. And when you drop
it in there, you're planting so literally in a morning.
I mean, if you're really in a hurry to get

(01:31:22):
it going, you started early, dropped that bed on the
ground and then had that pile of molch delivered and
shoveled it into the bed. You're done and you're gardening.
And I'm going to talk about that at Enchanted Gardens again.
They are on FM three point fifty nine on the
Katie fullsher side of Richmond. So if somehow you've never
been there, it's time to go and check this place out.

(01:31:44):
Next Saturday, the thirty first, from twelve thirty until two pm.
I think I said the time wrong the first time
I said it, twelve thirty to two pm. I'll be
there given my talk at Enchented Gardens and come on
out and see me. We're going to be given away
free product. Is providing some free product giveaways while we're there,
and get this, you know, want to miss this? And

(01:32:05):
Chanted Gardens is going to give away some gift certificates.
We just it's like money. You just go out there
and have fun. So there you go. Hope to see
you there. Let's see. I am not enough time to
take another call. Jim and Spring your first up. When
we come back from break. I'm gonna have to go

(01:32:26):
to a break right here. I want to remind you
guys that the Fort Ben Regional Vegetable Conference is Tuesday,
February seventeenth. I'll be there giving a talk. This is
a conference you have to register for, so call the
Fort Ben County Extension officers. A lot of quality talks
on all kinds of things going on all day. Plus
you get a lunch to eight one three four to

(01:32:49):
two thirty thirty four to eight one three four to
two thirty thirty four. Give them a call and show up.
Look forward to seeing you there too. All right, welcome.
I good to have you back with us here on
Garden Line. It's going after the phones where Jim from
Spring has been patiently waiting. Hey Jim, welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 16 (01:33:13):
Good morning, good morning, good morning.

Speaker 6 (01:33:19):
Good morning.

Speaker 5 (01:33:22):
Yes, Jim, do you have a do.

Speaker 6 (01:33:24):
You have a radio going? Do you have a radio
going in the background or not? Are you Are you
just hearing me on the phone? Let me turn the
radio the phone. Yeah, I think that would help because
there's a delay and that kind of throws us off.

Speaker 16 (01:33:43):
Alexis stop.

Speaker 8 (01:33:46):
How's that?

Speaker 6 (01:33:48):
There?

Speaker 7 (01:33:49):
You go?

Speaker 6 (01:33:49):
Alexi is a good helper. How can we help you today?

Speaker 16 (01:33:54):
I've got a garden full of amarilla's and lily's and
not many if any of the leaves have turned brown
and flung them off like they usually do, do I
just cut those things off and start from scratch again.

Speaker 6 (01:34:11):
Or leave them alone. Now, leave them alone, leave the
alone when some of them will be frozen back and
some of them will make it through just fine. But
just let them do what they're gonna do. When they're dead,
when they turn yellow and they're drying up and dying
at any time of the year, you can take them
off then. But when their leaves out, those leaves are

(01:34:32):
helping create carbohydrates to replenish the energy and the bulbs underneath.
So we don't want to take take that away. Sometimes
the weather world that we don't want to be the
one doing it.

Speaker 5 (01:34:43):
Well. I'll do it all right. Appreciate you. Hell, there
you go, sir.

Speaker 6 (01:34:48):
Yeah, thanks for the call. You take care, Stay warm,
stay warm well. Nelson Nursery and Water Garden out there
in Katie, Texas is a place that you definitely want
to go. And I'm gonna tell you why. The selection
of things that they have is outstanding. And we're talking
about plants. I know it says water gardens, but they're
also a nursery. They are as much a nursery as

(01:35:11):
they are a water garden place. When you go to
Nelson's Nursery and Water Garden I and Katie, all you
do is, by the way, it's off Eye ten. Just
turn north, just hop skipping or jump down the road
right there on the right hand side on Katie Fort
Ben Road, north of it ten. So what you're gonna
find is a selection from fruit trees, to herbs, to vegetables,

(01:35:32):
to flowers to perennials, all kinds of things. But make
sure you walk through the store and look at the
houseplants they have inside. They have the prettiest, healthiest just
you want to fill your arms and go home with them.
All really attractive houseplants inside the store. They have supplies
inside the store too for water gardens, so you can
have them build a water garden, or you can have

(01:35:54):
them set up in a disappearing fountain for you this spring.
If you want to do it yourself, they'll tell you
how to do it, and they have supplies that you
can use and do that however you want to go
about it. Water transforms the landscape. It just does. When
we first added water to our landscape, it was this
whole new dimension. You know. I enjoy the breeze, I

(01:36:16):
enjoy the visuals of pretty plants and birds and everything
going by. But water the sound. Ugh, I'm telling you
it is huge. Do me a favor, or do yourself
a favor. Go to Nelson Nursery and Water Gardens, Katie
four Ben Road, North Iten and just go back there
and sit a minute and just sit among the water.
And you know what I'm talking about. It is therapy, unbelievable.

(01:36:40):
More people should have water in their landscape. If you
don't want to take care of a pond with a
fountain in the pond and all that, that's fine, get
a disappearing fountain. It's just a big giant, beautiful ceramic pottery,
very tall, and the water comes over the sides. Birds
will thank you for that, by the way, and so
want some beneficial insects and just enjoy that. But anytime

(01:37:02):
you can add a little splash to it, that just
makes it all the better. Nelson Nursery and Water Gardens
and Katie, that's the place, that's where you need to do.
We've been talking about a lot of cold weather things today.
There's a lot of different aspects of controlling the weather
around the plant, and there's little things that we can

(01:37:22):
do to do that that help. And I think it's
important if you listen to gardline very long. I try
not to nerd out on you, believe it or not,
I'm really holding back, but I think it's important to
understand the why behind the what. And if you don't
care about the why, that's fine. I'll tell you what.
Go do this, go buy this. Here's where you get it.

(01:37:43):
I'll go do this thing to your yard. Don't ask
me quite, just do it.

Speaker 13 (01:37:46):
Well.

Speaker 6 (01:37:47):
I can do that, but I'd rather you kind of
understand the way, like when it comes to cold protection,
why do we do this or how do we cover
a plant? And why do we cover it that way?
Why is that the way to cover a plant? And
once you understand it, it's like it makes sense. It's
like a while ago, I was talking to somebody that
said it didn't make sense that putting water on the
ground makes the plant not get cold, right, And I

(01:38:09):
explain why that is, using the ocean and the wind
blowing in and out from the shore at different times
of day. There's a reason why. And once you understand this,
it's like, oh, I understand. So if I even put
you know, thirty four degree water on the ground, that
that is a heat sink. Right, water is a heat sink.
All right, Let's go now to west you and we're

(01:38:33):
gonna visit with Charlie this morning. Hey, Charlie, welcome to
garden Line.

Speaker 9 (01:38:38):
Hi, good morning, Skip. I have some Boston ferns that
are large and they've gotten kind of be dragged over
over the the years, maybe three years that I've had
them with some broughting leaves and some of the leaves
have fallen off the fronts and some are yellowing. I
tried tioting. I'm back. That's it takes a really long time.

Speaker 5 (01:39:04):
Is it possible to trim.

Speaker 9 (01:39:05):
Those down to maybe one or two inches close to
the ground and have them come back.

Speaker 6 (01:39:14):
It sure is. When you said trimming them back, I
guess sounds like you were taking like individual fern fronds
and cutting them back one time.

Speaker 7 (01:39:21):
Is that.

Speaker 5 (01:39:23):
Exactly?

Speaker 6 (01:39:24):
Okay? Yeah, yeah, So in nature, in the forests and
stuff around our area too, we have ferns that are evergreen,
and then we have ferns that just die back turn brown,
and in the spring out of the soil come all
these beautiful curled fronds unfurling to make it look pretty again.
And that'll happen if you cut the whole thing back.

(01:39:45):
Just do it before the new growth starts out, so
you're not cutting off emerging little fronds and it. Put
it in a spot, keep it warm, keep it moist,
and it will be back and looking really good for you.
So there's not a problem them. If you want to
just do a cutback to very low.

Speaker 9 (01:40:05):
Okay, how close to the top of the soil in
the pot should I cut it?

Speaker 13 (01:40:12):
Oh?

Speaker 6 (01:40:13):
I don't know. I might cut it an inch or so,
because the frinds you cut off, they're not you know,
they're not going to sprout from the side of the
frond or something. So it's going to be new stuff
coming out of the ground. So take the old step
back as far as you want to, uh, but don't
leave any don't leave it too stalky, because then you
got all those browned, old dead fronds when the new
ones are coming out. So yeah, get it mostly out

(01:40:35):
of there, cut it low, and then get you a
very dilute, a very delute fertilizer and water it with
just a general feed. Don't burn them with a strong fertilizer,
just a gentle feed and warm temperatures, and those things
will be beautiful. And when they are, send me a picture.
I'd love to see them before and after if you
are inclined and have time to do that, and it

(01:40:57):
always is helped. It helps for me. I want posting
in things and showing people will look here you cut
that from back and see what it did. So anyway,
no obligation, hope those things turn out well for you,
and I appreciate you calling, Charlie.

Speaker 5 (01:41:12):
Thank you very much.

Speaker 6 (01:41:13):
Skip all right, you take care, stay warm. All right,
let's take another break and we'll be back in just
a moment with your calls. Seven one three two one
two five eight seven.

Speaker 1 (01:41:25):
Four San Anton.

Speaker 6 (01:41:27):
Alrighty, alrighty, a little Western swing then kept alive for
decades by sleep at the wheel and feed up in Tomball.
It's just one of those places you enjoy going number one.
It's so convenient. You just drive out twenty nine to
twenty west of Tomball and it's just out town, just

(01:41:48):
a little bit about three miles from two forty nine
and on the left hand side, and that store is
stocked with everything you need. I mean you need past control, fertilizer,
those kinds of products. They have them in spades, and
it's really a good selection out there. Cold weather products. Now,
I don't know where it stands right this moment, but
even just a few days ago, I mean they had

(01:42:10):
the faucet covers, they had the frost protection blank kind
of stuff. They had the infrared and the regular heat
lamp or flood lamp type things, and the fixtures that
they go on. And they also have something called the
freeze miser. Now I don't know how those are holding up,
but that is one heck of a product. You screw
it on the faucet, you turn on your faucet and
nothing comes out of the freeze miser until it gets cold,

(01:42:33):
and then when when the temperature drops down below freezing,
it starts to trickle. You don't have to leave that
thing running all night trying to get it just the
right amount of trickle, you know, where it doesn't freeze
over freeze. Miser handles that and when the temperature wruns
back up, it sets off, so you're not wasting water.
Pretty cool stuff. D and D Feed. It doesn't surprise
me they would have them because they have the things

(01:42:54):
you need to have success. D and Feed twenty twenty
if you don't give them a call two eight, one, three, five,
one seventy one forty four. Let's go to southeast Houston
now and we're going to visit with Carol this morning. Hey, Carol,
welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 15 (01:43:09):
Good morning. I have a question. I moved several of
my pop plants into the garage and my garage does
not have windows, you know, in the door, so it's
dark in there. Excuse me, And I was just wondering
how long can I safely leave them in there in
the dark.

Speaker 6 (01:43:30):
A long time? They you know, it's not a there's
not a black and white line of you know, two days,
but not three days, you know, like that, it's uh,
they'll do fine in there for a week. I my
sister had a booga and villa and her garage with
this window, but it was like across the room and
not nearly enough light, and she left it in there
all winter. Now that became a spindley booga and villa.

(01:43:54):
But in the cold it kind of stayed dormant, and
it was okay, So don't worry about it. If you
got to cover it up for a few days, or
if you've got to leave them in there without light
for a few days, that's just fine. When we get
to where we have a little bit warmer during the day,
you can pull them out and let them have some sunshine,
put them right back in again, because you know, we're
gonna warm up just a bit, just a tiny bit,
and then it's gonna get cold again right away. So

(01:44:16):
we got a long haul here, And if you wanted
to leave them in the garage until the end of
next week or whenever the coast is clear, you could
do that.

Speaker 15 (01:44:23):
They'd be all right, Okay, great, thank you for you're out.

Speaker 6 (01:44:28):
And I didn't say I didn't say that they I
didn't say they'd like it. And I didn't say they
won't talk about you and trash you in front of
all their other plant friends, but they'll they'll live.

Speaker 15 (01:44:40):
Yeah, Okay, that's what I want to find out.

Speaker 6 (01:44:42):
Thanks, there you go. Thanks Carol. Appreciate that. I appreciate
that Pierce Capes is our preferred landscaper here on Guarden Line.
You hear me say that all the time because they are.
And I'm telling you the work they do is first class.
It is unbelievable. You may have a new house and
say I want you to come out here, I want
you to design a landscape. I want you to plant it.
I want you to get We're talking about irrigation and

(01:45:04):
the plants and the beds and the dirt and soil
and molts and all that. Just do the whole thing.
And I want a patio out back that's a beautiful
stone patio, and I want walkways around it, and I
want landscape light and they can do it all. Maybe
you've already got a landscape and you just need a
little work done. That spot in the backyard that doesn't
rain well, they can do a French type drain underground

(01:45:26):
to get that water out of there. For you seeing
grow more things. They can add landscape lighting, they can
do a lot of things. They also do maintenance. If
you want them to come out, let's say quarterly and
come to your place and spruce things up. You know,
if you're any weeds around, pull those out, put fresh
multch down, check the irrigation, make that's working right. It's
time to get those pansies out of there and put
in some petunias or whatever you're going to grow. They

(01:45:48):
do all that. It's a quarterly maintenance type of thing.
You just call them. Call them two eight one three
seven oh fifty sixty. They'll tell you about it. Two
eight one three seven fifty sixty. Or please do this.
Go to the website Piercescapes dot com. Find them on
Facebook pierce Scapes. It's inspirational to see the photos of

(01:46:10):
what they can do. It really is. You'll be going,
you know, I never thought about doing that, but I
love the way they did that multi level bed in
the backyard. So instead of everything just being flat, it
now just is a very interesting, beautiful looking landscape. That's
what I'm talking about. Pierscapes. You are listening to garden
Line and as we near the top of the air.
We still got a little time left seven one three

(01:46:32):
two one two fifty eight seventy four. If you would
like to give me a call, be happy to visit
with you about your gardening questions. We've been talking about
cold today that it comes as no surprise, right. I've
talked about how to protect the base of a citrus
tree when you can't cover the tree. I've talked about
how to cover plants properly, talked about adding heat underneath

(01:46:54):
the cover. Uh, and what to do about that. One
thing I didn't say about adding heat underneath the cover
that I really want to make sure and get out
there is check the electrical connections. If you've got a
bunch of dry grass and you got a little electrical
connection that sparks, your plant won't freeze that night, but
there won't be a plant the next morning. It'll be

(01:47:14):
a black, smoldering pile of ashes. So make sure be
safe with all this stuff when you're using it. If
it's got to be out in the weather, be drizzling
and rainy all the time, you got to find some
way to protect those connections from getting wet. So that's
common sense. I'm not your parent, I'm just telling you,
I've seen it happen, and you don't want it to

(01:47:36):
happen at your place, So be extra cautious and careful
with that when you bring electricity into the picture and
warming up plants, and I've seen people try everything under
the sun. I mean, people get creative, They get really
creative in terms of trying to protect their plants, and
I don't blame them. I'd feel that way too. I

(01:47:56):
do feel that way this afternoon. I still we've got
some protection to do. We're not going to get cold.
I think you know most everybody I'm talking to. It
should be above thirty two all day to day until
the sun goes down at some point in the evening.
Depending on if you live north or south, if you're
going to go below thirty two, you will, But through

(01:48:19):
the daytime we got a lot of daylight hours. It
won't be fine. It's wet and stuff, but there's still
a lot you can do. I've got another plant that
I need to pile up the soil around the trunk on.
It's a couple of citrus plants that I've got and
I'll get that done. I do need to do a
couple of other things around the yard. We've moved our
plants in the house, We've moved them around in the

(01:48:42):
garage and got them warm. Some of you ask about
garage covering over plants, and you know, what about what
about if the garage gets cold. Most garages are not
going to get cold enough to be a concern.

Speaker 15 (01:48:55):
Now.

Speaker 6 (01:48:55):
When we had storm ury and it was like where
I was living and it got up to got down
to seven degrees, that's crazy, that's cold. So I just
threw a cover over all of my plants in the
garage and I put some little incandescent bulbs, you know,
a hundred WAT bulbs underneath there, and just let them
lay there on the ground. And and uh they provided warmth.

(01:49:17):
And I don't know if my plants would have frozen
or not without that, but I provide him that extra cover.
It's always a tough call. And I'll tell you this,
plants will surprise you as to how resilient they are.
But when you got a prize plant, you don't want
to find out the next day or two or three. Uh, yeah,
I should have done more to cover it.

Speaker 1 (01:49:36):
Welcome to kt r H Garden Line with skip Rictor.
It's crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:49:49):
Just watch him as the world got.

Speaker 1 (01:50:05):
We're not a sign.

Speaker 6 (01:50:11):
Sid All right, we're back. We're back, folks, Welcome back.
I hope we got your cup of coffee or whatever
it takes to keep your eyes open this morning. And
here we are. We're gonna be hunkered down for a
few days in the house and lots of things we

(01:50:32):
can do. And I'm gonna talk about some of those
things here in a while, so stay tuned. Buchanans Native
Plants in the Heights on Eleventh Street. You've probably been
there before. If you haven't, I don't know why you haven't,
So get over there. You need to go.

Speaker 7 (01:50:46):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (01:50:46):
It is such a cool place.

Speaker 14 (01:50:48):
Now.

Speaker 6 (01:50:48):
The name is Native Plants, and they have the best
selection of natives anywhere in town. But don't think that's
all they carry. Natives are a small part of everything
that they carry at Buchanans. So you're gonna find any
kind of plant you're looking far from fruit trees to flowers,
for shade, for sun for house plants. You have to
see the houseplant greenhouse. It's unbelievable. By the way, Buchanans

(01:51:09):
is going to be closing at three o'clock today, so
they're sticking around till three o'clock. I don't know if
they still have frost cloth on him, but they have
really stocked up in it. I wouldn't be surprised if
they still do. You might want to give them a
call just to make sure. Buchanans Plants dot Com is
the website. It tells you everything you need to know.
If you've never been there, it'll tell you about where

(01:51:31):
they are. But they're going to be closed tomorrow on Sunday,
and the plan right now they're going to try to
reopen on Monday morning about nine o'clock. So just check
with them. Like all our garden centers, don't just take
off and go a long distance thinking you know when
they're going to be there. But everybody's trying to be
safe and everybody is trying to make sure we're taking

(01:51:52):
care of plants and shouldn't be out on the road
anyway during some of this. So there you go, Buchanans
Native Plants. Let's go to the phones and we're going
to head to Conroe and talk to Jack this morning.
Hey Jack, welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 17 (01:52:08):
Good morning, Skip. First off, I want to start off
with some apology. It's lack of information I'm gonna be
giving you here. I'm not really familiar with it. But
across the front of my house I have I have
their normal set of hedges, the ones that that by
trims off kind of square. You know, my house faces

(01:52:31):
the north and the east side. Across the east side
of the house, not the east side of the house,
but towards the east end of the front. The hedges
on that side just will not grow. They're they're dying off.
They will not take And on the east side of
my house, I have no trees that I fear are
just blocking the sun, and that's what's causing the issue.

(01:52:54):
The hedges across the rest of the house are no beautiful, grow,
grow like crazy, but the ones on that east corner
just will not take it.

Speaker 6 (01:53:04):
So the east side is shadier than the west side,
is what you're telling me.

Speaker 17 (01:53:09):
Yes, the east side is shaded the west side of
the full sun all day long.

Speaker 6 (01:53:14):
Okay, Well, it doesn't matter what kind of shrub it is.
Really what sunlight shines on leaves, and the plant makes
carbohydrates which drive every bit of growth, of flowering, fruiting,
whatever a plant does, You've got to have sunlight to
fuel that, and so as we move a shrub in
the shade, it may be fairly shade tolerant and not

(01:53:36):
get too terribly thin, but it's not going to get
the energy to be able to grow faster or to
bloom if it happened to be a blooming plant. So
I think that could be a factor. Does do you
have an estimate as to how many hours of sun
those shrubs that aren't doing well receive.

Speaker 17 (01:53:59):
I would guess very minimal if they get any at all,
just due to the location where they said, I mean
the sun really either the way the sun cuts across
either the trees blocket or the house box, you know,
so it's it's very minimal if they get any at all.

Speaker 6 (01:54:18):
Okay, So you know, bottom line is you could choose
to live with it. You could choose to try to
thin the trees out and get more light. That is
comes at a cost. The trees are not being treated
well when they get prune like that, and they will
grow back. So it's a temporary fix, but I'm just
giving you your options. Another one would be to replace

(01:54:39):
it with some type of a shrub that's a little
more shade tolerant. A Cuba. Japanese a Cuba and Fatsia
are both green shrub like plants. Are very different from
your typical woody shrub, but they can take a lot
of shade and do well. And that may end up
looking lopsided to you as you look at the front

(01:55:01):
of the house. So maybe that won't be acceptable, but
those are your options. Live with it, make more light
there with a chainsaw, or change what you've planted.

Speaker 17 (01:55:14):
Okay, well that's kind of what I was figuring. I
was just hoping maybe there was another option. But I
sure do appreciate your help.

Speaker 6 (01:55:20):
Yeah, well, you could buy a bunch of expensive plant
lights and set them over the plants and turn them on.
I'm messing with you. I'm messing no, I think that's
that's bud yet. So thank you, thanks to the call, Jack,
and hey, stay warm, appreciate it. You bet, you bet

(01:55:41):
your local wild Bird's unlimited store that listen, it is
time to take care of those birds. We're hul up
all day inside. What about the birds outside? I mean,
there's only any sunlight out there, and in the winter
in general, the days are shorter and birds have less
time to forage, and it's more important that we feed them.
And right now, if you want to see birds, you

(01:56:02):
put a feeder out there and you provide them with
a dependable supply of quality food, and they will. The
world will get around. They'll be at your house.

Speaker 15 (01:56:11):
You know.

Speaker 6 (01:56:11):
On the birds Facebook page, it'll say go to this place.
Wild Birds Unlimited has quality feeders, they have quality seed
and you're going well, bird seeds bird seed, No, it
is not. Most cheap bird seed is full of red bebes.
Birds don't care for that. They'd rather not eat it.
They kick it out on the ground so it sprouts
and comes up under your feeder. Wild Birds Unlimited sells

(01:56:33):
a bag of various blends for various kinds of birds.
Whatever bag you buy, you're not going to get the
red bebes in there, and you are going to get
a blend of seeds the birds love. Plus you can
do their no Mess blends. It starts with NM, the NM,
and then there'll be a name of the of the
bird seed. It means no mess. That means the sunflowers

(01:56:54):
don't have shells on them, so you know the birds
don't shell the sunflowers and drop the shells right down
on the ground for you that's an even cleaner way
to do it. Now you're also going to find really
good advice, and so I would recommend you go to
your store to find yours. Go to wild Birds Unlimited's website.
It's WBU dot com, Forward slash Houston. All six stores

(01:57:18):
are direct You are directed to them off that website
WBU dot Com, Forward slash Houston. Find your store. They're experts,
and I'm telling you, I got to warn you it
is an addictive hobby. I used to not be a
bird person. Oh my gosh. Since I got connected into
wild Birds Unlimited, it's like, yeah, yeah, it's an obsession.

(01:57:39):
There you go. Let's see here. I'll tell you what. Well,
we are going to go to a quick break so
that when I come back, Judy and Missouri City and
Justin and Montgomery in that order, you'll be first up.
That's not producer to come up with a song with ice.

Speaker 5 (01:57:51):
There we go.

Speaker 6 (01:57:53):
We found one at the morning. All right, man, maybe
a different ice. Hey, you are listening to Guardenline. If
you'd like to give me a calls eight seven. We're
going to go out now to Missouri City and talk
to Judy. Hey, Judy, welcome to garden line.

Speaker 18 (01:58:07):
Good morning. If I'm out of breath, it's because I'm
still bringing pop plants inside. But anyway, Yeah, my question
is okay, Yeah, we have a lot to prepare. We're
on an acre and we have a lot of plants.
But I have angel trumpets growing up next to the
house on the south side. However, the house is elevated

(01:58:31):
about four feet. Okay, so the wind does blow under
the house.

Speaker 10 (01:58:38):
Last the last couple.

Speaker 18 (01:58:39):
Of years with the angel trumpets, we cut them to
the ground and malched and covered and they came out fine.
So I've done that with some of the smaller ones
that are more exposed, but the larger ones, would it
be okay just to leave them just molts well and protected?

Speaker 6 (01:59:04):
Yeah, well, yes, to be okay. You don't have to
cut them off. They'll they'll freeze above you might Missouri City.
I I don't have in my head how cold it's
getting in every town around the listening area, so I'm
not sure. But you're south so south of ten so,
uh you it may be mild enough to where you
could wrap those trunks.

Speaker 15 (01:59:24):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (01:59:24):
There is the if the trunks are small enough, there's
those tubes, tubes of foam that you put around pipes.
They're slipped on one side, so you can slip around
the pipe. You might be able to do that around
the trunk and tie them on, uh, and take them
all the way to ground. Put the mulch away above it.
You may save some of the top. But you know,
as you've learned last year, those booger u briogmancia's are

(01:59:46):
just gonna just gonna.

Speaker 19 (01:59:47):
Come back the ground anyway.

Speaker 6 (01:59:49):
You have a new plant, yeah, angels, trumpet broogmansia, huh.

Speaker 5 (01:59:53):
Those.

Speaker 6 (01:59:53):
But it's it's up to you. I mean, here on
an experiment. You can give it a try and see
if if you can protect some of the trunk and
have a little head to start. If it were me
and I had as much to do as you have
to do, it sounds like I would just cut the
buggers off, pile up lots of multi over the top,
and then move on to chores.

Speaker 18 (02:00:12):
Call it good, Okay, all right, I appreciate it, all right,
thank you so much.

Speaker 6 (02:00:17):
All right, thanks a lot. You bet appreciate that. Call
a lot. Let's go now to Justin and Montgomery. Hey, Justin,
welcome to guarden Line.

Speaker 8 (02:00:30):
Hey, thanks so much. Skip good to talk to you.

Speaker 19 (02:00:33):
I'm trying to get ready for the freeze obviously this evening,
And the only plant I really have concerned about is
a couple of bottle brushes that I have. They're about
seven feet tall. We planted them last last spring after
we did some landscaping, and they seem to have taken
real well and are doing great. So I'm just kind
of wondering what we could do. They're a little tall

(02:00:55):
to put stuff on top of them, But I don't
know what's your opinion.

Speaker 6 (02:01:01):
Bottle brush is fairly cold tender. Some winners they go
through just fine. But if we're going to get one
of those winners that starts killing things or killing them
back to the ground, bottle brush will be among the
first to go. So a couple of things piling up
of compost and or probably compost or a very fine

(02:01:25):
textured mulch is even better up in a big cone
around the base. We'll protect that so that the plant
isn't lost, for sure, but just the top part. Anything
you can do to throw anything over them, we'll do
pretty good. But up in Montgomery, I bet you're what
are you supposed to get down about seventeen up there

(02:01:45):
or what's the I think around I.

Speaker 8 (02:01:49):
Think twenty two is what we're seeing is the lowest.

Speaker 6 (02:01:53):
Oh okay, well then that's that's good. That's manageable at least.

Speaker 7 (02:01:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (02:01:58):
If you throw a cover over, you would also need
some sort of a heat underneath it, and I realized
that that size of bottle brush, it's kind of hard.
One option would be to cut them off higher that
you could get a cover over and then try to
protect them, maybe an incandescent bulb or two or three,
or a heat lamp underneath there. But that's a lot
of time and work, and so you may just want

(02:02:21):
to say they're a goner. We're going to protect the base,
so they s brought back out in spring. So that
that's your call. It's to how much trouble you will
go to.

Speaker 19 (02:02:28):
Yeah, I think I'm gonna do the ladder, just kind
of protect the base and the and the trunk and
hopefully that sounds good.

Speaker 8 (02:02:36):
I appreciate it.

Speaker 6 (02:02:39):
Okay, you got it, man, Good luck with that all.
Take care. I was through Montgomery just the other day.
I was in Conro, Texas talking to a master gardener group.
It's a good group over there, by the way, in Conra,
and so that's such a beautiful place out there about

(02:03:00):
like Conroe. Really nice. Ace Hardware stores are all through
the area. You got a bunch of them to choose from.
You can go to Ace Hardware Texas dot com and
find your store. And I'll tell you this right now.
I've been checking out some of the Ace Hardware stores
and one of the stores I was looking at their
social media and they just got a giant truckload of
all the stuff you need in and all those things

(02:03:21):
you're running in at the last minute for now, like
a heat lamp, like the bulbs that go in on
like frost claw their covers or tarps, or you know,
the heaters for indoors, the little space heaters for your greenhouse,
and all of that kind of stuff. Ace knows what
you come and asking for come as far every time
it freezes, and they've stocked up on it. They're ready

(02:03:42):
to go. Ace Hardware Texas dot Com is the website
you need to know. Acehardware Texas dot Com. When you
go there, you'll find your local Ace Hardware store. They're
all over Houston. In fact, they go all the way.
I've got a store out there in the Orange area.
I've got a store down there in the Corpus area
down that direction, Portoransis and one and all the way
in between Wharton and Victoria and you name it, and

(02:04:04):
certainly all around the greater Houston area. Now, that would
be like Crosby Ace on FM twenty one hundred up
northeast Spring Ace North on Spring Cypress, Plantation Ace, which
is on Mason Road down there in Richmond Rosenberg. That's
an outstanding store. There's Champions Ace on Spring Cypress in
Spring Langham Creek ACE, which is on the backside of

(02:04:24):
Copperfield right there on five point twenty nine in Cypress,
just south of sixth. Those are just a few examples.
We got a lot of ACE stores to choose from.
But I'll tell you this, they got what you need.
You need propane, you know, to maybe have propane heaters
or something, or just want a barbecue. Uh, they got
those as well at your local ACE hardware store. So

(02:04:45):
take advantage of that. All right, we're talking cold today.
What did I promise you I would talk about in
a little bit. I just went like, Nicholas, do you
remember what I told them about? We talk about between
me thinking about stuff and doing the show, which is
sort of like roller skating, herding cats, juggling knives all

(02:05:10):
at the same time. It's kind of a lot of
moving parts to it. But anyway, I'll think of it
in just a minute.

Speaker 8 (02:05:17):
Here.

Speaker 6 (02:05:18):
One thing you can do during this cold weather is
start seeds. This would be a great time to start seeds.
You can start tomato seeds and pepper seeds and eggplant
seeds where it's a little early for most of the
listening area to start seeds of something like cucumbers or
squash or whatever indoors. Most of those are direct planeted
into the garden anyway, but people like to get a
head start. But I would hold off on those just

(02:05:40):
a little bit longer. But get you a good seed
starting mix, get some trays of course to put it in.
Make sure you have a cover over the trade to
hold in moisture. Now there's the store bought way and
there's the do it yourself way on these. So when
I started seed for years, I had a little seed
flat and I would put popsicle sticks in it. And

(02:06:05):
you could also use like a plastic knife, you know,
the plastic utensils. You could stick the knives in the
trays pointing up and then I would put them in
a dry cleaner bag something big. Maybe I don't know
how big those turkey baking bags that can go in
the oven, I don't know how big they are, but
for not too big of a tray of stuff, you

(02:06:27):
can put one of those in there and you just
loosely put that over it and that creates that moist
chamber like the store bock covers that you have, uh
and you lead them in there in a warm spot
until they want until they start to sprout, and once
they start to sprout, you gotta get them in light.
The number one thing that happens it goes wrong with

(02:06:47):
people that start their own seedlings, is they don't have
enough quality light. You can buy lighting. I'm putting together
a list of recommended fixtures. People ask me about lighting
a lot. There is something on my website gardening with
Skip dot com, Gardening with Skip dot com, and there's
a thing on lighting for starting houseplants, and it goes

(02:07:08):
into the science of the lighting, what you need, what
you're looking for. And when I go on you know,
like everybody seems to be running around Amazon, you look
at that and you put lighting.

Speaker 9 (02:07:18):
In and.

Speaker 6 (02:07:20):
Eighty five percent of what I see on there, maybe
higher than that, is not a good light. It's just not.
They make it look good. They tell you it'll do stuff.
They show you pictures that are fabricated about plants looking
so happy underneath it, but they're not good lights. Plant
lighting is me. Let me just give you the fast version.

(02:07:43):
Plants need light intensity that means not dim light, but
bright light. They need light quality that means the wavelengths.
You know how the prism breaks light into all the
wavelengths of the rainbow, Well, they're the blue is a
special important for vegetative growth, and that's what a seedling is.

(02:08:04):
A seedling is not interested in blooming and setting fruit
and stuff. It's vegetative growth. That's the most important one,
not the only one, but the most important. And then
as the plants get older and you're looking at better
growth and you're looking at blooming and seed and stuff,
the red end of the spectrum is important. But you
don't need two lights. You see those purple looking lights

(02:08:24):
that people grow indoor stuff on, that's what's going on there.
It's mostly red and blue, but you can get a
light that's white, but just has peaks in those areas
and that will do well. And then you need to
run in enough hours each day. And if the light
is somewhat lacking in terms of its qualities, you can
run it a little longer and partially make up for that.

(02:08:48):
So I run mind about fourteen hours a day when
I'm starting seed. But if you do not have light
on them, the minute they come out of the ground,
they will get spindley, they will start stretching. They're trying
to survive. They're gasping for a lot if you could
guess per light, and they're they're reaching for it. And
you put them by a window and they lean one
way and you turn the tray around, then they lean
back the other way. That's not enough light on There

(02:09:10):
are windows that have enough light, but ninety percent of
the windows in people's houses do not have enough light
for starting seeds. Maybe for keeping a low lighthouse plan happy,
but not for starting seeds. But it's a fun thing
to do, and the world is your oyster. What do
I mean by that? I mean that when you are
starting seeds yourself, any variety of tomato that's out there

(02:09:34):
you can start. Just buy the seed and you're ready
to go. When we buy transplants, you know, a place
can't carry one hundred and fifty types of tomatoes. It's
just not gonna be profitable for them to do that.
But when you're starting seed, you can do anything you want.
Or maybe you saved your own seed from something. Now
you can't buy a seed that you saved yourself. I

(02:09:56):
mean it's your seed, right, and so that would be
another reason for starting things from transplants. But the main
reason I do it is it's just fun. It is
just fun. Yeah, it's a little more economical, but when
you start investing in lighting and stuff, it's not more economical,
but it is fun. All Right, We're going to take
a break Steve in West Houston and Albert and Montgomery,

(02:10:18):
and that order will be our first two callers coming
out of the top of the hour. Break stick around,
grab a cup of coffee. We got plenty more to
talk about, including your calls right into the when we
head out to West Houston and talk to Steve. Hello Steve,
and welcome to Gardenline.

Speaker 8 (02:10:40):
Yes, sir, thank you. Busy day topics. I'll be brief
as I can. I lost my mature Ezavius and I
planted some small ones and they in the flower bed.
They've been in the ground over three months. They're doing
of course they're not growing, but I run out of

(02:11:02):
freeze cover. I'm worried, Well they do you think they'll
survive this without being covered?

Speaker 13 (02:11:12):
Uh?

Speaker 6 (02:11:12):
You know plants? Is they when they get established, they're
a little heartier than when they're brand new. So that
worries me a little bit about them. I would I
can't make I can't make that call very well. Uh,
West Houston kind of sounds like you're kind of on
the line there between north and south. So in the
listening area. Uh, they probably are okay, but there are

(02:11:35):
a lot of factors. You know, how exposed to the
wind are they which speeds cooling down?

Speaker 19 (02:11:40):
Uh?

Speaker 6 (02:11:41):
What is the condition of them? Are they healthy? I would?
They need to have enough water, and with the rain
that you're supposed to be getting here and there through
this period, they ought to be adequately moist. So they
have that. You know that it's probably not practical for
you to go out and try to buy a cover
and put it on all that so uh, and nor
would it be practical for me to tell you, well,

(02:12:02):
you multim really well especially around the stems at the base,
and that will provide even if the top gets frozen
back a little, you'd have something to come back from.
If that is doable for you, then I would. I
would get you a good pretty fine textured mult not
giant chunks of wood U And I would I would
do that. If that's not practical, we cross our fingers

(02:12:23):
and hope for the best.

Speaker 8 (02:12:25):
Yes, sir. Two quick other questions. At my hybrid t roses.
They should be okay, shouldn't they.

Speaker 6 (02:12:34):
They should be fine, but it doesn't hurt to cover
them up. What is the in your area? Do you
know the predicted cold level? Because if it gets cold enough,
you can damage a rose for sure, especially when it
is in a more active state than a fully dormant state.

Speaker 8 (02:12:53):
There today they're predicting.

Speaker 6 (02:13:01):
It's Monday morning.

Speaker 8 (02:13:02):
We're worried about. Yes, it's they're talking about below twenty
five and twenty four, twenty five Sunday morning and twenty
four Monday morning, and then back in twenty five years.

Speaker 19 (02:13:17):
Do you want.

Speaker 6 (02:13:20):
I would like to protect those plants if I could,
But why don't you if you got any time at all,
why don't you get some bags of compost. Do you
have a lot of roses or just a few.

Speaker 8 (02:13:32):
About eight?

Speaker 6 (02:13:35):
Okay, buy back of compost. Yeah, I would bag a
buyback compost for each one, and just make a big
cone over the grafted union. Your hybrid trees tea's are
most likely grafted, and you've got to protect the variety
that you want that's above the graft. So a big
cone of soil or compost in this case, as high

(02:13:58):
as you can get it there kind of a bag
may contain a cubic foot, or it may contain more,
but just mound it up and leave it on through
this freeze. And if you can't cover the roses, at
least you protect the base. And then when this is over,
you just spread that out and the roses will be
glad to have compost all out around the plants. So, uh,
that we think is the best you're going to be

(02:14:20):
able to do as far as what's in your go ahead.

Speaker 8 (02:14:25):
The last I always called this bush and acacia, and
I described it to someone canon and they said, oh,
it sounds like a cassius. Well, I've been looking and
I was times in the freeze. Uh, tolerants of these
they grow little yellow flowers and they've got bean pods.

Speaker 6 (02:14:52):
Yeah, that's well. The flowers look the flowers look like flowers,
not little yellow puffballs. Right, they look like a little flower,
not a little yellow puffball. Okay, that's a cassia. Uh
and uh so uh they are cull tender and uh
so there you know again, a cover or mounting up

(02:15:17):
sail around the base just to try to save some
of it. Are your two best options for that plant.

Speaker 8 (02:15:24):
Thank you, Skip, Keep safe, appreciate.

Speaker 6 (02:15:27):
All right, all right, take care, you take care. Appreciate that.
We're gonna go now to We'll go to Albert in Montgomery.
Good morning, Albert, Welcome to guard Line.

Speaker 20 (02:15:37):
Thank you sir, Thank you Skip.

Speaker 5 (02:15:40):
I played several red oaks.

Speaker 8 (02:15:42):
And not all oaks.

Speaker 20 (02:15:43):
There's young trees four or five feet tall, been in
the ground about six months.

Speaker 8 (02:15:50):
I could cover them if I need to.

Speaker 20 (02:15:52):
Are they those trees gonna be okay?

Speaker 5 (02:15:54):
Or should I cam?

Speaker 6 (02:15:59):
You know, if it was a a all established I
wouldn't be worrying about them so much. Being brand new
like that. If you can cover them, go ahead and
do it. At least take if you can buy some
of that foam that goes around pipes, it has a
slit down one side. You can cut it and get
as much of the trunk starting at the ground, make

(02:16:19):
sure goes all the way to the ground, has low
mult around the base of it, and get as much
of the trunk protected as you can. That's going to
do two things. Number one, it slows the cooling of
the tissues. But number two, it prevents during the winter
season that sun late in the day shining on the
trunk and warming it up. And then when you get
a freeze at night, that tissue is more susceptible to

(02:16:40):
cold because the sun warmed it up the day before.
It's called southwest injury because it happens on the southwest
side because that's where the sun is directly shining on
the trunk in the warmest part of the day. So
I would do that as an extra precaution. The cover
probably optional, but I hate to tell you, don't worry
about it. Your way up Montgomery and you're gonna get

(02:17:01):
pretty cold up there.

Speaker 16 (02:17:04):
Yeah, it's gonna be about seventeen eighteen.

Speaker 5 (02:17:06):
So oh well, that's good advice.

Speaker 8 (02:17:09):
Thank you, skid take form.

Speaker 6 (02:17:11):
Sir, thank you. I'm airing you bet, I'm airing on
the side of caution there, but I think that's the
way we ought to be doing it. I need to
run to a quick break. Richard in Deer Park your
first when we come up. All right, folks, we're about
to land this plane. Our last segment of the day.

(02:17:33):
If you've not had your trees looked at in a
few years, you've got to get somebod out there to
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h don't wait until a tree has grown for years
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(02:17:53):
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(02:18:15):
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This spring, so seven to one three, six nine, nine,
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where printing needs to be done, any issues it might

(02:18:35):
need to be addressed, to make sure that the dead branches,
that the any kind of a damaged branch is removed,
to make sure that we promote healthy new growth. Because
the fastest time of wound healing is in the spring,
So getting them prined now, then when the weather warms up,
that wound will begin to close over very quickly. I

(02:18:57):
don't know why I always say healing. Everybody says healing tree, stone, heel, tree,
close over. But it doesn't matter. That's technical. Get it
done now. Seven one three, six nine nine two six
sixty three. We're going to go now to Deer Park
and talk to Richard this morning. Hey, Richard, welcome to
garden line.

Speaker 20 (02:19:13):
Yes, sir, thank you hip. I have I've got about
twenty I have some small baby tomato sprouts. They're two
inches tall. What can I sightly feed those little sprouts?
Uh and not not borrowing them or are damage?

Speaker 6 (02:19:30):
Then you have a number of options. Uh when I
always use in starting tomatoes and stuff, I'll use the
Genesis fertilizer. It's a granular fertilizer comes in a little
jars from the folks at Nelson. Genesis will not burn
them and it will provide a good feeding. So when
you bump those little sprouts up to the next size

(02:19:53):
that in that soil you're putting them into, make sure
you've mixed Genesis into that soil for right now. Well,
you could go with a liquid feed, but at a
very dilute rate. So Microlife has one that's seven one four.
It's an orange label liquid. You mix it in water
and you could water them with it. These are little

(02:20:14):
sprouts when they first start, they don't need fertilizer, and
then pretty soon they're needing some nutrient as they're trying
to grow. And uh so early on a liquid feed
would work. The folks at Medina make a hash to
grow that has a higher middle number in it, and
that would be another good choice as a liquid that's
not going to burn your plants. You could do that

(02:20:36):
one as well.

Speaker 20 (02:20:38):
Okay, all right, thank you very much for all your information.

Speaker 4 (02:20:42):
Thank you.

Speaker 6 (02:20:45):
Well, good luck and I can't wait to see how
those old tomato plants turn out for you. Just make
sure and give them plenty of light. That that is
going to be the important thing, all right, all right,
if you live down in the League City area anywhere
in that region, you know Santa Fe, Dickinson, Bay Cliff, Webster,

(02:21:06):
Clear Lake City, ol cominaryl Lamark. I mean we could
go on and on San Leone. Did I say that
one League City feed is your hometown feed store. It
is located in League City, of course, on Highway three,
a few blocks south of Highway ninety six, So ninety six,
go south on three, just a few blocks and it'll
be there on the left if you're going south. They
carry all the fertilizers I talk about. They have a

(02:21:29):
good stock. They have a really good stock too of
heirloom soils products. So you need a veggie and herb
mix or something along those lines, they've got you covered.
You need to control pest, weeds and diseases, they've got
you covered. This store's been around over forty years now,
and it is that old time feed store and old
time fee store service, which means they're going to carry
the bags out for you. If you want them to

(02:21:51):
open Monday through Saturday nine to six clothes on Sunday.
I do not know their schedule for this freeze, so
if you want to check two eight one three three
sixteen twelve, you can give them a call. Two eight
one three three two sixteen twelve. There you go. League
City Feet. Just a reminder that if you have not

(02:22:12):
ordered your Texas Gardener Planning Guide, you need to get one.
If you're new to gardening in this area, you absolutely
do need to get one. The Planning Guide carries you
all the way through the year. What to do as
you go, What do I do today, what I do
next week, and those kinds of things. It guides you
all along and it has a lot of helpful resources
in it. It's not just a calendar of day to

(02:22:34):
day do It's got some really good resources in it
as well. If you're not a subscriber of Texas Gardener magazine,
first of all, stop it. Stop that, get a subscription.
There is not a better match. Do you know that
fifty states in the US, I don't know one state
that has a privately owned magazine like Texas Gardener for
that state. Now, maybe there's a Plant Society in Timbuctoo,

(02:22:56):
State that you know has a magazine they put out
and stuff. I'm not talking about that Texas Gardener. To
my knowledge, I don't know of another state gardening magazine.
And it is written by Texas gardeners, including yours, truly
for Texas gardeners. Practical hands on stuff from people that
have dirty hands because they've been out there digging in

(02:23:18):
the dirt and planting and harvesting and improving the soil
and all of that. It is inspirational and it is
you will love it. If you subscribe to their electronic version.
You can get the magazine, you know, the print version.
You can also get the electronic version. You can get
both of them if you want. You can go back
and look at old issues pretty far back, so it's

(02:23:38):
like you're getting all these past issues that you missed
when you subscribe to the electronic version Texas Gardener magazine.
So check that out and do it. Don't forget that.
Next Saturday, the thirty first. Next Saturday, I'm going to
be an Enchanted Gardens in Richmond Rosenberg area. It's just
north of Richmond Rosenberg Katie Folsher's. I'll be there from

(02:24:01):
twelve thirty to two thirty, and I'm gonna be talking
about raised bed gardening. I'll give you all kinds of
tips on raised bed gardening. We're gonna give away some
Medina products. We're gonna give away some gift cool gift
certificates from Enchanted Gardens while we're there too, and we're
gonna have fun. I promise you that I will make
you laugh at least once. We'll have a good time.

(02:24:21):
Learning is fun, but learning and having a good time
is even better. And that's what we're gonna do. I'll
also talk about container gardening. How to grow in a container?
Do you know that if you don't have a let's
say you live on a twenty aeth floor of a
high rise in Houston, you don't have a spot of
dirt anywhere to plant stuff containers. You can grow in
containers out on a little porch or patio. You can

(02:24:43):
do it, and I'll tell you how to do it.
How big does a container need to be? What are
the different kinds of containers? What can you grow in
a container? How do you grow in a container? We're
gonna talking about all that stuff and in Enchanted Gardens
next Saturday, a week from today twelve thirty to two thirty.
I hope you will come out and get in the
drawing for some cool prizes. And I'll also have some

(02:25:03):
other good information on hand and answer your gardening questions
about anything you want to talk about. Happy to do that.
So there you go. One final reminder, I got a
second here to do it. The annual Fort ben Regional
Vegetable Conference next Tuesday, and not next Tuesday. Scratch that.
Scratch that Tuesday, February seventeenth. It's a little ways away.

(02:25:25):
But you want to get registered for it. You got
to call and register. There is a cost for going
to it, but for that cost, you get a day
full of educational programs, including a talk by me, and
you get lunch, and you get the brakes. They're going
to have exhibitors so you see all kinds of cool
stuff being exhibited. I mean, it is a really money
we'll spend absolutely money. We'll spend your backyard gardener, lots

(02:25:50):
of good stuff for you. There's a track for you.
If you are a small producer or market gardener. There's
a track for you. If you want to learn about
food preserving. How do food preservation? You know, recipes, food safety,
those tend of fee there's a track for that as well.
So you need to get out there. Fort ben Regional
Vegetable Conference Tuesday, February seventeenth. It goes all day. I

(02:26:10):
think it starts about eight o'clock. They start checking in
about seven thirty, and we'll still be going at four thirty.
Love to meet you, come on out if you want to.
You can call the Fort Bend County Extension Office. Here's
a number two eight one three four to two thirty
thirty four two eight one three four two three zero

(02:26:31):
three four. Now where's it going to be. It's going
to be what's the name of that facility you guys got, Oh,
the Fort Bend Epicenter, which is on the Southwest Freeway
there in Rosenberg. All right, folks, I'll be back early
tomorrow morning. I know you're not going to be outside,
so tune in.