Tomato Time!

Skip Richter answers your questions all morning long!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Katie r. H Garden Line with scamp Rictor.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
It's the crazy here in the bass and gas. They
can you shrimp?

Speaker 3 (00:13):
Just watch him as wool got gasses and gas?

Speaker 4 (00:18):
Can you.

Speaker 5 (00:20):
So many people thanks to seep back basic in the
great bending.

Speaker 6 (00:24):
The glasses like gas and again you date almost globles
back again not a sound the glasses and gas?

Speaker 7 (00:33):
Can you.

Speaker 5 (00:35):
Sun beaming down? Betweens in the basses and gas? Byby
can you jan starting in the gasses like gas?

Speaker 3 (00:48):
Became you dig everything he is so can see and everything.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
Here is Sunday.

Speaker 5 (00:58):
It's rat.

Speaker 8 (01:03):
Hey, good morning morning, gardeners. Well here we go again.
We got some cold weather coming tonight. I guess you
probably are well aware of that. There's just a little
echo of what we have before. But still got to
get back out there. I just covered up my citrus,

(01:24):
uh pretty well yesterday. I've got some citrus. It's a
little heartier. I actually have a satsuma, which is one
of the hardier types of citrus that you can grow here.
It's not there are a few things hardier, and coume
quats are hardier h than tetsumas, but it's a it's
among the heartier. If you're looking for something that is,

(01:44):
you know, kind of like an orange like citrus, that
would be a satsuma actually technically amandarin, a mandarin type.
If you go to the groceries, if you don't know
what a setsuma is, you go to the grocery store,
and you see the little bags of like cuties, you know,
the little things that are just so easy to peel,
baggy skinned, it's like a satsuma. There's a several mandarin

(02:04):
types of oranges out there. Anyway. I've got one and
it's quite hardy, but I still do a cover over it.
It's a young plant. That's one thing to remember about
our plants, is you know, we say how hardy, how
cold can a Let's just let's just continue using satsuma
as an example. How cold can a satsuma orange survive?

Speaker 4 (02:24):
Right?

Speaker 8 (02:26):
Well, if it's well established and it goes into winter
and truly hardens off in other words, some cooling temperatures,
gradually over time, it's it's cooling off more and more,
and that tree is done as best of a job
as it can at being properly hardened offs. I've seen
them go down into the load of mid twenties, low

(02:50):
twenties even and do okay. But if it's a brand
new tree, it's only been in the ground a year
maybe two, a very young tree, if it has been
fertilized and pushed along as we went into fall later
and later getting succulent growth. And then the temperatures have
been you know, up in the upper seventies, and all

(03:10):
of a sudden boom, here comes a cold spell. Then
not nearly that hardy. It's caught unprepared. So we can't
control the weather, but we can control how we care
for our plants going in fall. Just make a note
on your calendar next next August, how about that, or
early September at the very latest, and just say, hey,

(03:30):
it's time to start thinking about fall is coming, and
how do we get these plants ready to go, or
how do we avoid the things that set them up
for problems when coal comes. Anyway, there you go. I
hope you've covered your things up. Just remember the covers
are there to hold the warmth of the soil in

(03:51):
so do not block the plant from the warmth of
the soil. So what I mean by that is if
you wrap them up like a lollipop, tie the cover
that went over to the top to the trunk, and
now you get this little sectionist trunk sticking up. That's
what I call a landscape lollipop. If you do that well,

(04:12):
you will slow the cooling and the part you wrapped
up you will not keep it. It will get just
as cold as it is in the air outside in time.
But you've slowed it down a little bit. But that's all.
But the trunk is fully exposed, and so I mean,
you could kill the trunk right there. So what good
did it do to protect the top if you killed
the exposed part that wasn't wrapped up. Let the covers

(04:34):
go all the way to the ground, drape over the
top and go to the ground. Seal them around the
edges with rocks bricks. I actually have some five gallon
buckets from my centristreets. I've got some five gallon buckets
with some soil stone whatever in them, and I just
set them around on the edges of the cover and
that cannot be blown off. It is very very secure

(05:00):
what you want to do with your plants. As you're
taking care of them, you're listening to garden line and
the phone number. If you'd like to give me a
call seven to one three two one two fifty eight
seventy four seven one three two one two five eight
seven four. I'm going to be at Enchanted Gardens today, uh,
and I will be there from twelve thirty to two thirty.

(05:22):
This is an event you don't want to miss. First
of all, Uh, they are setting it up. It's gonna
be a little long chili side today. But they're setting
it up with a tent and heaters in the tent.
So I mean, I still dress warm because you can walk.
I want to walk around shop a little bit. But
if you will show up at twelve thirty, I'm going
to give a talk on vegetable gardening in containers, both

(05:44):
the small you know containers on the patio and large
containers which is basically a raised bedbox. Those are all
contained soil. How do you have success with vegetable gardening
in those containers. That's what I'm going to be focusing
on at Enchanted Gardens, which is on FM three point
fifty nine. It's on the Katie fullsher side of Richmond.

(06:06):
Enchanted Gardens Richmond dot com. Now here is some more
reasons to come. We're gonna be giving away medina products,
the hose end attachable medina jugs where you can spray
your lawn, you can spray your any kind of plant
you have in flower beds and gardens and whatnot. They're
really cool products. I'll be giving them away there. And

(06:27):
the folks at Enchanted Gardens hold on, they are gonna
be giving away twenty five dollars gift certificates and we're
gonna give several of those away today, So I hope
you'll make it. I mean to be turned loose with
the gift certificate, and in chened gardens is a wonderful thing.
It is a wonderful thing. So I'll be giving that talk.
We're gonna have a lot of fun. I promise you.
I can't talk with a straight face. I gotta have

(06:49):
some fun with you guys. And we'll be doing that,
and then I'll be answering your gardening questions. I'm gonna
have some of my handouts. They're available any kind of
questions have. If you've got plant questions, you can take
a little ziploc bag or some kind of a closable
plastic bag, put a sample of a weed in it,

(07:10):
or a bug or whatever. You want to ask a
question about just slip it right there in the bag,
bring it to me. We'll take a look at it.
If you got pictures on your phone and you'd like
me say, hey, what can I do in this landscaper?
Bring those let's take a look at them. We're going
to help you find what you need to know to
have success and to create beauty around your landscape. And

(07:30):
that is in Chandy Gardens from twelve to thirty to
two thirty today, twelve thirty two thirty today. Channigardens Richmond
dot com is a website Enchanted Gardens Richmond dot com.
All right, let's take a little break here and we
will be back in just a moment. All right, we're back.

(07:54):
Glad to have you back with us. You know the
secret to success in gardening, there's really no secret. You
walk outside in nature, look down at your feet at
the soil, reach down, dig some up, feel in your hands,

(08:15):
see what's going on. That is the secret of success
is good soil. And nature builds good soil. Nature drops
leaves on the ground. Nature has grassroots that grow live
about a year and die and open chambers in the
soil and add their organic matter to the soil. Nature
builds soil slowly over time in a number of different ways,
including a lot of biological activity. That's what you do

(08:36):
when you want to have a better garden. But you
don't have to wait on for decades of nature building soil.
To help things slowly get better and better. You can
take a shortcut, and the shortcut is Nature's Way. Resources
head out to Nature's Way it is. They're up there
toward conro About where fourteen eighty eight comes in to
go to Magnoia. You just turn right and cross over

(08:59):
the railroad tracks in your Nature's Way now Nature's Way
on site there you know you can go pick up
stuff in bulk or the bag, or you can pick
up their bags. Their bag products are available in a
number of places around town. You go to All Seasons
Ace up and Willis. You go to Ace Hardware in
the Woodlands or Plants for All Seasons on two forty
nine up in Porter Jnr's Ace Hardware carries Nature's Way,

(09:21):
as does a task Asita out that direction and K
and m Ace in Kingwood west side of town. You
go to Ace Hardware City on Memorial Drive or Nelson
Water Gardens out in Katie, Southwest. Fertilizer or course has
Nelson's or Nature's Nature's Way products, as does the Chenna
Forests and China gardens where I'll be today at twelve thirty. Now,

(09:46):
when you buy a Nature's Way product, what you're getting
is the results of years of study and learning and research,
practice and development where they take their time to meet
things right. That's just what they do in Nature's Way.
Whether it is rose soil, whether it is a leaf

(10:06):
more compost, whether it is a specialty type of multch
they have a number of different ones. It's all there
at Nature's Way. Resources are by the bag at many
places around the Greater Houston area. But the main thing
is you got to do it. Take advantage of this
easy way to get into gardening by starting with good soil.

(10:27):
To PLoP a poor plant down into an unprepared plot
is not a way for success. It's a way for
disappointment and a waste of your money. Soil first, brown
stuff before green stuff. You're listening to garden Line if
you had a gardening question this morning, seven one, three,
two point two five eight seven four, go, grab you

(10:48):
another cup of coffee, Get that other eye fully open.
While you're up and about, check out your neighbor's house.
If the lights are off, bang on the door and
tell them they're missing garden line and they will. They
will rise up and call you blessed. They will love
the fact that you are willing to help them out
in that way. Who knows they may become a listener.

(11:09):
I always love going out to Kingwood. A number of
great sponsors out in that area. But I cannot go
to Kingwood without stopping in at Warren's in Kingwood garden Centers.
And I mean both of them really. Each garden center
has its own, let's just say, kind of a unique personality,
you know, the ways laid out, the things that they carry,
and just they're each unique. It's worth going to both

(11:33):
of them actually, But either way you are going to
get quality products right now, Huge pottery cell going on
seventy percent off a very very large selection. They've got
onion sets and seed potatoes and the lancelot leaks. If
you haven't planted leaks before, you ought to try that.
They're not hard to grow at all. Lots of beautiful
house plants, sense of areas, gosh, just a bunch of

(11:56):
different varieties you know, you think, oh, mother in law's tongue,
snake plant, sense of air area. Those are all the
same thing. Yeah, I know what they look like. Well yeah,
but there's a bunch of types that they look very
very different. Types, the Neantha, bella palm, the majesty palm, staghorn,
fern baskets, they're they're really pretty ficus trees, philodendrons. We

(12:18):
call the Swiss cheese the type they have there, and
all kinds of other things. Kalathia is one of my
favorite plants to plant indoors. They have citrus, blueberries, blackberries, grapes, squabas,
all kinds of things that. Then more are on the
way in February. They're gonna be loading up on a
bunch more and we'll be long for you going to
see tomatoes and peppers there Warrens in Kingwood Garden Center.

(12:40):
Warrens is on North Park Drive, Kingwood is on Stone
Hollow Drive. Both of them open seven days a week.
Makes it makes it easy and convenient out there in Kingwood, Texas.
I cannot pass the garden center without going in, Well,
I can't. I can't pass an independent garden center without

(13:00):
going in. I can pass the places that yeah, well
I'll leave it at that. But an independent garden center,
you go in there, you know you're going to find
people that know what they're talking about, that are well trained,
that live here, that garden here. That's what they're about,
is gardening, and they have that expertise on gardening. And

(13:22):
that is really important if you want to have success
to go to a place where they can advise you
and they're glad to see you, and you come back
and you got problems and they know what they're talking about.
And I just can't tell you enough. Independent garden centers
so valuable if you want to have success. Now, if
you want to go buy something that has been not

(13:45):
taken care of since it hit the property, not watered properly,
it's struggling. It's probably a species of variety that doesn't
even want to grow here because they're sold all over
the country, you know, in that chain. And well, that's fine,
that's not that's an expensive way to buy plants, because
you just don't you don't get the success you want.

(14:06):
You go someplace where they can tell you what to do.
They know, they look at a problem and they know
what it is. It's not like if you ever Okay,
I'm drifting a little bit here, but have you ever
been to a store? I don't care what the store is, uh,
And it maybe it's a store where you're fixing things up,
maybe it's a store where you're buying plants or whatever.

(14:26):
And you ask a question and the minute you ask it,
you look in the eyes of the person you ask
and you can already tell they don't know. And then
they start talking and you're sitting there going do I
want to stop them and just say never mind and
walk off? Or do I want to be polite for
a couple seconds, smile, nod and then walk on. It's
because you can just tell they don't know. And I

(14:50):
got to tell you I test garden centers all the
time on this, especially the ones that don't know. I'll
ask them a question just to see what they're going
to say. And I'm not being smart aleck, and I
don't don't you know, go oh you're stupid what you're
talking about? I just want to know what they say.
And I was in one one time and this is
a big old chain that's not national chain, and people just,

(15:14):
bless their heart, say, you know, they're trying to make
a living the people that work there, but they're not
trained and because the business is not really about gardening.
And you go in and ask a question about a
pesticide and they started talking and it was just like
they have no clue they are making this up or something.
I mean, it was scary. I look at this wall

(15:35):
full of chemicals that are being sold by people that
don't know how to tell you how to use them, dangerous,
dangerous stuff. All right, B and B turf Pros. You
heard me talk about them last year a lot BnB.
Turf Pros is a family owned business. They focus on
giving you honest, quality work because they want to make

(15:57):
a relationship with you, their customer. It's not like we're
going to show up, lowgo and we're out of there
kind of thing like some landscape type things are. And
by the way, BB turf Pros they will do a compost,
top dressing and a core aeration. Now, if you want
the aeration, you have to do the top dressing. If
they're gonna have to drive any distance, like they're not

(16:18):
gonna go way out and just do an aerration, you're
gonna have to do both of those to make it
worth their time because it's a very expensive process of
bringing all the equipment everything out there. But they use
top quality composts from the folks at cinamlts. They do landscaping,
they install turf, they as well as doing drainage work,

(16:38):
so this is a full service deal. They focus on
that customer satisfaction. They use only quality products from companies
I trust here on garden line, you know, with a fertilizer,
with the mulches, the top dressings and whatnot. So their
goal is your satisfaction. You can go to the website
Bbturfpros dot com. There is no end in the website.

(16:59):
It's b B Turfpros dot com. Or you can give
them a call and get on the schedule for them
to come on out. Seven one three two three four
fifty five ninety eight. Seven one three two three four
fifty five ninety eight. The difference that top dressing and
duration together make on a lawn is dramatic. It is

(17:21):
a significant, significant difference because what are you doing when
you when you errate and compass top dress, You're doing
what nature does itself. You know, I mentioned the roots
of grass plants go on the soil. They live about
a year, they die and when they die, they shrivel
the k away, They release their nutrients, They add organic
matter to the soil, and they open up chambers for

(17:42):
oxygen to follow down where those roots once were down
into the soil, which stimulates microbial activity, which stimulates grass growth.
That's nature. Well, your your lawn does that too, slowly
over time. But when you have compaction, you need to
get in there and and some holes pull the plugs
out of the ground. Don't just squeeze a hole into

(18:03):
the soil, but pop a plug out of the ground,
drop it on the surface. Looks like there was a
little miniature dog convention at your yard. When they get through,
and then put a compost top dress over it and
it falls down into the holes, It gets down in
the soil and it really does a dramatic thing for
improving your lawn. It's the way it is done. Professional

(18:25):
turfs are aerratd that is, you know, golf courses.

Speaker 4 (18:30):
Have to do it.

Speaker 8 (18:30):
Now, golf course, you're not going to see the compos
stop dressing. They sand top doress greens, but compo stop
dressing would be well, you know, got little golf balls
rolling around and being putted around on very tight, tight,
dense turf that that wouldn't be a thing. But the
way they care for them and the aerration stuff is
the same, works truly well, and it will work at

(18:53):
your house too. If you have a question seven one three,
two one two fifty eight seventy four, go to a
break here. I want to remind you today today, today
seven or twelve thirty to two, I'm going to be
an Enchanted Gardens, which is on the Katie Follsher side
of Richmond. I'll be given a talk on container gardening

(19:13):
and gardening and raised bed containers is also and I'll
be giving away some products from Adina. I'll be given
away some gift certificates from Enchanted Gardens. They're gonna have
a tent set up with a heater and heaters in
it and be a little bit of a protected spot
there the check out on dress Warm. You're gonna want

(19:34):
to see Enchanted Gardens. The place is awesome and what
all they have there. Check out the gift shops too
while you there, But not until I finished telling you
all about how to grow a vegetable garden the easier,
more productive way. That is what containers are all about
I posted some stuff to our social media, the Facebook

(19:55):
page of garden Line and the Instagram page of garden
Line with skip about cold weather. I'm trying to tell people,
don't prune too soon, don't prune too soon, be patient
with the pruning. I went outside and I shot the
video just yesterday and put it up. I went outside

(20:17):
and took a picture or a video of me cutting
into a plant that looked green inside, and it was
only green. It was completely killed to the ground back
in the last hard, hard freeze that we had. But
because it's been cool, it hasn't started the browning decay
very much yet in it, and the plans's gone to
the ground. It'll be back from the ground. But you

(20:40):
can't just rush out in prune right after, and you're
not going to get a good assessment of what is
alive and what was freeze killed until a few days.
Really more of warming temperatures and that will do it.
So check out that video on social media to explain
what I'm talking about here, and I'm going to comment
more about post freezer recovery here this morning as we

(21:01):
go through garden Line. Thanks for listening. Let's take a break.
We shall be right back. All right, we're back. Hello,
welcome back to the garden line. Hey, you got a
gardening question, Well then you call let's talk about it
seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four
to be glad, to hope to you in any way
we can. If you're looking for a quality nutrient product,

(21:26):
organic nutrient product for your lawns, for your flower beds,
for your gardens, herb gardens, vegetables, you know, any kind
of plant you want to grow, basically including indoor plants, houseplants.
The folks at Microlife have you covered with granular products
and with liquid products as well. I love a number
of the the liquids, specifically the orange label that is

(21:52):
just a it's called Biomatrix by the way. It's primarily
a nitrogen source, but it does have little, ever everything
in it. It is an organic product, and this one
I use on anything that I'm wanting to get vegetative
growth on like as plants, for example, or it could
be used indoors outdoors. It doesn't have to be used inside.
It's a good product. Ocean Harvest Blue label a good one.

(22:13):
You've following up with these freezes that we've had and stuff.
We want to give our plants a little boost with
a Microlife product, the blue labeled liquid product Ocean Harvest,
basically a fish based product. You can use it as
a folier spray, but you can also drench the soil
with it. It works well for that. And then the granules.

(22:33):
You know we're coming up for too long here, We're
going to be fertilizing our lawn and you don't have
to wait. You can get the bags now, the green
bags of nitre, the higher nitrogen six two four that's
a three one two ratio that turf scientists tell us
is excellent for lawns. Three six four three one two
ratio product from Microlife. That's a green bag probably the

(22:56):
number one selling organic fertilizer, in fact, it is here
in the area. So you're not going to burn your
lawns with these natural products. They're loaded with microbes. And
I said, I tell you they work because I use them.

Speaker 9 (23:08):
I know.

Speaker 8 (23:09):
I don't talk about something that you would put on
your plants unless I've put it on plants. I know
that it is going to work. And I'm telling you
Microlife products are that way. They are dependable and they're
proven and they're beloved for many years and now over
thirty five years here in our Greater Houston area own
hometown fertilizer from Microlife. The phone number if you want

(23:32):
to give me a call seven one three two one
two fifty eight seventy four. Let's talk about the cold
that we had. I know I'm not talking about just
last last night but tomorrow night and the cold. But
I'm talking about the cold that we had a few
days ago. It got really cold and in the northern
parts of the listening area just about hit the teens

(23:55):
uh and UH. In the southern parts it still was
cold and not nearly that cold. But when we have
that amount of cold damage, you have to decide what
am I, what do I do? What should I do?

Speaker 9 (24:08):
Uh?

Speaker 8 (24:09):
And there's a number of different kinds of plants that
we treat different ways. So, for example, if you had
a little succulent type of plant, I don't when I
say second on it just mean the leaves are full
of moisture like a Oh, let's say, well, you probably
didn't have petunias out. But if you had petunias or
something like that, they're going to just turn to mush

(24:29):
when you get cold weather, freezes cause ice crystals in
the cells. The ice crystals puncture the cells, and the
whole thing just turns to mush, just water soaked brown goo,
blah blah blah. You just scrape all that off and
get it out of there. It ain't wanna come back
to life, of course, But when you got another cold

(24:52):
spell coming, there's nothing wrong with leaving that because now
that what was mush will kind of dry out and
become a shell over the plant that protects it from cold.
I have some Mexican heather, and I have some lentennas
in a bed, and the freeze just turned them all brown,

(25:13):
completely brown, and so that is not a super insulator,
but it is a little bit of an insulator. So
I could prune it out, or I could just leave
it and take advantage of the fact that it's going
to help now. If you can't stand to look at it,
I try to talk people into learning to live with ugly.
That's the way we like to put it, learning to
live with ugly, because you will clean it up later,

(25:37):
but if you leave it for now, it's a benefit
to your plants now. If you can't stand it, prune
them out, prune, prune the Mexican heather back it's going
to be frozen back to the ground anyway with the
coal we had. And prune back the lentanna. Is there
any other plants that are perennials like that? You can
cut them back. I've got savias that will killed back
as a result, and then cover the base with some

(26:00):
compost and or mulch to protect it when we're gonna
have cold weather. And then after the cold weather just
pull it all away that you don't want to leave
a pile over the top of the plant, but pull
it all back, and the plant when it warms up,
we'll start putting out fresh new growth. So you have
two options there on those. I'm gonna take a little
break for a call here, and I'm gonna come back
and tell you about some other types of plants and

(26:23):
what we do post freeze for them. Let's set out
to Spring, Texas and we're gonna talk to Gerald this morning.
Hey Gerald, welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 10 (26:32):
Good morning.

Speaker 8 (26:32):
How you doing doing good? Thank you?

Speaker 11 (26:37):
That's good.

Speaker 12 (26:37):
I question, uh, every year I get these bad we's.
I always start growing about about a little bit earlier,
and now they're getting heavier.

Speaker 10 (26:47):
What can I use to take care of them?

Speaker 11 (26:50):
Weeze?

Speaker 8 (26:51):
I did?

Speaker 12 (26:52):
Do you know the winter rise and stuff like that,
but I just cur it. What can I do keeping
weeze from coming up? Because every year to get real
bad in the backyard.

Speaker 8 (27:02):
Okay, well, jerro, we have a bunch of different kinds
of weeds. We have some that are annuals and they
you know, they sprouted in the fall and then they're
gonna die when this this warm weather arrives here that
will be coming in a few months.

Speaker 4 (27:18):
Uh.

Speaker 8 (27:18):
And those that's one kind of weed. We have weeds
that are grassy and weeds that are broad leaf and
do you know if these are more like a grassy
type weed or broadly Okay, what you can do right
now is go out with at You have two options.
One is hand pulling, which is a legit option, especially
when the soul's moist and they come up easy. That's
an option. Or if you're going to spray them, you

(27:40):
want to use a post emergent broad leaf weed control product,
and there are a lot of them on the market.
Furd Loan has one the green light excuse me, bon eyed,
but has one that Monterey has them there's a lot
of brands out there, but they're for killing weeds already growing.

(28:01):
You want to do those as soon as possible. Once
we get past this cold, you can get back outside
and spray. Go ahead and spray them, because if you
wait until they have flowers and seeds, like if you
waited a month from now, it would be harder to
kill them and they would have already developed seeds. So
you they sentence you to another year of weed problems.

(28:21):
So the sooner you get those out, the better.

Speaker 13 (28:23):
Uh.

Speaker 8 (28:24):
Those products that kill them so well will hurt your
Saint Augustine once it gets warmed up real good. So
that's why I like to say, if you're going to
do it, do it now and get ahead of them
that way.

Speaker 12 (28:35):
Okay, then I got I got a dog, so it
won't hurt my dog, will it?

Speaker 8 (28:41):
Well? You know, does your dog go out and eat
eat the weeds? Sometimes dogs do that. They'll chew them off,
and okay, well, you know then you I wouldn't be
as worried about that. Some people don't like any chemicals
in the yard when they have pets and kids drolling
around the grass, And I understand that, but you know,

(29:03):
unless they're eating them. That would be my biggest concern.
And also when you spray, you don't want the dog
out in the yard where he's running through the wet
sprayed weeds and stuff like that. Either the needs are
dry off before that happens.

Speaker 10 (29:19):
So would you recommend me to buy this?

Speaker 12 (29:21):
Can you buy me at home Depot and Lows or
do you are Do I need to go to twenty
your vendors?

Speaker 8 (29:27):
Well, I would. I would go to Ace Hardware. You've
got I don't know where in Spring you are. There,
there's a brand new Ace on wort Wort Road. It's
actually at an intersection off of Work Road, and so
I would do that. Or you can go to Ace
Hardware Texas dot com and find out there what part

(29:47):
of Spring are you in?

Speaker 12 (29:48):
By the way, I'm on top of tweeny forty five
and ninety nine off of Layford. There's an Eighth Hardware
down Yeah, down there the other side the ninety nine.

Speaker 11 (30:01):
That's a beautifully hardware. They got some nice.

Speaker 8 (30:03):
Stuff, Yes, yes, there is. You can go to Ace
Hardware Texas and find out you know exactly where the
Ace Hardware stores are. But yeah, you got a really
nice one up there at Rayford. I would just go
in there and talk to them and see what they have.
They'll have you.

Speaker 11 (30:24):
All right it sir.

Speaker 10 (30:25):
I appreciate your time and thank you for answering the phone.

Speaker 8 (30:29):
All right, you take care, thanks Gerald, thank you. All right. Yeah,
the I realized I'm talking to a lot of people
that garden in different ways with different preferences. And you
may be one hundred percent organic, and that's fine. Understand
that you may not care. Just I want whatever products

(30:52):
the best I can use for this particular problem.

Speaker 14 (30:55):
I got.

Speaker 8 (30:55):
That's what I want to That's fine, I understand that,
but you want to be careful when you use pesticides.
Always follow the label, whether it's in organic pesticides, synthetic pesticide,
always follow the label. And if you're dealing with these weeds,
I have them in my broad leaf weeds. Basically I
don't have that many, and so I'll go out and

(31:16):
got my kneeling bench, get out there and just do
some weed pulling in a five gallon bucket, and I
get rid of them that way that works. I've got
a little gadget that I use where you stand up
and you shove it in the ground over a weed
and it pops the weed out of the ground. I
like that that works, That makes it easy, and it
just for me. There's this point where is it worth

(31:37):
buying a product, mixing it up in the sprayer, spraying
it everywhere, coming back, cleaning up the sprayer and so on,
and there's a point where it's not worth it. You know,
I got three weeds in the art is not worth
it to just use an extreme example. But if you're
going to use those broad leaf weed control you need
to do it now. You need to get it done
now because once the weeds start to bloom and set seeds,

(32:03):
the way I refer to that is they become reproductive.
Those products don't work as well. They just aren't as effective.
And whether you're using the speed Zone product or the
weed beater from Boonie or weed free Zone or any
there's a lot of them out there, and I mean,
you know it, there's a lot of blends out There's

(32:24):
some called trimac that are out there, and do that.
Whatever you're using like that, now is the time when
the weed is most susceptible.

Speaker 9 (32:31):
Now.

Speaker 8 (32:31):
I wouldn't do it in a you know, in thirty
degree weather, but I would do it. Once the weather
warms up a little bit, that wheed will start growing,
it'll take up the nutrient better, and it'll do a
good job. That is how to do it. If you wait,
think about you know what. The example I use that
I just think helps people understand is look at the

(32:51):
blue bonnets in nature. They sprouted in the fall as
little tiny plants made in the size of a quarter initially,
and right now I've seen the blue bonnets I'm seeing
are about the width of from your your thumb tip
of your finger, a little finger across when you open
up your hand, maybe five six inches or so and there.

(33:14):
So those particular ones are still in that pre bloom
and set seed stage. So that's what your weeds are
doing too. They're doing the same thing the blue bonnets
are doing in nature. When you see blue bonnets and
now there's these mounds of green with flowers on them
on the roadsides, that's what your weeds are doing.

Speaker 9 (33:33):
Now.

Speaker 8 (33:33):
Every weed is on a little bit different schedule, but
that's basically what they're doing in the spring. You don't
want to wait until then to spray your yard weeds.
It's you can get some benefit, but not near the
benefit that you would hope to get. And remember, the
warmer it gets, the more the broad leaf we control
products can damage. You're seeing, Augustine, especially about other types

(33:55):
of turf. All right, so let it up enough for
you don't want to be outside, and then if you're
gonna do it, whether it's pulliam or spraying them, now
it's the time to get that done. All right. I
hope that makes sense. We're talking about Ace Hardware stores.
I think he was. Was he at the Ace the
There was a Spring Ace Hardware on Spring Cyprus. I

(34:19):
can't'm trying to remember which one he was at. If
you go to Ace Hardware Texas dot com. Ace Hardware
Texas dot com and you were to just look at
the map, you can click on it. There's Ace Hardware
stores from Rockport to Orange, Texas and up to Brenham
and up in the Conroe area down to Galveston and

(34:40):
especially all through this greater Houston area. You're gonna find
your Ace Hardware stores. And it doesn't matter where you live.
There is an Ace Hardware store near you. Ace Hardware
Texas dot com. When you go there, you find the
things you need. You know you're going to cover your plants.
You need a little heat lamp or an extension corridor
or whatever you're looking for. You need some extra propane.

(35:01):
Ace Hardware stores Rope. Some of our Ace hardware stores
when we just went through this bad cold that we
just had, some of our Ace hardware stores are the
Actually some owners spent the night in the store, so
the first thing in the morning they were there when
customers are coming because they were getting truckloads of shipments
and of everything. That's just how Ace Hardware is. These

(35:25):
are home town stores. These are owned individually by people. Okay,
when you go to an Ace hardware store and your
friend or across town goes into an Ace hardware store,
that's probably two different owners, and each one has its
own personality, which I think is really kind of cool.
Now you're going to find Aceardware stores like Spring Ace
on Spring, Cypress, Crosby ACE on FM twenty one hundred

(35:47):
up northeast on the west side, Langham Creek ACE on
five point twenty nine in Cyprus it's right behind Copperfield
right there, and Plantation ACE on Mason Road and Richmond.
Those are just a few examples. Champions Ace on Spring,
Cyprus and spring, Nicholas, I didn't catch that. But Ace
Hardware stores are everywhere. Ace Hardware Texas dot com. They

(36:11):
got what you need. Just go check them out, all right,
to taking a break. All right, let's take a little
break here and we'll be right back. You will come back.

Speaker 4 (36:20):
You win.

Speaker 8 (36:21):
You welcome back to guard LINEE. You've got a question.
Here's a number seven one three two one two fifty
eight seventy four seven to one three two one two
five eight seven four. Uh. The folks at Pierscapes are
professionals ed designing, renovating, starting from scratch with the landscape.

(36:43):
You need hardescapes, you need beds that you need to
create a beautiful topography in the backyard with raised beds,
beautiful stone. They can do all of that landscape, lighting,
you name it. Right now is the time to give
them a call and to start talking to the about
what you want done, and also talk to them about
their maintenance program. They have a quarterly maintenance. They come out.

(37:06):
They spush up the beds to get rid of the weeds,
check the irrigation, put down fresh malts, replace flowers when
that's needed for transitions through the seasons, piercescapes dot com.
Piercescapes dot com two eight one three seven o five
zero six zero two eight one three seven oh fifty sixty.

(37:26):
They're very good about that. I was talking to Dean
Nelson the other day. We were visiting about some different things,
and you know, the Nelson's plant Food product called Genesis
is just it's the first retail blend they've made to
incorporate microrise, the bacteria of the fungi that benefit our
soul microbiome. It's specifically designed to be used in soil.

(37:47):
You can use it in containers, you can use it
in the in ground beds or if you've got raised beds.
It helps minimize transplant shock. It's just a good product,
and you use it. You mix it in the transplant hole,
you mix it in the transplanting soil that you're going
to be using, and then later on finish up with
Nutral Star, Color Star, Nature Star all the other Nelson
products as you fertilize through the season. But you start

(38:08):
with nutristar Genesis from the folks at Nelson Plant Food.
It's available by the jar and there's about a dozen
places around town that where you can refill those jars,
which makes it economical and just makes sense not throwing
away more plastic in the environment. Nelson Neutral Star Genesis.
I promise you when you use it, you're going to

(38:29):
see results. I will tell you about those sometime. A
recent research trial that was done that showed Genesis just
to be amazing, absolutely amazing. Well, looks like I'm about
out of time today here for this hour, so we're
going to put that in the bok. That went fast.
It always goes fast. Time flies when you're having fun,

(38:49):
they say, except for Kermit the frog. He says, times
fun when you're having flies. I know it's an old joke,
and I know it's a dad joke, but it's what
I do. You can thank me later. Hey, don't forget.
I'm gonna be a enchanted gardens and Richmond today from
twelve thirty to two thirty be giving away some microlife products.

(39:10):
Excuse me, some Medina products. I said the wrong one.
Medina's got those hose in products that you look up
the garden hose. You spray them around. You can use
them in lawns and gardens and flower but everything. They're cool.
We're gonna give away those we're gonna give away some
get nice gift certificates from enchanted gardens, and I'm gonna
be talking about raised beck gardening. Come on, let me.

(39:32):
I got pictures, I got a little power point. I'm
gonna show you. I promise you we're gonna laugh and
have fun because it's amazing the things people do. I'll
give you a few tips. It's time to get gardens planted.
Come on out, let's talk. Twelve thirty two thirty enchanted
Gardens in Richmond.

Speaker 1 (39:48):
Welcome to kt r H Garden Line with skimped Richard.

Speaker 5 (39:51):
It's crazy you just watch him as well.

Speaker 15 (40:07):
So many give teas the supposing not a sign credits.

Speaker 5 (40:22):
The sun bean and down between starting.

Speaker 8 (40:36):
Hey, welcome back to the garden line. Good to have
you with us. Do you appreciate you being a listener?
By the way, and I don't take that for granted.
I am hopefully, I hopefully UH am providing the information
that you need to successfully garden in this area to
have more fun in the process too. That is important gardening, Listen,

(41:00):
this is a hobby. It is. We are not raising
food to survive like it has been in times of
the past. We're not in agricultural production to necessarily make
a living. Some of you may be also just listen
to garden Line, but that's not what the show's about.
Shows about getting out there and enjoying yourself in the
garden and having success. And that's important. It is important.

(41:22):
It is no fun to feel like I can't grow anything.
Everything I plant dies and so on. We can help
you with that, and I want to. I said this
many times before, I'll say it again. The success with
gardening is really simple. It's learning to see things from
a plant's point of view. Plants want to grow, they
want to live, they don't want to die. They want

(41:44):
to thrive. They want to flower and fruit and reproduce
and all the things that a plant does. They want that,
and if we give them what they need, they'll do that.

Speaker 4 (41:55):
That is it.

Speaker 8 (41:55):
It is not magic. It is not super secret sauce,
although unfortunately some things aren't well known and there are
a lot of there's a lot of misinformation out there.
But it's really not that difficult when you just learn
to see things from a plant's point of view. And
that's what we'll do. So bring your plant with you,

(42:17):
and bring your thumb too. We're gonna help turn it green.
When you listen to Guardenline, we are going to get
to the bottom of things and help you have success.
That's my goal. At least that's my goal. I suspect
it's probably your goal too. If you've got trees that
haven't been ruined in a while, if you've got trees
have been looked at in several years, it's time to
have them looked at. Trees are the single most invaluable

(42:40):
plant on your landscape. They do numbers of things that
are beneficial from affecting our electric bills, that potentially the
utility bills. They can do that when they're used properly.
They can make it pleasant to be outside, even on
warm days. Trees can be feriferous and beautiful. There's lots

(43:01):
of flowering trees and things. You got to take care
of them. And Martin spoon More an Affordable Tree, knows
how to do just that. You can get Martin to
call at seven one three, six nine nine two six
sixty three. They need they need to be pruned right now.
Now is the time when tree pruning is done. It's
the best time to get it done because the healing
is the fastest in the spring. So a proper late

(43:23):
winter pruning or early spring even midwinter, gives your tree
a good chance at healing faster, of closing the wound
faster when spring growth begins. Call Martin now, get on
his schedule. Forever tree that he prunes, that tree he
will do a deep root feeding on. So that's another
reason to call him now seven one three six nine

(43:46):
nine two six sixty three. If you want to know
more about the services that they offer, you know, like
pest disease controls, stump grinding, pre construction care consultations, and
so on, to go to his website aff Tree Service
dot com. But right now, just right down that phone
number seven one three six nine nine two six sixty three,

(44:08):
so you can give them a call. We're talking about
post freeze recovery. This morning. I had talked about a
couple of things, like with the perennials that turned to
mush and so on. When it when it comes to
plants that typically died of the ground in winter or
come close to doing that, that would be like Redbird
of Paradise. That's the one. Pride of Barbados is the

(44:31):
other name for it that I have on the video
that I did for social media, posted yesterday, and what
I did was basically I went down the plant and
showed you how when you scrape it. Now, even because
we've had the freezing cold that I know killed Pride
of Barbados to the ground. Its way too cold. I though,

(44:51):
for a pride of Barbados not to be killed to
the ground. It's okay, they come back out of the ground.
But I scraped the branches back to show you on
video it's still got green in it. So you might think, oh,
it made it. It did not make it. It just
takes a little while with some warmer temperatures for that
green to just turn into a brown color. And then

(45:14):
you know where to prune it. You know, you scrape
a plant, you see brown, it's not going to come
back alive. Cut it off, scrape down, scrape down, go
further checking it. Just a little nix on the bark.
You don't have to pull all the bark off, and
when you see green, that is where it is still alive.
But it takes time to be able to do that assessment.

(45:34):
And when you prune. Now, if you were to prune
into the green, cut something back too far. If we
have a few warm days after this cold spell we're
having this weekend. If we have some warm days, that
plant is going to start to push out growth and
it's going to start to get ready to do that.
And if we have another freeze, it's going to be
even more damaging than it would have been had you

(45:56):
not pruned. So learn to live with ugly, put up
with it. What I generally do on my plants is
unless there's just a reason that I need to clean
it all out of there, I will wait, and when
the new growth starts, I prin the old stuff out
because then you can see where the growth is coming from.
And what you're gonna notice from the freezer we just had,

(46:17):
and listen to me on this, what you're gonna notice
is some plants are going to start to re sprout,
and then that sprout, as the weather gets warmer, will
just sort of shovel up and collapse and not be
able to make it. And the reason is there was
a degree of damage even below where it sprouted, so
that the flow of nutrients and water to that sprout

(46:40):
is limited, and when the demands are getting higher, it
just can't keep up with it. Or the continued decline
or decay away or whatever. Of that cold damage finishes
it out. So even things that starts to sprout, you
can oftentimes see them not quite make it. And that's
just because it is almost completely killed, but not quite.

(47:03):
And so be patient. Just be patient. It's okay. You know,
if family's coming over and friends are coming over something
and you just can't stand to have that round, sticky
stuff in the beds, well cut it back, but be careful.
Don't cut back into living tissues. And if you cut
back some of the low growing perennials, be ready to

(47:24):
throw a little multch over them. I use compost too
for that, by the way, just over the crown of
the plant, just to insulate it. Should we get another
coal spell, you can wait until the coal spell is
about to get here. You don't have to mulch them
right now. But if you have bear soil, you need
to mulch it. Wherever sunlight hits a soil, nature plants
a weed. That's a weed that you're gonna have to

(47:45):
pull out later or spray, and you don't have to
do either one. So be patient. Keep that soil well maultched.
All right, let's take a break. We'll be right back then.
So I'm going to sleep at the wheel single handedly,
keep a lusternless, sing a love. Bob Wills be proud,

(48:06):
all right, Welcome back to garden Line, Texas Fiddles. I
don't know what am I gonna say. We play a
mix here on guarden Line, but I enjoy music, so
it kind of gets mixed into gardening too. I like
to listen to music when I'm gardening. By the way,
I don't know about you right now, you can listen
to garden Line when you're gardening. If you were outside,

(48:27):
if it was not so cold and you were wanting
to get out there and you know, get some things done.
You can take your phone. You can go to the
iHeart Radio app. I Heart Radio app. There are other
apps that let you play podcasts and radio stations too.
I use i Hurt Radio app. Fine guarden Line. It's
one of only two garden lines on there. Some's the

(48:47):
other one. Some lady in the northeast, I believe one
of these days maybe ell to meet her anyway, uh,
and to get in your pocket, turn it on, put
your ear buds in, whatever you wanna do. You see
a bug, you see a plant, you got a weed,
a question. You want to take pictures, send it to me.
Call me. We can be live from your garden this
morning or any morning Saturday and Sunday six to ten am.

(49:11):
About forty years ago, Grandpa Thunderberg built his feed store
in what was an Okra patch done in League City, Texas.
Now forty years later, the third generation of Thunderberg, so
Wes and Madison are still running that feed store and
it's the old time feed source. You know, they carry

(49:33):
the feed out for you. Do you just go in there,
They're gonna know what they're talking about. They're gonna be
able to point you in the right direction whether you're
buying pet food or whether you're buying gardening supplies. You know,
they carry a wide variety. You can get your nitroposs
and asimite and microlife and Nelson plant food there. You
can get your airlom sol products too. They have a
number of different bags of bagged airloom sols products. So

(49:57):
if you want to get out and get a garden
going today this afternoon, this weekend, well League City feed
They are three block or a few blocks actually south
of ninety six on Highway three in League City, So
you go south on Highway three from Highway ninety six,
and it'll be there on the left hand side if
you're going south. League City Feed. They're open Monday through

(50:19):
Saturday nine to six, closed tomorrow, closed on Sundays, but
during the week after working swing by makes it really convenient,
and the fact that they carry a bag out for
you is even more convenient. And you're going to find
products to control those pessing weeds. Earlier, someone was asking
about getting rid of the broadleaf weeds in their yard.
League City Feed has all of the different options for
products that you're going to need to control those broadway

(50:41):
weeds to eight one three three to two sixteen twelve,
two eight one three three two sixteen twelve. I had
been talking about post freeze recovery and trying to encourage
you to be patient, to be patient, to learn learn
to live with ugly. It is okay, It's going to

(51:02):
be all right. Just just be patient with it. Things
will be all right.

Speaker 10 (51:05):
There.

Speaker 8 (51:06):
I've got some cold tender perennials on my property. Well,
the red bird of Paradise or Pride of Barbados is
a cold tender perennial. You can get cold enough to
kill them outright. Out of the ground, especially as you
move north in my listening area. But most years they
come back from the ground. But a little protection over
the crown of the plant and the way a mulch

(51:27):
is the way to protect them. And that's what I
did for mine. Some other plants that I have that
are like that are gingers. Most of our gingers that
we grow here are ground hardy. They die to the ground,
they come back, that's just fine, but if you want
to be careful, throw a little extra cover of them.
I grow edible ginger. Did you know you can grow
edible ginger here in the Greater Houston area if you're

(51:47):
hearing my voice, you can grow edible ginger at your house.
What you do is you get some ginger from the
store or you can actually buy it from companies to
sell it. But the ginger in the store will grow
just fine. You break those they're like a hand, you know,
the fingers going out from them. You break that off
where you kind of have a finger several fingers that

(52:08):
you're broken up. Plant them in the ground near the
surface like I would put mine, uh, probably an inch
deep below the surface, not much more than that. Cover
them over with soil, but don't do it until it's warm.
Ginger will not grow in cold soil. Just wait until
it really warms up good, put it out there, and
then keep it moist it does want moisture, get a

(52:31):
good mulch over it. You'll see them coming up out
of the ground and growing, and they'll be slow at first,
and then they'll speed up. And that little single finger
that you planted that had a bud on the end
of ginger, by the time you get to the end
of the season, you're going to have a whole hand,
you know, several branches going out from it, and you
will have grown yourself some fresh ginger, which, by the way,

(52:51):
you don't have to wait until ginger is looking like
a russet potato, you know, brown and rough on the outside,
like you're buying this. You can dig it up when
it's fresh it's white and pinkish colored around the buds,
and wash it off real good and use it right
then too. And then there's a lot of other ways.
This isn't a cooking show, so I'm not going to

(53:12):
tell you how to use ginger, but I can tell
you this. You can grow at yourself. As far as
winter hardiness you gotta have a good maltz to protect
it from getting too too cold. But mind does. And
so I need to dig mine up here pretty soon
and harvest some and also get it ready for planting
back and spreading out in the spring. I'm gonna create
a bigger patch of it as we go along. Some

(53:35):
people grow it in containers, which can be done if
you don't let the container dry out. If you don't
let it dry out in fact further north fun fact,
which you could do here. There are people that grow
ginger in large pots, like essentially like a five gallon
or three gallon pot that's in a greenhouse, and they
have perfect conditions there and they grow it really fast

(53:57):
and they harvest it. And when you think about a
green house bench that is filled with pots of ginger
and the value of what that bench has on it,
it's significant and it's economically viable for them to do that.
There you go, all kinds of ginger. I like the
flowering gingers. My favorite one is headicki on butterf white
butterfly ginger. And by the way, you can be buying

(54:20):
these things bulbs and rhizomes and corns and other types
of underground storage organs for planting things. You can buy
them at your local garden centers in many cases. But
I like the white butterfly. Of all the butterflies, I've
got several. I've got one called Doctor Moy named after
a fellow in San Antonio. That's a whole nother story.

(54:42):
Uh and uh then, but the white butterfly, the fragrance
of it is heavenly. It's like if you've ever smelled
gardenia flowers, you know how that perfume is just like
whoa intoxicating bo broogmancia angel strumpets intoxicating white butterfly. Same
thing primarily blooms in the late summer and fall. There's

(55:04):
this big time to bloom. But boy, it's easy to grow,
so easy to grow here.

Speaker 9 (55:10):
I love it.

Speaker 8 (55:10):
I love it. When one of my daughters was born,
we were she was born in a hospital in Conroe area,
Conrae Woodlands, and I brought some stalks of butterfly, ginger
white butterfly into the hospital room after she was born
from my wife and nurses and I'm not making this up.

(55:33):
We're coming in from the hallway saying, what is that smell?
It's like the it's like the fragrance of white butterfly
ginger had gone through the room and out into the
hallway and they could smell it mad that that is
a flower worth growing. Plus they're pretty Our CW Nurseries

(55:54):
is the garden center there where Tomball Parkway comes into
Beltway eight r c W Nurseries. I love that place.
Easy to get to, easy to get in, get out,
uh and RCW will provide the kinds of plants through
the year that you need all around that. Like shrubs
and trees, they grow on themselves up in Plantersville. Most

(56:15):
of the things they do grow up there, and they
always have deals going on. You know you'll find their
sale Like I recently, I was talking about the ten
percent off sale on trees and shrubs, the azaleas fifteen
percent off, and citrus and things forty percent off. It's
a limited time they do those sales while supplies last.
But you can go out right now. They're gonna they're
getting raised stock up on all the roses if they

(56:37):
have already h and they just have. They have the
biggest longest road rose list in town anywhere. I mean
I did. It's like one time while back I called
David and said, hey, I need a list to your
roses so I can see what you're carrying case somebody
wants one. Uh, And he sent me six pages, single spaced.

(56:57):
Think about that, six pages singles. Think they have some
roses there? Yes, they do absolutely. RCW Nurseries RCW nurseries
dot Com. Whatever you're looking for, they're going to have it,
and you're going to get treated right by people who
know what they're talking about. They've been doing this a very,
very long time. It opened up in nineteen seventy nine,

(57:17):
so what's that forty seven years ago? I guess if
I'm doing the math right, they do know what they're
talking about. RCW Nurseries coming up. I've got a number
of things I'm going to be doing. I'll be telling
you where you're going to find me and stuff. One
of the places I'm going to be at later in
the spring is Southwest Fertilizer, a corner of Businett and Renwick.

(57:40):
This is a Houston lawn and garden tradition. It's been
around since nineteen fifty five, So Southwest Fertilizer is where
you get whatever you need. You heard me talking earlier.
Someone wanted to spray broadleaf weeds. Every product I can
think of that comes to mind that works on broadleaf
weeds is a Southwest fertilizer, Every organ fertilizer. The largest

(58:01):
organic selection in the region is it Southwest Fertilizer, corner Bis,
Nutt and Renwick. Their friendly service, the products or top
quality and the selection is unbeatable. So I like to say,
if they don't have it, you don't need it, because
they do have it Southwest Fertilizer seven one three six
sixty six one seven four four seven one three six

(58:23):
sixty six one seven four four. I wan to take
a little break here, and when we come back, we're
going to continue with the discussion of cold protection, uh,
and what to do with plants after the freeze. We've
had the worst of our freezes. We got a little
bit of a doozy come in here, but not like
it was. But it's still still plenty cold, uh, and

(58:46):
we need to do some things to protect our plants.
I'll take talk about that a little bit more, and
then what do we do after the freeze to get
those plants back on their feet and growing very very well.
And when we come back, Annie and Wharton you'll be
our first stop. All right, folks, I bet that's the
first time you've ever heard a Megan Trainer song the

(59:07):
garden Line. Hey, welcome back. Good to have you with us.
Here's a number if you'd like to ask me a
gardening question today. We welcome you to do that. Seven
one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Let's
go out to Wharton, Texas and talk to Ann this morning. Well, Hello, Anne, welcome.

Speaker 16 (59:27):
To garden Line, Yester, good morning.

Speaker 4 (59:30):
Just a quick question. Wanted to know if shallots ever
freeze in the garden.

Speaker 8 (59:38):
Well, you know, various kinds of alliums the onion family.
Can I'm trying to think if I've ever had the
Shalott bulbs and stuff themselves freeze. It's possible, but I
just don't know how cold it would have to be
for shallots to freeze.

Speaker 4 (59:56):
Okay, they do pretty good. I was just kind of wondering,
not no, just how Cody is gonna.

Speaker 8 (01:00:01):
Get They're very good. I love growing all kinds of
onions and stuff. So that's good. Is that?

Speaker 13 (01:00:12):
It is?

Speaker 5 (01:00:13):
That the only question you got.

Speaker 4 (01:00:14):
That's that's it, so thank you.

Speaker 8 (01:00:17):
All right, Well, now now when your shallots produce. I
know it's a drive to come all the way to
the studio, but you need to bring me half of
your produce and you'll call this even okay. I tell
you what. I'll give you a choice. You can either
give me half your shallots or you can go over
to Wharton Feed and Ace on Richmond Road and say
hi for me. I think that's it.

Speaker 4 (01:00:38):
I love that spot. Thanks, thanks the book, by bye,
all right, you bet.

Speaker 8 (01:00:44):
You take care? All right? Well, uh, if you got
a gardening question, how about this seven one three, two,
one two five eight seven four. I Uh, I was
talking about post freeze protection and stuff, or post freeze
assessment rather of plants. When we get past this winter,

(01:01:08):
the plants are going to tell you where they are
in terms of damage that when new growth begins, you'll
be able to see. And sometimes plants can just be
ugly after they start to grow. A good example of
that is esperanza. If you look at an esperanza that's

(01:01:30):
gone through a pretty challenging winter, it may be killed
partially back, especially for those of you sal of it.
You know a lot of your winters will do damaged esperanza,
but not just kill it. To the ground, and so
you're left with this plant that's gangly and unbalanced and
just not very attractive. I will cut those all the
way back to the ground, the same way with Duranta,

(01:01:53):
the golden dew drop, and a number of other plants
that will do that kind. If yeah, we survived it,
but we don't look very good, there's nothing wrong with
cut them all the way to the ground. But I
would wait until we get past the winter, because if
you cut them back now and we have warm weather,

(01:02:13):
they're going to try to sprout back out. Pruning is
a stimulating process. I want you to think about this.
Meant pruning is a stimulating process to plants. When you
cut a branch off, it makes that plant want to
push new growth out right there at that spot. That's
how we end up with hedges. You shear them off,

(01:02:33):
and now they want to push out more buds than
used to be there, more shoots than used to be there.
And so you got to take care of that to
not do that when we still have cold weather that
could be coming. But when it's time cut them back
to the ground. Just be done with it. Same thing
with cannas and other kinds of plants. Just clean all
the debris out of there, but not until we're through
with the freezes, because that old debris can be helpful

(01:02:57):
and you don't want to stimulate new growth. Let's go
out to Laporte now and we're going to talk to
David this morning. Hello David, welcome to garden Lines.

Speaker 14 (01:03:05):
Hey, how are you doing.

Speaker 8 (01:03:08):
Doing good? How can we help?

Speaker 14 (01:03:11):
Just have a question about my hate. I want to
sprig some tifts and eighty five in it. My dad
brought some of that down on his farm back in
nineteen ninety and everybody's using this sprig. Now, do I
need to cut some roots out? Or can I just
top it, mow it and then disc it in the

(01:03:31):
tops of.

Speaker 8 (01:03:32):
It you're going to have? Yeah, Well, what do you
mean by cutting roots out? I'm not following on that phone.

Speaker 14 (01:03:38):
Well, I mean, like, you know, just getting it out
of the ground and having roots on it. You know,
have the little certain little plows that you can plow
it it has roots on it already, or can I
just mow the tops.

Speaker 8 (01:03:52):
Of it and use that right? Well, the first the
first thing is you need to wait until it's Bermuda
is actively growing. Until it's warmed up, so it'll hit
the ground running and they don't have to wait till summer.
But I mean, just let it warm up a little
bit and then if you can. You just need to
get the sprigs that you're planning in contact with the

(01:04:15):
soil and the disking, as you referred to, is how
that's done. The rooting part. I'm not fully following you on.
I tell you your your best option would be if
you would call the extension office, either Harris County or
Galveston County Extension offices and talk to the ag agent.

Speaker 9 (01:04:35):
Uh.

Speaker 8 (01:04:36):
They're really geared toward that farm type questions cattle, livestock, pastures,
and so on like that. We don't do sprigging, of
course in home lawns well exactly, but we don't do that,
and so I think they would advise you better. You
may want to do some getting rid of some of
the grass that you have so that the new variety

(01:05:00):
you wanted to put in, uh, you know, has less competition.
So that may be. I'm not I'm not an ag
I'm not an ag specialist. I just have been around
them a lot, so somewhat familiar.

Speaker 10 (01:05:10):
Yeah, okay, okay, okay, I'll do that.

Speaker 8 (01:05:15):
All right, sir, thank you very much. I appreciate your Okay,
thank you, David. Yeah. Uh, A specialists there. They're in
every county and most of several counties around Houston have
hort specialists. Up in Montgomery County, Conrad Michael Potter's up there. Uh,
we've got in Harris County. We've got in Galveston County,
got Fort Benk County, Brazoria County, Uh, Harris, let's see,

(01:05:39):
I say, Harris, Harris County, Brass County, up in Conege Station,
Orange County. Oh, they all have horticulturists. And I'm probably
leaving somebody out. I think I got it covered. Anyway,
we'll see. But you're welcome to call your county extension
office and get advice. And also they have advice like
if you're a gardener and you have produce and you

(01:05:59):
want to know, you know, how do I preserve this produce?
There is a family and I used to be a
family and community uh science family, good night fcs. Anyway,
they would do everything from canning and preserving to sewing
and whatnot back in the day. Now the direction that

(01:06:21):
they do is includes that, but includes a lot of
other things as well. We used to call it home economics.
All right, let's see all seasons turf grass. I kick
emails from guardline listeners often where do I go for
turf grass? And I'm also real careful where I send
someone to when the email bit about that, because they

(01:06:43):
need the retailer I send them to. You needs to
have the right varieties. Basically, not all turf grass is equal.
All seasons turf has more varieties than anybody else in
the area. Bermudas and Augustine Zuysia, and they're the right varieties.
Things like Xeon and Palisade Zoysia. Those are two of
my favor zis not the only two to plant, but
those two I love a lot. In fact, I having

(01:07:05):
both in my yard celebration. Bermuda is a newer Bermuda
that's outstanding. And then of course Raleigh Saint Augustine's been
around a while. Palmetto Saint Augustine a little bit more
shade tolerant, does really well. The thing I like about
all seasons turf is they don't cut the grass until
you need it. If you see grass harvested and it

(01:07:26):
goes to a site and it sits there for two days.
It already is of an inferior quality. And I know
I've I've put in two lawns over the last three years,
and we had one lawn where we didn't get it
all done one day and the grass sat there for
another day and a half, and you it was horrible
condition when we went to pull it off the pallett
to plant it. You got to get it fresh. You

(01:07:48):
can go to the farm in Berkshire for all seasons
turf it's open to the public. They're ten miles west
of ninety nine. Or you can order it online at
all seasons turf dot com, so pick it up at
the floor or have them delivered. There's a delivery charge
and you have to have three or more pallettes for delivery,
and if it's less than three pallets, I think on

(01:08:09):
Fridays and Saturdays, if you're within about fifty miles of bruckshure,
they'll do it. But this is a family owned business,
been around since two thousand and four and they harvest
grass year round and I sometimey as we go through here,
I want to tell you more about them. I don't
really have time in one moment here, but they've been
around since two thousand and four. Excellent varieties. They grow

(01:08:30):
them right, they harvest them, they get them to you fresh,
never sitting on a site for days. With all seasons
turf again, just go to all seasonsturf dot com. You
can find everything you want to know right there. And
if you have a question about which variety would work
best for you, you can talk to them about it
or call me on Guardline. We'll talk about it. All
seasons turf grass. It's coming up on the big busy

(01:08:53):
time when lots of turf's about to be planted. You
want to get a good quality and you want to
do it right. Let's take a little break here and
we will be back just a moment with your calls
at seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.

Speaker 16 (01:09:09):
In the broom.

Speaker 8 (01:09:10):
Suckon there we go. Welcome back to guard Line. Glad
to have you with us this morning. Hey, and Chanty
Forest been around a long time, down south and to
the east a little bit of the Richmond Rosenberg area. Uh.
They're on FM twenty seven fifty nine. Think of them
as being between Richmond and Sugar Lamb, but south of

(01:09:31):
fifty nine that's kind of a location where they are
FM twenty seven to fifty nine. Excellent selection of all
kinds of plants. They stay stocked up and it is
still time to plant woody ornamentals, and they've got a
good selection there, and now would be a good time
to get it done. Every day you delay is a
day closer to summer. Think of it that way. Get

(01:09:52):
that done. If you want to have an herb garden.
You wouldn't believe the selection of herbs that they carry
in there. Flowers, annuals, perennials, vegetable transplants, They've got them
all there at Enchanted Forest. My favorite perennial flower of
all are the salvias. And that I'm cheating when I
say that, because there's eight hundred bazillion salvias, and so

(01:10:13):
I get to say my favorite, and it's really I'm
talking about a bazillion different things. They have ninety different
types of salvia's there at Enchanted Forest. Enchented Forest, Richmond,
TX dot com. Enchanted Forest, Richmond, TX dot com, FM
twenty seven fifty nine outside of Richmond, Texas, you need
to go check them out. I visiting with the folks

(01:10:35):
at Houston Powder Coders a while back and looking at
the kind of work that they do, I always like
to go check them out, not just the website, but
like on Facebook, they have Facebook page. See the kind
of work that they do. Whatever is metal that's outside
that needs a nice durable coating that is beautiful. Houston
Powder Coders is who you call. You give them a

(01:10:55):
call two eight one six seven six thirty eight eighty eight,
or you can take a picture of your metal item
and you can email it at sales too, sales at
Houstoncoders dot com. Sales at houstoncoders dot com. They'll give
you a quick quote. They'll come get it, they'll bring
it back, they'll clean up the rust and everything, put

(01:11:16):
new hardware on it, whatever it needs, new straps, depending
on whatever kind of metal furniture item it is, and
then turn into something special. And that includes things like
barbecue pits, out our furniture, you name it. If it's
metal and you want a beautiful, brand new looking item,
you got to have it powder coated. They know how

(01:11:36):
to do it. It lasts over one hundred different colors
and stock Houston Powdercoders dot Com two eight one six
seven six thirty eight eighty eight. So we're talking about
cold weather protection and making sure that our plants and
the current cold snap we're dealing with just you just

(01:11:58):
need to get a good cover over them. Depending where
you live, you may be getting down in the mid twenties,
maybe might getting down and not just barely below thirty
two or thirty depending on where you live in the area.
You just got to protect plants accordingly. We made it
thus far. I don't think we have I missed. I'm
not a weather man and I don't have a crystal ball,

(01:12:19):
but I just feel like we're getting close to the
end of the freezes. We're probably going to have another one.
It's probably still more in it, for sure. If it's
an average year, we will have another one. But for now,
we've made it this far. Don't let your guard down
and let a good freeze come in there and do
that kind of damage. To protect your plants, take care
of them. That is important. If you need to do

(01:12:44):
the covering, if you need to do heat, do whatever
you need to do and take care of them. Now,
as far as the plants that made it through the
last hard, hard freeze, we've talked about assessing them, not rushing,
be patient, don't feel like you need to prune them
because they're brown, they're ugly. Just wait. There's a reason
for that, and that's why I posted that to our
Facebook page. By the way, if you don't follow me

(01:13:05):
on Facebook, it's garden line. Look for garden line on Facebook.
On Instagram, it's garden line with skip. Garden line with
skip on Instagram. And just to make things confusing, my
website is gardening with skip. So there we go. On
the website. You're going to find a lot of helpful
information too. By the way, years ago, I used to

(01:13:30):
go to the ground up out there at the Windfern
location on Windfern Street kind of West Euston. They've also
got a location at West Park that they can ship
out of or deliver out of there, and then they
had the Brentmore location, which is kind of the main location.

(01:13:50):
As far as being open to the public, they're open
to the public on Saturdays. That would be today from
seven am to noon on Saturday. Now there's just minutes
away from Interstate ten and the Energy Quarter the belt
Way out there. They're closed on Sundays and during Monday
through Friday, it's landscapers only, but on Saturdays you can

(01:14:10):
go there and you can pick things up. They have plants,
they have unbelievable I had no idea. I visited recently
the location out there, Bretmore. The selection of plants is
huge and great plants too, all kinds. Now you're going
to get the soils and the mulches and the composts.
You can get it by the bag. You can get
it by super sacks delivered to you, or you pick

(01:14:33):
it up there, or you can have it delivered bulk
if you like. They have a number of different products
including stone and gravel and ground cloth, and they even
carry artificial turf there at the ground Up. Now, when
you go to the ground Up, you're going to find
a number of different lines of products. They've got the
leaf mow compost, and they have the organic compost and

(01:14:53):
organic compost it's double screened. And they got bed mixes
and rose mixes, and hardwood mulches, veggie and herb materials
and potting soils and stuff. It's all there, and a
lot of retailers around town carry their product by the bag.
You can go to the ground Up dot com. It's
nice to have a ground up a sponsor for soil

(01:15:16):
materials out in the West. For those of you who
live west, it is just right next door to you.
There's gonna be a location pretty close. Just remember, when
you're gonna get delivery, you gotta get a three qubicyard minimum.
That is three cubicyards dump three cube cubyyards, supersacks. You
can mix and match them as you want, but just

(01:15:37):
just go there. The ground up dot Com that's where
it all starts. The ground up dot Com two eight
one ninety seventy zero zer zero three.

Speaker 5 (01:15:50):
You know the music.

Speaker 8 (01:15:52):
It always makes me sad because I'm having fun. It's
like I got a hush. We got to do news
and traffic and weather and all that. That's okay, we'll
do that, don'na. Don't wanna let you forget though. Today
at the Enchanted Gardens north of Richmond on the Katie
Follshire side of Richmond Rosenberg on Highway three fifty nine,
I'm gonna be there from twelve thirty to two thirty,

(01:16:15):
so that is four and a half hours from now,
I believe I'll be arriving. I'm gonna give a talk
on vegetable gardening and raised beds and containers, giving away
Medina products and giving away gift certificates for enchanted guards.
Oh gosh, you get to shop with some money in
your hand. Come on by and maybe you'll win one.

Speaker 1 (01:16:36):
Welcome to kt r H Garden Line with Skimp Richard.

Speaker 5 (01:16:48):
You can just watch him as so many spots in
sorry s.

Speaker 8 (01:17:19):
Starting all right. Welcome back to the guard line, Welcome back.
Good to have you with us this morning. Hey, do
you have a gardening question, Well give me a call
seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four,

(01:17:39):
or if you like the dial by letters makes it
easier to remember for some folks. Seven one three two
one two k t r H. Simple as that he
glad to help you with any kinds of questions you
might have. Arbigate is raring and ready to go for spring.
They have got their getting in their stock of all

(01:18:01):
kinds of things out there right now. When you go
out to Arburgate, you're always going to find a nice
supply of every kind of plant you might want to grow,
including products for your plants. And they're having their spring
classes right now and you need to go. You can
go to the website, go to one of their social
media pages and look at the programs that are coming up,

(01:18:24):
the programs on printing roses and on citrus and on
vegetable gardens. There's a Cocadama workshop coming up, a pollinator
gardens workshop. I'm going to be there coming up late
in the spring, and I'll be talking just all kinds
of topics with you. We'll have a question and answer session.
I'm going to talk you because I'm going to be
speaking a little later in the season. I'll probably focus

(01:18:46):
on some of the warm weather tips and plants that
we can grow. But the arbrogate is easy to find,
easy to get too, easy to get in and out of.
It's on twenty nine to twenty west of Tomball, west
of two forty nine, just about a mile and a
half west of two forty nine. When you go out there,
make sure and pick up some bags of their one
two three completely easy system. It's a food, a fertilizer

(01:19:10):
if he's anything with the roots, a soil for any
application that includes expanded shale, and a compost that improves
any in all soils that also includes expanded shale in it.
You're going to find friendly folks. You're going to find
an unbelievable, unmatched selection, and you're just gonna have a
good time. You're not just going shopping like the grocery
store shopping. You're going like you go into a little

(01:19:33):
botanical garden of all kinds of cool stuff, from bling
for the landscape to plants. Bottom line is it's a
place to go have fun. The arbor Gate, tom Ball, Texas.
I was like going out there, looking forward to my
talk out there too coming up. If you have been

(01:19:53):
putting off getting any kind of particular plantings done, I
highly recommend you get it done. Shrubs, trees, and perennials
all benefit from being planted sooner rather than later, giving
them more time to establish before the hot weather arrives.
So get it done. Now's the time to get it done.

(01:20:14):
If you're going to be putting out warm season plants
from tomatoes to petunias, you name it, you want to
hold off on those because we still got some cold
weather coming. But for all your cool season beds, maybe
you've maybe you have pansies and violas and snap dragons
or alyssum or who knows what else. Maybe in your
vegetable garden you have broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower and lettuce

(01:20:36):
and spinach and other things. Those could be fertilized now
and will benefit from that. And the cool soil microbial
activity slows down, nutrient relief slows down, and giving them
a boost is a good way to keep it going,
especially with flowers. And it is a little counterintuitive, so
you need to think about this when I were If

(01:20:56):
I were to say, well, what kind of fertilizers are
for flowers, you would say, well, high phosphorus fertilizer's middle number. Well, yes,
phosphorus is important in flowering. But I'll tell you something
else that is important in flowering. That plant having solar
panels to capture sunlight critical in flowering. So nitrogen the
first number on the bag, will cause the plant to

(01:21:18):
grow more vigorously, producing more leaves to capture more sunlight
to make you more flowers and fruit if it's a
fruiting plant. So it's important to give them a boost
keep them growing. Some of our flowers they bloom themselves
into a weakened state and it's just so many flowers
on the plant. Keep them going with a boost of fertilizer.

(01:21:39):
Now'd be a good time to do that. Whether it's
a vegetable gardener or gardener, or a flower garden, flower bed,
now's a good time to get those done. Just a
little tip right there for you to keep in mind.
Your local ACE Hardware store is still stocked up and
ready to go for any kind of coal protection supplies
that you might need. If you are looking at getting

(01:22:02):
some spring cleaning done and you need the storage bends,
and you need the cleaning supplies and all of that,
your local Ace Hardware stores got you covered. They do.
If you're looking at putting a fresh coat of paint out,
or looking at resealing the deck for this spring and
other things, Ace Hardware's got you covered. If you need
the tools to do all of that, Ace Hardware has

(01:22:23):
got you covered. Ace is the place, period just say.
ACE is a place. That's it. Ace Hardware Texas dot
com is where you find my local Ace Hardware stores,
the ones that are part of my garden line team
of Ace Hardware. Acehardware Texas dot Com. There's Aspas ACE
and Kirkandahl up in the Woodlands, there's All Seasons ACE
and well there's Uvaldi ACE on neu Valdi Road on

(01:22:45):
the east side of Houston down southwest in Bay City,
Bay City Ace and Wharton Feed and ACE on North
Richmond Road. I was talking about that one earlier. Chalmers
Ace on Broadway Street down south in Galveston, Or how
about Bacliff Ace on Grand Avenue south of Keema. Many
many Ace Hardware stores. Just go to ACE Hardware Texas
dot com. Find your store and know this. Whatever you're

(01:23:07):
gonna need, whether it's taken care of and creating a
beautiful lawn and garden or doing things inside to make
it a more lovable, beautiful place, Ace Hardware has got
you covered. In my own gardening, I've got some things
to get done on indoor seed starting and bumping up

(01:23:30):
of plants that are growing. I've been doing this for
a while now, but it just seems like I can't
get to it this year. I'm kind of running behind
on getting all the work done that I want to
get done. But now it'd be a good time. If
you're going to do any transplants you're going to grow
yourself for warm season, get them done, get them done,
don't wait, don't delay. If you have indoor plants that

(01:23:51):
haven't been repotted into bigger pots and need to do that,
now's a good time to get it done. Just remember
I always throw a little bit of Nelson's genesis and
soil when you do that, when you're bumping them up
from one container to another, whether it's a tomato transplant
or a house plant or something outdoors, put a little
Nelson Genesis in there, and it is an excellent product

(01:24:14):
for making sure that your plants not only survive, but
literally thrive. Lots of benefits from that. There was a
study done on Nelson products by a former coworker, Mine
Paul Winskey's an extension specialist in the WHO department at
A and M. They did a trial out of the

(01:24:34):
Katie Katie Campus, Houston Community College Katie Campus, and they
looked at Genesis transplant mix on some established Mexican sycamores.
Now I'm telling you use it at planting, which you
should do. But they had some that were already established
and they treated them with Nelson Genesis compared to a
standard conventional fertilizer program. You know, it was the same

(01:24:57):
amount of nutrient for each one. After one year, the
trees they treated with Genesis were three feet taller, that's
eighteen percent increase in height and twenty five percent increase
in trunk diameter. In other words, they grew, they grew faster,
and those kind of results because the nutrient levels of
the comparisons were all the same, but the difference in

(01:25:19):
the genesis plants suggests that the beneficial bacteria make a
rise of fungi, the biologic logical components there as well
as the humans in it. It just helped the plant
develop stronger and the product works. Nutristar genesis want of
many good quality products from the folks at Nelson. Plant
food like some of the other products. It's available by

(01:25:42):
the jar, and so when you use it, you can
refill that jar and not have to buy a new
jar and throw away the plastic. Let's take a little
break here and we'll be right back. Seven one three, two,
two fifty eight seventy four. That's rights run in the gardener.

(01:26:03):
Is something good? Just ask your gardener, don't tell you boy,
if you could bottle up spring gardening enthusiasm. That a
powerful substance. Let's head out to Dickenson this morning, and
we're going to visit with Less. Hello, Less, Welcome to
garden line.

Speaker 17 (01:26:25):
Hey, good morning's good.

Speaker 11 (01:26:26):
How you doing?

Speaker 17 (01:26:28):
It's doing well, thanks, we're talking about transplanting. I guess
a minute ago, I've got a lemon and a line
that really hadn't been doing that great. I think I
planned them right before the last breeze, and the lemon
really cut it back and it just grew one straight

(01:26:51):
line straight up. So when I transplanted I guess I
need to determine again. You get any recommendations that.

Speaker 8 (01:27:02):
Well, they like warm weather, you know, they don't want
to grow when it's cool. But I don't know when
you say transplanted, it is it from one container into another,
or did you put it in the ground.

Speaker 4 (01:27:14):
Right now?

Speaker 17 (01:27:15):
The lemons in the ground, the lime scent a pot,
I'm on the transplant, both of them in the ground.

Speaker 8 (01:27:21):
Yeah. I think when they get in the ground and
the soul warms up, the weather worms up. In general,
they're going to start to put on some new growth
and it'll start slow, but they'll speed up as you
go through the season. You want to get your good
quality plant food to put down there on them to
fertilize them. The folks at Microlife have a citrus type

(01:27:45):
fertilizer mix for fruit and ceentrus, and you can buy
by the bag, and you will use a lot of it,
so it's worth having a bag of it sprinkling around
the plants and watered in really good scratch it in.
I would do it again. I probably would do it
the first time about April, and then I would do
it again probably in April, May, June, June, and then

(01:28:07):
on one more time in August. I do it three
times this year and just continue to water them, keep
the weeds away, get a good mulch on the surface
to block the sunlight off the soil, and I think
you're going to see them get faster and faster as
they get going into the season.

Speaker 17 (01:28:26):
Okay, and it won't hurt like the limits. Just got
one straight branch straight up from the last freeze and
what was it three years ago or whatever to turn that.

Speaker 8 (01:28:38):
Okay, Yeah, when you cut it back, it's going to
branch out below the cut and you're gonna get a
lot of growth coming out, and so you kind of
have to do a little managing of that. And maybe
not every shoot gets to stay, or shoots that are
crossing over, don't let that be. Go ahead and cut
one out and make a good form for your tree.

(01:29:00):
Know this though, Less that The citrus leaf miner is
a little tiny insect that lays an egg in the
leaf and a larva crawls through the leaf and makes
a serpentine trail all through the leaf. That will love
the fresh new growth that comes out. So you want
to get a product that contains spinocid. And when new

(01:29:21):
shoots come out, before you see any damage, spray them
with that spinosaid and do it again ten days later,
and once as the shoots get a little larger, the
leaf miner doesn't bother them. But anytime you prune back
a citrus and get tons of fresh growth the leaf,
it's like you set up a salad bar for the
leaf miner, and so you're gonna have to be ready
to spray them. That's an organic spray. It soaks in

(01:29:43):
the tissue and very safe way to go.

Speaker 17 (01:29:47):
Okay, thank you much, you met.

Speaker 8 (01:29:51):
You take care, good luck with that. Appreciate that the
folks at pest Bro's have been busy this winter with
cold weather varmints. An never came across the yard the
day we're talking, and they had a big old hole
in the sofet eaten by some four legged creature that
crawled up in there. O. Can you know, squirrels do it,

(01:30:12):
rats do it? Who knows what else will get up
in the attic and go bump in the night. Pest
bros Will come out, they'll look at things, they'll they'll
assess them, and even things like little mice. You know,
mice can go through a whole size of a dime.
They just squeeze right in there and they'll come out
and they'll seal that up. So you don't have to
deal with that up in your attic. Now, you know
that when we get into our growing season, people can

(01:30:34):
be thinking termitis. You're gonna be thinking fireants and mosquitoes
and all kinds of other things. And pest Bros. Has
you covered. I don't care if you live east, west,
nor south. They cover this area and they do work right.
They know how to do it effectively, and they know
how to do it in the safest possible manner. Dpestbros
dot com, dpest b r o s dot com. Here's

(01:30:57):
a number two eight one two o six forty six
seventy two oh one two eight one excuse me, two
eight one two oh six forty six seventy I was
checking out Jorges the other day.

Speaker 4 (01:31:13):
You know.

Speaker 8 (01:31:13):
Jorge is our garden center down south of town.

Speaker 10 (01:31:16):
Uh.

Speaker 8 (01:31:17):
He is in the Alvin area, actually on Elizabeth Street, Uh,
between Alvin and Santa Fe. It's an Alvin address. UH,
one seventy seven Elizabeth Street.

Speaker 10 (01:31:27):
Uh.

Speaker 8 (01:31:27):
Here's the phone number Forray seven one three six three
two fifty two ninety seven to one three six three
two fifty two ninety. Now Ray has got a bunch
of s of fruit trees and all kinds of fruit trees.
They're in, they're potted up. They look really good right now,

(01:31:47):
and now is the time to get them done. Don't
wait until spring. You can plant and spring, you can
plant in summer, but do it now. Go buy horaes
and his selection is outstanding for all kinds of fruit trees,
even as strawberry right now that strawberries on them. But seriously,
he also has just gotten in and potted up a
bunch of bear root roses. So you've got roses and

(01:32:08):
nice containers that are ready to go on the ground
at your house. Jorges Hidden Gardens seven to one three
sixty three two fifty two ninety I this time of year,
it just I love this time of year, and it's
It's almost like exciting because people get excited. Gardeners get excited.

(01:32:31):
There's so much that we're doing right now. We're preparing
the soil. Hopefully, if you want to have success, start
with the soil. We are getting our plants and our
seeds out, and as the weather warms, everybody becomes a gardener.
I mean it just people love getting out and growing stuff.
I want you to have success from you do that.

(01:32:53):
So give me a call on garden Line let's talk
about it. Or go to my website where there's a
lot of resources that you can look at that helpful
and the things you do in the garden. My lawncare
schedules two different schedules on there for lawns that are
very helpful at Gardeningwithskip dot com. Gardening with Skip dot Com.

(01:33:15):
You need to go buy there and check those out.
We've got some other stuff we're preparing to put up.
We'll be up soon. You also should follow me on
Instagram and on Facebook. A garden line on Facebook Gardening
garden garden Line with Skip on Instagram. I said it's okay,
I can't talk. Garden Line on Facebook. Garden Line with

(01:33:37):
Skip on Instagram. Check it out. We just put some
other things up there. Don't forget today, by the way,
that I'm going to be at Enchanted Gardens in Richmond
on the Katie Folsh side of Richmond on Highway through
fifty nine. I'll be there from twelve thirty to two thirty.
I'm going to start off with a really nice training

(01:33:58):
that you will enjoy, lots of great pictures of ideas
on growing in containers on your patio and growing on
in giant container boxes on the ground as well how
to have success with that. I'll be giving away Medina
fertilizers that hook up to a garden hose, the products
that they have, the little containers that hook up to

(01:34:19):
a garden hose and you can spray your lawn, your
flower beds, your vegetable gardens, whatever with them. I'll be
giving some of those away today, and the folks that
Enchanted Gardens in Richmond are going to be providing some
twenty five dollars gift certificates and this will all be
by drawing. Hopefully you'll win. They have a tent and
it is got heaters in it, so bring your coat

(01:34:40):
because it's cold a out there, but bring your coat
we're going to be inside where we can really see
and get some inspiration. And I promise you you're gonna
have a good time, and I guarantee you're gonna laugh
as we go through this, because there's a lot of
fun to be had with gardening. And that's what we're
gonna do at Enchanted Gardens in Richmond today twelve thirty
to I hope you will come out. They always have

(01:35:02):
food trucks out there and other things. It's just a
fun place to go. If you have never been there,
you need to go for sure. If you have been there,
you're going to go anyway, because you know how cool
of what place it is. Our clay soils in the
Gulf Coast region, which we are part of here in
the Greater Houston area, they shrink and they swell when

(01:35:23):
they get wet and then they get dry. They move,
in other words, significantly, and it is a powerful force
of nature enough to split a house slab open. If
you got cracks in the sheet rock or in the brick,
if doors are sticking, those are all signs that something
has moved. You need to call Ty Strickland at fix

(01:35:44):
My Slab Foundation Repair. Here is his number, two eight
one two FI five forty ninety nine tie as a
straight shooter, and he does business the old fashioned way.
He'll tell you if it needs fixing or not. He'll
assess it. He'll explain the situation to you, so you
make a decision on what you want to do.

Speaker 11 (01:36:02):
Uh.

Speaker 8 (01:36:03):
He shows up on time. That's what I mean by
the old fashioned way. He fixes it right, that's the
old fashioned way, and he charges a fair price. Two
eight one two fy five forty nine forty nine. Fix
myslab dot com. Tell him you're a guardenline listener. Free
estimate for garden line listeners at fixmislab dot com. What

(01:36:25):
are you gonna do this year that is new and different?
If you're gonna be a caller this morning on garden line,
I would love to hear that. By the way, the
number two or seven one three two one two kt
r H seven one three two one two fifty eight
seventy four. What are you gonna do new? Maybe it's
a new way of gardening. Maybe you're gonna try this

(01:36:45):
container gardening that I'm gonna talk about today at Antended Gardens.
Maybe you're gonna grow something you haven't grown before. You
never had fruit trees, and you're gonna put some in.
Maybe you're gonna try herbs. You never really grew herbs,
but you're gonna put some in flower beds, or maybe
you're gonna make an herb garden. What are you going
to try new this year that you haven't done before?
A new way of growing, a new kind of plant,

(01:37:07):
a new variety, new way to trellis tomatoes?

Speaker 9 (01:37:11):
What is it?

Speaker 8 (01:37:13):
Can you call? Let's talk about that, because every gardening
year you need to be trying something new. Gardening is
a fresh new season every season, and every year gardening
brings hope because it is just that an tazem every spring,
I know that I'm going to have the biggest, most
luscious tomatoes I've ever had in my life that year. Right,

(01:37:35):
that's the hope of gardeners, and it is true. By
the way, today, happy birthday to Tie Strickland. It fixed
my slab foundation repair TI. Congratulations. I appreciate that, and
I'd wish you the very happiest of birthdays. You call
them up today two eight one, two five ninety nine,

(01:37:57):
tell him happy birthday. That's a good thing. Well, we're
gonna close it down here for the news for just
a moment, and we'll be right back with your calls.
Seven one three, two one two five eight seven four.
Don't go away, look forward to answering your questions and
talking gardening when I come back. If you're a foot

(01:38:20):
is not tapping, I need you to take two fingers
from one hand and put them on your wrist on
the other hand and check for a pulse because you
may not be all right. Welcome back to the guard Line.
Glad to have you with us. Uh, We're gonna jump
right out here on the phones and head to Livingston,
Texas and talk to Colleen. Hello, Colleen, Welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 18 (01:38:43):
Good morning, Good morning. I have a question about a
rock garden, not any plants. I just have a rock
garden and I need to have a barrier underneath it
so the plant the weeds don't come through. And I
have lack okay, black stuff, but it doesn't help.

Speaker 8 (01:39:01):
Tell me about it not helping. What happens when you
use it? What are you seeing?

Speaker 18 (01:39:06):
The weeds are just coming right through, popping right through
the black barrier.

Speaker 8 (01:39:10):
Okay, Well, if they're popping through it, then the barrier
is not strong enough to stop them from coming up.
And the main things that pop through a barrier are
going to be nut seds, which will punch a hole
through it easily almost all barriers, and bermuda grass or
something that's just finding a gap or a hole in
the barrier to come through. The Other thing that happens

(01:39:33):
with barriers, colleen is a little soil, dust and stuff
lands on them, and seeds land on top, and then
they sprout on top and we'll send bunch down in
the bar barrier fabrics. And that's the biggest problem with
barriers is they're not they're temporary. Really in time, you're

(01:39:53):
gonna get weeds growing on them or something. There are
some really barriers made. There's some high quality ones that
are very dense that will stop things from coming through them.
But as far as the other it's just occasionally you're
going to have to go in there with something in
spray weeds and it could be organic or synthetic. There's

(01:40:14):
options for both, but ultimately no barrier is long term
weed free.

Speaker 18 (01:40:21):
Okay, So what is a good, good quality barrier to use?

Speaker 7 (01:40:26):
Do you have a name?

Speaker 8 (01:40:27):
There's a well, there's a number of companies out there,
one called DWT. They sell products that are available in
our garden centers. Dewet barriers, you just have to look.
Typically a place will give you several options for barriers.
Some that are so wimpy you can literally punch a
finger through if you push hard against it, and others

(01:40:49):
that are very thick and felty, sometimes woven very felty
and thick. The thicker you can get the better off
in terms of it not tearing and preventing stuff from
coming through. But if what you're coming through is nutsedge,
that's a whole another thing, and you're just going have
to spray the nutsedge to shut it down.

Speaker 18 (01:41:09):
Okay, Well, I appreciate your health, Thank you so much.

Speaker 8 (01:41:13):
You bet good luck. Appreciate that the folks at Wildbirds
Unlimited are set up and ready to go for spring,
as are your birds. And by the way, right now
it's winter. The birds are not having as many daylight
hours to get out and forage, and they need a
better higher quality feed to keep them warm, to keep
them energized, and to keep them healthy. And that would

(01:41:36):
be a feed that has more fat and more protein
in it. And the folks at Wildbirds Unlimited have Winter
super Blend Winter super blend perfect for this long months
of shorter days that we're going through right now. Now,
it would be a good time to put it out.
They have a variety though, of bird seed, and everything

(01:41:57):
they sell is stuff that birdsirds want to eat. Birds
care about the quality of their seed as you do
about the food that's put on your plate. You know,
if you're a kid, broccoli gets pushed off the side,
fed to the dog or something, right, and birds feel
that way about the red babies. They don't want that.
So I mean, could they eat it, yeah, but do

(01:42:19):
they want No, they don't want it. And you see
cheap bird seed that is filled with the red baby
sometimes over half of the seed is red babies. Well
not it. Wild Bird's Unlimited Quality blends. They even have
no Mess blends where if you don't even want sunflower
shells on the ground, the birds shell them and eat
the kernel inside. You can get a no mess that

(01:42:39):
has pre shelled like sunflower for example. In it wild
Birds Unlimited. It's time to get feeders. It's time to
get the bird houses out. The scouts from the purple
Martins are. They're going to be at your house soon,
if not already. I mean they are out and about
and as certainly as we warm up just a bit,
they're going to be there. You need to have the

(01:43:00):
house up and ready to go. Go to your local
Wallbirds Unlimited six stores in the Greater Houston area. W
a b U dot com forward slash Houston Waldbird's Unlimited.
We will go out to Porter now and talk to
Bob this morning. Hey Bob, welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 11 (01:43:18):
Hey Skip, Hey, I I start my tomato seeds and
almost seeds indoors about this time of year.

Speaker 4 (01:43:25):
Uh.

Speaker 10 (01:43:25):
I usually I wanted to made us they get a
lanky on me.

Speaker 11 (01:43:29):
And I've got one of those warmer tray using start
seeds in and I'm using the real fine potting seed
starter and I thought I had my lights close en up.
I just need some tips on which you bushed, information
on getting that right because they usually they're real lank

(01:43:50):
and I, you know, I wanted to made it up
plant the the most of part of the stem buried
so it works. But they don't.

Speaker 10 (01:43:57):
They don't look when I plan them. I don't know
what's the.

Speaker 11 (01:44:02):
Bob.

Speaker 8 (01:44:03):
Is your light a fluorescent light or a led?

Speaker 9 (01:44:06):
Do you know?

Speaker 4 (01:44:08):
Uh?

Speaker 8 (01:44:09):
Is a fluorescent tube? Yes, okay, you need if it's
a floor, oh it's a bull not okay, okay, well, uh,
you know, there's a thousand different ones out there, so
I can't know exactly what you have. But basically, if

(01:44:32):
the plants are at all spinley, the light's not close enough.
And uh, sometimes you got to get them real close,
like within a foot of the plant. If it's a
bright led made for for and there are LED bulbs too,
made for plant growing. If it's just like a fluorescent tube,
I put them two inches away from the plant for

(01:44:54):
just a fluorescent tube, But for bulbs like you got,
you probably need to get them closer. Because it's all
about the light. The things that make a transplant spinley
and not very attractive, not very healthy. Is it very
warm conditions, lots of moisture and fertilizer, and lack of light.
All three of those push it toward being lanky. But

(01:45:17):
if you get the light down close to the plant,
very bright, and you run it. I would run them
for fourteen to sixteen hours a day, depending on the
stage of the growth of the transplants.

Speaker 11 (01:45:30):
All right, that's that's probably what I'm doing. Then it
sounds that sounds good. And if you got.

Speaker 10 (01:45:36):
To do a little more, I do about to meta seats.

Speaker 11 (01:45:39):
And pepper seats. Should I do over seed and cattle
seed or or just plant them underground when it gets warmer.

Speaker 8 (01:45:48):
We can plant them on the ground when it gets warmer.
Sometimes people are trying to kind of overlap crops, you know,
like they want one well in its way by the
time they pull the other one out and a transplant
like I cant getting it started. Uh, then then you
have maybe another week or two to finish out something
and then get that transplant in. You can do it
that way. But generally we we don't transplant candlopes, for example,

(01:46:13):
or okra, but you can you can, uh if you
if you want to, if you want to go that route.
Uh that And let me say one more thing about
d I was just gonna tell you something. You were
transplant growing indoors lights. I just I just went blank. Sorry,
I had another thought.

Speaker 10 (01:46:37):
Oh, I appreciate you s very much.

Speaker 8 (01:46:41):
I appreciate that. Hey, I thought of what it was.
Go to my website gardening with Skip dot com and
there's a publication on lighting for growing house plants. You
will find it very helpful. I promise you. It's free
to download or just look at on your computer screen.

Speaker 10 (01:46:57):
All right, I'll doer ship.

Speaker 8 (01:46:59):
Thank you, sir, Thank you appreciate your call very much.
Let's see Buchanans Native plants and the Heights. I love
going to Buchanans. You know, the name native plants is
in there because Buchanans is the biggest, best solution source
of the most native plants in our whole region. I mean,
if you're looking for all kinds of natives, ones that

(01:47:20):
other people don't grow and sell, and you're looking for
advice on natives, nobody has got what Buchanans has on
eleven Street and the Heights. But natives are a small
part of all the things buchan growth. They could call
it Buchanans houseplants because their houseplant greenhouse is huge and
full of lots of things. They could call it Buchanans

(01:47:42):
shading plants shade plants because they have a great selection
of things that grow when there's not enough light for
most things. They could call it Buchanans fruiting plants because
they sell free. Do you see what I'm saying. Buchanans
is a place for all kinds of very very helpful information,
and I would hide recommend that you go by there
and check them out Eleventh Street in the Heights, Buchanans

(01:48:05):
Plants dot Com. While you're there, you're going to be
able to pick up your nitrofush or Nelson, your full
line of microlife products, Nature's Way resources and heirloom soils
by the bag, as well as their own Buchanan's Life
below below and the Buchanans Tropicora quality products they sell

(01:48:28):
themselves there Buchanans Plants. Let's take a little break. We'll
be right back with our last segment of the hour.
All right, welcome back, A welcome back to Guardline. Good
to have you with us this morning. Hey, cienam all
south of Houston. I can tell you a couple of
things about Cenamals. I can tell you that when you
go there, you're going to find top quality products because

(01:48:48):
that is all they carry, and they carry a lot
of products. We're talking about compost, We're talking about mulchizing,
about rock and stone and flat rock and river rock.
We're talking about fertilize things that make the soil better.
That is what cienamultch is all about. Microlife Medina, Nitrofoss
Nelson's asamite products from heirloom soils. It's all there, the

(01:49:14):
brown stuff before green stuff. Capital of South Euston, Ciena Maltz.
They're on FM five twenty one near Highway six and
two eighty eight Siena Boltch dot com. Go to that
website tells you everything you need to know when they're open,
what they carry, how to get there. The other thing
I'll tell you about Ciana Maltch is you're going to
be treated right. Friendly, friendly, friendly, happy folks that make

(01:49:37):
sure you're happy when you get back. When you go.
Check out the outdoor stuff they have. They brought in
vago beds and they have statuary for out in the
yard that that that metal rustic stuff that is just
really cool looking indoors, the gift shop. I mean, there's
a lot going on there at Ciena Malch Siennabultch dot com.
That's what you need to know, Cianamulch dot com. We're

(01:50:01):
gonna head out to Humbol and talk to Sam this morning.
Hey Sam, Welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 19 (01:50:09):
Hi Skip, I have a question about fertilizer. I have
the Nitrocross red bag and can I put that out now,
or John need to wait till the weather's warmer.

Speaker 8 (01:50:24):
You're gonna wait a little bit. The grass is not
able to use it yet, it's not able to take
it up very well yet your grass is sleeping. It'd
be like putting a steak dinner beside somebody that's snoring
in bed. They're not going to eat right then, although
if it was me, I'd smell the steak and wake up.
But anyway, on my schedule at the end of February

(01:50:45):
through about the third week of March is the optional
early greenup application that we have, and that is where
that night fross product would be put down. And so
he just needs to wake up a little bit and
start to get some movements and take up some of
those nutrients other than them just kind of washing away
because grass isn't ready to use them.

Speaker 4 (01:51:08):
Okay, well, thank you, Ship.

Speaker 8 (01:51:12):
You bet, thanks a lot, appreciate that. Sam, thanks for
being a listener. All right, you're listening to guard Line.
We're here to help you have success, at least that
is my goal. If you would like to give us
a call, we're gonna take a litt break here in
a bit. But if you'd like to give us a call.
We've got one more hour in US today before I
head to Enchanted Gardens and Richmond. Now, if you've never

(01:51:34):
been to a Chanty gardens, here's your excuse to go.
You definitely as if you needed an excuse, you need
to get out there. If you haven't been in a while,
you need to get out there. At twelve thirty, I'm
going to show up and I'm going to be in
a tent that is heated, talking about gardening for vegetables
and raised beds and in containers. So if you're going, eh,

(01:51:55):
I'm not going to plow up the backyard, come to
my top. I'm going to tell you why you don't
have to. If you're gonna go, I don't even have
a room to put a bed on the ground. Come
to my talk. I'm gonna tell you how to grow
vegetables and how to have it have success in growing vegetables.
We're gonna have fun. I promise you're gonna learn. I
promise you're gonna laugh because I can't not cut up. Okay,

(01:52:17):
So we're gonna have fun. Come on out and do it.
I'm gonna be giving away some products. Medina is providing
the hose end types of products at Medina Makes. I'm
gonna be giving away those in a drawing and also
in a drawing the folks that enchanted gardens, which, by
the way, if you don't know, is on the Richmond
Rosenberg side. Oh excuse me, the Katie Fullsher side of

(01:52:41):
Richmond roseenmer Katie Fullscher side. So go north from Richmond.
I'll make it simple. Highway three fifty nine, FM three
fifty nine. I'm going to also be giving away some
certificates twenty five dollars gift certificates that they're providing the
folks at tended gardens. So now if you were to
tell me, I can show up and maybe win a
gift certificate and get to go on a spending spree,

(01:53:03):
having fun getting plants I can't live without. By the way,
there's very few plants that I can live without. I'll
be very excited about that too. I hope you can
come out. I think I have the food trucks and
lots of other things. They got copies of my book
on hand if you'd like to get a copy of that.
But we're going to have a really good time and
then I'm just gonna sit there and answer your gardening questions.
And as in all appearances, if you want to bring

(01:53:24):
me weeds out of your yard in a bag that
we can look at and identify and tell you what
to do about them, or bugs, I'll put them under
a hot lamp and make them confess. If you want diseases,
any kind of thing, or hey, there's a plant, here's
a leaf from it, what is that, we'll do that
as well as well as pictures on your phone that
we can advise you on. That's what it's all about.

(01:53:45):
I'll be there for two hours till two thirty, so
come on out, but get there at the first part
because I want you to hear this talk. Even if
you think of yourself as I am not a vegetable gardener,
when you get through this talk, you're going to want
to try something and a container. I promise you you
will because it is that easy.

Speaker 4 (01:54:01):
Uh.

Speaker 8 (01:54:01):
If you have a question that you would like to
ask about, now would be a good time to call in.
We're going to go to a break here in a bit.
As I said, Uh, but you can be first up
that things tend to get busy at the end of
the show, and so here's your chance to get first
in line seven one three two one two five eight
seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight

(01:54:23):
seventy four. Give me a call and we'll be glad
to visit with you and answer your gardening questions. Uh,
if you are planning on doing any kind of indoor
seed sprouting. The number one thing, and I was talking
about this just a little bit before here, Uh visiting
with Bob Uh is lighting. Lighting, lighting, lighting. That is

(01:54:43):
the number one thing that causes lack of great results
when you're growing transplants indoors. Is water important? Yeah, it's essential.
Our nutrients important. Plants can't grow without nutrients. Yes, they're essential.
Is it good to have a little warmth underneath the
trey a heating a pat YEP for some plants, it is.

(01:55:03):
But lighting is where things go wrong. On my website
Gardening with Skip dot com, there is a publication lighting
for grown transplants. You gotta look at it. It has
I spend a lot of time putting this together. It
has a lot of very helpful things to help you
understand and when you read it, if you've been trying

(01:55:24):
to grow transplants, you're gonna go, oh, so that's what
I wasn't doing, So that's what I need to do. Okay,
it's free. I mean it was a customer good one.
Go check it out and then go try it. You're
missing out on a great part of gardening when you're
not out there growing your own transplants, not all of them,

(01:55:44):
but some of them. Some things like that tomata you
can't find anywhere. Write yourself. You can do it. All right,
we're gonna take a break when we come back. Jacob
in Atlanta, Georgia. Hang on, we'll be right there and
your first stop.

Speaker 1 (01:56:00):
Welcome to Katie r. H Garden Line with Skip ricord.

Speaker 2 (01:56:04):
Shoes, the bases, the gases, gas, can you shrimp?

Speaker 5 (01:56:12):
Just watch him as.

Speaker 3 (01:56:14):
World got gas gas You did so many bo takes,
the soup hoopas in the bays, the gasses like gas.

Speaker 6 (01:56:25):
And again you Dad Samos becobles back ticking but not
a sound, the glasses.

Speaker 17 (01:56:31):
And gas and.

Speaker 13 (01:56:34):
The sun, themon of dreams, the gases like gas. Again
you jam by first starting out of great in the gas.

Speaker 20 (01:56:47):
Like gas became you did.

Speaker 3 (01:56:49):
Everything is so clean, can see and never.

Speaker 8 (01:56:53):
Ding he sung in all right, welcome back, Welcome, to
guarden Line. We're about to enter our last hour of
the morning. Remember, for those of you who are new
to guard Line, you should know that we're here from
six am to ten am every Saturday and every Sunday morning,
oh year, all year long, one way or another. So

(01:57:17):
you're free to give us a call anytime you want.
Seven one three two one two five eight seven four.
Let's go out to Atlanta, Georgia and talk to Jacob
this morning. Hey, Jacob, are you in Atlanta?

Speaker 20 (01:57:28):
Stale used to be there, first time calling in good
Can you hear me?

Speaker 8 (01:57:33):
Yes, sir, yes, sir.

Speaker 9 (01:57:36):
Actually I'm in Spring.

Speaker 20 (01:57:37):
I just moved here this past year and I bought
a house and all the people didn't take care of
the yards. All the landscaping was dead, and I had
to like redo it all, and I really researched. I
wanted the stuff that would kind of survive a frost,
you know, And a couple of things that I have
I'm trying to decide do I need to tear them
out or see if they're going to come back, And
that says I have birds of Paradise, falk hill legave, Lantana,

(01:58:00):
firecracker bush, and oleanders are, Will they come back or
do I need to pull them out?

Speaker 8 (01:58:06):
Bird of Paradise. Probably the worst of the cost will
kill it out right, but usually there's enough of a
clump there you might get a sprout come back out
of it. Uh, So I wouldn't give up totally on it.
I'm sorry you're gonna have to go through that list
of plants again.

Speaker 14 (01:58:22):
Uh.

Speaker 21 (01:58:24):
A foxtail agave.

Speaker 8 (01:58:27):
Mm hmm. And then two plants foxtail fern and a
gave is what you're saying.

Speaker 20 (01:58:35):
No, a foxtail a gave is what it's supposed to be.

Speaker 8 (01:58:39):
Okay, Well, the agaves are are pretty cold hearty, but
they range some between them, so I think you're gonna
have to wait and see. Don't give up on it, though.
There's if even if a top was killed on a
on a plant like that, Uh, you're probably gonna get
a sprout coming out of the base. Lantanas will generally
reach sproute just fine from the base. I we've got

(01:59:04):
pretty cold in your area, but I think your lantanna
will come back and be okay. So yeah, most of those,
but I would wait, be patient, wait until spring, because
here's the thing. Depending on where it is in your landscape,
even you know, on the north side subject of the wind,
on the south side protected by the house and so on,

(01:59:25):
it's hard to predict exactly what a plant's gonna do.
There's a lot of micro climates around the yard, so
I on all of those, I would just say, let's wait.
And on some of them, like the bird of Paradise,
you're probably gonna have to wait well into the warming
weather before you see any signs of recovery on it, okay.

Speaker 10 (01:59:46):
And then firecracker bush and oleanders.

Speaker 8 (01:59:51):
On the firecracker bush, does it have arching very thin
leaves and stems that almost like a fountain coming up
and drooping down on the outsides.

Speaker 5 (02:00:03):
Or red flowers?

Speaker 8 (02:00:05):
Yeah, if it has, if it's what I just described
with red flowers, that is a type of Russellia, and
it it will come back from the base.

Speaker 9 (02:00:17):
Okay, good mhmm, yeah, all right, well, thank you sir,
I should come back.

Speaker 8 (02:00:26):
Uh is your only under a dwarf or a full
size leander?

Speaker 12 (02:00:30):
Do you know?

Speaker 21 (02:00:31):
I believe?

Speaker 16 (02:00:34):
Okay, you're about.

Speaker 8 (02:00:39):
Okay, Well, it's good. It it probably well, the taller
ones are hardier than the dwarf ones in general, depending
on how that plant was going into the cold. If
it was if it had hardened off and kind of
gotten ready for the cold versus not, will determine its survivability.
But at the very least you should get re sprouting

(02:01:01):
out at the base of it.

Speaker 20 (02:01:03):
Okay, all right, perfect, Thank you for your help, sir.
Around next year, those some of these things I want
to cover up. So I just didn't realize it was
going to have that much of a problem.

Speaker 8 (02:01:11):
So yeah, well, you know, you kind of learn over
the years as you do these things. But welcome to
the area. Good to have you here.

Speaker 9 (02:01:20):
Thank you.

Speaker 20 (02:01:21):
I'll be listening to you show again.

Speaker 9 (02:01:22):
Appreciate it all right, bye bye.

Speaker 8 (02:01:27):
Dan Deefeed and Tomball three miles west of two forty
nine on Highway twenty nine to twenty, just outside Tumbo.
Dan Dee feed is stocked up with all the stuff
that you need. I was just talking to the folks
out there yesterday saying, hey, you know, with this cold
coming up, what do you know do you are you
cleaned out or do you have supplies?

Speaker 4 (02:01:45):
Oh?

Speaker 8 (02:01:45):
They got there, they're stocked up. They've got the freeze miser,
that low thing you screw the faucets that you screwed
into the facet. You turn on the faucet and it
nothing happens, and then it starts dripping as it gets cold,
and as it gets cold, it drips a little bit faster,
and your pipes don't freeze. I got them all around
my house. Dandfeed has those. They've got the heat lamps

(02:02:07):
with the little aluminum clamp on shields, you know, so
if you've got baby checks, or if you need to
put them underneath the big cover to protect some citrus trees,
which is what's happening outside at my house right now.
I've got some of those out there. They've got the
extension cords and everything you need. At D and D Feed,
you're going to find the supplies for any kind of gardening, growing, landscaping,

(02:02:29):
you name it that you need, from your lawn to
your flower beds and shrubs to vegetable gardens. They've got
the fertilizers by Nitrofoss and Microlife and Nelson's and Medina,
and they have the heirloom soil products too, by the bag,
so you can go out there and just instantly create
you a really cool, beautiful garden. D and D Feed

(02:02:51):
two eight, one three five one seventy one forty four.
We're going to go to Montrose now and talk to
Kevin this morning.

Speaker 16 (02:03:00):
Hey Kevin, welcome, Hey skip Pie, thanks for taking my call.

Speaker 10 (02:03:04):
I have a question for you. I bought a palmetto grapefruit.

Speaker 9 (02:03:08):
Tree and it grew beautifully. I've had it for over
a year. I got seven huge grapefruits. But when I
cut them open, they're not developed inside.

Speaker 8 (02:03:23):
What do you describe to me what you're seeing are
they Are they green on the outside or are they
turning yellow?

Speaker 10 (02:03:29):
Came on green.

Speaker 9 (02:03:31):
They the fruit was actually green, and then someone told
me wait until they turned yellow.

Speaker 10 (02:03:37):
Which I did. They're huge. They're very so big, I
had to pop them up with other branches that I
cut off of other trees to hold the fruit on
the tree.

Speaker 9 (02:03:48):
And then when I cut into it, it has a
very thick membr and i'd say like four inches thick,
very soft once you get through the skin, and then
the inside, like the last one I just could open,
only had maybe three little parts that were turning red.
Everything else was hard.

Speaker 8 (02:04:09):
Okay, Well, a pamelo is very thick, skinned, very large,
and like any citrus, there's a stage where it is
at its best quality. Pamelos tend to be a little more,
a little sweeter, a little less acidic, and a little
less flavorful in my opinion than a regular grape fruit.

(02:04:33):
So if they go too far, they're going to be
kind of dry and mealy inside, not a lot of
juiciness to them. So going too far can be a problem.
But picking them too soon, what would you say was
the outside diameter? Are these softballs or than softballs?

Speaker 9 (02:04:54):
Bigger than softballs?

Speaker 8 (02:04:57):
Okay, well it sounds like they kind of well the
size that they would be. Yeah, So other than maybe
cutting through it and sending me a picture of what
it looks like, it's going to be one of those
things though that I mentioned either went too far, stayed
on too long, or it just hadn't fully developed yet.

(02:05:18):
But if it's producing, it's getting enough light, so that's good.

Speaker 10 (02:05:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (02:05:23):
The tree is beautiful and it survived the freeze, and
I took whatever fruit was left in before we got
the deep freeze, thinking that would just you know, explode
and then But looks like none of the fruit has
developed to its full potential. So I had read somewhere,

(02:05:44):
I don't know if this is true that the fruit
takes a certain amount of years to actually develop.

Speaker 8 (02:05:50):
Now, the fruit the tree may take some years to
fully you know, establish itself well, But the fruit itself
is like like other citrus fruits. It's it goes through
a season and over. It's not gonna land last over
a year on the tree for example, right, the fruit
doesn't need a year to develop even.

Speaker 9 (02:06:13):
Okay, yeah, I thought this was gone very long, and
so yeah, we'll just let it go and we'll try
it again next year.

Speaker 8 (02:06:22):
I have flowers on it, so yeah, my guess is
that too mature may be the problem as we talk
about this, but that's my best shot at it there.
But I do appreciate I appreciate your call, Kevin. Good luck.
Good luck with that. We're gonna have to run to
a break here, Matt in the woodlands. You'll be first
up when we come back. All right, we're back. Let's go.

(02:06:43):
We're on a roll here. Hey, Growers outlet. It goes
down in the winter cold of winter time, and they're
back open again and going full force up there in Willis, Texas.
And that's the website, by the way, Growers Outlet in
Willis dot com. They've got their plants started, they got
lot of seeds started, transplants growing. They grow ei their

(02:07:04):
own stuff up there, and they have a great selection
of all kinds of things, of course, betting plants, perennials,
the most beautiful ferns you're going to see anywhere. A
nice selection of all kinds of shrubs and trees and whatnot,
fruit trees or season They carry a lot of stuff
up there in a nice gift shop too. Now when
you head up there, you're going to be able to

(02:07:24):
buy your fertilizers from Microlife and nitrophiles and Medina for example.
If you are up we're in the Willis area, Willis,
the Woodlands, bent Water, April, Sound Point, Aquarius, Republic, Grand Rams,
Seven Coves, all those communities up there. This is a
local garden center for you growers out in the Willis
on Highway seventy five, just minutes away from forty five.

(02:07:46):
So let's do it this way. If you were going up,
let's say seventy five or forty five, excuse me, and
you cut across to seventy five. If you're in Willis,
go south on seventy five. I've exited seven Coad. Go
north and it's right there. So it's just south of Willis.
Great place, nice greenhouses. Today'd be a good day to

(02:08:06):
be there because you'd be inside the warm greenhouse shopping
around for the plants that you need. Growers outlet in Willis.
We're gonna go now to John in Southwest Houston. Hey, John, welcome,
regard line.

Speaker 22 (02:08:20):
Hey, Hey Keith, great, how are you doing? Hey look good?

Speaker 4 (02:08:25):
Good?

Speaker 22 (02:08:25):
Have a plant that had covered with one of those
green things, you know, But I noticed that all the
tree leaves a wei the way, but it has fruits
on them, you know, on the trees. So is that
those foods me right?

Speaker 10 (02:08:42):
Or should I forget about building?

Speaker 8 (02:08:45):
If they're not fully developed there, they're not going to be.
They're not. If the plant itself, the stalk, was killed,
then it's the fred's not going to develop. You may
want to wait a while, unless you already know the
stalk is dead. You may want to wait a while
since you had them covered. But Papa is very tropical
and it just doesn't tolerate much cold.

Speaker 22 (02:09:04):
Yes, I had wrapped the trunk with you know, like
a you know, a warm cloth or something like that
before putting the cover over the over the Okay, Okay.

Speaker 8 (02:09:15):
Well, let's let's do that. Let's do this, John, I'd
be patient and wait. I think that it's not going
to be okay, but I wouldn't quit if it were mind.
I would wait and let's let it warm up and
let's see what that plant's going to do. Who knows,
you might be surprised.

Speaker 10 (02:09:30):
Okay, thank you very much.

Speaker 8 (02:09:32):
All right, you bet appreciate your call. Thanks a lot.
Let's going out to Mountain the Woodlands. Hello, Matt, welcome
to garden Line.

Speaker 9 (02:09:41):
Hey, good morning.

Speaker 10 (02:09:42):
Skip quick question.

Speaker 16 (02:09:44):
I pulled in a dwarf key on it's in a container,
pulled it into the house, and to my surprise, there
was about a root. It was about a foot and
a half growing out of the wheephole. And it's not
a small root. It's about a or inch in diameter.
And I'm not ready to take the plants back outside.

(02:10:04):
And I was just wondering, do I cut that root
at that wheephole and let it reset itself, or how
do I hang inlelet?

Speaker 8 (02:10:16):
So was this sitting on the ground and the root
was going down in the ground or was it sitting
like on a concrete surface and the roots Okay, yeah,
just cut it off at the bottom of the pot,
and it'll be fine. That happens whenever plants are sitting
where their roots can get down, I generally recommend, like
if a plant is sitting on a concrete you don't

(02:10:37):
have to worry about it. But if it's on the soil,
I like to put the pot up on a little
bit of a rise or something to hold it up
off the ground. The reason is number one, the roots
won't go down in there, because what will happen is
it'll take off and grow much bigger plant than that
pot could support because it has soil roots and soil
down below. Second thing is when it sits on the soil,

(02:11:00):
the drain holes, now they got a root plugging the
drain hole. Plus it's sitting on soil and the soil
is sort of sealing the bottom and you're not getting
good internal drainage out of that pot. So that's a
couple of other reasons.

Speaker 16 (02:11:13):
Okay, no good deal, great great information. Thanks kit, I
appreciate it.

Speaker 8 (02:11:19):
Yes, sir, thank you appreciate your call very much. The
folks at Medena have a number of great products, and
they have products that are available with a hose end applicator.
So it's like a plastic bottle that you attach your
hose to and you spread it out over whatever it
could be. The lawn could be a garden, it could

(02:11:39):
be shrub beeds there has to grow for lawns. It's
a twelve twelve for sex. Product works really really well.
They also have the sixteen percent nitrogen product available by
the hose in sprayer. And by the way, I'll be
at Intenned Gardens today giving away those products. We're going

(02:11:59):
to be drawing for them. The products from Medina that
are hose and applied. These things are so convenient because
you hook them up. You know, if you're doing your lawn,
you walk through the lawn just spraying across spraying the swap.
They give you good, good, good quick results and they
make your lawn look better. And if you got an
area's not looking so good, you could just kind of

(02:12:20):
treat that area and get a little boost in it.
But I'll tell you this, once you got them hooked
up as well, give them in other places. I know
a lot of people that love to use that on
their gardens as well. Medina products in general, quality products
come on out to in Chenni gardens today, hear my
talk on vegetable gardening and race beds and containers, and

(02:12:42):
who knows, maybe you'll win one of these cool products
from the folks at Medina. We're going to head out
to Kingwood, Texas and talk to Jean.

Speaker 9 (02:12:51):
Hello Jean, Hi, Skip, I sure enjoy your program.

Speaker 7 (02:12:56):
I wanted to give a shout out to the Kingwood
Garden Club. We are having a home and garden tour
April seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth that will include a plant sale.
So for all of those plants you lost this winter,
you can replace some at a good price at our

(02:13:16):
garden tour Kingwood Garden.

Speaker 8 (02:13:19):
Well, you guys always have good garden tours up there, Jane, Yes,
we do it.

Speaker 7 (02:13:23):
Every other year and it's our only fundraiser and we
are five oh one three c So form more.

Speaker 8 (02:13:31):
In how people? Yeah, that's what I was going to ask.
How do people find out more?

Speaker 7 (02:13:37):
Yeah, tickets will be sold at Wildbird's unlimited Kingwood Garden Center.
You can go to our website Kingwoodgardenclub dot org for
more information.

Speaker 8 (02:13:52):
Okay, So the king Kingwoodgardenclub dot org are up in
Kingwood on Kingwood Drive. Uh and king Wood Drive is
the wild Birds Unlimited store up there one, so you
can also get the tickets there. All right, well, thank
you for the call, and good luck with your event.
I do wish you well. All right, very good. So, uh,

(02:14:18):
what is uh what is the plant that you are
going to do this year that you've never grown before?
What is this the style of gardening? The type of gardening?
I mean, it may be I'm going to try this
new way of trellising tomatoes that I've never done before.
I'd like to hear about that. I'm always curious, so
let's uh, let's talk about that. Give me a call

(02:14:40):
seven one three two one two five eight seven four.
I'm want to give you a couple of ideas and suggestions.
So tomatoes, everybody knows you can steak tomatoes. That isn't
done as much anymore, but it's still done. I'm just
saying it's not the number one way people grow tomatoes.
Some people put steaks down a row of tomatoes and
they eve like a twine in and out of the

(02:15:03):
tomato plants attached, winding it around the steak, and then
in and out of the tomato plants and around the
next steak. And they do several layers of that and
they create a weave that holds the tomatoes in place.
You can do that. I want tell you the way
I like to do it. I like tomato cages are great.
That's kind of the famous way you grow tomatoes. Right,
That's all fine, we can do that, But tomato cages

(02:15:27):
can be hard to store. Now. I know there's types
that fold away, and there's different ways people have made
tomato cages. It'll fold up and stuff. What I like
to do is use cattle fence panels, livestock panels, and
I'll cut them in sections. They come sixteen feet long.
You get a bolt cutter. You can make sections whatever
link you want, but I'll do them about eight feet long.

(02:15:50):
If I have a row of tomatoes and attach them
to a couple of teposts in the ground at an angle.
So imagine if spence was leaning out so that the
bottom of the cattle panel, they're about four or five
feet high. The bottom of the cattle panel is about
a foot away from the post, and the top is

(02:16:10):
leaning against the post. Can you picture that, So it's
a slight lean. You plant your plants underneath that leaned panel.
And as they grow, you weave them through the livestock panel.
You don't have to weave them a lot, just enough
for them to hang on, so they'll be flopping around
on the ground. You pick it up and you kind
of go in and out of the panel once and
you create a wall of tomatoes over time. That way,

(02:16:32):
you can do some pruning out of suckers in order
to control it and manage it. But your tomatoes tend
to hang down below the panel and are shaded by
that wall of foliage very well. And at the end
you can just with the clippers clip out some vines
and pull them all off there and clean up that
whole panel, and the panels being flat, store very easily
around back behind the barn, behind the garage, whatever. And

(02:16:55):
I like that way. So it's not the only way
to grow tomatoes, but it is one way for tomatoes
that are going to be vining. So that's just an
example of what I'm talking about. Let's take a little break.
We'll be back, Bob, Northwest Houston, your first stop. Will
we come right back. Oh, it's tomato season. We are
already thinking tomatoes. I know, don't plan them now, don't

(02:17:17):
plan them now start them inside. Now, Hey, let's go
to Bob in northwest Houston. Hey, Bob, you don't talk tomatoes.

Speaker 9 (02:17:28):
Yes, sir, good morning.

Speaker 23 (02:17:30):
Last year I planted these black cherry tomatoes and they
didn't in the ground, and they grew kind of stringy,
and they only didn't last very long, and I thought
maybe my root.

Speaker 9 (02:17:42):
System was kind of small.

Speaker 21 (02:17:45):
The question I have is, Okay, if I put these
these tomato plants, these they're very small right now. If
I put them in a little pot before I transplant them,
and I only go halfway and I just keep putting
dirt around it to keep the plant very deep, would
that help strengthen the Yeah root system?

Speaker 8 (02:18:03):
Sure, yeah, sure you could. You you can do that.
I would let them. I would let them probably get
at least four or five inches of trunk on them
before I pot them, and then I would drop them
down and uh in the pot, and then as they grow,
put more soil down around the bottom of You could
do that because it's way too cold to get them out.
But you can get a heck of a good transplant

(02:18:24):
that way. But the key, Bob is light, light, light,
lots of light. I mean, like they need to think
they're in the sunlight that bright, that much light for
about fourteen sixteen hours a day at this stage, in
order to speed them up.

Speaker 9 (02:18:40):
Okay, that you think that's why they were kind of stringy.

Speaker 10 (02:18:44):
Last year because I didn't plan them.

Speaker 8 (02:18:47):
Well, sunlight, sunlight is part of it. No, not planning deep,
no planting deep just allows them to develop more roots
along the stem. But even if you don't plant deep,
that it's it's fine. I mean it's sunlight and warmth
and water and nutrients. So get you a good vegetable
plant food.

Speaker 13 (02:19:07):
Uh.

Speaker 8 (02:19:07):
You know, folks that Nelson Plant Food have the jars
of vegetable plant food. It's part of their their their
line of plant food jars. And uh use that according
to the label and get them growing and uh yeah,
just get them as much sunlight as you can. Last year,
you said a black tomato. Was it one called midnight

(02:19:28):
snack or do you know what variety you had?

Speaker 9 (02:19:31):
I don't know what variety.

Speaker 10 (02:19:33):
It's a black cherry tomato.

Speaker 11 (02:19:35):
And I don't know.

Speaker 1 (02:19:36):
Yeah, okay, this one this year burpie.

Speaker 10 (02:19:40):
So hopefully they do a little better.

Speaker 8 (02:19:43):
Okay, well, good luck with them. But tomatoes, they just
they want warmth, They want sunlight and they want nutrition,
uh and they do good. Make sure they're yeah, absolutely,
and but but out in the garden, make sure you've
got a good mix. Get some you know, like early soils,
veggie nerd mix uh and mix it in the soil

(02:20:03):
and give them the best soil you can uh. And
when you have great success with it this year because
of this advice we've given, make sure and bring me
half your tomatoes and we'll call it even. All right,
that's all I am.

Speaker 10 (02:20:16):
I'm sorry. I can't help you with that.

Speaker 9 (02:20:17):
I don't even let the grand.

Speaker 10 (02:20:18):
Kids have them.

Speaker 8 (02:20:19):
Oh oh my gosh. Okay, all right, thanks a lot.

Speaker 10 (02:20:24):
Delicious, Okay, thank you, all right.

Speaker 8 (02:20:28):
Bye bye, Oh gosh. All right, you're listening to Garden Line.
Here's the phone number seven one three two one two
five eight seven four seven one three two one two
five eight seven four. Make sure and get us call.
Let's talk about it. We don't have much time left today,

(02:20:49):
so we got a question that can't wait until tomorrow morning.
That would be a good time to call. Nelson Nurser
and Water Gardens out in Katie, Texas. One of a
kind place, one of a kind. It's it's your desk
to Nation Nursery out there in that part of the world.
If you will go to Katie Turn North on Katie

(02:21:11):
Fort Ben Road, you can end up right there at
Nelson Nursher and Water Gardens where the magic happens. And
when I say that, I mean one of a kind fish,
one of a kind fountains. You will not believe the
fountains and the disappearing fountains and things like that that
they have.

Speaker 9 (02:21:27):
It is.

Speaker 8 (02:21:28):
It is really really nice. You're going to find that
when you go to Nelson Usher and Water Garden. The
selection is unbeatable. And this is not just water plants.
This is like fertilizers. And because they do carry all
the fertilizers for your lawn and stuff and plants. This

(02:21:49):
is gonna be fruit trees, It's going to be flowering plants,
vegetable plants, herb plants, all kinds of things like that.
At Nelson Nursher and Water Garden. Go to the website
Nelson Watergardens dot com. Nelsonwatergardens dot Com. You'll find everything
you need. It is West Houston's full service local nursery,
two generations now of Nelson's providing you the inspiration the help,

(02:22:13):
and if you want them to have them come out
and just create one for you, they can absolutely do
that as well. Nelson Nursery and Watergardens. Let's head out
to Tony. Tony, are you in New Waverley?

Speaker 10 (02:22:29):
I am in Texas, Grand Rank.

Speaker 8 (02:22:33):
All right, well, how can we help today?

Speaker 10 (02:22:36):
I got a couple of questions. My first one is
I have a crown of thorns plant. Yeah, it didn't
happen just here recently, but those things are real. They're
they're tender, and you know, you look like a cact
if you'd think all are pretty hardy, but they got
pros on the like the tips of the limbs or

(02:22:59):
the stocks, and I was wondering kind of what to
do with that. I've cut it off, but it just
seems like it keeps going deeper and deeper as far
as the part that's dying.

Speaker 8 (02:23:20):
Hello, shit, I'm sorry, something happened and I lost audio
for a second. Could you repeat that for I'm sorry?

Speaker 10 (02:23:39):
Yes, okay, So I got a crown of thorns plant?

Speaker 8 (02:23:42):
And uh did I lose my call?

Speaker 10 (02:23:47):
I mean I'm still here?

Speaker 8 (02:23:48):
Are you back on hold?

Speaker 9 (02:23:51):
Uh?

Speaker 8 (02:23:52):
Nicholas, will you just see what happened there? I lost connection.
H Hello, are you there, Nicholas? I lost complete connection

(02:24:31):
for a while. Can let me read? Okay, I'm hang on.
I'm gonna try going back to Tony. Hey, Tony, we
just had a total glitch here and I lost you
and everything, and you were probably hearing me and talking
to me, but I wasn't hear anything. I am actually
backs start. Let's start over and try that one more time.

Speaker 10 (02:24:53):
Okay. So I got a crown of thorns plant and
let I left it out one night. It and it
kind of froze the tips, you know, of the stalks
or the limbs or whatever. And you know, I've kind
of cut cut it off where it's dead, but it
seems like it wants to just keep you know, the

(02:25:14):
the dead part wants to just keep going further down
into the plant.

Speaker 8 (02:25:19):
Okay, Well you may have had you may have had
some damage further down than you thought. Uh, so on
that you just kind of have to wait. I would
I would hold off on the cutting it back for now,
and let's let it get let it look ugly for
a while, and when the weather worms up and the
freezer and stuff are past. Uh, no need to you know,
no need to uh okay, an longer than that, then

(02:25:42):
go ahead and cut it back and then see sometimes
there's you know, cold weather doesn't just like hit at
the top of the plant and start killing it back.
I mean, it could kill parts around the base. And
now the flow of nutrients up and down isn't what
it should be. So something that looked like it was
still alive suddenly starts wilting and dying. Now, yeah, so
that's why we just got the weight and let warm

(02:26:02):
let warm weather tell us how to go back to
prune it.

Speaker 10 (02:26:06):
Okay, well that's that's kind of what I was thinking.
Uh But also do have a question on tomato plants,
which uh okay, I want to say, at one time
I was buying Better Bush. It was you know, it
was a short plant, but it was you know, it
had thick stocks on it, and it didn't really get
real tall. You know some of these plants you buy

(02:26:29):
now they grew eight feet tall.

Speaker 8 (02:26:34):
Okay. Well, there's a lot of a lot of different
brands and stuff of tomato, and hopefully when you buy
a plant you're getting you're getting the variety that it
was supposed to be. But Better Bush was always a
very a very stocky, strong plant, very determinant. It didn't
just buying it made a bush and that was it. Yeah,

(02:26:57):
So if you're buying something that's sold is better bush
and it's not doing that, that plant is not better bush.

Speaker 10 (02:27:04):
That's and that's exactly what I was thinking.

Speaker 8 (02:27:08):
Okay, yeah, but so yeah, there's.

Speaker 10 (02:27:12):
Varieties of tomatoes that you know, or a short bush,
and then some of them are they're just vines, I guess.

Speaker 8 (02:27:22):
Mm hmm. Yeah, there's there's actually three categories of tomatoes, uh, tony.
The one is determinant, which means it hits a certain size,
that's all it grows, It sets its fruit, it ripens
them fairly uniformly together, and then that's it. There's a
semi determinant, which is in between the bush and the vine,

(02:27:43):
and then indeterminate means it just vines and keeps producing.
The problem with indeterminant here is our season doesn't allow
for the indeterminate to just keep producing. It gets too
hot to set fruit and so on. So you know,
if you're further art an indeterminate, you just get you
just get tomatoes all summer, you know. But here, for us,

(02:28:05):
it's more of a short season in the spring and
a short season in the fall where we can get
the fruit forming and developing. So any of the three
kinds of work, it's just indeterminate, has a shorter season
than you would hope.

Speaker 10 (02:28:21):
Okay, the but the determinant is the ones that are
kind of a short bush.

Speaker 8 (02:28:28):
Yes, yes, okay, there's there's uh determinants that are slicers.
There's determinants that are are cherry type tomatoes. Uh, so
you can kind of grow whichever whichever type you want.

Speaker 10 (02:28:43):
Yes, I'll get on the internet and do some checking
on that determinant. But I do I do think what
you said was you know, they got the little tag
on there and it says what it is, but that
it really ain't what it is.

Speaker 8 (02:28:56):
Yeah, that's true. Now, there's a lot of varieties, and
you know, with a short time on the radio on
a call here, I can't give you all the determinants
to grow. But Burpie has one called Bobcat that it
reaches its days to harvest pretty fast. It's like a
fifty five to six fifty eight day days to harvest.
And that's what you want. One that hurries up because

(02:29:18):
we want fruit before it gets too hot to set fruit,
and so Bobcat is that way. That is one example.
I'm not saying it's the best one out there, it's
just one you might look for.

Speaker 10 (02:29:28):
Okay, So I heard you talking about the place in Willis.
Would they have that?

Speaker 8 (02:29:36):
Okay, Probably not Bob Probably not Bobcat. That tends to
not be one so locally. But they'll have to meat
us and they'll be able to tell you this one
will come as close to what you're looking for as
any of them. So I would just go and ask them.

Speaker 10 (02:29:50):
I will. Okay, thanks, pretty info.

Speaker 8 (02:29:53):
All right, all right today you take care. Thank you, Yes, sir,
appreciate that call very very much. Let's see here, well,
I got time for one more call if somebody would
like to speak about gardening before tomorrow morning. Airlom soils
quality products all through the Houston area. You're gonna find

(02:30:13):
airloom soils. Of course, you can get them bulk anywhere.
You just have them deliver it, or go out there
to Porter Texas and take your trailer, let them load
it up, or set one of their supersacks on it.
Anyway you want to go about it. Now, they're good
to go, and we'll provide you with I guarantee you
a quality mix or veggie and herb mix is outstanding.
There's so many, so many different vegetable options out on

(02:30:38):
the market, and the veggie nerd mix from Heirloom Soils,
I guarantee you're gonna have success with that.

Speaker 10 (02:30:42):
Now.

Speaker 8 (02:30:43):
They have a fruit berry and citrus mix, they have
a rose and bloomers blend. They have the Works which
is a potting soil. They have a cactus and succulent soil,
and many many more. Airlom soil products are made right,
they're developed properly so you can have success because remember
brown stuff before green stuff. It's all about the soil.

(02:31:05):
What you need to do is go to their website
Heirloomsoils dot com, Heirloom Soils, follow them on social media too.
A lot of good information there and you're gonna find
the bag products all over town. Makes it really easy
to have success with airlom soils. Let's see here we are. Okay,

(02:31:26):
Let's take a little break here and we'll come back
with our last short segment in just a bit. All right, folks,
we got a little bit of time left on gardenlane today.
Tomato season is here and it is time to plant. Uh,
it has been time to start seedlings. Some people's seedlings

(02:31:47):
are already up and growing and looking good, and they're
bumping them up. I try to grow mine early on
because I always have some weird variety I'm trying to grow.
I'm always wanting to try something new, and I go
to my garden centers and get their varieties too. Then
a lot of good varieties at your local garden center.
But with tomatoes, this is tomatoes or other vegetables are
just vegetables. Tomatoes are religion. I mean, they're an obsession.

(02:32:10):
It's like the there's no vegetable in the vegetable garden
that people just obsess over like they do tomatoes. And well,
individual people might like I have an okra problem, but
that's that's for another time. But when it comes to tomatoes,
absolutely got to have the newest one, gotta have the

(02:32:31):
best way to grow them, I mean, and there if
you do no gardening except tomatoes, you can spend three
hundred and sixty five days out of the year doing
something on tomatoes. There are people that collect their own
seeds to reuse. If it's not a hybrid variety, you
collect your sieg. You replan them, we get the same
thing again. If it's a hybrid, you won't. There are

(02:32:52):
people who breed tomatoes. They I'm talking about homeowners, home gardeners,
not professionals. They cross tomatoes. There is a Tamat made
a breeding project. You can find it online. There's some
people that just work on dwarf types, or some people
that work on all kinds of types, but they create
their own varieties by crossing them. Now, is it going
to be better than something that you buy that's been

(02:33:12):
bred and tested that is available commercially. No, probably not.
You'd be extremely lucky to get something better. But people
do it because it's fun. People grafted tomatoes. Did you
know you can graft tomatoes under rootstocks that don't have problems,
and you graft your tomatoes. Isn't that crazy? Yes, I'm

(02:33:32):
telling you. It's an obsession. It's a religion, absolutely, But
it is fun. Nothing is more fun. I talked about
a Trellis system. I came up at least I think
I came up with that. Maybe someone else did too,
but that works really well for me. I love that
you gotta grow tomatoes. Just what you gotta do? I mean,

(02:33:53):
what are mockingbirds going to eat if you don't grow
the some tomatoes. Come on, man, have a heart. Get
you Organza bags or a little drawstring bags. You can
buy them online. They're used for bridal gifts and stuff.
Put them over your tomato cluster. Draw the string, try
to keep some of the pests out. It works pretty good. Hey,

(02:34:13):
come on out to Enchanted Gardens. I'll be there at
twelve thirty