Weed Wars

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Kat r H Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any
of the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome
to kat r H Garden Line with Skip Richter.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Shoesmill, the crazy listing, the gas can use a trim,
just watching as wholly good thanks to Seabot Basic in
baysies like gas again you slobs back ticking not a

(00:35):
sound glass gas the sun beamonsiting the basis and gas.

Speaker 3 (00:49):
Starting all right, folks, Good Sunday morning. Hey, welcome to
garden Line to have you with us. We are here
to hope you have a bountiful garden, a beautiful landscape.
And don't forget this it's an important one. More fun

(01:11):
in the process, Yes, I try it. Gardening is supposed
to be fun, and it can be. It is important
to be able to see things, as one man put it,
from a plant's point of view. Once you start doing that,
it is amazing how well things work out when you
know the things that plants need, the basics. It just
works a lot better. Starts by creating a foundation in

(01:33):
the soil that they will thrive in. It's picking plants
that want to be here. I don't know if you've
ever brought a blue spruce home from a Colorado vacation.
But I bet that didn't turn out well, did it.
They probably ought to have a Society for the Prevention
of Cruelty to Plants station at the border to confiscate
those things. But anyway, we plant things that want to

(01:55):
be here and they're going to thrive. We give them
the sunlight that they want, the drainage that they want,
and then we take care of them. If you've got
a gardening question, you can reach me at seven one
three two one two k t RH or if you
hate hunting the letters out of the dial pad seven
one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. That's

(02:15):
how I am. I you know, KTRX is easy to remember,
but come on, give me the number second and just
go right to them. And every now and then I
get a caller that kind of fusses at me about that. Hey,
I can't die that way, all right, Well, that's it is.
If you have a photo of something that you're asking about,
you can call my producer get an email to send
it to. I don't do email back and forth. I

(02:38):
just they're just too many for me to be able
to do that. But it is for sending a photo
that you're going to follow up with a call, So
I'd be happy to do that. If it's a bug,
if it's a spot on a leaf, if it's a
plant you want to identify it, or something a weed,
perhaps so much easier if I can see a photo first,
and that way I'm not guessing and wasting your time
and money going after the wrong thing. That's what I

(03:01):
would recommend. Got a few people be calling in today
from that that have sent me some photos, looking forward
to visiting with them as well. So anyway, let's talk summertime.
It is hot out there. I don't have to tell
you that. And this is the time of year when
we want to get our work done in the morning.
If we can't, certainly late in the day is good too,
but just get what you can done. The paradox of

(03:23):
this time of the year is we are on the
doorstep of fall planting. In fact, if you are wanting
to put in tomatoes for fall, or peppers or eggplant
or some of those other things, you need to get
that done soon. It is time to get those in
the ground so they have time to grow and then
when the weather breaks a little bit, they can start

(03:43):
setting fruit better and you end up with a good crop.
If you wait until the weather feels good to be outside,
it's too late to do all those things. They won't
have time to make it. So what do we do well,
This is the time of year when we're making sure
that everything we need to do the soil is done
because fall planning is coming. There's not a better season

(04:03):
in the year for planning than the fall. It is
the best for especially woody ornamentals, that's trees and shrubs
and woody vines, for perennials, plants that come back here
after year after year. Herbs except for annual herbs, but
all the standard herbs that you would think of when
I say herb, those going in in the fall are best.

(04:26):
And I just can't emphasize enough how important that is.
Everybody gets spring fever. In the spring. Springs a great time,
it's good to plant, we're all happy, everybody's a gardener
in the spring. But when we hit the fall season,
that is the best time. And the reason for that
is this. If you put a plant in, let's say, well,
I planned something the other day in August. Okay, so

(04:49):
what I'm having to do is go out there almost
every day and water that little root ball that came
out of the container, keeping that plant alive, because in
a garden center, that plant would be watered every day,
keeping it alive in that little pot. Whether it's a
orange pot of gallum pot, whatever it is, it be
watered every day. And so when I put it in
the ground, the roots are still where they were when

(05:09):
it was in the container. And I always tell people,
We'll pretend that you just took the container and plant
and all and set it in the ground. Where would
you water if you knew that there was a pot
around the roots underground, we you'd water right where the
pot was. That's what you have to do when you plant. Now,
planting in spring is better because it's not so touch
and go. It's easy, easy to take care of those

(05:31):
plants and get them going. Winter is even better. But
fall is the best. And here's why you put your
plant in the ground. When I say fall, i'm talking
about October November typically mid October on is the best time.
But as we get cooler and cooler, that plan is
about to go into winter. It had and even in winter,
when the root, when the soil temperature is about fifty

(05:52):
degrees or higher, fifty five or higher, which it is
all winter here. Those roots are slowly establishing and growing.
So if you took the same plant, Yeah, let's say
had two salvia's that you're going to put in the ground.
You put one in the ground in mid October, and
you put one in the ground in March or April,
and then you come back in June and look at

(06:14):
those two plants. The one you plant it in October
is going to have the head start. It's going to
be a better plant. It just is Fall is the
best time. But if you're going to plant in the fault,
don't PLoP a plant into unprepared soil. Get the soil ready,
which brings us back to August. Here we are. Now's
the time to be getting all that done. All right.

(06:34):
So there was a little bit of a soap box.
But I've seen it, I've done it. I've done it right,
and I've done it wrong, And I know what I'm
talking about on that one. Hey, let's go out to
the phones. We're going to head to Karen and Richmond. Now, Well, Hello, Karen,
welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 4 (06:51):
Hi Skip, how are you this morning?

Speaker 3 (06:54):
Doing great? Doing great? How can we help good?

Speaker 5 (06:57):
Good?

Speaker 4 (06:57):
I have an Esperanza that I've had in the ground
for this is its second year bloom beautiful this year.
I have a branch with a cluster of looks like
seed pots that almost look like green beans. Duck, cut
those off or leave them or.

Speaker 3 (07:19):
It doesn't matter, you know, to a tiny degree. Cutting
off seed pods from krape myrtles and esperanzas and other things.
If you do it early helps the plant put that
energy that would have gone into the seed into more flowers.
With Esperanza, those little seeds are so tiny, and it's
it's just not a big deal. I wouldn't I wouldn't

(07:40):
worry about them.

Speaker 4 (07:42):
Oh, okay, either.

Speaker 3 (07:43):
Way, if you don't like the look of them, cut
them off, But otherwise the plant will be fine.

Speaker 6 (07:46):
Yeah, okay, great, thank you, all.

Speaker 3 (07:49):
Right, you ready, that's a great plan. Thank you for
the call.

Speaker 7 (07:55):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (07:55):
If you're dealing with pests in the soil, you know
we got we're in big time. We're in chinchbug season
right now. Sometimes side webworms are coming through each year.
Kind of we roll the dice and see how bad
of a side webworm yere it's going to be Usually
it's not very bad, and then every now and then,
oh boy, here they are. Well. Night Fross bug Out
Max is made to kill over one hundred and thirty

(08:18):
different kinds of insects, and that includes the fleas and
ticks on your pets. You know, the dogs go outside,
ticks hop off. They develop in the thatch too. They
can they the larva and little ticks can be down
there in the thatch and jumping the dog. Then when
the dog runs by, ticks and flees both and by
putting bug out Max out you kind of shut all

(08:39):
that down. It goes down in the in the thatch.
You water it in real good and anything living down
there at the soil surface or that it's going to
take care of. The bug Out Max being a night
foss products available in a lot of places. You can
get it Hide and Feed, which is on Studient Airline
up there north. If you go to Fisher's Hardware. You
know there's a bunch of Fishers Hardware. There's one in Pasadena,
one on the Port, one about Bellevue, one down in Baytown.

(09:03):
Any of those are going to carry night FoST products
like the bug Out Max as well. I was talking
about the importance of fall planting, and it's just it's
a little bit of a hard sell for people to say, Yeah,
it's mid August and we need to be getting ready
for fall right now. But that's true to Mey just

(09:24):
do need to go in now. Your soil should be
prepared right now. If you've got a weed problem, if
you've got a weed problem in your bed, maybe bermuda
grass has taken over your planting beds or nuts edge,
now's the time to treat it and get it in
good shape. So when you go into fall planting, you're
not planting into something that's already infested with weeds, because

(09:46):
then you just have another headache to deal with. So
if you're going to treat for weeds like nuts edge
and bermuda grass, you want those weeds to be healthy.
And consider this. You've got bermuda grass and if it
is drought stressed and it's not vigorous, it's alive, it's fine,

(10:06):
but it's just not really happy and you spray it
even something you know people round up has been all
the things people have used for years on it. You
can spread it with roundup and if it is stressed,
is not gonna kill it, It is not going to
fully effectively kill it. If it's actively growing, whatever you're
using on it will work much better. And that's true

(10:27):
of a lot of weeds. That's true of nuts edge
and bermuda grass, but it's true of many others as well.
So here again is something that kind of doesn't make sense.
Go out and water your weeds and get them actively growing,
give them a few days to perk up and get going,
and then spray. I know your neighbors are going to talk.
They talk about you already as it is, But milderdy's

(10:49):
out there water and is nut grass? Well, okay, just
just do it. And when you have those weeds in
an active state, and I don't care what it is, torpedograss,
there's another good one. You get it actively growing, which
probably already is, and then you spray and you're gonna
have better results. So don't think that spraying stressed weeds
is a good idea. It's not. You need to make

(11:09):
sure they're growing actively and then when you put that
spray on, you are going to have good results. By
the way, if you're having trouble with nuts edge nut grass,
you can go to my website gardening with Skip, Gardening
with Skip dot com. And all you gotta do is
check for the nut sege publications. They got two of
them on there. Tell you what to do well. I
better take quick break here. We will be back with
your calls in just a moment. Welcome back to the

(11:31):
guard Line. Glad to have you with us. Hey, I
have you got a question. Here's how you can give
me a call. Seven one three two one two fifty
eight seventy four seven one three two one two five
eight seven four. I was talking about the importance of
fall planting, and I hope that you will consider that.
Something else that is important to get done now, if

(11:54):
you will, is a compost, top dressing and a core aeration.
When someone comes out to your yard and they do
a correation, what's happening is they're popping a plug of
soil out of the ground and dropping it on the surface.
And when you do that all through a yard, it
looks like you had a little miniature dog convention the
other day on the yard, you know. But what that's

(12:17):
doing is it's opening up a channel for water and
nutrients and organic matter and most importantly oxygen to get
down in the soil. You've got compacted soil, plants struggle,
grass struggles, and if your lawn is struggling, whether it's
chinchbugs or take a root rot or drought or just
wear and tear from the piti pattern of a little
feet or big feet, well, correoration is important. Compost top

(12:39):
dressing following that does a number of things. Number one,
it puts compost out there. Number two, it gets that
compost a good part of it down in the soil,
not just on the surface, but also in the soil.
And it really breathes life into a lawn. And you
need to consider that. The folks at Year Round Houston
know what they're doing when it comes to These guys
are specialists when it comes to correporation, compost stop dressing.

(13:02):
Now you can do it yourself. It's complicated. I mean
it's not complicated, but it's very cumbersome. You know, you
gotta rent equipment, you got to buy all the bulk
of the compost and things. You got to clean up
the machines and return them, and it's just a it's
a dusty mess to do it. Why not just hard.
Somebody knows what they're doing. They can come in and
get the job done. They basically, here's what you do.

(13:23):
You go to year round Houston dot com. That's the
name of the company. That's the website, year round Houston
dot Com eight three two eight eight four five three
three five. They basically are working inside the Beltway around Houston.
So if you're inside Beltway eight year round Houston dot
Com eight three two eight eight four fifty three thirty five. Well,

(13:47):
last this a couple of weeks ago, I had the
folks from Houston powder coders on and we were picking
their brain about powder coating. You know what, what's the
reasing powder coating and painting? You know why is powder
coning better? How's it on? And we went through all
about and it was really interesting. I had a number
of people that emailed me afterwards talking about how much

(14:08):
they enjoyed just hearing and learning about that. When I
first learned about powder coating and saw what the process is,
now I see it everywhere. I was at a restaurant
out in Atlanta, Georgia, and I was just looking around, going, Yep,
that park bench out there is powder coated. This table
posts that we're sitting on here outside and the cafe
is powder coated. These chairs were on a product coat.

(14:29):
I mean you see it everywhere. You can powder cot
it metal period, I mean normally things like cast iron
and wrought iron that you don't want to rust and
get all, you know, cause that rust to run down
the side of your house if it's something decorative, or
to run onto your patio. It can be done. Aluminum
furniture can be powder coated. That barbecue that powder coatings
that can take just hotter than your barbecue pit's ever

(14:53):
going to get. And I mean it makes it look
brand It looks really cool. Now they'll come get it
and they'll bring it back when they're done. It's easy.
Here's what you do. You write this down sales at
houstoncoders dot com. That's the email sales at houstoncoders dot com.
Send them a picture of your stuff. They'll give you
a quote. You can talk to them about it. You know, Okay,

(15:15):
here's my furniture. What can you do? And they can
do it. And I'm telling you it is so it
makes it new. It just makes it like brand new.
All that rust that might be on it, they take
care of that. If you got the end caps, you know,
the little furniture sometimes has little plastic game caps or
vinyl sling straps or things. They do all that, they
fix it all and it's like new. It's got me.

(15:35):
I'll tell you this, and I'm not. This is humorous,
but I'm not. I'm reena joking. I'm serious. I literally
when I'm driving around town now and I see people
putting junk out at the street, I'm always looking for
a quality piece of metal furniture because I can take it,
get it powder coated, and save over half of what
it would cost to buy that furniture myself, and it

(15:55):
would be I think, better than new. It just really
looks good. All right, I've been bragging on enough, but
you get the idea. I'm talking about Houston powder Cooders
dot com. That's the website, Houston powder Cooders dot com
two eight one six seven six thirty eight eighty eight
thirty eight. I take a look at your furniture, take
a look at your metal art, take a look at
the lamp posts, the post railings. What do you got

(16:17):
that's metal? They can coat it. You're listening to garden Line.
I'm your host, Skip Richtor, and we are here to
help you have success in what you're doing in your garden.
I enjoy visiting with gardeners, especially when I can talk
to you ahead of time. The calls that make me
sad are the ones that are like, yeah, I just

(16:38):
did such and such to my lawn and it's not
looking good. What should I do? And I said, well,
you killed your lawn. I wish you'd called me first,
or go out and buy a bunch of money to
try to kill or spend a bunch of money buy
a bunch of stuff trying to kill some weeds and
you got the wrong stuff. It's not going to kill
that weed. Call me first, Let's talk about it, and
let's make sure we save you time and money and

(16:59):
make guard need more fun. I wrote an article for
Texas Gardener. It'll be on the next issue of Texas Gardener.
By the way, if you don't subscribe to that, you should.
It's a wonderful, wonderful gardening magazine for Texas. I wrote
an article just about things I wish gardeners knew, and
that was fun to write because I've been doing this

(17:19):
for thirty five years. I actually have been gardening for
a lot longer than that, but as a professional horticulture
is thirty five years and I've heard a bazillion questions
by a bazillion people, and a lot of them are
the same question. Not all though, And I just I
know the things that gardeners do and where they have
success and where they get themselves into trouble. And I

(17:41):
want you to have success because gardening is way too
fun to waste your money on products that don't work,
or on products that aren't for what you're going after,
or on a diagnosis. And I wrote accurate. I had
someone the other day tell me they had sprayed their
squash for powdery mildew, and they sent me a picture
and it was a squash that has natural white variegation,

(18:02):
silver variegation in the foliage, and say, you don't have
powdery mildew. I was just a waste of money. You
just put chemicals on your food that you didn't need to.
So that's what I'm talking about. How do we help
you have success. We want you to enjoy gardening and
it is a blast when you do it that way. Anyway.
Check out that article in Texas Gardener. I think it's
it'll come out in November December issue, which is I know,

(18:24):
far far away, but magazines get printed way way ahead
of time, that's for sure. Hey, I was we were
just looking at that hurricane that's out there is not
going to hit us in the Gulf, thank goodness. Uh.
And noticing that reminded me about Affordable Tree Service and
getting your trees ready that we dodge that one. But
we won't dodge them all. We will get summer storms

(18:45):
here and if they tear up a tree, they ruin
the most valuable plant in your whole landscape. They may
cause damage to your property or God forbid to people,
especially you know, things following your neighbor's property and whatnot.
Martin Spoon Moore has been doing this a long time,
finally been doing this for fifty years. And Affordable Tree
Service is a place you need to call. It's as

(19:06):
simple as that.

Speaker 8 (19:07):
You can go.

Speaker 3 (19:08):
Give them a call seven one three six ninety nine
twenty six sixty three, have them come out, Have them
look at your trees. What do they need? Do they
need some pruning or do they not? What do they recommend?
What is this thing on my tree? Someone call the
other day and I have a thing. They didn't know
what it was and what to do. So it's called
Martin seven one three, six nine nine two six sixty three.
He stays busy because he does good work. So don't

(19:30):
wait until the storm's in the gulf. Call him now
seven one three, six nine nine two six sixty three.
We'll be right back. Well, welcome back to garden line.
Good to have you with us, folks, Glad to have
you with us. Hey, whatever you want to talk about,
give me a call seven one three two one to
two fifty eight seventy four. Let me let me qualify that,
not whatever, whatever gardening you want to talk about. All right,

(19:52):
let's let's limit it to that. Guess what season it
is now, I'm not summer mosquito season it is. It
is mosquito se And if you are dealing mosquitoes out there,
you need to do something about it. And the simplest
thing I can think of is mosquito dunks. Mosquito dunks
are the little donuts. They kind of look like that,
you know, those little white, powdered, dusted little babies donuts.

(20:14):
That's about the size of mosquito dunk. And they're hardened
so you can float them in water. They cover about
a ten by ten one hundred square foot area for
a whole month, and as they float there, they're releasing
a disease of mosquitos, not a disease of fish or
birds or cats or dogs or kids or anything else.
They're very safe to use. Only two things that kills

(20:37):
mosquitos and fungus gnats, and both of those we need
them to die because they're not fun well. Mosquito dunks.
If you've got something like maybe a gutter on your
house that's not draining well, or a hollow in a
tree where waters gathering, Oh, mosquitoes love that, or even
underneath your pots you got those little catch basins, or
maybe you're going to go on vacation and that bird

(20:58):
bath is going to be full of mosquitos when you
get back. Throw a dunk in there and it won't
be The larva cannot survive in that. It kills them.
Mosquito dunks. They are approved for use in organic production.
They're safe as you can get, and they work, and
they need to be hanging in your garage and all
the time, all the time, so whenever you run into
stagnant water, you just take care of it. That way,
you make sure that you're not being a skeeter breeder.

(21:21):
You want to find them all over the place, like
a hardware stores, feed stores, independent garden centers, mosquito dunks.
Look for those. Let's go now out to the phones.
We're going to visit with Bill in Houston. Hey, Bill,
welcome to garden Line Hieron. Hey, what's up?

Speaker 6 (21:39):
Hello?

Speaker 3 (21:40):
Hey, yes, sir, I'm here.

Speaker 6 (21:41):
Here you guys, Yeah, hey, thank you. Yeah. Don't want
to try find out how to make something to live
when I'm going to find out how to kill something.
Got a bunch of uh, there you go, weeds crawling
up through Yeah. Uh rock of replace the driveway with
black rock in the contractor do a good job. I

(22:05):
can give his name too if you don't want to
use them.

Speaker 3 (22:07):
But no, anyway, don't do that.

Speaker 6 (22:15):
You know, I just can't get rid of these things.
And I've got dogs, so you know, I just don't
want to use anything at all that would remotely possibly
you know, hurt the dogs. Kill the dogs.

Speaker 3 (22:28):
Yep. Yeah, Well Bill, you got a couple of options.
Number one, the dogs are probably not gonna be out
there eating rocks, so I'm not super worried about hurting
the dogs with this particular kind of application. The simplest
thing you know in terms of like an organic type
product is to burn the weeds with a vinegar spray

(22:49):
if they are annual weeds, not perennial weeds. But in
other words, you kill the weed and it's gone, or
you kill the top and the weed is gone, then
vinegar would work. If it's something that comes back in
burning the top off just sets it back and it
comes right back. Bermuda grass and nut grass will be

(23:09):
examples of those, and vinegar is not a viable way
to go after those. There are a number of different
products that will top burn the weeds. If there are
grassy weeds, we got two products that just kill grasses
nothing else, and then we have products that kill grasses
and broad leaf weeds and do a pretty good job
of it. If online on my website Gardening with Skip

(23:33):
dot com, there's a publication called Herbicides to use with
Skip's weed wiper. They're not really just for the weed wiper,
but it lists the different kinds of weeds you might
have and then it tells you the products that will
kill them. So if you got grasses and broad leaves,
there are certain products you use for that. And the

(23:54):
old round up is an example of one that kills
grasses and broad leaves. There's another one called Finale. It's
a different chemical that kills grasses and broad leaves, but
it's on that chart. If it's just grasses that you're
dealing with, there are a couple of products that just
kill grasses. And you know, and and I've got stuff
on there for woody weeds like poison ivy coming up

(24:15):
and fire beds and things. So I would recommend going
to that you probably are going to have broad leaves
and grasses coming up both. And is that right? Yeah? Yeah,
so I would There's a there's a product. The ingredient
is glue fascinate And I know that's a mouthful, but

(24:36):
if you if you go online and look at it,
you can see that there's a there is one brand
of it called Finale f I N A L E. Finale.
And so if you will, if you want to hunt
that one down your ace hardware stores. Let see where
are you? Where are you calling from? Where in Houston? Oh,

(24:59):
inside the Loop, inside the out Okay, uh well Southwest. Yeah,
they're gonna have they're gonna have everything. But if you
go in there and you're telling me talk to us
on guarden line and you're looking for something like Finale
or they'll have the same ingredient in other brands. There's
nothing special about that brand. It just that's the ingredient

(25:21):
you're looking for. All right, got you?

Speaker 6 (25:23):
Got you? Yeah. On the vinegar, Now, let me ask you.
Do you have to have a specially const trade vinegar or.

Speaker 3 (25:35):
Yes, yes, household Houso vinegars five Yeah, Houseo vinegar won't.
It'll burn some little tender seedlings, but it's not good enough.
You need something that's about ten percent or higher vinegar
to do a good job.

Speaker 6 (25:52):
Okay, And can you off hand recommend where I would
find that easily bible happen.

Speaker 3 (26:02):
Well, you might. I haven't shopped in there. I haven't
shopped in there, and so I don't know. I tend
to go to places where the people that work there
are going to be able to give you expert advice.
And that's why I go so much. Yeah, higher, ten
percent higher. You'll typically see stuff in garden centers is

(26:22):
like twenty percent. Uh, that's fine, just be careful. Vinegars
and acid and you know you splash that in your
eyes and you got more problems and with some of
the synthetic crticides for sure.

Speaker 6 (26:34):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, thank you, thank you very much.
Good point. Yeah, okay, hey, thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (26:40):
All right, you take care, Thanks for the call.

Speaker 6 (26:42):
Okay, folks.

Speaker 3 (26:44):
Something something that I do want to mention is just
because something is natural doesn't mean it's safe. Okay. Everything
that is a pesticide of any kind is made to
kill something, Okay, so safe to us or safe to
other things that we care about. So, for example, in

(27:05):
secticidal soap is about the least toxic thing I can
think about that you can use in your gardens. We
give our bodies a bath and soap and it doesn't
hurt us. Right, We're fine. Just don't get it in
your eyes. But insecticidal soap kills lady bee larva. Insecticidal
soap kills lace wing larva. Insecticidal soap kills the little

(27:27):
wasp that's trying to grow up as it's parasitized your aphid,
and so it stops that next generation a beneficial wasp
coming out of those aphanths. I mean, that's not to
mean don't use it. It's just to say don't think
that if something is natural, it has no secondary effects.
Some of the most toxic things on earth are natural
afhlotoxin rice, and you guys have heard about those kind

(27:51):
of compounds and they come from nature. Okay, that again,
just what I'm wanting you to do is just be
aware that things have secondary effects. So we've got to
be careful with that. Let's go to a quick break here.
When we come back, Josh and spring Break, you will
be our first up. Hey, welcome back to the guard Line.

(28:18):
You got a gardening question, let's talk about it. Seven
one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven
one three two one two five eight seven four. I
was talking to somebody the other day about Bruce's Brew.
It's a Nelson fertilizer product, part of their tourch Star line,
and they were saying was it a fast release or
does a slow release? And my answers yes, yeah, and

(28:39):
they kind of looked at me like, what do you
mean by that? Well, it's both Bruce's Brew and by
the way, now is that perfect time to do Bruce's
Brew in your lawn because it releases some of that
nutrient that it has immediately and then some of it,
it holds on to It's got like five different kinds
of nitrogen in it. Okay, I mean it's a It

(29:00):
is a very well designed product and the other parts
are slower release and it's going to give them to
you gradually over time. And so you put it down
now and just you don't have to overdo it. Just
put on a moderate amount.

Speaker 5 (29:13):
Now.

Speaker 3 (29:14):
I would say that when we overdo fertilizer, we're just
asking for problems. When we underdo it, we're not getting
the performance we need. So there's a just right amount.
And if you look on the label of a fertilizer,
you're going to see that amount. So Bruces brou do
it now. When it comes time for fall fertilization, which
is coming in October, you're going to want to do

(29:34):
a fall fertilization with a different product. Nelson's got one
of those two coming up. But we need a little
boost to go from now on. If your garden or
your lawn rather it is not looking good, a little thin,
kind of worse for the wear struggling with summer, a
little boost of Bruces Broo could go a long way
and do it a lot of good, you know, Nelson
has a lot of great products. Their Nutral Star line

(29:55):
is the jars that have every kind of fertilizer you
can imagine. Do you want to something for plumerias, or
for roses, or for vegetables, or for you name it?
Even have one for house plants. I got one for
boogain villas. Boy, how's the time for that one, too,
Neutral Star boogin Villa. Now, when you use those jars,
don't throw them way, because there's a dozen places around

(30:16):
town where you can take your Nelson Nutra Star jars
and you can get them refilled, and it's economical and
you don't throw plastic away. You just keep your jar,
keep your empty jar, go fill it up. I wish
more things were that way, where we just keep our
old one, go back in, fill it up again. But
the folks that Nelson's have got covered on that one.
You were listening to Garden Line. If you'd like to

(30:37):
ask me a call, We're getting toward the end of
this hour. We got time for a call, maybe two
seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four
seven one three two and two five eight seven four.
I was at Ace hardware store a couple of days ago.
I guess I believe it was a couple of days ago. Yeah.
I picked up a ice cream freezer that we were

(30:59):
looking at getting and it just reminded me. You know,
I talk all the time about ACE being the place,
you know, about how this isn't your father's hardware store.
You know, they got all the Dad's hardware store had,
but this is a new kind of hardware store. You
go into an ACE and you're going to find all
the hardware stuff, you know, hammers and wiring and lighting

(31:19):
fixtures and plumbing product. You're going to find all that.
That's the hardware store. They got you covered on that,
but you're gonna find a lot of cool stuff, Like
did you know you can get some really cool ice
cream freezers at an eighth hardware store? Did you know?
You a lot of ACE hardware stores will carry a
wide variety of tools, you know, not only just the
ACE brand, but Milwaukee and Stanley and Black and Decker

(31:41):
and Craftsmen and my favorite Dwault that's what my battery
powered tools or Dwalts, the yellow one. I like those,
and ACE Hardware's got that. I also have an ego
Ego Ego, I don't even know how you say it,
but it's an electric powered lawnmar and a couple of
other things, and edgeer and some other stuff and ACE.
Some ACE Hardware stores will carry those as well. Each

(32:02):
one's independently owned. They have their own flavor. But no
matter what they are, here's what you do. You go
to ACE Hardware Texas dot com and you find your
local stores. There'll be more than one Ace Hardware Texas
dot com. North, south, east and west. There's one for you.
For example, fullsher Race on FM three point fifty nine,
done in Fullshire Baycliff, Ace on Grand Avenue south of Keema,

(32:27):
down southeast. Let's go over to the east. How about
Child's Buildings supply way out in Orange, Texas. Hate the
listeners out there in Orange, Wharton Feed and ACE on
North Richmond Brennam, Ace Hardware on North Austin Parkway. See
what I'm talking about, They're all over. Go to ACE
Hardware Texas dot com. Find your store and go there

(32:47):
and see what I'm talking about. ACE is the place
lots and lots of cool things. I was in ACE
the other day and I picked up some things for
a little soda fountain soda fisitor thing that we have
at the house. Did you know A said that, Well,
they probably do. Just go to the Ace Hardware sterner
you and I promise you this, You're going to see
a dozen things that you did not know they carried there.

(33:10):
But they do good expert advice and plenty of things
in stock and ready to go. And don't even get
me started on barbecue. I'll save that for another time.
That I've now become the pep master of the backyard. Yeah,
that's not much of a kingdom, is it. But I
love barbecue and it's good. All right, you're listening to

(33:32):
Guardenline and we're here to help you have bounty and
beauty and all those kinds of things. I was talking
earlier about the importance of doing some fall planting and
getting ready for fall planting. It is important that we
get things in and give them the best chance of surviving,
the best chance of thriving. Because when you spend money,

(33:53):
you know, you buy a shrubber tree. Those things aren't cheap,
are they Maybe it's a rose bush or something like that.
They're not an expense, but they are so worth it
because they are return on investment. I like to say
that things like bulbs and shrubs and whatnot, they give
you an annual dividend. Okay, so you go out, you

(34:13):
spend some money on a rose bush, and year after
year after year you can enjoy it. And by the way,
those make good gifts too. I think about this. Maybe
there's someone in your life who's not able to get
out and do their own gardening. What about a gift
of a special rose that you would go out plant
with them, have a cup of coffee, enjoy it. Every
year when that thing blooms, they are going to think

(34:35):
about you. That is that is a great kind of gift.
That's something that's not going to just get thrown away
and forgotten or put on a shelf. Let's do this.
Let's go to the phones. We're going to go out
to Stafford and we are going to visit with Mary
this morning. Hey Mary, welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 9 (34:53):
Hello, thank you.

Speaker 6 (34:54):
I have a problem with my isaia bush.

Speaker 10 (34:56):
It's in a pot and I moved it from the
direct sum and I thought maybe that was the problem.
It's in a shady spot, but all believes if turned
brown fallen off. I sprayed it with a fungicide that
didn't seem to help, and I'm not ready to throw
it away.

Speaker 6 (35:12):
What do I need to do?

Speaker 3 (35:15):
Okay? Well, browning just means there's not water getting up
to them, the water that they need. So I would
say it probably went through a period of time where
it got too dry. It's also possible it's also possible
that maybe you know, it was kept too wet. Okay,

(35:38):
so uh huh, it's gonna be one of the other
extreme too wet and soggy, and roots get root rots
and die too dry and they get too dry. It
may have just gotten away from you. It could only
be for a few days too, and the damage is done,
and so now you water it, but it doesn't have
the roots to perk back up. It has to grow more.
So if it's still alive enough to do that, it

(35:58):
may be go ahead?

Speaker 11 (36:00):
Should I?

Speaker 1 (36:00):
Should I trim it?

Speaker 6 (36:02):
This dead off? I mean, it really looks sick.

Speaker 3 (36:07):
I understand that if I were you, I would wait.
It could be that some of those dead looking branches
re sprout, So let's not give up on them just yet.
Within a two or three weeks of do something, we
soul you know, Hey, I'm out of time, but good
luck with that Rosemary or Zella Mary. Take care. We'll
be right back, folks.

Speaker 1 (36:27):
Welcome to Katy r. H. Garden Line with Ski Richard.

Speaker 3 (36:30):
It's just watching us, all right. Welcome back to guard Line, folks. Hey,

(36:55):
I've got an idea for when you're listening to guard Line.
We don't want you to the radio do something else,
but I'll tell you what I would do. I'm looking
outside right now. It is nice and cool as far
as summer mornings can be, and enough day life to
get around. You could get to the iHeartMedia app, put
it on your phone, tune into Guardline. You can listen

(37:17):
to a current show live, or you can listen to
past shows on the iHeartMedia app. I just turned that
phone upside down in my pocket. If you got earbuds
that works too. They just listen. Get out there. You
can get some weeds, pulls, some moultz put down, some
plants put in the ground. Or you could just walk
around with a cup of coffee. And what if you
encountered a bug or a unusual weed in the lawn

(37:40):
or something, take a picture of it. Call my producer,
email it Tommy and live from your garden. Garden Line
how about that. I think that's a good way to
do it. As the day heats up, it's not as
much fun to be outside. But that's just an idea.
I'm just saying, do what that is you wish. The
folks at micro Life have a number of really good products,

(38:00):
and recently, in fact, yesterday and day before yesterday too,
I've been out doing some planting and a couple of
products that I was using. I just thought i'd tell
you about this because I talk about a lot of
micro Life products, but I don't generally talk about these two.
One of them is micro Grow Liquid AF It is bioinoculant.
What does that mean. It means it's got a number

(38:22):
of different beneficial microbes that help the plant fight disease.
Can you believe that?

Speaker 12 (38:29):
It?

Speaker 3 (38:29):
Actually, it's amazing. There are a number of different strup
to micees, there's a number of different Trichoderma bacillas and
so on, and they literally they're microbes that fight disease.
And it's a liquid. And so what I was doing
the other day is I was planting, well, most recently
I was planting in Broogmancy. If you've never had one,
it's called yesterday to day and tomorrow the ballooms come out,

(38:52):
and they as they age, they change their color a
little bit. And so at the same time, because you
got blooms opening each day, it's got purple flowers, it's
got live underflowers, and it's got white flowers on the
same plant. It's really cool. It does good in a
bright shade too, which is where I was putting mine. Anyway,
I was using a concoction. I used the microgrow liquid
af in a watering can along with along with a

(39:16):
different product, which is it is microlife soil and plant energy.

Speaker 8 (39:21):
So what is that.

Speaker 3 (39:22):
Well, Microlife's soilin plant energy is basically humic acid and molasses,
and molasses gets in the soil. That's basically it's a sugar.
It's a carbon chain and microbes go nuts. They love it.
It rocket fuel for the microbes. That's basically what it is.
So I'm putting this new plan in. I'm drenching it
in with these. You can use them as folios too,

(39:43):
by the way, folio feed them. That's got over sixty
three different minerals and the solin plant energy. But I
just put them both in the water and can mix
it according to label and just watered it in real good.
I'll do it again about a week from now, and
probably again about a week later because you want to
continue to give that plant and a boost. Because here's
the deal. That thing is going in the ground at
a stressful time right now. But I'm telling you this,

(40:06):
as long as I don't let that plant dry out
and I do what I'm doing to it with Microlife
soil and plant energy and micro Grow liquid af bioinoculate,
the plant's going to be fine. It's going to survive,
it's going to fight diseases, it's going to get the
root system established, and we're going to be good to go.
I talk about fall planting being so important, Yes it is,
but you can plant now if you take care of

(40:27):
your plants like this and the folks at Microlife these
are just two of many, many different products, both dry
granules and liquid that they offer. Alrighty here I'm going
to head out and now to Spring Branch and visit
with Josh. Hey, Josh, welcome to Guardenline, and thanks for
being a patient person on the line. Sorry it takes

(40:49):
so long to get back to you.

Speaker 13 (40:51):
Oh note worries. Thanks for taking my call.

Speaker 3 (40:52):
Skip.

Speaker 13 (40:53):
I have a two herbicide questions and a iron question.
On the herbicide question, I remember maybe a year ago
I heard you and a caller talking about a selective
herbicide for bermuda.

Speaker 14 (41:06):
What was that?

Speaker 3 (41:10):
Where's the bermuda growing?

Speaker 13 (41:12):
It's getting mixed in with my zoysia that I'm trying
to get established in the backyard.

Speaker 3 (41:19):
Okay, Uh, I would need to check the label. Normally
it's in the we're dealing with it in St. Augustine
because most people have Saint Augustine. But if I understand
your question, I was probably talking about a product called Recognition.

Speaker 6 (41:35):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (41:35):
And it's not one that's available in the retail garden market.
You're not going to find it at you know, your
feed stores, well you know you might, but probably not,
but garden centers and things like that. But it's it's
a mix of the two. And I would have to
I'm not going to go into it on there because
it's complicated and people will get confused and end up
doing something different than they should on it. If you

(41:59):
wanted to email me, I could send you more information
on that.

Speaker 13 (42:03):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (42:03):
That's probably the best way to do it.

Speaker 15 (42:05):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (42:05):
You could have a professional you know, len landscape care
folks come out and do everything for you on it.
It's not cheap at all. And so typically you know
a company that's going to do a bunch of yards,
well they can afford to buy it the quantity of
it and do what they do for the individual homeowner.

(42:25):
It's anyway, if you want, I'll send you the info.
You can make your own decision on it, okay.

Speaker 13 (42:32):
Second to herbicide question, then I have some Johnson grass
that has started to really get aggressive in what's supposed
to be my native grass and wild flower section. Is
there any good collective herbicide for that that would be
you know, native friendly, pollinator friendly.

Speaker 3 (42:50):
Well, uh, as far as Johnson grass, that's not a
big pollinator plant, so we're not really worried about it.
But I would I would use probably something called finale.
Excuse me, hold on just a minute, not finale. My
brain just went blanket. Well, actually you could, you could

(43:11):
use finale, but I would I would say probably something
called ornamac or fusillade on it. If you go to
my website Gardening with Skip dot com, there is a
publication called Herbicides for Skipsweed Wiper. It goes into for

(43:31):
each kind of weed, Like Johnson grass is a grass.
So you go down the chart to grasses and you
go across to the left, and it gives you two
ingredients and oh gosh, over a half dozen different products
that you would look for with those ingredients. Either of
those two would be a good grass only herbicide, so
you could spray it. Johnson grass was coming up native

(43:52):
grasses in there. Okay, Well, you just spray it on
the grass that yeah, But if you haven't seen my
weed wiper that's also on the publication. And the cool
thing about that is you would put the product on
the weed wiper and just wipe it on some of
the Johnson grass leaves and it would translocate down and
kill the rhizomes underground and would not hurt your native grasses.

(44:14):
So that's another reason I like that weed wiper approach.

Speaker 13 (44:18):
Okay, and then fire ants have invaded my potted lime tree.

Speaker 16 (44:25):
So anything good.

Speaker 13 (44:27):
That's you know, mixed in with food that I can
use to.

Speaker 3 (44:32):
Kill the fire ant, Well, you've got a couple of options.
There is an organic product called come and Get It
that's a fireant bait, but you would sprinkle it not
just in the pot, but around the pot, because as
fireant's in that line, they're they're venturing out around the plant.
They're not all just living right there. There's not enough
for them in just the pot for them to survive.

Speaker 6 (44:53):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (44:53):
So if you sprinkle it as a bait, they'll bring
it back to the colony where that is and kill it.
And that's an organic option for controlling them. The other
alternative would be to use something that you just drench
through the pot and that would kill him quickly. But
I I either way you go. You should be able
to do the job.

Speaker 14 (45:14):
On that one.

Speaker 3 (45:15):
Okay, okay, awesome, all right now, uh yeah, hang on,
My producer is gonna come on and he will give
you my email. Okay, okay, so we'll we'll get to
that if you if you want to pursue that the
other option, okay.

Speaker 13 (45:32):
Yeah, that'd be great.

Speaker 3 (45:35):
Okay, all right, sir, thanks you, thanks appreciate the call.
We're going to go now to Sherry and Willis. Good morning, Hey, Sherry,
good morning, Yes, good morning.

Speaker 17 (45:50):
So we have a good morning. We have a fig
tree on that has done fantastic for four years and
now suddenly it's lost leaves, like most of them.

Speaker 3 (46:03):
Okay, as it lost them, can you describe to me, like,
did they did they just go from green to brown?
Did they brown on the edges and then the whole
leaf browned and fell off? Did it hand up with
some spots or splotches that didn't turn brown? Can you
describe that for me?

Speaker 5 (46:22):
Well?

Speaker 17 (46:23):
Yeah, Unfortunately I didn't get close enough to them when
they were doing that.

Speaker 6 (46:27):
I was out of town, so and I didn't ask
my husband.

Speaker 17 (46:32):
Right now, I'm driving, so I can't, so look. But yeah,
it Also the bigs were always disappointing. They were small
and somebody, some creature would get them before we did,
which was, you know, okay, because they were so small.
So we planted another one that it says they're big big,
So that's good in another spot.

Speaker 3 (46:54):
But this looks fantastic.

Speaker 17 (46:56):
It was probably tipsy tall.

Speaker 3 (47:00):
Okay, Well, here's the deal. Figs. It could be a
number of things. It could be drought conditions, it could
be nematodes in the roots, and it could be a
thing called fig rust that just attacks the foliage and
infects it and the tree casts off its leaves and
then it puts on new leaves. It'll come back and
put on new leaves. So it's gonna be one of

(47:21):
those three. Probably probably not drought, Probably not drought, but yeah,
it's gonna be one of those three. If I saw
a picture of the leaves, I.

Speaker 7 (47:32):
Probably can tell you terrible.

Speaker 6 (47:34):
So you know it's fine.

Speaker 3 (47:38):
Yeah, well then eliminate that option. But but a defoliating
fig is going to be due to something wrong in
the roots, which could be drought or nemotodes, or it
could be to the fig rust, which there's not a
real good way to fight it spray wise. So hey,
I gotta I gotta run, Sherry. But if you wanted,
I'll leave you on on hold here. If you want
to get an email to send me some picture of

(48:00):
the leaves as they are beginning to show the problem.
I can take a look at them. If it's just
brown leaves, I'm not gonna build tell anything. But thank
you appreciate that call very much, folks. I got go
to a break here. We're a little late running to it.
I'll be right back. Hey, welcome back to the Guardline.
Good to have you with us. Listen, if you are
wanting a showplace of a landscape, or if you're just
wanting to take yours up in the loch. Pier Scapes.

(48:22):
That's a company you need to know about. Go to
the website. Look at what they do. That's the simplest
wagon I'm cent Or described to you and tell you
all about. Well, they do irrigation, well, they fix drainage, well,
they do lighting, well, they do hardscapes. Go look at
what they do piercescapes dot com. Pierscapes dot com from
a small renovation of a bed to a complete landscape

(48:45):
build to that outdoor living area you've always dreamed of.
Piercescapes dot com two eight one three seven oh fifty
sixty two eight one three seven oh five zero six zero.
We're gonna go now to Houston to talk to Josh. Well,
Hello Josh, and welcome to garden Line. Good morning.

Speaker 7 (49:04):
Question for you here.

Speaker 6 (49:07):
Back when I was a kid, He's going to some.

Speaker 18 (49:10):
Family property in Buffalo, Texas, and my dad would always
warn me about the furry little plant.

Speaker 3 (49:15):
He called it Bullmetal's house. Stay away from that Bullmetal.
And so fast forward to last weekend.

Speaker 18 (49:22):
I okay, because I got into it. Last weekend, I
left the tracker and trailer up there on the family property,
getting ready for some brush clearing, and came back up
there and I cranked the tractor up and there's a
red wasp. I'd built the nest, so they came out
and stung me. And I'm jumping off the trailer and
I rolled into this bull netal on the ground. So

(49:45):
I'm stung by red wash and I got bullmetal.

Speaker 7 (49:49):
Now, men, the stuff has been plaguing.

Speaker 3 (49:52):
Did a rattlesnake come out and bite you in the neck?
After that.

Speaker 18 (49:58):
Night, I spent two doctor visits at the orthopedic because
I sliced my finger off.

Speaker 16 (50:03):
That's the truth too.

Speaker 8 (50:04):
So it was just what the other, Yeah, it was.

Speaker 18 (50:08):
It was a it was a rough weekend for old Josh.
But uh so, uh, I'm now readdressing this whole bull neetal.
I've got a couple of kids and and uh it's
kind of an open clear and pasture and we have
a cabin up there, and and so I was I
used to have my private applicator's license back when I
had thirty one acres in Brazoria County, and through the

(50:29):
bag Extension office there, I was licensed, and I was
buying some regulated herbicide but I.

Speaker 6 (50:35):
Don't know that.

Speaker 18 (50:36):
I'm calling for you to advise for me.

Speaker 6 (50:39):
What what what?

Speaker 18 (50:40):
What's the best to go after?

Speaker 6 (50:41):
I've got a.

Speaker 18 (50:42):
Fifty gallon spray rig with a boom and a wand
that I can run off my pizzael on my tractor,
and so I can apply some pretty heavy medicine.

Speaker 6 (50:50):
Yep, but I do just so what what would you recommend?

Speaker 18 (50:53):
Or and and uh, what's the strongest because I saw
maybe you know, do I need to go out there
and just dig it all up with a shovel?

Speaker 3 (50:59):
Or do I treat it well? I mean it's got
an underground storage root, so you could, but that's that's
pretty labor intensive. Okay. First of all, I would recommend
you talk to your county extension office there because they
deal with the pasture types of things. I'm a home
and garden kind of guy, so, but I happen to
know there's a product ingredient called Trichlo peer t R

(51:20):
i c l O p y R in the home
and garden market. It'll be sold as poison ivy killer,
as brush killer, as things like that. And if you will,
if you will spray it spot spray it with tracla peer,
it'll move down into the root system and do a
pretty good job of killing it. So right now there's
there's ranch ranch sized versions of Tricla Peer, but but

(51:44):
the home and garden market has it in smaller quantity.
So if you're looking at you know, I need you know,
five gallons of this stuff, well then go with a
ranch root.

Speaker 5 (51:51):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (51:52):
If you just need to spray you know, I don't know,
fifty bowl met old plants, Well you can probably do
that with the home and garden end of it. Well,
we talked to you drag agent out there. Yeah, they're
gonna give you a shot.

Speaker 6 (52:04):
Okay, yeah, thank you, very good triclop here. I think
that answers my questions.

Speaker 3 (52:08):
I appreciate your time this morning. Thank you. Sorry about
your your weekend. Man, I I feel better about my
life after that happened. I have tangled with bullntal before,
so I know what we're talking about here. That is amazing.

Speaker 18 (52:23):
You know, you kind of did spread, like you said,
poison ivy, the the the whelps that have came up
because it was sticking out of me like it was
cactus bonds, and so I was even plucking it out
and it and that stuff is still with me a
week later. It's really starting to float to the surface now,
and I mean it's bad, but I kind of feel
like it's spreading like it does poison ivy.

Speaker 3 (52:43):
But yeah, anybody didn't you need somebody who was visiting you.
You need somebody who was filming this, because you could
have put it online and made some money of this
guy rolling around screaming and uh, you know everything. I
mean that that was a rough day. I feel for you.
I used to move irrigation pipe in a peanut field.

(53:05):
By the way, bullnetal grows in sandy soil, so you
must have some up there, but the peanut field, and
we'd run through their barefoot like kids in the morning,
early mornings, moving those pipes and oh my gosh, get
a bull netal walking you on top of your barefoot
and it would get your attention at about five in
the morning for sure. All right, man, thank you, thank you,
bye bye, bye bye. All right, enough for reminissing in pain.

(53:30):
Let's now run out to my land and talk to Andrew. Hey, Andrew,
welcome to guarden Line.

Speaker 7 (53:35):
Bye, good morning, how are you ye do good? So
we've got a place down on the coast, and I
am dealing with Dallas grass and barnyard grasses and smother
broad leaf grasses because I'm trying to just keep the
permuted down there. And I'm just wondering on the seedheads

(53:56):
for those grasses. I'm gonna spray some MSMA on that
in order to kill it off. But with the seed heads,
how quickly is that going to come back?

Speaker 19 (54:07):
And how?

Speaker 7 (54:08):
I mean, I know I'm limited on how many times
I can spray that products. I just wonder if I
might ever going to really get rid of it, or
do I just go through and round up the whole
thing to kill it up and start over again.

Speaker 3 (54:22):
Well, if you never let it up for air, you're
going to win. I don't know that I would would
go that route. Uh there, If it were mine, I
would do some spot spraying. Okay, that I think that
is what you're going to find, probably is your best shot.
How extensive is the Dallas grass? I mean, is it
solid Dallas grass or just one here and there?

Speaker 7 (54:44):
Or what I have patches, you know, like a probably
fifty square foot patches of it and then then it's
here and there.

Speaker 3 (54:54):
Yeah, Well it's a it's a tough one. To get
rid of. I would go for something that just kills everything,
you know, whether it is round up type product or
something else, and I would spray those patches and then
the Bermuda grass with some water and fertilizer. It'll crawl
back in pretty fast. It's a good invader.

Speaker 14 (55:11):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (55:11):
And so you're gonna have some dead spots, gonna look
like heck, but just stick with that like that, and
then as new ones come up, when they're small, you
can do a little squirt on those spots and not
have this giant area. But getting rid of Dallas grass
in a grassy lawn is definitely a challenge to do
so with bermuda I think I would just do the

(55:32):
spot treat type thing. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 7 (55:35):
My challenge is always that I don't get down every
weekend to cut it. You know, like right now I'm
bedding down and it's been three weeks since I cut
the grass, so I know I got seated as popped
up everywhere. And even if I go kill the grass off,
how long would it be before those seeds, those seeds
take root to get going.

Speaker 3 (55:54):
Well, they're gonna sprout again, and it's a it's a
warm season, so they're gonna sprout again when the weather's warm.
I would get for the seeds. I would do if
you go to my schedule online at gardening with Skip
dot com, look at that schedule and then put the
pre emergent herbicide out. I would use barricade. Put it out.

(56:14):
Probably tell me where that property is.

Speaker 7 (56:17):
Again, it's done in Matagorda.

Speaker 3 (56:21):
Mattagorda, Okay. I would put it out probably in mid February,
and then I would repeat that again about sixty days
later to carry the extension on a little further in
through the year and stop all the seed germination part
as far as the existing plants. That's where you got
a spot treat. But the other do do that, okay, Okay,

(56:43):
all right, I'll give it a try. Thank you, Yeah,
you bet, take care. Thanks for that call. Neilson Nursery
and Water Gardens out there in Katie area. In fact,
if you drive to Katie on ten or maybe are
already in Katie, go north on Katie Fort Ben Road
and it's just a US just up the street a
little bit on the right hand side the garden center

(57:05):
is outstanding. Nelson Nursery and Water Gardens at garden Center
is it's up stating they're gonna have every kind of
plant you're looking for, Like right now we start in
our vegetable gardens for fault, they've got you covered on that.
The house plant selection they have inside I just think
is amazing, beautiful, beautiful, And the folks there are so knowledgeable.
They've been doing this a long long time. And when

(57:25):
it comes to water gardens, I gotta warn you, you're
gonna walk back in there and you're gonna hear the
sound or running water, and you are gonna want to
have some to take home, and you should at Nelson
Water Gardens. I gotta take a little break. I'll be
right back. I we're doing today out there. We've got
plenty of things we canna be talking about, that's for sure.
Let's do that. Here's the number seven to one three

(57:46):
two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three
two one two five eight seven four. We're gonna go
to Jenny now in Cypress, Texas. Hello, Jenny, Welcome to
garden Line.

Speaker 5 (57:58):
Hey, good morning. I'm a Mexican lime tree in a
pot a few years old and it's got some a
bunch of black It looks at black mold to me
all over the leaves. It doesn't the line, but I
just want to know what you think that might be.

Speaker 3 (58:17):
It is going to be something that is sucking juices
out of the tree and pushing a sugary substance called
honeydew at the back end of the insect, and the
set grows on that. So most likely it's going to
be scale on a lime tree. There are a number
of insects that can do that. Aphids can do it,
white flies can do it, meae bugs can do it.

(58:38):
But you're probably dealing with scale. So if you'll look
on the little twigs and stems of the lime tree
for little bumps. If you'll look underneath the leaf, turn
a leaf over, especially a larger leaf's been around a
little while, and look for little, tiny scale like things
sticking on there, almost like little if you can imagine
miniature fish scales, you know that are just struck to
the leaf. Ye, it looks sort of like that. So

(59:02):
there's two ways to go about getting scale. One is
to use the systemic product. And while there are systemics
that are labeled for citrus, I generally stay away from
them because a you got blooms and bees and c
or B. You're gonna want to eat the things yourself.
I just would rather not have a systemic in some momenty.
So that leaves us with horticultural oil sprays. So you

(59:25):
get a summer oil, a horticultural oil, and you spray
it upward from underneath the plant. Because oil is not
a poison. Its smothers scale. So to the degree that
you coat a scale with oil, you kill it. And
if you miss it, maybe a leaf blocks the spray
and the scale. You know, on a leaf above that
doesn't get hit, it's not going to get killed. So

(59:47):
good thorough coverage is important. Do it really early in
the morning, when it's the coolest time of the day,
do your oil spray.

Speaker 6 (59:54):
And then.

Speaker 3 (59:56):
As we get into milder weather it's easier to do it.
But if you want to shut it down right now
that that would be the first time to do it.
Go ahead and get it done now, but early in
the morning.

Speaker 5 (01:00:07):
Yeah, okay, because we do have bees too, so I
know that's the essential two things. Yeah, before it awake.

Speaker 6 (01:00:14):
So okay, well, thank you appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (01:00:17):
Yeah, Well, the oil, the oil won't really hurt the bees.
You know, but but it it just works by smother
in the scale. So that'd be my suggestion to it.
Just be just be careful with it because you can
burn plants when that sun's baking down on oily leaves.
All right, Jenny, thank you appreciate that. I appreciate that
call very much. Have you, guys, when was the last

(01:00:40):
time you're out at Warren Southern Gardens. Warren Southern Gardens. Uh,
I'm telling you, I love love going to that place.
Kingwood Garden Center is the same way. Warren Southern Gardens
and Kingwood Garden Center both they it's just they're just
excellent places to find what you're looking for. They carry

(01:01:01):
a wide variety of all kinds of stuff. When you
go out there, you're going to find an excellent supply
of all the fertilizers and things, for example, Microlife and Nelson.
You know, I was talking earlier about turf Star line
like Bruce's Brew. Now's the time to get it on
your grass. Get ready for the fall fertilization. It's coming
up in a couple months, But for now, get the

(01:01:23):
Bruces Brew down, Get over to Warren's, get over to
Kingwood Garden Center. And you're going to find it. They've
got them there. They also remember how I was talking
about Nelson had those filling stations, you know where you
could refill your nutri Star line and things. They've got
those that both Warren Southern Gardens and Kingwood Garden Center,
so high quality line of fertilizer there that they do

(01:01:45):
carry in many different forms. Also, while you're there, they
have a special deal right now. Earlier I was making
an appeal for fall planting. It's the time to get
our soil ready because fall planning is the best season
of the year to plant. Twenty percent off every bag
of leaf More Compost from heirloom soils and veggiean nerb mix,

(01:02:06):
also from heirloom soils. Two of the top products that
people use ever, leaf More Compost, outstanding Veggie nerd mix,
perfect perfect for you can use it flower beds to
It doesn't have to be veggie nerd, but twenty percent
off each bag. Right now of those, they got peppers
and tomato plants in stock. They're about to get some
more stuff in stock, and the seed supply has been

(01:02:29):
rejuvenated with fresh dated seed. You got to get over
there if you're going to do any kind of seed
planning of flowers and veggies and whatnot, and you should
be for fall. Warren Southern Gardens on North Park Drive,
Kingwood Garden Center on Stone Hollow, Both of those open
seven days a week. Let's see, let's head out to

(01:02:49):
Dave now on Lake Conroe. Hello, Dave, welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 6 (01:02:54):
Hey yeahlink, Hey, yeah, I got a question on Well,
the first one is fertilizing that Saint Augustine grass on
that new house we got, and we got it's a
pretty good big piece of property. But my mom she
always swore by thirteen thirteen thirteen. But I mean that
might have been up there on our farm.

Speaker 3 (01:03:17):
What do you think that was the thing back in
the day. Yeah, back in the day, triple thirteen was
recommended for about everything. We don't do that anymore. The
middle number sticks around now. I did a just as
just an aside, but I did a study of two
hundred yards in northwest Austin on a clay so black clay,

(01:03:37):
just similar to what we have a lot of in
some of the Houston are anyway, of the two hundred yards,
and not one of them needed that middle number. Not
one that's not to say, no yard in Texas needs
the middle number. No, it's not true. It's just the
triple thirteen is a one to one to one ratio
equal amounts of all three and grass takes up less
of the middle number than it does the other two.
And the middle number sticks around for a long time.

(01:04:00):
So if you've ever done triple thirteen kind of fertilizing,
you probably got enough phosphorus there. I would go with
a three one two or four one two ratio for now,
and then when three one two or four one two, yeah, ratio.
So let's do this. Bruce. I was just talking about
Bruce's Brew from the folks at Nelson. Bruce's Brew is

(01:04:22):
an excellent product to put down now on your lawn
when we get to fall. Then when we get to fall,
you're going to be looking at something that's got more
of the third number, not a three one two, but
like a two to one two kind of ratio. So
let me let me try not to confuse anymore. But
if you look at the if you look at the okay, well,
Bruces Brew is going to be an eighteen.

Speaker 6 (01:04:43):
Let me go to real quick, let me go real quick.
Before one time on the Okay, I heard the talking
about the fig trees. Uh do you recommend what what
big tree would I get maybe to put in my
front yard in Uh, you know for big figs, there's
a lady that's behind me. Hers is about two feet

(01:05:05):
above the six foot plants, and she's got some figs
on there that are huge. Man, you know they're big.

Speaker 3 (01:05:11):
Okay, Yeah. The main thing on figs is that you dave,
you want to get a fig that has closed eye
that little end. If it's open, bugs get in there
and sour them and then wasp come to them because
they got that fermented stuff coming out. So you want
closed eye figs. So I like, I like, you know,

(01:05:32):
people use brown turkey, people use Texas everybury. I would
say there's an L. S U Purple and an L.
S U Gold that are both pretty decent figs, good sized.
I like Alma is another good one. But there's a
lot of good figs out there. It's it's you have
a lot of good options. But I would I would
say maybe maybe the L. S U Purple would be
a good one to consider if you want a bigger fill.

Speaker 8 (01:05:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:05:56):
Yeah, but there's some other good ones.

Speaker 6 (01:05:58):
Strawberry strawberry Big Jailey.

Speaker 3 (01:06:01):
You know I grew up eating that. My mom took
strawberry jello and put it in figs and made strawberry Jellmen.

Speaker 6 (01:06:07):
I hear the music going. If you could give me
some skips on a sweet sweet magnology.

Speaker 3 (01:06:15):
True, We're gonna have to do that after break, so
I'm gonna have to run. Not not much to tell
you on that in the short time that we have folks.
Let's see Luke and Conro. I know we've got a
question coming up from you. We'll take you first when
we come back from break. I want to remind everybody

(01:06:35):
that if you want information that I keep talking about
here on the show, go to my website, Gardening with
Skip dot com. But come familiar with those publications. You're
gonna have those questions and detail and the information you
need is right there, including my long care schedules.

Speaker 1 (01:06:53):
Welcome to kt RH Guarden Line with Skip Richard.

Speaker 11 (01:07:06):
Just watching as well. So many supposa.

Speaker 1 (01:07:22):
Not a sad glass gas.

Speaker 14 (01:07:26):
Thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:07:30):
All right, folks, welcome back, Welcome back to Guardline. Good
to have you with us. We are here to help
you have success with what you're trying to do in
your garden. Somebody was following me and asking about a
product or earlier.

Speaker 6 (01:07:45):
Uh, and I.

Speaker 3 (01:07:47):
Sometimes the products you're looking for are not easy to find.
You know that there's stuff that's available everywhere, and then
there's stuff that's almost not available anywhere. But if you're
going to find something it's difficult to find, I can
tell you where you should start looking in that Southwest
Fertilizer corner of Businet and Runwick, a place has been
around for seventy years now, and it's because people know

(01:08:08):
when you go there, you're going to find the products.
This selection is unbelievable. You could be not an organic gardener,
you could be an organic gardener. Either way, the best
selection's gonna be there at Southwest Fertilizer corner of bissin
Ut and Runwick in Southwest Houston seven one three six
six six one seven four four. Whether you're dealing with

(01:08:31):
weeds or pests or diseases, or whether you're just looking
for fertilizer in all kinds of forms, granule liquid, slow release,
fash release, all of the above. Southwest Fertilizer corner of
Businet and Runwick. Simple as that, Let's now head out
to Conroe. And we're going to visit with Luke this morning.
Hey Luke, welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 6 (01:08:51):
Good morning. What I've got is an acre and a
half that was low. I'm having some fieldert brought in,
and I'm also digging a pit there to get the
sand up to spread over the top. But that soul
is there's nothing there. What do I need to put
on it? To get a bible?

Speaker 3 (01:09:12):
You got a good quality fertilizer. What I would do, Luke,
since you're starting there kind of from scratch, you know,
digging and moving and everything, I would start with a
soil test. That way you know exactly what you have
so you know what to add. Yeah, we give we
give general recommendations, Like I'll say, for a lawn, you
want a three one two ratio or a four to

(01:09:34):
one two ratio of fertilizers. But you may have not
enough phosphorus in your soil, which would be rare, but
it could happen in which case the three one two
wouldn't be the best answer for you. Uh, And so
I would start with the sol test first and then
fertilize from there. Now, if you don't want to go
through that, then the general recommendations are something with a

(01:09:54):
three one two or four one two ratio. During the
growing season, when we get to fall, we we go
to more of a two one two. We bring that
third number up a little bit compared to the other two.
So either way, if you want to do a soil test,
it's real easy. It's soil testing. One word soil testing
dot t a m U, dot e d U. Soil

(01:10:17):
testing dot TAMU, dot e dou test you how to
do it, gives you all the information. On my website
is a publication about taking a soil test, tells you
how to do it.

Speaker 11 (01:10:26):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:10:26):
And if you go to my schedules for the lawn,
there's a link to soil testing dot TAMU, dot du,
so you can just click on it and go straight there.

Speaker 6 (01:10:35):
I have done the soil testing in the past at
y'all's recommendation. It absolutely works fantastically. Oddly enough, the first
two numbers I was completely depleted in and potash I
was off the charts.

Speaker 3 (01:10:50):
So isn't that word okay?

Speaker 6 (01:10:52):
Yeah, the fertilizer okay, Well, a three zero or something
that's all I can find.

Speaker 3 (01:10:59):
Three three to zero. Isn't that weird?

Speaker 16 (01:11:01):
Well?

Speaker 3 (01:11:02):
I mean you can, there's a way to go about that,
depending on how big the area is. You know, if
you're doing acreage or if you're doing a thousand square feet,
it's kind of different what I would send you to do.
But that is really strange now when you start you know,
digging a pit and bringing stuff from the bottom up
and putting it on the surface or any kinds of
stuff like that. Yeah, you're throwing everything in an unusual situation,

(01:11:24):
which is fine, it's just what we would normally expect.
Probably going to be the case because you've kind of
turned the soil profile.

Speaker 6 (01:11:32):
Upside down because who don't know what's there?

Speaker 3 (01:11:37):
Yeah, we just don't know. Typically, sandy soils are low
in nutrient because unlike a clay that has small particle
size that holds on too lots of stuff, sand is
like broken glass. And I mean, if you poured fertilizer
water into a column of broken glass, it would just
run right through, you know, very little stick to the glass.
And that's kind of how it is with sand. So

(01:11:58):
with sand, you're gonna definitely want to do a slower
release product so it gradually releases over time rather than
just washing all away.

Speaker 6 (01:12:08):
What what I'm bringing in this clay, and I've got
okay deep deep sand there. So what I'm trying to
do is dig a pit, but poling the sand off
of the side and throwing the clay in the pit.
So I put like two inches of sand over the
top of the clay because okay, we'll hold the water.

Speaker 3 (01:12:26):
Is the right window or uh, it'd be okay, I
don't know what kind of clay it is. There's different
kinds of clays. They're not all equal. In general, they're
gonna drain slower. They're gonna hold water and nutrients better,
but not not necessarily drain as well. A lot of
times in East Texas you're dealing with more of a
reddish clay that has a U. When I say used to,

(01:12:48):
I'm talking to piney, woodsy kind of areas which Conor
used to be like Conor used to be. Uh, but uh,
you're dealing with more of an acidic clay, whereas down
on the Gulf Coast and black clays and times our
class are our pH So that's where that's where we
get back to the soul test. If you get one done,
you know, send me the results. Let me take a

(01:13:08):
look at them. We can talk about what you might
need to do. You also have a horticulture agent in
Montgomery County, Michael Potter, who can help you with that
kind of thing, and an ag agent too. If it's
a little larger area, there's an ag agent there, Brandon
in Montgomery County that can advise you on that as well.

Speaker 6 (01:13:29):
Okay, I'll look at it.

Speaker 3 (01:13:31):
Yeah, and don't you know, don't hesitate, let me know
if I can help with anything. I'm not just trying
to not just trying to send you down the road.
I just want you to be aware of You've got the.

Speaker 6 (01:13:41):
Thank you very There you.

Speaker 3 (01:13:42):
Go, Thanks sir, all right, appreciate your calling. Thank you
very much. I appreciate that. Yes, sir, Agro Life Extension Service.
Two hundred and fifty four counties in Texas. I think
there are two hundred and fifty extension offices. You go
out way in West Texas where there's a lot more
a rabbits and people, and you may have two counties

(01:14:02):
served by one office. That's certainly over here in the
Greater Houston area. In fact, we got like I think
we have six horticulture agents in the Greater Houston area
going from Orange all the way down to Brassooria County,
Fort ben County, Galveston County, Harris County, Montgomery County. Who
am I leaving out? I said Orange, I'm leaving somebody
else out anyway. I just try to think of them

(01:14:22):
all at once. Oh, Brass County College Station, Briancas Station,
that's hoard adent too, So take advantage of those folks.
Plants for All Seasons is an outstanding garden center. You know,
it's up there on Highway two forty nine, which is
Tomball Parkway, right north of where Louetta comes in Ben
Arounston's nineteen seventy three and outstanding expertise, outstanding product selection,

(01:14:49):
beautiful pottery. And if you have an issue, you can
take a picture, or you can you can take a sample.
Maybe it's a weed, take a sample in a bag
in or a bug, and they'll tell you what it is.
And maybe it's nothing needed to do about it. Maybe
there is, and they're going to be able to point
you to a product that works for it. At Plants
for All Seasons, they're also experts. And containers beautiful containers,

(01:15:11):
beautiful pre planted containers where like you take it home
and boom, it looks good from day one. Or maybe
you want to do your own. They'll help you pick
out the plants, get you a good soil mix. I
got outstanding soils. There a good container, and you can
go home and have a little do it yourself job
to create beauty that'll carry you on into fall. Plants
four All Seasons dot Com two eight one three, seven

(01:15:33):
six sixteen forty six. Let's take a break and I'll
be right back with your calls at seven one three
two one two fifty eight seventy four. Hey, welcome back,
Welcome back to guard Line, folks. You got a gardening question,
give me a call. Seven one three two one two

(01:15:54):
fifty eight seventy four. Seven one three two one two
five eight seven four. I was up this morning, of course,
got to get up early for guard Line, and I
was sitting there having a cup of coffee, just kind
of getting my head on straight and listening to a
bird outside. And I don't know which one it was.
I'm not an expert on all the bird songs, but
this poor misguided bird was singing in the pitch black

(01:16:18):
of early early morning. Maybe it was I don't know,
Maybe the light from the room was shining outside, and
he decided that the sun was coming up. But anyway,
I love to listen to birds sing. I've got a
little lap called, uh, let's say, called Merlin. Merlin as
in Merlin the Magician. It's put there, put up by
the Cornelli University or Anthology Lab. That's a fancy word

(01:16:39):
meaning bird. The Cornell University is like one of the
premier places in the country when it comes to bird science,
information research, all that kind of stuff. And the Merlin
app is cool. You can take a picture of a bird,
send it to put it in your Merlin app and
I'll tell you what it is. You can listen to
a bird sing, It'll listen for you and it'll tell

(01:17:00):
you what bird. That is so cool? Well, anyway, how
did I find out about that? Wild Birds Unlimited. They're
the place where everything I know about birds came from.
And it really is true. I talk to the managers there,
the owners of the stores and so on, and they
are experts. They know what they're doing. And if you
want to have a backyard bird sanctuary, that's where you start.

(01:17:22):
In fact, not just start, but that's where you finish too,
because from bird houses, to bird feeders, to quality bird seed.
When I say what's a quality bird seed, the seeds
a seed, right, No, it's not. Some mixes are full
of red beebes. The birds kick them on the ground.
Most birds don't want to eat them, and so you
just spent thinking you're getting a good deal on bird seed.

(01:17:42):
You just ended up wasting about over half in many
cases of the seed that's in the blend that birds
don't even care. That's why they're cheap, because they can
buy that stuff cheap. Quality bird seed that's what you're
looking for. That's where you get the best bang for
your buck. And wild Birds Unlimited has those kinds of blends.
You can buy it and compress seed cylinders. You can
buy it in loose bags of seed seasonally. You know,

(01:18:05):
I was talking about nesting super Blend. All through the
spring and early part of the year, birds are out
nesting and doing that. They have a number of different blends.
The kinds of birds are after. They've got blends that
those birds love, and so you can bring those kinds
of birds in along with the quality feeders. I've got
a squirrel excluding feeder and it is awesome. I love

(01:18:25):
that thing from wild Birds Unlimited. Squirrels can't get in.
They try, they cuss, they get upset. The language is horrible.
I laugh because I want to feed birds, not squirrels.
You may be different, but that's what I want, and
I go to wild Birds Unlimited for that. Hey, there's
six stores from WBU Wildbirds Unlimited. Here's the website WBU

(01:18:49):
dot com Forward slash Houston. That's where you'll find out.
You can go up to Cypress on Barker Cypress. There's
a wild Bird's Unlimited, and clear Lake on El Dorado Boulevard,
another one in Paarland East Broadway, over on bell Air
in Kingwood, or on Memorial Drive in Kingwood. Two more
Wildbirds Unlimited stores, and then of course Kingwood. Uh what

(01:19:10):
did I say? Kingwood? Bell Air in Houston, Memorial Drive
in Houston. There we go Kingwood Drive in Kingwood. I
don't know. Did I say clear Lake on El Dorado.
There's six of them here in the Greater Houston area.
I'm confusing myself. You don't need to be confused. WBU
dot Com Forward Slash Houston. Find the wild Birds store

(01:19:30):
near you and have some fun. It really is fun.
I enjoy that. So anyway, by the way, the the
Merlin app is available in your app store depending on
what kind of phones you got phone you have Merlin
me E R L A N. Check it out. You
will love it. You're listening to Garden Lined and the

(01:19:52):
phone number here if you'd like to give me a call.
Just went into a little bit of a quiet spell
here seven one three two one two fifty four seven
to win three two one two five eight seven four.
I have got to get over to some take care.
And I say get over. I got to get out

(01:20:13):
of my yard to take care. Checking into my mosquito buckets.
I always like to look into those things. You know,
they're the ones I got from pest pros. Pest pros
will come out to your house. They will set up
mosquito buckets and then they will come once a month
and they will service them. They need to be serviced
once a month. That's very important, So have them come
out and do that. I like looking at them because
what I'll see when I look in them is little

(01:20:34):
mosquito wrigulars in the water. Now, normally mosquitos and water
would be a cause for concern, not in a pest
Bros mosquito bucket. Here's why you put a p that
you put there is a product in them that is
very effective and shutting down mosquito larvae, and they never
grow up. There's another product in them that has an

(01:20:56):
odor that makes mama mosquito want to go lay eggs
in there. Squitch she does. That's good. I'd rather they
legs there than somewhere else because they will not grow
up there. Next, there's a product that they mama mosquito
picks up and flies around with that will infect her
with a fungus and she will die within a week.
And in the meantime, she's carrying another thing she picked

(01:21:18):
up off that screen she lands on in the bucket
to other places so that those places become unsuitable for
mosquito larva development as well. I mean, what a deal.
And it works. I've got them, I've had them all summer.
I love them. I've got a family member that's got
some buckets. They love them. It works. We've tried them
under all kinds of pressures. You know, get real rainy

(01:21:40):
periods where normally mosquitos you just get this outbreak that's
crazy following the rain because they're standing water everywhere. It's
got the buckets work. And by the way, if you
want to get some pest bros pees t b r
os dot com pest or, it's actually the pestbros dot com. Okay,
the pestbros dot com. Let me give you a phone number.

(01:22:00):
I hope you got a pen. Need to have a pen.
When you listen to guarden line two eight one, it's
two O six forty six seventy two eight one two
O six four to six seven zero. By the way,
they don't just do mosquitoes. They have outstanding programs for
preventing termites, I mean getting in your house. They have
indoor pest control options. They can control fire ants in

(01:22:22):
the art. They can they can shut down things like varmints.
I was out the other day and looking at some
plants and rats had gotten out and chewed on them.
I know what this looks like. They come at night,
rats and mice and other kinds of varmints. They can
shut that stuff down too. They know how to deal
with issues. Okay the pestbros dot Com two eight one

(01:22:43):
two O six forty six seventy I know I'm talking
about them a lot, but I love that company. Because
it works. It absolutely works. Oh and another thing about it.
You know people and you, I'm sure feel this way
a little concerned about using pesticides around the house and stuff.
These folks know how to treat a actively and how
to do it in the safest possible manner so that

(01:23:04):
it works for a long time. But you don't have
to worry about the dogs and the kids and the
pets and things like that. You were listening to Guardline
phone number seven one three two one two k t
r H seven one three two one two k t
r H. All right, well, uh, this last hurricane veered

(01:23:26):
out into the Atlantic. We missed that one. We won't
miss them all. They'll be back. We'll have summer storms.
And when that happens, what happens. Got a quiz for
you if you were here last summer? How many times
did Houston lose a good section of the Houston area
lose power for two weeks last summer? Twice? Once a
hurricane wants not summer storm, not a hurricane, summer storm,

(01:23:47):
it can happen. And basically, quality home products of Texas
is all you need to know. Quality home products of
Texas will hook you up with a Generac Automatic stand
by generator. Listen, it's a quality product. It works. But
the most important reason to go with the quality home
products of Texas is they are a standout organization when

(01:24:08):
it comes to being able to trust them. They're reliable,
they have integrity. They prioritize honesty and transparency with ever plant.
They'll tell you how it is, they'll tell you what
can be done. They'll tell you what it takes. They'll
tell you how they do it. And they do it
in house. They don't hire out and sub out and
do all that kind of stuff. They show up, They
take care of all the hoop chef to jump through

(01:24:28):
with permits and things like that, and they get you
set up so you have peace of mind, not if
the next storm arrives, but when the next doorm arrives.
Qualitytx dot com seven one three Quality. Let's head out
to Mike and sugar Land. Hey Mike, welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 6 (01:24:47):
Hey Skip, thank you for taking my call. Just got
a question for you regarding getting ready to put down
some fertilizers in nineteen four to ten. And I've got
a small area in my yard that's got a little
litle bit of take all root rot, And I'm just wondering,
is that an area I should avoid putting fertilizer over
or is it okay if some fertilizer goes into that

(01:25:09):
area as well. The only reason I asked that question.

Speaker 14 (01:25:11):
Is I.

Speaker 3 (01:25:13):
It's okay, not a problem. Yeah, no, it's not a problem.
It's the nineteen four tens of slow release fertilizer. It's
going to gradual lease over time. You know, the take
all is going to mean the plant doesn't have roots
to take up nutrients. But the fertilizer is not a
negative at all. I mean, as the roots develop, they'll
have good nutrition in the soil and that'll actually help them.

(01:25:34):
So don't worry about that at all.

Speaker 6 (01:25:36):
Go for it, okay. The only reason I asked is
a few years back, I think I accidentally fertilized over
an area that had fungus and I was like putting
the fungus on steroids. I believe it just like spread
like wildfire.

Speaker 3 (01:25:50):
Yeah, things like gray leaf spot fungus or what's the
fall of brown patch large patch circles, those all are
exacerbated by high nitrogen. But not take over it rot.
You're okay, I mean you can you can mess up
a plant by misfertilizing a grass plant or any kind
of plant. But what you just described nineteen four ten,

(01:26:12):
putting it out right, rate and everything. You're good, don't
worry about it.

Speaker 6 (01:26:16):
Okay, perfect, Thanks good.

Speaker 3 (01:26:18):
All right, all right, thank you very much. Appreciate your
calling you. You are listening, folks to Garden Line, and
we're here to help you have beauty, bounty and fun.
We want gardening to be fun, not frustrating. You know,
I hate it when someone says I tried to plant
that and it died and I just have a brown thumb.
You do not have a brown thumb. Repeat after me.

(01:26:38):
I do not have a brown thumb. What you have
maybe is an uninformed thumb. So we're gonna take a
little break here. I want you to go get your thumb.
In fact, bring both of them, sit down front of
the radio. We're going to talk and we're going to
inform your thumb, and you are going to see success
as a result of that. All you got to do
is learn how to see things from a plant's point

(01:26:59):
of view. When we come back from our break, Alan
McAllen and Don and sugar Land, you are going to
be our first two up, so just hang on with us.
I want to make sure we give you plenty of
time to do justice to your questions, and we'll be
doing that in the meantime. Take a break, go look
at my website Gardening with skip dot com. Check out
what's up there, a lot of helpful stuff. Grab you

(01:27:20):
a cup of coffee. I'll meet you back here in
just a minute. Hey, welcome back to guard Line. Hey,
glad to have you with us too. By the way,
let's run right out to the phones. We've got some
folks here online waiting. We're going to go to McAllen
first and talk to Al. Hello, Al, welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 14 (01:27:37):
Good morning, good morning, Thank you very much. I've been
listening to Jill for a long time. He being back
to Randy.

Speaker 6 (01:27:46):
Good.

Speaker 14 (01:27:47):
We're infested with mosquitoes down here, although it's pretty dry.
And when we're telling I heard the bucket and I
tried to get there by a pan and all, and
I got the testpros dot com.

Speaker 3 (01:28:05):
Uh, pest p e s T Yeah, the pest bros
dot com. Where are you located? Where you located?

Speaker 7 (01:28:11):
Out?

Speaker 3 (01:28:12):
Where you located? Me?

Speaker 14 (01:28:13):
Allen mac Allen, Oh.

Speaker 3 (01:28:15):
Down and down in the valley. Uh, your pest Bro's
not gonna come down there. They're they're just a greater
Houston area. Uh here okay, but uh here's here's what
you can do. I can put you on hold. My
producer can pick up and give you an email, and
if you if you will email me and say where
can I get mosquita buckets in McAllen, Texas. I'll send

(01:28:36):
you a link. I don't know exactly where down there,
but I'll send you a link where you can you
can find uh a pest control operator down there that
might might carry those things.

Speaker 14 (01:28:45):
Okay, well great, right, yeah, so I got there all right,
but that's really not it's not the.

Speaker 3 (01:28:52):
One I need is now. Yeah, they're a local company.
They didn't they didn't invent the technology. They just they
just sell it and apply it and take care of
it and stuff here in our area. So uh yeah,
I'm pretty su I'll give you an email send me that.
Just give me the detail because I know exactly about
this call. I connect your email to this call and

(01:29:14):
we'll get you some information. Hopefully there's somebody down McAllan
that can take.

Speaker 6 (01:29:17):
Care of you.

Speaker 3 (01:29:19):
All right, all right, let's go to Don in Sugarland.
Hey Don, welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 15 (01:29:28):
Good morning, Good morning, Thanks Gip. We've got a problem.
I've got two questions, but I got a problem with
layantana and each year in it right now, it has
it's got kind of a it makes the leaves kind
of squatchy, and there's dead areas and it kind of

(01:29:48):
turns a white yeah, chrispy. What really affects sure of that?

Speaker 3 (01:29:56):
Well, Uh, it's probably a little insect with piercing sucking
mouth parts. Or it could be antennas have a leaf
minor that gets in them and it eats it's a
little larvae in between the top and bottom surface of
the leaf, and it eats a big kind of almost
a circular, irregular, splotchy not perfectly round, but instead of

(01:30:18):
making a long trail, it kind of winds itself around
in a blotchy kind of pattern. It could be that.
And if it's that name, excuse me, nime, the a'ser
directin type of name, not knem oil. The a's a
directing type of name or spinosaid. Either one will work

(01:30:39):
on the leaf minor. If it is the piercing sucking insects,
you're probably gonna have to go with a different kind
of insect aside on them. And then finally there's a
possibility there's just some sort of a fungal leaf spot.
But you know, just I can't tell which of those
it is without seeing it.

Speaker 15 (01:30:56):
This kind of gets kind of like a white substance,
and the leaves are green. They lose a lot of
the greenness and it it's just the light green doesn't
totally kill it, spread it with the haloed ion, but
each year they kind of sometimes it hasn't, but I
haven't done a follow. Would malifi and kill everything it?

Speaker 3 (01:31:18):
Yeah, it would and sprang upward from underneath the plant,
getting it on the undersides. Because if you when you
describe it further there, I'm thinking it's the piercing sucking
insect that's sucking juices out of the leaves are very
very tiny. You turn the leaves over, they're not going
to be there. They hop away or they jump away there.
They're hard to catch in the act. But that's that's what.

Speaker 6 (01:31:39):
Everything.

Speaker 15 (01:31:41):
The malifi will kill everything.

Speaker 19 (01:31:44):
One of it.

Speaker 3 (01:31:45):
It will be effective.

Speaker 15 (01:31:47):
I have a been on the internet. I've got a
pakistanding lullberry. It must be some thing must be six
years old. The thing's tall and you know, big, but
it's never bloom. So sorry. Look, and then they've got
people that have grown cultured mulberries like that and they
seem to never flower or they it takes forever for

(01:32:11):
them to do. Is there some way that you know
they encourage the blooming process or is it impossible to
think will never bloom?

Speaker 3 (01:32:22):
Uh, the last part is not going to happen. The
thing you just said they will eventually. I don't know
anything about the tree that you actually purchased, if they had,
if they if they were selling seedlings, it could take
years and years before they mature enough to produce if
they were overfertilized. If you overfertilize the plant, you can

(01:32:47):
push it into vegetative growth and delay it's blooming a
little bit too.

Speaker 6 (01:32:52):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:32:52):
If it is a legitimately grafted mulberry that you know
what they should have been selling you, and it ought
to settle in and bloom, But just don't overdo the fertilizing.
Make sure it has plenty of sunlight, and I think
you will get blooms here sooner rather than later. But
it could take a little while they're just a lot of.

Speaker 6 (01:33:11):
Factors in years.

Speaker 3 (01:33:12):
How fast?

Speaker 15 (01:33:12):
Ten years. I don't fertilize it long.

Speaker 3 (01:33:15):
It's if it's a grat, if it's a grafted plant,
it should not take ten years. Okay, yeah, it's a
grafted mulberry plant, it shouldn't. All right.

Speaker 15 (01:33:27):
Well, thanks, about twenty five feet tall?

Speaker 6 (01:33:31):
All right?

Speaker 3 (01:33:32):
Okay, well hold off a little on the fertilizer. It's
got plenty, so yeah, I don't do it, all right, okay, thanks,
all right, sir, thank you appreciate the call. That's right.
All right, let's see here. Where are we on the boards.
Let's go to David in West Chase. Hello, David, Welcome
to garden Line.

Speaker 7 (01:33:51):
Hello, good morning, Hey, good morning.

Speaker 3 (01:33:56):
I tout you, guys man.

Speaker 20 (01:33:59):
I've got a small line tree in a pot an exoria,
and the leaves are curling. And I went on a
line and looked it up and on it sugisted cutting
them all off, all the ones that are curling off.
And I did that, and now they're coming back again.

Speaker 3 (01:34:18):
Okay, David, you're talking about the line when you're saying that,
or the exoria.

Speaker 15 (01:34:24):
Both of them.

Speaker 3 (01:34:26):
Okay, I did not get the picture. I'm going to
have the producer make sure you have the right email
and uh, and then will you resent it. I'm gonna
put you on hold and go to break. If you
can shoot me that email again, just.

Speaker 20 (01:34:40):
I'm not walking my dog.

Speaker 6 (01:34:41):
I'll have to do it, all right, Well.

Speaker 3 (01:34:44):
If you want to hang on, I'll finish answering as
best I can when we come back from this break.
All right, folks, I'll be right back with your calls.
Welcome back. Good to have you with us. I guess
plenty of stuff to talk about here. Still, I wanted
to get a little bit about vegetables here before we
get too far along in the show. I was out

(01:35:05):
yesterday taking care of my barbecue. D I've got a rectech.
It's a pellet grill that I got at Ace Hardware store.
You know, Ace has got a wide variety of pellet
grills of other kinds of barbecues. In fact, all the
big names that you know, the cult following barbecue brands
like rectec and like Big Green egg. Oh my gosh,

(01:35:27):
that's that's probably the biggest cult of ball. I used
to have a friend, Oh, I have a friend that
used to always brag about his Big Green Eggs like
nothing else existed except Big Green Eggs. Well, okay, good,
they're great. Maybe you've got a trigger. Maybe you're looking
to get a Weber. I spent my whole life barbecuing
on Weber's great pit. It's all of ACE Hardware. Just

(01:35:47):
go to your local Ice Hardware and check them out.
And when you're there, you're gonna find everything you need
to go with them. And you need stuff to go
with them. You know, the seasonings and the sauces and
the skewers and the little baskets where you put your
veggies and you're going to roast them on the grill,
and on and on and on. You can do that
beer can chicken. You need a little wire thing to
hold your chicken up so they can put a beer

(01:36:08):
can underneath it. Oh my gosh, have we gone nuts
on barbecuing? Yes we have. Is that a good thing?

Speaker 8 (01:36:12):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (01:36:13):
Yes it is. ACE Hardware has got you covered. Go
to Acehardwaretexas dot com. Now, when you're there, don't just
stop with the pit. I mean check out all the
things that make that outdoor living area wonderful. Listen, the
evening times are a nice time to be out. The
morning times are a nice time to be out, and
we got fall coming. When you will want to be out,

(01:36:33):
you need to get set up, get your string of lights,
create that little beer garden setting that you wanted to have.
Whatever you need, Ace Hardware has got you covered. Ace
Hardware Texas dot Com North southeast West. If you're hearing
my voice, there's an ACE Hardware store near you, Maybe
something like Deer Park Acehardware on the Eastside on Center Street.

(01:36:53):
Maybe All Star Ace up in Spring on Rayford Road,
or how about the K and M. There's one in
a Taskasito on Timber four Strive. There's one in Kingwood
on Kingwood Drive. How about Paco Ace Wes Willison Alvin
Texas or Sinkhole ranch As on South Mason and Katie.
How about Cypress Ace on Jones Road. I used to
live by that one great ACE Hardware store up there

(01:37:14):
in Cypress on Jones Road. As many many Ace Hardware
stores are. Check out the one near you at Ace
Hardware Texas dot Com. Find the one that you're looking for.
So I wanted to talk about vegetables a little bit
in the fall season. Of course, he cools off and
we start to plan our cool season veggies. So if
you're going to want to plant broccoli and cabbage and

(01:37:36):
califrond cole robbie and kale and collards, all the blue
lee vegetables, most of which begin with a sound kale
collar to cole robbie cabin. All right, the blue lee vegetables.
Those are going to go in in September, maybe October,
depending on how on north or south you live. And
you can start seeds from transplants now and you can

(01:37:56):
plant them in your garden, or you can wait and
buy your transplants at your little garden center. That's a
great idea too, but you got to get the soil
ready because it's coming. If you want to grow warm
season veggies, we plant those when it's too hot to
plant warm season veggies, but we do it anyway. That
would be things like squash and cucumbers and a Swiss

(01:38:18):
charred and other things that can't take the freezes. But
they're great vegetables to grow. But you got again in
at the right time. If you want to plant potatoes
in your fall garden, typically what gardeners will do is
save a few of their smaller potatoes from the spring
and just plant the potato hole in the fall because
the soil is so warm. If you do cut pieces,

(01:38:38):
they rotten the soil. You can let them dry off.
You can put some sulfur dust on the cut edges
and stuff to help that out. But I just use
a little small hole pieces putting out. It's time to
get them out. End of August, last third week, fourth
week of August good time to put in potatoes. You're
going to need to shade the soil a little bit
now if it's something like potatoes, and sprinkle some pine

(01:39:00):
needles or leaves over the surface just to kind of
keep it a little cooler, and they'll come on up
through it. If it's little seeds, you can't molt the surface.
That's why we maltch to keep weed seeds from coming up.
And it'll do the same with your vegetable and flower seeds.
So you need a little bit of a shade cloth over.
I've used little sections of shade cloth over a little
hoop that works really well. Gardeners have done a lot

(01:39:22):
of crazy things to shade the soil keep it a
little cooler. Remember this for your fall planting, because we
are planting and soil that is pretty hot. You want
to make sure that soil is well watered before you plant.
It's called pre plant watering. You get them watered well
ahead of time, and then when the seed sprouts or

(01:39:42):
whatever the transplant starts to root out, there's already moist
soil down there for the roots to venture into. Then
after you plant, of course, you water them in well.
If it's seeds, a good soaking, and then water them lightly.
I would water them every day, very lightly for a while,
because when seeds start to germinate, if it dries out,
it dies and it cannot recover once it commits to sprouting.

(01:40:07):
Once a seed gets wet and biochemically kicks into gear
and commits to sprouting, it can't dry out until it's
got a dependable route that can take a little bit
of drying out. Okay, So keep them moist on a
regular basis for your transplants. Water them in with a
good soluble fertilizer product. We have so many good options.

(01:40:27):
If you want to do one that's got extra micro
built charge or it's got some other benefits to it.
We got many great products. I know the folks at
a Microlife and the folks at Medina have a lot
of quality products that work well for that. What are
those transplants in really well? Get them started off to
a good start, and then once they're established. By the way,

(01:40:49):
I'll use a soluble fertilizer solution, probably oh maybe two
or three times in the first couple of weeks, getting
those plants off to a good start, and then switched
to a granular product, scratching into the soil surface, watered
in really good. Once you got an established plant, let's
say it has about five leaves on it, it's going good.
You can scratch you some fertilizer in around it and

(01:41:11):
it just keeps going. You want to keep them moving,
hit the ground running and don't look back. That's how
that works. And if you never tried growing vegetables before,
why not do a container. If you have a container
for the cool season crops. If you have a container
about five gallons in size, that'll do. If you have
a bigger container, that's better. You can use a half

(01:41:32):
whiskey barrel size container. Don't do the actual wood barrels
because they ride out on you. Now you want something
that lasts longer than that. But those work really well.
I'll tell you what I do for the gardening is
I will get me a good quality mix I like,
for example, I like heirloom soils veggie and herb mix.

(01:41:53):
The veggie and herb mix from Airloom Soils is just
outstanding for vegetables, for herbs, plant flowers in it. It
works really good. It drains well, but it holds water
and nutrients and you're gonna find it. By the way, everywhere,
lots of places carry Heirloom Soils products by the bag.
You can call them. If you want to put in
a bed I'd recommend that and a raised ground excuse me,

(01:42:16):
above ground raised bed fill A full of a quality
mix like that. You know they have also a rosemix
it says Rosen Bloomers mix. You grow a lot of
things in it as well, all from heirloom soils. Get
them started in a good quality mix. That's very important.
By the way, if you want to give Airloom Saals
a call and get a delivery of a bulk two
eight one three five four nineteen fifty two eight one

(01:42:38):
three five four nineteen fifty or do this, go to
the website Heirloomsoils dot com. Go to airloomsls dot com.
I just mentioned a couple like veggie nerve mix, have
a lot of good mixes there for you. Then you
get them watered in, you get a good mix, you
take care of them, you keep them growing, and you're
gonna have a good time. And again, if you don't

(01:43:00):
want to create a garden, consider a container, or get
you one of these raised beds above ground beds dropping
on the ground, fill a full of mix and go
to town. Gardening is too much fun, and growing your
own veggies is great. If your kids are part of
the process, which I would hope kids and grind kids are.
They're going to experience growing things themselves and they're more

(01:43:20):
likely to eat them, and you get kids off to
a halfway decent nutritional habit growing up like eating fresh
veggies and things, and it will become a lifetime habit
and they'll do well. My granddaughter, one of my granddaughters,
just shocked me. We were out in town. I said, hey,
would you like to grab a bitdet I thought we
were going to probably go to McDonald's or something. She goes, yeah,
I would like a salad. It's like, what is wrong

(01:43:43):
with you?

Speaker 8 (01:43:44):
Here?

Speaker 3 (01:43:44):
I am a gardener, going what is wrong with you?
But she does. She grew up eating them and she
likes them. She does. And if your kids grow broccoli,
they will eat broccoli. They will. You all remember when
the first President Bush, George Herbert Walker Bush, he said
he didn't like broccoli, and there was protests. There was
a guy in a broccoli suit, looked like gumby, marching

(01:44:05):
back and forth in front of the White House because
she said he didn't like broccoli. Oh my gosh, peop,
they're good to life. No, seriously, it is. It is
a good thing. And kids will learn to love it
because they grew it. They'll enjoy it. Let them grow
some flowers too. By the way, when you have vegetable,
it's not against the law to put flowers in the
same pit. All right, Well, here we are top of

(01:44:28):
the hour or into the hour, about to go into
a break. Got one more hour today. You'd like to
get in line. There is no line at this moment.
Seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.
Give me a call. Let's talk to you when we
come back.

Speaker 1 (01:44:48):
Welcome to CAZy rh garden line with scamp Richard.

Speaker 6 (01:44:52):
It's so.

Speaker 2 (01:45:01):
Just watch him as well, ess.

Speaker 3 (01:45:18):
Sign the sun beamon between all right, folks, all right,
we're back. Hey, would you like to talk about gardening, Well,
here's a number to do that. Seven one three, two
one two five eight seven four seven one three two
one two fifty eight seventy four. Let's head on the

(01:45:41):
phones first thing this hour and we are going to
talk to Ralph in Brazoria. Hey, Ralph, welcome to the
garden Line.

Speaker 6 (01:45:48):
Good morning, Good morning. Have a question about forty three
percent glass of fate spring for weeds and grasses around
the base of well established trees equally twenty five or
thirty years old. I've always been cautious about that for
fear that it would.

Speaker 9 (01:46:04):
The tree.

Speaker 3 (01:46:07):
Okay, I think I think you cut out right there,
but I think for to say everybody listening, I believe
you said you're concerned about it killing the tree spring
around the base. Is that correct?

Speaker 6 (01:46:17):
Yeah, not killing it right away, but over time it
penetrated into it in weakening the tree.

Speaker 3 (01:46:23):
Okay, So glyphasate you could spread against the trunk of
a tree and it would not hurt anything. But when
you spray it on green leaves or green shoots, it
moves into that weed or plant or desirable plant, and
it moves in and it does its work. So if
at the base of your tree you had suckers, you

(01:46:44):
could damage it by spraying glaf state down there around it.
As long as there's no Yeah, as long as there's
no green stuff, you could do that. Now, when you
if you're going to use that product, you just need
a little bit of a just a little moisture of it,
of the spray to get on the leaves of what
you're trying to kill. So don't you know, like drench it.

(01:47:07):
Don't apply it with a watering can, Not that anybody would.
But my point is that if you wash a whole
bunch of it down in the soil, you know, there
could be some issues with things like that, but just
you just barely need to wet the weed, that's all,
and it does its work. And that's true, not just
you're talking about glive, say, but that's true of all
these kinds of herbicides and things. Just follow the label
and you'll be okay as long as you don't get

(01:47:28):
it on green stuff.

Speaker 7 (01:47:30):
Thanks a lot, I appreciate it all right, Yes.

Speaker 3 (01:47:32):
Sir, thanks for the call. Appreciate that you are listening
to garden line folks. If you would like to give
me a call seven one three two one two kt
r H seven to one three two one two kt RH.
I'm going to use that call opportunity from Ralph in
Brazoia to talk a little bit about this glyfe essaid

(01:47:54):
and round up and all that kind of product. And
now I'm not going to get into the goods and bads,
and it's a very polarizing topic for sure, people have
strong feelings about it. I just want to talk about
an aspect of it that you need to be aware of,
and that for sure is this. It used to be
that when you bought a product called round up, it
had glyphysate in it. Now in the home and garden

(01:48:16):
market you can still buy round up with glyphasate in
certain kinds of markets. But when you go to a
garden center, you know, the typical place where you would
buy things, what's called round up isn't glaphissay, it is
something else. Now there's several things that are so with
that name round up on them. I wish they hadn't

(01:48:38):
done that. It is confusing. It's just a mess, in
my opinion. But you need to be aware of this
that when you buy a current round up in a
retail garden outlet, you're getting a mix of several different chemicals,
none of which are glyphasate. Some of them will work

(01:48:58):
better on rush or woody weeds, some of them would
you know, work on other kinds of weeds, but it's
not glavisate. And so if somebody is looking for that ingredient,
you have to go to the product. There are other
products that contain that. I'm not going to list them
all here on the air, but if you're looking for that,
if you go to my by the way I mentioned

(01:49:19):
earlier today, if you go to my website, there's something
called us Herbicides for skipsweed wiper, and basically all that
is it's just a list to connect an ingredient with
the kind of weed it kills. So on that chart there,
the first row says woody trees, shrubs, vines, perennials with
storage tubers, roots and rhizomes, and then it says examples

(01:49:43):
grainbrier that's also called devil's shoestring, BlackBerry, while blackberries poison
ivy little tree seedlings you know, like hackberries coming up
in the fence line, and peppervine. That's another one for
all of those. There's a certain ingredient that I recommend,
and then I have good night one, two, three, four, five, six, seven,

(01:50:03):
six or seven different product names that have that ingredient
in it. So if it's just grasses that you're trying
to kill Bermuda grass, Dallas grass, Johnson grass, torpedograss, there
are two different ingredients and then there's the product names.
You may find them for sale. And it's not a
recommendation of those products. It's just saying or a recommendation

(01:50:25):
you use it at all. It's just saying that if
you if you're looking for that ingredient, here's some products.
I've got it for broad leaf weeds. I've got it
for grasses and broad leafeeds. Something that kills both grass
and broadly. Maybe have wild onion or wild garlic that
you're trying to get rid of, there's an ingredient and
a product name for that. For nuts set nut grass
as people call it nuts, it, well, there's something for that.

(01:50:48):
So that chart has it all on there if you
want to find out more about it. So anyway, just
wanted to make that statement. One of the things that
drives me nuts, and that's a short drive by the way,
the UH is when products change names or when they
apply a name to something that is not the same ingredient.

Speaker 6 (01:51:10):
UH.

Speaker 3 (01:51:11):
And it happens. I've seen cases where you could have
let's say product Z, you know whatever, and it would
be in are ready to use, and then it would
be in a concentrate, and then it'd be in some
other kind of form, and it would be different ingredients
in different forms. It's the same name product, but different
forms have different ingredients. That is a mess. And so

(01:51:34):
I'm not in charge of it. They don't care what
I think, but I'm just telling you, as a gardener,
be careful. One of the things on garden line that
concerns me is, you know, recommending or just mentioning products
because people misuse them, and they I'm sorry, it's not you,
it's the other guy right asking for a friend.

Speaker 11 (01:51:55):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:51:55):
People don't listen. And so I had I call one
time and say, yeah, I heard you me to put
roundup on my lawn. It's like that never came out
of my mouth. I promise you. But it it's a
concern that I have because pesticides kill things, whether they're
synthetic or organic. They're made to kill things. If it's

(01:52:16):
an organic disease control, it's made to kill the disease
and stop it. And so I don't like people using
things indiscriminately because of the damage that it can cause,
not just to your plants, but also to people in
pats and other things. You need to be careful. You
need to follow the label. All right, that's enough of
a soapbox, but that's something one of the things that

(01:52:39):
bugs me. I guess one day I'll do a show
on my rant. So I just got the whole show.
I'll just go through all these rants and I'm complaining
about all right, well, I've talked to you this one enough.
How many? I've got two folks here, rich In Spring
and Craig and Houston. I'm gonna take a quick break
because it's time, and then you two guys will be
very first up. All right, welcome back, folks. Good to
have you with us Darlin Garden Line today. Okay, I

(01:53:03):
think it's not easy for me to say. We're going
to head straight up the phones right now to rich
In Spring. Hey, Rich, how can we help today? Good morning?

Speaker 19 (01:53:14):
Skip following up with you. We talked on August the
second about take called root patch on my lawn. Then
you confirmed that's what it was, and so I'm calling
to give you an update because the plan I've used
at least has proved to be very successful. I sent
you two emails, one with a before and after picture.

(01:53:37):
But what I said it was is prior to you
and I talking, I used Scott's Disease x azoxystroban on
seven twenty one. Then on eight two when we after
we talked, I put down azoxy WDG, some Pete moss,

(01:53:57):
some micro nutrients and medina A plus. Then on eight
nine I put mike clobutanol on it, and today the
lawn looks fabulous.

Speaker 3 (01:54:10):
Wow, those two pictures are taken in the same spot.

Speaker 19 (01:54:14):
Yes, sir, Yes, sir, exact.

Speaker 3 (01:54:18):
Well, all right, folks, there you have it. If anybody
that's reading the take All root rot publication I got online,
Rich is basically talking about some of the aspects of
that publication. So I'm impressed Rich that it did that good.
I think you. I think you started pretty early in
the process. The take all had not literally just killed

(01:54:39):
huge sections of your lawn yet, and so you were
able to get faster results than I would have than
I would you know, normally, by the time I see
a lawn, it's in pretty bad shape, a lot worse
than yours. But that's good to hear. I'm glad to
hear that. Now you mentioned which medina did you use
when you when you did dina plus the plus okay, good, good?

(01:55:05):
And if I can ask what was the micro nutrient?
Was it the fertiloan one or which one did you choose?

Speaker 19 (01:55:12):
I used to believe it or not. I quit down
some azo mite and I also did a micro nutrient
that I get online from yard mastery.

Speaker 3 (01:55:24):
Okay, okay, all right, good, well, sounds like you did it. Hey,
thanks for good doing a follow up there. Appreciate that.
It's good to see the results. Thanks for your help.

Speaker 19 (01:55:36):
The plan work skip.

Speaker 3 (01:55:38):
All right, good, glad to know that.

Speaker 8 (01:55:40):
Well.

Speaker 3 (01:55:40):
I wouldn't say it if I didn't think it would,
but it's good just to hear that you had those results.
All right, sir, thank you, thanks a lot. Rich. Let's
go now over to Houston. Talk to Craig. Hello, Craig,
welcome to garden Line. Hey there, hello, hey, yeah, how
can we help today?

Speaker 12 (01:55:59):
Yes, sir, so I had a neighbor recently he had
got an older tree cutting down in his backyard, and
in that tree looked like the tree was dead and
I guess infested with some type of tree spider in
that when the branches fell while they were cutting over
it felling into my yard. It seems that it had
left some type of spider or like a lawn spider

(01:56:22):
in the yard. And I'm trying to see if you
had any suggestive pesticides that I could spray that could
eventually like alleviate those spiders in the yard. And at
the same time, I would be two, I guess dangerous.
I have a one year old that likes to play
out there, and yeah, that's kind of held off on
spray anything back there.

Speaker 6 (01:56:43):
Got you?

Speaker 3 (01:56:44):
So when you say you have spiders, are you actually
seeing the spiders running around or seeing the webs or what?

Speaker 12 (01:56:51):
No, I'm seeing the spider.

Speaker 15 (01:56:52):
There's no webs in the yard.

Speaker 12 (01:56:53):
Luckily, there's just I could see them crawling, and you know,
as I cut the yard, I see them jumping.

Speaker 3 (01:56:59):
They're not really big, gotcha, but they're definitely out there.
All right. Well, now, I know when it comes to spiders,
people have their you know, concerns and fears and whatnot.
I would like to talk you into leaving them alone
if you need to kill them. There are a lot
of pesticides that will kill insects, sides will kill a spider.
But those spiders are predators. They are they are eating,

(01:57:24):
they're capturing live things to eat, which would include insects.
So in a way they're benefiting you. And now I'm
not gonna make a big case for like you won't
have chinch bugs if you have spiders, I'm not going
to say that, but I am going to say that
they're not hurting anything. And there's only a couple of
them here in your area that that are going to
be a concern. One is brown recluse and one is

(01:57:45):
black widow, and neither of those operate like we're talking
about here. So I'm just going to say that's not
at all what is in your lawn. But if you
if you, that's not a sales point for you, and
you absolutely want to get rid of them. There are
products that can do it. But you mentioned a kidd
o plane on the grass, you're going to have the
residue from that out there. There's not a there's not

(01:58:08):
an organic spider control other than using a perithrin product,
which is organic, not pervy throid, but pervy thrin, and
it kills everything and and it breaks down pretty fast,
so you know, within a couple of days it's not
there anymore to be present.

Speaker 19 (01:58:27):
So there you go.

Speaker 3 (01:58:28):
It's your call, not my yard. I would ignore, all right.
I appreciate it, Thank you, all right, you bet, thanks
for the call. Appreciate that a lot. See where are
we here? We're going to go now to Warrenton and
talk to Tommy. Hey, Tommy, welcome to garden line.

Speaker 6 (01:58:46):
Good morning. I have a six or seven foot Texas
red oak tree we planted, and my donkey got into
it and ate the leaves off of it, most of
the leaves and broke it over. So I it didn't
completely break it, so I pulled it back and kind
of and uh graft it sor like you would up

(01:59:06):
a con tree. And I was curious what your thoughts are,
whether that's a good thing, or whether I should just
cut it off and let it re sprout.

Speaker 3 (01:59:17):
Well, not seeing it, it's kind of hard to tell.
You know, a minor break, you might straighten it up.
And it ended up being a young, vigorous tree. It
would heal back over and be okay, Okay, I don't
know about the grafting, Like, did you did you like
take a section of limb to graft?

Speaker 6 (01:59:34):
All I did was since it was since it was
just broke over, I straightened it up. Yeah, and then
and then I wrapped it with a luna fall and
then sell a thane and then put a splint on
it to hold it. And one of the leaves above
that is still got a little green in it.

Speaker 3 (01:59:49):
So I'm optimistic.

Speaker 6 (01:59:51):
But I don't know if that's a good thing or
not to do that, whether it just got thought and
I should just cut it off.

Speaker 3 (01:59:57):
Well, it won't be a long term weak spot. If
it's a young tree like you're describing that a donkey
would knock over, I would say, let's wait and watch.
You know, maybe there's enough connection there where it will
heel over. If you want to cut it off at
the bottom, that is an okay option. You'll just want
to get rid of every sprout except one that will
become your new trunk, uh, and there that I would

(02:00:21):
if you've got several sprouts coming out, just you might
leave a couple of them initially, just because maybe the
donkey or something will break one of those off. Okay, good, well,
then then just leave one and cut everything else off
as it tries to sprout. If you go that route,
if the top doesn't take off and you what you

(02:00:43):
may see is it starts sprouting itself on the side
of the trunk or from the base, and in which
case you can you can cut it off. What would
you say, is the trunk diameter of that tree about
waist high? We talk about a golf ball, we talk
about a broomstick. What are we look at?

Speaker 6 (02:00:57):
No, No, it's it's probably a half inch. It's just
a young planet about two weeks before he got into it.

Speaker 3 (02:01:06):
Okay, Well, if the damage was not too severe in
the initial break, it'll probably heal and keep going. But
if not, wherever a sprout occurs, cut it off right
above the sprout and you'll.

Speaker 9 (02:01:20):
Be all right.

Speaker 6 (02:01:21):
Okay, all right, I appreciate that. It gives me a plan.

Speaker 3 (02:01:25):
You bet, all right, thank you. I appreciate your cover.
You bet.

Speaker 6 (02:01:31):
Hey.

Speaker 3 (02:01:31):
Folks, if you are trying to carry your lawn into
the fall fertilization, maybe it's struggling, you know, you know,
had the call from Rich and he was dealing with
the takeof root rot and stuff. You're trying to bring
the lawn bag, get it back dense, healthy again, and
stuff like that Sweet Green from night Foss a great
way to do it. Sweet greens available right away. It

(02:01:52):
is almost just think of it almost like a dried
molosses type particle. It's not perfectly accurate, but something like that.
You put it, you watered in, it dissolves away and
that high carbon material goes in the soil and microbes
go nuts and they take the nitrogen loose from it.
Give it to your grass and it works. It works
very well. My neighbor came across the yard while back

(02:02:13):
earlier this year and he had done the sweet green
and he's like, man, that thing works. I mean that
stuff it really does look good and it does and
it's not going to last for months and months, which
is okay because we got fall fertilization coming up. You
do a sweet green, now you're good to go until
fall fertilization. Where do you get night Foss products like
sweet Green? Well done in Stafford on South Maine, go

(02:02:35):
to Court Hardware. You can find them there Katie Hardware
and on Pinoak and Katie Katie Ace hardware and Pinoak
plants for all season Lueta and two forty nine Tomball
Parkway right at that world close to that intersection. Luetta
and two forty nine. That is your plants for all seasons.
That carries nighte Fross products as well. If you're down

(02:02:59):
and Alvin Stanton shopping Center and retailer another place you'll
find night Frost products. And again they do work. Let's
go now to Kathy and Roe. Sharon. Hello, Kathy, Welcome
to garden Line.

Speaker 9 (02:03:12):
Hi, how are you.

Speaker 3 (02:03:15):
I'm good, Thank you.

Speaker 9 (02:03:18):
I'm calling about We live out in Roast Share and
we have about five and a half aacures and mosquitoes
are horrible out here, as you can imagine. But what
I learned is that if you take a five gallon
bucket and feeling about a quarter of the way full,
and put new grass cuppings in it and then put

(02:03:39):
the mosquito dunk.

Speaker 14 (02:03:41):
There, you go.

Speaker 9 (02:03:42):
It work and you replace. Yeah, it replaces. You replaced
the mosquito maybe every six weeks or so, have no mosquito.

Speaker 3 (02:03:52):
Well, thank you for the tip. I appreciate that. Yeah,
it does work. It makes that bucket of base station.
What the other buckets that I talk about here. I
have advantage of iss is pick up a product to
take with them from that bucket to make other areas
not breeding. But I do know, folks, Kathy, that do
what you said there, and that is a way to
make make them lay eggs and the eggs don't hatch
because you got those good mosquito dunks in the water. Hey, folks,

(02:04:14):
I'm up against a very hard break here. I got
to take it. We got thirty minutes of garden Line left,
if you'd like to give me a call. Seven one
three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Hey, votes
you with us. Welcome to garden Line. We're good to
be back. Hey, you know what, we have got thirty
minutes left the show today, So if you'd like to
give me a call, and I'd be a good time.

(02:04:35):
Seven one three two one two ktr h seven one
three two one two kittrh We're going to go now
to Rex in mont Bellevue. Hello, Rex, Welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 8 (02:04:46):
Hey, how are you listen? I just sent to today
avocado Tree about March of this year, and it's about
four years old, and it's uh say, three three and
a half feet tall and about inch and a half
at the base. The leaks on this thing, some I'm

(02:05:06):
in the middle of browning up right in the middle,
and some are browning up on the edges. It's lost
a lot. I don't know if it's a Texas heat
after because it's full sunlight.

Speaker 3 (02:05:19):
Yeah, when you say I just planted it, how long
ago did you plant it?

Speaker 6 (02:05:24):
March?

Speaker 3 (02:05:25):
In March? Oh, okay, I'm sorry I missed that. I
think it's a heat related and moisture flow related. I
don't think it's a disease or insect. So just watch
the soil. You know, when you overwater and the roots
can't get oxygen because they're drowning, that's bad. But certainly

(02:05:46):
if you underwater, that's bad. So try to keep the
soil moist without keeping it too soggy wet, and give
it the best chance you can that way. When it
stays two wet, then root rots get in and now
that becomes a whole new thing because they continue to
take it down even when you get the slow moisture
back to where it should be. So hopefully that's not
where you are on this one.

Speaker 8 (02:06:09):
I purposely when I planted it to kind of like
in a mound, you know what I mean to where
that the rooms weren't all underground and so built the mound.
It's about six inches above the ground. The barking on
the on the truck is doing well. It's almost half
way up now.

Speaker 3 (02:06:30):
Okay, okay, well hopefully it'll settle down. Avoid Yeah, I'm
just gonna say one more thing, Rex, and that's avoid
any pushing it with fertilizer right now. Avocados, you know,
are cold tender, and so if you were to fertilize
going into early fall and stuff and push some late
season growth, that's going to be even more susceptible. So
let's just let it hold for now, and then next

(02:06:52):
spring start fertilizing it again. See you can get some
growth on it.

Speaker 6 (02:06:56):
Okay, thank you very much, sir, appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (02:06:59):
Thank you. Appreciate you call very much. I tell you
all the time. Southwest Fertilizer is a place to go
when you're trying to find something, because it is there
if it is worthwhile using in your lawn garden plants, houseplants,
outdoor plant orchards. If it's worth using, Southwest has it.
They carry all the stuff that works and lots of

(02:07:20):
fertilizer options, lots of products for weed control, insect sites, fungicides,
you name it. But when it comes to tools, it
is amazing. Bob is put together a nice selection of tools.
Back the wall of tools in ninety feet long. That's
a lot of tools and it includes things like my
weed wiper, the tool you need to make my weed wiper.

(02:07:42):
And it's just a place to go. You don't, don't.
Life's too short to waste it on. Cheap tools gets
you a quality brand for a very reasonable price. A
Southwest Fertilizer corner bisut and Runwick Southwest Fertilizer dot com
seven to one three six six six one seven four
or let's go now to Larry and Dayton. Hello Larry,

(02:08:05):
Welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 6 (02:08:08):
Hey Skip. Yes, I was calling about the about barricade
putting barricade out with our free range chickens. I'm started
to put it out and I got to thinking I
need to check.

Speaker 7 (02:08:20):
I read the label, but I just can't tell.

Speaker 3 (02:08:24):
You know they're free range. Yes, well, you know chickens
will peck anything. I don't know that particularly they would
like barricade, but I would avoid that in fact, if
you want to put it down, you got to water
it in for it to work. So if you put
it down and then you give it about a third
of an inch of water to a half an inch
of water somewhere in there, not over a half inch,

(02:08:46):
it should wash it down to the soil surface and
it shouldn't be an issue. Plus it's not going to
be as visible either, sitting up there for the chickens
to see and stuff. So maybe could you keep them
off of it for a day and get it down,
get it watered in really good. That that might be
able to do.

Speaker 6 (02:09:03):
Okay, we put them up at night, and we put
them up at night, so we can do that and
then water it in and then let them out in
the morning.

Speaker 3 (02:09:12):
Possibly, Yeah, I think so. And walk out there and look,
you know, find a little spot and when you put
the barricade out and put a little flag, one of
those little wire flags where you can look and go, yeah,
I see the granules right down there. And then water
down and then come back and look at it and see.
I think number one, it's going to wash. The product
is made to wash off the granule, otherwise it wouldn't work. Secondly,

(02:09:33):
the product ties up in the soil surface where it
can work, and so it's a good product. And I
think if you do what we just said, I believe you'd.

Speaker 14 (02:09:42):
Be all right.

Speaker 6 (02:09:44):
Perfect.

Speaker 3 (02:09:44):
Thank you, Skip you have a blessed day. Yes, sir,
you too, Thanks a lot. I appreciate that. Alrighty uh,
Arctic Insulation Solutions Company. You've been hearing me talk about
now for a little while. If you're like me, you
get the electric biel and you just go, oh my gosh,
oh my gosh. You know, it's summertime, the airc's running

(02:10:08):
all the time. It can't get the houses colds. I
want it to be anyway, and I'm just wasting money.
And Arctic will come in and they will see to
it that that is shut down to the degree that
possibly can be done. In other words, if you've got
leaking going on around your say you have a ceiling
fan or a light fixture, or wall plates or sockets
and things, those are all places where air. You take

(02:10:29):
the plate off and look, air can just move in
back and forth. It's one hundred and fifty degrees in
your attic. It's going to affect the temperature in your
living room or whatever room you're in Arctic comes in
and they fix that. They put full barrier in the
roof if you need that. They do fiberglass insulation. They
do solar attic fans, which are really cool. They move
all the hot, hot air out pretty fast. You tell

(02:10:52):
them what you want to do, they'll tell you what
your options are and you can, according to your budget,
do everything that is going to be the most effective.
First to get those tadgam electric bills down. Make it
easier on your unit. They cover the whole area around
Houston here, So Arctic Insallation Solutions. Here's the website. Remember
Arctic has two seas Arctic Houston dot com Arctic Houston

(02:11:15):
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you're an Arctic Insallation Solutions area eight three two five
eight six twenty eight ninety three. Don't listen, we've got
a lot of hot weather. Go, don't waste your money.

(02:11:36):
Get them out there to help save you some money.
Seem's true. By the way, when you get into the
cool season, let's go now to ooh gosh, here we're
short on Brad and Rose Sharon, Brad, Welcome to garden Line.
We're gonna go ahead and try to fit you in
here before we have to go to our next break.

Speaker 6 (02:11:55):
Yes, sir, I appreciate taking my cost.

Speaker 16 (02:11:57):
Give hey, I asked some knocked out roads, some of
them that we've had planned for twenty years, some other
ones that are a little bit newer. But we've never
had this issue before. The leaves are turning yellow that
look real poor. I've already treated with bacon, soda and water.
I've put epsin salt down around the base of them,
and I've also treated with fungicide. Nothing seems to be

(02:12:20):
working all right.

Speaker 3 (02:12:22):
So when you look at this branch and it's got
yellow leaves, is it the new tender growth coming out
the end that's most yellow or is it the older
leaves that are most yellow and the new growth looks okay?

Speaker 16 (02:12:35):
The new growth looks okay. It's the tender the older
stuff that looks bad. We can tried to clean it up,
cut some of the old stuff out, and it's just
they're not getting any better. We've never had this problem.

Speaker 3 (02:12:49):
Okay, Well, nutrients don't change overnight, so I think probably,
if anything, it might be a lack of nitrogen that
shows up in the older leaves first. But when you
just see bright yellow leaves, not just a lack of green,
but really yellow turning up there and then they turn
brown and fall off, that may be a water solution

(02:13:12):
and the heat of summer. They are having to work
hard to pump water fast enough, and if the soil
is too dry or too wet, either extreme, that's a
stress to them. It could be that some type of
a root ride is involved. So now the soil is
okay in moisture, but you don't have the root system
you need to take it up. I can't know that
whether it's that or not, you know, just sitting here

(02:13:34):
talking on a phone call. But I'm just telling you
some of the things that I'll do that when older
leaves turn yellow, it's often a fluctuation, and so a
moisture to an extreme or anything stopping the root growth.
The heat of summer is hard on plants and it
doesn't take much of a pump in the road go ahead.

Speaker 16 (02:13:54):
So what's kind of rare this year during the summer
In August, we've had quite a bit of rain. I
mean we've had like over three inches just sit us
in the last week.

Speaker 3 (02:14:04):
Yep. Right, well, you know that it's a possibility. That's
what you're looking at. If you want to, if you
want to send me some pictures, show me. Send me
one of the bush and then go up close and
show me as close as you can get with good
sharp focus. Show me what the ends of the shoots
look like, the stems out near the end, and show
me those yellowing leaves, and let me see if I

(02:14:25):
see anything else. Maybe I'll see something that I'm not
picturing in my mind's eye as we talk. I'm gonna
have my producer get on the line with you and
he will give you an email to do that and
I'll be happy to take it from there.

Speaker 9 (02:14:36):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (02:14:36):
For the rest of you guys listening, I'll be right back.
We got a break and our last segment of the day,
all right, folks. Oh, if you've got a question, I
got time for another call. I believe, and that would
be seven one three two one two k t r H.
Seven one three two one two k.

Speaker 8 (02:14:57):
T r H.

Speaker 3 (02:14:58):
I believe I got the board all cleared up. Yeah,
I believe I do if if you have a lawn
that is struggling, If you have a lawn that is struggling.
We got struggling lines all over the Greater Houston area
right now. Drought, compaction, hot weather. You know, the grass
gets a little weakened and it just seems to thin

(02:15:18):
and thin, and then here comes they all root. Right,
there's another one, and then there's chinch bugs. I mean,
my goodness, our poor lawns. They have a lot to
deal with.

Speaker 7 (02:15:26):
Well.

Speaker 3 (02:15:27):
Year around Houston, they know how to deal with rejuvenating
a lawn. One of the things that grass is struggle
with is lack of oxygen down in the soil and
lack of ability to take up water nutrients that are
needed because the root system just isn't as extensive when
you air rate. Listen, the best looking turf in Texas

(02:15:49):
is aerated. I mean, look at a golf course. Look
at the things they do in a golf course to
improve that. Look at a football field where they're stomping
the ground all the time and running up and down
the feeld. And you get in there and you do
aerration and it's going to look its best. It is
and year round, Houston Dot com. Those are the folks
who know how to do it, and they serve the

(02:16:09):
area inside belt Way eight. So if you give them
a call eight three two eight eight four fifty three
thirty five, they'll come out. They are the specialists. They
will do core aeration and they will do a compost
top dressing, basically breathing life back down into the soil.
They is high quality composts, not something that stinks or
anything like that. Finally, screen so it settles down into

(02:16:32):
your lawn. That combo of core aeration, popping a plug
out and dropping it on the surface, and then top
dressing with quality screened compost set your line up for success,
and don't wait to do it. Go ahead and get
it done now, because we still have quite a few
weeks in fact months of growing season left to do

(02:16:52):
for that lawn to rejuvenate and fill in and go
into winter strong. You know, once we get into October November,
we're going to start seeing all the cool season weeds germinating.
What can you do to get that long thickened then
so sunlight doesn't hit the soil. Call you around Houston
dot com. You're around Houston eight three to two eight
eight four fifty three thirty five. Alrighty here got an

(02:17:17):
open boards, so I get to talk about some things
that I would like to talk about right now. One
of the things I don't think I've talked about this
in a while, but herbs. Herbs are so versatile to grow,
and we ought to be growing herbs more. I want
to tell you some ways. Now everybody knows you can
have the formal herb garden. Most people aren't going to
put one of those in, but you can, and they

(02:17:37):
look great. You can also include herbs in your landscapes
or Regano makes a wonderful groundcover, so does time makes
a wonderful groundcover. Chives. You could use chives like you
use a rioty lining a walkway or something. I mean,
they're great herbs for that. There are herbs that we'll
do a good job of blooming for you. Begin of

(02:18:00):
blooming the chives. Many of the chives will put up
bloom stalks and attract beneficial insects when they do that.
By the way, the trailing types of rosemary make beautiful
little blooms. I think that I've seen so many honey
bees working on rosemary ballooms. It's really a benefit to
them during a time of year, sometimes when there's not
a lot else that they can do. I put herbs

(02:18:21):
at the end of my vegetable rows just because I
like to include herbs and flowers really my vegetable gardens.
I had a row a few years ago. I was
in sight, living in Cyprus, and we had to row
a tomatoes and on one end was basil and on
the other end was a regano and that was basically
my pasta and pesto row. You know, I had the

(02:18:44):
tomatoes and it was just it was a seasoning row
for those tomatoes. Why not do that? How about in
a container? You may have a flower container, but why
not have some herbs spilling over the side. My wife
got a bed in the backyard. On one end is
a regano, a two different kinds of oregano spilling over
the sides. And then there's some times spilling over the sides.

(02:19:05):
They make a beautiful ornamental as well. So why not
do that? You want herbs that really bloom pretty? How
about pineapple sage. It's a type of salvia. It has
red tubular blooms mostly in late summer and fall. It'll
bloom a other time of the year, but it's a
wonderful herb, and the hummingbirds come in, you know, those
red tubular blooms. That's just like telling the hummingbird, I've

(02:19:27):
got a neon sign here, flashing on and off. They
love that stuff. Another one is Mexican mint marigold. Mexican
mint marigold is a plant that has it's kind of
got a liquoricy smell to it, so it's like the
black jelly beans. You know, that liquoricy smell. That's the foliage,

(02:19:50):
and people use it as a terra gun substitute when
they're cooking. But in the cool season or not the
cool season in the fall is a disease. As the
daylength getting shorter, it kicks it into bloom. That's what
our fall blooming plants are triggered typically by is shortening
day links. Maybe I'll say more about that in just

(02:20:11):
a second here, but shortening day links trigger to bloom
and you get clusters of pretty little yellow flowers up
on top, and so you have blooms in addition to
the wonderfulness of that herb. Now, let me say one
thing about fall blooming plants. You need more of them.
You need more of them because fall is a season
we tend to neglect when it comes to perennial flowers.

(02:20:33):
So the Salvia leucenta Mexican bush sage has purple spikes
of flowers. The standard type has white bloom throats inside.
The yellow klk or the purple calyxes, does really well here.
Copper canyon daisy got a citrus pine smell to the foliage.

(02:20:53):
It loads up with little yellow flowers, does very well here.
Let's see mountain sage, red tubular flowers. It's a type
of salvia, does really really well here. These bloom because
the day lengths getting shorter, so don't put them where
you're going to have a night light coming on and off.

(02:21:14):
Because it's not that we say it's short days, but
it's really long nights. We'll skip it. Not the same thing.
Short days, shortening days mean length the nights, Yes, in nature.
But when you go in the middle of the night
and you turn a light on one of these short
day plants, one of these fall blooming plants, it makes
the plant think that it didn't have a long night,

(02:21:36):
it had two short nights because the light came on
in the middle and it won't bloom. I've seen this
one time. We had some planted where we had an
outdoor security light and there was a tree trunk that
cast a shadow across. This was a particular type of
fall salvia. Everywhere the shadow of the tree trunk fell,
it had blooms because it had a long night. Everywhere

(02:21:59):
the night light, the security light came on and made
the night break into two pieces or three pieces or
four pieces, depending on how many times it came on.
We didn't have blims because that plant thought I never
got to the long nights I was looking for. So
if you want fall blooming plants, just be aware that
light at night messes them up, so put them somewhere else.

Speaker 6 (02:22:21):
All right.

Speaker 3 (02:22:21):
That's the last tip of the day. Music means I
got to quit talking. I'll be back next Saturday and
Sunday six am ten am and listen here on KTR
seven forty live. As many of you are listening. You
can listen on the computer anywhere you are. You can
get the iHeart Media app. iHeartMedia app little white box

(02:22:42):
with a red heart in the mettle, and you can
listen to Guardline Live on there. You can also listen
to past shows both on the iHeartMedia app and on
the website. So if you didn't have that pencil with
you today, when I gave a phone number or a
website or a name of a product, but I listen
to the show, can hear it back? Hey, thanks for
being listening to Garden Line. Hope you have a wonderful

(02:23:04):
rest of your Sunday and a great week out in
the garden