Why Winter Pruning Is Important

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Shait that call. Yeah, that's a good good question. I
always ask questions before you answer questions. Right, that's a good,
good advice. It is time. It is always time to
put some azmite out on your lawn. People ask me
all the time, well, if I fertilize or if I
use asmite, do I need to fertilize Or if I fertilize,
do I need to use as mite? And the answer
is yes, all the above, because what we're doing when

(00:23):
you put most fertilizers, when you put them down, you're
getting primarily the big three nutrients. Now with organics, you're
getting some other things in there. But azamite is a
trace mineral supplement, and trace minerals are required for growth,
just because you don't need a lot of them. You
just need a trace, a small amount, a micro amount.
That's why they call them micro nutrients. You still need them.

(00:46):
They're essential. And I talked about last week the concept
for those of you horticulture nerds that you want to
be the cliff Claven of your garden club. Well here's
one for you. There's something called Libig's barrel. A guy
named Li Big years ago came up with an ingenious
way of explaining the importance of nutrients. And he used
a barrel. So imagine a big old whiskey barrel or

(01:09):
wine barrel, okay, and it's got all those staves that
go from the top to the bottom, and they're banded together,
you know, with the metal straps going around it. What
if you could go in and cut off all the
staves at different heights. You had one stave that was
only halfway up the barrel and one that was ninety
percent up the barrel, and all varying things. If you

(01:29):
started to put water in the barrel, when how full
could you fill that barrel? The answer is only as
full as the shortest stave, because then it just runs
out there. That's Lebig's barrel, that stave. Each stave is
a mineral. One's nitrogen, one's phosphorus, one's potassium, one's manganese,
one's iron, one's zinc, when's silicon. I mean, they're all

(01:53):
kinds of minerals, right, So whatever is most lacking, that's
the extent of plants excess that you're going to get
plant productivity, plant growth, plant health. So with azamite, we're
putting it down for micro nutrients we're putting it down
for the tiny, tiny amounts that are essential to plant growth.

(02:15):
So if you have every nutrient that plant could ever want,
but only about half of something like an iron or
boron let's say boron for example, that it needs, then
that's as good as that plant can do. That's why
when we do as MTE, it's not something you put
on and it makes the plant take off growing like
nitrogen does. It's something you put on and it's in

(02:37):
the bank account. And now as the plant needs that
tiny little nutrient that's not needed much, but it's essential,
it's there in your soil, azamite builds the soil bank account.
It's as simple as that. All right, Well, I hope
that helps. I hope that helps make it a little
bit easier to understand, because a lot of times people

(03:01):
get confused on these minerals and things. Just because something's
needed in small amounts does not mean it is not
absolutely essential, because we got it depends on how you
want account. They used to say sixteen nutrients that are essential.
Now it's up to in the twenty twenty one, depending
on the plant and the stage of plant growth and stuff.
But the bottom line is they need those. They need those,

(03:21):
and we need those, especially if it's a garden and
you're growing it to eat. All right, I'm going to
take a little break and we will be right back
with your question. Seven one three two one two ktrh
May welcome back to guard Line. We're ready to we're
ready to get going here, speaking of you, Speaking of which,
we're going to head straight out to Richmond, Texas and

(03:42):
talk to Julie this morning. Good morning, Julie, welcome to
guard Line.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
Good morning. How are you.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
I'm doing well, doing well. What's up in Richmond?

Speaker 2 (03:56):
Well, it's February, the month two start turning back to
crane myrtle.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
Yeah, dormance season in general is the month, and so
January and February are both good months you kind of
like to get. I like to get my printing done
before the new growth starts to push out. So don't
delay past that. If you do it, the plan live.
But it's better to prove before the new growth begins.

Speaker 2 (04:27):
And I just get the small branches, you know, like
the ones that are fake and then the ones that intertwine.

Speaker 1 (04:36):
I don't do anything with the top, right, So how
how big is this plant? How long? Has it been
in the ground roughly any idea.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
At the thirty gallon when it got put in, and
it's been in the ground eight years.

Speaker 1 (04:55):
Okay, so you got a good sized plant. So with crapes,
we want to develop a nice, beautiful branch structure, you know,
So a trunk comes up and it forks into two branches,
and then each of those forks into two branches, and
you know, you just create this beautiful structure. And you'd
like to avoid using a saw. So it's better to

(05:15):
make a decision when branches are very small, so that
you're not having to make this big, stubbed off cut
on the plant that mars its beauty. And so typically
we say on a krpe myrtle, you shouldn't have to
prune anything bigger than a pencil. But I realize in
reality sometimes you have a branch that's bigger than that

(05:37):
and you just go, okay, I didn't see this last year,
but I need to take it off now, go ahead
and do it. But just try to avoid having to
prune too much on them, because they have their own
beautiful structure and we can guide that as they grow.
But it kind of comes down to the esthetics that
you like, what do you want it to look like?
And so yeah, that's it. Just when you cut it off,

(05:59):
don't leave us stuff. Cut it off close to where
it joins the branch that it's attached to or the
trunk that it's attached to. You if you note, I
don't want to make this too complicated, but if you
follow it. Let's say you have a branch that you go,
I got to take that off, and you follow it
down to where it joins the trunk or another branch.

(06:19):
Right as it gets to right to where it joins,
it flares out, it gets bigger. Okay, you want to
cut it off right there where it starts to flare
out a little bit, so that way you don't have
a stub. But you also don't cut it. We say
flush cut, meaning right up against the trunk. And that
makes a much bigger wound, because as it gets bigger,
the wound gets bigger. So just come all the way

(06:41):
down to where it attaches and right where it starts
to flare out, make your cut right there.

Speaker 2 (06:47):
But the top that I have all the old flowers,
just leave all that along.

Speaker 1 (06:53):
If you want to get up and prune out all
the twiggy stuff, you know, pencil size and smaller. You
can do. That's it. It takes a while to do
all that, but yeah, there's no problem taking all that off.
But as the new growth begins that I just kind
of fall a lot of that.

Speaker 2 (07:08):
They're just going to.

Speaker 3 (07:09):
Fall off on its own.

Speaker 2 (07:10):
Anyway. I can leave all that whole stuff.

Speaker 1 (07:14):
The little twiggy stuff does it kind of dies and
just sort of breaks out of there.

Speaker 2 (07:20):
So yeah, because I see these people just take the
whole tops off like burling or whatever they call it.

Speaker 4 (07:33):
Don't do that.

Speaker 1 (07:34):
Great murder. Yeah, great murder. Now, shouldn't do that. That
practice got started. I think that the thing that started
it because there is no horticultural reason to do that,
no horticultural reason to do that. I think it got
started because you know, mowing crews in the wintertime don't
have a lot to mow, and so they would just
send them out and say here, here's loppers, reach up

(07:55):
as bout as high as you can above your head
and cut everything off there. It makes it fast easy,
nobody has to be a pruning expert, and the krepe
myrtle sprouts back out again, lots of shoots and stuff
but all that new growth now is attached weekly you
can get it's a weak attachment and branches can break
off and it just it's unsightly. It takes the beautiful

(08:17):
smooth form of crepe myrtle structure and it just destroys it.
And so there's no reason to do that.

Speaker 5 (08:25):
Okay, So thank you very much.

Speaker 1 (08:27):
You have a great day, all right, Julie, you bet,
thanks for the call. Appreciate that you take care for sure,
we're gonna. I wanted to mention if you're at in Kingwood,
you've got two great garden centers. And you've heard me
talk about these, but Warren Southern Gardens on North Park
Drive Kingwood Garden Centers on Stone Hollow Drive. Now, both
of these are open seven days a week, so you

(08:48):
are if you're in the Kingwood area, and even Humble
a Taska seat of Porter Valley Ranch, New Cany, that
whole area up there. You're just really fortunate to have
two great garden centers right there. Kingwa just redid their
gift shop and oh it's just gorgeous inside. It's always
been gorgeous inside, but they had a total revamp of
content and everything over the past months. And looks good. Now,

(09:12):
if you're looking for any of the products that I'm
talking about garden line like Microfoss, nitrof Microlife, Nitrofoss, turf Star,
airloom soils, Nelson plant foods, bone Eyed pest control, mosquito
dunks we talk about those, Well, they've got that. They
even have the little filling stations for Microlife and Nelson
plant food jugs. So if you buy the Microlife or

(09:34):
the Nelson and those clear screw top jars plastic jars,
you can go in there and refill them and save
some money on it. Plus you don't throw more plastic
out into the waste stream, so it really makes sense,
a great, great idea. Those refilling stations. Now right now,
they are stocked up on color. They've got citrus, they
got shrubs, they've got seeds, everything you need for spring.

(09:58):
They're ready to go. It's just go get it and
bring it home. This is the season to get going,
and we are ready to go. And boy are they
ever stocked up and ready to go out there at
Kingwoo Garden Center and Warren's Southern Gardens. And also they
do have the full landscaping services for the surrounding area.
So just talk to them about that if you'd like
to get little bit of work done here and there.

(10:19):
I just talk to them and see. They also design
and make potted containers for their customers. So like you
go out and you don't know how to do a
mixed planter, but you want to buy a big old
container from them and buy a bunch of plants from
them and have them design and put it together. They
can do that wonderful service too. Out we're in southern gardens,

(10:41):
all right, We're going to go to the phones now
and head down to the galleria. Talk to Forest. Hey, Forrest,
welcome to guard Line.

Speaker 3 (10:48):
Thank you.

Speaker 6 (10:48):
Skip had a question about kind of the lazy man's
way to build a raised bed. I was gonna build
a new bed. I'm wondering, can I get away with
not scraping the layer of grass and weeds off the
surface and just put the soil right on top, or

(11:08):
maybe is there a way to put something down before
I put.

Speaker 7 (11:12):
The soil on top of it?

Speaker 1 (11:15):
All right? So is the grass Saint Augustine or Bermuda
or Zoisier or what do you have for grass?

Speaker 6 (11:22):
It's kind of a Saint Augustine weed mix. It's an
area of my lawn that's not real, real developed.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
Okay, Saint Augustine. You can just throw dirt on it
and it's dead. It's not going to come through, no problem.
Most weeds, that's true. Now we have a few. Bermuda
grass is notorious. You throw a dirt on it and
it'll come all the way to the top, and now
you've got an infested bed. So if you have any
bermuda as part of your weeds out there in the
Saint Augustine, you got to get rid of that. There

(11:54):
are some other weeds that can come up through, most
of them cannot. So if you wanted, you could lay
some cardboard down in the bottom and then throw the mix,
your bed mix on top of that, and that you
would be fine, except for things like bermuda, and that
you would have to spray it and kill it and

(12:15):
even have a little kind of a no man's land
around the beds because that stuff will crawl in, it'll
go up through the bed and it's it's a mess.
So that's that's kind of the main exception. To just
throw dart on it and you'll be okay.

Speaker 6 (12:29):
Okay, I don't think I have any bermuda out there,
so I think I might be safe doing that. I'm
just getting I'm just getting a little old bumed shoulder.
I don't want to do all that work, honestly.

Speaker 1 (12:39):
Yeah, oh, I get that. And is your soil do
you know if your soil is kind of a heavy
clay or what kind of soil do you think you
have out there?

Speaker 6 (12:49):
I honestly can't answer that question.

Speaker 1 (12:51):
It's that's okay, that's right. Here's the thing gallery there
you go. So a lot of areas have kind of
a heavier clay in them, but in a residential neighborhood,
you never know what the builder brought in or what
someone added after the builder, or you know. So go
out and if it is kind of a heavy you
kind of take a little If you have a spading fork,

(13:11):
just step on it, push it in the ground and
just kind of lean back on it. You don't have
to bend over and stoop and turn it over anything.
Just crack it open, kind of look at what you got.
And if it's a clay, what I would do is
I would put about three inches of your bed mix
down and then I would use that spading fork and
wiggle it down into the soil, you know if you
step on it and then just lean back and just

(13:32):
sort of crack it open. No stooping, no bending, no lifting,
just break it open. And that bedding mix is going
to kind of fall in between those those clay chunks
that you kind of have broken open, and that's creating
a transition zone between the nice bed mix and the
heavy clay below, and water moves down through that better. Okay,

(13:53):
then finish fill in the bed or finish filling the
area with the bed mix. So when you say raise beds,
are you talking about something with metal sides or rock
or just a mound of soil? What do you have
in mind there?

Speaker 6 (14:07):
Well, I bought those those concrete blocks that you slide
the two to six boards, some boards and.

Speaker 1 (14:17):
Good okay, So so with that, what I would do
if it were me for us and I got to
run here for a break, But what I would do
is I would throw the bed decide where you want
the bed, and throw the bed mixed down on it,
break it open, like I said to kind of not
mix it, but just sort of crack it open and
get get a blend there, and then put your blocks

(14:37):
and boards down to form the bed and then finish
filling it. That's how I would go about it with
the least effort. Okay, so most stooping, no bending, no,
all right, thank you. I appreciate your call very much.
If speaking of clay soils, our clay soils move, they
get wet, they swell, they get dry, they shrink, and

(14:57):
that is why you see the heaving of sidewalks, the
cracking of un heaving of driveways, as well as damage
to foundation in your home. Now that's where it starts
to get serious. You start messing with your house foundation,
fix my slab foundation, repair, own and run since the

(15:17):
beginning by a fellow named Ty Strickland. And Ty knows
what he's doing. Listen, he's been here, he's been doing
this for twenty three years. He's a fifth generation Texan
Navy Estonian. He knows our soils, he knows this area,
and he knows how to fix things. He knows how
to assess them too. You see a crack in your brick,
you see a crack in your sheet rock inside the

(15:37):
door starts to stick, that used to not stick. That
means something's moving, and you got to have somebody look
at it. Don't be an ostrich stick your head in
the sand. Have him look at it. It may be
that it's a slight amount of movement. Nothing, you don't
need major foundation work or it. Maybe here's a situation.
He'll be honest with you. Listen. This is why I
like to talk about ty and fix my slab. He

(15:59):
shows up on time, he fixes it right, and he
charges you a fair price. You're not going to do
better than that. Fixmslab dot com. Fix myslab dot com
two eight one two five five forty nine, forty nine.
Don't put it off, find out today. All right, I'm
gonna take a little break and I'll be right back
with your call. Seven one three two one two ktr h. Alrighty,

(16:25):
we are back. Welcome back to garden Line. We are
here to answer your gardening questions. We want you to
have success. That's the bottom line. The way I like
to put it is, we want you to have a
more bountiful garden, a more beautiful landscape, and more fun
in the process. All right, does that sound Does that

(16:46):
sound good? Gardening is supposed to be fun, supposed to
be something that we thoroughly, thoroughly enjoy and you can.
All you gotta do is give plants what they want.
Give them what they want, and they're gonna do super
super or well, well, I wanted to I want to
mention something. I alluded to this earlier. But we're going

(17:06):
we are in a warm spell right now. We've been
having some eighty degree temperatures spell through a lot of
the listening area. And when plants are in a dormant state,
they are chemically inhibited from growing, meaning there are actual
chemicals in the plant that prevent that bud from pushing
out and growing. That's why we have, for example, on

(17:27):
peaches and other certain other kinds of fruit, we have
chilling hours. Those chilling hours break down the inhibiting chemicals.
So when we do have a few warm days, the
plant takes off, It blooms, it sends out shoots, it
starts growing. But if we're in the middle of wintertime
and these plants are starting to get these eighty degree days,
they're going to say, you know what, it's spring, let's

(17:50):
get going, and they start to come out of dormancy.
And then if we end up with a good hard
cold freeze coming up, they're in big trouble, and that's
what happened to crate myrtles a few years ago. In December,
they were still in there, they had not fully hardened off.
They were in their somewhat active growing state, and we
had a December freeze. It went on in the teens
and I mean it killed crapes all the way to
the ground in some places. I opened College station, they

(18:12):
had a severe amount of damage to that. As you
came farther south, it wasn't quite as bad because it
wasn't quite as cold. But I'm concerned about these eight
degree temperatures.

Speaker 8 (18:20):
Now.

Speaker 1 (18:20):
If we don't have another good hard freeze, we're okay,
but just be aware that a plant's heartiness is only
based on how well hardened off it is, so all
this week of eighties, and then if we're going to
go in the future, let's say we're going to have
a low twenties that hits later. Hopefully we won't, but
if we did, you'd need to be extra careful to

(18:42):
make sure and get that point covered because it's going
to be more sensitive than that species otherwise would I mean,
think about crape myrtles, they're very cold, hardy. I mean
you grow them throughout Texas and they're fine here. They
can take our cold, but not when they're not ready.
And these eighty degree temperatures are starting to cause plants

(19:02):
to wake up and get thinking it's springtime. So let's
just keep an extra eye out for that. Don't want
to be alarmist. And I hope we don't have that
kind of cold still, but we will find out. But
now you know, at least have been forewarned. Our phone
number seven one three two one two k t r H.
Seven one three two one two k t r H.

(19:24):
Give me a call. We'll talk about the things that
you are interested in so that you can have success
with your gardening and your plants.

Speaker 4 (19:31):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (19:32):
The folks at green Pro, they they're experts in providing
top quality compost top dressing and fertilizing make your lawn
really look good to keep it at its healthiest. They
also do core aeration, which is a perfect companion for
compost top dressing. And here's why. When you I was
talking earlier about our clay soils and you know they
don't drain well and whatnot. Well, when you go down

(19:55):
in the soil with a core errator, that's not a
that's not like a little little finger that pushes a
hole into the soil. This is a hollow time, a
hollow core. It pushes down in the soil and it
pops a plug of soil out and drops it on
the surface. After you've done corroration, looks like you had
a little miniature dog convention on your yard, if you

(20:16):
know what I'm talking about. It's just it does that
and it gets oxygen done in the root system. Then
with the compost top dressing, that compost will wash it
or fall down into those holes. And so now what
you're doing, it's like you're putting organic matter down deeper
in the soil. You're getting oxygen deeper in the soil,
you're improving the rate that the soil can take up

(20:36):
water when it rains, and you're also adding the organic
matter that stimulates biological activity. It's good for your lawn.
It's one of the single best things you can do
for a lawn is to do a correation and a
compost top dressing, especially when that soil is compacted. It's
almost essential when your soil is compacted to do this.

(20:59):
If you're going to have a good success with your lawn.
Now it feeds that biology, it alleviates compaction, it does
all these things I'm doing. If your lawn is recovering
from chinchbugs and brown patch and take off patch, or
just drought that we maybe went through in last summer,
hot hot conditions, this is one of the stimulating things
that you can do. Also, if you have created a

(21:21):
thatch layer by overfertilizing and overwatering, and you got all
these runners that are crawling on top of each other,
and you walk across the lawn and it's like spongy,
spongy because of all those runners. Well, when you do cororation,
you put that soil up on top of the ground
and it kind of falls in among those runners which
are slow to decompose, and it helps them speed up
the decomposition. So correoration with compost top dressing also breaks

(21:45):
down the thatch layer in a lawn. Just a lot
of benefits to it. Now, Green Pro serves an area
about forty five miles from Magnolia, So we're talking about
spring and cyprust the woodlands. Conroe willis over northwest Magnoia,
Montgomery down to Katie kind of West Houston, And basically
I like to put it this way, the the I
forty five I ten quadrant that that's basically the Green

(22:08):
Pro area about forty five miles from Magnolia north southeast west.
So greenpro Texas dot com, greenpro Texas dot com. That's
the website, the phone number eight three to two three
five to one zero zero three two eight three two
three five one zero zero three true greenpro Texas dot

(22:29):
com for compost, top dressing and core aeration up in
the northwest quadrant at the Greater Houston area. These companies
that do these kind of services, and we picked the
ones out that we think are going to do the
quality job, use the right quality ingredients that they're gonna
they're going to do the job right. They know what

(22:50):
they're doing. They're you know, they're carrying some very specialized equipment.
You can't rent the stuff, you know, you can't rent
the kind of equipment they have. You can rent equipment,
but it's not going to do the quality of corrooration
that they have. And then these bulky composts and say
they can't drive all over creation. It's just not its
cost prohibitive to try to serve a too big of

(23:11):
a geographical area That's why I'll talk about different ones
for different parts of the city. Greenpro up in the
northwest quadrant. That is a that is a no brainer.
Right there, you are listening to garden Line the phone
number seven one three two one two k t r H.
Seven one three two one two k t r H.

(23:31):
I wanted to talk about it in Chenne Gardens just
a little bit by the way. Today it in Chenni
Gardens down in Richmond, just north of Richmond, toward Katie Side. Uh.
Gay Hammond Rose expert extraordinary. Gay is a great lady
and boyd, she knows more about rosesn't about anybody I know.
But she's going to be there at ten am talking

(23:53):
about month by month Rose care for Gay Hammond. Now,
guess what's going to happen next Saturday at in Jenni Gardens.
I'll be there talking about tips for making gardening less work.
The way I like to put it is, I'm gonna
be talking about how to get more for your garden
from your garden with less sweat and less ibuprofen. My
dog is gonna be from twelve to one point thirty.
But I don't want to confuse you here, But today

(24:14):
Gay's gonna be there at ten am. So the minute
I quit talking on garden Line, Gay starts talking at
Enchanted Gardens. You need to get out there. When you
get there, you're gonna find the products I talk about
on garden Line. And let me just say you that,
Just go look. It is an expanse of every kind
of plant you can imagine with expert advice. What more
can you ask for? All right, time for me to

(24:34):
take a little break here and say hi to Gay
when you're out there by the way at Enchanted Gardens
today and again they're on the Richmond Rosenberg side of
Katie if you want, if you want the specifics FM
three point fifty nine, I'll be right back. All right,

(24:54):
we're gonna be walking on sunshine a little bit here,
so dark outside by the way, look out the wendaw.
If you're neighbors, lights aren't on, go bang on the door,
Bang on the door. Tell them they're missing garden Line,
and they'll they'll be so happy. They'll rise up and
call you blessed, thank you for that. They may call
you something else this morning, but eventually they will appreciate
the favor that you did for them. Oh my what

(25:15):
have I started? Pierce Scapes. I talk about peer scapes
all the time because I am so impressed with the
work they do and you will be too. Do me
a favorite. Just check this out. I'm gonna just check
it out and see what I'm talking about. Piercescapes dot com.
Piercescapes dot com one word, piercecapes dot com. Go look

(25:37):
at what they do. I mean, it is amazing what
they can do. They can turn your place into whatever
you want it to be. Do you need landscape lighting,
do you need hardescape done? Or is your irrigation system
needing some work? Almost every irrigation system needs work. That's
just a fact. Typically they're not made right, they're not

(25:58):
built right initially, and they have issues that arise. Pierce
Capes can fix that if you want. If you have
an area that doesn't drain well, you want it to
drain well, See can plant more there so there's not
standing water so it's not a mess when the dogs
run through the area. Well, they can fix that too.
They've got highly qualified and trained and certified employees that

(26:18):
know what they're doing. From the designers that create this
magic down to the folks that install it. All the
way through piercescapes dot com two eight one three seven
oh fifty sixty two eight one three seven oh fifty sixty.
There are preferred garden Line landscaper and have been for
a good while now and for a good reason. You're

(26:39):
listening to guard Line. If you'd like to call and
ask a gardening question, we would love to visit with
you about that. Seven one three two one two fifty
eight seventy four seven one three two one two five
eight seven four. That's how you reach me here. I
had a couple of early calls, folks are I always
know the early birds. They know what are doing, and

(27:00):
it's because they know you call it early and they
are not so many callers and it's easy to get
right through, so that is why they do that. Smart
Smart Microlife products have been around the Houston area for
a long time now, over thirty five years. And there's
a reason that they're around for every thirty five years,

(27:21):
and it's because they work and because people love them.
They love the results that they see you When you
use microlife, what you are using is a natural product
that is loaded with microbes. They are their products are
and you know the bag may say, you know, like
their lawn fertilizer. We'll be talking about this here as
we get into spring. The six two four green bag
of lawn fertilizer. That's six percent nitrogen, two percent phosphorus,

(27:43):
four percent potassium. But what the label doesn't tell you
is because it's made from organic materials. Organic materials have
all the different ingredients. Remember earlier I was talking about
the essentials, the trace minerals and stuff that's in organic stuff.
Because you know, if you've got if you pick a
grass blade from your yard and you look at that blade,
there's nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, There's also calcium, magnesium, and sulfur.

(28:06):
There's also boron and zinc and iron in that grass
blade because that's what it takes to grow plants. So
when you take organic materials and create a product out
of them, when you do that, you are in you
are bringing all those nutrients with you. And that's Microlife.
Over one hundred different minerals, more minerals than any fertilizer
I'm aware of in that Microlife product. Now, I first

(28:31):
used it. I spent about ten years now ago, and
I saw right then it works. It's going to give
you some immediate release pretty quick, but a gradual release
over time as those organic materials are broken down by
microbes into the nutrients that your plants are gonna then
take up. You're going to find Microlife. It end up
in a garden center, Speed stores, Ace Hardware stores, Southwest Fertilizer.

(28:54):
Just go to Microlife Fertilizer dot com. They have a
wide array of products, from dry granular products to liquid products.
I'm working my way through the list. It's a long list,
and every time I've used one, I've been impressed with
how it works. Right now, I would suggest you consider
the humans plus. That's the zero zero four. It is

(29:15):
a purple bag and it is composed of compost. In
its final decomposition form, it is humus. Is wonderful for
the soil. You start putting that out on a regular
basis and you get it down in the soil, and
you're going to see an improvement in soil structure, in
microbial activity and nutrient holding content, and a lot of

(29:35):
other benefits to your plants over time. When you do
it the way nature does, which is over time. That's
how nature makes a meadow, a forest, or any other
location better and better and better as the years go by.
Microlife can do the same thing for your plants. We're
going to head out now to sugar Land and talk

(29:56):
to Mike. Hello, Mike, welcome to Guardenline.

Speaker 7 (29:59):
Hey, thanks for taking my call.

Speaker 1 (30:03):
Yes, sir, I got a question for you.

Speaker 9 (30:05):
I'm sure you've answered a million times before. But I
picked up a bag of fifteen five ten fertilizer and
a bag of preemmersion herviside yesterday. And the question is
is it okay to put them both down at the
same time, or put one down then the other with
how long.

Speaker 1 (30:22):
It can You can put them both down on the
same day. Just don't mix them in the in the
spreader because the particle size is different. So do one
come back, load up, do the other one. You can
do them both the same day. When you do that,
then put about a half inch of water on the lawn.
If you have to turn on the sprinklers, that's fine
because you want to move that especially move that pre

(30:43):
emergent down into the soil surface before these weeds one
season we'd start to germanic.

Speaker 9 (30:49):
Okay, good, and then let me just a slight twist
of that. I also picked up a bag of asimite.
Good idea to wait on that maybe a week or
so and put that down later.

Speaker 1 (30:59):
No way, it all do asmite any time of the year,
the same day you're doing any other thing we talk
about on guardenline, from fertilizers, pungicides and sectus it doesn't matter.
Just whatever product you're putting on your lone, you can
put as might at the same time. Again, because of
particle size, we don't want to mix them in the
hopper bed. Two separate spreading same day is fine.

Speaker 7 (31:20):
Okay, perfect.

Speaker 9 (31:21):
The barricade went down yesterday, so I'm good to good
to go on the other two in the next day
or two whatever, whatever time.

Speaker 1 (31:28):
Yeah, okay, absolutely, yeah, and good barricades, great product. And
by getting it down and getting into the watering end
is the most important thing. Is sometimes people forget they
put it down, think it's working, but it only works
after you wash it off the granule into the soil
surface because that's where the weeds are going to, the
seeds are sprouting, and that's where it shuts them down.
So don't forget. The corp.

Speaker 9 (31:52):
Watered it in yesterday, I'll do it again today so
it gets a good soaking in twice and then like
I said, maybe tomorrow I'll put down the fertilizer.

Speaker 1 (32:02):
And then as yeah, okay, that's a good point.

Speaker 7 (32:06):
I was.

Speaker 1 (32:07):
I was talking to Dan at night Foss the other
day they met. They're the ones that create that barricade,
and just say, man, Dan, this week eighty degrees, we've
better be getting stuffed down because all these warm season weeds.
They're like, yep, we're into this and they're gonna start
sprouting on us right now.

Speaker 7 (32:24):
That's good.

Speaker 1 (32:24):
Good that you didn't delay. Yeah, okay, great, all right, sir,
thank you, thank you, uh appreciate you cole very much.

Speaker 5 (32:33):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (32:33):
While Bird's Unlimited is an awesome, awesome store for everything
you're looking for right now. The thing that I I
kind of recently got really excited about this, but it's
the new product called Cardinal Confetti. It's a blend that's
got all kinds of different seeds, you know, from bark butter,
peanut halves, dried meal worms, sunflower, black all sunflower sapflower,

(32:54):
on and on. Birds love it. It's been documented to
attract a lot of birds, as has their bark butter.
By the way, bark butter, you Smear it on the bark.
Smear it on whatever you want, anything that will holds
still on in the art. Smear some bark butter on it.
One hundred and fifty different species of birds have been
documented coming to bark butter. This is like it's like
bird crack. I don't know if it's a control substance

(33:14):
or not. That it ought to be in the bird world.
And it's at wild Birds Unlimited. They love this stuff.
Wbu dot Com, Forward, slash Houston, find a Wallbird's near you.
They're all over the place. I love going into them
and you will too, by the way, really cool stuff
and knowledge. When I have a bird question, I call
Wildbird's Unlimited, store, own, our manager, whatever, because they know

(33:36):
all they do. All right, I guess I gotta go away.
I'll be right back. Archie your first when we come back.

Speaker 10 (33:45):
Kt RH Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of
the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to
kt r H Garden Line with Skip Rictor.

Speaker 11 (33:55):
It's just watch him as.

Speaker 7 (34:11):
So many.

Speaker 12 (34:20):
A sign.

Speaker 1 (34:23):
Alrighty, we're back. Sometimes I just want to cut in
on the song and get talking, because we've got a
lot to talk. About. There is so much going on
in the garden right now, and I've talked about a
few things, like I don't like the fact that it's
been eighty degrees this week. At least I don't if
we're going to have more winter, because our plants won't
like that. It is time to get all your pruning finished.

(34:46):
Get it done on all your deciduous plants now. If
we're talking about you know, citrus, for example, then hold off.
If it is a somewhat tropical, somewhat cold tender type plant,
just hold off on pruning it. You don't have to
print it right now. But on all the deciduous ornamental plants,
all the deciduous fruit trees and things, now's the time

(35:07):
to get that work done. Learn what you're doing before
you go out and do it. Just because you own
pruners and you have a plant doesn't mean that what
you're about to do to it is the right thing.
So learn what you need to do. There's a lot
of good information on there. If you want to learn
how to prune a fruit tree, go to the Aggi
Horticulture website. Aggie Horticulture is the name of the website.

(35:28):
You can search for it. It's easy to find Aggie Horticulture,
and there's a fruit section and there's a publication on
every kind of fruit tree you can imagine. I mean,
there's an avocado publication. There's peaches, plums, you know, pairs
per Simmons. The whole nine yards is there, including some
nut producing plants like pecan too, and it tells you

(35:49):
how to punt them in those publications and they're free.
You don't have to buy them. They're multicolored PDF fologing,
download them or look at them online. Learn what you're
doing before you head out to prune. That is a
word to the why Let's head out to Pariland now
and we're going to talk to Archie this morning.

Speaker 13 (36:04):
Hey Archie, welcome to garden Line Barning Ship. I have
a bed in the front. It's about ten by ten.
I got about gosh, at least seven flats of.

Speaker 7 (36:17):
Arcade.

Speaker 13 (36:18):
I can't said archangel Allegonia, Angelinia, oh Angelonia, yeah right.
And they were beautiful, you know during the summer last year.
They're purple and I covered them for you know, before
we had all the snow. I covered them all and
I thought I'd done pretty good job covered them. But
they still just turned brown after I pulled all the

(36:39):
torps and stuff off and I cut them back to
just ground level because there is some green coming up.
What can I do, you know to keep them going,
like soil activator medina or something like that, or should
I put you know, azemite or what would be the
best stuff to put on that to keep them going.

Speaker 1 (36:58):
Well, you're not going to go wrong with any kind
of mendina a product like that on them. Most of
those are they've got microbial content, they've got nutrient content.
A lot of them have hormones and vitamin different kinds
of things mixed in to the concoction that are going
to do the plants good. You know, as azimite as
you're doing the whole bed. Small amounts, very small amounts,

(37:20):
like ten pounds per thousand square feet is about the
right rate on azimite. But that's a micronutrient situation, so
it helps when you need the micro nutrients right now.
The Angelonia, the big thing is, I've never cared in
angelonia through the winter before. They are a summer, warm
season annual typically. Now you've gotten yours to survive till now,

(37:41):
there's a good chance they're gonna make it because you
last too.

Speaker 7 (37:45):
This would be my third year.

Speaker 1 (37:46):
Oh did they okay? Oh third year? Wow, and they
look good. They look good.

Speaker 13 (37:51):
The second year, well yeah, yeah, because I had to
I had to go get a couple of flats and
still in where they didn't come back.

Speaker 1 (37:59):
Yeah, you know, done in Paarland.

Speaker 7 (38:03):
I'm just afraid of another freeze too. And I've got
all these roses.

Speaker 13 (38:07):
Well, I've got a prune and that's supposed to be
next week, and you start those on Valentine, so I
don't know.

Speaker 7 (38:14):
I mean, I've got a hundred rose bushes.

Speaker 1 (38:15):
I wouldn't worry. I wouldn't worry about it. I would print, Yeah,
prune those roses. It's it's okay, go ahead and print them.
You know, there's no problem with printing. In fact, there roses.
They'll start growing when it's still cool, and they'll keep
growing as we go into the cool set. So I
wouldn't worry a lot about those. I'd get them prune
like you want to. You know, there's this slight chance

(38:38):
that we would have the kind of cold that just
would burn them back, but it wouldn't kill them. They'll
come on back. But it's time to prune them, and
we can't can't worry about the weather too much on
those two, so you can get that done. But anyway,
if you want to wait a little bit and print
them a little later, that you know, that's fine, but
don't wait too long on them. But yeah, have angelonia.
I just get ready to come if we get cold.

(39:01):
But otherwise, congratulations. You send me a picture of those
when they when they bloom this year, I'd love to
see them. See them now, the picture now, and that
a picture is a.

Speaker 7 (39:11):
Plant that uses just an annual at least when I
bought them.

Speaker 1 (39:16):
Yeah, well, but they are they are awesomely beautiful all
through the summertime. I mean you get months and months
and months of beauty out of angelonia. It's one of
my favorite summer plants.

Speaker 7 (39:27):
So yeah, well that's that's that. She's great.

Speaker 1 (39:32):
Yeah, well go ask her about printing them. See what
she says, Yeah, she's forgotten more about roses.

Speaker 7 (39:40):
I'm in society, you know, I'm the society.

Speaker 1 (39:42):
Oh you are, okay, Oh so you know gay? All right,
good right, all right.

Speaker 13 (39:46):
But I'm just afraid, you know, pune. I know when
I have to prune, but it just scares me to death.
One you know, this early in February. Yeah, all right,
thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (39:57):
Yeahs roses are tough. You know they're tough, all right, Archie. Hey,
thanks for the question and good luck. If you get
a chance, send me a picture. Take one now, take
one when they're blooming this next summer, and I'd like
to see that. I think that'd be cool. Thanks sir.
Appreciate you. Cal you bet, you bet, you know. We
love our feed stores here on Guarden Line and Spring Creek.

(40:18):
Feed is up there, conveniently located right up there Magnoia
on FM twenty nine seventy eight FM twenty nine seventy
eight up in Magnolia. It's it's just a few minutes
away from Graham park Way. I have a two forty nine.
I love going into that place. It's a beautiful place.
First of all, you walk in and you're going, wait
a minute, am I in a feed store or what
is this going? I mean, they have all kinds of

(40:39):
beautiful decorations from inside the home and whatnot. But yes,
it's a feed store loaded with quality feeds and including
feed for things like pets. Your pets. A Victor Purina
brands like that. If you have backyard chickens and you
are looking for some of the supplies that you need
for those, they are they're stocked up, they're ready to go.
And when it comes to gardening, full line of fertilizers,

(41:01):
turf Star from Nelson, Microlife, nitrofoss, anything you need to
control weeds, insects, diseases. They got you covered. At Spring
Creek Feed. It's again m Magnoli on FM twenty nine
seventy eight. You can't miss it when you drive a big, old,
beautiful decorative barn looking exterior. It's just really a cool place.

(41:21):
Now you can get special orders. They will do some
special ordering. They have a delivery service. And if you're
senior citizen or military, or maybe you're a youth for
h FFA raising livestock, there's special discounts for that. Just
ask them about it when you're there at Spring Creek Feed.
Time for me to take a little quick break here
and we're going to come back to your calls at

(41:43):
seven one three two one two KTRH. All right, folks,
let's do this. Let's talk gardening. Seven one three two
one two KTRH seven one three two one two ktrh
Hey plans for all seasons. This is a public servicenouncement, folks,
plants for all seasons. Has got tomatoes? What do they

(42:04):
say out the wazoo. I don't know what that means,
but I've heard it before, so I almost save you.
They've got tomatoes out the was zu. All kinds of
different varieties have come in and listen. Grab some now
while the supplies are good. You want to be able
to pick the varieties you want. So grab them now.
If you want to be a little careful. Not put
them right out in the ground, because what if we
have another freeze? Okay, bring them home, take care of them,

(42:26):
Bump them up into the next sice, gitttle, putting soap,
Bump them up to a bigger pot, put them outside
and water them. Just take care of them, watch them.
Bring them in. Just gonna get cold. They need to
spend some evenings out where they're getting our cooler evening temperatures.
That's good for them. And when you decide okay it's safe,
I'm going to plant. And some people are gamblers, some
people are not. I get it. Then put them in,

(42:48):
but don't wait to get them. Go get them now
Plants all Seasons has got them. They've got a lot
of things in stock. We're talking about herbs and flowers,
and of course you know all the standard things shrubs
and trees and whatnot. You're gonna find them there when
you go into Plants for All Seasons. If you already
got a green thumb, well you probably already go there
because green thumbs know about plants for all seasons. If

(43:08):
you had a brown thumb, they're going to turn it green.
And what turns of brown thumb green? Information good information
and knowledge and understanding so you can have success. That's it.
They're a full service garden retail or retail garden center.
The family owned been around since nineteen seventy three, so
they have staying power because they do things right. They

(43:30):
have great plants, outstanding service. Take a picture in there
or something, they're going to be able to look at
it and identify it or diagnose it and tell you
what you need to do. It's easy. All you got
to do is head up toward Tomball or if you're
from Tomball, head down North Houston take the Luetta exit.
They're just north of Luetta. As you're heading toward Tomball
they're just past Luetta on the right hand side there

(43:53):
and the website if you want that Plants for All
Seasons dot com. The phone number two eight one three
seven six, sixteen forty six. We're going to go out
to Cyprus now and talk to Ike. Hey, Ike, welcome
the garden line.

Speaker 14 (44:06):
Hey, how are you? Good morning?

Speaker 1 (44:08):
Thank you good? What's up?

Speaker 14 (44:11):
I had a question about I know Leake's mold compost
is the best thing you can put in your yard
or one of these things, but do you have any
alternatives that's a little cheaper. I've looked at some of
the process of the company, but it's just a little
bit out of my pocket.

Speaker 1 (44:26):
So anything that I can do, that's all. Yeah. Leipole
compost is Cadillac stuff. I mean, you know it's made
out of obviously leap leaves, and so you got already
got a really fine textured, high quality You can take
a standard compost and use it, just get it from
a quality company, one that you know knows what they're

(44:49):
what they're doing, so that you're not just getting something
that was rushed through the system and isn't fully decomposed.
If you want a finer texture compost, you can even
screen down posts that you have. I've got a little
thing that I built, a two by four square box
that sits on top of my wheelbarrow. And when I

(45:10):
say box, I just mean it's four two by four's
making a kind of like a just a frame. And
I hammered a half inch hardware cloth on the bottom
that a little checkerboard half inch checker bird, and I
just throw compost in it and shake it and anything
chunky gets stuck in the hardware cloth and you can

(45:31):
just throw it off the side. It's still good for
a multre continued composting, but you can come down with
a finer texture that then you could use if you're
compost top dressing or something along those lines. It's just work.
You're you're exchanging paying for something with doing the work
to try to create a product on your own, right.

Speaker 14 (45:49):
I know, how about some of the microlife products, Is
that a good alternative to just doing the compost or
I know they're more natural, organic anything you sugget.

Speaker 1 (46:00):
Yeah, Well, if you're gonna if you're going to try to, uh,
you know, use a microlife product to in exchange for composts,
I would do the Humates Microlife hummates. Plus it's a
zero zero four purple bag. And what that is it's
compost that has been decomposed past the stage we call
compost into the stage called humus uh. And you just

(46:23):
mix it into the soil a little bit. You can
put it on the surface, but you can also mix
it in and it It basically gives you a mini
year head start on improving your soils. It's already reached
that stage that is the most beneficial.

Speaker 14 (46:39):
Okay, well, I appreciate it, Thank you.

Speaker 3 (46:42):
You, bet I.

Speaker 1 (46:43):
Thanks for the call. Appreciate that a lot. We're gonna
go now and talk to Ken. Hey, Ken, welcome to
garden Line.

Speaker 7 (46:50):
Hey, Skip, good morning.

Speaker 15 (46:51):
How are you.

Speaker 1 (46:53):
I'm good, I'm good. How are you.

Speaker 3 (46:56):
Good?

Speaker 11 (46:56):
Deal?

Speaker 15 (46:56):
Hey, I have a question about uh. I guess you
out of a soil amendment. I know years ago someone
asked Randy Lemon whether at wood ashes would help a
man of soil in a garden, and he said no,
But I was wondering about a charcoal from wood if
that would a man of soil and.

Speaker 7 (47:18):
Thing for it.

Speaker 1 (47:21):
Well, there is something called biochar which is it's different
than charcoal, but very similar. It's it's like wood that
it can be made out of a lot of things,
but let's just say wood that has been turned into
a black charcoal like compound at a cooler temperature. It's

(47:42):
almost like a very very cool burn kind of product.
And that's that's helpful. Now, wood ashes are not an
amendment in the sense of like adding composts to improve
soil structure, but they can be used to add some nutrients.
They have about five to eight percent potassium. That's the
third number on the bag. So depending on what the

(48:03):
wood ashes were made from, like what you burned, it's
about a zero one maybe I don't know, three to
five ratio of nutrients that are out there in it.
And so if your soil is already a fairly high pH,
don't use wood ashes because it raises the pH even more.
If you're a little on the acidic side, a moderate

(48:25):
amount of wood ashes can be helpful. You just want
to be very light in the amount you put out
because you can overdo it. So I would say no
more than like a five gallon bucket over a thousand
square feet at the most, and that's a dry five
gallon bucket. You know, when we wet wood ashes, they

(48:46):
shrink down just the fluffy loose wood ashes about a
five gallon And you got to do it on a
calm day because the wind blows and it's a mess.
But can you use it? Yes, and it will add
some nutrients, but it also raises pH.

Speaker 15 (49:03):
Okay, well that answers the question that I had. Really, Uh,
I noticed I have some royal acreage and I know
this when I burn a brush pile that uh yeah,
so when mudergrass takes it over very quickly and the
and it's a.

Speaker 7 (49:16):
Very lappy green in that area.

Speaker 15 (49:18):
Yeah, it really likes it as my soul is kind
of so I guess it helps a balance pH.

Speaker 1 (49:24):
So yeah, and other and other folks with land can
tell you that if you were to continue piling up
brush there and burning it in that same spot year
after year, you could eventually, read apart, reach a point
where almost nothing wants to grow because you've overdone it
so much in that one spot. But a little bit
it's good, you know, It's like life, A little bit's good.

(49:46):
And there's such a thing as too much of almost anything.

Speaker 7 (49:50):
Everything in moderation.

Speaker 1 (49:51):
Right there you go, there you go, all right? Ken, Hey,
thanks and good luck with that.

Speaker 7 (49:59):
All right, thank you.

Speaker 1 (50:02):
Bye bye. Yeah, that is a see. Not only do
you get gardening advice on garden Line, you get nice
life lessons that we've all learned the hard way.

Speaker 7 (50:12):
Right.

Speaker 1 (50:14):
Talking about quality products, somebody we're visiting just a moment
ago with Ike about you know, about composting and stuff,
heirloom soils. They have so many quality products for making
your soul better. And I could sit here for literally
for an hour describing and talking about everything. Yes, they
have lead more compost. They also have a veggie and

(50:35):
herb mix that's outstanding. You put it in the you
just pot it up on the ground and plant in it.
I mean it's ready to go. It's ready to go.
They've got things like rose soil for example, they have that.
They have a wide variety, even down to things like
lawn mix. It's a it's an inexpensive mix that is
made with Mason sand and compost and a little bit
of bed mix. Good for laying down before you put

(50:57):
a lawn in, kind of mixing it in and getting
ready to go in those areas and getting it ready
to go. They also can deliver by the supersack. Now
you can have them dump it on your driveway. You
can go get it from the soil yard. They have
up their importer. It's called Warren's Rock and Mulch Importer.
That's where the Airloom sols comes from. Or you can
have them deliver a supersack. Now there's a three sack

(51:19):
minimum for delivery because it's very expensive for any place
to deliver a big old truckload to take a truck
anywhere basically no matter what's on it, So three sack minimum.
They set on your driveway. I've done this before myself.
You set on your driveway, you shovel right out of
that sack. It is neat and clean, there's no mess,
works really really well. Now all you got to do

(51:40):
is give them a call if you want to find
out about going to pick it up or having a
delivery two eight one three five four nineteen fifty. If
you just need some bags. Airloom Seals products are sold
all over the Greater Houston area. I talked about the
Veggie Nerb Mix and Honor. They have a potting Solfur
indoor plan. It's an outdoor containers. Just just check out

(52:04):
where you purchase your landscape supplies. You know whether it's
a garden center and ace hardware store, a feed store,
a Southwest fertilizer and ask them if they carry airlomsaws
and the answer is probably going to be yes, that
they do. Let's see here, let's go now to Cleveland
and we're going to talk to Ron. Hello, Ron, welcome
to garden Line Warner Skit.

Speaker 8 (52:26):
Hey.

Speaker 16 (52:27):
I've been kicking around this core aeration for years, putting
it off, putting it off, and heard you talk about
it again. I always put down the barricade and fertilizers.
Would a core aeration be bet to do before barricade
and fertilizer or all the same time?

Speaker 7 (52:48):
Or what are your thoughts?

Speaker 1 (52:50):
You know, it's not like you have to do it
a certain way. You can do that. You can go
about that either way that you want to do it.
If if it were me, I would probably do the
corporation and then the compost stop dressing and the fertilizing
on top of it. But I don't feel like if

(53:13):
you did it wrong, it's going to mess everything up.
And either way you'll go, are you going to do
that yourself or you're going to hire somebody to come
out and do the corredoration for you.

Speaker 16 (53:21):
Well, I've done the compos top dressing myself through years.
I thought about getting a machine, running a machine and
doing it. Okay, you know, if you're gonna do it yourself. Yeah,
I'm I'm about thirty seconds out here, Ron, I think
we may have to hold. If you want to keep

(53:42):
going on this, let me put you on hold and
we'll come back to you when we come back. If not,
if you're not there, well thanks for the call. Appreciate
it either way. All right, folks, I got.

Speaker 1 (53:51):
To run here there. I'm up against a really hard
break and we'll be back with your questions at seven
one three two one two k t r H. All right,
but we're back. We are back. If you're gardening questions
at seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy
four seven one three two one two five eight seven four.

(54:13):
If you have planted a tree in the last five years,
especially if you plant it one right this year, you
need a tree hugger sprinkler entering into the next coming warm,
hot blast of summer season. That is the touch and
go time when you're most likely to lose a tree

(54:34):
is that first summer. It's also the time. Maybe your
tree survives, but it just doesn't establish and grow much
because of stresses from droughts. That tree has a very
confined root system. You pulled it right out of the
container like that. You know, you had this little cylinder
of roots right there. That tree needs to have roots
going way beyond the branch bread in all directions, the

(54:56):
height of the tree in all directions. Plus it's getting established.
And in order to do that, you got to maintain
moist soil. And when summertime comes and it gets hot,
that's very hard to do. To do that tree hugger's
designed to do that. There are three sizes. There's a
seven inch, eleven inch, and fifteen inch. They go around
the tree trunk. You hook them to a water hose

(55:17):
and you turn it on and you can turn it
on just a little bit. Where let's say you had
the seven inch size and you barely turn it on.
It's just sort of trickling. It's watering a seven inch
wide area, which is where your low root ball is there.
You crank it up a little more, it gets bigger
and bigger and bigger. I mean, you can take a
tree that's been in the ground for years and you
can rescue water the majority of its root system underneath

(55:39):
the branch spread during excessive heat and drought conditions. Tree
huggers are very versatile. You can go to tree Hugger
sprinkler dot com, find a retailer near you, or let
me make it easy. You can get them at the
arbor Gate. You can get them at Nelson Watergarden out
in Katie, RCW. Nurseries up on two forty nine were
on Southern Gardens and Kingwood Garden Center in Kingwood, go

(56:00):
down to Richmond Rosenberg. You got in Chenny Gardens and
in Channy Forests that carry them up in Tomball D
and D feed and the Spring Creek Center up toward Magnolia,
League City Feed down in League City Southwest Fertilizer and
then Ace Hardware is like Sinkle Ranch and Katie and
K and m Ace hardware and a task Asita and
fulshaar Race. These things are all over the place. Just
go to TreeHugger Sprinkler dot com. You can find a

(56:22):
retailer near you, but get you one help that tree going.
And when you go, well, what if my trees established?

Speaker 3 (56:30):
And do I need it?

Speaker 1 (56:31):
Yes? Because when we go into summer, you're going to
want to do rescue treatments. You don't want to run
your entire lawn irrigation system to a depth to try
to help your trees through. What do we have a
couple of years ago, forty five days over one hundred
degrees with not a drop of water. That's where tree
Higger again comes in to help you. TreeHugger Sprinkler's real easy, easy,

(56:52):
easy to do. What are my favorite new products that
has come out on the market in recent years. We're
going to go now out to Deer Park and talk
to Steve. Hello, Steve, Welcome to Garden Line.

Speaker 17 (57:04):
Hey, Skip, I just sent a couple of pictures. I
don't know if you've had a chance to look at me.
It's something that's growing on top the fungus, I mean
on top of the on top of the mulch, looks
like yellow and corne globs.

Speaker 1 (57:24):
Boy, you send them. Okay, let's do this. I want
I'm going to put you on hold, and I'm gonna
get my producer Jonathan to talk to you. Make sure
you got the right email address, and when he puts
you back on we'll continue this discussion. I don't have
those in my email, so we want to make sure
we get you the right spot. Hang on, Steve, Hopefully

(57:45):
we can continue this discussion and help you a little
bit further. Uh yeah, And while while we're doing that,
I want to just mention that on Guardenline, I'm not
able to answer all of the email questions that come
in by email. I just I just can't. And a
lot of questions are very involved, you know, they take
a lot of time, they need some back and forth

(58:06):
and whatnot. And so what I ask is, if you
got some photos or something you want to send in, boy,
that is really helpful for me to answer a question.
Just email them to me and then call me up
and let's talk and we'll go into it. I had
several this week that are probably going to call over
the weekend that we're going to continue discussing them. It
gives me a little bit of time to look into something,

(58:26):
so I'm not having to try to study through it
on the air. But it works really well, and so
I encourage you to do that. You just have to
call the show, talk to Jonathan, get an email address,
and again I wish I could sit there and type
answers to everyone. I'm just not able to just time.
Time does not allow it. So anyway, I was talking

(58:49):
to you about earlier about some of the things we're
doing this time of year. It is time to finish
winter printing for those plants that are prinned in the winter,
that would be particularly deciduous plants. That's the main thing
we're doing in the winter pruning. You want to get
that finished because the new growth is going to begin.
And here's another reason. The fastest time of wound healing

(59:14):
on a woody ornamental that's been pruned, like a tree
or shrub, is in the spring. And you've probably seen
the time lapse photos like a cactus flower that you
know it's closed and then it opens up real fast
and it closes and like in ten seconds you get
to watch the whole thing. Well, if you were to
do that on a tree wound, what you would see is,
you know, let's say you cut it in January and

(59:36):
it just sits there, and when spring comes it starts
to close pretty rapidly, and then it kind of slows
down to a crawl in the summer and then it
speeds up a little bit for fall, not as much
as spring, but it closes again faster in the fall,
and then it shuts down for winter. And so that's
why we like to prune in the winter because the
fastest time of one of the reasons, the fastest time

(59:58):
of wound healing is in the spring. So let's go
ahead and get that done. There is also I need
to point out the reason I say try to do
it before the new growth shoots out, is because when
new growth starts, the bark we say slips and instead
of being stuck hard against the wood, so that when
you make a pruning cut it doesn't tear strips of

(01:00:20):
bark loose instead of being stuck hard against the wood,
that bark it's like peeling a banana. You know how
you break the top of banana, it just peels right off.
Bark does that in the spring. When the growth is occurring,
the bark is we say slipping. So if you wait
until them to prune, you got to be real careful
because it's easy to tear a strip of bark because
it's loose against it. It tears off from the bay

(01:00:42):
from the trunk real easily. And if you do that,
that is going to be a very slow to heal wound.
And so pruning during dormant time helps avoid that. Now,
can you prune when it's actively growing? Yes, tree care
companies prune all through the summertime. They do what they
need to do when they need to do it. But
the best time is in the winter when things are

(01:01:03):
fully dormant.

Speaker 6 (01:01:05):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:01:05):
We're going to go out to back to Steve now
in Deer Park. Hey, Steve, welcome to Guardline. Did you
get that email?

Speaker 17 (01:01:15):
Oh I'm still sendent right now?

Speaker 7 (01:01:18):
Sorry?

Speaker 1 (01:01:19):
Oh okay, okay, sorry, I'm gonna put you back on hold.
I'll come back to here when I see you pop up.
All right, Anyway, I hope that. Uh, I hope that
what I just described to you there on on, you know,
the way the bark is and the way things heal.

Speaker 3 (01:01:33):
I hope.

Speaker 1 (01:01:33):
I hope that was helpful, because, yes, we want to
prune in the in the dormant season, and it's better
to get it done before the new growth begins. There
are several types of grafting. If you're going to graft,
let's say you have a pecan tree that's not just
a little, you know, a little seedling coming out of
the ground.

Speaker 6 (01:01:50):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:01:50):
They there's a graft called the inlay bark graft where
you stick the grafted piece of wood in between the
bark and the trunk, and you have to do that
in the springtime when the bark is slipping that way,
the bark slips away and you can put the graft
piece right in there. And that's just an example. Different
kinds of graft are done at different times of the year,

(01:02:11):
so that is what we try to do. You're listening
to garden Line if you'd like to give us a
call seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy
four seven one three two one two five eight seven four.
For those of you who live down in Seabrook, Texas,
you are so fortunate you've got Moss Nursery down there.
And Moss Nursery listen, this is not just another garden center.

(01:02:35):
I mean, it is a seventy year old family operated
nursery that sprawls out on eight acres of everything you
need for your landscape, your garden, even your indoor homescape.
You got to see their indoor plant greenhouse that they have.
It is unbelievable. I don't care if it's succulents or
cactus or lush tropical types of things. It's all there.

(01:02:58):
If you're into strings, string of pearls, string of tears,
string of watermelon, I mean all those string things, they've
got those there. They just got in three shipments of
small cactus. They just got in four shipments of succulents.
They got a lot of hanging baskets, I mean lots
of hanging baskets. And then when it comes to vegetables
and herbs, if you pick, there's an incredible array they're

(01:03:20):
stocking up. I think they've been getting like six to
seven shipments a day coming into that place. So whatever
you're looking for, they've got. You want a Japanese maple,
Oh my gosh, they have plenty of gorgeousness. You had
a kind of area with a little summer, little morning
sun and then a bright d apple shade all day.
Japanese maple's gonna be really really happy there. Check out

(01:03:41):
the t shirts, especially Gim's whimsical eyeball plant art T shirt.
Yeah I said that right, Jim's whimsical eyeball plant art
T shirt. He showed me those a long time ago.
He draws these kind of crazy looking whimsical plants with
eyeballs on him you can get a T shirt of that.
All kinds of cool gardening merchandise there, Lost Garden Center,
Moss Nursery. All right, I'm gonna come back Steve by

(01:04:03):
then hopefully we'll have your email and we'll be able
to continue on. All right, there, we are not Saturday night,
but it's coming. It is for sure coming. Hey, Nelson
Plant Food. They have a product that I think you
will find quite interesting. I did not seen one quite
like this. It's called turf star Weedonator. Turf star Weedonator

(01:04:27):
is not just your typical weed and feed type product.
Basically what it is, it's got a growth regulator in it. Now,
it's got the nutrients. First of all, it is a fertilizer,
but it has a growth regulator in it. And this
growth regulator causes the grass to not grow vertically so fast,
but to continue to spread horizontally, so mowing is reduced

(01:04:50):
by that effect. And it works. It works, It works
quite well, and it's not going to hurt your grass.
It also has a post emergent herbicide. So what you
want to do is we the soil or what the
weeds rather, turn the sprinklers on just enough to get
some drops on the weed on the grass and weed leaves.
Put that weed natter out, leave it for you know,

(01:05:11):
a day or so, then wash it off at least
a few hours and wash it off and into the soil.
And it's going to shut down things like chickweed and
clover and dot and dandelions and dollar weed and grassburg parts.
It does a really good job and then it'll release
those nutrients into the lawn too. So uh, it's an
excellent product. Turfstar weedat or buy the folks at Nelson.
You're going to find it widespread in a lot of

(01:05:34):
different areas. We're going to head now out to Magnolia
and talk to Donna. Hello, Donna, welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 18 (01:05:41):
Good morning, Good morning. Yes, so are there emailed in
some Yes, I'm here, Yes, I emailed in some photos
to you. I think I have a wide read fungus
situation spreading rapidly through the property, and it looks like

(01:06:06):
everywhere I turn is affected.

Speaker 1 (01:06:11):
Well, I have good news for you. I looked at
them and boy, that was a lot of photos, and
thank you. That made it very easy for me to
get a good assessment, you know, of what we're looking at.
Your plants were showing it's not a fungus that it's
not well. You know, on any plant you can see
a little spot here or there, and then there are roses.

(01:06:31):
Your roses had some black spot on them and stuff.
But that basically what you're sending me pictures of or
plants that are that are heat stressed and in some
cases a little bit suns called it and some of
the photos. Okay, now, it's not something that we really
worry a lot about, and because I think last season

(01:06:52):
it could have been several things. Number one, it could
just be the heat in the sun wearing on the plants,
and leaves don't last forever. And you get toward the
end of the season, if you have a little drought condition,
if you you know, as we as the days start
getting shorter and we move into the cooler season, the
plants are going to start to abandon their older leaves.

(01:07:13):
And that's what you're seeing. Your new growth looks good,
it's fine, but it's the older leaves that are starting
to scorch and to look worse. And as you look
at the array of plants that you sent me, diseases
tend to be pretty plants specific and even in the
case of also use powdery mildew. Powdery mildew, there's a

(01:07:33):
powdery mildew that attacks krape myrtles, there's one that attacks roses,
there's one that attacks turk's cap. But it's not the
same strain of powdery mildew. So if you had roses
with powdery mildew and you put them right next to
something else that gets powdery mildew, it wouldn't attack it
because it's the wrong strain. And so when you see
a whole big problem going across all these different plant species,

(01:07:56):
it's going to be cultural or it's going to be
environmental weather. That's what the case is. And I saw
nothing to be alarmed about other than this year. Give
them good deep soakings whenever we are hot and dry,
and I would give them a little boost a fertilizer.
I think that would be helped. Some of them look
like a little bit of nutrient maybe lacking. I can't
remember it specifically which one now, specific plant, but in general,

(01:08:20):
just a good balanced fertilizer with some micronutrients in it.
I think that's going to be all you need to do.

Speaker 18 (01:08:27):
Wonderful, that is good news. Such can I ask you
about the crate myrtles. The wood of the crate myrtles
is turning black.

Speaker 19 (01:08:36):
What would cause that?

Speaker 1 (01:08:38):
Okay, that's caused most of the time, it's caused by scale.
There's a crape myrtle bark scale. And if you look
at your crpe myrtle trunks, you're going to see little
white things in the in the black, and those are
the scale insects. They secrete sugary sugary water that the
black city mold grows on. So the black is just

(01:09:01):
a sign that the scale's there. It's not a disease.
And so for kurt myrtle bark scale, in the next
few months, spring the trunks with a horticultural oil, not
a dormant but a horticultural oil and getting good coverage.
You want to do that in March, I would do
it in March, maybe mid March, late Mar or late March,

(01:09:23):
maybe even early April. Do it again and that will
help the little crawler baby scales that are going out
and ending up everywhere causing the problem.

Speaker 18 (01:09:32):
Okay, okay, awesome, Thank you so much for your help
this Wenking.

Speaker 1 (01:09:36):
All right, you bet, thanks for the call. I appreciate
that I talked about Houston powder coders last week, folks,
and this is the biggest powder coder in the region.
And if you're not familiar with powder coating, it is
a process where it's so much better than painting. But
if you look at furniture like yard furniture, and it's
got that really dense, hard protective coating of colors around it,

(01:09:59):
that's coding typically, and they have over one hundred colors
that you can choose from. So if you want something,
they'll powder coat cast iron, wrot iron, aluminum, patio furniture,
you know, if it's metal, they can do it. And
if it's got a little bit of you know, rust
or some need some welding to kind of toach things
back together. If you need to replace the old rusty hardware,

(01:10:20):
they'll do that. They'll do it with stainless steel. By
the way, so at lasts they'll replace the plastic feed
and the end caps. And they can take your patio furniture.
They can take your outdoor art. If you've got a
metal handrail, if you've got a metal lamppost out in
the yard, anything a matter like that, they'll put a
powder coating on it and it is unbelievably attractive and

(01:10:40):
it lasts. And for those of you down on the coast,
they have a special process they do for that salt
spray you deal with down there to help stuff last
even there. Now you can email photos of your furniture
to sales at Houston Coders. No word powder in the
email Houstoncoders dot com. Sales at houstoncoders dot com. They'll
give you a quick quote and in the greater Houston

(01:11:02):
area they'll even do pick up and real quick turnaround.
I went through the shop and saw all the work
and oh my gosh, it is unbelievable the work that
they can do. Turn your furniture new again at Houston
Powder Coders Houston powder Cooders dot com, Houston powder Cooders
dot com. Go check them out two eight one six

(01:11:23):
seven six thirty eight eighty eight and follow them on
social media. They're posting all the time pictures of jobs
and things they've done. You see what I'm talking about,
really cool thing. Well, here we are, the music is playing,
and I've got a couple of folks out there probably
need to get back to I'm going to have to
hold you guys until we come back from break. When

(01:11:46):
we come back, we'll take your calls calling to Steve
and Mike both be sort of visiting with you. I
want to remind you that I have a website out
there where I put everything that we talk about that
needs a publication here on garden Line. So for example,
I walked out in my one of my beds, one
of one that I fought nuts edge in last year,

(01:12:07):
and I just about got it all. It's gonna get
done this year. It's gonna be finished this year. I've
taken it down to just a few plants that survived.
I saw a sprout coming up. I've got a publication.
I'm to wind the blow and not to I know.

Speaker 16 (01:12:21):
How to do it.

Speaker 1 (01:12:21):
I've done it and it's on gardening whip stip dot com.
I'll be right back.

Speaker 10 (01:12:29):
Welcome to kt r H Garden Line with Skip Rictor.

Speaker 11 (01:12:41):
Just watch him as basic.

Speaker 1 (01:12:52):
All right, folks, let's do this. We got plenty of
garden Line talking going on here, and we are get
back on back in the again and get moving on this.
I did want to go back here. We're going to
talk to Steve in Deer Park. Hey, Steve, I understand
we had some glitch on the email. But let's see
if we can solve this problem without the email.

Speaker 8 (01:13:13):
Yeah, you probably know.

Speaker 17 (01:13:15):
It's on top of our mulch areas. We have some
bright yellow and it fades to an orange and it's
like a spray foam or something. Have you seen that before?

Speaker 7 (01:13:28):
Huh?

Speaker 5 (01:13:30):
I have?

Speaker 1 (01:13:30):
They call that scrambled egg fungus because it sort of
looks like scrambled eggs to some people too. And yeah, okay,
that is a decay, that's a decomposer. No, not at all.
It's a decomposer of fungi. So it basically is one
of the thousands of different fungal organisms that turns tree

(01:13:51):
trunks back into dirt in the forest. And so we
see it in our mulches and things. Anytime there's a
little composed or wood materials, it can occur and it
makes a crusting over the surface and then it goes away,
you know. I mean, if you don't like the look
of it, you can take a little shovel and kind
of pick it up and get rid of it. But
it's not hurting anything. It is not a disease of plants.

Speaker 7 (01:14:14):
So you're you're good, okay, Well, that's good to know.

Speaker 17 (01:14:17):
Thank you, then I appreciate it, you bet.

Speaker 1 (01:14:20):
Thanks for hanging and being patient with that. I'm glad
we could help with it. Take care, yep, that is
the way it goes. Uh, those kinds of things. There's
a lot of microbes in nature, you know what. Let
me just make let me let me see here. I
want to I want to just make a point. When

(01:14:41):
you look at insects and diseases, well, or let me
put it this way, when you look at insects and
bacteria and fungus organisms, the vast majority or of no
concern at all. It is a tiny sliver of the
pie on all of them that are our concern, you know.

(01:15:02):
So we say, well, pottery mildew's of fungus, that's bad. Okay, yes,
I got that. But there are bazillion different fungal organisms
that are good or they are no significance, you know,
to your gardening. And the same is true with insects.
Because it has six legs does not mean mean it
needs a death sentence. There are so many beneficials. And

(01:15:25):
then there's things that don't matter, like a house fly
going through the garden and landing on a tomato. And
then flying off. What was the significance there? Nothing? Houseflies
don't eat tomatoes, right, and it just happened to be
there and happened to have six legs. So what I'm
saying is either it's a good guy, or it's of
no significance at all to your garden, or it's a

(01:15:47):
tiny sliver that would be a bad one. So just
because you see insects, assume they're not bad. There may
be bad, but that's the exception. Just because there's a
fungal organism or a bacteria doesn't mean it's bad the
majority of them, or of no significance, or they're actually helpful.
And there are many microbes and fungal organisms that are

(01:16:07):
almost essential to plants in the services that they provide
for them. So let's kind of back off, you know,
lay the spray gun down, step back away from the spray.
It's not necessary to kill everything that moves in the garden.
In fact, you shouldn't. It's a problem to do that.
That's your public service announcement for this morning. All right, Well,
here's another public service announcement. ACE Hardware. Last summer I

(01:16:31):
replaced a problem sink or excuse me, faucet that we
had in the kitchen above the sink, and you know
did all that? How are your faucets? Are they working right?
Are they do you like them? Do they do what
you want to do? Did they spray in the bin
where they want them to spray? Maybe they don't have
a spray and you want one that comes out and
does that. Ace Hardware's got you covered twenty percent off

(01:16:52):
all Moen faucets this month. Is that cool? And while
you're in there, grab some air filters. You know we're
supposed to be replacing those monthly on our houses. I
have to put a little thing on my calendar to
remember every month because I'll go three months and forget
to do it. Well, speaking of three months, you buy
three air filters at ACE and you get one free,
so you get an extra deal there. That's kind of

(01:17:14):
a cool deal. Do you want to redo your deck
or do you want to update some boards and maybe
do some resealing. They have just about everything you need
to get your deck job squared away. And they even
have stained They have pain of course, they just have
a president sale that they've announced on all kinds of
painting supplies, So be sure and stop buying. See it
yourself now. ACE Hardware is the place when you go

(01:17:35):
into ACE though. Please do this. I did it myself
years ago, and I'm so glad I did sign up
online or at the store just to get the information
for ACE Rewards. ACE Rewards. You get discounts, you get
special offers. There's things that are only for ACE Rewards
customers that are emailed directly to you. It is a
good deal. You need to do that. It doesn't cost

(01:17:57):
to sign up, So do it now. There's ACE Hardware
is all over. Go to Acehardware dot com, find the
store locator, find the one near you. If you're in
the Woodlands, Aspas ACE is up there out at Lake Conroe,
ACE in Montgomery, Single Ranch down the Cavy area, Single Ranch,
ACE Hardware K and m ACE Hardware is another one
down there. Are over in the Kingwood air essay down there.

(01:18:19):
It's over in Kingwood, as is Kingwood ACE in a Tascasita.
Just some examples of the many, many ACE Hardware stores.
We're going to go now to Surfside and talk to Mike. Hey, Mike,
welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 20 (01:18:33):
Hey, thanks Jiv, Hey, I've got some cauliflower that the
heads of the I guess the plant itself, they're gradually
starting to turn purple. Do you have any idea what's
going on with that?

Speaker 1 (01:18:48):
Sometimes there's a color change. There's actually a gene cauliflower
that can do that. You can buy a cauliflower that
has kind of a purplish color to it that they've
selected for that. There are stresses that can cause some changes.
Typically people like cauliflower that's all pretty and white. It
doesn't matter what color it is, you can eat it.
And so sometimes in the old days, people would pull

(01:19:09):
the cauliflower leaves up over the head and put a
put a clothesline clip on their clothespin to hold it
and keep the sunlight out so the head stays whiter
and doesn't turn kind of a tannish color. But it's
just for aesthetics, it just for now. They breed cauliflower
to have they call themself blanching varieties. The leaves naturally

(01:19:31):
grow up over the head and do the same thing.

Speaker 20 (01:19:35):
Okay, I didn't know if there's some sort of virus
or fungal disease or something that's gotten into it. Because
they started out nights and white. It's just over a
period of four to five days. They're they're going to
darn their purple now.

Speaker 1 (01:19:47):
So well, you may have gotten a variety that just
naturally does that. Go online and google around purple cauliflower
and let's see what I'm talking about. There's some there's
one type that has almost a cheesy orange yellow color.
Uh you know, I guess it looks like it's already
been buttered or something. I don't know, it's been dead
for that.

Speaker 20 (01:20:07):
So crazy stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:20:10):
Hey, you bet, thanks a lot, appreciate that. All we
ask is that you bring half your purple cauliflower to
the station as a gift, and we'll call it even
for this advice. Thank you, Mike.

Speaker 20 (01:20:19):
I'll bring you a couple.

Speaker 1 (01:20:22):
I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Thank you, Bye bye. That's the case.
Enchanted Forest down in Richmond Rosenberg is a haven for
fruit trees, and boy, now is the time to plant them.
It's a haven for a lot of things. But they've
got all kinds of low chill apples and peaches and plums.
They even have a like what they call three and

(01:20:43):
one trees that means they graft it was actually budded
three different varieties onto the same plant, So you don't
have room for three different apple trees or three different whatevers.
They can get your plant that's already got all three
in one plant. Is that cool or what?

Speaker 17 (01:20:59):
Now?

Speaker 1 (01:20:59):
You got a permium right, and don't let one take
over the other, you know, so you kind of each
of them gets about a third of the tree. But
what a cool deal. Now if you're into citrus, lots
of cold harty citrus, all kinds of citrus actually down there,
and they have the satsumas, which are probably as far
as orange type things that are the most cold hardy.
We have come cauch your a little cold heartier, but

(01:21:20):
they've got brown select incredibly sweet. They've got one called
Arctic frost bread by doctor Moy in San Antonio. Nice
fella now passed away, but it's cold harty down to
twelve degrees. Once it's established, not the first day you
put in the ground, but about three or four years
down the line, you're gonna have something. If the gradual
cooling occurs you it'll take it down into the mid

(01:21:41):
teen So that's amazing. Of course, when you're there, get
the tools, get the soil, get the fertilizer you need
for your fruit trees. And when you're there, walk around
because their selection of vegetables and herbs and flowers and
everything is amazing. Go to an Chenned Gardens, go to
in Chenned Forest. Those are both great places down there,
Chanted Forest. Right now, with those fruit trees they've got going,

(01:22:04):
you can create your own fruitful paradise. Yep, that's right,
your own little garden of eating e A t I
N Garden of eaten. It's a good idea. I need
to use that again down at Enchanted Forest and Richmond Rosenberg.
How fortunate are you guys that live down there, to
have both of those options available to you. All right,
I'm gonna take a break. We'll be right back. All right, folks,

(01:22:27):
we're back here we go or garden line seven one
three two one two k t r H. If you'd
like to be on, and if you're shy about being on,
I talk to people about this all the time. When
to do these appearances and go out and meet with
the folks that listen to the show, there's always be like, yeah,

(01:22:49):
I'm afraid to call in. I don't want to call in.
I'm afraid I'll look silly or whatever. You know, all
that kind of stuff. I get it. Okay, I get it.
I understand that. But listen, if you've listened to garden
Line very long, now you know I will. I'm here
for you. I got you. You don't have to worry
about that. We're not gonna We're not going to give
you a hard time about anything like that. And what

(01:23:09):
you think is a stupid question, somebody else has it too.
Don't be afraid of that. The way I like to
put it is, there's no stupid questions. There's just stupid answers.
So the pressure's on me, not you. I'll try to
avoid the stupid answers. Believe me, in my life I've
given more than one of those, so I'll stay away
from that. But just give me a call. You've got

(01:23:30):
a question. Somebody else will had the same question. I
guarantee you I see them all the time. I've been
doing this for over thirty five years now. First as
an Agrolife Extension horticulture agent with Texas and m Agrolife Extension.
Worked in Montgomery County for a while, I worked in
Travis County, over in Austin, worked in Harris County, worked
in Briseles County and then up in Braizis. I did

(01:23:52):
some radio, but certainly doing radio now. Then in the
Greater Houston area again. And it's amazing how the same
kinds of questions come around each year, but there's always
something new. I always get a question this like, yeah,
no one's ever asked me that before. You know, there's
a first for everything, and that's okay, that's what makes

(01:24:14):
it fun. All right, Well, I want to talk a
little bit about the Southwest Fertilizer. Southwest Fertilizer Company. Southwest
Fertilizer is an institution. It's been around since the nineteen fifties.
You know that a Southwest Fertilizer was advertising on Garden
Line before it was called garden Line back in the

(01:24:36):
Dewey Compton days. I'm the fifth host to talk about
Southwest Fertilizer here on the radio. Is that amazing. They
are now celebrating their seventieth year. So happy birthday, Happy
birthday to Southwest Fertilizer. I'm really I'm enthusiastic about the place.
I don't tell you why. When you walk in there,

(01:24:57):
everything you need is there.

Speaker 3 (01:24:58):
It is it.

Speaker 1 (01:25:00):
There's never been a product name come out of my mouth.
That's not a Southwest fertilizer, and there won't be because
they have at all. If they don't have it, you
don't need it. That's the way I like to put it.
Because they have it all. You walk in there with
a problem, they'll take you to the product that will
fix it. And if it's not a problem, they'll look
at it and they go, no, that's not that bug's

(01:25:21):
not a problem for your plant. So you just happen
to capture him and when he was out in the garden,
he's okay. They're not going to sell you something you
don't need at Southwest Fertilizer. Now, if you need to
prevent product right now, it's time to get the barricade out.
It is time to get the barricade out, and they
have it. And the reason I stress that is because
we have a window where we put down a product

(01:25:44):
like barricade. The pre emergent watered in and then here
come the warm season weeds. When the soil tip hits
fifty five, crabgrass starts to germinate. Soil temperature fifty five,
crabgrass starts to germinate, and so it's time to get
it down. If you wait until a month and a
half from now they're going to have all sprouted. I mean,
though there's weeds sprouting every month of the year, but

(01:26:05):
the bulk of it that you're trying to stop, you
got to do it now. If you're going to do that,
And you can see that on a schedule online. Go
to gardening with skip dot com find my lawn pest
disease and weed management schedule. There's two schedules that are
both free. Look at it and see when it tells
you to put that down and it's now, we got
to get it down now. Okay. Southwest has it herbicides,

(01:26:26):
sponge sides, and sexticides. They have a better selection than
anybody in the city. And if you're hearing me say
all these things and you're going those are chemicals, and
I'm an organic gardener. They have the biggest organic gardening
section of anybody in the city, the whole region. Really,
it is amazing what they have. They have tools. It's
printing season. Get you a quality tool that will last

(01:26:48):
you forever, like a folk or a corona for example.
Get you that garden kneeling seat that I always talk
about on guardline. I think it's such a great one
of my top five favorite. I'll call it a tool
that I in the garden. It's all there, seed Starting.
Seed Starting supplies, big bins of seed. You just buy
it by the scoop, very very economical packages of seed.

(01:27:11):
Anything you need to start seeds, they've got it right
there at Southwest Fertilizer corner of bus Net and Renwick.
Southwest Fertilizer dot Com corner of bus Net and Renwick.
They have friendly service there, quality products. I would say
a great selection, but it's greater than great. It is
a complete everything selection Southwest Fertilizer. Now, if you rather

(01:27:34):
drive around shopping all the time trying to find this,
that and the other, well I guess that you can
do that, but this is a one stop shop. Let's
now go out and talk to Blake here on Guardline.
Hey Blake, welcome to the show.

Speaker 18 (01:27:46):
Oh thank you.

Speaker 21 (01:27:49):
So, I'm curious since after the freeze, I noticed that
the tops of my pineapple plants look dead.

Speaker 3 (01:27:58):
But underneath where I like to them.

Speaker 14 (01:28:00):
With a bunch of waltz, there's some grand leaves.

Speaker 21 (01:28:05):
Is is that a good time that they're still alive?

Speaker 1 (01:28:11):
Yes? The base probably is going to be Okay, now
you you have a plant that doesn't have a pineapple
on it yet. Correct, Correct?

Speaker 19 (01:28:23):
I just planted the top all back into spring.

Speaker 1 (01:28:26):
Yeah, it will probably come back out of the center.
And you know, I'm not there looking at it and
poking around on it, so I can't tell you for sure,
but it probably is going to come back. If you
had a good mulch on it, it might. If not,
you can cut another top off. It doesn't take that
long to get back in business with a with a
new pineapple.

Speaker 22 (01:28:50):
And I know that you said did not over to
avoid over watering in the winter. Yes, I know that
there's a old time coming in next week. But other
than that, it almost feels like an early spring after
that gold.

Speaker 1 (01:29:09):
Well it does. Yeah, that's right. Like you know what,
here's the thing about watering. It's not the water that
kills plants. It's the lack of oxygen in the roots.
And so when we overwater a plant, we're not killing
it with water. We're killing it because we're submerging the
roots and they can't get oxygen and they start to
do it.

Speaker 3 (01:29:30):
So.

Speaker 1 (01:29:31):
Uh so with your pineapple, more important than just what
season is it and watering, it's it's do. I have
really good drainage, so if I water, it runs out
and the and the root system still has oxygen available.
That that's what's.

Speaker 21 (01:29:45):
Important, because I know that I kind of dug a
hole in order to give it some room before the
roots hit the clay. Yeah hopefully.

Speaker 1 (01:30:00):
Yeah, Well, good luck with it, and send me a picture.
Send me a picture if you get the thing to
a fruit. I'd love to see that. You take care
appreciate that. I was talking about South. What's fertilizer having everything?

Speaker 5 (01:30:13):
You know?

Speaker 1 (01:30:13):
What they got is ever Medina product just about that
there is on the earth, like astro grow six twelve six.
That's the one that's got nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, the
six twelve six high middle number because roots especially need
that phosphorus. It's got Medina soil activator in it, which
stimulates biological activity. It's got humate, which is a humic acid,

(01:30:35):
and we know humus and humic acids and things improve
sol structure. Therefore you have a better root system with
better nutrient uptake. It's got seaweed extracts. Basically, it's got
everything you need. It's great for watering and transplants. That's
how I mainly use it, but you can do it
as a folier feed. It won't burn your plants. You
can improve your fruiting and blooming and things by continuing

(01:30:57):
to foli your feed with that or drench the soil.
The way you go about it, it's going to build
a biological activity in your soil. Medina has to grow
six twelve six plant food. Let's head out to let's
see here. We're going to go to lakeside of States
and Marine. I'm picking you up here with about a
minute to go, but we'll see how far are we get.

(01:31:18):
We'll come back to you after break.

Speaker 23 (01:31:20):
I think we need to Okay, No, I don't think
we'll do that Nutsedge. I think I have the first
blooming or whatever.

Speaker 20 (01:31:29):
You want to call it.

Speaker 23 (01:31:30):
I do remember you talking about it over and over again.
I just need a quick refresher. I know that I
got to get started, okay, and keep going back. So
give me their product.

Speaker 1 (01:31:41):
Yeah, okay. First of all, I highly recommend you go
to gardening with Skip dot com. I have a publication
called Nutsedge, an in depth look, and if you read that,
it'll help you understand how to do it. Because people
squirt it and say, oh, that didn't work and stuff.
It'll help you understand how to do it. But here's
the name of the product. Uh, there's several different products

(01:32:04):
that have the same ingredient. One is called sedge hammer,
and what is called sedge ender, and there's some others
and they're on that publication. But there's the that's the
best product to control nuts edge. But you got to
read the publication because how and when and how many
leaves should it have before you spray it.

Speaker 22 (01:32:22):
It's all on that publication, all right, fabus, I knew
all right, senselessly, thank you, all right.

Speaker 1 (01:32:31):
You take care, all right, folks, I'm at a break.
When we come back rich in spring, you'll be the
first up. Thanks all right, Welcome back, Welcome back to
garden lines. And when you think about RCW Garden Center,
RCW Nursery, which is right there wherell Tomball Parkway and
belt Way it comes together, you probably think about their

(01:32:52):
trees and shrubs because they grow on themselves up in Plantersville.
They you know, listen, they know what grows here and
that's all they grow. They grow things that want to
grow here, not stuff that's gonna die because you know,
lose spruce from Colorado for crying out loud. No, they
grow things that want to grow here. But someone asked
me that they does RCW Nursery have roses, and I said,

(01:33:15):
does a one legged ducks swim in a circle. Of
course they have roses. They've got the best selection roses
you're gonna find anywhere. Hundreds hundreds of types of roses. Now,
every day you wait, there's less and less because people
come and buy them and they sell out and they
don't reorder. It's a spring thing. Primarily they have roses
you're around. But I'm just saying, if you want the
best selection, go there now. RCW Nurseries corn of Beltway

(01:33:39):
eight and Tomball Parkway r cwnurseries dot com. They are
the get it god at nursery, meaning if they don't
have it, they probably can get it for you. Just
go talk to them. Great family, Williams and fam just
really quality products. And right now, I mean, what February
Valentine's Day you think you might come up with a

(01:33:59):
good gift from somebody on your list.

Speaker 7 (01:34:01):
You bet.

Speaker 1 (01:34:02):
A rose bush is the gift that keeps giving every
year when it blooms. They're going to remember you go
by RCW and grab you one. We're going to go
now out to spring and talk to Rich. Hello Rich,
and welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 4 (01:34:17):
Good morning, Skip, Thanks for taking my call. I have
a Saint Augustine lawn. I have not put any pre
emergent down yet. I'm looking or considering doing a split
application of pro diamine and then following it up maybe
in forty five days or so with dittyal pier. What
are your thoughts about that.

Speaker 1 (01:34:40):
I wouldn't use two pre emergents in the same season.
I would pick one, okay, because pre emergence work.

Speaker 4 (01:34:50):
By the only thing I was considering doing it. It
is because I've had a couple places where crabgrass has
popped up even after the app application of the pro diamine,
and with ditthio pears, post emergent help with young crabgrass.
That's why I was considering it.

Speaker 1 (01:35:09):
Yeah, well, I would, you know, pick one and go
with it. And and the reason is they both work.
Those two products both work the same way. When a
weed route tries to come out of the seed and
establish it shuts it shuts it down and it can't
form the root down and if you overdo it, it
can have that effect on your grass. You're saying, Augustine

(01:35:30):
or whatever you have is trying to put roots down
too and and it it it's and it doesn't kill
the grass. It just stops the root growth for a
period of time until it all breaks down and then
the roots can grow. But when we get into summer
drought and things, you don't want a limited root system.
So using the right amount according to the label is fine.
Just I would not use both products. I would pick

(01:35:52):
the wine and go for it. And I think you'll
be fine either way.

Speaker 4 (01:35:54):
But appreciate that, Scott, Thank you.

Speaker 7 (01:35:58):
Skip.

Speaker 1 (01:35:59):
Yeah, you bet You've got no problem. Thanks Rich, appreciate
that a lot. I want to tell you about someone
who is new here on Guardline, and that is year
round Houston dot Com. Now we've been looking for a
compost top dressing and core aeration company that could serve

(01:36:21):
kind of the inner city, the inside the Ludwell inner city,
inside the Beltway primarily and year around Houston. Is that company.
They are specialists when it comes to doing the core
aeration and the coppost top dressing. You can do it yourself.
It's not complicated, but it is very cumbersome, and chances
are you're not going to have the equipment to do

(01:36:42):
a true core aeration to pop a good depth of
plug out of the soil and drop it on the surface.
So save yourself the hassle of renting and transporting and
cleaning and returning the machines and all that kind of stuff.
Big posit compost in your driveway. Just get year round
to come out. They use quality screened compos plant based
is not compost. It stinks. This is quality product, so

(01:37:05):
that and it's a fine screen so it settles down
into your lawn. And so if you live inside the Beltway,
if you are over maybe out in the Richmond Rosenberg area,
that's another area that they will cover and just you
even give them a call. There are a few other
areas they'll reach out to. But year round Houston dot com.
Simple as that, easy to remember. Year round Houston dot

(01:37:28):
com for all of you inside the Beltway and out
there in the Richmond Rosenberg area. Eight three two eight
eight four fifty three thirty five. I'll say that again.
Eight three two eight eight four fifty three thirty five.
Year round Houston dot com. If you want your lawn
to look good. There's nothing, no single thing you do

(01:37:50):
to it that makes more of an impressive difference over
time to improve that situation the soil and the lawn
than year round Houston's top with compost and core aerration.
Those practices are very important. We're going to go out
to Conro now and talk to Marie. Hello, Marie, welcome

(01:38:10):
to garden Line.

Speaker 3 (01:38:12):
Well Skip Skiff.

Speaker 24 (01:38:14):
I have a question in regards to timing.

Speaker 25 (01:38:17):
I have an Encore royal amethyst assalia that has been
established for over ten fifteen years.

Speaker 24 (01:38:23):
It's about four and a half be tall.

Speaker 25 (01:38:26):
I am planning to trim it some of your well
at least halfway and relocate her to a different bed, either.

Speaker 24 (01:38:35):
This weekend or next weekend.

Speaker 25 (01:38:39):
Of course, the Encore astalia's bloomed throughout the year sporadically.

Speaker 24 (01:38:44):
So my question is this, Am I timing doing this okay?
Or should I wait?

Speaker 1 (01:38:54):
That's a really good question, Marie, because what you're doing
here is you're juggling a couple couple of conflicting factors.
The best time to move that azalea is fall through winter,
so we're getting at the end of the best time
to get it moved now it wouldn't be the best
time to do pruning because even the encores. Your spring

(01:39:15):
bloom is a big deal, and as you prune it,
you're removing the buds for spring. But it's more important
that the thing survives than that it blooms the spring.
I mean, if you can get it to survive, it
will continue on and you'll you'll have what you want
out of the plant. So I would move it now.
I would prune as needed in the move, get wider
rather than deeper when you dig it up. In other words,

(01:39:38):
you know, if you even got down four to six
inches below the surface and just kind of horizontally shoved
your flat shovel underneath the plant, slide it up onto
a tarp, drag it to its new spot. You never
have to lift it up that way, and you know
you won't have to go to the chiropractor with that
kind of thing, and then slide it into its new spot,
watered in really good, make sure and keep it adequately

(01:40:00):
moist on a regular basis.

Speaker 4 (01:40:02):
There.

Speaker 1 (01:40:03):
I think that's your best bet for that Azalea wonderful.

Speaker 24 (01:40:07):
I had hoped to have moved it before during the
winter time, but she was a soul florifous.

Speaker 25 (01:40:14):
I mean she was flowering sadly, like she knew what
I had in mind, and she I just could not bear.

Speaker 1 (01:40:21):
That's right.

Speaker 24 (01:40:23):
Cut off all those blooms. Yeah, wonderful.

Speaker 1 (01:40:28):
Yeah, that's right. Okay, Marie, thank you, good luck with that.
I appreciate you call very much. Folks. I'm gonna have
to run here for a break. I'll be back with
Doug and Katie and George and Parland. We are back.
She was welcome back to garden Line, and we're here
to answer your gardening question. I'm going the whole calls
here for we got a few on the board, and
we were right near the top of the hour. Listen

(01:40:50):
to Nelson. Plant Food is a purveyor of quality products.
They have a number of lines. They've got the Turf
Star line for lawns. They've got the Nutri Star line
for specific time types of plants, and I'll come back
to that in just a second. And then they have
the Nature Star line, and they've got oh gosh, there's
there's some more at Color Star. I can I forget
that one. Most famous one they got probably well in

(01:41:12):
the Nutri Star line. They have a tree and Shrub
It's good for any woody ornamental that you have. Any
woody ornaments got five sources of nitrogen. Slow feeding promotes
healthy growth. You play it about every three to four months.
That way you'll spread it out. It's got micronutrients for
especially healthy growth and vitality by giving that plant everything

(01:41:32):
it needs. Now, I don't care what kind of tree
or shrub you have. This stuff works nutristar, tree and shrub.
The other nutri star I want to tell you about,
and there's only eight hundred of the month there citrus
fruit and avocado essential nutrients again for these types of
fruiting plants. Again about every three months. Give it a feeding.
You can get it in a little canistir jar. There's

(01:41:52):
even places in town where you can get refills on
various kinds of Nelson plant food products. Now, this product
works on all all of the fruit and nut trees.
It says citrus fruit and avocado. Fruit means fruit, peaches, plum,
you got. Just go for it, whether they're in a
container or whether they're in the landscape. Nutri Star citrus
fruit and avocado give them a little boost as they grow.

(01:42:14):
Good growth, good sunshine means good production and that's why
you're growing the things. All right, We're going to run
out here and talk to Doug in Katie. Hello, Doug,
Welcome to Gardenline.

Speaker 26 (01:42:25):
Thank you, sir. I appreciate your appreciate your call. I
know you've addressed this before and I misplaced my notes.
Your recommendation for drop spreader settings for the products I'm
looking at are Barricade, the micro Life six two four,
and Sweet Green.

Speaker 1 (01:42:45):
Yes, so when you're here, here's the thing. It ought
to be on a lot of the bags of those products.
If you have you checked on.

Speaker 26 (01:42:53):
The bag for the specific product, yeah, I think, and
they probably are are for broadcast spreaders. Again, this is
a Scott's drop spreader.

Speaker 1 (01:43:03):
Yeah, I'll tell you on that one. I would need
to take a look at it. Here's the deal. Different
particle sizes are going to drop at a different rate,
and so that that makes it, you know, kind of
difficult to know exactly, you know, to give you a
specific number on those, I don't know. I'm a little
I'm a little hesitant on that.

Speaker 26 (01:43:26):
So let me ask you. You gave some general guidance
on a on a percentage of the maximum settings on
the spreader.

Speaker 1 (01:43:38):
For for yeah, yes, and I remember what you're I
remember what you're talking about. Let me let me hunt
that down and pull it up, and I'll mention it
on the air here just in a little bit. I
just know that whatever numbers I give you, or whatever
number you see on a bag, what I would commend

(01:44:00):
is going way under that initially and going across your
lawn one direction. Let's just say it's north south right,
and hopefully not using even half of it, and then
that way you can come back east west and use
the other half. It is more important that you underdo
it so that you don't run out and now you've

(01:44:20):
overdone it on a So I actually I do remember
the numbers that I've given you. I don't remember distinguishing
between drop or the whirlybird spreaders. But on a on
a regular walk behind spreader, if it's a fertilizer, you
put it about a notch or two above halfway. So
if there were twenty notches, you would go to eleven

(01:44:42):
or twelve. Okay, a notch or two above halfway. If
there's only I'll be ridiculous, but five notches, it would
be a three that you would go to. Okay, on
the pre emergent herbicides. Those are fine granules. And basically
you're going to do about a notch above one quarter.
So using that example of twenty notches, that would be
you know, five or six that you would set it on. Okay,

(01:45:05):
that's stills that you're walking on. Yeah, yeah, but but
that's a that's the best guess, the best shot that
we can do. But always go light. You can always
come back over the area. But if you've overdone it
and you're halfway through and you've used all your product,
you've got a problem.

Speaker 26 (01:45:24):
Right, Okay, great sir, I'll all right. I'll save these
notes and not misplace them like I did the last ones.

Speaker 1 (01:45:31):
Hey, no problem, that's why we're here. Thanks for the call, man,
appreciate it. Okay, alrighty here, let's uh you bet we're
going to go out to George in Paarland. Hey, George,
how can we help? I'm good, I'm good, thank you.

Speaker 27 (01:45:46):
Okay, Well, here's the deal. I got a little tip
that may be able to help people with especially citrus
or other not so hearty plants in the freeze. It
worked great for me this this past freeze. I've got
a lemon that's about five feet tall, and it's actually
got a little fruit growing on it already, so I
wanted to make sure it didn't die when the freeze came. Now,

(01:46:09):
this trick only works if you if you're old school
like me, and you have incandescent Christmas lights, because the
ones I had taken off the house, I had three
strings of them, so one of them I ramped around
the base of the tree keep the roots warm, and
the other two hung up the leaves and the and
the branches. Covered it with a frost claw and worked

(01:46:31):
just great. My neighbors probably kind of wondered whether there
was this glowing ghost in my heart with white cover
and the little light shining through it. But after the
frogt treeze was over, took it all off, the trees
just doing what hell.

Speaker 1 (01:46:46):
Well, that's true. I appreciate that. Thanks thanks a lot
for those tips you off. Folks. You got to use
incandescent lights, not the LEDs because LEDs don't heat up much,
but you got to have enough of them. So it
comes down to how many bulbs putting how much he
and how cool is it going to get? And it's
kind of hard to find that magic number. But anything
that produces heat like a little incandescent bulb like you

(01:47:08):
know we were talking about there with George. Anyway, that works,
all right, We're gonna go now to Charles. Hello, Charles,
Welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 19 (01:47:18):
Hey, Hello, thank you. I just have a real quick
question after this freeze. I used to have a nice
green backyard. Now what's coming back is the yard looks
like I've planted weeds, seated the entire backyard of weeds.

Speaker 1 (01:47:34):
Okay, the best way to treat all that. The weeds
you see now are cool season weeds, and you need
to use a past emergent weed killer to kill them,
and you need to do it soon because once they
start blooming and setting seeds, they're harder to kill. And
you may already have seeds anyway, which means you're going

(01:47:55):
to have this problem again next year. Even more so.
The product you know, I was talking about the products
from Nelson Plant Food. They've got the weed and Nator
that's a post emergent weed control product that you put down.
You have to wet the yard so that the granules
of weed donators stick to your weeds. Okay, okay, And

(01:48:16):
when the granules stick to the weed, then yeah, just
follow the instructions. It's all in the bag. But weedinator
would be an option, you know, in that's gonna be
one of the one of the things you can There
are other options out there, but you know that that's
one I was just talking about, so I'll just mention it.

Speaker 5 (01:48:36):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:48:36):
You can also one one other option real quick is
that you could spray those weeds and you could kill
them with a post emergent weed killer sprays. There's a
lot of brands on the market, a lot of things
at work for that. But again, do it this weekend,
not three weeks from now. Go ahead and get it
done before they get too far.

Speaker 19 (01:48:57):
Yeah, that's what I was playing on doing this week anyway.

Speaker 1 (01:49:01):
All right, sir, all right, we'll have fun with that.
Thank you so much. I appreciate your call, hey, to
have to run Orges hidden gardens, Orges hidden gardens out
there in Alvin, Texas. Oh my gosh, that place. Ray
is always bringing in new stuff. He continues to grow
and right now the I was so amazed at all

(01:49:22):
the different fruit that he's getting in. I mean things
like a dwarf mulberry. Have you ever heard that all
kinds of citrus like lemons and grapefruit and kalamanda and
tangerines and satsumas and Tangelo's and oh my gosh, on
and on and on kaffir lines. He has things like
the fuuu per summons, which is great, by the way,
Joey Avocado, Mexicola Grande avocado, thy purple guava, Primark Freedom

(01:49:45):
BlackBerry that is a thornless BlackBerry. You need Primark Freedom
BlackBerry or has got it? Outed Orges Hidden Gardens on
Elizabeth Street in Alvin, just south of the Highway six.
Go check them out. All right, time for a break here,
I'll be right back with more of garden Line.

Speaker 10 (01:50:05):
Welcome to k t r H Garden Line with Skip Richard's.

Speaker 11 (01:50:10):
Essays trip just watch him as many peace to suppot
brasy signs sunmon.

Speaker 1 (01:50:41):
All right, folks, we got one hour left of garden
Line today and we're looking forward to it. If you'd
like to ask a question, here's your chance. Seven one
three two one two k t r H seven one
three two one two k t r H. We will
discuss the things that you're interested in. I certainly have

(01:51:03):
a number of things I want to talk about I
always do, But top priority is your calls. What are
your calls? How can we help you have a better success.
The way I like to put it is, we want
you to have a bountiful garden, a beautiful landscape, and
more fun in the process. That's the goal.

Speaker 7 (01:51:19):
So let's do that.

Speaker 1 (01:51:21):
Let's talk about the kinds of things that are of
interest to you right now. If there were to be
like something in neon signs flashing above the garden line
sign it would say stop the weeds, get rid of
the weeds, Stop the weeds, get rid of the weeds,
flashing back and forth. Maybe even get highway signs going.
That'd be a great idea. I wonder if the highway

(01:51:43):
department would be willing to let me comeandeer a couple
of those flashing signs when you're driving down the road
and it says prevent weeds now, prevent weeds now, flashing
on and off. Kill existing weeds now. I don't care
how you go about it. If you want to handpull,
I handpull a lot of my weeds because I don't
have that many of them. But there's always some wherever
sunlight hits the soil, nature plants of weed all the

(01:52:04):
cool season weeds are up now and growing, and that's
what you see. Warm season weeds too tiny to see
yet cool season weeds. They're up and you got to
do something. Hand pull them or spray them with a
post emergent weed control product. Either way you get rid
of them before. That's an important all capsul b e
f ore before they bloom and set seeds. Once they

(01:52:28):
become reproductive. Even the products that work well otherwise are
not as effective. Number two. By the time you spray
them like that, they probably already have set viable seed.
So even if you did kill the weed, it's gonna
die anyway on its own. But even if you did,
it's already produced its seed, and so you have sentenced
yourself to another year of problems when next winter comes around.

(01:52:51):
So control them. If you're going to prevent them, you
gotta prevent them now. You gotta prevent them now because
they are starting to sprout. The crabgrass starts to sprout
at fifty five degrees soil temperature, So once it starts sprouting,
then you're up a creek. You got to deal with
that because then you're dealing with an existing weed in

(01:53:12):
your lawn, and it's much better to prevent a weed
than it is to control one that's already grown. All right,
I think I beat that horse to death. But we're
gonna go now out and talk to c R on
the phones. Hello to see R. Welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 12 (01:53:26):
Yeah sure, Hello, good morning, Good morning again. Okay, So
I'm calling today about there's a yellow plant. It's a
shrub that you see, you know, it grows pretty well out,
you know, around I'll see it all over this local
geographical area. And it's called a sunshine plant. It's yellow.
I don't know the true name of it, but it's
a yellow shrub. It's really pretty. But I noticed, and

(01:53:49):
I have a lot of them at my place. But
they'll sprout up green, you know, green branches. The foliage
is green and not yellow, and you can't just like
clip off, you like give it a haircut because it
doesn't get rid of the green. That's so my question is,
is the plant is yellow, but you know sprout up
these green twigs. Do you have to chase that twig

(01:54:12):
all the way like to the base of the base
of the shrub? Is that and then going there and
just clip that off? Is that how you keep all
the green out. I need some help on that.

Speaker 1 (01:54:22):
So you're saying that you don't like the green because
it hides the yellow. Is that what you mean?

Speaker 12 (01:54:27):
Yeah, that they're predominantly yellow, but then that green will
pop through, and do you do you clip the green out?
Or is the is it supposed to be a green
and yellow? Because all of mine are predominantly way yellow.
They're really pretty and yellow, especially in the spring and summer.
But then that green will come through, and I'm just wondering,

(01:54:48):
what do you do about the green?

Speaker 1 (01:54:51):
Okay, so you're not talking about like a wild plant.
You're talking about a landscape plant, right, yes, correct? And
and the yellow is the foliage, correct, not a blown
it's a foliage, that's right.

Speaker 12 (01:55:04):
The whole plant is yellow, called the sun jon, and
the whole thing is yellow.

Speaker 28 (01:55:08):
Spits frown Okay, these will comfort yeah, Okay, So that
that is a There are a number of plants that
have yellow or variegated foliage.

Speaker 1 (01:55:20):
Legustrum is a common one, and that may be what
you're dealing with. Uh, that doesn't matter what it is.
That that is a recessive trait, and what will happen
is it will revert back to its original stronger green form.
And now you've got these big, strong green shoots coming
in and they want to take over because they're much
more powerful than the yellow growing shoots on it. You've

(01:55:43):
got to go back to where they attach. Follow the
green all the way back to where it attaches to
a shoot that has yellow on it. So if you
if you follow the green back and it attaches, look
at the shoot that it attaches to, and is that
shoot producing yellow foliage out there? It is cut the
grain off right up against the point of attachment.

Speaker 3 (01:56:04):
Yeah, revert.

Speaker 1 (01:56:06):
This is an ongoing process because they they will continue
to do that from time to time. It's just the nature.
It's an unstable genetic sport that created that yellow in
the first place. So you have to work to maintain that.

Speaker 3 (01:56:21):
All right, very good.

Speaker 12 (01:56:22):
That's now on that same planet, that same plant got
attacked by a white fly, and the white flies it
ate of like that several of my shrubs. It ate
all of the yellow leaves off of the plant. And
so now you're just sitting there with like a brown
there's no leaves on it. Will will those plants? I

(01:56:45):
noticed that they're starting to bud and the yellow is
starting to come back again. But that white fly ate,
you know, it basically just goes in and eats all
the leaves off of the dawn thing. And what do
you do about that?

Speaker 1 (01:56:57):
So yeah, so see, I don't I don't know what
you're seeing. Would you take a close up picture. I'm
going to put you on hole. My producer will give
you an email. White flies don't have the mouth parts
to eat, so something else is going on there. But
send me a picture up close, make sure it's in
sharp focus, and we'll see if we can take this
a little bit further.

Speaker 7 (01:57:15):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:57:16):
I got to I'm sorry, I gotta run. It's time
for a hard break here coming up. Buchanus Native Plants
in the Heights is just an awesome garden center to
go to. I mean every time I go to Buchanan's,
I'm amazed. You know, Number one, you're not going to
find a better source of native plants in terms of extensive,
extensive options. You know, the lyre leaf sage is one

(01:57:36):
they're featuring right now, Salvi el irata. It is a
gorgeous little low blooming native ground cup not groundcovery, but
it's a perennial comes out of the ground they've got
a great selection of Clemitus too. If you've never grown clemitus,
if you've got a spot with morning sun that you
can molt the roots really good. And it's got some
mid to late day shade. Columbitus will be very happy

(01:57:59):
in there, and it is quite a stunning plant. And
of course they got all the fruit trees in nectarines, apricots, plums, pluots,
all kinds of stone fruit, including peaches. They also have apples.
I mean, just a wide variety of things. Pears, they've
got them, and the kinds that you want to grow here,
the kinds that will produce well in our area. So

(01:58:20):
stop by there, grab you some tomato plants. It's time
for getting those two. It's all there. Buchanans plants. They're
in the heights on eleventh Street, easy to find, easy
to get to, and I promise you you'll be very
impressed with the selection that they have. Time for me
to take a break and I'll be right back, folks,
thanks for listening, Welcome back to garden line. How many

(01:58:41):
if you remember last year when twice storms took the
power out, knock down trees, knockdown lines. Weeks people went
weeks without power. Generators suddenly became important to our buddy.
And I mean there were a lot of people interested
in getting a generator. And I'm telling you there's a
lot of places you by generator in Houston, but nothing,

(01:59:02):
nothing that I can recommend like Quality Home And here's why.
Number One, they have generatic generat the automatic stand by
generators that are high quality equipment. High quality equipment. They
absolutely are amazing that they power goes out, you don't
have to run around, put gas in something, pull a
string fired up or whatever. They come on automatically. When

(01:59:24):
the power goes down, they come on. They get set
up that way. Now, the reason I recommend Quality Home
Products is because they stand out this organization when it
comes to reliability, when it comes to integrity, when it
comes to honesty and transparency with every client. Quality Home
Products is the one that does that. I've talked to

(01:59:46):
numerous employees from there. They love working there, They love
what they do. The products are excellent, Okay, don't take
my word for it. Fourteen thousand five star reviews. Eight
times they have won the Better Business Was Most Prestigious
Customer Service Award. A times they've won the Pinnacle Award
from Better Business Bureau. We're talking about a special company here,

(02:00:09):
seventy seven thousand homeowners with award winning customer service. That's
what they've received from Quality Home Houston Chronicle twenty twenty three.
They were the best of the best for home contractor
family owned operations since nineteen eighty nine. Financing operations are operations.
Financing options are available, so if you want to if

(02:00:30):
you do that, they can work with you on that.
QUALITYTX dot Com. Just write that down, think about it.
Now's a good time to get it done. Anytime of
the year. We can have storms and issues for true dependability.
You got a home business you're running, or you got
something else, and you can't be down. You can't not
have the internet QUALITYTX dot com or by phone seven

(02:00:53):
to one three quality, seven to win three Quality Home
Products of Texas. That's the one you need to know.
We're going to go out to Galiston now and talk
to Louise. Louise, welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 19 (02:01:07):
Yes, thank you very much.

Speaker 7 (02:01:08):
Two quick questions.

Speaker 19 (02:01:10):
The first is I have a neighbor, an elderly woman
of whom shared with me some wise.

Speaker 29 (02:01:15):
Tale that I'm wondering if there's any truth to it.
She said on February fourteenth, to go to my rose
bushes and cut them, essentially cut them in half, as
she said, they would come back bigger, fuller.

Speaker 1 (02:01:32):
And I thought to myself, my rose.

Speaker 16 (02:01:34):
Bushes are fine.

Speaker 12 (02:01:35):
They're about four feet high and they're full.

Speaker 29 (02:01:38):
And I didn't know if you had heard anything to
that effect that February fourteenth was dat we cut them down.

Speaker 1 (02:01:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (02:01:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:01:47):
People use that because Valentine's Day is for flowers and roses,
or the Queen of the flowers, and so it's easy
to remember plant roses and prune roses on Valentine's Day.
It doesn't matter what day. This time of the year,
dormant season is when you prune roses, and so you
can do it on Valentine's Day, you can do it
the day before, the day after, a week before, if
you want, you can do it right now. As a

(02:02:09):
matter of fact. So different kinds of roses are prune differently.
If you have a shrub rose, the kind that's basically
bushy leaves with flowers in it, it's prune like a shrub,
then you can just prune them anytime you want. But
that's one type of pruning. So maybe your rose got
too tall and you want to cut it back byhalf

(02:02:30):
and start to bring the size down a little bit.
It'll regrow and it'll do just fine. But if you've
got like a cut flower rose, like those hybrid teas
that make the long straight stems with roses on the end,
that's a different kind of pruning. But it also can
be done now or Valentine's Day if you want. It
doesn't matter on that day. It's a different style. So
depending on the rose you have, yeah, a different style,

(02:02:51):
but timing is fine.

Speaker 3 (02:02:52):
Now.

Speaker 29 (02:02:54):
My second question is here in Galveston, I read something
regard to obtaining permits for wildflower.

Speaker 7 (02:03:04):
And I have no clue what that it's all about.

Speaker 29 (02:03:07):
Why you would need a permit for growing well, yeah, yeah,
growing flower.

Speaker 1 (02:03:13):
Uh, there's there's something weird in that question. And I
don't know what they told you, but if I were you,
I would call your Galveston County Extension office. They are
experts when it comes to all kinds of things related
to gardening and whatnot, and they're gonna know the low
if there's any local rule in the county or rule

(02:03:35):
out on the island or whatever. I'm not sure what
you're referring to with that, with that question, I've never
heard that.

Speaker 7 (02:03:42):
All right, thank you very much, appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (02:03:45):
Yeah, have you ever have you ever called have you
ever called your extension office before out there? If you haven't,
you ought to, Uh go ahead.

Speaker 29 (02:03:56):
Oh I I just uh, I think because I see
some neighbors who have this uncontrollable growth of I guess wildflowers.
It looks unsightly at certain times of the year, and
they just don't touch it at all. And I'm assuming
maybe that's what it's related to.

Speaker 3 (02:04:16):
Something's that effect.

Speaker 26 (02:04:17):
You know, it.

Speaker 1 (02:04:19):
Could be that it could be a homeowner's association role
of some sort. I don't know, And like I said,
when you said it, it's like, I've never heard anything
like that. But if you want to, you know, check
around and ask. I guess you could ask the city
or the county or whatever, but I would just call
two eight one five three four thirty four thirteen. That's
your extension office. And they are great for gardening advice.

(02:04:41):
They got master gardeners, they got a garden out there.
It's wonderful. Talk to Boone Holiday if you can. He's
he's the horticulture agent there in Galveston County.

Speaker 19 (02:04:48):
Now I'll do that, thank you.

Speaker 1 (02:04:51):
But thanks for the call. Manure all right, you take care,
all right, all right. Now we're going to go to
Lee in Houston. Hey Lee, welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 3 (02:05:00):
Thanks for having me on skip.

Speaker 7 (02:05:01):
You doing okay this morning?

Speaker 1 (02:05:02):
Sounds like, uh, I'm doing well? How can we help today.

Speaker 7 (02:05:08):
Up?

Speaker 30 (02:05:08):
Two years ago I bought from home depot a key
lime lime tree. Looked to me like about a two
gallon pot, and it said to can leave it in
the pot for two years. Well, every year it has
hundreds of blooms on it, it doesn't grow, and then
the blooms fall off and I got no limes.

Speaker 1 (02:05:32):
Okay, all right, So you need to put it out
of the pot. You need to check the roots. You're
gonna have a bunch of roots that are circling. In fact,
the outside of the pot may be white with roots
out there. You know, to cut slice down through those
roots with a box cutter knife in about three places.
Just make a vertical slice from top to bottom to
cut all those outer roots. Put it in a bigger pot.

(02:05:53):
It needs room to grow. The more confined it is,
you can grow them in smaller pots, but it they
go into drought stress faster and easier because they don't
have the root volume. You know what I'm saying. So
keep them moist, get them in good sunlight. And it's
not unusual when a plant is stressed for it to
abort its blooms or its fruit, and that's what happens

(02:06:15):
a lot in some types of citrus. So you just
need to keep it happy and get that stress out
by giving it more room to grow. Make sure it
never lacks for water, good nutrition and so on. Not
too much nitrogen but moderate amount. And I think this
will turn that around and you'll end up getting some limes.

Speaker 30 (02:06:34):
Any particular soil I should put it put in the
new pot.

Speaker 1 (02:06:39):
There's some there's some really good quality soils you can get.
The folks that airlom soils have a citrus fruit type
cetrus type mix. You can buy it in the bag.
So since you're growing it in pots, that would be
a good way to do it. A good quality growing
mix for containers would be good for that. But you
can go specific for that centrus fruit type mix from

(02:07:02):
heirloom if you like.

Speaker 30 (02:07:04):
I think I think mister Patterson over its Southwest fertilizer.

Speaker 3 (02:07:09):
He'll have something there for me.

Speaker 1 (02:07:11):
Oh gosh, yes, Bob will have it. If he doesn't
have that, he'll have something else that he would recommend.
So talk to him. He'll shoot straight and.

Speaker 7 (02:07:20):
Do you recommend that?

Speaker 12 (02:07:21):
All right?

Speaker 7 (02:07:22):
Citrus fertilizer.

Speaker 1 (02:07:25):
I don't know which one you're referring to, but products
that have a name on him, like this is a
tomato or this is a citrus or whatever, those would
be good. I can tell you this. If you just
get your good fertilizer that has all three numbers on
it in a pinch, that'll get you by. But for
the longer term, you want to fertilize more in accordance

(02:07:46):
with what that species is most gonna want. So either
way you want to go is fine. Just don't overdo it,
but follow the label real carefully. Okay, thank you, Skip,
Thank you, Lee, appreciate the call. You take care. Ciena
Maltz speaking of soils, Ciena Molts. Oh my gosh. They
are south of the Houston area, near where Highway six

(02:08:10):
and two eighty eight come together. It's the road is
FM five twenty one and here's the website. If you
hear nothing else I'm about to say, write this down.
Sienna Moltz dot Com tells you where they are, gives
you the phone number, tells you what they have. All
of you folks down there in Quill Valley and Rose
Sharing and first Colony in Parland and Sweetwater, Sandy Point,

(02:08:33):
Iowa Colony, Siena Plantation. This is your hometown, soil place
and everything you need for success. Remember brown stuff before
green stuff. They've got the composts, They've got the bed mixes,
They've got the mulches for top of the ground. They've
got the fertilizers. Okay, you want Microlife, Azamite, turf Star.
Do you want products from heirloom soils. Do you want
fertilizer from Nitroposs or Landscaper's Pride or Nils plant Food Medina.

(02:08:57):
They have all of that, everything you need to set
the founder for successes at Ciena Maltch. Wonderful folks. You
will love going in there and interacting with them. They will,
I promise you, they will treat you right. They deliver
within about twenty miles of their location, or you can
just go by there and pick it up. They're open
today till two pm. Don't delay close tomorrow, but open
Monday through Saturday. So get out there and get you

(02:09:19):
some stuff or get it ordered have it delivered. Secret
to success is to start with the soil, and Ciena
Maltch will get you covered on that. Let's see here
we are. I'm looking at a heartbreak, so I can't
grab the next phone call just yet, but I did
want to mention to you that Ace Hardware stores are
all over the place. You can go to acehardware dot

(02:09:40):
com find the store near you. Examples are k and
m Ace up in a Tascasita, Bay City, Ace down
in Bay City, Wharton Feed and Ace for those of
you Done and Wharton. I was down there a while back.
Hamilton Hardware off Highway six near Bear Creek. While you're there,
they're having right now twenty percent off all their Mowen faucets.
This is a great time to fix those spausets in

(02:10:02):
the house that need fix and grab some air filters.
Make sure that they had a president's sale on painting
supplies coming up. Just go to your local Ace Hardware store.
There's good things happening right now. Time for me to
take a break. When I come back, we'll be back
with your calls a little true free league to get
us going here on our nest segment of garden line

(02:10:26):
Microlife products. You know they've they've been around for over
thirty five years, loved by gardeners and landscape professionals. I
think it's ten years ago that I first used a
Microlife product and I've been sold on it ever since.
There are sixty four lawn fertilizers and number one selling
organic fertilizer in Houston. Their products are not going to
burn your lawns or your plants, are not salt based products.

(02:10:49):
They're safety use on anything with it. It's turf, grass,
as alias, flowers, vegetables, and they have products for every
kind of thing. Certainly there's the bags of products that
are loaded with microbes and to the nutrients that you have.
They've got their jugs that are plastic clear plastic screw
top lid jugs that you can refill at several different
kinds of places around town. There's jug refill stations that

(02:11:12):
select retail outlets are really cool. You can go to
microlfertilizer dot com find out all about the products, and
it's a huge line and all the places you can
get it. I want to talk about two real quick.
Two of their liquid products. The first is Microlife Biomatrix.
That's an orange label. It's a high nitrogen liquid organic
product with beneficial microbes. It's a seven to one three.

(02:11:33):
That's the three numbers on it, seven to one three.
I use it myself, very good. I use it for houseplants,
but I mean my patio containers as well. You can
put it on a rosebush in the ground. I mean,
it's good stuff that really works. The second product is
Ocean Harvest. That's a blue label. It's a six two
three so orange label Biomatrix, Blue label, Ocean Harvest. It's

(02:11:56):
a four to two three fertilizer. It doesn't burn. You
can use it to a folio spray. It's a fish
based fertilizer. Use it outdoors, no fishy for the inside,
but it's a gray product. Organic gardeners have long known
the importance of things like fish and mulsion and seaweed.
By the way, Microlife has both of those. It's easy
to find all over town and it works. Microlife products

(02:12:17):
for those of you who are wanting to garden in
line with nature a little bit more organically, well, this
is definitely something you need to know about in the years.
I'm gonna head out now to Katie and we're going
to talk to Kevin Scott. Hey, Kevin, Welcome to Guardenline.

Speaker 7 (02:12:33):
Hik skip.

Speaker 5 (02:12:35):
So I'm just looking for some confirmation. I put out
the barricade yesterday grain earlier, and yes, I've got a
big poemana infestation, and so I killed I put that
out because they're you know, they're currently germinating, so it

(02:12:56):
should kill what's in the ground. But I also sprayed
image herbicide after I laid down the barricade.

Speaker 7 (02:13:06):
Is that okay? Or should I have waited?

Speaker 1 (02:13:10):
Well, they work in different ways. The barricade you watered
off the granule and it prevents weed seeds from coming up,
and the poeanna is primarily done. It's it germinated back
in the fall, primarily so you don't have to worry
about it going into summer other than the fact that
it's got seeds on it. So if there were a
way to get you know, chop off the tops or

(02:13:32):
it's not tall enough to mow off the tops generally,
but if you can get that seed out of there,
that's a good idea. The image goes into the soil
and is taken up by certain kinds of weed roots. Okay,
so that there you you you would be looking at
prevent or killing existing weeds that are coming up.

Speaker 5 (02:13:55):
Is there anything I've got a lot of it, and
if you remember right, I'm on my long pretty short.
I've got a real mower, so I keep it down
to three quarters of an inch. But this poana I
bought it every year.

Speaker 17 (02:14:09):
Is there a.

Speaker 5 (02:14:11):
Specific weed killer that I could you know, measure and
put in a pumps ray that specifically targets poana that's already.

Speaker 9 (02:14:24):
Developed.

Speaker 1 (02:14:26):
Yeah, there there are. Now here's the thing with poana.
The stuff that has always worked pretty well is sometimes
not working well because you may have a strain of
the poana that's developed resistance to it to the product.
So things like like on my schedule, you'll see a

(02:14:47):
dithiopea that's dimension. You'll see barricade that's pro diamine. Those
products both worked on poanna in the past. But if
you're not getting results from those, then you're gonna have
to switch up. We're going to change jover on something
because uh, resistance can happen and it's not the products. Well,
it's just the fact that dimension. Okay, well that's just

(02:15:10):
a they're they're really closely related in how they work.
So if you're not getting results with those, then we
would need to be talking about, uh you know, switching
to something else. And there there are a number of
good things out there. Uh some of the products I
don't like to recommend because they if you don't use
them right, they can cause damage to things. And that

(02:15:33):
that's the way it's. That's the case with a lot
of different things that we have to deal with. Uh
that is your is your grass, Saint Augustine.

Speaker 7 (02:15:42):
No, it's it's soyja zorrozja zoro.

Speaker 1 (02:15:48):
Okay, Uh there, well you can there. Number one, I
would do a pre emergent in the fall according to
my schedule online in a guard skip dot com. Follow
that second second, okay, So when you if you do

(02:16:09):
that and then you watch your you know what poana
looks like, so watch and if you see it. There's
another product. There's one called Certainty and one called man
or M A n O R. You're going to be
very careful with using those, and you may have to
hire somebody to come in and do it. But if
the Poeana is very young, very young. It works pretty well.

(02:16:29):
Once there it matures, those products don't work. But that
would be your second line of defense on Poeanna and
then you know, I mean we could we could talk
poant all day here, but the bottom line is get
you a good primerg and start with that. If you
need to switch to another. If you want to send me,
you know, an email and ask some questions on it,
I can send you the link to a publication that

(02:16:50):
goes into it in depth more than I can do
on the air. So I'm going to put you on hold, Kevin,
and uh if you will give uh, if you want,
give my producer Jonathan your email, He'll give you my
email address and just send me that request and I'll
send you something.

Speaker 7 (02:17:07):
Okay, Okay, I'll do that.

Speaker 5 (02:17:10):
I haven't tried to mention before, so I'll pick some
of that.

Speaker 1 (02:17:14):
Okay, just see a right, Take care, you bet you
take care?

Speaker 3 (02:17:20):
Bye bye?

Speaker 1 (02:17:21):
All right, folks, here we are boy. Time flies. Time
flies when you're having fun arbor Gate. Speaking of having fun,
I always like going out to Arburgate. I was out
there the other day visiting some of the folks. You
can't believe the extensive selection they've got on fruit. I'm
talking about fruit trees, I'm talking about grapes, I'm talking

(02:17:43):
about berries, you know, blackberries and everything, strawberries, everything else.
They're loaded up. And if you want to do some
seeds starting, they've got plenty of really good seeds and
seeds starting kits still getting deliveries of all kinds of
things for landscape, color, for vegetables, for urge. Listen, spring
is springing, and the trucks that arbigateor are going to

(02:18:06):
line up, they have been lining up to bring you
a good selection. They always have a good selection. Do
you want a rose? Do you want a camellia? Do
you want to fill in the blank, They've got it.
Remember to go around and back in park. Go on
Trischel Road which goes behind Arburgate. The back parking lot
is awesome, great accessibility. It's the safest, easiest way to

(02:18:27):
get in there, and there's always space back there. Even
as busy as that place gets. You're going to find
a place back there to get your parking done. And
remember that when you're there, get their one two three
completely easy system that's a soil for anything with roots,
a fertilizer that's organic than for anything with the roots
and a compost product. And by the way, the soil

(02:18:48):
in the compost both had expanded shale mixed in them,
which is a really nice added plus. And their soil
and composts can be delivered in bulk. So if you
want that good arburgate product and you want it delivered
to your house, call them up, talk to them, or
when you're out there, ask them about a book delivery
of it, and they can do that. I don't care
where you live around here, they can do that. All right,

(02:19:09):
Time for me to take a quick break. When I
come back, we will be talking to Barry and David.

Speaker 11 (02:19:14):
Oh major.

Speaker 1 (02:19:16):
Look all right, folks, we're back with our last little
bit of segments of Garden Line today. You know, I'm
a broken record when it comes to soil. Right, what
is the secret of success with your garden plants? Round
stuff before green stuff is the answer. Round stuff before
green stuff. You get the soil right, that includes organic matter,

(02:19:36):
that includes improving the texture, structure, the drainage, You get
the nutrients in there, you're going to have success. And
Nature's way is built around doing exactly that. The same
way that nature does. That's why it's called Nature's Way
because it does it Nature's way. Now you go out there,
talk to Ian, talk to any of the folks out

(02:19:57):
there at Nature's Way, and they can point you in
the right direction with the soil blend that you need
for what you want to grow. Maybe you just want
some composts to improve a clay soil. Maybe you want
to get a bed mix that's going to go well with.
Maybe you're putting in fruit trees and you're going to
create a nice raised mound for better drainage on the
surface with one of their fruit blends. Maybe it's a

(02:20:18):
vegetable type soil blend, or for herbs or for flowers,
they've got it. Do you want to grow a zelias
and blueberries and peiras and oh my gosh, Virginia sweet inspire,
all those things that like cool that like acidic soils,
they've got that at Nature's Way Resources. It's really easy.
Just go just go check them out. You can go
buy there and pick it up yourself. If you've got

(02:20:39):
to pick up our trailer, you can call them and
have them deliver it.

Speaker 17 (02:20:42):
You can go buy.

Speaker 1 (02:20:44):
You can go buy and purchase it by the bag
or around town. There's a lot of places that carry
Nature's weigh soils. Buy the bag. The address is Sherbrooks
Circle and Conro. Basically, what you do is you head
up toward Tomball direction and when we're fourteen eighty eight
comes in from Magnolia, you turn right across the railroad
tracks and that's Sherbrock Circle and that's Nature's Way. You're

(02:21:06):
right there. It's really easy. Do you want a high
quality leaf mo compost or a fungal based compost. Both
of those are finally screened and excellent for top dressing
your lawn. You can get that as well as many
other things that Nature's Way. And you know when you
buy it there, it's going to be a product that's
made well. It's not cheap compost. This is is stuff
that's made well. It's been adequately composted, it's been properly screened,

(02:21:31):
and it's gonna give you the results you're looking for.
I'm going to head now to let's see where are
we going next. I believe we're heading to David and
Spring Branch. Hey, David, welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 3 (02:21:43):
Hey, good morning, thank you for taking my call. Had
a couple of questions. Might you know of any annual
fruit tree cell that's going on this weekend?

Speaker 1 (02:21:56):
I don't. I don't keep up with those. I know
different groups those around. You'd have to call your county
Extension office and see if they're having them. I tend
to focus on what's available in our local garden centers
at that time. But if you can get a hold
of your county Extension office, they can tell you when
you know the master gardeners are having various kinds of

(02:22:17):
things that they have, and I know those are going on,
I just don't have a list of that.

Speaker 17 (02:22:22):
Okay, okay?

Speaker 3 (02:22:23):
And yeah, in my peach tree is coming out with
the round bulbs and the pink petals, is it okay?

Speaker 11 (02:22:30):
Now?

Speaker 3 (02:22:30):
If I do some pruning on my peach tree, is
real tall? Is it okay? If I do that now?
Or should I wait?

Speaker 1 (02:22:37):
If you want to do it, hurry up and get
it done. Yes. You can just be real careful because
once the growth starts, the bark starts to peel away
from the wood. When you do a cut, you know,
if that branch falls, you want to have your hand
on it to control it because it'll strip the bark
right off down the trunk or branch of the tree,
and that's a wound that takes forever to heal. So
that's the only thing right now, be real careful with

(02:22:59):
if the bark is already starting to come loose from
the inner wood. Okay, okay, yes, get it done this week.
There you go, Thank you, There you go, you bet, David,
thanks a lot, appreciate your call. We're going to now
go talk to Barry. Hello, Berry, welcome to guard Line.

Speaker 8 (02:23:21):
Yes, thank you for taking the call. I got a
question about crate myrtles. We bought the crate myrtles and
then put them in about eight years ago in obviously
they've grown pretty tall, and I was wondering if if
I were to like cut some of the trunks down

(02:23:41):
a couple of feet to lower the whole crown of
the great myrtle, would that work.

Speaker 19 (02:23:47):
Or is that just a well.

Speaker 1 (02:23:52):
You technically you could. What's going to happen where you
cut the trunk off is you're going to get a
whole bunch of shoots that come out. We call that
a crow's foot. Like if you hold your arm up
and you point all your fingers up and out that
kind of your fingers are all the shoots that come
out at the top of that stubbed off trunk. It's
really not a very attractive growth and this is drastic.

(02:24:12):
But another option is to cut it off at the
ground and when the new shoots come out of the base,
pick maybe three of them to be your main trunks,
and then as they come up you can top them
and they'll form a couple of shoots that form the
next category of branches. And you know, a crpe myrtle
should come out of the ground as a single branch

(02:24:35):
or a trunk. It should fork into two or three,
and then fork into two or three, and as it
goes up it just makes this beautiful structure. When you
do the stubbing off two foot high, you're going to
have an ugly down there low. It's okay to do that.
I don't think it's very pretty to do that, and
so I might take it all the way to the
ground and start over or kind of branch back to

(02:24:56):
where a side branch comes out.

Speaker 8 (02:25:01):
All right, okay, that helps me out, Thank you very much.

Speaker 1 (02:25:07):
Yes, sir, you take care. I need to put something
online about that. I think it's hard to describe that
on the air. Let's go to Southwest Houston and we're
going to talk to Sharon. Hey, Sharon, welcome to guard Line.

Speaker 6 (02:25:20):
Hi.

Speaker 24 (02:25:22):
I have a lot of weeds in my yard, but
my dogs like to nibble on them.

Speaker 19 (02:25:27):
So is it safe to poison them?

Speaker 1 (02:25:31):
To poison the weeds?

Speaker 24 (02:25:33):
Yes, when your dogs eat them.

Speaker 1 (02:25:37):
Well, I wouldn't. You know, there's a lot of different
products out there, and they vary in their toxicity and things,
so it's hard to do a sweeping answer to that,
but I wouldn't if the dogs are eating them. If
you could keep the dogs off of them for a
week and you know, just kind of watch the dogs
and stuff, don't let them do that. But if you

(02:25:58):
need to have something go down and kill that whole weed,
some perennial weeds, that's the only way to really get them.
Then you just have to keep the dogs off that section.

Speaker 24 (02:26:08):
So you think a week will be good.

Speaker 1 (02:26:12):
A week will be enough for the product to move
down into the weed, and then you could do a
low mowing to cut all the top growth off that
there's nothing but the dogs to chew on then, and
that would be a strategy to go about it. Because
dogs do like to eat weeds mine do?

Speaker 19 (02:26:30):
Okay?

Speaker 1 (02:26:31):
All right, thank you, you bet, Charon, thank you for
the question. Hey, depending on what kind of weeds you have,
there are some other options if you just if you
don't have like a solid yard full of weeds. There's
a little device I've never talked about it on Guardline.
It's called Grandpa's weeder, and it's like fingers that you
step on it. It's a pole. You step on it

(02:26:52):
and it goes down beside the weed, and then you
just pull on the handle and it has a little
fulcrum and it like the weed right out of the ground.
Now that's for good for tap rooted weeds. It wouldn't
be good for weeds that are running all through your grass,
but that would be another is just do the hand
pulling without you getting on your hands and knees. That way,

(02:27:13):
it's it's easier cool, okay, Southwest Fertile Line. All right,
thank you. Oh they've got everything. Yeah, say hi to Bob.
All right, you take care of it. Well, it always
takes all and it's spring. Oh my gosh, it's going
to get more fun as we go here. I'm looking
forward to it. I hope you are too. Hey, garden

(02:27:35):
Line is available as a podcast. You can go to
the ktr H website go to garden Line. You can
listen to past shows. I think the best way to
listen to garden Line, unless you just happen to have
radio you like to sit by, which is fine and
we still do that, is to get the iHeartMedia app.
It's a little red app with a white heart in it.
Download it to your phones. Fine garden Line, you know,

(02:27:57):
put it on your list and you can listen to
me live. Put that phone in your pocket and go
out in the garden, pull weeds work, Take a picture
of a bug, send it to me. We'll talk about
it during the show. Get an air in time. It's
a good way to listen. And you also listened to
past shows on the on the iHeartMedia app too, So
tell your friends and neighbors about it. We try to
answer questions and answer them from all over the place,

(02:28:20):
so no matter where they live, we're happy to help them.
Would like to get us Paul on garden See you
tomorrow morning at six am. Get you some coffee, sat
ride eyed and bushy tailed. I'll be there