Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Kat r H Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any
of the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome
to kt r H Garden Line with Skip rictes.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
The crazy.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Gas can trim.
Speaker 4 (00:19):
Just watch him as whom.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Gas so many birdings to see bats in the bases.
Speaker 4 (00:30):
Like gas again, you sacking not a sum glasses gas
so beamon sweets gas.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Starting well, well, doodle, first thing in the morning on
a Saturday morning. Congratulate if you're up. Added congratulations if
both eyes are wide open and you are somewhat alert.
(01:12):
I'm ready to go this morning. We got a lot
to talk about on gardening. We always do. I talk
about that all the time. The fact that gardening gives
us a lot of opportunities to learn and talk about
a lot of things. I enjoy that aspect of it.
You know, you never get bored when you are learning
about growing things and plants. We were made to grow things.
(01:33):
That is just part of our DNA, I believe. And
there's an accomplishment that comes when you plant a plant
or plant a seed into the soil. Uh. It is
just just a sense of I did that, I grew that,
I made that, and that is a really cool and
fun thing to do. You are listening to garden Line,
(01:54):
We're here to answer your gardening questions phone number seven
one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. If
you would like to give me a call seven one
three two one two kt r H and we can
talk about whatever gardening topics are most of interest to you.
I spent this week getting some things done out and
(02:15):
about around the landscape. You know, my garden has been
kind of on hiatus since it was primarily an Okra garden.
This summer I kind of went all in to doing
a lot of different Okre breeding plots and things, and
so it Okra sort of took over the garden. Of course,
Okra right now is not very happy at n't like
these temperatures, and it's all coming out so that I
(02:38):
can move on to other things. But I look at
gardening as not only a way to grow food, but
also a way to become a better gardener. You know,
when you can read about gardening all day and I
don't care how good a book is, how knowledgeable the
author is, there's nothing like it out there, and just
(02:58):
doing it now when I'm not saying that, you know,
it's not important to read and learn and well listen
to the garden Line to learn. But it's just nothing
like putting your hand to the plow, so to speak,
and getting after it and doing it. And I learn
something every year in the garden. I learned more than something.
I learned a lot of somethings every year in the garden.
(03:21):
It is a very dynamic thing. Every year is different.
You know, one year maybe late light blast or early
blight blast your tomatoes and it just seems like, you know,
where did all that come from? Well, each year is different.
Some years, certain insects we have outbreaks of and some
(03:43):
years what you find is where you didn't seem to
have nutrient problems, suddenly plants aren't doing really well. And
who knows what the change could have been. Mad It
could have been things you added, It could have been soggy,
wet soil affects that, it could have been a lot
of things that happened. But you learn every time you
do it, and you just got to get out there
and do it. That is, you know, it's it's like
(04:05):
the quote, and I've made it a number of times
here on garden Line. You know, to be a good
gardener to be a good gardener, you got to kill
a lot of plants. Doctor J. C. Ralston, a famed
horticulture has said, if you're not killing plants, you're not
really stretching yourself as a gardener. And boy, is that
ever true. That is true. So I have stretched myself
(04:27):
a lot by trying things and killing plants and learning,
learning what plants need, what they want. You know, That's
the thing I always say, there's no brown thumbs in gardening.
There's only uninformed thumbs. And we're here to inform your thumb.
But it is really true that a lot of the
things that are that have made me the best gardener
(04:50):
that I can possibly be a year after year getting
better and better at it is. It's just trial and error.
It's being experimental and not being afraid to fail. And
I would encourage you to do that this year. You know,
every year I grow tomatoes. Of course, it's almost required.
I think there's a Texas law that if you have
(05:10):
a garden, you have to grow at least one tomato.
But I always add, I've got Tier three that are
my you know, dependables. I know they're going to be there.
I like them. They they're going to perform, they're pretty good.
But I always have Tier three that are some I've
never grown before, just to try them out, just to learn.
And you know what, some of my favorites entered the
(05:32):
world of my favorites by being an experiment that I tried,
one that I tried out. How about growing things differently?
Have you ever grown potatoes in a bucket? That's too
late for planting potatoes, But if you can make a
hole in the bottom of a bucket or a basket,
or you know whatever, however you go about it and
set a potato piece in the bottom, set that container
(05:53):
on the ground, by the way, and let the potatoes
grow up into the bucket, and then just keep adding
compost soil are more of a compost to the bucket
as they grow, so they're having to grow up out
of the compost a little bit. And by the time
they get to the top and that bucket is full
of compost, all your potatoes will be in that bucket.
(06:15):
It's true. You can do that, and then you just
kind of lean it over, cut it loose from the
ground because the roots are down in the ground. Regular
potatoes like red potatoes and white potatoes are those are
the stem pieces. It's actually a stem. Sweet potatoes or roots,
Irish potatoes, baking potatoes, new potatoes, all of those those
are stems, so they come above the little seed piece,
(06:39):
the chunk of potato that you plant in the ground.
So all your potatoes are in the bucket. They you
got a bucket full of compost and potatoes, you just
dump it out. There's no easier potato digging than that.
And they also it's also really nice. You just need
to have plenty of drainage holes in the bottom of
the bucket. But that's something different. Have you ever planted
a tomato upside down? You could do it same thing.
(07:01):
You got a bucket, you stick the tomato. You kind
of have to wrap the leaves up so you can
push them down through a hole in the bottom of
the bucket. But the hole shouldn't be so big that
everything just falls through. Sometimes I'll wrap a little newspaper
around the stem just to sort of plug that hole.
Fill the container full of a high quality and growing mix,
(07:21):
you know, veggie and herb mix would be a good example,
and just keep it watered and the tomato hangs down
and they'll try to kind of bend up, but then
they end up drooping down as they get tomatoes on them,
and you hang it up somewhere and it gives a
neighbor something to talk about. He's growing tomatoes out of
the bottom of a bucket upside down. Mildred, Well, they're
talking about you anyway, so don't worry about that. Just
(07:43):
have fun anyway, Try something new. I always trying to
encourage you to grow something you haven't grown, try something new,
do something in a way you haven't tried. And I
think it just is part of the fun of gardening.
It's certainly a conversation piece. All right, Well you get
the idea. Uh seven one three two one two five
(08:05):
eight seven four. If you'd like to give us a call,
We're going to go to a little break here and
I'll be right back with I got a lot of
things I want to talk about today, some really interesting
and cool tips to talk to you in just a bit.
Welcome back for garden Line. Hey, we are here to
answer your gardening questions and just to help make you
a better gardener. You know, they say, if you're cutting
(08:25):
trees every night and then you got to quick cutting trees,
just to stop and sharpen the saw. Well, gardeners are
the same way. If we don't stop every now and
then or in the process, you know, sharpen us our saw.
If you will make us better gardeners, it kind of
gets boring, and sometimes misconceptions we have tend to live on.
Have you ever noticed that in life in general, there's
(08:48):
things you thought were right, but they turned out later
you go, yeah, that wasn't right. Well, I think I
don't know. Is it probably Mark Twain or one of
those kind of pontificators said something like, it's not what
I don't know that concerns me, it's what I know
(09:10):
that ain't. So other words, the thing I think I
know that I'm wrong about whatever. Anyway, that is really
true when it comes to gardening as well. I've talked
to you in the past about quality home products, and
you know that they are the purveyors of the outstanding
stand by generator by Generac Generac automatic stand by generators
(09:33):
set outside your house. And I know right now the
storms from this past year are the last thing on
your minds. But let me just give you a tip
if you are interested in getting a generator set up
for next year. So when we do enter the storm seasons,
and it's not just hurricane season. You know, the first
storm we had this year wasn't even a hurricane season.
(09:53):
It wasn't related to a hurricane. If you're interested in that,
now would be a good time to call them, because
a low quieter on the on the front during this
time here, because people are busy with other things. Give
Quality Home a call. You can dial seven to one
to three Quality, or you can go to their website
Quality tx dot com and talk to them about the
(10:15):
process of what it takes to get a Quality Home
generator set up at your place now. If you happen
to be we're getting the end of the year here.
Maybe you're an electrician or a plumber and you just
aren't real happy where you're working right now. Maybe you
know you would like to get a better opportunity, something
with more maybe competitive pay, something with comprehensive medical, dental,
(10:39):
vision coverage, retirement plans, holiday paid time off, career advancement.
You want to work for a really established, reputable company. Well,
Quality Home is all that, and you ought to get
my call. You ought to go online to Quality TX
dot com, qualitytx dot com. The three you can make
an application to become heart of the Quality team. And
(11:01):
I'm tell you this. When I visited with the folks
from Quality, one thing I noticed is they just love
working there. They love their jobs. And boy, isn't that
important those of us who have been in jobs we loved,
in jobs we didn't love so much. Well, consider giving
them a call again. License electricians and plumbing pros because
all their stuff like that is in house. They don't,
(11:23):
you know, contract out to get electrician to come in
and deal with their products when they're installing. They have
their own and you can be one of those. So
a lot of things that I'd like to visit about.
One thing I want to start talking about today is
there is a fellow I know. I've always really respected
his horticultural work. His name is Lee Reich up in
(11:44):
New York area, and he writes from a standpoint and
I really appreciate this of both research base information, am
making stuff up or hearing what someone else said, research
based information, and secondly, very much personal experience. He is
a full gardener, I mean thirty years of his career,
(12:07):
and he worked for Cornell for a long time, and
he had written some things and I was just looking.
It was kind of a gardening guru's guide, some tips
for gardeners, And as I read them, it was like, yes, yes, yes, yeah,
every one of them. He is hitting the nail, just
direct on. So I want to give you a few
(12:28):
of those to think about. One of his tips is
it basically has two words organic matter. Now have you
ever heard me talk about the brown stuff and the
green stuff. Yeah, it's important to some, it's important in gardening.
And you can just sum it up to words organic matter.
Whether it's coming from these fallen leaves that are hitting
(12:49):
the ground now, whether you make compost, buy composts, put
kitchen scraps out there to decompose, if it was once alive,
it's organic matter. And as it decomposes, it becomes the
equivalent of compost and eventually humus. And when you put
it in the soil, it encourages a healthy balance of
beneficial microbes and microbes health plants, fight pests and disease.
(13:14):
They also feeds. It releases its nutrients back into the soil.
Organic matter so important, so important. Do you know that
your lawn more puts out more nutrients than your fertilizer spreader?
Let that sink in just a minute. Your lawn mowre
puts out more nutrients and your fertilizer spreader. So that
(13:34):
means that if you were to take all the grass
clippings in a year of mowing and dry them down,
send them to the lab, have them do an analysis
on what's in them, there are more pounds of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium,
and all the micronutrients because you have to have them
to grow grass. All of those are in those clippings
more than you've applied with your fertilizer. Now, if you
(13:57):
bag your clippings to get rid of them, you just
have to fertilize even more. It doesn't mean if you
return clippings you don't have to fertilize. It just means
don't get rid of that valuable stuff that is happening
when trees drop leaves. It's happening with grass clippings and
all kinds of things organic matter. Second point, we're it's
(14:18):
going to take a while to go over some of these,
but over the course of this morning, I'd like to
do that. Don't panic over insects and diseases. That is
something that isn't said I should talk about that more,
there are some situations where if you don't deal with
them early, they become a big problem. You know, brown
patch in our yards. If you're going to treat for it,
(14:41):
you got to catch it either before it starts or
very very early in the process. But most things we
deal with. It's just a tolerable amount of damage. You know,
to have a few aphens on a plant, to have
a few spider mites on a planet, to have a
few leaf spots on a disease. Something you and up
some leaves here and there. Maybe it's a caterpillar or
(15:02):
a grasshopper or a beetle. We can put up with that, Okay,
A spray is our last resort. Now, that doesn't mean
you wait until there's hardly anything left of the plant
to spray. It just means you don't have to control
every problem in the garden by constantly spraying and treating
for it. Organic or synthetic I'm talking about I don't
(15:23):
care whether you're an organic or synthetic gardener. In this point.
You don't have to spray for everything that happens. And
it is really true, It is really important to remember that.
I remember years ago they did a study on green
beans in the garden, you know, bush beans, and they
took leaves, they cut leaves off the plant to see
(15:43):
how many leaves does the plant have to lose in
order to have a significant noticeable drop in production, and
it was forty percent of the leaves. So if you've
got a green bean and it's got a few holes
and almost all the leaves, that still is not warranting
(16:03):
a spray. You can spray and kill the bug, but
you're not going to see more green beans as a
result of it. So that's just the point that I'm
trying to make. Just think about it before you feel
like you have to deal with something now. Again, my
caveat on that is, yes, there are situations where you
get an explosion if you don't shut it down early,
(16:26):
but I'm telling you nature has a way of fixing things.
When I first started as a county extension agent, I
remember that our spray schedule for pecan orchards was every
week or two. You're spraying with this and spraying with this,
and spraying with this all through the season. And basically
you just sprayed the orchard all season, over and over
(16:48):
and over again on a pretty frequent basis, so that
fill in the blank didn't become a problem. It was
disease and insects, sprays and stuff like that. Then part
way into it, something called integrated pest management really took hold.
And that's a process where we don't just spray because
there might be a past, or there is a past,
(17:10):
we decide whether we need to spray or not. And
so pecan orchardice would turn over a pecan. You know,
pecans have compound leaves. It's not just one little leaflet,
it's a whole set of leaves on a stem of petial.
And they would turn over a leaf, count the number
of aphids on it and do that to one hundred
leaves in the orchard and come up with the exact
(17:34):
average number of aphids on it. And so maybe this
week you had an average of four aphids per leief
and next year seven afrits per leief, or next year,
next week and the next week, you know, it got
up to nine and then it went back down to five.
What happened there? Ladybugs moved in, lace wings moved in,
parasitizing wasps move in, and nature took care of it.
(17:57):
And there's this little dotted line that says, yeah, more
than number of aphids, then spray, And that concept applies
to our garden as well. No, we don't count aphids
on plants. We don't need to, but that idea, that
approach to it applies as well. And so point number
two I'm making here with Lee's doctor Reisch's tips is
(18:19):
don't panic over insects and diseases, learn about managing them.
All right, Well, it is getting near another little break here.
I'm going to come back with more of those tips
as we go through. And I've also got some interesting
stuff on how plants react to light that I think
you'll find very interesting, as well as a few other Oh,
(18:39):
I'm gonna go I'm gonna talk about an missletoe today.
We're gonna talk about mistletoe. It's a season for it, right,
all right, stick stick around. We'll be right back here,
and just a bit by the way, if you'd like
to go ahead and give me a call, see can
be first up when we come back. The number is
seven to one three two one two K T R H.
Speaker 5 (19:00):
And none of you.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Remember John Denver? Yep, he had a garden song. You know,
I try to I've been on a search for songs
about gardening things, and I've come up with some interesting ones.
Let's just say we'll be adding a few of those
as bumper music as we go through here, especially next year.
(19:24):
But anyway, I just thought I put that in there,
so I've been I was talking about some tips from
a guy named Lee Reich, doctor Reich up and was
in Cornell. He's now retired. He still writes. He's got
some great books. By the way, if you want an
excellent book for a Christmas gift, h he has a book.
Oh guy, it's called Weedless Gardening. I believe he's the
(19:47):
title of it, weedless Gardening, and he basically talks about
how nature takes care of the soil by covering it
with maltz and things like that. And I have used
that system of weedless gardening myself and it it really works.
When I saw his book, it's like, oh, somebody else
figured that out too. Of course, Nature figured that a
(20:07):
long time before we did, which is another point that
I'm going through. Some of the points that I think
really valuable that he made, and that is have faith
in Mother Nature. She's been at it a long time
follower lead. So, for example, what does nature do with
bear soil? Nature throws leaves on it to cover it
up and prevent erosion and prevent wide string swings and temperature.
(20:31):
Nature essentially protects that bear soil with leaves. It also
protects it with plants. We call those weeds, by the way,
But when if you just strip away a section of
your lawn and get rid of all the lawn, what's
going to happen is all these weeds come up where
they come from, seeds that we're waiting there. But your
lawn was preventing it. And so nature doesn't like that,
(20:52):
and it covers it up to protect the soil, and
we can do the same thing. It really makes sense nature. Also,
you'll notice that plants in areas where they want to grow.
Now that think about that a minute. So if you
are looking for something to go in a wet spot,
(21:12):
we'll pick one from nature that grows in wet spots
or you know, whether it's a native plant here or
from another area. A button bush is a native shrub
and through it in parts of Texas and it it
just will grow right on the side of a stream.
I mean, it puts up with wet soil really really well.
Louisiana Iris puts up with wet soil really really well. Uh,
(21:35):
and then there are plants that need dry soil and
prefer dry soil, and so whatever it is that just
learn from where plants grow, for the conditions, for how
nature goes about things, and be patient with it. So
I think it's a good point that he makes. Another one, well,
I'll tell you what. Let me let me let me
just make a statement about that that nature thing. Microlife
(21:58):
fertilizers have been designed to work with nature, and by
doing that, they're doing things like using organic ingredients, natural
organic matter, things from nature to form a fertilizer that
you can put out that will release those nutrients somewhat
(22:19):
slowly over time to help stimulate your plant. Because that's
what that's how nature does it. It puts organic matter
on the ground that releases nutrients over time as it
decomposes a way over places. Now there's microlife ingredients that
microlife products that are filled with beneficial microbes as well, like,
for example, one the micro micro grow bioinoculate. It is
(22:43):
not a fertilizer, it is a bios biostimulating and bio
providing product. What do I mean by that, I mean
that you are inoculating soil with sixty three different types
of beneficial microbe strains that are known to be beneficial
to plants, and that is how micro grow bioinoculate works.
(23:06):
You can put it in any kind of soil. I
put it in some of my container mixes indoors, because
you know, this is kind of an artificial soil. That's
what growing media is. Potting soil is an artificial soil.
And I put it in that, I put it outside.
You can spread it in your lawn. I mean, there's
a lot of ways you can use it. But microlife
products are designed that way to work with nature, to
(23:28):
take what nature has taught us, and to put it
actually to practice for your law and for your garden,
for whatever you're trying to grow, including like I said,
house plants. You can find out more at Microlifefertilizer dot
com Microlife Fertilizer dot com, and you find these products
all over the Greater Houston area at the kinds of
places we talk about feed stores and ace hardware stores
(23:50):
and Southwest Fertilizer and garden centers across town. Microlife products.
But anyway, another point that I would like to make
by the way, I should I get going on this talking,
and I forget to give you our phone number in
case you want to call someone's wanting to dial in
seven one three two one two k t r H
seven one three two one two k t rh Uh.
(24:14):
And this one I think is probably neglected more than
most of the points I'm going to be making here.
But and that's to keep written records and photos. Now
I know some of you are going, oh, I don't
want to go through that. That's nonsense. When you write
down what you did and what happened as a result,
(24:36):
you learn from it and you can refer back to it.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
And I don't mean just written records. I mean information
about what you're writing about. For example, here it is
you have this new bug and it's eating your I
don't know whatever plant, and you send a picture to
me on garden line and I say, it's this bug,
and here's something things you can do about it, or
(25:01):
don't worry about it. It's not a big problem, or
whatever I say. And then you just make a note,
take a picture in your garden with your camera phone,
take a picture of the bug, and write down with
it include cut and paste from an email or I've
even used publications online and you can download and put
them with it, and you create like a it's like
(25:21):
a gardening journal, but it also becomes a gardening book
as you build it over time. But keep records when
did you plant? What were the results? Because you just
won't remember. And trust me, I don't remember. I don't.
I mean, I love The other day I was thinking, Okay,
what peppers did I plant? Two years ago? I had
(25:42):
a big pepper crop or a bunch of peppers? A
trial I did? Which ones did I plant? And how
did they perform? And my brain's going, I don't know.
I went back and looked at my seed orders to
find out, Oh, it was these. But keep records. You
learn from your mistakes. There is no end to what
you can learn about goard gardening unless you forget what
(26:02):
you did and what the results were. So help avoid that.
Thomas Jefferson, a very good gardener, wrote, though an old man,
I am a young gardener. He kept excellent, excellent records.
All right, time for a break? The number seven one
three two one two kt RH. Would you like to
give me a call? We'll be right back. All right,
(26:22):
we are just monkeying around here on garden line. Thanks
for listening. Appreciate having you with us today. If you'd
like to give me a call seven one three two
one two K t r H. I'm going to jump
back into these tips by a fellow named Lee Reisch
that I just found so helpful. Another tip he had
(26:43):
is don't get boxed in by preconceptions. For example, the
flowers have to be in a flower garden, no flowers
can be in the vegetable garden. You know, flowers, A
lot of types of flowers attract beneficial insects, and we
want those to be attracted to our vegetable gardens. There
are number one it makes your vegetable garden pretty, or two.
(27:04):
I always include there's certain kinds of flowers I know
are very attractive to beneficials, certain beneficials, and so I
always include those when I'm planting around the garden. I
had a garden one time where I had I like buckets,
the galvanized buckets, you know, punch some holes in the bottom,
hang them on a fence post, and you can grow
flowers in those as long as you got some sort
(27:24):
of drip irrigation or like to get out in water
a lot, and I had beneficial flower plants, beneficial attracting
flower plants all around the garden, hanging on an over
post of the fence around the garden. It's kind of unusual,
looked kind of cool, and it did some good. You
don't have to have an orchard to grow fruit. There's
another one I lived over in conro text As many
(27:47):
years ago. I had a peach tree that was part
of our landscape. It was just sitting there like any
other shrub or tree that you would put in the landscape.
It wasn't in an orchard. But in the spring it bloomed.
Then it was beautiful. It just made a nice that's
called edible landscaping. There's a lot of ways to do
that same. It's true with herbs. You don't have to
have an herb garden to grow herbs. In my vegetable gardens,
(28:10):
I will often put something like a regano as a groundcover.
I often will also put some of the flowering herbs
for the reasons I mentioned before, at the end of
the garden bed. One year I made a kind of
apasta bed. It had tomatoes in it. At the ends
of the rose. One end of the rose was a regano,
(28:30):
the other end was basil. Well, I just had all
the you know, all the ingredients you would want for possibly.
It was just kind of fun. But plus, gardening is
supposed to be fun, right. The weating isn't fun is
another preconception. Oh, I hate weeding. Actually wheating is not bad.
You know, we by getting out there and doing a
(28:51):
little bit of early hoeing. If you've got bear soil
and you get some weeds in there, just slice them
up real good. Even hand weating, if it's not too much,
is kind of enjoyable because you get to see the benefits.
But when you get through eating, put mulch on the soil.
Remember what nature does put mulch on top of the soil.
Over thirty years ago, I think doctor Reich has not
(29:14):
been tilling his soil. And for me, it's been probably
fifteen years that I quit regularly tilling the soil. And
you don't need to think about nature. Who tills the forest,
who tills the meadow. It doesn't get tilled. Roots grow,
(29:34):
the plants die, the roots decompose. You have channels now
into the soil where those roots were. Now there's rotting
organic matter channels, and earthworms will follow those channels because
they like to eat the organic matter take it in,
so you don't have to rototill the soil. There are
a few times where I will rot hotel of certain situations,
(29:56):
like if I were trying to incorporate some foster first
down deeper at phosphorus doesn't move down in the soil
very well, then that that might be a time where
I do it. Or if I'm getting started for the
first time and I'm trying to improve a crumy soil,
I would wrote a till things in like expanded shale
and a clay or compost and a clay or a saying,
but you don't have to you don't have to do that.
(30:19):
Try new ways of doing things. We have a whole
other talk on no till gardening. Sometimes here's a big one.
Seek out reputable sources when you have a question. Oh boy,
oh boy. I get so frustrated when and this is
worse on social media, but not only on social media,
(30:40):
when I read stuff by people who do not know
what they're talking about, but they're experts, because why because
they say they're experts, and it just happens a lot.
And I'm not going to pick on any specific names here,
but often celebrity type people will do that, you know,
because famous than you know, Like if Taylor Swift ever
(31:02):
went in and did a gardening show, everybody watch it.
But does that mean she knows what she's talking about?
I have no idea if she knows what she's talking
about about gardening and she doesn't. I'm just using that
as an example. But I read a lot of stuff
and it just isn't necessary. It's kind of like some
of these home improvement shows where you know you got someone.
If you've got if you're a young, strappy guy with
an Australian accent, you can be an expert on a
(31:25):
home gardening show. I mean a home improvement show. From
what I see, young ladies with a tool built same thing.
But anyway, find a reputable source. Here's how you do that.
Number one, I would consider myself a reputable source because
I've spent forty years now learning and just studying, research
(31:45):
and talking to gardeners and teaching and things like that.
We have many good nurseries, garden centers, independent garden centers
where we have people that are reputable resources that you
can have when you're doing an online search. Now, this
is worth this is worth listening to the whole show
today just to get this one point. If you're going
(32:06):
to do an online search, at the end of what
you're searching for, type in site s I T E
s I T E colon dot edu. What that tells
Google or whoever you're using. And when you say cite colon,
it says I want you to Let's say you're searching
(32:27):
for nematode control, nematode control space site colon dot eedu.
What it says is Google, I want you to go
find information on nematode control, but I only want you
to return to me sites that end in dot edu
(32:47):
in other words, a university or research and extension service,
those kinds of things. Try it sometime, Try it sometimes,
Try like lawn disease or Saint Augustine disease, for example,
and then do it without site colon dot edu and
do it with site colon dot ed You Now, does
that mean that only universities know anything?
Speaker 6 (33:08):
No?
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Does that mean they're one hundred percent right? Absolutely not.
In fact, oftentimes I see things that are aloft, but
they are ninety nine percent I mean it is very,
very hopeful, and it allows you to go through a
lot of nonsense and cut right to the chase. I mean,
you can look wherever you want, but reputable sources very
(33:29):
very important. Hey, Ace Hardware stores are set up for
holiday lighting. It is time to get that done. Go
to Ace Hardware for your indoor lights, your outdoor lights,
for your indoor and outdoor decorations. They've got gifts from
their gifts that beautiful gift shops, toys, tools, everything you
need for the holidays and forevery day. You know, we
got Child's building supply out there in Orange for those
(33:50):
of you listening out in that area. Hamilton Hardware off
Highway six near Bear Creek, All Spas Ace in the Woodlands,
just three of many, many A stores in the Greater
Houston area. We will be right back after a break
at the top of the hour. I got a lot
more stuff to talk about, and give me a call
(34:10):
with your question. You know, I h one thing that
I enjoy most about about gardening and things is trying
something I haven't tried before. That is just fun. You know,
there's a traditional way of doing everything, but then there's
I talked about upside down tomatoes, you can do that.
(34:32):
Upside Down peppers, by the way, didn't work as well.
That's a different story. But upside down tomatoes work pretty
good when you're our greet tomatoes and an upside down
bucket and in the top I plant at basil. So
there you go. There's your pasta garden or whatever post
testa garden.
Speaker 6 (34:49):
All right, we'll you're.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
Welcome to KTRH Garden Line with scamp Rictor.
Speaker 4 (35:06):
Just watch him as so many good things to see,
not a side.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
All right, here we go again, garden line. Welcome back.
Good to have you with us. We got we got
a lot of things we are talking about.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
I've been going through kind of a list of tips
or ideas or concepts. I guess that I ran across
from a fellow who I have read and respected for
a long time, doctor Lee Rich. He's from Cornell. Wasn't
from Cornell. He's retired now. Uh, he's still a garden writer,
got some great books out and uh, just knowledgeable, does
(35:57):
a lot of research based and from that works really
really well. Another idea or a tip that he puts
out that I totally agree with this is to grow
a variety of plants, especially when it comes to edibles,
because you never know, you know that it may be
that one year, a particular disease wipes out your crop
(36:20):
of fill in the blank, but you still have all
these other crops that are coming through just fine. It's
true of ornamentals as well. But the more you mix
things up, the more you heage your bet. And I
do that with cultivars or varieties within a type of vegetable.
For example, I don't just grow one type of tomato typically. Well,
(36:42):
I'm always experimenting, so I may have six or seven
different ones in a year, but at least I would
recommend for you to grow at least two or three
even better, because that way you sort of headge your bet,
and I think that's a good idea. Another one is
don't plant too much. Oh boy, here we go. Now.
You know how they say do as I say, not
(37:05):
as I do. This is a perfect example of that.
Don't plant too much. Don't let you know. You get
a seed catalog, and boy have they been coming in
the door. I've got a whole stack of them here already.
You look through those catalogs, Oh my gosh, you see
a picture of tomato is like, I have to have
(37:26):
that one. It is perfect, yea, and the catalog is perfect,
but it is a tough suggestion to follow. I fall
prey to planting too much stuff all the time.
Speaker 7 (37:35):
You know.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
Of course I do mine for experiments and for taking
photos from my articles and stuff and videos too, so
I can make an excuse to have this certain kind
of garden thing, but seriously, don't do it at home.
Plant enough but not too much. Here's a prime example,
and Newby gardeners do this all the time, and unfortunately
(37:58):
not just Newby gardeners. You get a packet of lettuce,
and I don't know how many seeds are in a packet,
but you plan about half of them, and so you
have this like eight foot or five foot long bed
of lettuce growing. Now, how much lettuce do you eat
in a week? I mean, do you like if you're
growing ahead lettuce, which I don't recommend you do here.
(38:18):
I don't think that's the best kind of grow. But now,
if you're growing ahead of lettuce, how long does the
head of lettuce last? That's one plant and you just
planted dozens of them. What's going to happen to that?
You see what I'm saying, think about plant a little bit.
Just like lettuce. For example, I may plant five or
(38:39):
six to ten plants at the most, and then two
weeks later plant five or six to ten. That way,
if the bugs get one or one dies or doesn't
come up or whatever, I'm still good. But you can
get a lot of good eating out of a small
garden space if you don't plant too much of any
one thing. You mix it up a little bit. And finally,
(39:00):
I'm just going to say that, and this is not
coming out of what he wrote, but it's a get
out in your gardens on a frequent basis. There's an
old adage that would they say it, the best fertilizer
is the footprints of the gardener. So you can think
about what that means. It means you get out in
your garden and your plants do better.
Speaker 6 (39:22):
Well.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
I would say the best pest control and disease control
is also the footprints of the gardener. Catching a problem
early on, making some wise decisions as to whether something
needs to be done or not, not waiting until you
know it's too late. I get a lot of questions
and pictures by email, and I've just seen a lot
(39:42):
of gardeners do this, but they don't notice the problem
until there's hardly a leaf left on the plant, and
the ones left have holes in them, and then it's like,
what do I do? Well, I can tell you what
would have killed the bug if you had needed to
spray it, But at that stage there's no need to
spray because it's done. It's toast to pull it up
(40:03):
and replant. So get out there in the garden. See
what's going on, learn from it. Make notes, keep records
that's important. Oh did I skip over that one? Keep written?
Oh no, I didn't keep written records and photos. I
talked about that. But let me go back to that
one just for one second. Here. I wean't talk all
the way through this segment. When it comes to records.
(40:27):
There's a lot of ways to doing it. You can
use apps. There was an app called, oh gosh, I
can't even remember the name that I used to use,
but then it something changed about it and I didn't
like it anymore. Now I use one Note. One Note
is a Microsoft product. You can use that. There are
a lot of different apps. There's a number of different
(40:48):
apps that are excellent for they'll allow you to have
like files, you know where. Let me make you this
my vegetable file. This is my flower file, this is
my lawn file. And then within there you can have
folders in that, and then you can you can add stuff.
You can add pictures, you can add articles and stuff.
I just printed up an article a little bit ago
(41:11):
on something that popped up that was of interest to me,
and that's going to go in and my digital file.
You don't have to. If you want paper to wrestle through,
you can do that, but I like to just file
it digitally in there, and your notebook becomes your learning page.
That's very, very helpful. You always refer back to it.
All right, we're gonna we're gonna leave Lee Reich there
(41:35):
for a little bit and some of those tips. By
the way, his book, he has more than one book
out there, but his book Weedless Gardening is really a
good one. It is a top down gardening method like
Nature does. Nature gardens from the top down. You can too.
Let's go ahead and go out to the phones. We're
going to head to Cleveland now and talk to Ron. Hey, Ron,
(41:57):
welcome to garden Line.
Speaker 8 (41:59):
Good more skip this cool morning's gotten me thinking about
freeze protection. I've got a Texas Mountain Laurel that's been
in the ground for maybe four or five years. I
got it right before Randy passed away, so.
Speaker 6 (42:15):
It's been about that long, I believe.
Speaker 8 (42:17):
So it's fairly good side like five foot How well
does that plant resist freeze freezing?
Speaker 2 (42:25):
Do I need to Yeah? It does well. Yeah, no,
you really don't. It does well in areas much colder
than Houston. In fact, he's a native up in the
hill country of Texas and stuff, where they can have
harder freezes than we do here. I've never seen freeze
damage on a mountain Laurel. I suspect it could happen,
(42:46):
especially if a freeze came suddenly and was a very
hard freeze. You know, we're going from days in the
seventies and eighties to suddenly getting down in the low twenties,
you know, without warning. I'm sure you could freeze damage it,
but not something we normally worry about.
Speaker 8 (43:06):
All right, great, Yeah, it's it's it's pretty getting pretty
good size, and it's going to get a bit of
bit harder and harder to protectisolog just curious? I have
gotten the seed pods, and I was able to after
talking to you previously. I have gotten the seed pods
and I've got about four or five.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
I think there's four now about five six inch long.
Speaker 8 (43:27):
You know your scarfire them or however that you say that, yeah,
so's it's pretty neat. You know, making like you say,
making those things good is an achievement like you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (43:38):
So all right, there was something else.
Speaker 8 (43:41):
That I was gonna mention, but just oh yeah, last
week talking you were you hey Ron, Yeah, yes.
Speaker 2 (43:48):
Sir Ron, I need to put you on hosts. I'm
gonna have to go to a break. Hold that thought
and we'll come back with your question when I get
right back from break. Thanks a lot, We'll be right back. Folks,
Welcome back to guard Line. Do I ad you with us?
I was just taking a look at some of the
(44:09):
lighting work outdoor lighting, Christmas lighting, holiday lighting that Peerscapes does.
You know Peerscapes, I talk about them all the time
is a full service landscape company. I mean they kind
of do it all whatever you need, but they do
holiday lighting and if you would love to see a
professional job, go check out their website. It is Piercescapes
(44:32):
dot com. Pierscapes dot Com. Follow them on social media.
A lot of good ideas there too. You know, one
thing about outdoor lighting, this isn't just holiday lighting, but
outdoor lighting in general, is it is a security issue.
You know, you come into your house through a door,
it's a dark area, there's a bunch of bushes planted
up against a house where somebody can hide in there,
and it just a well lit landscape is kind of
(44:55):
a deterrent to somebody wanting to break in walk in.
And they can create at outdoor lighting to enhance safety.
Of course, also people walking around tripping over things and stuff.
Pierce Caapes knows how to do all that, and they
also are excellent at regular maintenance. You know, if you
need somebody to come in, maybe just quarterly, you want
somebody to come into your beds, trim them, weed them,
(45:16):
fertilize them, check the irrigation, make sure that the mulch
is you know, an appropriate thickness, apply it is needed.
And then of course make color changes so your bets
always look good all four seasons of the year. Well
Piercecapes can do that. You can give a call to
eight one, three, seven, oh fifty sixty two eight one
three seven oh five zero six zero, or, as I
(45:38):
always say, just go to the website. You'll see it
all there Piercescapes dot com. We're going to go back
now to Ron in Cleveland. Ron, I think you had
a follow up question you were wanting to talk about. Yes, sir,
thank you for coming back.
Speaker 8 (45:54):
It wasn't really a question as much as it was
a statement, but it was about a caller. I believe
it was last Sunday you had and he was asking
about aromatic plans and you had mentioned Texas Mountain Laurel
and sweet almond verbena. And I've got sweet Alma verbina
in the backyard in the front yard with my Texas
(46:15):
Mounta Laurel front and as you're mowing around the aromatics
of that sweet almond verbena. So I just wanted to
second your thoughts in case that gentleman was listening.
Speaker 2 (46:26):
Yeah, I think sweet Alma verbina fragrance should be a
control substance to be regulated because you can just about
go into a heavenly coma smelling that that plan Mount
Laurels the same way. Yes, thank you very much, good well,
(46:46):
thanks well, thanks for sticking around after break I appreciate that,
Thank you. All right, Yeah, that is true fragrance. You know,
one thing about gardening that I want you to remember
I talk about it from time to time is gardening
isn't just a visual you know. We when you think
about I'm gonna landscape my house, you picture the visual
of it, right. It's pretty, it's balanced, it's got all
(47:09):
these you know, different colors and and uh and and
the textures, different textures and things. Gardening is also fragrance.
To walk outside and have a citrus tree blooming, and
that wonderful citrus bloom, fragrance wafts up into your old
factory system. Oh my gosh, that's good. Alma being another
(47:30):
of course example of that, and there are many other
good examples of that as well. Another thing is, uh,
the benefits into our ears when we when we enjoy
the sounds of the garden, maybe the sounds of birds
that are out in the garden singing. That's one of
my favorite things right there. But even you know, here's
(47:53):
an example. One time I sat beneath a clump of bamboo,
a talk clump of bamboo at the old Harris County
Extension Office used to be on at off Highway six
and it in there in the Attics reservoir, and I
was sitting on the bamboo and the wind was blowing,
(48:14):
and it sounded like there was a light rain falling
as those those stiff, kind of papery bamboo leaves were
rubbing against each other as the wind blew. It was
a unique sent Yet to hear that, to see what
I'm talking about, or hear what I'm talking about, it's
just really cool. And gardening has sounds, you know. Gardening
also has movement. Gardening has moved and maybe the swaying
(48:37):
of plants, the way grass sways in the breeze. It
there's a lot of different the fluttering of butterfly going
by or things. There's a lot of aspects of gardening
that add to that complete sense, not just visual, but
the sense of smell, the sense of hearing, certainly, the
sense of touch. Back to the smell. By the way,
there are plants with very aromatic foldage tech Copper canyon
(49:03):
daisy as an example of that kind of plant. Rosemary
is one of my daughters. When she was little, we
had one of these roseberry Christmas trees in the house.
You know, it's a big container shape like a Christmas tree.
Is a rosemary a cushing plant. Those out afterwards, and
she would go up and hug that thing. She would
hug it. And she went through the house with rosemary
(49:27):
coming off of her like I mean, I thought Mussolini
had invaded or something and get out the pasta and
the Italian food. At his time. It was the whole
house smell like rosemary because she carried it with her
as she went. But the scent of such a nice
aspect of gardening. I mentioned earlier about you know, nature
and learning from nature, and that nature doesn't like bear soil.
(49:51):
You can fix that real eazy in your landscape by
using well landscaper. Spride has a couple of mulches I'd
like to talk about. First of all, is a cedar
mo really attractive? The holidays got that nice reddish smell,
the fresh the fresh look of cedar malts, the fresh
fresh aroma of cedar malts, you know as you're moulting
your beds walking through, it's beautiful. They also have their
(50:12):
black velvet that's a standard hardwood mult It's kind of
an immature compost what it amounts to, but it's been
it's been dark and it's full of life. It's not
it is not dyed. It is naturally dark, and it's
screened to be bulky enough to protect the surface of
the soil as most mulches do. Black velvet is widely available,
(50:34):
you know, like other landscapers privately, they got two dozen
or plus different kinds of products. Here in the hoast scenario.
You can go to garden centers, feed stores, ace hardware stores.
You know, Southwest fertilized a lot of places. You can
get south Landscapers Pride Quality Multus and then don't forget
their top soil. To anybody who is trying to level
out some holes in your yard, or maybe you are
(50:56):
redoing your yard, you can just get their top so
it's a sandy loam compost mix to help you repair
patchy areas, just smooth out even areas. It's also good
for bedprep, you know, if you're gonna prepare a bed
and you want to get a little more kind of
a soil based material in there in addition to the
organic matter. A sandy loam compost top dressing topswell from
(51:17):
Landscaper's Pride. You can go to Landscaperspride Dot com. They've
got all the information on their products there, including where
you can find them, including where you can find them.
All Right, what was I What was I talking about here?
Speaker 6 (51:33):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (51:33):
I wanted to talk a little bit about light plant lighting. Now,
any kid in school has learned that if you stick
a prism in front of light, it refracts the different
colors that are in light. What we see is white
is actually everything from a violet color through a blue,
(51:57):
through a green, through a yellow, through a red. That
whole range of colors is there in white light. But
each of those colors does different things in plants. You know,
we think light is light, white light is white light. No,
it's not. Each of the colors has different aspects that
the plants utilize. And for example, if I can oversimplify it,
(52:22):
blue and red are the two big ones. Those are
the ones that do most of the stuff we want
with plants. Blue is a something that really causes the
leaves to grow thicker. It causes the stems to a
long or to not elongate. It's a sign that there's
(52:44):
a good, strong light there. And it also plays a
part in photoperiodic flowering, which means when the days get longer,
when the days get shorter. The blue light is one
of the regulators of that process.
Speaker 6 (52:58):
You know.
Speaker 2 (52:59):
We know that holiday cactus, you know, blooms in the fall,
for example, or Point sett Is, and that is a
day length effect from blue light. So those are some
things blue light. Just think a blue light for vegetative
development and growth, primarily vegetative development and growth. And then
red light on the other hand, red is another thing
(53:23):
that makes the plant stockier, and it also helps the
plant go into blooming and fruiting. It's a big part
of blooming and fruiting, and it's also a big part
of some seed germination. Certain seeds you don't want to bury,
you put on the surface of the soil or barely
cover them because they need that red light. It's part
(53:44):
of the process of their germination. So blue and red.
So that's why sometimes you see lights that look purple,
and it's because they're primarily blue and red LEDs in
there for that. Now, so if you're going to grow plant,
let's say you're going to grow tomatoes. For plant, blue
is the most important one for producing good vegetative growth.
(54:05):
You don't just have blue lights, but that's an important one.
If you want those tomatoes as they get older to
then start blooming and fruiting. Red is the most important
aspect of that. And then the question is what about
green light? Green Light is a sign that you're growing
in the shade, you're competing with other other plants, and
(54:26):
as a result, you're going to find that though they
stretch a little bit, plants in the shade do trying
to get to light, and the photosynthesis down deeper in
the leaf occurs a little bit more because the light
is limited in that. I can talk about those a
little bit when we come back. We're about to have
to take a little quick break here and I'll talk
(54:48):
a little bit about some of the led grow lights.
And why would I just said maybe important phone number
if you'd like calder and break seven one three two
one two fifty eight seven. All right, little culture club, Hey,
welcome back to Guardenline. Good to have you with us.
Try to pay some upbeat music every around. Then. I
(55:12):
talked about a Nelson fertilizer for a long time now
because they have so many great products. But you know,
as we enter into the cool season, we think about
house plants more because house plants, you know, we're I
don't want to make it like we're hole up indoors
because it's a freezing blizzard outside. But we just spend
(55:32):
a little more time indoors sometimes in the cool season,
and your houseplants really twelve months out of the year
need to have a quality food that is providing them
the nutrients they need to do well. That is important.
You don't overfertilize any plant, but you do want to
fertilize all the plants that we have into some degree
in another. And a plant in a potting soil in
(55:55):
a container has a confined root system. So let's say
you've got a little i don't know if the leaf
fig or you know, Chinese evergreen or something, that little
plant in the container. If it was growing in its
native habitat in the ground, it would have roots way
out in all directions. But you've got it wound up
in a little tight container, and that container then has
(56:16):
it's the only place roots can get nutrients and water.
And so you've got to keep it adequately moist, but
not too wet, because both drought and too much water
are a problem. But it's think about the nutrients in
that container. Nutri star for indoor plants is it has
both slow and fast release nutrient sources to provide that
(56:37):
plant the vitality, the healthy development, the leaf growth. Primarily
with houseplants, we're looking at leaf growth, foliage, and you
can ply it once or twice during the winter time
because it's a slower time for plants to grow. But
as things, you know, as we get into longer day lengths.
As you know, even though your house is kind of
the same temperature most of the year, the day length
(56:58):
changes and the light quality and chain, and that's when
we kick into fertilizing our indoor plants even more. Nutri
Star for indoor plants by Nelson's an excellent product. Just
buy it, have it on hand because you're going to
use it all year. We are. Let's see, I'm gonna
go to Patty and Spring. Hey, Patty, welcome to garden Line.
Speaker 9 (57:18):
Thank you.
Speaker 10 (57:20):
I was wondering, is it too late for me to
fertilize my Saint Augustine.
Speaker 2 (57:30):
It won't hurt if you do it, but the benefits
are very minimal at this point in time. Now you
could put some down, it'll be there. There'll be a
little bit of nutrient uptake that occurs but now that
we're hitting the point where it's getting as cool as
it is and the daylenks is as short as it is,
the grass plant just isn't pulling in that nutrition at
(57:51):
the rate it was back in October, for example. And
so generally, if you look at my schedule, I don't
really talk about fertilizing, you know, when we hit this
point in the season. But if you had a situation
where the soil was very poor you didn't get fertilizing
done before, Yes you can, you can certainly do that
(58:12):
add to it, but just realize that a lot of
it will be lost over the wintertime as it gets
washed away in rains and so on.
Speaker 11 (58:21):
Okay, and then I have one more question.
Speaker 10 (58:23):
Is there any place that I readid my flower beds
in the front. We had some foundation work done, so
they kind of got trashed, but I don't know why.
I don't don't know what to put in them. Is
there anybody that would come that I could pay to say, Hey,
this would be good here and this would be good there.
Speaker 2 (58:46):
Well, what I would do is go to a good
quality mom and pop garden cent are like you hear
me talk about her on guard line and talk to them,
take them a picture of your yard and say, oh, look,
here's a bed that's law. What plants would you recommend
for cool season for this bet and then for spring
or summer, and they can give you some ideas, give
(59:08):
you kind of a mix. Maybe if it's plants for
the season we're in now, they'll have them on hand
where you can kind of look at them and see
if you like that and whatnot. I think that's the
best way to do it. Now. As far as you know,
you can have a landscaping company come out and do
planting for you know, puer Scapes goes out and does
color or bed maintenance and does seasonal planting. You can
(59:32):
have them do color changes through the year to keep
those beds looking good. So those would be a couple
of options for your question.
Speaker 11 (59:39):
Okay, all righty, thanks so much.
Speaker 2 (59:42):
All right, you bet, thank you for the call. Appreciate that, Patty.
We're going to go to George in Jersey Village. Hey, George, Yeah.
Speaker 11 (59:52):
Good morning, Skip. When I heard you talking to that
gentleman before about fragrant plants, and I made to know
it about the robina, but I didn't get the other to.
Speaker 2 (01:00:02):
Please Okay, well, I mentioned, uh that citrus blooms are
wonderfully fragrant. They have a wonderful fragrance. And so especially
if it's a smaller cus, you know, like oh, a
satsuma or a kumquat that you've got in a big container,
you can kind of put it on the patio where
you enjoy that breeze up close, or that fragrance up
(01:00:24):
first when the breeze blows through. Another one is uh
you see almond verbino was one in Texas Mountain Laurel.
The blooms look like clusters of purple grapes and they
have I don't know if you I know, I know
that that gaudy is something we use to describe things
(01:00:45):
we see, you know, like pink flamingos all in the
front yard. That's bloody. But I think if Gotty had
if fragrance could be gaudy, Texas Mountain Laurel would be gatty.
It's that do you remember the grape super bubble bubble
gum of the grape flavored that fragrant. That's what the
Texas Martin Laurel smells like. It is a sweet, syrupy
(01:01:09):
grape that'll you won't you will not fail to remember
it's there when it blooms only in spring, though. Am
I going to the neighbors all right, George, No, that's
their problem. No, they won't. They'll they'll love it. It'll
be diluted by the time it gets over there. Take
care of Josh. Appreciate appreciate your call. Uh where are
(01:01:31):
we here? We're going to go to Carroll in Sugarland. Hey, Carol,
welcome to garden morning.
Speaker 12 (01:01:37):
So I went ahead and got a Chinese fringe tree.
It's little, it's about four or five feet tall, and
it's got branches down that are kind of low. When
can I remove those branches? I don't want it to
grow like a bush. I wanted to grow like a tree.
Speaker 2 (01:01:54):
Yeah what okay, Here's what I would do, and this
is true of any tree for the other people listening.
If you will take the branches that are not permanent
and cut the end of the last four inches out
of them, tip them. We call that they will branch more,
but they won't become dominant at all. They'll be more dwarfed.
(01:02:16):
And then the branches that are gonna be permanent, leave
those to grow. And then when the ones you've been
tipping periodically, hit about just under an inch in diameter.
Cut them off then, and that woundlehill roll quickly. The
reason we're leaving them is they have foliage on them,
and if you were to strip off every branch that's
(01:02:37):
not permanent, you would be taking a lot of the
energy leaf producing branch area out of the plant and
you wouldn't get as rapid of a growth and development.
So what we're doing is we're saying we're not going
to let you put too much energy into this branch
because it's going to go, but we are going to
keep leaves on it because they are fueling the root
(01:02:59):
system and the growth of the plant itself. Does that
make sense, Yes, that's interesting.
Speaker 12 (01:03:05):
And also I've read different things about the soil preparation
and some people say, don't amend the soil at all
because you want it to get used to the clay soil.
Speaker 2 (01:03:17):
Okay, in a I'll have to do this quick because
I got to take a break in a situation where
you've got a tree that's going to have roots going
way out in all directions, much higher, much further than
the height of the tree in all directions. Amending a
small area doesn't do much. If it's a smaller plant,
and you can amend a large area, not the planting hole,
(01:03:40):
but let's say ten foot wide bed, you know, or
ten foot long bed, then go ahead and amend the
whole area to help it in its early growth. But
after you amend it, then dig the hole in plant.
Don't just throw a little fertilizer or compost in the
pot in the hole. That's going to not be good.
Don't do that.
Speaker 12 (01:04:01):
Okay, thank you, you bet.
Speaker 2 (01:04:04):
Thank you very much. We're going to take a break
right here. When we come back, Ben and Baytown, you
will be our first up. All right, welcome back, Welcome
back to garden. Good to have garden line, good, good
to have you with us today. Moss Nursery done in
Seabrook is one of those places that when you have
(01:04:25):
family in town for the holidays, you got to take
them out there. You know, you need an afternoon, get
a little stroll, enjoy it. Moss is a destination nursery.
This thing has been around for ages as a family
mom and pop garden center. Eight acres, eight acres of
gardener's paradise to wander through and you go in if
it's a cool day, go into the greenhouse and they
(01:04:47):
get warm. But you wouldn't believe the plant collection they have.
I mean, whoever's visiting you is going to want to
take a plan home when they go in there, because
there's everything from succulents, you know, cacti and other succulents,
to gorgeous foldage plants. I mean, Moss just has it all.
They whatever is seasonal, you know, right now, they got
good seasonal color, all the different kinds of bulbs and
(01:05:09):
holiday plants and things like that. Of course you can
find all those there, but it's always a good time
to plant trees and shrubs. Moss has got you covered
on that too. The main thing is just to get
out and enjoy it and check it out. You're not
going to find a place with any better selection of pottery.
I mean, they have a huge pottery selection from all
(01:05:31):
over the world and a lot of unusual things that
you walk around the corner, you see I've never seen
one of those before. Well that's because you're at Moss Nursery.
Moss nurseryes on Toddville Road in Seabrook. The website is
Moss Nurserymaas nursery dot Com. We're going to go now
to talk to Ben in Baytown. Hey Ben, welcome to
(01:05:54):
garden Line.
Speaker 6 (01:05:56):
Hey, good morning, Skip. I just want to ask you
a question. I got a little bitty oak sapling, I say,
a little bit. It's about two feet tall or so.
Is it too late in the year to transplant that
to another area?
Speaker 2 (01:06:12):
It is perfect time of the year. The best time
is when the leaves are falling off in the late fall,
even into the winter, but sooner is better. So you
could go out right now and move that thing. Get
as much of the root as you can. Main thing
is too watered in, really good, subtle the soil and
(01:06:34):
make sure you put it in the soil at the
same level that it was growing before. Don't plant it
too deep or too shallow. Okay.
Speaker 6 (01:06:42):
And I heard you say something when you're moss and
you talk about moss nurture, and you're saying, it's a
good time to plant shrubs as well.
Speaker 2 (01:06:52):
Oh gosh, yes, the best. And Ben, here's why. When
you put a shrub in the ground, First of all,
when you take it out of it contain they're going
to be roots circling and you want to cut those
and they will quickly branch within a couple of weeks.
I'll already be sending out new roots underground. But if
you do that now, it has all the way until
(01:07:12):
next May when it starts to get hot to develop
a root system. So when summer comes, it's much more resilient.
And if you waited until April to plant that same plant,
you could do that, of course, but you'd be a
little more touch and go on the watering of it
than you would if you get it planted at this time.
Speaker 5 (01:07:31):
Of the year.
Speaker 6 (01:07:33):
Okay, I see, yeah, give.
Speaker 2 (01:07:34):
Yourself, give yourself an advantage, give your plan a head.
Speaker 6 (01:07:37):
Start, all right, man, appreciation you take care, you.
Speaker 2 (01:07:42):
Bet you thanks appreciate that call very much. That is
absolutely the case. By the way, D and D Feed
in Tomball is an awesome, awesome place to go for
quality feeds.
Speaker 6 (01:07:57):
You know.
Speaker 2 (01:07:57):
They stock every kind of feed you can imagine, including
some really high end lines for dog food and other pets.
They are on twenty nine to twenty about three miles
west of two forty nine, So when you get when
you if you're on two forty now you're in Tombol
and you head out twenty nine to twenty about three
miles on the left. That Over family has been running
(01:08:17):
that place since nineteen eighty nine. And when you go
in there, if you hear me talk about products like
I've talked about heirloom soils or Nelson plant food or
Landscaper's Pride products, you know I'm talking about products from Nelson,
like turf Star, products from Medina, from Microlife, from Nitrofoss.
They're all there at D and D Feed, including a
(01:08:40):
better selection. I was really surprised first time I went
in there at their selection of things to control pests
and weeds and diseases too. D and D Feed and Supply.
That's your hometown feed store on the west end of Tombul,
just outside of town. We're going to go. Now, let's
see where are we here. We're going to go to
Cliff in Katie. Hello, Cliff, Welcome to garden Line.
Speaker 9 (01:09:03):
How are you doing good? To talk to you? Question
for you about mogunias.
Speaker 13 (01:09:10):
I'm I'm not not typically not able to take care
of plants very well, but this one is sort of
blossomed on me.
Speaker 9 (01:09:17):
And I don't know if.
Speaker 13 (01:09:19):
Begunia's gross actual additional stems, but it seems like this
one is sort of blossoming. And before I got some
microlive six two four, and I didn't know before I
start trying to keep it alive and do that kind
of thing, it's kind of flourishing, and I kind of
feel like, well, hey, heck, I just don't want to
touch it is. Let it just water it every now
(01:09:41):
and then and let it keep doing its magic. But
before I thought, before I start stepping into doing something
that I might regret, I just thought I'd give you
a call.
Speaker 2 (01:09:53):
And get your advice.
Speaker 9 (01:09:54):
I didn't know if microlife is something that you would
put in. I don't know how many of those pellets
to put in a little you know, base with this
well gone unit, so to speak.
Speaker 2 (01:10:04):
Ye, how big is there that container? How wide does?
How wide is the container they're growing in?
Speaker 9 (01:10:13):
So this one is about eight inches deep. I put
potting soil in it because, like I said, I don't
know what else to put in it. I just put
potting soil in it, dropped it in it. It's about
eight inches deep and it's it's a kind of a bowl.
So it starts at the top four or five six
inches round down at the bottom it's probably eight inches.
Speaker 2 (01:10:32):
Around Okay, so you know there's not a writer. Yes,
you can use micro life six two four. I would
probably put about oh maybe three tablespoons of it in
that container each time you with it. Begunias are warm
seasoned plants. They can't take cold, and generally we don't
(01:10:52):
fertilize those this late in the year. Now, if you're
going to bring it indoors, or if it is indoors,
well it's indoors. You've been little fertilizer. Okay, Well, it
just needs it just needs to be adequately watered to
keep it moderately moist but not soggy. When you sprinkle
the microlife in there, if you can kind of scratch
(01:11:14):
it into the surface a little bit, you know, when
I say scratch it, I'm kind of picturing, you know,
something that just kind of breaks not two inches deep,
just under the surface and water that helps it get
contact with the soil, and it does it does a
little bit better that way in terms of breaking down
and releasing those nutrients. Okay, Now, if I were you,
(01:11:34):
I would probably if I were I would probably instead
of using the six two four. I mean, that's a
good fertilizer, but I think I would use instead one
of their liquids. And Microlife makes a number of really
good liquid fertilizers. So I don't know if you've ever
seen any of those.
Speaker 6 (01:11:52):
No, not have not?
Speaker 2 (01:11:56):
So oh gosh, I'm just drawn a blank here and
I'll say the name of one in just a minute.
It's an orange label I'm trying to think of. Just
hang on, hang on to keep listening.
Speaker 1 (01:12:09):
Welcome to k t r H Garden Line with Skip Richards.
Speaker 2 (01:12:15):
Crazy trim.
Speaker 4 (01:12:22):
Just watch him as to see crazy not a sign.
Speaker 2 (01:12:43):
All right, folks, we're back. Let's get going. We've got
a lot to talk about on plants here on Guarden Line.
I'm your host, Skip Richter, and if you'd like to
give me a call you got a question, our phone
number seven one three two one two k t r
H seven one three two one two kt RH. Now,
winter is pruning season, primetime pruning season. Can we print
(01:13:07):
otther time of the year? Yes? Absolutely, Primetime is the
cool season that that's when we try to get it
most done. And uh, if you are interested in having
somebody come out and do it right, you need to
call Affordable Tree Martin spoon More. He knows what he's doing.
He's done this a long time. He's a professional at it.
(01:13:28):
And Martin and his wife Joe answer their own phones
when you call them at seven one three six nine
nine two six six three. It's the owners that answer
the phone. And if you don't talk to Martin or Joe,
call up all the wrong number, not wrong place, uh
seven one three, six nine nine two six six three.
(01:13:48):
You can also go to his website aff tree Service
dot com. Afftree service dot com. He does all things
for trees, you know, if you need pruning done, deep
root feeding, just checking the trees, overall health advice on
things you're doing around the tree. Hey Martin, I'm going
to put in a driveway over here. You know, what
is it is that okay? Or what can I do
(01:14:10):
to prevent damage to the tree, all those kind of
things that bring them in. Trees are the most valuable
single plant in your landscape, and they are very valuable
of the house. They're valuable for the shade in the summer.
And if you haven't been in the Houston summer yet,
well God bless you get ready. But it's good to
have shade trees, and they're valuable and you don't want
(01:14:31):
to have somebody that doesn't know what they're doing. Mess
with them, because when they do damage to a tree
by bad pruning, it's for life. I mean just it is.
And also if damage is done in construction or anything
like that, it's it threatens the life of the tree,
certainly the early growth, but maybe the life or the
structural stability of it itself. Call Martin seven to one
(01:14:54):
three six ninety nine two six six ' three. We
are going to go now to uh talk to Cliff
and Katie. Hey, Cliff, what, Oh no, we already talked
to Cliff.
Speaker 9 (01:15:07):
You did I saw you still heart?
Speaker 2 (01:15:12):
Okay, you were asking me. I thank you for hanging around. Well,
bless your heart hanging around so long. Micro Life bio
Matrix is the one I couldn't put the name on.
It's the orange label. It's a little court jar you
can buy in a gallon, but it's a seven to
one three fertilizer. So it supports that foliage growth really well,
(01:15:33):
and you'll get good blooms on them as well. But
that's that is a good one. There are the good
micro Life products. But I like the liquid. You mix
it a little bit of water every time you water.
You put a little bit of that in and it
it just does. Well, that's probably going to serve you
better than the granules on your indoor play. Well, thanks
so much, all right, thank you, thank you. Okay, yeah,
(01:15:56):
you know the I uh, all right, here we go
and go to now Rick and Spring Branch. Hey, Rick,
welcome to.
Speaker 7 (01:16:04):
Guard Hi skipper, love your show, really do. You're doing
a good good job.
Speaker 14 (01:16:11):
Next week it's going to be I'll see right now,
it's going to be thirty nine degrees on Wednesday.
Speaker 7 (01:16:17):
You think my tomatoes will be okay?
Speaker 14 (01:16:18):
It's a pretty weighty question because I have over a
hundred of them on there.
Speaker 2 (01:16:25):
They'll be okay, they won't they won't be freeze damaged.
As we get closer to freezing, if we have a
good clear night, we may have the potential for frost.
It doesn't have to be thirty two degrees in the
air for there to be a frost. I don't just
(01:16:45):
kind of watch for that, see what the Yeah, well,
all you would have to do for the frost anyway
is just throw a cover over them. You don't need
heat underneath for that temperature. But thirty thirty nine is
a little high to have a frost, but it could happen.
Speaker 14 (01:17:01):
Okay, I hope not. Well that gets me to my
second question. I was going to talk about my compost.
Is there anything I have like I do my own
I do.
Speaker 7 (01:17:11):
A lot of work on my compost.
Speaker 14 (01:17:12):
I spend a lot of time because I use my
own compost, and I use row soil and micro light.
I use those three and I'm doing really well, especially
with my tomatoes.
Speaker 7 (01:17:25):
Is there anything that I can feed sounds like.
Speaker 14 (01:17:29):
My compost, Like go like the Southwest fertilizer and back
and actually get a bag of something to enhance it.
Speaker 7 (01:17:38):
I put all my scraps in there.
Speaker 14 (01:17:39):
I put my coffee grounds all that stuff, and my
my compost as well, always does real well.
Speaker 7 (01:17:46):
But to feed the worms, I never.
Speaker 2 (01:17:51):
Yeah, you're you're doing it good worms. Are we talking
about an earthworm?
Speaker 4 (01:17:57):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (01:17:59):
Are we talking about the little red wigglers?
Speaker 7 (01:18:02):
The little red wigglars?
Speaker 2 (01:18:04):
Which worm? Okay? They like food scraps, uh, And well
that's what I'm doing. Yeah. If you if you put
if you put food scraps into the compost, that they
like that. They don't like it hot, So you know,
a cold compost with food scraps. The red wigglers will
feed on those food scraps. That's what people make what's
called verma culture bins for raising worms, and they're they're
(01:18:27):
based on newspaper and food scraps. That's that's all they need.
Sounds like you're doing everything right. You got a good
mix this red wigglers do. Yeah, go onlining and and
just do a search for verma culture bin. I used
to have something online. I don't know if I still do,
but anyway, Uh yeah. You take a you know, one
(01:18:49):
of those rubber made tubs, and you tear up tiny
strips of newspaper about an inch wide, wet them, moisten them,
and then throw in some some fruit food scraps and
put yours in there. And they go to town and
they turn the whole thing into worm castings in time.
So okay, But sounds like you're doing good. You got
you got anything going all the province y'all for a
(01:19:11):
long time. Y'all help me out there, all right, thank
you sir? Well, good, well, good, sounds like you're doing
a good job. You bet take care of that. Is
that is the case. He's doing an excellent job based
on all of that. Plants for all seasons is on
two forty nine Tomball Parkway just north of Louetta. You
(01:19:34):
exit Louetta and go one just north of Louetta heading
toward Tomball Way. There they are right on the right
hand side. Been around said it's nineteen seventy three. That's
a long time. And this family owned business is true
lawn and garden experts from the family members, many several
of them work there, to the employees they hire that
(01:19:55):
are very knowledgeable and well trained. You can go in
there with pictures and samples. They help diagnose them for you.
Uh you know, like they say, get your green on
at Plants for All Seasons. That is so true. I
don't care if you're a master gardener or if you're
a first time gardener. Go to Plants for All Seasons
and you will get the help you need. You'll get
the quality plants you want. Plants for All Seasons dot
(01:20:17):
com two eight, one three, seven, six one six for six.
I'm gonna take a little break here and we'll be
right back. I got some more stuff to talk about.
I'm gonna get back into the colors of light on
plants a little bit, and then i gotta talk about
missile to today Oh yeah, we feel good this morning
(01:20:37):
because we're gardeners and it's always a good day for gardeners.
Welcome back to garden Line. You want to give me
a call seven one three two one two k t
R H seven one three two one two k t
R h U. If you uh, you know, you got
family in for the holidays and stuff and h You
may notice a door is sticking. You know, you never
(01:20:58):
go through that door much, but suddenly now it's kind
of sticking. And you look, there's a crack in the
sheet rock. You go outside, there's a crack in the brick.
That means things are moving around, which we do not
want our slab moving around, but it happens. We live
in Houston high shrink swell potential soils, meaning they get dry,
they shrink, they get wet, they swell, and that movement
(01:21:18):
takes its toll. Is it a problem you need to
deal with? Well, you don't know, but you can find
out by calling Ty Strickland. Tis an honest fella, been
doing this for twenty three years. Fix myslab dot com,
Fix my slab. That's his company. Fixmyslab dot com Free
estimates for Gardenline listeners. Telling me you heard about him
on garden Line. Give him a call. Two eight one
(01:21:40):
two fiy five forty nine forty nine. Two eight one
two five five forty nine forty nine. Even in these
expensive times, Tie is still committed to giving you a
fair price, showing up on time, oh my gosh, and
fixing it right. And he doesn't just tew foundations. They
can fix driveways and sidewalks too, They can level them
(01:22:03):
of those, they can replace him a new concrete. He
does it all. Is a native Hewstonian, fifth generation Texan.
Ty knows our soils, he knows what happens, and he
knows when and how to fix things. Give him a
call find out about it. Ty Strickland fix my slab
two eight one two five forty nine forty nine. Never
(01:22:26):
never good news to know you need work done on
anything from plumbing to electrical slabs to whatever you name.
Speaker 6 (01:22:33):
It.
Speaker 2 (01:22:33):
Never good. But when you do, you want somebody that's
going to treat you right, that's going to show up
and be honest. My gosh, I wish that I could
have that going back in time. All the times I've
hired some person to do some sort of repair on
my property, it doesn't always turn out that way. But
it's nice to know you got people that do do
(01:22:56):
that kind of work. I was talking about lights earlier
and the fact that there's blue I guess to summarize
some things I was talking about, is the blue wavelength
is primary for vegetative growth. The red wavelength is primarily
for blooming and fruiting. And certain seeds that we plant
on the surface, they need red light as part of
(01:23:17):
their germination process. Now there's green light, which is what
you find in the interior. Let's say have a tree
or underneath the tree. You know, the red light and
the blue light get absorbed, but the green light makes
it down into the interior of the tree more. But
for a plant getting green light and not the red blue,
that's a sign that hey, I'm in the shade and
(01:23:38):
I gotta stretch out and grow a little further. I
got to have a little more photosynthesis going on in
my leaves with a little bit of light that's coming in.
So they developed that. I don't know if you've ever
grown a those moth orchids, the kind you just see everywhere,
I mean even in a supermarket. Those moth orchids, they'revery
(01:23:59):
easy to grow, but if you put them in not
enough light, they actually get dark emerald green color because
they are trying to pack as much chlorophyll in there
to capture the few little photons coming through to the
leaves and make the best of it. And that's just
that's an example of that kind of response. But anyway,
(01:24:19):
I want to talk about plant growing. You plant a
tomato ceiling, you want to get a transplant for the garden.
The blue light is especially important now you really need
it all. It doesn't hurt to havele just regular white light.
You don't have to buy one of these lights like
certain indoor grower producers used that just have blue and
red colors in them. Just gets you a good light.
(01:24:41):
But the blue is most important for vegetative growth, and
then the red when we get into blooming and fruiting,
that is the most important too. Now we can get
real nerdy about light. I mean, we can talk about
all kinds of factors. Just know this, people and plants
(01:25:01):
don't see and measure light the same way. When we
measure light, we want to know how many lumens is
that light bulb? How many lumens is it? That's what
you see on a light bulb package. Plants want to
know how much photosynthetically active light is coming through. They
(01:25:22):
call that photosynthetic. Photosynthetically active radiation is what it's called. Now,
what is that par I'm just going to say par
from now on about that. Lumens are for humans, par
is for plants. Remember that. So when you go by
a light made to light up your house, all you
know is that it's either a warm white or a
(01:25:42):
cool white or some version of those. That's fine. That
that's what we need. We need to see. Plants need
light to function for photosynthesis. They are the ones that
can take sunlight and turn it into plant food and
turn it into people food too, by the way, And
so when you're purchasing a plant light, if you're just
(01:26:06):
going to grow a few seedlings, something that is in
the cool spectrum and the warm spectrum cool as blue,
warm as red. That that is, if you have a
balance of those two, that's going to be a decent
light just to get your seedling up and growing. But
if you really want to grow quality seedlings, or if
you want to grow plants further than just seedlings, like
(01:26:27):
maybe you're bringing some cold sensitive plants in for the
winter and you need to supplement the light on those
or provide light for them. You can get a quality
led grow lamp designed for plants and you can learn
more about that. And I'm going to post something to
my web page. I meant to do it this past week.
I will this week get it posted to the web
page on lighting so you can understand better. Maybe you're
(01:26:50):
thinking about purchasing a plant light for yourself or for
a Christmas gift for a gardener on your list. Buyer, beware,
there's all lot of stuff out there that is just
not helpful or not true. They say this is a
plant light, but when you get into looking at it,
it's only a plant light if you put it two
(01:27:11):
inches from the plant and leave it on fourteen hours
sixteen hours a day. You know, in other words, it's not.
So we can clarify that. My article will clarify that
a little bit. But just remember, if you're going to
start seedlings, if you've done it before and they're lanky
and spinley and they break over, and you know they
just are not good seedlings, it's because of the lighting.
(01:27:32):
And that is the number one thing that goes wrong
when people try to grow plants is the lighting. Water
is an issue, nutrients are an issue, temperature is an issue,
all of that, but lighting is the biggest mistake we make.
And once we get past, oh, let's say Christmas time,
we get into New Year's it is time to be
planting seedlings of things you're going to plant out in
(01:27:54):
your garden in the spring. Things like tomatoes and peppers
and whatnot. Those all come after wee get past these
holiday season, it's time to get them in the ground,
maybe even before if you live in the southern part
of the listening area. Let's see here, we're going to
go out to Katie now and we're going to talk
to Bob. Hello, Bob, Welcome to garden Line.
Speaker 15 (01:28:15):
Hello.
Speaker 6 (01:28:17):
Yes, sir, I was wandering to think about a growing scrape. Yeah,
I think about growth of grapes.
Speaker 16 (01:28:24):
Heare out here in Katie, and I was wondering what.
Speaker 6 (01:28:27):
Style of grapes I have and what should a soil
be Like.
Speaker 2 (01:28:33):
Grapes are pretty forgiving a soil. They don't want to
be in soggy soil. And you know out here it
can rain a lot at times where we end up
with a swamp so especially if it's a clay soil.
Or a low spot. You need to build up a
bed to make sure drainage is good. That said, grapes
are pretty forgiving of the soil. As far as grape
(01:28:55):
types there. If you want to make a white wine,
there is a variety you called blanc dubois blanc. It's
blanc b L A N C d U B O
I S. I believe it is how they it's it's French,
so I believe it's Blanc dubis is it. It's a
green grape and it makes a white wine. And it's
(01:29:18):
Pierce disease resistance. That's a number one grape killing disease
that we have here in the southeast part of the state.
It's Pierce's disease. And you've got to have resistant varieties.
So Blanc dubis is a white wine one. If you're
looking for let's see for red wines. Oh boy, there
(01:29:39):
are you know what? Let me let me do this
first to give you the best answer. If you go
to the Aggie Horticulture web page, just do a search
for Aggie Horticulture.
Speaker 6 (01:29:51):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (01:29:51):
And on that front page there's a fruit there's a
fruit and not resources page on there. And if you
get into that, there are Pierce's Disease Tolerant Grape listing
uh and it's one of the publications on there. There's
also an art publication on grape arbors. If you want
to go that route with it on there. But you
(01:30:14):
want a tolerant variety, black Spanish lenore is another name
for it. Black Spanish is an old time red grape
that's grown here. A lot of those kinds of grapes
are not going to perform. They're not going to have
the qualities of wine that you might in some of
the fine wines you buy in the store that are
grown in more arid regions. But they they will grow here.
Speaker 9 (01:30:39):
Yeah, okay, don't think about it.
Speaker 2 (01:30:40):
And then if you want a table grape, yeah, I
was just going to say, if you want to if
you want a table grape, go ahead.
Speaker 11 (01:30:52):
Oh sorry, I'll playing them in an.
Speaker 5 (01:30:55):
Old orbs tross, you know, to make sure it's playing
granted holes in there.
Speaker 9 (01:30:59):
That works like a.
Speaker 5 (01:31:01):
Kind of like a race bet almost.
Speaker 2 (01:31:04):
Well, it would, but I would more use the ring
without the bottom, the sides without the bottom. If you
want to go that route, it provides them some soil.
Grapes are going to need a much larger area than
the horse trough holes for roots to grow in. So
just you can buy those rings that have no bottom
in them. They're not for holding water, and you could
(01:31:25):
do that, or you could just make a raised box bed,
however you want to go about it. I'm gonna have
to take a break here pretty quick for the for
a commercials, but I would do that. I would go
to the Aggie Horticulture website though. You'll learn a lot
on there about those and get some other good ideas.
I just threw out a few varieties for you all.
Speaker 6 (01:31:44):
I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (01:31:45):
Okay, thanks, Bob, appreciate that. We're gonna take a little break.
When we come back. We will talk to Bob in
Friendswood and Fran and Katie welcome back to garden Line.
Glad you are listening today. We've got a burn to
things talk about, including your questions. At seven one three
two one two fifty eight seventy four, we're going to
(01:32:07):
go to Friends with now and talk to Bob. Hey, Bob,
welcome to garden Line.
Speaker 15 (01:32:12):
Good morning, Skip, thank you.
Speaker 2 (01:32:15):
Sure.
Speaker 15 (01:32:18):
So I have a we just bought a new home
down in Lamark and uh, I'm wanting to put some
red mulberry trees back there, And first off, I guess
is that a good area for red mulberry trees?
Speaker 2 (01:32:32):
They would? They will do fine there, they sure will.
Speaker 15 (01:32:35):
Yeah, do you happen to know any places in the
Houston area where I can purchase them?
Speaker 2 (01:32:46):
Down south? I might try calling Moss Nursery over in
Seabrook or Jorges Hidden Gardens down in Alvin. There are
some other garden centers down your way. The names are
escaping me right now as I try to think of them. Uh,
(01:33:07):
but those two would be a place to start.
Speaker 6 (01:33:11):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (01:33:11):
And if you if you run, if you can't find one,
you're sure welcome to email me and I can. I
can look into it more specifically on the red mulberries
and probably do a better job giving you a source.
But that that would just mean, you know, hang on
after our call, and my producer will give you an
(01:33:32):
email address if you want, if you want to.
Speaker 6 (01:33:35):
Do that, Okay, Yeah, that sounds great, I appreciate.
Speaker 2 (01:33:38):
Yeah, you bet. That's not a common fruit tree really here.
I mean, not like you know, peaches or citrus or things.
Speaker 6 (01:33:46):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (01:33:47):
And so I just off the top of my head,
I'm just not sure down in your area? Who carries those?
Speaker 6 (01:33:55):
Thanks?
Speaker 2 (01:33:55):
Thanks sir, appreciate that call. You bet.
Speaker 6 (01:34:00):
It.
Speaker 2 (01:34:01):
Let's go to Katie now and talk to Fran. Hey, Fran,
welcome to garden line.
Speaker 16 (01:34:05):
Oh thanks. I'm just wondering if you have any tips
on how to keep spoils from digging in your garden beds,
digging holes and into the newly planted bushes and such.
How to is there a way to stop them?
Speaker 2 (01:34:21):
Any tips? Yeah? So, I don't know how much bed
area you have that they're digging in, but some gardeners,
and I've done this myself, is put wire on the ground,
you know, sections of wire. I have an area where
the dogs were always digging in the beds and things,
(01:34:42):
and I just took some chicken wi I actually bought
the kind that's green coated metal, kind of covered with
a green plastic coating so you don't really see it,
and I just laid it on the surface and took
a few pins to pin it down. And that keeps
them out of there. And if it's a bed where
you've got to get in and change the flowers all
(01:35:02):
the time, uh, then that that's not going to be practical.
But if it's just some shrubs and things that would work.
Speaker 16 (01:35:09):
Okay, okay, that's sound good. I'll try that, thank you.
Speaker 2 (01:35:13):
Okay, you bet. One other thing, one other thing you
could try, and and is sometimes gardeners have told me
they use they'll use mothballs and they'll throw a few
around the bed, and not a whole bunch of them,
just a few, and it creates an odor that a
lot of plant or a lot of critters don't like
(01:35:34):
that smell. I mean, if you've ever smelled mothballs, they're
pretty pungent, And of course you'll smell it when you're
outside if you're the ones blowing the right way. But
you might try that and see if that kind of
gets them out of that bed and off to something else.
Just another idea, Sure you bet, Thank you, Thanks for
the call. Okay, here we're going to go now to
(01:35:58):
Bob in freend Ones. Would hey, Bob, welcome to garden Line.
Speaker 15 (01:36:04):
Yes, sir, I think you already answered my red mullberry questions.
Speaker 2 (01:36:08):
Oh okay, okay, okay, thank you very much. I'm close off.
Let's see, we're gonna go down to Jeff and Clearla
like Hey Jeff.
Speaker 5 (01:36:19):
Hi, good morning, Skiff, I've got a hedgerow of azalea's.
They're probably about three and a half feet high. They're sick,
they're long and down at the base. In one area
there are all these like thread or maybe a little
string sized, light green, tall weeds that kind of like
(01:36:40):
a vine, and it has little tiny leaves hanging off,
but they go all the way up, okay, to the top,
and they kind of lay over on top, and I
don't know how to kill them. I just pull them
out from the top, but it doesn't really kill the root,
so I don't know how to get rid of them
without hurting the azalea.
Speaker 2 (01:36:57):
Okay, to number one, I can put you on hold
and you can send me a picture, and that allows
me to be sure of what I'm talking about. We
can do that if it is a broadly vine, in
other words, it's not a grass plant that's growing through there.
It's a broadly plant of vine. You can dab a
(01:37:19):
product containing triclope here on the leaves or stem of that.
The safest way to do it is to build a
little weed wiper, which I have to online. You can
see how to build one. They're inexpensive and easy and
you'll use them a lot around the landscape because that
allows you to put that product on the sponges of
the weed wiper, and you reach right in there and
(01:37:41):
you get it on the stem of the vine, and
you get it on the leaves of the vine, and
it'll translocate down and kill them. That's one option. Another
is to cut the vines off a few inches above
the ground and just use a little spongebrush like you
get at the paint store, a little narrow spongebrush, dip
it in the triclopere and wipe it on the stem
(01:38:03):
and the cut surface of the vine. And that's another
way to go about that.
Speaker 5 (01:38:09):
No, that's good, I think. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (01:38:13):
Ahead, okay, you have you have you ever been to
my website Gardening with Skip dot com? Uh no, sir, okay,
So go there and you'll see Skip's weed wiper. It's
a publication shows you how to build one. You'll also
see herbicides to use on Skip's weed wiper. And so
(01:38:34):
whatever you're trying to control, maybe it's wild onions coming
up in the yard, maybe it's poison ivy, you know,
over in a shrub or the vine you're talking about.
It'll tell you what products to use to wipe on
those particular kinds of unwanted plants.
Speaker 5 (01:38:51):
Yes, I will do it at the top. The base
is so nested down and they almost can't get in there,
you know what I mean. So yeah, hopefully it'll work
to the top. I appreciate it all that.
Speaker 2 (01:39:01):
Just just be extra careful, yeah, yeah, the track will.
Just be real careful not to get it on your
It will kill broad leaf weeds period, whether it's a
lovely azalea, a petunia, or the weed you're trying to kill,
it'll kill them all if you get it on them,
So be real careful, yes, sir.
Speaker 5 (01:39:17):
I will. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (01:39:19):
Thank you, you bet, thank you. I appreciate that. U.
League City feed Down in League City is your go
to place for quality feeds down in that area. You know,
if you're if you're in any of the communities around
League City, this is your hometown feed store. So people
in Santa Fe and San Leon and Dickinson and Webster
(01:39:41):
and clear Lake City and Lamark and this is your
hometown feed store. You just head to League City. It's
on Highway three, just a few blocks south of ninety six.
Highway three, A few blocks south of ninety six. You're
going to find the products I talk about, like nitrofoss
and microlife, Nelson play food asamite. There. They carry a
(01:40:03):
wide variety of pesticides and herbicides and fungicides, and of
course they have feed store. They got feet stuff. But
if you're a gardener or a lands it won't take
care of your landscape. You got to go by there.
Here's the phone number two eight one three three two
sixteen twelve. They are open Monday through Saturday nine to six,
so you can swing by there after work, and they're
closed on Sunday. League City Feet. I've got to run
(01:40:25):
here to break Bill and Friends with You'll be the
first up when we come back. Welcome back, Welcome back
to garden Line. All right, on a good day for gardening.
And yes, I know, I know you're saying, but it's
raining outside. It's hardly going to get about fifty today.
How can that be a good day for gardening. It's
(01:40:47):
a great day for gardening. It's time to listen to
garden Line on the radio, which we're going to be
doing that till ten o'clock. It is time to get
out the seed catalogs and dream, dream about the wonderful
things you're going to plant this year's time. You could
even you know, brave souls can get out and visit
a garden center if you want to do on a
day like this, that's all right. I like I do
(01:41:08):
it less crowds and days like this too. It is
a good time to take care of house plants, to
plan your house plants, to fertilize. If you need anything repotted,
this would be a good time to do it. To
get online and order some equipment and things for gardening
and supplies. You need lots of stuff to do for gardening,
even on a day like this. Bukin's Native Plants, they've
(01:41:28):
got a house plant greenhouse that is covered. It's it's
a greenhouse, a plast to cover over the top. You
can go in there and shop on a day like this,
and man, do they have a good selection all kinds
of open things, all kinds of things that are there.
And they're open today by the way too. Now if Buchanan,
they've got an event coming up that is today that
(01:41:49):
I really think you need to consider, and that's the
holiday open house that's today. There's live music, there's kids crafts.
There's a sanob there. There'll be drinks. When Buchanans puts
on a party, it's always a great event, always a
great in this case a free event. They're on Eleventh
Street in the Heights. Eleventh Street in the Heights is Buchanans. Now.
(01:42:10):
They specialize in natives, native plants. Nobody has as many
native plants as Beginnings does in this whole region. So
if you're thinking about adding a native plant. Earlier I
talked about I don't know what was it. Button bush
does well in wet areas. You know, so you got
this wet, soggy area. What can what shrub can I
plant there that will attract butterflies? Button bush is a
(01:42:32):
good example. Where do you get it? Well, Buchanans has it.
They've got a lot others too, And fall is the
time to plant, even if you're not going to get
out and planet it today, Get the plant, bring it home.
When the weather clears and it'll be clearing up here,
you can get out there and get the job done.
At Buchanans Plants, go to Buchanansplants dot com. That's the
website Buchanansplants dot com. Sign up for their newsletter. You
(01:42:54):
need to hear what's going on, and they always have
good educational materials available. Throw on a coat, get out there,
enjoy the holiday open house that they're having today. We're
going to go to Friends with now and visit with Bill. Hello, Bill,
Welcome to garden Line.
Speaker 17 (01:43:11):
Good morning Skip. I've got seven variety of citrus plants
in my backyard, including some Persian limes, satsumas, and meyer lemons.
And I'm going to be gone on and off for
about a month here in the beginning in about a
week and then into January. I'm worried about coming home
(01:43:33):
and find them all dead. I was wondering, I've got
like wire those a little wire cages around them. I
was wondering if it makes sense for me to go
out and get some like leaf moll composts and dump
it in there up to the stock up to the
leaf level to try and protect the you know, would
(01:43:54):
it be okay to put you know, something like that
on the stems for that length of time to help help.
Speaker 2 (01:44:01):
You could do that A uh yeah, A fairly find
textured compost put around the base will help protect uh
uh and insulate uh and you see citrus orchards in Florida.
When it's going to rain, they'll or Texas they'll pile
giant cones of soil up around the base and that way,
if it freezes back to the top of that soil cone,
(01:44:24):
well at least you've got something above the graft to regrow,
so that that would be step one. You're on the
right track there.
Speaker 5 (01:44:31):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (01:44:31):
You just you just want to remember pardon.
Speaker 17 (01:44:35):
Saying, get you know, get it away from it after
I get back, as soon as I get back.
Speaker 2 (01:44:40):
Yeah, when you can get it back, get it back
from there. Don't leave it long term. But you do
want to finder textured compost because you don't want air
to blow through that, you know, and you want it
to you want it to hold in some heat there.
But that would do it. On my website, Gardening with
skip dot com, there's a publication on protecting plants and
frosts and freezes that I wrote with one of our
(01:45:03):
hort specialists at A and M. It is nine page,
I think it's nine pages, full color, lots of information.
I would definitely go check that out today. You can
print it up if you want, or just read it
online and that will give you some guidance. You can
create a structure over the more cold tender things. And
(01:45:25):
let's say you make a PVC box. Just think of
that a PVC igloo or a box. I like to
bend the PBC pipe in an arch over it in
two or three different directions, and then throw a cover
over the whole thing. If it's a clear cover, it'll
get too hot underneath there. If it's a shady cover.
To not have sunlight for how long are you going
(01:45:46):
to be gone?
Speaker 7 (01:45:47):
Over? About a month?
Speaker 2 (01:45:50):
About a month, it's a little long to not get
any sunlight at all. If you had anybody who would
locally be willing to come by and drop the sides
down and just put some bricks, you know, you have
the weights and stuff there and secure that and then
when the freeze is done, take it off. If it
(01:46:11):
gets if we get you know, warm sunny days, and
they're boxed up in a clear cover, it gets too
hot in there too. That would be the ultimate protection,
is to have that covering over it. That air dead,
air space, no air blowing through covering.
Speaker 11 (01:46:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:46:26):
Now I do have RSA.
Speaker 17 (01:46:27):
I got these like metal fences around them. They go
up to about two and a half feet tall, and
I got a bunch of frost cloths I could kind
of with with the mulch inside, kind of put the
frost class around it and then but not cover up
the top of the tree so much. It might help keep.
Speaker 2 (01:46:45):
You can cover if you Yeah, if you have a
frost cloth level thickness of that spun bomb polyester, that
that would give some protection a few degrees. Now, things
like satsumas, they're going to be very hearty and we're
probably not going to have weather that kills us atsuma
and while you're gone. But some things like lemons and
(01:47:07):
limes are very coold tender, So yeah, you may prioritize
how you do that.
Speaker 17 (01:47:12):
Okay, Well, thank you very much, appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (01:47:16):
Well, good luck with it. And if any citrus survives,
I just ask you bring me half the produce to
the station and we'll call it even. Thank you, Bill,
bye bye. All right. Oh you're listening to the garden line,
and oh my gosh, the clock says that I got
to quit talking. I don't want to quit talking. I've
(01:47:37):
had a lot to talk about here. I keep telling
you we're going to talk about mistletoe. We are just
stick around and be patient. I'm going to tell you
stuff about mistletoe that you did not know. That's a
bold statement that I am. I'm going to tell you
stuff about mistletoe you not know.
Speaker 6 (01:47:54):
Now.
Speaker 2 (01:47:55):
I will not tell you how to get your favorite
significant other underneath that that you're gonna have to work
that out yourself. But I will talk about some of
the wonders of mistletoe when you come back. You are
listening to garden Line. Our phone number is seven one
three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one
(01:48:15):
three two one two five eight seven four. You can
check the out online at gardening with skip dot com.
Lots of good information there. I talked about that fees
and cross protection. Hey, don't wait until the night of
the freeze. Download it now. Let this supply you know
and you'll be ready.
Speaker 1 (01:48:37):
Welcome to kzy r H garden Line with skimp Richter's so.
Speaker 2 (01:48:41):
Please crazy trip. Just watch you as will tell us
so many.
Speaker 3 (01:48:57):
Gothies to supposy not a side.
Speaker 2 (01:49:09):
All right, folks, Welcome back to guarden Line. Glad you're listening.
Glad to have you with us today. It's a good
day to be inside listening to Garden Line right now.
I hope you can bundle up and enjoy getting out
some of the things that you can be out there
doing today. Begin has had that big event going on.
I definitely don't want to miss that. Starts right after
(01:49:30):
the Garden Line show, by the way, ten o'clock until
you don't want to delay, get there and enjoy that.
I'm sure they're going to have some cover for you.
I know they do in the greenhouse there. It's a
good thing.
Speaker 12 (01:49:42):
Well.
Speaker 2 (01:49:42):
Medina Products has been a fixture of Garden Line for long,
long before I sat down in this chair. And Medina
is loved by gardeners because they have a number of
different products and they work. That's kind of the bottom
line on it. One of them i'd like to feature
right now is called Medina Plus now Medinasol Activator, a
(01:50:05):
different product. Medinosol Activator has been around for a long time,
very popular with gardners. Medina Plus takes that Medinosol Activator
adds about forty different trace elements natural growth hormones from
seaweed like side of kindness for example. It's got additional
elements like magnesium and iron and zinc and so on,
(01:50:27):
of vitamins, and other things. It's going to be the
kind of thing you would use as a folier feed,
won't burn your plants. It is especially helpful at transplanting time.
You can drench that new transplant in with Medina Plus
and it helps establish roots. It helps early growth. You're
going to have better establishment, You're going to have better
(01:50:49):
growth in everything. When a plant is healthy, everything is improved,
so increasing blooming and promoting fruit set and other things
like that by just making the plant very very healthy,
very very vigorous. Now when you're using it, you can
you can buy it by the court and mix it up,
(01:51:10):
put it in a wateringkin. That's how I would apply
it as I do apply it. Or you could do
a hose in sprayer. That's another option, so you could
use it on lawns and things like that if you wished, Uh,
but you could what are your plants in with that?
Just go over the whole garden with that hose en sprayer,
applying it to the foliage and the and the roots
as well. Medina Plus from the folks at Medina and
(01:51:32):
Medina products again widely available here in the Greater Houston area.
You're not going to mean trouble finding those products. Now
I've been talking about coming in and discussing missiletoe, so
let's jump in to the mistletoe discussion. So the mistletoe
(01:51:54):
is a parasitic plant that essentially lives off of other plants.
So you see it in trees. For example, some trees
are especially prone to it. Hackberries very prone to mistletoe,
but not the only variety. In fact, a lot of
different trees are attacked by mistletoe. Did you know they're
(01:52:14):
over thirteen hundred species of mistletoe worldwide. Fortunately, they don't
all grow here. We just have a couple of types
here in North America that are native and then a
few species that have found their way in to North
America as well. But they can only live on a
host plant. So what they do is the mistletoe sea
(01:52:37):
lands on the plant bark and it sprouts in its
sends the equivalent of a root's actually called a hostoria
into the tree branch, and then the root like structure
just populates that area and it draws the nutrients and
the water the minerals in the water from the tree.
(01:53:01):
Mistletoe is green, the stems are green, and so they
can photosynthesize and make their own carbohydrates on the plant. Okay,
that's how they live now. Interestingly enough, in the America,
mistletoe the primarily one we deal with this called phorodendron.
That's the genus of it, and what it means is
thief of the tree in Greek. So it literally is drawing.
(01:53:25):
It is sucking water nutrients out of the tree through
those Australia roots and they can live many, many, many years,
and it generally doesn't kill trees, although it can get
to be so bad that it really severely weakens the tree.
Second fun fact about mistletoe. Did you know they're separate
male and female plants. Yeah, separate male and female plants
(01:53:47):
and mistletoe. So the female plants produce the berries, those
little white, gelatinous, kind of sticky berries. If you've ever
grabbed one and squeezed on it and everything, it's it's
just it's a gooey mess. But here's another fun fact,
a cool thing. The seeds. The berries have seeds inside.
(01:54:10):
They pump water into the seed and there is so
much pressure in that berry that when it explodes, those
seeds just shoot out of there and they've actually you know,
with slow moo photography determined that up to sixty miles
per hour as far as fifty feet away. So you
(01:54:31):
got mistletoe in your tree, Boom, a berry pops and
there go. Seeds fly in whichever direction and it's they're sticky.
They have sicky substance, so they stick where they land
and then they germinate. Now you got mistletoe over there.
Another way they can occur is birds eat them. They
like the berries, and then the birds digest the berries
(01:54:52):
and out the back end of the bird comes the seed.
And when they do their little droppings and they land
on a plant. That's another way that's gets into the
plant that we have now. Now, yeah, controlling mistletoe is
very difficult and almost almost impossible. I've seen a lot
of different things recommended, from wrapping a tree with burrowlap
(01:55:13):
covered with black plastic and leaving it on for a
long time because remember it truly is a plant that
has to have sunlight to grow, but that it does
just say it's impractical to try to do that. There
are products containing hormones like ethophon that caused the missletoe
to essentially be cast out of the tree that has
break often come out. That is a temporary effix, not
(01:55:36):
going to last a super long time. You can do that.
Did you know that? In Oklahoma mistletoe is the state
floral emblem. Okay, I think you can do better than that,
but we're going to go with it. In that tradition
of kissing under the mistletoe goes back at least to
the seventeen hundreds, and I don't know how that actually
(01:55:57):
got started. But if you're underneath the mistletoe and someone
finds you, they're supposed to be able to get away
with a holiday kiss. Good luck with that to an
unwilling victim. Approach the mistletoe anyway. Mistletoe is hung up
in our houses and stuff. Just remember it has a
reputation of being a poisonous plant, but it's the European
(01:56:21):
spee one European species. It's reportedly toxic. The American mistletoe
is not deadly. I'm sure it doesn't taste good and
it would be good for you to eat it, but
it's not the toxic one. But it is one we
use a lot for our decorations. A lot of birds
depend on the mistletoe berries. Other animals, deer, elk, squirrels, chipmunks,
even porcupines will eat the leaves of mistletoe when fresh
(01:56:44):
food is scarce. So you know what surprised me though?
One other thing, and that is that it is an
important nectar and palmen plant for honeybees and other native bees.
So there you go, more about mistletoe than you ever thought.
I think the most amazing fact that I learned reading
up about it was that those berries could burst and
(01:57:07):
send sixty mile an hour seeds as much as fifty
feet away. That's like, wow, that's cool stuff. All right,
Time for me to take a break and we will
be right back. Welcome back, folks. I tell the lad
you're listening into garden Line today, how can we help
you have a more downtiful garden, a more beautiful landscape
(01:57:28):
and more fun in the process. That's what we want
to do here. I'll tell you how you have more
success in your garden, and that is to get the
products you need to do what you need to do.
Do you need to fertilize, Do you need to control insects,
our diseases or pests? Do you need tools? Quality tools
that will help you to get the job done better?
(01:57:49):
With less effort, less strain on your joints and hands
and things like that. Southwest Fertilizer. As he answered all
those questions, it's also the answer to other questions. Who
sells in bulk? Also, where you get those scoops and
you scoop out. There's the most economical way to buy seeds.
Southwest Fertilizer. You know, where can you go and get
(01:58:09):
your lawnmower blade sharpened, small engine repaired? Southwest Fertilizer. It's
it's the answer to a lot of questions. It's been
around since nineteen fifty five, nineteen fifty five, and they've
got every fertilizer or product you'll ever hear coming out
of my mouth on guard line. They just do. They
carry it all. If Southwest doesn't have it, you don't
need it. It's as simple as that. Southwest Fertilizer dot
(01:58:33):
Com is the website phone number seven to one three
six six six one seven four four seven one three
six six six one seven four four. They're located on
the corner of Byssinet and Renwick in southwest Houston. It
is where veteran gardeners have long known to go for
(01:58:54):
anything you're looking for, especially things that might be hard
to find in other places. By the way, it's a
good place to get some cool Christmas gifts, like a
soil knife. One of my favorite tools. If I were
to say, like, what are my top five favorite tools,
I think on that list would be a soil knife
and the kneeling bench, and Bob's got both of those.
By the way, I was talking to someone earlier about
(01:59:14):
how to build a weed wiper. Go to my website
gardening with Skip dot com. It'll tell you how to
build a weed wiper. But the first tool you need,
the suction cup grabber tool. Bob's got it at south
West Fertilizer. See this is what I'm talking about. Bob
and I talk pretty often about things and what's in
the market and what might be an item that gardeners
(01:59:36):
are needing or looking for and things. And I'm telling
you the guy stays up to date and then some
on all these kinds of things. Southwest Fertilizer. I was
visiting with the wild Birds store owner recently, and I
always call them because they if there's a question about birds,
(01:59:57):
they know what they're talking about. They are experts at it.
You know, there's six different wallbirds stores around Houston. You
can go to WBU dot com forward slash Houston and
find the store near you. Now, right now, you need
to be there picking up the Wildbirds Unlimited Winter super Blend.
Wildbirds Unlimited Winter super Blend that is packed with protein
(02:00:21):
and fat helps the birds out. You know, today's the
day where it's kind of hard to get out and
about looking for food, and the birds are going to
be coming back to our feeders in large numbers as
the natural food sources becomes more and more scarce out there,
and Wildbird's Unlimited Winter Super Blend is excellent for that.
(02:00:42):
Another reason to go to Wildbirds right now, though, is
for your holiday gifts. There are wonderful options you can do.
My favorite feeder is a squirrel eliminating feeder. It is
a Cadillac and it really really works. It's an excellent feeder.
They can do replacement parts on in. I mean, it's
real simple to operate and it works. Uh. But maybe
(02:01:04):
a beautiful hummingbird feeder, maybe a bird house of Some
people want to learn to attract blue birds and they
can help you do that and they can even provide
you with a variety of different kinds of bird out.
How about Purple Martins. By the time we get to February,
Purple Martins are going to be here and a nice
quality Purple Martin house. It's on a telescoping pole or
something that allows you to take it down and clean
(02:01:26):
it out the part the little sections come out. It's
real easy. They have a really nice Purple Martin house.
They also have the kind that are that look like
white gourds that but they're plastic. But they also are
well designed for Purple Martin. What a good gift. What
a good gift from Wilbirds. You are listening to garden Line.
(02:01:47):
If you'd like to give me a call, the phone
number is seven one three two one two five eight
seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight
seventy four. We'll be happy to help you in any
way we can. I saw something the other day, this
from the Saturday Evening Post in nineteen oh three. Saturday
Evening Post nineteen oh three, someone said, you've heard that
(02:02:10):
you reap what you sew, but that does not always
apply to the pictures on seed packets. Is that not true?
All right, Well, let's we get better at it. Maybe
it applies more and more to you report yourself.
Speaker 6 (02:02:27):
You know.
Speaker 2 (02:02:28):
Sometimes I look at at gardening catalog seed cat packets
and stuff. Or my favorite is the companies that sell
fruit trees. They had the catalogs, you know, And I
don't pick on any one company, but you know, there
are companies out there that do. And you'll see this
branch with like fifteen apples in a foot long branch,
and they're all big and gorgeous and everything're like, okay,
(02:02:50):
come on, man, really give me a break here. That's it.
And I tell you the one job, one of many
jobs I would not like to have a is writing
descriptions for let's say, vegetables and flowers, especially vegetables for
seed packets. Oh my gosh, some of these sea companies
(02:03:11):
carry dozens of types of tomatoes, and what are you
going to say? It's red, it tastes like a tomato,
it's sweet, and I mean, there's only so much you
can say about a vegetable, and yet they've got to
write another one and not make it sound like the
one they just wrote and could go read a packet.
Sometimes there are seed companies that specialize in tomatoes. There's one,
(02:03:36):
what's it called Tomato Grower supply. There's another one totally tomatoes.
They're not really justtimated. They may have peppers and eggplant
things in them, but they have more Dutch of tomatoes
than you can imagine, most of which you shouldn't grow here, right,
because not every part of the country needs to plant
the same varieties. But I just think about how on
(02:03:56):
earth do you write those descriptions. But anyway, that's a
fun part of gardening. Hey, A good gardening gift would
be a seed starting kit. And by a kit, it
could include things like a tray, one of those seventy
two cell trays like you see. They're long about eleven
(02:04:16):
inches nine inches wide and twenty inches long something close
to that. Anyway, they're close to that nine or eleven
and twenty inches long. And then they come with a
little dome over the top of plastic dome. And then
you just put the potting soil in them and you
start your seeds and throw in a heating mat. Would
be a nice addition to that. By throwing in a
(02:04:38):
heating mat. I start my seeds now in the garage,
and it's a cold garage. I mean there's no heat
out there. I mean it's protected, so it's nice cold
as outside, but it's just a cold garage. But I
have heating mats underneath the covers and then a plastic
cover over that kind of holes creats a dead air
space of some warmth in there, and it does well.
In fact, did you know that young seedlings you're growing
(02:04:59):
yourself mention that not enough light makes them spinley. Another
thing that helps that causes a lack of good strong,
stocky transplants, or is temperatures. When when temperatures are very warm,
plants tend to grow luxuriantly. If you could put a
heating mat under a pad and keep the media you're
growing the seeds in warm, but let the air be cool,
(02:05:23):
that helps create a very stocky transplant. While I'm talking
about stocky transplants, I'll just throw one more thing that
helps stocky transplants, and this one I think is cool
moving the plants, I mean brushing over them in a greenhouse.
It may be an oscillating fan blowing by that causes
movement in the plants in your little few trays you're
(02:05:47):
starting at home. It could be running your hands over
the top of the seedlings, just brushing over them, petting pets,
your plants, and each time you move them, it stimulates
responses to create a stockier stem and a stronger transplant.
Speaker 9 (02:06:03):
It does.
Speaker 2 (02:06:04):
And the fancy word. I try to give you a
fancy word each week if I can. This week's fancy
word is thig mo morphogenesis. Big mo morphogenesis. What does
that mean? It means if you touch it, it gets stronger.
So thig momorphogenesis is why I say when you stake
a plant, you shouldn't stake it perfectly still. For that
(02:06:25):
trunk of the tree to bend a little bit in
the wind. That stretching causes the tree trunk to grow stronger.
The heading over the surface of your little tomato seedlings
causes those seedlings to become stockier. It does. It's a
natural reaction that nature does to plants. And we bring
them inside and put them in a real still, a
(02:06:47):
very still air space where they don't move at all.
We put them in not quite enough light and maybe
it's a little warm in there. We're putting too much
nitrogen fertilize all of those things, recreating that sp seedling
that doesn't survive well. Take advantage of big momorphogenesis and
you can be the cliff Claven of your neighborhood horticultural
(02:07:09):
Cliff Claven. Remember the the postman on Cheers who knew everything,
or at least he thought he did, and he talked
like he did. You can be the Cliff Clavin by
just knowing great words like big moo, morpho, genesis. For
those of you who grew up with Julian Andrews, supercrags
are super catifragilistic, expieladoches. You thank me later. We're going
(02:07:34):
to take a break. I'll be right back. Actually, we
got just a minute left. I don't have to stop
talking quite yet. That's a good thing. I love quotes,
you know. I was giving you a quote a little
bit ago, one quote that I like. It was written back,
oh gosh, I don't know when, by an unlingering English aristocrat,
author and gardner. It goes this way. The most noteworthy
(02:07:56):
thing about gardeners is that they always are optimistic. They
always are enterprising, and they're never satisfied. They always look
forward to doing something better than they've ever done before. Man,
is that ever true? I can tell you this. The
best garden I've ever grown in my life is the
(02:08:17):
one come in this spring. It is I always feel
that way, not about spring, but all the time because
I'm learning more, I'm trying something new, and I'm going
to have success with I just know I am. I
just know I am. That's a fun thing. I think
that's one of the beneficial things of gardening. In addition
to the physical exercise, In addition to getting out there
in nature, breathing the air and stuff like that, one
(02:08:39):
of the best things about gardening is the hope and
the optimism that it bills in us as gardeners. All right,
I'll leave you with that. We'll be right back, folks.
All right, folks, welcome back to guarden Line. Hey, if
you'd like to give me a call, we are in
our last half hour of the day here. Seven one
three two one two five eight seven four seven three
(02:09:00):
two one two five eight seven four. I hope you're
enjoying the weather we're having. And I know some people
are going, wait a minute, I don't enjoy wet, forty
degree whatever temperatures. Well, I know, but isn't it a
nice break from the summer we just went through. And
you can always here's how I look at it. When
it's hot, it's hot. I mean, you can put on shorts,
(02:09:22):
sleeves and shorts and all that. But it's still hot.
But in the cold weather, you can always bundle up.
That's what I love. I love cold weather. I don't
like being cold. I like cold weather. I just do.
It's a nice, nice break. So here we are finally
getting to it. And I'll tell you another reason it's
important our plants. Plants go through a process called hardening off.
(02:09:42):
Hardening off means that the plant is shutting down growth
and storing up carbohydrates and preparing for winter as it
goes into dormancy. Even if it's a plant that doesn't
really go into dormancy, it's still is going through those
the processes. When a plant properly and fully hardens off,
(02:10:04):
it is quite cold, hardy. I mean, you take really
cool weather and that that plant does fine. When it
doesn't properly harden off, a freeze, even a freeze that
shouldn't kill that plant, suddenly becomes a big problem. And
it happened. I noticed it, especially in the northern parts
of this listening area. But a couple of Decembers ago,
(02:10:26):
we had a mid teen frieze that occurred in December,
way early for the area, and also our crpe myrtles
were not hardened off fully and we had crape myrtles
killed to the ground. The next summer they sprouted out
and we had this big bushy mess coming out of
the bottom of the ground where they're where the crape
(02:10:46):
myrtle trunk had died back, sometimes the only partial die back.
But that's an example of why hardening off is important.
And when we have temperatures like today, it helps those
plants to harden off, and that is important so that
we don't have the significant cold damage that can occur
when plants are not properly hardened off. So you can
(02:11:07):
be glad we're having the day. Plus, if you got
a fireplace in your house, I always I've always thought
it was humorous that we have fireplaces in Southeast Texas.
Of why, I tell you why, because of the ambiance.
It's cool, it's fine. It just I mean, there's just
there's just an ambiance. You know. When it comes to winter,
(02:11:28):
we don't get a lot of the cold spells. So
all these Christmas songs which we're starting to hear, and
we'll be hearing a lot, it's hard to relate. As
the Texan you know, dashing through the snow. What snow
on a one horse open sleigh? What's a sleigh? Chestnuts
roasting on an open Wait a minute, what are chestnuts? Anyway? Yeah,
(02:11:51):
I could go on and on about that one. All right,
noth of that. Let's go out and take some of
your calls. We're going to go to Clear Lake and
talk to Jane Heyan. Welcome to garden Line.
Speaker 7 (02:12:02):
I thank you very much for taking quare coal.
Speaker 18 (02:12:04):
I understand that I can dig up my hybiscus and
take it in because I'm worried about it being cold,
but I don't know how to do that.
Speaker 7 (02:12:12):
Can you help me?
Speaker 2 (02:12:15):
Okay? Well, so you just dig wider more than deeper, okay,
And so if you can get out about oh, let's
say eight inches from the plant in all directions. If
it could go a little wider, they'd be fine, and
then slider shovel underneath it. To dig underneath it, you
(02:12:37):
only need to go about maybe four to six inches deep.
But if you can't get that wide and everything, that's fine.
But just get a little more of the roots. I
would lift it up and kind of shake some of
the excess soil off the roots and then bring it
in to put in a container. The size of the
roots you dug, so that was a sixteen inch wide
(02:12:58):
if I said eight inches on each side, so you
would need a bigger container for that. I have mine
and about a two thirds of size. It looks like
an old whiskey barrel, but it's it's plastic, so it's
about two thirds the size of a whiskey barrel. And
it does really well in there. And just fill it
full of quality potting, soil, quality page so water. Okay, yeah, well,
(02:13:20):
after you transport it inside, after you get it planted, yes,
give it a good watering, make sure the container has
drainage holes, and then just bring it into a protected spot.
Now mine I leave out a lot during the cool season,
but when it's going to be freezing, I take my
dolly and put a strap around it and bring it
(02:13:41):
into the garage and then take it back out again
because it'll still have some leaves on it. If you
can give it a decent amount of light as much
as possible, but that's it. And don't worry about fertilizing
it a lot. Just keep it adequately moist, not soggy,
adequately moist, and you can get it through the wintertime,
and then I would that are leaving a container outdoors
(02:14:02):
as well. It just makes it a little bit easier
to bring it in and out. You don't have to
redig it every year.
Speaker 16 (02:14:08):
That sounds like a great idea.
Speaker 2 (02:14:09):
I'll remember that.
Speaker 7 (02:14:11):
I don't want to have to.
Speaker 11 (02:14:14):
Okay, thank you.
Speaker 2 (02:14:15):
Very much, Well, you bet, you bet, Gene, thanks for
the call. I appreciate I appreciate that very much. We
are I wanted to talk about Nelson Water Garden. They're
out there in Katie. So basically you go out I
ten to Katie and when you get to Katie Fort
Ben Road, you're going to turn right. That's going north
(02:14:36):
across over the tracks. You're you're there. It's just a
little bit up the road on the right. Nelson Nursery
and water Garden. Of course, they're a water garden place
are nationally known for that have been for a very
very long time. But Nelson Water Gardens is also an
really outstanding nursery from fruit tree plants to annual color,
to vegetables, to herbs, you name it. Of course they
(02:14:58):
carry the plants for water garden as well. If you've
been thinking about getting a watergarden. That would be a
fun thing to do during the end of the winter season,
getting it all set up and ready to go so
as the weather worms up, you can get that thing
stocked with fish and plants and other things. Nelson's will
build those for you. They will also tell you how
(02:15:19):
to do it. So if you want one of the
disappearing fountains that they designed and created, you just get
a really nice large glazed pottery urned from them. It's
set up to have water spout out the top, roll
over the sides into a bed of gravel where it
recirculates back up through the container. A beautiful feature, a
(02:15:40):
nice feature. So you can get that thing out there
and set up and weather worms up a little bit.
Take off. Good to go. Nelson Water Gardens and Nursery,
Katie fort Benroad. Go to the website Nelson Watergardens dot
com Nelson Watergardens dot com. When you get there you
will find out all lot more about them, and boy,
(02:16:01):
they are set up for the holidays right now. From
trees to poinsettas, to holiday cactus to all kinds of
other holiday decor. They have got you covered at Nelsonwatergardens
dot com. I'm going to have to take a quick
break here when we come back, Saviian and Beaumont, you
will be our very first up. All right here, we're
going to go out to Beaumont. Actually we're going to
(02:16:22):
go to Wharton. Excuse me first to Jeff and Wharton. Hey, Jeff,
welcome to Guardline. Good morning.
Speaker 18 (02:16:29):
Well, you were advertising Medena products just a little while ago,
and it reminded me. We moved to Wharton in nineteen
seventy six and Dewey was still on the air, and
remember he was telling us, and you may know this story.
He was talking about the magical qualities of the products
(02:16:50):
and he said, you know, there was a fell and
I may be best in this story up that lost
his hand in an industrial accident and.
Speaker 2 (02:16:59):
He put the stump.
Speaker 18 (02:17:00):
Of his hand where the hand had gone the arm
into Medina and the Henri group. And he used to
tell that story about Medina products and you know, all
you got to do is go down the Honda Texas
and pick up those products. And it was in he'd
(02:17:21):
loved telling that story.
Speaker 2 (02:17:23):
So anyway, I don't we don't talk about that because yeah,
we don't. We don't talk about that because we don't
want to put all the plastic surgeons out of business.
They could do that.
Speaker 18 (02:17:35):
It was a hilarious he was great.
Speaker 2 (02:17:39):
That sounds like they called him old old dude.
Speaker 6 (02:17:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:17:42):
He was a character. Yeah, and that tells me how
long Medina has been a sponsor Reguard Line. Yeah, because
I'm looking.
Speaker 18 (02:17:50):
I went online just before I called you, and he
died in that plane crash in October nineteen seventy six.
Speaker 2 (02:17:57):
I mean, that's that was.
Speaker 18 (02:17:59):
Incredible and most of the Compton family was all on
that plane. It was near Somerville.
Speaker 2 (02:18:06):
That's all right.
Speaker 18 (02:18:08):
I thought that would your Bedina folks would like to hear.
Speaker 2 (02:18:11):
Thanks. Yeah, thanks, thanks for the My gosh. You know,
now you've caused me a problem, though, Jeff, because people
hear stuff and either they don't listen to what I
said and they tell me I said something I didn't say,
or they they hear something that's a joke and they
think it's for real. So I got to be extra
careful with that. I'm going to go out to Beaumont
(02:18:33):
now and talk to Sabian. Hey, Sabyan, welcome to Guardline.
Speaker 11 (02:18:37):
Thank you, Hey. I did some pictures of a foreign
grass in baying my Saint Augustine lawn and you asked
me to call back. That's what to do with it?
And what type of grass this is?
Speaker 2 (02:18:52):
When did you send the email?
Speaker 9 (02:18:55):
I think it was.
Speaker 2 (02:18:58):
November teat or Okay, let me go back, let me
go back here. Uh, I don't have the name Sabian
in my emails. It's a Fabian. Okay, okay, got you
(02:19:19):
got you. Let me let me find that right quick here.
I do remember getting that one in and now I'm
not finding that either. Good night, nurse. Could you do it?
Could you do a quick rescind for me? I don't
know why, but it's I remember seeing it and I
don't see it here. If you could hit a quick rescind,
I will. I will try to look at I'm trying
to remember what the grass. Oh, was this the little
(02:19:41):
small kind of shiny leaf grass that was just growing
real thick in the lawn that I remember that that was? Yeah,
that is called kai linga k y l I n
g A. I think it has two l's actually, but
Kayalinga is kind of nutgrass, but it doesn't have nuts underground.
Speaker 6 (02:20:02):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (02:20:02):
If you go online to go to my website, it
is it is gardening with Skip dot com Gardening with
Skip dot Com. And when you get to the website,
there is a publication on there called nuts edge an
(02:20:23):
in depth look okay, and the products that it mentions
are good for ki linga. The products are good for kylingka.
So uh. The it's also on the herbicides to use
on my weed wiper publication too. You'll find it on that.
So let me let me pull that up right here
(02:20:45):
and just give you a couple of examples. Uh. Here
we go. Halo sulfur on methyl halo sulfur on like
halo like uh uh around your head and sulfur on
s u L h h A l O s u
l f u r O N. And I'm gonna stop
(02:21:07):
spelling it out there. If anything that starts off with
halto sulfur on on the garden market, that's it. So
brand names sedge Hammer plus, get the sedge hammer that
says sedgehammer plus uh. And Monterey. If you go where
Moneray products are sold, it's called nutgrass Killer. Two. If
(02:21:30):
you go where Martin's products are sold, it's nutgrass Eliminator.
And if you go where they carry high yield products,
it's high yield nutsedge and horsetail control, but sedgehammer plus
is the one most people find. It's a little one.
It makes a one gallon. It's a little little small packet,
(02:21:53):
very small packet that you put in water makes a gallon.
And the hedge sedgehammer plus, I said, the plus this
is important. It has a surfactant that makes it stick
to those shiny Kailinga leaves because Kalinga and that said
you're very closely related. That'll work. You're going to have
to redo it. You're going to be ready to do it,
and maybe but doing it right now, you can do that.
(02:22:15):
It'll do some good now, but especially when things warm
up and it begins actively growing again in the spring.
You want to you want to hit it then.
Speaker 11 (02:22:23):
Okay, okay, thank you.
Speaker 2 (02:22:27):
You bet, Thank you very much. Appreciate appreciate your call. God.
We resolve resolved that uh Ace Hardware stores are set
up for the holidays. I mean, do you need gifts?
They got great gifts. They got toys too, by the way,
and some of those old antique toy stuff that you
remember growing up with you is that still around? Yes,
(02:22:48):
it is. At Ace Hardware. They have tools for the
do it yourselfers on your list of all kinds and genders.
I used to say, for the guys that do it
just no, no, no, no, we got We've got ladies that are
bigger do it yourselfers than their spouses are or significant others.
ACE has got you cut up are set up for that.
(02:23:08):
If you need lights or decorations, things inside the house,
things outside the house, things for the patio, Christmas lights,
lights by the foot, which I think is really cool.
You can buy a string exactly as long as you
want it to be. Ace has got that.
Speaker 7 (02:23:22):
You know.
Speaker 2 (02:23:22):
Ace has a thing called round Up for Kids, and
at what it is. It's a fundraiser for the Children's
Miracle Network, which supports our Texas Children's Hospital here in Houston.
Round Up for Kids is when you go to the register,
you have this option to round up to the next
dollar and that money and you know what, when you
(02:23:42):
take all the people that check out at all the
Ace Hardware stores throughout Houston, that adds up to a
significant amount of money. Now. Ace Hardware stores are everywhere
all through the Houston area. The K and M Hardware
has got a location in Kingwood and one in a
Tascasita All Stories Hardware has got two locations. One is
in the Spring, one is in Magnolia. For those of
(02:24:03):
you up around Lake Conroe, you got Lake Conroe ACE Hardware.
Over on the east Side you've got U Valdie Ace Hardware.
And up in Brenham you got Brenham Ace Hardware. And
of course all through the Greater Houston area. Easy to
find an ACE and when you go in there, you're
going to find stuff that you need for a beautiful garden,
(02:24:24):
a beautiful landscape, beautiful decorations. That's why they say ACE
is the place. Well, I've talked all the way through
the show today, four hours of garden Line, along with
some of you calling in to talk. Appreciate that. I'll
be back tomorrow morning six am. I hope everyone is
(02:24:45):
go ahead and get up at five so you can
have coffee and be alert and ready to go, and
we will hit the ground running at six o'clock in
the morning answering your gardening questions or maybe even saying
some crazy things or playing some crazy music for some
of that as well. Thanks for being a garden Line listener.
I appreciate that. I just want to remind you my
website gardening with skip dot com go check it out
(02:25:10):
and download the publication on frosts and Freezes