Austin Stovall, Regional Sales Manager of Ferti-lome

Austin Stovall, Regional Sales Manager of Ferti-lome gives gardening tips for the upcoming planting season and the weather.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
This week on the Art of Improvement, I'll be talking with Austin stove All.
He's with Fertilone, and if youlove gardening like I do, you're
going to want to listen to allthe things he has to say for what's
coming up in the fall. Maybeyou're interested in composting or fertilization. It's
all coming up next my conversation withAustin on the Art of Improvement. Thank

(00:26):
you so much for listening to theArt of Improvement. I have a guest
that you might have heard before Regionalsales manager or Fertilone. It's Austin stove
All High, Austin, how heyyou are here because we haven't talked to
you in a few months and wereally need to find out about the fall.
It's so funny because we get thosewet months that we talked about during

(00:47):
our last show, and it hasbeen you know, it was raining like
crazy in the spring, and thenof course just a few months later everything
just dries up and then we're wonderingif we'll ever get rain again. So
now we're in a situation where wehave to start thinking about the fall and
what we need to plant and ifthere's anything that you can give us tips
on for making the best of ourfall. Yeah, So those summer months,

(01:14):
the hot, dry, everything decidesthat it's going to go dormant.
And when everything goes dormant, growthslows down. There doesn't seem like there's
a whole lot to do in thegarden other than water as much as you
possibly can to try and keep everythingfrom keeling over dead, right, And
so the most important thing to rememberwith fall is that all of these plants
are all exhausted. They're tired fromthat long, heavy summer months, all

(01:34):
of that excessive growth they did inthe spring that they've been trying to hang
onto through the summer, and socoming into fall, the important thing to
remember is fertilization. Fertilization is goingto be one of the biggest things you
can do in the fall to pushyour garden along even far they're going into
the next spring. So fertilizing yourroses with things like rose flower food or

(01:57):
liquid fertilizer like blooming and can reallyhelp things like your fall roses and chrysanthemums
bloom really really great for you.Coming into the end of September beginning of
October, so I always ask youabout this too late, and so I'm
going to ask you very early inthe show, and that is how do

(02:19):
we find all of your products?I just told you Just a minute ago,
somebody said, can you tell meabout a product? I'm like,
Okay, I got to go onlinebecause I don't know exactly where to find
it. So where can we findall of your products and learn more?
Yeah, so fertile loam is andhigh yield is available at all of your
local independent nurseries and garden centers anywherethat's run by a family owned business as

(02:40):
usually a great place to find ourproduct. If you're a little bit lazier
and you don't want to go outsearching, you can also go to places
like Amazon and websites like do itBest and the other sort of websites like
that that also happened to sell ourproducts. So an easy thing to do
is just simply google the products you'relooking for, and a lot of website
will also pop up that you canpurchase our products on as well. Okay,

(03:02):
so you just mentioned fall roses,and so I don't know why I
never put those two together, Butare roses still blooming right now? Or
I don't think I've ever had arose plant. Yeah, So roses are
something that's basically considered to bloom anytimethe opportunity is right, and that opportunity

(03:22):
just boils down to the weather beingright and making sure that there's enough moisture
in the ground for them to pushout roses. What they do is they
put a bud on the terminal endof every new shoot of growth that they
have, So during these summer months, they've been dormant and trying their hardest
to just hang in there, andso they haven't been pushing out a whole
lot of growth. You go intomore northern places and they'll have blooms on

(03:45):
their roses all summer long. Butdown here in Texas, we hit this
really really hot months and we getsomething called a summer dormancy as well as
the winter dormancy. So roses rightnow, what's happening is as the temperatures
going through September start to get alittle bit cooler, they're still going to
be quite hot, but the secondthey start getting down into the nineties again
is when you'll start seeing your rosesstart pushing out more growth. And so

(04:08):
it's really good here at the beginningto middle of September to put out fertilizers
that are going to help push thatgrowth extra hard and give you like really
big beautiful blooms on your roses.Same thing with chrysanthemums. Chrysanthemums are what
are what's called a phototropic bloomer,so they bloom during specific time periods of
the year in which the daylight hoursare approaching twelve twelve, which means twelve

(04:32):
hours of sunlight and twelve hours ofdarkness. And so with chrysanthemums, what
they'll do is they bloom in thespring and you'll get a nice flush of
chrysanthemum blooms in the springtime. Theplant again will go dormant during the summer,
and then here coming up on thefall, as we start to approach
closer and closer to that twelve totwelve photoed period is again where your chrysanthemums

(04:53):
will be pushing those blooms out,and so again fertilizing with things like rose
and flower fluid or blooming and rooting, it's going to really help both of
those species give you just the mostshowiest show possible coming into these fall months.
For some weird reason every fall inmy life because I love plants so
much, I always go for thethings that I know I'm not going to

(05:15):
be able to keep, and thatis the things like I know everybody says
they're easy, but like irises oris daffodils, you know, part of
the things that you see or inthe fall, you see these beautiful flowers
on TV because they're in the Northeast. But how do I know what not

(05:35):
to get when when I'm living inTexas and can I sustain like an iris
or what is it, like acantilily or whatever. Yeah, all of
those guys. So a bunch ofthose species of what you'll see, especially
like up north when you're talking aboutthose plantings, you see they get all
of those plants grown in a greenhouse, and when they grow in a greenhouse

(05:57):
like that, they are growing healthily, vigorously, and then they plant them
out and they get them to beblooming all the time, and so if
they're they're more of like a anannual plant, especially with the things like
cannas. Cannas are a tropical plantthat do really well with the high heat
and all of that, and sowhat happens with us down here with things
like cannas and irises and stuff likethat. Is during the summer months,
they're rapidly growing and dividing, andso they're not blooming. They're just going

(06:20):
to be this green foliage that's growingall summer long. And what will happen
is you'll come up into the fallmonths and your irises and your cannas,
your day lilies, all of thesedifferent species like that are going to be
really really lush and full of abunch of green growth. And so around
this time is a great time tocome through and take all of those species

(06:43):
and divvy them up and spread themaround. So if you want to,
you know, maybe you've got cannasin one spot, but you want them
to also be kind of all downthe row or all the long around the
pool, around the pool exactly,that's the favorite place for yes. And
so you can take them and youcan divide them around this time. And
what you'll do is you just simplyneed to hang onto the bulb. Irises
and cannas and these guys are goingto have a pseudo bulb that grows beneath

(07:05):
the ground. And so when yougo in and you dig these guys up.
Just simply cut the top green foliageoff and then take those bulbs and
spread them out farther apart, andthen all throughout the fall they'll grow a
new set of growth, and onthat new growth they'll bloom again, and
you'll get another round of flowers inthe fall. Another thing too to remember
too, if the roses and thechrysanthemums and stuff too, is that it's

(07:29):
really great too also to remember itto deadhead and prune off a third of
that material as well, So theroses, the can as, the irises
coming in and pruning off some ofthat material and then dividing and separating your
irises and cannas and all that kindof stuff will get you to give your
garden an even bigger head start goingagain into that next season. Again,
so the irises and the cannas andall that, when you go to transplant

(07:51):
them, you go to prune offthe tops on them and move those bulbs
around. It's great to fertilize thatspot you're gonna put all of those bulbs
into again. Talking about fertilization withDutch bulb food something like that for all
your cannas and your irises, andall that good stuff. And then when
you're transplanting your daylilies and some ofthese more tender like leary op, which

(08:13):
is like a little tiny grass lookingthing with little purple flowers on it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, whenyou go to divide those guys up.
Something like roots stimulator is really greattoo, because that's what that's going to
do is encourage all of those guysto push more roots out during this a
little bit more stressful time period herewhen you're doing this, but it's important
to do it now so you getthe blooms before the cool season comes in.

(08:35):
So something like root stimulator contains ahormone in it called oxen in the
form of indol butaric acid, whichis our synthetic version of the hormone oxin.
And what that's gonna do is triggerthese plants to exit dormancy, which
is what they're sitting in right nowwith these hot temperatures, and cause them
to start pushing growth again. They'regonna push out roots, they're gonna push

(08:56):
out shoots, and on of thosenew shoots, they're gonna put those new
blooms for those things like cannas andirises and stuff like that. And so
it's good to fertilized and then putout something like that root stimulator that's going
to trigger that root growth, becausethat root growth is what's going to be
so vital to make sure that they'reabsorbing as much water and nutrients that they
need to make sure that you getthe biggest, showiest flowering. I have

(09:18):
a hundred questions. So on theirises and cannas, you cut off all
of the greenery, you pull themout of the ground, and then you
cut them. How do you doyou cut them with a knife? Do
you cut them with the shovel?Yeah, So things like with the iris
and the cannas, especially their bulbthat they have beneath ground is actually really

(09:39):
firm. If you think of somethinglike tumeric or ginger or something like that
that you would buy from the grocerystore. You can actually take those bulbs
like that and break them up intolittle pieces. And those little pieces typically
you want to go for something maybethree or four inches long. It's going
to be the smallest I would recommendto go with those, but each one
of those little three or four inchlong pieces will grow into its own plan

(10:00):
ah. And so also to withthe irises and then the daylilies and those
kind of guys like that. It'sgood to maybe hang onto a third of
the plant material and that'll give itsome green phototropic bits to kind of push
that root growth out, photosynthesize andget you a headstart the canons that the
growth on the above part is reallyfleshy and really tender, and a lot

(10:20):
of times when you're coming in anddigging them up and separating them and dividing
them, you're just your hands grippingthose stems and pulling them apart will cause
damage to them. And so it'sjust better to just cut that bit off
and not worry about having ugly kindof bruised tops to them. And so
I usually with the cans, Ijust cut all of the green bit off
and then take those bulbs and dividethem. They grow like weeds, so

(10:43):
they'll bounce back in no time.So when you're saying cut them into several
pieces, so let's just say,I'm thinking of the ginger root that you
just talked about. So let's justsay I have one that's, you know,
ten inches long, and I cutit into two or three pieces.
Am I going to put the rootsdim? Later on every open side that
I've cut, so the root stimulatora few different ways you can handle that.

(11:07):
You can put it into like acan of watering can and when you
go transplanting them, just water itin. Another good thing too, is
to water it into the ground first, then put the canons down of cover
them with soil again, and thenwater again on top. And then when
you're going to do that division ofthe bulbs, you'll notice that they kind

(11:28):
of have an appearance of like you'llsee where you want to split them up.
They'll almost be easy enough to justkind of grab with your hands and
break them apart, because they'll bamboohas those notches exactly. You'll see these
sections that kind of make it lookobvious like oh okay, that could be
a new plant and that can geta plant. And then when you take

(11:48):
those guys and spread them out,then those will just bounce back in no
time at all. And I knowanybody that's interested and listening probably knows what
deadhead of plant is. But canyou explain that? Yeah, yeah,
so deadhead simply just me to removethe flower tops off of a plant.
So deadheading is like with roses,what will happen is like, get done
blooming and you're left with the what'scalled the rose hip, and that rose

(12:09):
hip is essentially the fruit that therose is producing to produce seed. And
the reason why you want to deadheadthings like roses and chrysanthemums and stuff like
that is because they're putting all oftheir energy and effort into producing that seed
that's inside of those fruits, oranother term again rose hips, and what

(12:30):
that is is just a green applelooking thing at the bottom of the rose
where the rose used to be.And so what you want to do is
you want to find that hip andthen go down two leaf nodes. The
first leaf node is usually a weaker, smaller one with only a few leaf
petals on it. If you godown one or two, you'll find a
leaf that has five petals on it. And that leaf with five petals on

(12:56):
it is going to be where thestrongest new shoot will emerge from. And
so another thing to think about toois with roses especially, you want your
roses to grow out into like avase shape. You don't want them to
have a whole lot of growth cominginto the middle because all of that growth
coming into the middle is going tocause things like fungal problems and stuff like
that. So when you do prunedown to that good leaf that we were

(13:16):
talking about, if you pick aleaf that's pointing out away from the plant,
not towards the center. If youpick that leaf pointing out in a
way, that new shoot will growout in a way from the center of
the plant as well, And sothat will get your rose to grow in
a nice vase shape and allow youto not have a lot of fungal issues
and pest issues and all that kindof stuff like that. I hope I

(13:39):
remember that. I'm excited. Iwant to try something new, and that
sounds like I mean, I understandexactly what you're talking about before I go
any further. If you just nowstarted listening. This is Austin stove All.
He's regional sales manager with Fertilam andyou can find Fertilm just about it
any garden center and also online onAmazon. I've seen that before too.

(14:01):
We can't go one more minute withouttalking about web worms. I mean,
who in Texas has not been disgustedby web worms? Is there anything that
we can do to prevent them?And if we do have them, what
the heck do we do to getrid of them? Yeah? So fall
web worms are, like you said, a really big pain for everyone,

(14:22):
especially down here in Texas. Andso there's two products they're really great for
that, and that's going to bea product called Spinosaid soap as well as
our regular spinosad and then also toanother product called bat which is basillis.
Their ingenesis is a bacterial species thatkills soft bodied insects such as those fall
web worms. So coming through witha hoson attachment sprayer and spraying the foliage

(14:46):
material, spraying all of those webareas, making sure you get in contact
with the caterpillars, especially to sprayingthem down real good with that is going
to kill them off. And thengive all of those plants that they like
to hang out and all those treesand shrubs and stuff like that breathing room
because that that web material is goingto cause fungal problems. Their feces and

(15:09):
their droppings is also going to causefungal issues and other problems for the tree
as well. So so coming throughwith those products and spraying them whenever that
you first start to notice them,if you let them be really really bad
at that point, there's going tobe all of that that web material up
in your tree and you're still goingto come across these issues like that.
So keeping an eye during these monthsis going to be really critical to make

(15:31):
sure you spot them in time.A good way to also pay attention to
whether or not they're there. Theylike to dangle down on a string and
you'll kind of be walking through theyard and you'll bump into them. Yeah,
yeah, they freak you out.They get out of your face.
Right as soon as you see thoseguys coming through with that the BT or
the spinosid and spraying that plant materialdown, we'll get rid of them and

(15:54):
no time at all, and thenyou don't have to worry about them attacking
your face as you walk through thegarden. They are so disgusting. I
mean, who hasn't in Texas havememories of those web worms when they were
a little all the way today andyou're seeing them. It's so gross.
Okay, so web worms fall,roses, chrysanthemums, roots stimulator. What

(16:18):
have we missed? Oh what aboutcomposting? Yeah? Yeah, so composting.
This is again like another time whereyou have to remember all of this
stuff. Your fungal, your bacterial, your plants, animals. Everybody likes
good weather to grow, and yourcompost pile is something that's alive. Your
compost pile is made up of fungaland bacterial species that all move into this

(16:40):
detritus material and break it down.And so again, with this weather kind
of slowly making its way back intoa more functional state, all of your
compost is going to start heating upagain and start taking off. And also
too, you'll have certain species oftrees, like your maples and stuff like
that that will begin dropping leaf materialduring this time. They're stressed from the
summer months and they have a lotof excess leaf materials, so they're gonna

(17:02):
go ahead and drop off the oldleaves and get rid of them now.
And so coming through your yard andbreaking up those maple leaves, raping up
those leaves that have already fallen andgetting them to your compost pile is going
to give your composti new material toget a new headstart again and start taking
off again. And so once youstart noticing those leaves fall and all that
coming through, adding something like compostmakerto your compost pile will kickstart that compost

(17:25):
pile and give it the nitrogen andthe sugars that it needs to trigger all
of that fungal and bacterial growth tobreak down that leaf material that's now been
added to it, and then youcan put that on anything pretty much.
Yeah yeah, so the compost especiallytoo. So your spring compost at this
point should be pretty well hot anddone, should be all nice and rich

(17:48):
and brown and looking nice, andso you can move that that compost from
the spring out into your yard andfertilize again like all of your flowering species,
fertilize your trees, fertilize your lawn, spreading that compost around and then
taking all of this new dead materialand maybe all of that, you know,
those rose hips that you were pruningoff, taking all of the tops

(18:08):
to the chrysanthemums, taking all ofthat cann of material that you prune the
tops off of all of that,throwing it in the compost pile, and
then that'll give you another nice roundof compost for the end of fall.
Is compost something that you can useon your indoor plants? Yeah? Yeah.
So the important thing to remember withindoor plant species is that they need

(18:29):
a really airy breathable soil, Soyou want to make sure that the compost
that you're using is a nice,rich, earthy material. You can actually
use old composts, so compost that'sbeen sitting there for a long time is
not going to be super nitrogen heavy, and so you can almost use that
in place of things like pete andcocoa and all of those other sort of

(18:49):
green fines material that are brown finematerial that you would usually use to make
your potting mix. So you takethat compost and you mix it with light
for mikuli, mix it with earthformcastings, mix it with which is again
earthworm casting is just another form ofcompost. Taking all of that, mixing
it together and making sure you havea light airy mix. And as long

(19:11):
as it's a light airy mix,your indoor plants will love it just fine
too. So the final question fertilization. We talk about this a lot,
and I think the last time wemet, I told you my horror stories
about me loving my plants so muchthat I wanted to give them so much
fertilizer that they killed them. Butthere really is a reason to read the

(19:33):
instructions on these bottles right exactly.Yeah, So all of the all of
the fertile lome fertilizer lines we have, like our tree are you know,
the tree food and the rose foodand all of these different fertilizer lines.
They're custom formulated specifically for the plantson the label, and then the fertilization
directions are going to be oriented againtowards those plant material species. So it

(19:56):
makes it really easy to just lookat the plant material that you're trying to
fertilize, buy a bag of thefertile home fertilizer that matches the plant you're
looking for, follow the directions onthe bag, and usually what will happen
is you'll get a nice, awesomegrowth if you're really picky about it.
You can also too go something astep farther and you can take things like
our four pound Amendment bags, whichare going to contain specific nutrients like nitrogen,

(20:19):
phosphorus or potassium, and that's goingto be things like the Dutch bulb
food or the blood meal or thebone meal, and coming in with those
sort of things. After you doa soil test again this right around now
the beginning of September. Around thattime, you'll get that soil test back
and it'll give you the exact amountof nitrogen or phosphorus or whatever it is

(20:41):
you need and then doing the mathlooking at the bag figuring out the number.
So that's what that number on thebag is for, is to determine
how much of nitrogen, potassium,phosphorus, whatever is in it, and
then you can do the math tofigure out the exact amount of that four
pound amendment bag you need to putdown to fertilize just the right out for
everything that you're growing. So that'sreally good, and I'm writing notes for

(21:06):
my own good. But is thereanywhere we can get this information, like
on your website so it can bea reminder. Yeah, So all of
our products have their own product pageon fertilome dot com. So if you
go to fertilome dot com and goto the products tab, you can scroll
through all of the fertilizers, theinsecticides, the fungicides, the herbicides,
and you can download such things likethe safety information sheets. You can download

(21:30):
the fertilization directions, download the label, find local places to buy said products.
All of that's available on fertilome dotcom. That's really helpful, And
I don't know if this is evenas we go into the fall, it
is there anything that we can door should we even be worrying about the

(21:52):
weeds that are to come you know? Is there any free weed thing that
we can do? Yeah? Yeah, So big coming into fall, going
into the winter is going to bethings like hen bit and some of these
other species that like the starting tocome into the cooler temperatures, and so
something you can do to prevent alot of these weed species from coming up
in your yard. Again, becauseremember we said it's all about the temperature

(22:15):
and the moisture levels and all thatstuff, and weeds love those things just
as much as our garden does too, And so coming through with something like
turf and ornamental weed and grass stopor what that's going to do is put
a pre emergent down that's going tostop weed seed from germinating and coming up
in your yard. So if turfand ornamental can be used in your ornamental
garden beds as well as in yourlawn to prevent any sort of weed species

(22:37):
from popping up. The important thingto remember though is that it's going to
stop any seed from germinating. Soif you're trying to plant out any sort
of species by seed. Don't putturf and ornamental in first, because that
turf and ornamental is going to blockthose seeds from germinating. Oh my gosh,
what a horrible situation you would bein, just waiting patiently for nothing

(22:57):
to come. So all you gottado is wait for those whatever it is.
Once you've planted it, it comesup, once you have two or
three leaf nodes on it, youcan come through with that turf and ornamental.
Put that all out, and that'llprevent all of the weed seed from
coming up around it and choking outwhatever that one thing is you're trying to
plant. Austin. You know,I always have to have one ridiculous question,

(23:18):
and here it is when I amlooking around at you know, let's
just say, HB, and Isee that table that has all those dead
plants on it, is there anyway to save them? And should or
should I just look away and say, these are dead plants, Karen,
don't look at them. That's actuallyone of my favorite things to do.
All of those garden centers and stufflike that will have like a discount plant

(23:42):
area where they've got this mostly deadplant material. So the only advice I'd
give is to make sure that there'sat least some sort of green material somewhere
on it, maybe at the bottom. A lot of this stuff will have
a fungal infection, something that's killingoff the tissue, and usually it's because
they've overwatered it. The employee comesthrough twice three times a day and waters

(24:03):
everything just to make sure it allstays watered while trying to sell the plant
material. And so usually all theproblem is is you just need to come
in, remove that infected material,cut back to something that's still slightly green,
and then also two things that arebulbs, so things like daffodils and
all this other stuff that it mightlook horrible, there might be nothing left
of the top material. But ifyou stick your finger in that pot,

(24:26):
dig down to that bulb and younotice the bulb is still healthy, totally.
I would buy that plant, takeit home, and then again bringing
up that root stimulator product. Thatroot stimulator is going to trigger that new
growth, that synthetic oxen in it, that synthetic oxen, the indolebutic acid
is going to trigger root growth,trigger shoot growth, and bring that plant
back to life and make it healthyagain, and give you something for a

(24:48):
lot cheaper than what you would havepaid full price for. Does it say
something about our personality that we wantto say the dead plants? Maybe so,
But I really appreciate you coming bytoday, Please come back again.
This is Austin Stowall, regional salesmanager for Fertilone. Thank you so much.
Again, thank you. I appreciateit.