Austin Stovall, Regional Sales Manager of Ferti-lome

Austin Stovall, Regional Sales Manager of Ferti-lome talks about Fall planning.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
This week on the Art of Improvement, I'll be talking with Austin stove All.
He's with Fertiloe, 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
gonna ask you very early in theshow, and that is, how do

(02:19):
we find all of your products?I just told you. Just a minute
ago, somebody said, can youtell me about a product? I'm like,
Okay, I got to go onlinebecause I don't know exactly where to
find it. So where can wefind all of your products and learn more?
Yeah, so fertile hoom Is andhigh Yield is available at all of
your local independent nurseries and garden centersanywhere that's run by a family owned business.

(02:39):
There's usually a great place to findour product. If you're a little
bit lazier and you don't want togo out searching, you can also go
to places like Amazon and websites likedo it Best and the other sort of
websites like that that also happen tosell our products. So an easy thing
to do is just simply google theproduct you're looking for, and a lot
of website will also pop up thatyou can purchase our products on as well.

(03:01):
Okay, so you just mentioned fallroses, and so I don't know
why I never put those two together, but are roses still blooming right now?
Or I don't think I've ever hada rose plant. Yeah, So
roses are something that's basically considered tobloom anytime the opportunity is right, and

(03:22):
that opportunity just boils down to theweather being right and making sure that there's
enough moisture in the ground for themto push out roses. What they do
is they put a bud on theterminal end of every new shoot of growth
that they have. So during thesesummer months, they've been dormant and trying
their hardest to just hang in there, and so they haven't been pushing out
a whole lot of growth. Yougo into more northern places and they'll have

(03:44):
blooms on their roses all summer long. But down here in Texas we hit
this really really hot months and weget something called a summer dormancy as well
as the winter dormancy. So rosesright now, what's happening is as the
temperatures going through September start to geta little bit cooler, they're still going
to be quite hot, but thesecond they start getting down into the nineties
again is when you'll start seeing yourroses start pushing out more growth. And

(04:08):
so it's really good here at thebeginning to middle of September to put out
fertilizers that are going to help pushthat growth extra hard and give you like
really big, beautiful blooms on yourroses. The same thing with chrysanthemums.
Chrysanthemums are what are what's called aphototropic bloomer, so they bloom during specific
time periods of the year in whichthe daylight hours are approaching twelve twelve,

(04:32):
which means twelve hours of sunlight andtwelve hours of darkness. And so with
chrysanthemums, what they'll do is theybloom in the spring, and you'll get
a nice flush of chrysanthemum blooms inthe springtime. The plant again will go
dormant during the summer, and thenhere coming up on the fall, as
we start to approach closer and closerto that twelve twelve photoed period is again
where your chrysanthemums will be pushing thoseblooms out, and so again fertilizing with

(04:56):
things like rose and flower fluid orblooming and rooting, it's going to really
help both of those species give youjust the most showiest show possible coming into
these fall months. For some weirdreason every fall in my life, because
I love plants so much, Ialways go for the things that I know
I'm not going to be able tokeep, and that is the things like

(05:18):
I know everybody says they're easy,but like irises or is daffodils, you
know, part of the things thatyou see or in the fall, you
see these beautiful flowers on TV becausethey're in the Northeast. But how do
I know what not to get whenwhen I'm living in Texas and can I

(05:40):
sustain like an iris or what isit, like a cantilily or whatever.
Yeah, all of those guys.So a bunch of those species of what
you'll see, especially like up northwhen you're talking about those plantings, you
see they get all of those plantsgrown in a greenhouse, and when they
grow in a greenhouse like that,they they are growing healthily, giously,

(06:00):
and then they plant them out andthey get them to be blooming all the
time, and so up there,they're more of like a an annual plant,
especially with the things like cannas.Cannas are a tropical plant that do
really well with the high heat andall of that, and so what happens
with us down here with things likecannas and irises and stuff like that.
Is during the summer months, they'rerapidly growing and dividing, and so they're
not blooming. They're just going tobe this green foliage that's growing all summer

(06:24):
long. And what will happen isyou'll come up into the fall months and
your irises and your cannas, yourday lilies, all of these different species
like that are going to be reallyreally lush and full of a bunch of
green growth. And so around thistime is a great time to come through
and take all of those species anddivvy them up and spread them around.

(06:45):
So if you want to, youknow, maybe you've got cannas in one
spot, but you want them toalso be kind of all down the row
or all along around the bowl aroundthe pool exactly. That's the favorite place
for yes. And so you cantake them and you can divide them around
this time. And what you'll dois you just simply need to hang onto
the bulb. Irises and cannas,and these guys are going to have a
pseudo bulb that grows beneath the ground. And so when you go in and

(07:06):
you dig, these guys up.Just simply cut the top green foliage off
and then take those bulbs and spreadthem out farther apart, and then all
throughout the fall they'll grow a newset of growth, and on that new
growth they'll bloom again and you'll getanother round of flowers in the fall.
Another thing too to remember too,if the roses and the chrysanthemums and stuff

(07:28):
too, is that it's really greattoo also to remember the deadhead and prune
off a third of that material aswell. So the roses, the can
as, the iris is coming inand pruning off some of that material,
and then dividing and separating your irisesand cannas and all that kind of stuff,
we'll get you to give your gardenan even bigger head start going again
into that next season. Again,So the irises and the cannas and all

(07:50):
that, when you go to transplantthem, you go to prune off the
tops on them and move those bulbsaround. It's great to fertilize that spot
you're gonna put all of those bulbsinto again, talking about fertilization with Dutch
bulb food something like that. Forall your cannas and your irises and all
that good stuff. And then whenyou're transplanting your daylilies and some of these
more tender like leary op, whichis like the little tiny grass looking thing

(08:16):
with little purple flowers on it.Yeah. Yeah, when you go to
divide those guys up, something likeroots stimulator is really great too, because
that's what that's going to do isencourage all of those guys to push more
roots out during this a little bitmore stressful time period here when you're doing
this, but it's important to doit now so you get the blooms before
the cool season comes in. Sosomething like root stimulator contains a hormone in

(08:37):
it called oxen in the form ofindol butaric acid, which is our synthetic
version of the hormone oxin. Andwhat that's gonna do is trigger these plants
to exit dormancy, which is whatthey're sitting in right now with these hot
temperatures, and cause them to startpushing growth again. They're gonna push out
roots, they're gonna push out shoots, and on of those new shoots,

(08:58):
they're gonna put those new blooms forthose things like cannons and irises and stuff
like that, and so it's goodto fertilize and then put out something like
that root stimulator that's going to triggerthat root growth, because that root growth
is what's going to be so vitalto make sure that they're absorbing as much
water and nutrients that they need tomake sure that you get the biggest,
showiest flowering. I have a hundredquestions. So on the irises and cannas,

(09:24):
you cut off all of the greenery, you pull them out of the
ground, and then you cut them. How do you do you cut them
with a knife? Do you cutthem with the shovel? Yeah, So,
things like with the iris and thecannas, especially their bulb that they
have beneath ground is actually really firm. If you think of something like turmeric
or ginger or something like that thatyou would buy from the grocery store.

(09:45):
You can actually take those bulbs likethat and break them up into little pieces.
And those little pieces typically you wantto go for something maybe three or
four inches long. It's going tobe the smallest I would recommend to go
with those, but each one ofthose little three or four inch long pieces
will grow into its own plan.And so also with the irises and then
the daylilies and those kind of guyslike that. It's good to maybe hang

(10:05):
onto a third of the plant materialand that'll give it some green phototropic bits
to kind of push that root growthout photosynthesize and get you a headstart.
The cannons, that growth on theabove part is really fleshy and really tender,
and a lot of times when you'recoming in and digging them up and
separating them and dividing them, you'rejust your hands gripping those stems and pulling

(10:28):
them apart will cause damage to them, and so it's just better to just
cut that bit off and not worryabout having ugly kind of bruised tops to
them. And so I usually withthe cans, I just cut all of
the green bit off and then takethose bulbs and divide them. They grow
like weeds, so they'll bounce backin no time. So when you're saying
cut them into several pieces, solet's just say, I'm thinking of the

(10:50):
ginger root that you just talked about. So let's just say I have one
that's you know, ten inches long, and I cut it into you know,
two or three pieces. Am Igoing to put the roots dim later
on? Every open side that I'vecut. So the root stimulator a few
different ways you can handle that.You can put it into like a can

(11:11):
of watering can, and when yougo transplanting them, just water it in.
Another good thing too, is towater it into the ground first,
then put the cans down of coverthem with soil again, and then water
again on top. And then whenyou're going to do that division of the
bulbs, you'll notice that they kindof have an appearance of like you'll see
where you want to split them up. They'll almost be easy enough to just

(11:35):
kind of grab with your hands andbreak them apart because they'll bamboo has those
notches exactly. They'll you'll see thesesections that kind of make it look obvious
like oh okay, that could bea new plant and that can get a
plant. And then when you takethose guys and spread them out, then
those will just bounce back in notime at all. And I know anybody
that's interested and listening probably knows whatdeadhead of plant is. But can you

(11:56):
explain that? Yeah? Yeah,so deadheads simply just me to remove the
flower tops off of a plant.So deadheading is like with roses, what
will happen is they get done bloomingand you're left with the what's called the
rose hip, and that rose hipis essentially the fruit that the rose is
producing to produce seed. And thereason why you want to deadhead things like

(12:16):
roses and chrysanthemums and stuff like thatis because they're putting all of their energy
and effort into producing that seed that'sinside of those fruits, or another term
again, rose hips, And whatthat is is just a green apple looking
thing at the bottom of the rosewhere the rose used to be. And

(12:37):
so what you want to do isyou want to find that hip and then
go down two leaf nodes. Thefirst leaf node is usually a weaker,
smaller one with only a few leafpetals on it. If you go down
one or two, you'll find aleaf that has five petals on it.
And that leaf with five petals onit is going to be where the strongest

(12:58):
new shoot will emerge from. Andso another thing to think about too is
with roses especially, you want yourroses to grow out into like a vase
shape. You don't want them tohave a whole lot of growth coming into
the middle because all of that growthcoming into the middle is going to cause
things like fungal problems and stuff likethat. So when you do prune down
to that good leaf that we weretalking about, if you pick a leaf

(13:20):
that's pointing out away from the plant, not towards the center. If you
pick that leaf pointing out in away, that new shoot will grow out
and away from the center of theplant as well. And so that will
get your rose to grow in anice vase shape and allow you to not
have a lot of fungal issues andpest issues and all that kind of stuff
like that. I hope I rememberthat. I'm excited. I want to

(13:41):
try something new, and that soundslike I mean, I understand exactly what
you're talking about before I go anyfurther. If you just now started listening.
This is Austin stove All. He'sregional sales manager with Fertilam and you
can find Fertilm just about it anygarden center and also online on Amazon.
I've seen that before. Two.We can't go one more minute without talking

(14:05):
about web worms. I mean,who in Texas has not been disgusted by
web worms? Is there anything thatwe can do to prevent them? And
if we do have them, whatthe heck do we do to get rid
of them. Yeah, So fallwebworms are, like you said, a
really big pain for everyone, especiallydown here in Texas. And so there's
two products that are really great forthat. And that's going to be a

(14:26):
product called Spinosaid soap as well asour regular spinosad and then also to another
product called bt which is basilis.Their genesis is a bacterial species that kills
soft bodied insects such as those fallweb worms. So coming through with a
Hoson attachment sprayer and spraying the foliagematerial, spraying all of those web areas,

(14:50):
making sure you get in contact withthe caterpillars, especially to spraying them
down real good with that is goingto kill them off. And then give
all of those plants that they liketo hang out and all those trees and
shrubs and stuff like that breathing roombecause that that web material is going to
cause fungle problems, their feces andtheir droppings is also going to cause fungal

(15:11):
issues and other problems for the treeas well. So, so coming through
with those products and spraying them wheneverthat you first start to notice them,
if you let them get really reallybad at that point, there's going to
be all of that that web materialup in your tree and you're still going
to come across these issues like that. So keeping an eye during these months

(15:31):
is going to be really critical tomake sure you spot them in time.
A good way to also pay attentionto whether or not they're there. They
like to dangle down on a stringand you'll kind of be walking through the
yard and you'll bump into them.Yeah, yeah, they freak you out.
They get all in your face.As soon as you see those guys
coming through with that the BT orthe spinosid and spraying that plant material down,

(15:52):
we'll get rid of them and notime at all, and then you
don't have to worry about them attackingyour face as you walk through the garden.
They are so disgusting. I mean, who hasn't in Texas have memories
of those web worms when they werelittle? All the way today and you're
seeing them. It's so gross.Okay, so web worms fall, roses,

(16:15):
chrysanthemums, roots stimulator. What havewe missed? Oh what about composting?
Yeah, yeah, so composting.This is again like another time where
you have to remember all of thisstuff, your fungal, your bacterial,
your plants, animals, everybody likesgood weather to grow, and your compost
pile is something that's alive. Yourcompost pile is made up of fungal and

(16:37):
bacterial species that all move into thisdetritus material and break it down. And
so again, with this weather kindof slowly making its way back into a
more functional state, all of yourcompost is going to start heating up again
and start taking off. And alsotoo, you'll have certain species of trees,
like your maples and stuff like thatthat will begin dropping leaf material during
this time. They're stressed from thesummer months and they have a lot of

(17:00):
excess leaf material, so they're goingto go ahead and drop off the old
leaves and get rid of them now. And so coming through your yard and
raking up those maple leaves, rapingup those leaves that have already fallen and
getting them to your compost pile isgoing to give your compost pile a new
material to get a new headstart againand start taking off again. And so
once you start noticing those leaves falland all that coming through, adding something

(17:21):
like compostmaker to your compost pile willkick start that compost pile and give it
the nitrogen and the sugars that itneeds to trigger all of that fungal and
bacterial growth to break down that leafmaterial that's now been added to it,
and then you can put that onanything pretty much. Yeah. Yeah.
So the compost especially too. Soyour spring compost at this point should be

(17:45):
pretty well hot and done, shouldbe all nice and rich and brown and
looking nice, and so you canmove that that compost from the spring out
into your yard and fertilize again likeyour all of your flowering species, fertilize
your trees, fertilize your lawn,spreading that compost around and then taking all
of this new dead material and maybeall of that, you know, those

(18:07):
rose hips that you were pruning off, taking all of the tops to the
chrysanthemums, taking all of that cannonmaterial that you prune the tops off of
all of that, throwing it inthe compost pile, and then that'll give
you another nice round of composts forthe end of fall. Is compost something
that you can use on your indoorplants? Yeah? Yeah, So the
important thing to remember with indoor plantspecies is that they need a really airy,

(18:30):
breathable soil. So you want tomake sure that the compost that you're
using is a nice, rich,earthy material. You can actually use old
composts, so compost that's been sittingthere for a long time is not going
to be super nitrogen heavy, andso you can almost use that in place
of things like pete and cocoa andall of those other sort of green fines

(18:51):
material that are brown fine material thatyou would usually use to make your potting
mix. So you take that compostand you mix it with light for Mikuli,
mix it with earthform castings, mixit with which is again earthform casting
is just another form of compost.Taking all of that, mixing it together
and making sure you have a lightairy mix, and as long as it's
a light airy mix, your indoorplants will love it just fine too.

(19:15):
So the final question fertilization. Wetalk about this a lot, and I
think the last time we met,I told you my horror stories about me
loving my plants so much that Iwanted to give them so much fertilizer that
I killed them. But there reallyis a reason to read the instructions on
these bottles, right exactly. Yeah, So all of the all of the

(19:37):
fertile loam fertilizer lines we have likeour tree ore, you know, the
tree food and the rose food,and all of these different fertilizer lines their
custom formulated specifically for the plants onthe label, and then the fertilization directions
are going to be oriented again towardsthose plant material species. So it makes
it really easy to just look atthe plant material that you're trying to fertilize,

(20:02):
buy a bag of the fertile fertilizerthat matches the plant you're looking for,
follow the directions on the bag,and usually what will happen is you'll
get a nice awesome growth if you'rereally picky about it. You can also
too go something a step farther andyou can take things like our four pound
Amendment bags, which are going tocontain specific nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus or
potassium, and that's going to bethings like the Dutch bulb food or the

(20:25):
blood meal or the bone meal,and coming in with those sort of things.
After you do a soil test againthis right around now the beginning of
September. Around that time, you'llget that soil test back and it'll give
you the exact amount of nitrogen orphosphorus or whatever it is you need and
then doing the math looking at thebag, figuring out the number. So

(20:45):
that's what that number on the bagis for, is to determine how much
of nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus,whatever is in it, and then you
can do the math to figure outthe exact amount of that four pound amendment
bag you need to put down tofertilize just the right out for everything that
you're growing. So that's really good, and I'm writing notes for my own

(21:07):
good. But is there anywhere wecan get this information, like on your
website so it can be a reminder. Yeah, So all of our products
have their own product page on fertilomdot com. So if you go to
fertilome dot com and go to theproducts tab, you can scroll through with
all of the fertilizers, the insecticides, the fungicides, the herbicides, and
you can download such things like thesafety information sheets. You can download the

(21:30):
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 even aswe go into the fall, it is
there anything that we can do orshould we even be worrying about the weeds

(21:52):
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 be thingslike hen bit and some of these other
species that like the starting to comeinto the cooler temperatures, and so something
you can do to prevent a lotof these weed species from coming up in
your yard again, because remember wesaid it's all about the temperature and the

(22:15):
moisture levels and all that stuff,and weeds love those things just as much
as our garden does too, andso coming through with something like turf and
ornamental weed and grass stop or whatthat's gonna do is put a pre emergent
down that's going to stop weed seedfrom germinating and coming up in your yard.
So if turf and ornamental can beused in your ornamental garden beds as
well as in your lawn to preventany sort of weed species from popping up.

(22:37):
The important thing to remember though,is that it's going to stop any
seed from germinating. So if you'retrying to plant out any sort of species
by seed don't put turf and ornamentalin first, because that turf and ornamental
is going to block those seeds fromgerminating. Oh my gosh, what a
horrible situation you would be in justwaiting patiently for nothing to come up.

(22:59):
So all you gotta do is waitfor those whatever it is. Once you've
planted it, it comes up.Once you have two or three leaf nodes
on it, you can come throughwith that turf and ornamental. Put that
all out, and that'll prevent allof the weed seed from coming up around
it and choking out whatever that onething is you're trying to plant Austin.
You know, I always have tohave one ridiculous question, and here it
is when I am looking around atyou know, let's just say, HGB,

(23:23):
and I see that table that hasall those dead plants on it,
is there any way to save them? And should or should I just look
away and say, these are deadplants, Karen, don't look at them.
That's actually one of my favorite thingsto do. All of those garden
centers and stuff like that will havelike a discount plant area where they've got
this mostly dead plant material. Sothe only advice I'd give is to make

(23:47):
sure that there's at least some sortof green material somewhere on it, maybe
at the bottom. A lot ofthis stuff will have a fungal infection,
something that's killing off the tissue,and usually it's because they've overwatered it.
The employee comes through twice three timesa day and waters everything just to make
sure it all stays watered while tryingto sell the plant material. And so

(24:07):
usually all the problem is is youjust need to come in remove that infected
material, cut back to something that'sstill slightly green, and then also two
things that are bulbs, so thingslike daffodils and all this other stuff that
it might look horrible, there mightbe nothing left of the top material.
But if you stick your finger inthat pot, dig down to that bulb
and you notice the bulb is stillhealthy, totally. I would buy that

(24:30):
plant, take it home, andthen again bringing up that root stimulator product.
That root stimulator is going to triggerthat new growth, that synthetic oxen
in it, That synthetic oxen,the indolebteric acid is going to trigger root
growth, trigger shoot growth, andbring that plant back to life and make
it healthy again and give you somethingfor a lot cheaper than what you would
have paid full price for. Doesit say something about our personality that we

(24:53):
want to say the dead plants?Maybe so, But I really appreciate you
coming by today. Please come backagain. This is Austin Stowall, Regional
sales manager for Fertilone. Thank youso much. Again, thank you,
I appreciate it.