Classic Gardens From October 19th, 2024

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's the Classic Gardens and Landscape Show on the hand,
Ready with your want shop plant some grass to grow?
Two and docent Chris, Chris and Chris No, Chris knows it.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Chris knows it.

Speaker 3 (00:18):
Chris knows it.

Speaker 4 (00:20):
Chris knows it.

Speaker 3 (00:21):
Chris knows it.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Chris knows it.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
Chris knows it. See Chris knows it.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
And now you're a host.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Chris Joyner and Chris Keith.

Speaker 5 (00:33):
Good morning and welcome Classic Gardens of Landscape Show on
w r C.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
I'm Chris Keith and.

Speaker 3 (00:38):
I'm Chris Joyner. What kind of bird is that, Chris Keith.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
It's like a peckerwood?

Speaker 3 (00:42):
Yeah, old woodpecker.

Speaker 5 (00:45):
You know what.

Speaker 3 (00:45):
I bet that's from I bet so My oldest daughter
or young middle daughter, Caroline had a had a project
to do and it was something to do with the
state Alabama, and so she had to do like the
state bird. What's the yellow ham? So, I bet that's
it yellow?

Speaker 2 (01:01):
That's yellow hammer. And then it's not colored.

Speaker 3 (01:03):
Yeah, it's just not color. So she probably drew it
on here to practice for her poster. So she did.
She had like the Tennessee River up in North Alabama.
She had uh long leaf pine, and she was gonna
draw a pine tree, but I said, no, baby, come on,
and so we grabbed the flashlight and up by my
neighbors there's a long leaf pine with low limbs, and

(01:24):
so we broke off some of the small limbs and
just sare hot glued does on there and anyway, that's
so she had my radio books. I was going through
this and what you figure out what kind of bloom
that is?

Speaker 2 (01:36):
With that?

Speaker 3 (01:37):
Right, Familia? I think she drew a camellia bloom on there.
I didn't have any camellias in bloom, so we couldn't
so we couldn't do that. But uh so she grabbed
my radio book and I was sitting in here looking
at it. Early He's like, why is there a dad
gune woodpecker drawing in here? That's why Carolina had like

(01:57):
the state of Alabama project. Yep, And then the couple
weeks but they're getting into the point where they've got
projects all the time at school now. So Claire's in
the sixth grade, Caroline's and fourth and Claire had one
a few weeks ago that they had to they did
something about inventions, and hers was the invention of crayons, right,

(02:19):
go figure you think would be light bulb or light switch, ye, electric,
you know whatever, But it was all about crayons. So
somewhere around this joint there's a bunch of poster boards
stuff like that on there. That's fun. Now we actually
make Sarah helps them do all that stuff and directs them,
but we actually make our kids do the projects, and

(02:39):
they put a lot of effort into it. I tell
you that's one thing. I don't know if all girls
are that way compared to boys, but my girls typically
put put a lot of effort into school, and they
don't mind going to school. Yeah, I did not like school.

Speaker 5 (02:52):
I know one of the girls one time, you know,
because I drawed, Yeah, I just do that.

Speaker 3 (02:57):
I thought about that the other day. You know where
we put our tomato program stuff. You drew that whole
farm scene on the side of the way.

Speaker 5 (03:04):
And I painted all those bricks on the floor of
the garden center. Your knees still feeling God, But uh yeah,
So I one of the girls had a project that
was about rows of parks or whatever and the bus
or whatever, and I drew basically the like if you
were sitting on the back of the bus, like coming
up through the bus. Yeah, you know, to all the
seats and everything like like like you were literally sitting

(03:26):
in the back of the bus looking down through the bus.

Speaker 3 (03:29):
On it.

Speaker 5 (03:30):
They put it on the on the rows of parks,
poster or whatever.

Speaker 3 (03:35):
Good artists. And if you ever want to hear a
great singer, we'll get Chris Keith to do some karaoke
on the radio show.

Speaker 5 (03:41):
Well a little sweep out the ashes, Darling.

Speaker 3 (03:46):
I guess you've sung that one a few times.

Speaker 2 (03:47):
Huh no that uh no?

Speaker 5 (03:51):
We I know one thing. I grow some greens you
sent me and and a picture of other man.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
If y'all want some greens, just holler at me.

Speaker 3 (04:00):
I got plenty, Man't that patch of mixed greens you got?
You can't see the dirt?

Speaker 5 (04:06):
Everything out there is just went nuts. I've been pumping
the middle organite to it to keep the deer out
of it, and then the process I just made everything explode. Plus,
I mean we were up until this last week we
hadn't had any cold weather, so uh you know that
everything I think I planted like dead on the perfect day,
like the stars were aligned and like everything because I

(04:29):
when I put that seed out for those mixed greens.

Speaker 2 (04:33):
It literally within.

Speaker 5 (04:35):
It seems like three days, I had a dust dusting
cover of green Sea coming up.

Speaker 3 (04:41):
You know.

Speaker 5 (04:42):
I was like, man, these things are gonna be pretty good.
You know, I feel a little bit of stuff.

Speaker 3 (04:45):
To him.

Speaker 5 (04:46):
I was like, man, I saw some deer tracks in there,
and I was like, man, I better go ahead and
start throwing the stuff out here. And I put it
out and email shot up a little bit, and then
all at once it's like, just over the last two weeks,
they everything just busted. I mean, I've got cabbage that
are about as big as a volleyball, and uh man,

(05:08):
it's kind of collars my collar plants for like two
and a half feet wide. I mean they got leaves
on them like ten inches wide.

Speaker 3 (05:16):
I think I've got some ham hawks in my freezer.

Speaker 5 (05:19):
Listen, I get some greens, I mean.

Speaker 3 (05:22):
And some smoked ham will chop up and put in there.

Speaker 5 (05:25):
I fixed some of those mixed greens the other day, Chris.
I'm going to tell you that's probably as good as
greens as you ever ate. Man, they were so good.
There's so much. I've got seven top turnips and purple
top turnips and kill and rape, and I've got a
curly mustard and broad leaf mustard and all that stuff
so mixed together. And man, you're talking about some good greens. Lord,

(05:45):
they are so good. They're nearly they're nearly knee high.
I mean, they are pretty.

Speaker 3 (05:53):
Talking about deer. It is it is deer season, man,
and they're moving to how about about molly walk one.
The other day, we heading back over to my brother
in law's house to take our camper. We uh dropped
it off and we were coming back down to the back.
We always come down back way down through here to
twenty three and cut through the floor land and there's

(06:13):
a deer that came out in front of us, and man,
I slammed on my brake so hard. My girls are
in the back seat, and if they didn't have their
seat belts on, they probably would have been through the window.

Speaker 5 (06:21):
I hadn't stopped so fast.

Speaker 3 (06:25):
Yeah, and this stretch down through here, Man, down Highway eleven.
Last year, I was coming into work and I got
to I got to the intersection at twenty three and
Highway eleven, and I'm driving and it's just kind of
dusky outside and I look over to my left and
this deer is coming towards the side of my truck
and hits its brakes. If you've ever seen a dog

(06:45):
like try to stop or try to start running on
a hardwood floor and its feet are just like they're moving,
but they're not going anywhere. That deer just like was
doing that on the asphalt and like landed on its
side and then hopped up and ran back into the woods.
I think about went through the side of my door.

Speaker 5 (07:00):
I've seen a lot of them right there about where
about where Lord John's is, or where it right the
other side of where Jamie Layfield used to live, down
on the right in that double light on the Highway eleven. Yeah,
that's that's a treacherous spot right there for deer. Man,
they come through there like crazy.

Speaker 3 (07:18):
Yeah, I bet well it Van. We got the cool weather,
and I'm glad. We were in Murphysboro last weekend for
a soccer tournament and it was still. Man, it was
still like eighty five eighty six degrees on Saturday and Sunday,
and then the wind starts blowing Sunday night. And when
I woke up to cook breakfast outside Monday morning, because
it took Monday off, I was like, oh, yeah, here

(07:40):
we go, baby, it's fall. And ever since then it's
it's been it's been super nice temperatures and we got
some we got some frost. You talk about the way
you go to work. I dropped the kids off at
school and then uh had to go over to Trustville
on Wednesday, and I cut back down Village Springs Road
cause I had to look at a yard off a
Village Springs Road and you could just see it coming

(08:02):
back through over to Old Springville. You could just see
frost all over the rooftops, all over the yards. So
we're there. Man, I'm glad. I'm always done with heat.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
Well this time of year too.

Speaker 5 (08:14):
So after we have one of those frosts like that,
if you see squiggly lines all over the yard, and
you know it just funky patterns in the yard, and
just basically those Bermuda yards, it seems like it it
puts a good burn on them.

Speaker 2 (08:26):
First.

Speaker 5 (08:27):
Uh, that's that's all it is, is just frost, and
it's you know, it's gradually going dormant.

Speaker 3 (08:32):
So we're kind of in that spot. It's funny how
that frost just settles on the yard, how it does
that pattern almost like a leopard, you know, leopard type
pattern all over the yard. Uh, just a little I
guess you could say little. You know, some grass is
just a little bit taller than the others, and you
got little many micro climates all over the yard where
this patch of soil is a little bit warmer than

(08:53):
this patch, and it just settles in like that. We
usually get a few phone calls, people freaking out, think
that their yard is diseased and fixing it die. But
it's it's just frost.

Speaker 2 (09:02):
Good.

Speaker 3 (09:03):
It's we caught frost damage. But I mean that's kind
of what it is, because the frost knocks the grass back.
But it's just part of nature's course going into dormancy.

Speaker 5 (09:12):
A healthy yard of go dormant looking like that. You
want it to be more on the straw side, like
you're looking at wheat straw as opposed.

Speaker 2 (09:19):
To like a gray.

Speaker 3 (09:21):
Look.

Speaker 5 (09:21):
Yeah, the gray is dry and dead. There's a lot
of there's a lot of gray out there just because
it got it got.

Speaker 3 (09:30):
So hot and so dry this summer, you know, all
of August, the first couple of weeks of September, and
then we got a little bit of a break for
like a week right. We had a couple of tropical
storms hurricanes that came through and they gave us some rain,
but it really wasn't enough to do a lot. I mean,
you're I'm sure your pond still wait out and here

(09:52):
we are again, you know what, Like you know, the
last two weeks basically we hadn't had any rain. Now
the weather is nice for us and it's back off,
but it's still it's dry, and the ten day forecast
doesn't have any any rainfall in it as well, so
you still have to stay on top of watering. You're
not going to be able to tell it. Like yards
are not as vibrant, you know, grasp or whether it's

(10:14):
permuter as oisia. For the most part, they're not as
vibrant green as they were, you know, five weeks ago. Growing,
they're not They're not as vibrant as they were. Listen,
we had our yard at work, I want to say
probably two weeks ago was as green as you could imagine. Right, Well, uh,
we we gave it a haircut and cut it and

(10:35):
so that kind of shaved some of the green off
its permuta grass and it lost some of its luster.
And then here we go into cooler temperatures, and it's
just starting to fade away. But it's not as easy
to see that. There's still a lot of yards that
are dry. They don't need to water, but you wouldn't,
you know, everybody's thinking right now, it's like, oh, it's
just fall, it's cold. We're going in dormancy. But there's

(10:56):
you still have to keep you know, keep up with
the water and schedule for sure.

Speaker 5 (11:00):
And you know too, if you've if you win all
summer and you've grady, you know, we all do it. Uh,
when you get into you know, you go on vacation,
you come back, what are you The first thing you do?
You go up one notch on you mower and you
have something happens or whatever and you can't get to
your grass, you know, three days over what you were
supposed to or whatever. You go up on that more blood,

(11:21):
you know, and you gradually go up, go up, go up.

Speaker 2 (11:24):
Next thing.

Speaker 5 (11:24):
You know your grass is you know, three and a
half inches tall or whatever. You need to start now,
you know, once a week, just go in there, lower
it a notch, start gradually working that stuff down. Because
the worst thing you can do is let this, especially
if you got a yard that's on a slope or
a hillside or whatever. You don't want that grass going
dormant long. So just you know, gradually work that back

(11:46):
down as you're getting the leaves up. You know, leaves
are starting to fall prematurely just because it's been so dry,
and making sure you get those leaves off the yard
and uh, you know, just gradually drop that mower.

Speaker 3 (11:58):
You think we'll have good fall color this year.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
You know, it's a spit ball. It's craps.

Speaker 5 (12:03):
You if we get any is you know after these
last couple of frost or whatever. Usually about ten days
after that. Yeah, it's kind of when you start, you
kind of get that that peak in it.

Speaker 2 (12:15):
So we'll see what happens.

Speaker 3 (12:16):
That's when you need to take a drive through the country.

Speaker 2 (12:18):
Geehaw or something.

Speaker 3 (12:19):
You know. One year we were in on On and
we cut up over Pine Mountain and just just drove.
We didn't have a GPS or anything on I just
kept turning left right, left, right, left right, and man,
it was it was one of those days where the
sun was perfect and like the oranges and the yellows
and the reds, it was just like so vibrant.

Speaker 5 (12:38):
Yeah, yellows kind of peak out before everything else, and
then you'll start seeing the oranges and the reds afterwards.
We've already got some pretty decent yellow out there now,
and we're starting to see, you know, some of the
some of the maples that have a little more stress
or you see like a sweet gum or something like that,
you'll start seeing them kind of coloring up.

Speaker 2 (12:59):
Uh, just over the next week or so with that
little frost we have.

Speaker 5 (13:02):
But I figured ten days from now, you know, ten days,
two weeks, yep, you know we'll be peaking. And uh,
that's that's about normal for us. And then uh, usually
I and just like noster domus, it comes true just
about every year about mid November, it's gonna start raining.

Speaker 2 (13:22):
Believe it or not.

Speaker 5 (13:23):
Since you know, we haven't had much rain in the
last three months, it's gonna start raining about mid November
and they won't quit until May. And uh, you can
bank on it.

Speaker 3 (13:32):
Chris Keith has a weather onman acting accurate.

Speaker 5 (13:35):
When it quits in May, it'll shut off like a
light switch. But meanwhile, about every other day for December, January, February, March,
it's gonna brain. You know, you're not wrong light clockwork. Well,
let's take a break right quick. Our number if you
want to call you ask us guarding the question you can.
It's two O five four three nine nine three seven two. Again,

(13:57):
that's two O five four three nine nine three seven two. Now,
if you landscaping, if you need irrigation, if you need
long care, if you need a patio or a taina wall, forest, multching,
land clearing, any of that stuff, you call us eight
five four four thousand and five. We'll get you on
the books. We'd love to work with you. We've been
working in Homewood, We've been working in the where technically

(14:20):
I guess that's Vess Davie right there. I was kind
of in right out of Cahaba Heights and right off
two eighty there, so we were working down there. But
our number, if you want to call us at the
garden Center, set an appointment for landscaping or long carry
any of that stuff, eight five four four thousand and five,
and we'll be right back.

Speaker 4 (14:39):
It's the show in the Know with all Things that grow.
It's the classic gardens and Landscape show with Chris Joiners
and Chris Keith Russell Green.

Speaker 6 (14:48):
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(15:10):
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(15:31):
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(15:52):
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Speaker 4 (16:05):
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Speaker 6 (16:09):
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(16:33):
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(16:55):
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(17:15):
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Speaker 1 (17:34):
No, no, don't don't no, no no no dunnof no no,
du't of don't don't turn no, don't no doll don't.

Speaker 2 (17:41):
Know your plants?

Speaker 5 (17:43):
Yes, and we know our plants and Chris, uh, we
just got some shipments of plants. I didn't even get
a chance to see what all it was. But I
saw some small cryptomeria yeah, and I saw some weeping
red bud trees.

Speaker 3 (17:56):
Yep, yes, right, I didn't. I don't even know we were,
I mean we were.

Speaker 5 (18:00):
I saw the carts come in and then it was
like Anne was busy and she, you know, couldn't get
to them to get it put up and then we
were swamped, you know, trying to get the the landslide
uh taken care of and uh, I just I never
saw anything.

Speaker 2 (18:16):
Come on, encorez has been blooming like crazy.

Speaker 5 (18:19):
If you want to do landscaping, man, that you couldn't
get a better time of year to do it. Uh,
you know if you held a gun to my hat.
When we landscape three hundred and sixty five days a year,
so I don't care if if the ground is stalled
enough to where I can stick a pick in and
or a shovel, We're out there putting bushes in it.
And uh, a plant would much rather be in the
ground then it would be in a black pot above ground.

(18:42):
So you know, growers in our industry, they have to
grow plants whether it's winter or summer, or hot or cold,
or wet or dry. They're they're under control conditions. So uh,
even you know, the best plants got to go through,
you know, sitting on top of the ground in a

(19:02):
black pot and a hundred degree weather and vice versa.
It's got to sit on top of the ground in
twenty degree weather to be grown. I mean that's just
the way it is. So but a plant would much
rather be stuck in the ground, you know, with those
roots in that root system in the ground, that would
be on top of the ground in a pot. So

(19:22):
but if you held a gun to my head and
said what time of year is the best year to plant?

Speaker 3 (19:27):
Right now?

Speaker 6 (19:27):
Is it?

Speaker 2 (19:28):
Uh?

Speaker 5 (19:28):
You plan them two three weeks from now, it's gonna
start raining. They ain't gonna quit to me, So you
got about six months that you're not gonna have to
do anything to those plants.

Speaker 2 (19:37):
So it is a great time.

Speaker 5 (19:39):
You'll have to water them next two or three weeks,
but you know after that you won't have to water
them all. And then the nighttime temperatures and the daytime
temperatures are gonna start gradually falling off, and when they do,
you're only not had water a couple of times a
week anyway. So now is a great time to do it,
great time to put outside people.

Speaker 3 (19:56):
I get that question a lot, Chris Keith. It's like
people people wonder, you know, as it okay to lay
side in the winter months. I love there, and they're
worried about they're worried about winter injury and getting cold.
But listen, I got eight thousand square feet a yard
in my in my backyard. I remember laying that side
and that side was dagged on frozen solid. I was

(20:17):
out there. I think I had I had the sad delivered,
and I had like it was December when we were
off for Christmas, and I had like a two day window.
I had the sawd delivered, I had I covered it
with a tart because it was raining for a couple
of days. And then I had like a two day
window when it uh it wasn't gonna rain, but that
sid was so it was so it was dagging on

(20:39):
frozen solid to wear. It was like, I mean, you
could like it was like somebody sprayed the whole thing
with starch. It was just as stiff as can be.
And I remember I remember being out there. I had
the floodlights on trying to lay that side down in fantastic,
fantastic looking grass. And you think about it, Chris Keith
is like homes, you know, home building. You've talked about
that they built homes three hundred and sixty five days

(21:01):
a year. Well, if they build a house in December
and they finish, they don't wait till you know, they
don't wait until March or April to lay the grass.
They lay the grass in so great time to it
is a great time to lay saw all year long,
doesn't matter.

Speaker 5 (21:15):
I like it right now. You know, you get into
July and August, you know, when we're out there trying
to do a sod job, and it's like, i'm An's like,
I got the sad coming in Thursday, and I'm out there.
We had even christ grass. We ain't even begun prepping.
We begun, you know, we're we're putting in the shrubs

(21:36):
and putting in the irrigation and doing all this stuff.
And NaN's like the sod's coming Thursday, and I better
make sure it's like Thursday evening. We want to make
it where when we get one prepped, you know, we
got it preped, We got it ready to go with
the swad gets there. We get it off Pallett, you know,
just immediately. And when it's one hundred degrees outside, you
gotta get it off there immediately. If you don't, it's

(21:59):
it's gonna burn up on the pallette. So we are
busting a move, you know, trying to get your sad
on the ground to make sure that it looks fantastic
and uh, this time of year, you could get a
pallet of sowd, you know, on a Monday, and you
could lay it on a Wednesday kind of thing.

Speaker 2 (22:16):
So you got like a it's a cakewalk.

Speaker 3 (22:19):
You know.

Speaker 5 (22:19):
It's so much easier laying saw this time of year.
And you get you know, the saw down. You don't
have to worry about it, you know, sitting there and
going through a heat on the pallette and uh man,
it does a good job. And then even you know
when you put it out too, you know, the wake
for we're about to talk about them, uh after this
next break, but we just put their sade out.

Speaker 2 (22:39):
I told her, I said, you'll hand waters.

Speaker 6 (22:41):
Come.

Speaker 5 (22:41):
She got some irrigation issues and our irrigation truck has
been in the shop for like three weeks, so we're
behind on, you know, getting any irrigation done. So they've
got a they've got a leak over there. And I
told her, I said, if you just hand water, you
know a couple of times this weekend, we're supposed to

(23:03):
get our truck out of the shop, you know, late
Monday in a Tuesday, and we'll get over here and
get this irrigation fixed and get it where you can water.
She got a pressure egg or she don't have a
pressure egg letter and Chris, I bet you they got
two hundred and fifty pounds of pressure. It's like it's
like you can run thirty five heads on one zone.

Speaker 3 (23:22):
She probably needs four.

Speaker 5 (23:24):
Oh god, yes, then we'll talk about hers in a
little bit. We got a lot to talk about on
that one. But yeah, at a man, it just but yeah, so.

Speaker 3 (23:37):
She we treated her yard over off of in Vestavia
by where does she use to? Bad Ham Drive? Over
by uh West Davy Hills High School. You know, the
older established neighborhood.

Speaker 2 (23:48):
She should have stayed there. It was one of those.

Speaker 3 (23:53):
Established emeralds Oisy Yards. Yeah, beautiful house. Great neighborhood is
between Rocky Ridge Road and uh Rocky Ridge and Highway
thirty one invest Avia. Fantastic. You know where the Ballards live?
Not that yeah the yeah, oh heck, you know the
neighborhoods bad Ham Drive, Panorama Drive up there in Vestavia? Yeah,

(24:15):
heart of Stavia. Yeah, you know houses are probably built fifties. Yeah,
I know where you're at, like I did, I did.
I remember one of the first landscape jobs and I
passed by it all the time. One of the first
landscape jobs I ever worked on at Classic Gardens that
the Jerry Johnson was running it, and it was off
of Panorama Drive and I planted He had me plant

(24:36):
two I'm assuming they were fifteen gallon crape myrtles on
either side of the driveway. And I'm forty one and
that was probably when I was like fifteen, and uh,
crape myrtles are still there, and so it's kind of cool,
like getting to drive by those two crape myrtles that
I planted, you know, over twenty years ago. Yeah, you know,

(24:57):
and I'm sure the homeowners have changed and they had
ever been they had never been murdered. They're they're they've
grown like a crape myrtle should grow. They're the right
size for the driveway, so they're not like encroaching and
hanging over everything. You know, you plant the right tree
in the right place. But it's just neat being able
to go back and see stuff that you did a
long time ago.

Speaker 5 (25:17):
There's a row of layland cypress over on two thirty
one that I'll see when we go to the river
and uh, you know, we'll be hanging out up there
in pel City or whatever. But there's a row of
layland cypress on the left going up to thirty one
that I planted like.

Speaker 2 (25:31):
In nineteen ninety five.

Speaker 3 (25:32):
Isn't that cool?

Speaker 5 (25:34):
You know they're thirty five feet thirty five forty feet
tall now and the perfect privately privacy screen they wanted
to screen from the traffic from on two thirty one,
you know, because it's pretty busy right there.

Speaker 3 (25:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (25:45):
Then, Uh, I planned those things when I was in
tenth grade, and uh, they're still killing killing it, Chris.
When we come back from this break, I want to
talk about the wakefers and the Fortsun's. Uh, that's where
we've been working the last week or so. We'll take
your calls to at two O five four three nine
nine three seven two. If you want to call Monday

(26:06):
through Friday, we're open at the garden Center eight to four.

Speaker 6 (26:09):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (26:09):
You can call us if you need a sub appointment
for landscaping or irrigation, if you need lawn care, if
you need a patio or a taina wall, any of
that stuff. You call us eight five four four thousand
and five. We'll be right back.

Speaker 1 (26:21):
It's the classic Gardens of Landscape show.

Speaker 6 (26:25):
All the ready came when you'll.

Speaker 1 (26:29):
Want show up plants and grass to grow two percent Chris,
Chris and Chris No.

Speaker 4 (26:36):
And now you're a host Chris Joiner and Chris Keith.

Speaker 5 (26:42):
Then we're back for the second half of the Classic
Gardens The Landscape Show. And our number if you want
to call us and ask us a gardener question, you.

Speaker 3 (26:48):
Can do that.

Speaker 5 (26:48):
It's two o five four three nine nine three seven two.
And we went to break. I was talking about the Wakefers.

Speaker 3 (26:56):
Hey, if any of my if any of my fans
want autographs, I am available the.

Speaker 5 (27:00):
Radio show, standing out here rolling Oaks d.

Speaker 2 (27:08):
Like aiker.

Speaker 3 (27:09):
Yeah boy, yeah, everybody loves me. No, not really. So yeah.

Speaker 5 (27:14):
So the Wakefords, they you said they were up off
a panoram over in the vest Davia back in the
day and they moved to a new neighborhood.

Speaker 3 (27:24):
It's Helen's helen Ridge, Heiling Ridge, new development. But yeah,
so no no yard prep. And so I went and
measured her yard. I think we've been treating it for
about a year something like that, maybe year and a half.
Brand is when it's brand new. And when I start
driving down the main main road going through there, I

(27:45):
start looking and it's auber Muda kind of contractor grade
type stuff. Yeah, I'm like, man, that looks like torpedo
grass in that yard. And I look over and there's
another one and another one and another one. And then
I get to Jennifer's house and I start measuring. I'm like, man,
this thing is torn up, ate up with torpedo grass.

(28:05):
And torpedo grass is one man, It is hard to kill.
It is extremely difficult to get rid of. You know,
we talk about behea all the time, yea being a tough,
tough grass. Behea is hard to kill. But like, I
don't mind it. Torpedo grass it literally like snakes through
your yard. If you were to think of a torpedo
going through the water, just sume straight ahead. That's how

(28:27):
torpedo grass just crossed through there. And you can take
the best products in the world and spray that stuff
and then you have to spray it again and have
to spray it again. And that's what we basically her
front yard and sides. That's what we're gonna end up doing.
Like we just went out and sprayed it to kill it.
We're not gonna do anything with it until next spring,
you're telling me. And then we're gonna come in and

(28:49):
spray it again. But it's just you know, and it's
it's you know, basically like a weed is considered something
that you don't want any yard. So you can have
like you can have bermuda grass, and if you have
zoisa mixed in with it and you don't want the zoysia,
well that's oys just considered a weed, right or flip flop,
you got zoisa with bermuda in it, that bermuda is

(29:09):
considered a weed. But this whole neighborhood, I'm assuming that
they that they brought that side in from South Alabama,
and torpedo grass is big down there. It's kind of
a you know, coastal looks like sandy soil. It's a
coastal type weed. But man, every one of those things,
every one of those yards had torpedo grass in it.

(29:29):
I'm just like, man, I don't we consider it uncontrollable?
Like if we get a yard that uh that we're
starting to treat and just doing the regular fertilization on,
I'm upfront with the customer and I tell them, hey, listen,
this stuff's going to continue to spread. There's nothing that
we can do about it other than if you want
us to come in and kill it off completely and
resite it. And that's what we're doing it. That's what

(29:50):
we're doing at Jennifer. Sure, but that front yard, I mean,
the yard was it was as good as it looks
as it's gonna look. It's just old. You know, new developments,
there's no tops oil slate on gravel, and you know
mortar chunks and concrete and you know modello and Budweiser
bottles and cigarette but basically all the construction debreed two

(30:12):
by fours, OSB, trim pieces, you name it, it's under that.
It's under that soil. And if you've got a new
home and a new development and you're active in the yard,
new plant plants and stuff, you know what I'm talking about. Uh,
but we're gonna come in and do it right. We're
gonna come in with good grass and you know, prep
the soil and make sure everything looks good.

Speaker 5 (30:31):
Well, we're going way over and above what anybody else
will do. Anyways, Literally, we sprayed it with round up.

Speaker 2 (30:37):
It's dead.

Speaker 5 (30:38):
The grass is just gonna look dormant all winter. We're
gonna come in there next spring. We're gonna fertilize it.
We're gonna encourage the torpedo grass to come back so
we can kill it again, and then then we'll go in,
we'll prep and we'll lay the new side. So we're
got This is like a six month process that we're
putting Jennifer's yard through to do all we can to

(30:59):
make sure she didn't have to repedo grass come back
in that grass. Now, that was easy problem. That was
the least of the problem. So the torpedo grass, you
can live with. It sucks, but you can live with it.
The bad problem problem was she had a landslide in
the backyard and we literally hauled now her backyard, y'all,

(31:21):
the whole backyard ain't four pounds of sawd uh, and
she had twelve triaxle loads of dirt slide off the
hill into the backyard, busted the back fence down. I
mean it was a it was a landslide. I mean
enough said, you know, it like an avalanche and fell

(31:44):
off the side of the hill into her backyard. And
we literally took an excavator and excavated all that stuff,
climbed the side of the hill and excavated it off
from the top and worked anything any loose material from
the top all the way down that thing. And as
as Justin was digging the side of the hill that
didn't slide off down to just hard rock, he was

(32:08):
sending it off the hill and I was hauling it out.

Speaker 2 (32:10):
There was a kids deer a bucket at a time.

Speaker 5 (32:12):
Luckily the neighbor there's like a bluff beside us on
the right hand side, and luckily the neighbor let us
just send the dirt off the side of that hill,
and so we didn't have to haul it off. Otherwise
we'd have been hauling and do it to take twice
as long. But we were literally just taking it bucket
at a time off of there, and you know, two
hundred and fifty buckets later, we had it all out

(32:33):
of the backyard and we went in there and regraded
the whole backyard, put her in a good French train
in the back We wound up having to pipe her,
so we wound up having a jack camera just to
put the French train in. Chris, because the ground in
the backyard had a shell had shelfs of rock in it,
like the side of that hill, so we had.

Speaker 3 (32:54):
They probably blasted and to get to build the house.

Speaker 5 (32:57):
Yeah, so when they put in the down when they
when they piped the down spouts out, they got down
to the hard rock and just quit. So all the
down spouts were sitting. The pipe that the down spouts
were running into was higher than.

Speaker 2 (33:11):
The down spout.

Speaker 3 (33:12):
And water doesn't run up hill, don't run uphill, you know.

Speaker 5 (33:15):
So, uh we literally jack cammeron a ditch in the
backyard to put in her French drain and to put
her down spouts piper down spouts out and uh put
a good French strain back there lay some beautiful emeralds. Oysa,
that's the South Dallas turf. Man, I'm telling you they're
they're turning out some fantastic grass of props to those guys.

Speaker 2 (33:38):
But uh man, Yeah, that.

Speaker 5 (33:40):
We'd laid some beautiful sod and got her back in
good shape and the backyard smooth, and now she can
have the fence and company come back in, put her
fence back up in the back and she'll be good
to go.

Speaker 3 (33:51):
Yeah, and then we'll do the front yard next year.
I guess we're going back with going back, thank goodness.
You know you can tell like the the yards, it's
amazing when you go through new developments like that, how
those oiser yards stand out compared to the old contractor
of Bermuda that goes.

Speaker 2 (34:08):
In, Well, it looks like you took. It looks like
you cared.

Speaker 3 (34:11):
Yeah, right, you know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (34:13):
It just man, some of that.

Speaker 5 (34:15):
We were talking about the bray over in Lime Liberty
Park the other day.

Speaker 3 (34:20):
My god, it's the worst we've seen. Me and you.
A lot of trashy development, I think soil, but man,
that is horrible.

Speaker 5 (34:28):
What I think, Chris. The whole one I see a
place like that is you had to drive into that
neighborhood to want to live in that neighborhood. But when
you drive in that neighborhood and you see them about
the lay sid on top of what looks like my driveway,

(34:50):
I just don't get it. Yeah, you know that the
house that you want to buy had the same thing
under the sod. So I just I don't understand.

Speaker 3 (35:02):
We look at it differently.

Speaker 5 (35:03):
How I run through a neighborhood or whatever, and in
every yard is literally you know, you can see two
by fours and plywood and gravel and everything, and they've
literally just went in there and scratched it. Down to
as flat as they can get it. They put in
irrigation in amongst all that stuff, and uh, to layside. Yeah,

(35:26):
that's what it is, and that's what you're buying.

Speaker 3 (35:30):
Wow, it is what I know. We had a customer,
mister Bell lives off off Rocky Ridge, now a custom
building house, but he lived in the preserve down Hoover
and it was the same way. I remember trying to
take a soil sample out of his backyard because it
was just the front yard. It was Emeralds way. Just
saw it and uh, it took it took. It took
about two years, but we got the vast majority of

(35:53):
his yard like looking really nice, a deep, lush green.
And that's sometimes that's what it works. That's how it worked.
You know, in the new developments. It just takes a
little bit more time to get the grass established, you know,
to get the nutrient level built back up, and you know,
get some type of some type of organic material up
under there for the for the grass like hold on to.
But the backyard just never did, never did well. So

(36:17):
I was going to pull a soil sample and check
the pH because it was always just a you know,
pale green almost yellow, and I remember trying to pull
a soil sample out of there, and I kept pulling
out chunks of plywood. It was OSB and so then
I always carry like a little little spade with me,
and I cut out a little section. I was like, David, man,
come here and check this out. And so I pulled
the side back and I was just like peeling back

(36:38):
plywood from up underneath the soil. Now he did the
exact opposite. He built a custom built home off a
rocky ridge. And I want to say he probably brought
in three hundred little tracks of loads of top of
the soil to build his house because it's up on
a bluff, and they just kept dumping and kept dumping
and kept dumping. He's got he's got a great yard. Now,
was fantastic.

Speaker 2 (37:00):
Well, Chris, let's take that last break of the show.

Speaker 3 (37:01):
Our numbers.

Speaker 5 (37:02):
If you want to give us a call, you can.
It's two five, four three nine nine three seven two.
If you need to set appointment for long care landscaping,
if you need irrigation, not lighting, a patio, retaining wall, forest, multing,
land clearing, any of that stuff, you call us eight
five four four thousand and five We'll be right back.

Speaker 4 (37:20):
These guys know they're dirt. It's the Classic Gardens and
Landscape Show with Chris Joiner and Chris Keith.

Speaker 6 (37:28):
Russell. Green Houge has been insuring my business, my home
and my farm for over twenty years. You see Russell
as an independent agent. He gets to shop the insurance
industry to bring me the best possible insurance and price.
Green Hoouge Insurance is a family run business with his
wife Marcia and son Adam involved. As Russ eases up

(37:50):
a little, Adam is stepping in. I remember when my
home on my farm burned down to the ground. I
called Russ that afternoon, and the next I had an
adjuster standing next to me on my farm. My memory
is a little foggy, but the way I tell the
story is he wrote me a check on the spot
for the full amount of the policy. If it didn't

(38:11):
happen that way. It was so easy to work with
them that it seemed it happened that way. I also
remember when my house in Birmingham had tornado damage. I
called green Houge, laid on a satdery prepared to leave
a message on the phone. Russ answered. I said, Russ,
why are you work so late on a Saturday? He said, Mike,
there was a storm, and I'm expecting some phone calls

(38:33):
from my customers. It might be hard to believe, but
that's the kind of service you get from Green Houge Insurance.
Give Russ or Adam a call today nine to sixty
seven eighty eight hundred and tell them that Mike sent you.

Speaker 5 (38:54):
Where it of all my flowers gone?

Speaker 1 (38:58):
No spice?

Speaker 5 (39:00):
See were headball my flowers gone?

Speaker 2 (39:06):
No further to all where the ball my flowers gone?
They got smoked by the cold the other day.

Speaker 5 (39:18):
If they didn't get hit by they they did at
the drought didn't get them.

Speaker 3 (39:23):
The sun patients. And so we had some just you know,
tropical hibiscuits, not that not the printy ones, just the
ones you buy the roadside market up there. And they
were looking pretty puny the other day, and Sarah was like,
why don't you water those things? I was like, maybe
we're fixing it a frost. Those things are fixing a
croak anyway, So I ain't even worried about humming birds
love those things. We put them right on our back

(39:43):
deck outside our kitchen living room window, and you just
see the humming birds come to those all the time.
I got red and the yellow one every year.

Speaker 5 (39:51):
I know they've been traveling because those things get in
my barn and they get they come in my big
doors from a barn and they get in there and
I've got that I've got that clear uh, that clear
plastic come on that one side, you know to let
sun in there.

Speaker 3 (40:05):
Yep.

Speaker 5 (40:05):
And they get up in that top and they can't
figure out, Hey, dummy, I gotta go out there and
go go out the door.

Speaker 3 (40:10):
You know. They stay up in that high point and
go the same way you came in, having to pitch
them out of there.

Speaker 6 (40:15):
Ye.

Speaker 3 (40:16):
Well, Chris, we talked about watering, and yards still need water.
But one thing that I've seen a lot of is
I think people forgot to change their schedule on their
or on the irrigation system, because I've actually been on
a lot of yards that were like swamps right now
because they're still watering three days a week, you know,
if for an hour or zone each time. So that's

(40:36):
not something that you still need to water, but you
need to pay attention to that. You don't have to
water nearly as much as you did back in August
and September when we were super hot and super dry,
and then uh, just a couple you know, little things
like a night lighting schedule. You know, obviously it's it's dark.
It dang six six thirty. Now it seems like so

(40:58):
if you've got night lights, you need to adjust that
SCHEDE had to do mine the other day because they
weren't coming on till eight o'clock. Right, Yeah, so adjusting
your night lighting schedule.

Speaker 5 (41:06):
A lot of people want to adjust them until you know,
time changes.

Speaker 3 (41:09):
Yeah, and I just keep bumping mine back and bumping
mine back and bumping mine back. I've got lights that
come down my deck stairs and so that's all we see,
so we don't trip and fall. And it's a it's
a great time because grass has slowed down. It's a
great time to do maintenance on your lawnmower. So if
you hadn't sharpened your blades, if you need to grease fittings,
if you need to change the oil or anything like that,

(41:31):
now it's a great time while you got a little
bit of downtime to get that taken care of. Because man,
I know they've been running wide open lawnmowars half in
all year long so it's a great time to do
maintenance on that.

Speaker 5 (41:43):
Yeah, that grass is gonna gradually start slowing down. That
we're getting these cold night time temperatures. Man, that bermuda
sitting there, it's it's shivering. Yeah, I tell you, it's
gonna slow down to you. I mean they'll get to
where you only have to mow every other week kind
of thing.

Speaker 3 (41:58):
That's really just a kind of not tops off and
to get the leaves.

Speaker 2 (42:02):
Off, clean it up more than anything.

Speaker 3 (42:04):
I know.

Speaker 5 (42:04):
I mote everything at the house two weeks ago and
it still looks, you know, fresh and low like it
like it's supposed to be a little shaggy.

Speaker 3 (42:13):
But I got Halloween decorations all in my yard, so
I need to I need to get out there and
cut my bermuda because it's a little tall, a little shaggy.
I got some bad but hey, you can water it,
that's right. Oh man. Winter eyes are on lawn and shrubs.
That's something that you need to do. Come into the
Gorden Center Monday through Friday.

Speaker 5 (42:33):
It's not too late for It's not too late to
get your pre merging out either. If you didn't get
the bag of gold out in September, you're gonna have
a little bit of poe ina, but you still got
plenty of time to head off the brunt of it.
So you know, get in there, get the bag of gold,
get it out on your yard. I was down at
Ron Lynch's the other day down in Alabaster and uh

(42:53):
he said, yeah, I came in and got the bag
of gold the other day, and I was like, yep,
these yard looks fantastic.

Speaker 2 (42:59):
He does.

Speaker 3 (43:00):
A good thing about the bag of gold is specifically
on poana is it has a little bit of a
post emerging effect. So if you've got poana seeds that
have actually germinated and they've shot that first little tap
root down into the ground, you can still put that
bag of gold out, get watered in, and it'll go
ahead and eliminate that poana. Even if the seed is germinated.
Now you can't come in in like January or February

(43:23):
into it because by then that that poana seed has
you know, it's basically become an established plast. But you've
got a little bit of a you got a little
bit of wiggle room, so you get that bag of
gold out. We got time, but you ain't got much
and you know, we were sitting at our nighttime temperatures
really just now started getting ideal, and our soil temperatures
are just you know, we're a little bit later, it

(43:44):
seems like getting cooler for poana to start germinating. So
you it's doing it right now, and it has been,
but you still got some time to put that out
if you hadn't.

Speaker 5 (43:54):
Yeah, come see this at the garden Center eight five
four four thousand five. You know I have. When I
was in the I was in the garden Center with
Jenny the other day. I think that was Friday. My
my crew had the bubonic plague go through a good day. No,
I mean it started Wednesday, and yeah, I went home
already Wednesday. Gerardo wasn't there Tuesday. Me and me and

(44:18):
and uh Sergio both got sick at the same time.

Speaker 2 (44:22):
We were out Wednesday Thursday.

Speaker 5 (44:25):
I came back Friday, but I felt like hell and
uh I literally just said that guard.

Speaker 3 (44:31):
It's bad. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (44:32):
You could count on one hand how many times I've
called in sick. Yeah, and uh man, I was down
for the camp but uh yeah, so we had to
plague go through. So we were down and out for
about two or three days there, and uh finally, I'm
still getting over the head cold part of that. But uh, boy,

(44:52):
we were in rough shade.

Speaker 3 (44:53):
Man, it was uh that was I was treating yards
around Center Point and you were at the garden Center.
And then Jenny's oldest boy got sick, so she had
to leave to pick him up. I came back to
the garden Center just to help you out, and I'm
glad I did because it was right around lunchtime. And man,
we had customers to the door. You know, pansies were
going out. We had mums, but I don't think we've

(45:14):
got any more. They're gone. We sold them.

Speaker 2 (45:17):
Babies was the word.

Speaker 3 (45:18):
Mum was the word. Not anymore. Pansies and stocks, snap stocks,
snap dragons, your ornamental kills.

Speaker 5 (45:25):
It's not too late to put out some collars, that stuff,
some of that stuff left.

Speaker 3 (45:30):
That's I'm way ahead on mine. Yeap, yes you are.
Mine looks good. And then plants, plants galore. We you know,
we stay fully stocked in the garden center with with shrubs.
If you want to do landscaping, now is fantastic time
to do it. Have us come out and give you
a quote for that great time to plant plants. We
preach that all fall, and heck, we even preach that

(45:50):
in the spring and our busiest time. People will call
us in April and they'll say, you know, what's the
best time? Is now the best time to plant plants,
And we're like, you know, it's a great time to
plant plants right now, but it was actually about six
months ago in the fall. Yeah, we ain't just saying that.

Speaker 5 (46:04):
Well, now it's a good time too. We're getting in
the bull plant in season. We don't sell bubs at
the garden Center, but if you want to plant some daffodils,
or if you want to plant tulips or anything like that,
and the tulips are annual considered annual. He they don't
get enough chilling hours here, so they're only gonna bloom
for you one good time. Really, But if you want
to plant some daffodils or some avarillas or anything like that,

(46:26):
we're heading into the perfect time to do that. So, yeah,
we don't sell them at the garden Center, but it's
time to do it, you know.

Speaker 3 (46:32):
I We've had a couple of customers over the past
that had tulips that they would dig them up after
they bloom.

Speaker 5 (46:38):
Yeah, you got to put them in their refrigerator.

Speaker 3 (46:41):
That's a true gardener right there. And yeah, colladiums too.
Miss Culver that lives over in the Hoover area, she
would do that with coladiums. She would dig herkladiums up
and uh and put them, put them down in the basement,
do whatever it is that she needs to do, and
then she would replant them every year. Man, I tell
you what, I've never seen me kalladiums in a person's yard.

(47:02):
She had them everywhere all that. And then Old every
time you go to her house, it'd be like a spectacle.
Yeah that and and and old Menda Perica. She's still alive.
I saw her a couple of weeks ago.

Speaker 5 (47:14):
She's got about two thousand ponies.

Speaker 3 (47:17):
That and she's got the peonies every every color, every
shade of color, every shape, every size through her yard.
But she also does uh not iris, not dailies. Joel
Rickles was the one that did iris. Yeah, I mean yeah,
day lilies. She had iris and she had so many
types types of iris on their backside of her property.
It's amazing seeing her house in Bloom.

Speaker 5 (47:39):
There was somebody order we used to treat you, Well,
I don't think we treat their yard. I just we
treat the yard next door. And I'd always walk over
to their house because they had so many varieties of
day lilies, and they had like the Daily Society almost,
you know, and they got every one of them, like
with a little name tag labeled every one of them
and all that stuff.

Speaker 2 (47:56):
I'm just like, well, you're out there.

Speaker 3 (47:58):
Joel Rickles had all this little plaque with those all
over all over his place.

Speaker 2 (48:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (48:03):
I don't think he doesn't even gott to be dedicated
to go there. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (48:05):
Sorry, sure, there's a society for everything. Well, Chris, it's
time for the last West end of the show. Y'all
call us if you need a long care, if you
need landscaping, if you need a patio retaining.

Speaker 3 (48:17):
Wall, any of that stuff.

Speaker 5 (48:18):
Eight five four, four thousand and five, y'all come see
us at the Garden Center. We're at eighteen fifty five
Carson Road, and we'd love to see you.

Speaker 2 (48:25):
Y'all come see us and have a good weekend.