Braving The Cold

be learning. Uh. There's I guess an old adage that says something about when you know, if you're a if you're a lumberjack and you're cutting down trees, you gotta start. You got to stop every now and then to sharpen the saw. And I don't know if any of you ever used a axe or hatchet or saw, and if it gets a little bit dull, it takes a lot of a lot more work and effort to try to accomplish something in terms of cutting down a tree. It's just it's just harder. So you's at some point you

just stop and you sharpen the saw. Well with gardening. Saw sharpening is a constant process. And I'm not talking about literal sauce. I'm talking about the gardener. I learned something every day of the week about gardening. I do because I read about it. I watch stuff, I listen to stuff, I get out in the garden and do stuff. And that is one of the coolest things. It's not like there's this limited amount of info out there. You learn it and you're done, and now you're a good gardener.

Now it's a constant learning because things changed too, so we constantly are sharpening the saw. We go to educational events, botanical gardens, you know, master gardener programming offered, agrolife extension programs that are offered. Garden centers are constantly offering great programs for you to come out and learn. And the more you learn, the better you get. The better you get, the greener your thumb, the green of your thumb, the

more you can enjoy gardening because it's not frustrating. You start to get to see the fruit of your success. And that is just kind of a philosophical thought. I guess to start the day, but with a question of are you sharpening the saw. What have you learned lately about gardening? What new kind of plant have you grown that you hadn't grown before? If you're a vegetable gardener, there is a lot to be growing in the cool season garden. It's one of the best gardening seasons that

there is. All the blue leaf vegetables, I call them blue leaf broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, col robbie, collareds, kale, Brussels sprouts, all of those that are part of the cruciferous vegetables, super super healthy, lots of different things including cancer fighting

compounds in those plants. They're easy to grow, and you can grow them in the cool season, and you know, occasionally we're gonna have a real hard freeze, throw something over the top just to kind of the keep the cold down just a bit, and they do just fine through the season. We've got great greens that we can grow to season up our salads with outs lathering on. You know, a bucket full of thousand island dressing things

like sorel that are lemony. There are a number of different kinds of greens that provide a different flavor profile. Ridicio something you never hear people talk about it looks like a small cabbage sort of, and it adds a bitter taste, which actually mixed in at the proper amounts, is a really nice twist to ask to add to some salads. We've got other greens like plantain. That is one that can be added into salads, the vegetable types of plantain in the cool season. Let's see corn salad

also called mosh m ag. That is another green that we can grow in the cool seed. Of course, there's lettuce, and then there's spinach, and on and on down the line. It's just lots of things we can grow. The root crops carrots, for example, we'd be planting those things now and just taking care of them when they're little. They'll do just fine. They're pretty cold hardy. But what are you gonna grow new? What flowers have you never grown before?

Have you ever grown stock? Have you ever grown colendula? These are cool seasoned flowers that you don't see around a lot. Those would be good examples. How about a rose bush? How about a fruit tree? You know, maybe a citrus in a large container on the patio. That would be a new thing for some people to try. I'm telling you when citrus ballooms. The fragrance of those ballooms are unbelievable. They're great. I just love the scent

of citrus blooms. They do really well. Well. I'll be talking about a number of different things today, but hopefully we'll be talking to you about the questions you might have or anything related to gardening that we can help with. Our phone number is seven one three two one two k t r H seven to one three two one two k t r H. A number of you have emailed me through the past weeks and uh photos and things to then follow up with a call in on.

So go for it. Let's talk about those things as well help you get off to a really good start with your garden. I have a number of topic. Today's going to be a lot of kind of fyi things of interest perhaps that you might you may be interested in knowing and finding I have. I'll just start off with talking about when you want to have a beautiful, cool season container, how do you select plants? How do

you build one of those? You know you walk by them, or you see them, maybe even you know in a shopping district there'll be these beautiful containers along the sidewalk out front that are just gorgeous. How do you make one of those for home? Well, there's a few things to think about as you do that. First of all is the sunlight exposure. Most plants that you want to grow on a container for beauty are going to want good sunlight. There are plants that can grow in less sunlight,

but choosing the plants accordingly is very important. In the cool season, things that used to be areas that used to be shady or often now sunny because the leaves fill off the tree, or at least partially sunny. But you want to select plants that like to be in the same amount of sunlight. So if you take something that wants to be in a break from the sun and then you put it in full sun with something that wants to be in full sun, that combination doesn't

work really well. Never forget that foliage is a color too, Okay, So we want blooms and so pansies and violas, colegulas, snapdragons. What am I leaving out a bunch gosh stock I mentioned before a lessen. These are all plants are dianthus a very important cool season plant. These are all plants that do well in the cool season that bloom. But we have plants also for our cool season that are

just foliage. We have the beautiful grayish color of Dusty Miller, and it really is an interesting dramatic especially when you use it with flowers that have a bluish color to them. Gray and blue really work well together. So violas that are darker blue, lighter blue with gray Dusty Miller, it just really looks good. All Right, I'm gonna leave you hanging there. We're coming back. Got a lot more to talk about on container plants, and then a few other

topics as well. Just remember the number seven one three two one two KTRH. Hey, welcome back to guard Line. Glad to have you with us this morning. If you'd like to give me a call seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four, or you'd like to die by letters seven one three two one two ktr H. Simple as that, we'll talk about the things that you

are interested in. I was talking about putting together a beautiful container, and you know, there's so many options for plants, and what I'm doing right now is giving you a few tips, a few concepts to think about when you're wanting to have success with the container. By the way, a lot of our garden centers if you, in fact,

I would say pretty much everyone I talk about. If you walk in there and you go, hey, I want to do a container, and I like this color and that, but I don't know what plants to grab, they'll walk you around and show you exactly your options and how to do it. There are a few of the garden centers they'll even go make it for you, you know, if you want them to, they'll they'll put it together. I'm for a charge, and then you just take the container homets,

you set it up and it's instant. You got everything you want right there. So however you want to go about it, it works. It works either way. But when you're the second concept that I'm talking I believe we're on number two. That is the plant form. There's a concept that it has catchy name, so I'll use it because it helps people remember. But it's called thriller, filler, spiller. So thriller is something that's upright, A filler is something that fills in around the base, and a spiller is

something that spills over the side. So basically, you're talking about a upright plant, a more bushy plant, and a more trailing slash binding type of plant. So something that would be upright could be like a cast iron plant that is a really hardy plant. There's one called milky way. There's a little yellow spots in the in the foliage. That's nice there. And during the summer we often use

ornamental grasses in that way. Then for filling in around them. Gosh, most of our flowers, everything from zinnias in their bush form to you know, anything that's more of a compact filling type plant would work for that. And in the cool season we have those as well. And then the trailing plants would be things like a lissome sweet lessome trailing over the sides. And so it just creates a nice connection. And that could be done in shady areas with ferns, and it could be done in sunny areas

with a lot of plants. But having a group of different forms of plants also helps a lot. Well, I'm gonna pause just for a moment on that, and we're going to go to Magnolia and talk to Tim. Good morning, Tim, Welcome to garden Line. Hello, Hello, do we have a Tim out there.

you bet. I appreciate that. Since we're talking about that. There are several things that make it easier for me to help you. One of them is when you take pictures, take sharp focused pictures, and sometimes people you know, Like if you hold up a plant at arm's length and then with your camera phone you take a picture of it, Sometimes the phone focuses on the background and not on the plant in the foreground, and so it's too fuzzy and fuzzy pictures. I'll give you fuzzy answers, and you

don't want fuzzy answers. You want sharp back your answers. But make sure it's in sharp focus. Secondly, get in as close as you can. You know, you got a bush with a tiny white flower on it, and you stand back four feet, I'm not going to be able to really look at that flower or that bug or whatever is on it. So the closer you can get, the better. So sometimes it also helps to have a picture in its context. So a shrub is the branches

you turning brown or yellow or dyeing or whatever. If I see the whole flower bed with that shrub in it, I may see things on other plants that help me connect a diagnosis to it. So a picture like that, and then a picture up really close if the question is appropriate for a close up picture, and it usually is, that helps more than one picture is usually a good idea too, different angles and stuff. So anyway, just a

few things to think about. Sometimes you're taking a picture in a bush and it's like the camera doesn't know which branch to focus on, and just putting your hand in there or something like holding a leaf, now you get a better focus on that sharp focus on that leaf. So just a few tips like that for doing it. Finally, the third one is We're a visit with Tim about is the attaching versus embedding. When you paste a picture

into the text. If it's a really large file, like a nice multi megapixel photo, when I get it and open the email, it it's like three screens wide, and so I have trouble, you know, seeing into it as well. When it's an attachment, I can open it separate, and I can open several of them and look at all of them at the same time. So you send me four pictures of your yard, the kinds of pictures I was just talking about, and I can look at them

all and then it helps. Embedded in the text, it's just a little more trouble to get to and so just a few tips on that sort of thing. We'll get back with Tim here in a bet. So I was talking what was I talking about? I was talking about the different ways and tips on creating a beautiful outdoor container. Another concept in containers, and I'm gonna mention this one. Just remember this about all all the rules of gardening and things. Sometimes often they're important if you

want to have success, and then often they're an esthetic opinion. Okay, color combinations are an esthetic opinion. We have colors that do complement each other. Interior designers use it all the time when they're creating that beautiful indoor scape that you want. When it comes to outdoor colors, there are colors that combine better together. But you plant what you want. You plant the colors you like that appeal to you. But consider this. There's not a right or wrong way to

use colors in a container. But these guidelines I think are really helpful because it helps you create things that are pleasing to the eye. So a riot of bright bowl colors can really be eye catching, and in the summertime especially gives that hot tropical look, you know. The gaudy colors, the things that are like a pink flamingo in the yard that scream look at me. Those are important.

Another concept, well, in the cool season, often we're dealing with a more subdued color palette, not always, but some a more subdued color palette, and either one is okay. It's like, do you like bright primary colors? Do you

like pastels? Everything has its place. The other thing is when you look at a color wheel, and you can just type color wheel into a search engine and you'll get a lot of examples of color wheels, especially if you put the word plant in there with it, it'll help you even find some plants that are in that color, but opposite sides of the color wheel seem to be complementary to the eye. So blue and orange, green and red, blue and orange, green and red, yellow and violet would

be another example. Those are examples that cross the color wheel, so that is nice. But then you can also do colors that are considered adjacent on the color wheel. So purple and violet and magenta are all adjacent and they look well together. They match together really well. Yellow orange and red, that's another one. Think about that yellow orange and red. So the summer shrub, we have the Pride of Barbados se Salpinia. What's the other name, redbird of

pair lace is the name for it too. Boys, that every that group yellow, orange and red, just bald bright colors and it goes well together. I mean, it's the planet itself is doing the color combo for you in that case. But considering that, and so in the cool season, I like using a light blue viola with a maybe a darker viola, blue viola with some white and with some dusty miller gray grayish silver foliage that looks really good put together. But again your garden centers can help

you with those kinds of things. Very important for that, and I mentioned already you know the important of foliage and foliage color. A lot of these things apply. We have more opportunity to use them in the summertime than we do in the cool season. The cool season are palate's quite different. And a lot of the plants I would mention as examples to these are basically color plants. Maybe how to put this on the web? Two that

may be helpful anyway. And then finally water requirements. You know, to put a cactus in an azilia in the same container. Aside from other issues with that, they don't need the same water retirement requirement. And you water enough to keep the plant that uses the most water happy, and when you do that, what you end up with is a very soggy, unhappy other plant. So just think about water can amount. Finally, a less thing I'll add is volume

of soil. You may see online TV shows on gardening where they have like a little boot and it's got all these flowers spilling out. They filled the boot with potting soil. Well, that's cute and cool, but here in our area, the more soul volume you can give plants, the less often you water, and the better they do. So just be careful to not create too small of a containers with too many or too large of plants. All right, it's time for me to take a quick break.

I'll be back with more tips and if you'd like to give me a call seven one three two one two, All right, welcome back to garden Line. Good morning. I hope you got the sand out of your eyes. Mister send me to sleep. We are here to answer your gardening questions. Uh, and I just wanted to continue a little bit on some tips while we wait. Did receive the photos, Tim, and so if you'd like to discuss those, we can do it. If not, if I don't hear

from me, I'll just talk about them inside myself. It is important when you want to have success with plants that you consider a few basic concepts. And now, I always stress the soil because that's the thing I see people often not do they prop They, as I like to say it, they PLoP a poor plant into an unprepared plot, and that just doesn't give it a chance to get going. Soil. Soil is so important. You get

the soil right. The plant thrives, the root system expands, it has access to lots of water, lots of nutrients because it's expanded in a good soil, and the plant's going to do better. Another thing, though, that's very important is sunlight. If you are wanting to have success with a plant, you need to give it the amount of light it needs. Now, there are a few plants that

do not want to be in the blazing sun. They just don't like that intense, especially in summer, the intense, blazing hot summer sun, and they we typically relegate them to shadier spots. Most ferns kind of fall into that category. Not all, but most ferns kind of fall in that category. Impatients tend to go in the Kaladiums used to go in that category, but breeders now have kolladiums that thrive

in the full sun. Colius used to be in that category, but breeders have colius cultivars now that just thrive and absolute full sun. But some plants don't want much sun, Okay. Hydrange is a good example of one that you can overdo it. Now, other plants are going to need as much light as they can get. Some will put up with part day shade, part day sun, and some just want to be in full day. And full day means

about eight hours if you can get eight hours. In fact, we usually say a minimum of six Okay, when we're looking at a plant that wants full sun, if you can get a a minimum and that's a minimum of six hours, they usually do pretty good. But here's a quick way, especially like let's just take a vegetable garden for example, a quick way to know where do I need to put this plant? Like, okay, here's this scenario.

You've got a spot and it's some of its full sun, some of its partnation sun and some of it not a whole lot. I mean it gets it gets a lot of light, but not much direct full sun. Well, if it's gonna grow roots or fruit, so roots that would be turnips, that would be carrots. We're talking about radishes were from a sweet potatoes. So those are storage structures for carbohydrates. And the only way you get carbohydrates

is by having the sun shine on a leaf. So can you grow that in less than full cent yes? Will your production be the same, No, it'll be less because there's less energy shining on that plant. Fruit, tomatoes, peppers, squash, green beans, peas, southern peas, cool seasoned peas. Those are all fruit. And I know, how can eyed peebe fruit? But it's the fruit of the plant. So if you're going to grow those, you need to give them full sun.

For the same reason. There's a lot of carbohydrates in a black eyed pea or a tomato or even a squash, and so the best results are found when you give them the most sun you can. Leafy greens things that their only use is for harvesting the foliage. Lettuce and spinach are two good examples.

themselves do need some sunlight. There are flowers that can flower in shade, like a wishbone flower and impatience being two examples. They can bloom in quite a bit of shade. But a lot of flowers if you don't give them sun, you're not going to get the production. And roses are a good example. You know. Typically I've more than a thousand times been asked something like the essential. The essence of the question is can I grow a tomato in four hours of sun? Or can I grow a rose

in three hour or four hours of sun? And the answer is absolutely, you can grow a rose bush or a tomato bush in that amount of light, can you have blooms and fruit, Well, not as much. It's going to go down progressively as the light intensity goes down. So that's just it kind of how that works. But imagine think of it this way. Leaves are solar panels. So if you bought solar pan panels to put it in your house and you wanted to make lots of energy for the house, that's where you put them on

the roof. One reason you didn't imagine if that you put them on a part of your roof that was shaded by a big giant tree, how much electricity would you get out of solar panels. Same thing is true with carbohydrates. That's how that works. So just picture your leaves of solar panels. And if a plant needs to make a lot of energy a lot of carbohydrates, then you've got to provide it that thing that it needs. So we talked about the importance of soil and the

importance of sunlight as well. And then the final step and we will come to this and after this break is the amount of drainage that a plant needs, the kind of sol moisture that a plant needs. So I'm going to take a break right here, and we'll come back to your questions. We'll also come back to my continuing comments about success tips for success with your plants. Our phone number seven one three two one two kt r H seven one three two one two k t

RH if you'd like to give me a call. Get a little bit of sunshine in here and get this day going. We're gonna have a great Sunday, by the way, UH, gardening weather tip's Looking at the weather yesterday, I believe and saw that we've got a lot of nice sunny weather, really good temperatures to be out and about working in the garden. So maybe this afternoon you can plan on getting yourself a little bit of sunshine and enjoying the garden outside.

and container color and things like that. I'd like to talk a little bit about And this is gonna get a little nerdy just for a minute, so bear with me, though I think this is important. There are a lot of myths in gardening, and gardening myths in general are usually based on truth, a bit of truth. Sometimes it's just like, Okay, that just came out of space. I don't know where you got that. But a lot of times I can see why they're saying it, but it's

just not true. And often when you take the truth and apply it too far outside of the box, it's becomes not true, right. That's kind of how that goes. So I would I would suggest this to consider something about the way water behaves in the soil as a example of a myth, and that has that we can bring some truth to. Water is pulled by gravity, so when you water, something goes down in the soil, and in a real loose soil like a sandy soil, the water just flows through the sand and moves on down

and very little water sticks to the sand. Some does, but for a very short time. So that's why sandy soils tend to have to be fertilized a little more often water a little more often in order to keep the plants happy. And water is also influenced by something called capillary action, and that is the way particles pull

the water to themselves. So if you were to take a paper towel, and let's say you had a little few drops of water on your catching counter, and you take the corner of the towel and set it down right and touch that water drop, what happens. The water goes up in the towel. That's capillar reaction. Okay, soil does that too. The smaller the soil particles, the more pull of capillar reaction like that that it can have, the more it can take up in the end, but slowly,

but the more so. Whenever we have a clay soil, it has a lot strong pull on the water, but we see a little less movement by gravity, or at least not as fast, because the soil is holding it better than a sandy soil would. When we add organic matter to soil, it improves either kind of soil because in a sand think of organic matter. This is a

don't it's just an it's just a concept idea. It's not don't take this literally, but think of organic matter as little tiny sponges, okay, and you mix them into sand, which you will think of as little pieces of broken glass. And now when water and nutrients go in, those sponges are holding on to more of the water that the sand would just let run through. So it helps organic matter are compost helps the sand in that way. In a clay soil, what it does is that massive clay.

Remember when your kid and you played with modeling clay. You can make a little bowl with your fingers and then you pour water in the bowl and it just sits there and it holds water. It's like a farm pond. They line farm ponds with bent night clay to help them hold water. But now water soaks in, but it's

really slow. Our typical Houston black clay. Then listen to this, Our typical Houston black clay with no organic matter, just the clay, no roots going through opening channels, just the clay takes in water at about one eighth of an inch an hour. Now, a lot of times when we water, we'd like to put an inch of water down, But if you're taking it in at an eighth of an inch an hour. Can you imagine watering an eighth of an inch an hour for eight hours to get an

inch in the rain? Doesn't happen that way. Our irrigation systems can't even put it on that slow. But the concept to remember is that you have to soak clay soil slowly over time. But the organic matter in that clay now, suddenly those particles start to clump together and you get airspace. It's called structure in the soil. It's what the term friable means. You grab a dirt clod and it's just hard dried clay, and you might as

well be squeezing concrete. You grab a dirt clod and you have it has a lot of organic matter in it, and it crumbles apart in your hand. So that's the benefit of the organic matter in the soil. And I'm gonna continue, but I've just remembered something I was talking a while ago about the importance, you know, of having sunlight for plants and the energy and things that plants need. Microlife has a product that I haven't really talked about

much before. It's called Microlife Ultimate. It is an eight four six now normally you think in the cool season, well, we're moving away from a lot of nitrogen. But when you have a blooming bed like pansies or petuna or pansies or alyssum or violas or things like that, and you need flowers and energy, you need nitrogen because nitrogen makes the plant grow leaves and leaves or solar panels,

and solar panels make carbohydrates for more blooms. So if you put your panzi's in the shade, they can't get sunlight, they don't bloom as much. You put your pansies in the soil and you don't give them good nitrogen content, they bloom them. We say bloom themselves to death. That's an exaggeration, but they put all their energy into blooms, and then the weakened plant just can't produce more blooms. Microlife Ultimate eight four six provides that boost of nitrogen

in a gradual release form. Now, in addition to the nitrogen, it's got all kinds of things in it. It has a lot of essential like rock mineral types of nutrients. It's got endo microurza and ectomycrourza that associate with the plant roots and cause that plant to be more productive more. It increases the health and every aspect of the benefit to the plant. So Microlife Ultimate eight six four. You can buy it in a bag, you can bite in

a canister. It's a blue label and it is one that if you're going to do cool season color, it is important to provide those kind of nutrients to your plants to keep them floriferous. Doesn't that sound magnificent? Floriferous? Microlife will do that. You can find micro Life products everywhere the website Microlife Fertilizer dot com. Microlife Fertilizer dot com. You can find out more about Microlife Ultimate and you can find out where to get Microlife products there as well.

This morning is flying by. Maybe it's just because I'm doing all the talking. I don't know. We're going to take a little break here pretty quick for the top of the hour in the news, and when I come back, I'm going to continue on with some of this. I did want to say on water movement and soil, I want to go a little further into that, and I'll

talk out into the music a little bit here. There's a concept because it's true that water flows through real chunky stuff you know, gravel, sand, those things much more readily than it does a tight clay type soil, a fine textured soil. We think, well, if we put gravel and sand and stuff in the bottom of a planting hole, that makes it drain well. And that is absolutely not true. Here's what happens. You dig a hole in clay and

you have created an underground bathtub that holds water. Throwing gravel in the bottom of that does nothing for drainage. Have you ever had an aquarium there's gravel in the bottom of an aquarium. Does that gravel make the water get out of there? Does it know? When you fill the aquarium with water, it is it's water logged, right, same thing as a hole. Don't do that. I'll talk a little bit more about why that is.

two five eight seven four. I was in the middle of a nerd Alert comment on soil and water, and I'm going to continue that right now because these are things that are one of the most common misconceptions about planting and gardening and things like that, especially watering plants and whatnot. And we talked about the fact that water moves is drawn more toward finer textured soil than toward coarse textured soil. And why is that important. Well, here

here is an example. As the as the poor space gets larger, the only the primary movement of that water is by gravity down into the soil. As a poorer space gets smaller, it's the soil itself that pulls on the water, just like I use the example of putting a corner of a paper towel down on a wet spot on the counter and watching the water go upward away from gravity into the towel. That works in the soil too, And so why does that matter? Well, here's

why that matters. Well, one thing I pointed out was if you throw a bunch of gravel in the bottom of a planting hole, because you know, the area is too soggy, and then you plant on top of it. That did nothing. It's like gravel in an aquarium does not pull the water out of the aquarium. It just fills up with the water. And so that doesn't don't do that. Don't put that kind of stuff in there when it comes to an above ground container. So you say, okay,

well that's an underground bathtub in the garden. What about a container? Should I put pot shards, broken pottery and gravel and styrofoam, peanuts and gosh, we've heard all kinds of things over the years in the bottom of the pot so they drain better, Because doesn't it make sense that water will run out of that better than it would if it was solid soil the inches, of course,

yes it does. But the only way water water moves from fine texture into a courser texture, and the courser texture, let's we're going to use the word gravel just as a general example. The only way it moves from your potting soil down into gravel is primarily by getting so saturated in the potting soil that it literally drips out of the potting soil and down into the gravel. So

what happens is you've got this container. Let's say you've got a little two gallon container on the patio and you're going to grow things, and you put it two inches of gravel in the bottom, and then you fill it up with potting soil. Okay, what you've done is you've reduced the volume of soil that roots can get water in their nutrients from, because they're not going to go down the gravel and there's not hardly anything there for them, So you've reduced your soil volume. And I

said earlier, soal volume is important. Bigger pots are important, especially here in Texas, and especially in the summer when the demands are so high. What doesn't happen is the gravel doesn't pull water out of the potting salt to make it drain, but it just gets so saturated that it drips out. So if instead you just fill the pot full of soil, no gravel, pot full of soil, it would be the same thing. You just lowered that

saturated zone. And so the water moves down and as the soil begins to get drier, you bring air in behind it, and that water saturated line is at the bottom and when it's so saturated at the bottom of your pot, it just drips out of a hole. The gravity pushes the water below it. The water above is pushing the water below it down as gravity pulls on both of them, and so it goes out. So don't

put gravel into a pot. It just doesn't work. I could go on and give more examples and why that is, but that is a myth that just won't die, and I see it all the time. I hear it from people that ought to know better about that kind of thing. Take advantage of the full pot size with quality potting soil.

It is very important that your container has drainage holes and that they're not plugged up, and that they're not Sometimes pots have one hole in the middle at the bottom, and then people set them on a clay soil in the yard or whatever. Well, now for the water to get out, it has to go into a clay, which is going to happen really slow. So you want to have something that lifts the pot a little bit up off the ground. A lot of pots are made little

indentations underneath, so water goes out to the side. If you are going to plant in something and set it on the ground, like those water troughs, you know, the oval cattle water troughs, galvanized metal. Those have kind of become popular as a little planting bed. That's fine, you can do that, But if you just drill holes in the bottom of it and set it on a clay soil is going to be really slow without water to

get out of there. Drill the holes on the sides down near the bottom, like maybe oh an inch up from the base around the sides, and let the water also be able to get out from the sides to do that. All right, I know I nerd it out on that, but I see a lot of people make that mistake, and I keep hearing about it, and gosh, when you go on social media, which is it is the vault of misinformation about planting. There's so much stuff on social media just not true. And I just picked

apart the water one. I mean, we could do a season of shows just taking myth by myth by myth and talking about why it's not true, why it doesn't work. And myths are perpetuated because they make sense. Right. We know water runs through gravel, so why not put gravel in the bottom of the pot so water will run out better. See see how that that is based on common sense and what we know to be true. It's

not all right, I'll stop right there. You can spare your fellow listeners the diatribe by calling seven one three two one two k t r H seven one three two and two k tr a T. If you like to ask a question, talk about some things that are related to your gardening goals and things.

by the foot. Incredible assortment of lights at ACE Harder all kinds. But you can also just get lights by the foot where you say I want a I want a string of lights that is seventeen and a half feet long, and you can have that you can get that, they'll show you how to do it. Now. ACE has lots of indoor decord that's really cool. That's an awesome

place for gifts. I was walking through an AC other day looking at some of the power tools and stuff like that, and it's like yeah, yeah, And when I go to the barbecue section, I have to wear a bit because I really start drilling the Tregger grills, the Weber grills, the big green eggs and all the stuff they care. It's just really cool, good stocking stuffer. A

lot of cool kid toys too. I don't know if you have ever gone in an ACE and noticed this, but I was in one the other day looking at a lot of the old retro cool toys that I remember from decades past. That ACE still has versions of those. They're kind of cool, I think. And they have something called Brewder Toys that's a one to sixteenth scale, very realistic, a detailed little toy vehicle, so you know you're playing with little cars. You got somebody that's kind of into that,

the Brewder toy. They got to check out the Brewer Toys. Just go in there and ask them. I want to see Brewder Toys and that's kind of cool. Now, remember every Ace Hardware store is independently owned, so they can carry what they want or don't want to carry. But you see a lot of these things in common between our Ace Hardware stores. Don't forget that the U Valley location has been newly remodeled, so that's kind of cool.

You want to go visit that. The one in Baycliff down south of Seabrook is a newly opened store in the Ace Hardware group here in our area. So anyway, there's a lot of good Ace Hardware stores to visit. Just go to Ace Hardware dot com and click on the store locator and you can find the ones that are closest to you. But I encourage you just trust me on this one. Go buy and check one out. Maybe this afternoon be a good time. Go buy and check one out and see the kinds of things that have.

I think you'll see why I am so excited about the fact that we have those wonderful stores all over the Houston area. They carry I promise you things you didn't know they carry. All right, Well, you are listening to Garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter, and our phone number is seven to one three two to one two KTRH seven one three two one two k t r Age. You give us a call if you got

a question, we'll be happy to visit about that. Plants for All Seasons is a garden center in on Tomball Parkway. It's Highway two forty nine for those of you new to the area, that's Tomball Parkway. It goes from Houston out to Tomball and as you're going out that direction, you want to exit Luetta, cross over Luetta and you're at Plants for All Seasons. It's been around since nineteen seventy three when the Flowery family founded it. Flowery Family

still operates, owns and operates the ACE Hardware. Ace Hardware. Here I go the Plants for All Seasons store. And when you walk into Plants for All Seasons, what you're walking into is a place where you know you're going to get plants that will be successful here, and you're going to get advice to make sure they are successful here. So listen, plants have problems. Things happen. You know, there's bugs, there's diseases, there's issues with amount of sunlight or drainage

or all those kinds of things that can happen. And when you go into Plants for All Seasons, you take them a photo, you take them a sample of a plant and go, what's this bug? Or what's you know, what's wrong here? Or even a maybe an area of your yard where nothing wants to grow and you just say, what what do you think might grow there? And they can help you with that. They are true lawn and

garden experts, So take advantage of that wonderful opportunity. You know that it's a full service retail garden center and whether it's education or selection or delivery, yes, they do delivery and even custom potting. I mentioned that earlier. You know the cool season container. Some of our garden centers will do custom potting for you. Well. Plants for All Seasons will do that their websites Plants for All Seasons dot Com, the phone number two eight one, three seven six,

sixteen forty six. When you check out, by the way, you have to walk through the fertilizers and the soil products, because we all know brown stuff before green stuff. Don't go home with a plant without going home with compost or maltz or fertilizer or all of the above. That's just a general good shopping tip for shopping in our area for plants and things. I was, We've been having family in for the Thanksgiving holiday, and I've got my

garden is outside being ignored and abandoned right now. I had some people out there who were willing to stand still long enough for me to explain oak or breeding to them. Poor things. But anyway, I thought it was interesting. I think they did too. We were just talking about the different concepts and what we do. You know, with gardening, there is a lot of levels of gardening. Now, the standard garden is you hire somebody and you say I want a beautiful flowerbed, go make one out there, and

they do it. That's like bottom line. The next level up is I need a flower bed created, but I would like to plant some things in it, and you go planch up and you come home you plant them in your beds. But you know, it's kind of a blend right there in that. Another level, as you go up is where you start to get into some of them. I don't have a word far, but the higher level aspects of gardening, and so that would be stuff like

seed starting. See the standard level, people go to the garden center, they buy containers and good for that, or go to the garden center buy your seeds. That's good, but a lot of people it's like I'm a tomato afiicionado or I'm a pepper fish nato and I've got to have this variety. And you can buy those online, you can get the seeds in or if it's if it's fairly common, you're going to find them in garden centers as well. And then you go home and you

grow your own transplant. So if you want a tomato that is so big that it already has fruit on it by the time you plant it out, when it's safe to plant it out of side, you can start it yourself. Start right after the Christmas season, right around New Year's and you get a little before New Year's and grow it and move it to a bigger pot, and then move it to eventually a gallum pot as long as you got the lighting for it and you get a big plant to grow. That's another level of gardening.

Another version of that is plant propagation. Well, of course seed planting is plant propagation, but I'm talking about cuttings or divisions or things like that, grafting of plants. Those are all things that most gardeners don't do. But as you get more into gardening, you start to do those things. And I'm telling you, when you learn how to propagate a cutting, the world is your oyster. I have on

many occasions been. In fact, just the other day, I was driving through the countryside and there is a relative of blueberry that grows wild up north of the Houstern area, into the woods and stuff, and I was taking some cuttings, I mean, some seeds off of it on a roadside. They're just beautiful seeds. But I was looking at the plants because some of them have a beautiful fall burgundy color more so than others. You know, plants are. That's how we select plants, as we find ones that have

what we want and we continue to propagate those. And so I was finding some that were a deep deep burgundy, really pretty maroon color, and on those I was just collecting seeds, and they're they're in my garage right now waiting for me a little bit here. I'm gonna go ahead and plant them, get them started under lights, and put them out, and as they grow, I'll probably find the ones that are the most burgundy of those and just keep saving them. This is a little edible berry.

It's not allowed to write home about the seeds hard and a lot of the inside of the berry is filled with seeds. But still it's something you can do. I think that's a cool native plant that has not been developed, and we need to we need to keep doing that. It's called a farkle berry, by the way, and then a weird name farkle berry. Farkleberry native plant. Oh, by the way too. It's growing on soils that are not very acidic, and it is graft compatible with blueberry.

So thing about that you live in an area, you can't turn it into this beautiful, acid loving soil that makes blueberries and Azelia's happy. You take the soil you got and work with it. And farkleberry expands the ability or the range of that if you do the grafting on them. But again most of you are going, I ain't going to do that. Well, that's what I'm talking about. It is there's levels of gardening, there's things you get

interested in. But if you learn how to at least how about this this year, learned how to propagate a plant from cuttings, and if you want the easiest plants in the world to propagate. I would say Colius is one. You walk up to Colius and you just take a cutting stick it and water stick it and soil at roots it grows. It's easy, easy, easy. Actually, rosemary is easier than most plants to propagate too, but each one has its own how you do it. But try that

this year? Why not try that this year? I bet most people have at least taken a section apothos ivy growing in the house, the most common house plant on earth, and stuck it in a glass of water and just let it root and let it grow out of the water. Right. That's that One's another one that's pretty easy. All right, I think you get the idea of what we're talking about here. The folks at Nelson Plant Food have created a number of different fertilizers and I talk about them

through the year. You know, we got the Turf Star line. Those are all the things we put on our turf through the year. Things that are for springing, summer fertilizing, things for the fallertilizing. There's a wide variety of options in the Turf Star line from Nelson. Now there's the nutri Star line, nutri Star is typically there are a lot of very specific kinds of fertilizers. You know, there's a nutral Star tree and shrub. It's a twenty one sixty eight. That's just an example of a nutri star.

There's nutril stars for a lot of different kinds of plants. But color Star is the one that provides the boost of color that has just been so successful for people. Landscapers use it. They I actually was talking to Dean a while back and just asking about that particular product, and he was saying, oh, yeah, we ship it. I don't know how many states. He said that people out of state find it. They find it works. And I say people, I mean landscapers and I mean gardeners, and

they use it. And if you want to keep your color beds going strong, you got to give them a boost through the cool season, and color Star does just that. It's good for cool seasoned gardens beds, it's good for warm season garden beds. Use it year round, about every three or four months, make another application to it. It's got five sources of nitrogen, bone meal, organic bone meal, and blood meal to feed the soil in your plants. And you can find in a lot of places in

the little canisters, little jars screw top lids. And by the way, we have about a dozen places around the Greater Houston area where you can take your empty jars in and refill them. Number one, you don't put that plastic back in the environment. Number two, it's a little bit more economical to do that because you know, refilling is less expensive than buying a brand new jar, as it should be. Well, so we got a lot of different options there. But I think another mistake people make

is they don't they don't fertilize their plants enough. You can overfertilize a plant, but think about the plants around your yard, or think about your yard. When was the last time you've flized this past year? How many times were those plants fertilized. It doesn't mean the more of the merrier, It just means for a lot of plants that we have. It's like I've got house plants that I just didn't get around to fertilizing this year. I know I know better, but I hate to admit that.

But it's just you and me listening right now anyway, So you know, don't tell anybody, But if I want them to grow better. I should do that. I've got some beautiful orchids I've kept from past years. You know. You buy those orchids, that's the moth orchid. Uh, and it just they're sold everywhere by the bazilions. But they are the easiest orkid I think to grow. And I buy one, and then I buy another one, or someone

gives me one or whatever. And I probably have probably eight of those now that are sitting around the house, and most of them need repotting and fertilizing and a boost and they'd keep blooming. And some of them bloomed despite me. But how often do you fertilize? You need to keep plants adequately fed, because if a plant is going to grow, it's going to need sunlight on the leaves, it's going to need water on the roots, and it's going to need the nutrients that they are the building

blocks of growth and production on the plant. So that's it. That's not a big secret, right, it's not a big deal. It's very very simple. But sunlight to grow, water for the roots, and nutrients in the soil that it can take up to make the building blocks. All right, it is time for us to take a little break here. O. Hey, welcome back, Welcome back to the Garden Line. We are glad you are listening in today. I'm your host, Skip Richter, and you can give us a call. We're gonna right now.

We've got a full load on the boards for this last segment, but we will be the next segment talking to a special friend and guest. I'll let that be a mystery coming to really really soon here. You know, if you are seeing sticking doors in your house that used to not stick, if you see cracks in the sheet rock, cracks in the brick on the outside, that means something is moving, and that may mean a foundation problem. And Ty Strickland with fixed mesh lab foundation repair. I

has been doing this for twenty three years. You know, Tie is even in these times that we're always dealing with rising prices, Tie is committed still to a fair price. In fact, his slogan is on time, fair price and fixed. I like that. Didn't that everything you would ask of anybody coming in to do some kind of a service in your home and your property. He shows up on time, he prices it fair, and he fixes it right. Ty's been here in Houston, his whole life. He's a fifth

generation Texan and he knows our soils. So we're talking about the soils while ago, the black clay, and how they take in water and you know, they get dry, they shrink. When they get wet, they swell and that moves things. It's why we see heaving of sidewalks and breaking up in our driveways and things. It's why our foundations on our homes crack as well. Call tie two eight one two five forty ninety nine or go to fix myslab dot com. Look, don't fear what might be happening.

Call him to come out and take a look. Tell him you're a garden line listener. You get a free estimate for guardenline listeners. Tell him that you hear it on the garden line and just let them have him look at it. He'll tell you if something is needed and what the best approach would be and what your options are. Or he'll tell you too if not, this is not a concern, this is still okay. Let's check back in a few years. All right, I'm going to head out to the phones. We're going to talk to

Susan in Pattison. Hey, Susan, welcome to garden line.

the brown leaves for like months now. But similarly to when you lose you know, when the citrus freezes, you know how the rootstock starts putting little branches out from right at the ground level, right, these oak trees are doing that. And and one of the guys there asked me what I thought they should do. And I'm assuming they're never going to grow into a big oak tree. But I don't know the answer to that.

right where attached. Don't leave a little stub, or you'll just get lots of bushy suckers coming out of the base of that. So you can pick one and regrow it, or you could replace it. Of course, the advantage of regrowing it is it doesn't question any money. The advantager replacing it is you got a tree faster. But if it's got a decent root system with some bigger in it, that may get back up to a good size pretty fast. So those are your options.

Just don't leave a stub. But you want those things to get going and fast and close that over so there's not this like dead opening into the interior wood for very long. That's the trade. There's not a right or wrong, but each has its advantages, all right.

soil around it. Just use the soil from the site, and let's give them one more shot before we give up on them. Jerry, I'm running short on time on it, so I'm not able to elaborate further. But that's the quick answer, and that's what I would do if they were in my yard.

fungal disease. It kills roots, kills runners, kills grass. It's not like brown patch in the winner that makes big brown circles and then it regrains. Take all kills whenever a plant is stressed, whenever your turf is stressed, take all has the advantage to move in and cause a lot of more problems. It adds insult to injury. It's what we call an opportunist disease. So the bottom line on it is go online to gardening with skip dot com, find Plant my Lawn, pest disease and weed schedule. There

are three times to treat for take all. There is October and November. I know it's past November, go ahead and do the November, and then there's one in spring, and it lists the products that you want to use to do that. And so that would be my suggestion. If you can keep some water on those areas. I think they got a little droughty this summer based on some overall look of it, and when it gets drought, that is a stress and that is one of the ways that take all enters a weekend plan. I hope

that is helpful. All right, Well, I've got a special guest right now, a friend of mine, actually a good friend of mine from Texas Gardener magazine. Jay White is the publisher of Texas Gardener. Jay and his wife are the publishers of the Texas Gardener magazine. Texas Gardner's been around a long long time, and I tell you it is a gardening magazine if you've never seen it. It

is written by Texas gardeners for Texas gardeners. And I'm telling you they have a lot of author I've written for a long time myself in there, but they have a lot of excellent, excellent authors with really good advice, a lot of people that save all their old Texas Gardeners because they go back and they refer to the articles that they've read in the past in there. So what I want to do is go over here and see if I can get Jay live on the air. Jay, Welcome to garden Line.

Jay to come on and I wanted to talk. We have a very brief time here, but I would like to talk about some gift ideas that for Texas Gardener, and I'm sure the magazine itself will be the main one, but I'm gonna turn it over to you Jay and let us let you give us some ideas for people that are looking for the Gardener or the want to be Gardener on their list.

and you might burn your plants. But that would be the only caveat that I would have, you know what, Jay, I looked back recently, and I think it was ninety eight or ninety nine, over twenty or twenty five or more years ago that I wrote the first article for Texas Gardner. So I have loved that magazine for a long time. And as I know a lot of other people have.

in print. Over the years, one by one they've dropped, and so finding a good gardening magazine other than just some foo food thing to put on the coffee table from the northeast or wherever Texas gardener is down in the dirt here, how to do it? Get your hands dirty, practical advice.

eighty five cents. Star of Hope feeds more than six feeds people with more than six thousand meals a week. Six thousand week and they could use your help. How many meals are you able to provide? How many meals are you willing to provide? Together we can make a difference, really, so please give hope and do so now? Will you join me and my family in giving the Star of Hope. If you want more information or to find out how to give, go to Sohmission dot org. Sohmission dot Org.

I'm going to head out now. I have another special guests. In fact, I have a bunch of them that I'm telling you about that we've been wanting to talk to about all kinds of things. And right now I'm going to head out to the phones to Cyprus and talk to Bill Murph. Bill is with the Ace Hardware store there in the Cypress area. It's on Jones Road. And I'll tell you this. When I lived just Arthur Jersey Village, the Jon Jroit Ace Hardware Store was where we went.

That's where we did our shopping and things. That was our local closest Ace hardware store that we had. And I've been in there and I'm telling you that you got to check it out. It is quite a place. Hey, Bill, Welcome to Garden Line. Good to have you with us.

It's not too late to get your Christmas lights up and decorated for the holiday.

we have we have Ladies Night. We're gonna be giving away beer wine, Margarita's, uh most items in the store. So it's kind of an unheard of discount for us.

isn't it. I mean, with each Ace hardware being independently owned, you just you just don't know what all kinds of cool things are going to be in there.

And we're all unique, we're all different, but we all have a core uh commonality, and that's where key and hardware first and foremost we're hardware store, and then we add everything else to the to the mix.

great gifts. You know, there's there's a lot of lines that you might not know are available right there in your ACE store and top quality stuff.

power electric power equipment things. I've seen a number of different brands and that you know, I have a lot of de Wault kind of stuff and I've seen those in some ACE hardware stores and uh so it would be a good place to make someone on your left happy, including you know, as we look into the kitchen and kitchen gadgets and some of the decorations and stuff for that, there's some really cool stuff there too.

but you probably know someone that has. So stop into an ACE and help help Texas children.

I know we're approaching the holiday season and people are interested in purchasing gifts for those on their list something different. You know how many times have you gone, Okay, what do you get the person who has everything? I would like to get them something nice, but I don't know what would be a good idea. I don't want to do the same old kinds of things, you know, package of pajamas. I mean, come on, let's do something with a plant that would be cool. Well, you know, Buchanans

Native Plants is a great place to visit. They have a wide selection of all kinds of different products and gifts and things like that. They're on Eleventh Street in the Heights. Their gift shops right now are stunning. They are holiday decorated out. I mean they are gorgeous, and whether it's something for your own home or something you're

purchasing someone else, you really should stop by there. Buchanan's is a place where you're going to find things that are not just the plain old, same old that you find in many other locations. When you go into Buchanans, first of all, native plants or their thing. That's what they do, that's what they specialize in. And we are in the big important season to get native plants planted that there's no other way to say it. It's very

important to get all woody ornamental shrubs and trees done. Now, Now when you go in there, do you need a Christmas tree? Do you need some cyclomen for gorgeous pink, white, and red color in your landscape? Or on a table adorning a table? Do you need points at us? They've got all of that there. Don't forget that their holiday centerpiece workshop is coming up December twenty second. I know that's a long time away, but I think this is going to fill up. It is from noon to one pm,

and this it's an eighty five dollars ticketed event. But here is why you will build. You will learn how to do decorations for holidays. The principles a lot of the basics incorporating greenery and natural elements and floral styles and techniques for creating centerpieces. And at the end of the workshop you go home with your own hand crafted piece, ready to brighten your home during a cool Chiley holiday season. Coming up. Buchan's Native Plants at on eleven Street in

the Heights. If I were you, I would just go to their website because that is a very cool spot where you find a lot of good information, including events like I just mentioned if Buchanansplants dot com Bukenansplants dot com. To some point is that you know Southwest Fertilizer, Gosh, it's just a Houston institution. It's one of those places that has survived that tests the time, and it's just

you can depend on it. You know. People know when you go into Southwest Fertilizer, if there's a fertilizer you're looking for, Bob's got it. He does if something comes out of my mouth on garden line regarding this fertilizer or that fungicide or this insecticide or that organic product. He has the biggest selection of organic products in town at Southwest Fertilizer. You can go there and it's going to be there, and some cool gifts are there as well.

Anybody that's looking for a quality guarding tool, you're going to find it at Southwest Fertilizer. A lot of things. You know, I keep telling you about my weed wiper tool. Well I don't know that that's a gift item, but if you want to build one, he's got the thing you start with. It's very inexpensive and you can build your own weed wiper out of it. The kneeling bench that I like a lot, he's got him there and

they work super super well. If you need to go to your knees and get back up again out working in the garden, or you need a place to set this bench does them both. It falls up its stores away. It's really really easy to do. Southwest Fertilizers on the corner Abyssinet and Renwick in Southwest Houston, so makes it really easy to get to. And I don't care where you are, it's worth the drive to get there. Southwest

Fertilizer dot com. Southwest Fertilizer dot com. You are listening to garden Line and my goal here is to help you have a more bountiful garden, to help you have a more beautiful landscape. And to help you have more fun in the process. You know, it's not just about information. It's about having some fun as we go along here, and we try to do some of that here on garden Line. I enjoy getting to visit with gardeners. I always look forward to talking to you when you call,

because every call is different. You never know what's going to happen. Someone asked me one time, he goes, how do you sit there not knowing what that call is going to be about, or what that person's going to say, or do? I say, Well, you just do. It's fun. It's part of the excitement of it all. And sometimes train wrecks make for good radio too, so I am

not worried about about that either. I enjoy that. I was visiting with some folks the other day about gardening tools, and you know, what are your favorite gardening tools and what do you like? And there are a lot of really cool tools around town that I think are must have, you know, when it comes to gardening. It just they provide that extra let's say benefit. For example, you get a quality tool like quality printers or something, and they

fit in your hand and they work well. There's even versions of printers that have handles that roll a little bit, so as you're squeezing down to cut a branch, it's ergonomically easier in your hand. You know, some people deal with issues from arthritis to similar types of things, or if you're printing a lot, your hand just gets tired of doing it, and a quality printing tool that's kept sharp really works well for that. One of my favorite

tools in gardening is the soil knife. A soil knife is just you know, picture of booie knife, but thicker and made for dirt. They have little marks on them so you can see one inch two inch three inch when you're planning things deep. One side has kind of scalloped the it's like the whole blade is curved a little bit, and so it's easy for digging out soil. I use it for digging holes. I use it for

removing plants. You know. I do a lot of no tail gardening in my vegetables, and so at the end of the season, I can pull the plan out and rip a lot of roots out of the ground. Or I can just take my soil knife and just make some cuts around it and pull the top out and leave those roots in the ground to decompose. That's how nature does it. By the way, do you know that nature doesn't own rot hotellers? But the soul knifes are really cool too. You can get them in a nice

sheet and it works really well. Lopper prunters, now, we have these things that are battery operated power prunters and it's just like you hold in your hand like you would a drill or some other tool, and it's got regular printing blades out front like a regular punter would, but you go up to squeeze the trigger and a very well designed system allows it to cut through a large and very hard branch really easily. It's amazing what those things will do. Keep your fingers away from them.

But as somebody who's going to do a lot of printing and just can't do that physical squeezing and stuff, those power prunters are really a cool tool also for that. Gardeners are always looking for information and events. Are some great guard events information. There's some great gardening books on the market that do very very well for you, and if you want to give those a try, you will find that they work super well. Also, I would recommend I actually have a book I don't never talk about

our online a lot. But it's month by month gardening in Texas. It's about cool springs press and there is a Texas gardener. Is a Texas gardner. Doctor Bill Welsh wrote it. Now excuse me, doctor Doug Welsh. Dougwell, we had two Welshes in the wart department. Doug Welsh wrote that one, and it is a similar month by month through the garden that's designed for Texas. That's very important to do that. There are a lot of the other really good books that are helpful resources if you're an

organic gardener. There's books if you are someone who's into a particular type of plants, like you want to do perennials. Doctor Bill Welch wrote Perennial Garden Color many years ago, and that is just a Texas You got to have that on your shelf if you're going to have beautiful perennials throughout your gardens out the year. Here in our landscape, from bulbs to Salvius to you name it. He's got a lot of great ideas in there and it works very very well. Let's see here we are, oh a

Wabird's unlimited. That's another good idea. You know, wabirds has some beautiful feeders, it's got beautiful bird houses of all types, and other merchandise that anyone interested in birds would like. So maybe you've got someone on your list that's not a big time gardener, but I bet they would like to at least bring some birds up to the patio where they can watch them and enjoy them, or get out in the morning with a cup of coffee and

listen to their songs. It's one of my favorite times a day and one of my favorite things to do is to enjoy the music of the birds first thing in the boy they wake up. I am not a morning person. Birds are mourning people. I know. I said, I'm not a morning person, and here I am on garden line just generally in my natural habitat. You know, more and more I'm becoming a morning person. But I just have not been a wake up and start singing kind of person. But your birds here are and they

have some wonderful books also at Warbirds Unlimited. That makes a really nice nice gift as well. Remember that it is time to get your winter super Blend Winter super Blend from Wabirds Unlimited. And you know with their bird seeds. Many of the types, there is a no mess version, which means that if it has sunflower seeds and it doesn't have the hulls, they're already hulled sunflower seeds. So when you put a pound of that into the bird feeder, there is a pound that goes into the bird's stomach,

not on the ground. They it's not the red bebes. They kick out because they don't want to eat, but it's the kind of things that they are very, very interested in. Well, we're getting close here to a break. I think I'm gonna stop talking right here and we will be right back. Welcome back to Guardline, folks. Good

to have you with us. Got another special guess that I would like to bring on to visit with you, and that is Richard from Walbird's Unlimited rich Eddie, Eat Eddie, thank you for being on garden Line.

impressed in the peguin. These are these are tightly packed seed cylinders that are shaped in the in the uh in a fun shape like snowman in a penguin, and those go on a cylinder feeder, and those those make great gifts instead of just giving you.

really nice bluebird nest box makes a great gift. And then also purple Martins, they'll return in February, So if somebody's wanting to put a Purple Martin system in their yard, and now's the time to be thinking about looking at installing a Purple Martin system right after the holiday sometime and be ready for them to return in February.

a ten dollars discount once you earn that. So somebody constantly is you know, uses wild Birds unlimited and they're on your list. Giving them the gift of a daily membership Daily Savings club membership is also a really great way to help them feed the birds because they can save money and earn discounts all year long, so that works really well.

be right back after this break. Hey, welcome back to the garden line. Good to have you with us. You're the lads. You are here. We are looking forward to visiting with you about the things that might be of interest to you. Our garden. Our garden, our garden, our goals are. My goal is for you to have a better time gardening. I like to put it this way, a more bountiful garden, a more beautiful landscape, and more

fun in the process. That's what we're here about. And because gardening should be fun, it should be rewarding, it should be fulfilling. The mental benefits of gardening, the physical benefits of gardening, the esthetic benefits of gardening, I mean, even the community benefits of gardening are huge. And we had to get out there and have fun doing it, and we can help you do that. You do not hear public service announcement. You do not have repeat after me.

I do not have a brown thumb. If anything's not growing, it's because my thumb needs to be informed a little better. And that's what we're here to do. That's also what our home garden centers are here to do. You walk into a quality independent garden center, as they say, the mom and pop garden centers, and you will find people that are eager to help you and know what they're

talking about. And without dissing national chains and local chains and all the other stuff, I'm just tell you this, a mom and pop garden center has folks that know how to garden. They know how to take care of plants. They know what grows here and what doesn't, and they

can help you with that. You can walk into a place and maybe you bought some plants somewhere and it's not doing good, and you walk into one of our independent garden centers and you say, look, I got this plant, here's a picture of it, here's a problem with it. They'll help you. They will take time to help you

have success. That's what they're about because they know that when you have success with plants, you're going to come back, because when you come back, you're going to get a plant that actually should be planted here instead of being shipped all over the country to all the chain locations and not for here. They know that your plant's going to do well because they have picked one just for that, and they advise you on how to have success with it.

And that's what it's all about. Man, it is fun, fun, fun. We gotta make gardening more fun, make gardening fun again. I guess there's a way to put it. It already is fun, but seriously, we want you to have fun with that. So that's that's kind of a goal for doing that. Well, you are listening to garden Line, and we're going to come up here a little bit on the top of the hour break. I want to come back.

I'm going to have open lines and if you would like to call in anytime from now through even during the break time, my producer will get you on the board and we can visit briefly about your gardening questions. I got some more special guests coming up later as we into the next hour, but this is your chance if you'd like to give a call seven to one three two one two KTRH seven one three two one two kt r H. So I've been going over a number of different things that I think are of interest

in gardening. We've talked about all kinds of things, propagating plants and some of the principles of success with plants. Why we don't put gravel in the bottom of pots to make the drainage better, because it does not make the drainage better, it just gives you less soul volume to work with. I want to talk a little bit about seed saving. There are many many plants that we can save seed from and it's a fun thing to do. The thing you need to know a few things you

need to know. First of all, when you save seed from a plant, it needs to be what's called an open pollinated plant, not a hybrid plant. So a hybrid is a mixture of two different parents that creates this special offspring that has special features. Okay, when you take the seed out of that, you're going to end up going back to the random genetics in the background, and what you grow will not look like what you pull the seeds out of in some way, shape or form.

If it's a fruit. It may not be as swede or as large, or it's timing maybe different, or maybe it's a peach. It doesn't color, boil, or you see what I'm saying. Well, so make sure it's not an open pollen. If it's a native plant, save seed from it if you want. If it is just a flower garden or a vegetable garden, you can save seed from them. But number one, make sure it's not a hybrid. Number two, I mean, you can save a hybrid if you want,

but you know you're gonna get something different. Number two, you need to get those seeds dry so that they can be stored. You don't store seed wet. And the seed is produced, it's got a lot of the oils and proteins and things like that that are necessary to fuel the growth, but it also has moisture in it. And do you know, even pecans when they fall, they have appeared where they kind of dry out and you get down to the you know, the real solid oil

protein parts of the kernel. But it's important to let seeds dry out before you store them. Number three, you need to provide a dry cool storage location. Dry cool if you got some of those packets of desscont that come in I don't know supplements or when you buy electronics, you get those little packets in there. Save those things. You can throw them in with your seed and a jar, seal it tightly, put it in the refrigerator. You can store seed in the freezer two for super long term storage,

but it's not necessary. A refrigerator will give you at least several year extension on your seeds storing time. So get out there, look at your garden, look at your points. What do you want to save seeds up? That's a new thing to try, this puss. You'll do a.

today certainly is no exception for that. Uh, you've heard me talk about Medina products before, and Medina products have been around for a very long time because they have proven themselves effective and gardeners swear by them. They love Medina products. There's a lot of different products on the market that Medina has. I just want to feature one right now, and that's Medina Plus. Medina Plus is Medina

Soul Activator Plus over twenty trace elements. It's got sight of Canon, which is a natural growth hormone that comes from seaweed extract in it. It's got things like magnesium and iron and zinc for example. In there, various kinds of vitamins, a lot of ingredients that basically help plants to grow. Just to put it really simply now, it comes in a gallon container and it also comes in a quart sized sprayable jar. The sprayable jar you just took up to a garden hose and you just turn

it loose. You can do it in the yard, you can do it in the flowerbed, you can do it in the vegetable gardens. Wherever you want to do it, just do it. It is a very effective product that can be used. Here's a tip if you will buy the court jar. The next time you need some, just buy the gallon jug and refill your court jar. You know you can do that and then hook it back up again and go to town with it. And that gallon

is a very economical way to approach it. So I would suggest you try giving that Medina plus a try. You're gonna find it good in your flower gardens. You're gonna find it good in your vegetable gardens herbs. If it's a plant, Medina plus will be very helpful. I recommend it for transplanting. Drench those plants in with Medina plus. Get it on the leaves, not gonna burn them. You'll get some folier benefit. But get it down in the soil and drench that root system every time you plant

a plant. And I generally will say do it when you plant, drench it well, do it again a week later, and again a week later, and those three applications will help your plant become very well established and therefore more successful. We're going to head out to Tomball now and visit with David.

but in general turn a problem. Now if you're if you're wanting to control them, though, you're gonna have to do repeated applications periodically of different sprays. Remind me the one you said that you used on them, David it was.

to kill the ants though. Anything that has by fentre should kill the ants. So something is happening where the ants are not getting exposed to the product. If you tried, if you.

success with that. Now that I'm thinking about this, David is just to get an insecticide that is that he mixes a liquid and water and drench it down so it goes not only on the surface, but down deeper into the soil. All right, thank you, all right, sir, thanks very much, appreciate your call. Okay, here, well we've got a couple of minutes here. Hello, Bob and Porter. I'm gonna get you here on Guardenline see how we can help.

off the mother plant. Wrap them in a moist paper towel, put in a zip like bag, set it in the refrigerator, and just kind of keep them cool, and then when you take them out, you can do the grafting with them if you choose to do that.

Put them into something that's got a little peep but a lot of pearl light in it, very well drained, and then put a clear cover over and put it in a bright spot. And that's everything you can do in your power to try to encourage them to root good light, not direct sun.

that's open pollinated. Number two, you need to dry the seed out before you store it. If you take wet seed, it's not going to store very well at all. In fact, it'll mold and you'll have problem. And I store seeds in the freezer sometimes for longer term storage. And if you freeze seed that has a high moisture content, it'll it'll the ice crystals will form and you'll damage that seed too. So dry it out, dry it out, dry up, dry out, and then store it in a air tight container. I have two kinds.

that's another option. A lot of my seeds are stored in those as well. Refrigerator storage, though generally, is adequate. You don't need to go cooler than that. Now, if you are a person who wants to play around and do some black some like different kinds of like a black poppy, I couldn't even say the word poppy or other kinds of unusual plants and things. Those can be

really valuable seeds to save. And all we have to do is help you to find the right way for each of the seeds that you want to save to get the best results. For most of them, it's simple. It's just a matter of drying a mountain store them and they do just fine. Now I do want to I did mention putting a dessicant packet in there. That is important. One thing to remember on stored seeds. Here's a mistake people make. They know they need to be dried.

They need to be stored dry, So you put them in the freezer or i'll say worsh yet the freezer of refrigerator or worshipt the freezer. You pull it out and you open it up. Well, what happens when you take something freezing cold and expose it to a countertop in your house. All the moisture in the air condenses on it. So now you've taken dry seeds and you've just wet the seed packets. Just like you know, you get a drink that's got ice in it and on

the glass sides, you get that condensation happening. Don't do that. Put them on the counter, let them reach him room temperature, and then open them up. So just keep that in mind when you're saving seed. Avoid disease plants. Avoid plants, especially with virus infections. Do not save a seed from a plant that's been virus infected. That it's not going to be good. And if you want to play around a little bit and have some fun, you can take seeds and cross them yourself. And people do this with

squash all the time. Squash a big old fat flower. That's easy. You know, you got male flowers and you got female flowers, and that's true of watermelons, squash, cantelope, cucumbers, all of those. You got those two kinds of flowers. And so you can easily pick a male flower, pull the pedals off, and use the little dab a pollen on the to go around pollinating female flowers with it. So if you want to cross two types of squash, you can save seed and start to create the new squash.

You can name it after yourself. It'll be this new unusual squash that you created. And a lot of different kinds of squash can be crossed. I can't go into the details, and you probably don't care about the details of that, but if you want more information, you can email me about which kinds of squashes cross with what. In general, things like pumpkins cross with hard winter squashes like that, and in general summer squashes will cross, but

there's exceptions, so don't take that too far. And then finally there is the fun mystery seed selection, and that would be things like, Okay, this Thanksgiving, my wife got some little tiny pumpkins, you know, the little tiny size as big as your fists are a little bit bigger than that. And one of them was white, and one of them was modeled, and one of them was orange, but it was minute. And so I've seed the seeds out of all three, and I marked them as this

one came out of a minute. I took a picture of them, marked them this came out of the small white when this came in. And I'll plant those in the garden next year and they're going to grow some sort of a squash, slash pumpkin, a winter squash or pumpkin, but I don't know which. Who knows what field they were grown in, if they'd been grown side by side, who knows what those seeds hold. They're going to be dukes, mixtures of all kinds of stuff. So you can just

play around and have some fun like that. If you see plants you like along the roadside that have some seed pack or seed you know, pods on them, you can select those and save them. One last thought about seed saving is some kinds of plant throw their seed, they cast them. These are typically plants with little pods like a blue bonnet, and a blue bonnet pod looks

like just like a miniature green bean pod. But when it breaks open, when the seed's dry, that suiture splits and it literally is like putting put your hands together. They're like, you know, praying hands form like that, and then just push your thumbs out and through the middle. As the sides fly out, you do that push away from you, prying, push away. That's what bluebonets do, and

they throw their seed a long way. So if you want to save blue bonnet seeds, maybe you grew someome and and I don't know, maybe you have some maroon ones or something or white ones in the in the group and you want to save them. You need to throw a organza bag with draw strings over the top. When the seed pods a form, just put that over the top and let them fully dry and when they do, they'll pop and they'll throw those seeds and they'll all be in your little draw string bag. And that way

you can do that. Another way is to pick the pods as they're turning brown, but before they hit the point of splitting. Put all those in a bunch of in an a draw string bag. Put a bunch of them in a draw string bag, pull the draw string and just sort of hang it up in a warm, dry, well aerated place. And next thing you know, you're gonna come by and there's gonna be a whole bunch of bluebonet seed that explodes it in there. But you got

them all, all right. That's probably enough information on seed starting, but it is, I mean seed collecting, but it is a lot of fun. Just remember time varies on seed viability. Some last a year only some of them will keep over five years depending on the seed pod. But if you put them in refrigerated storage, most seed you should get two to three good viable years out of them. If you've got seed that are stored and you don't know if they're still good, what you do. Okay, here's

another tip for the day. Boy, we are full of those tips for the day. Is you take the seed, take ten of them, lay them on a paper towel that has been moistened, fold the towel over and put that folded paper towel section with seeds inside in a zipplot bag. Don't squeeze it down tight. Leave some air in there. They need some air exchange. And put those in a dark spot. Or you can just put them on the counter and check them back two days later, three day, five days. You know, just keep checking and

as they start to sprout, you will see how many sprout. So, just as an example, if you put ten seeds in and three sprouted and seven didn't, you've got a thirty percent germination rate. So when you take the seeds that you have saved and you don't know how viable they are, now you know to plant more of those accordingly in order to get the number of plants you're trying to plant. Okay, that's a lot, a lot of information, I know, but we want you to have success, and that's why we're

providing that kind of information for you. Gardening is a fun, fun, fun hobby. It is good for your mind, it's good for your soul, it's good for your your physical body. It's just good in all kinds of ways. And as you go from being just a peripheral gardener, which is perfectly okay, you go, you buy some plants, you put them in, you're done, take care of them and things, and you start getting into it. I got to warn you.

It's addictive. It's addictive. Next thing you know, you'll be rooting cuttings, and you'll be saving seeds, and you'll be starting your own transplants of unusual things you found along the road side and other things. And it just goes on and on and on. There's no end to it. I'm sorry, there's no end. But of all the addictions in the world, it is a great a great one to have. And I hope you'll take care of that, take it to heart. And again my challenge to you

this year I got several I've been given you. One of them is to try something new. What are you going to do that you haven't done before? Have you never grown vegetables and containers? This is a season to do it. One, there's a great time to do that. Have you never grown vegetables period, grown your own edibles. Have you never tried growing herbs? This is the time to do it. What have you not tried doing? Have you ever tried seeds starting, propagating, seed saving. There's lots

and lots in gardening. That's a lot of fun. And the more you get into it, the more fun you have. And then you meet people who have the same addiction and it even gets more fun. And if you run in and he bumps along the way. Go to your local independent garden centers. We got them north, south, east, west, central here in the greater Houston area. And go there. You're gonna get expert advice. They'll help you with it.

They'll help you get you over the hump, make you a better gardener as you do, or just give me a call on garden line. Be happy to visit with you and help you along the process. Because this is the greatest hobby in the world. It absolutely is. You can argue with me if you want, but I'm right. I may be biased, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong. All right, time for me to take a break. We're

gonna come back with a special guest. Right after the break, we got another guest today that we're going to visit with about some great Christmas gift ideas. Welcome back to the Garden Line. Glad to have you with us today. Thanks for listening in. I want to head straight the phones. I got a special guest that we're going to visit with, and that guest is Joey Linderman from Enchanted Gardens down in Richmond Rosenberg area. Hey Joey, welcome to Garden Line.

Chended Gardens. And you think, you know it might be some gifts not only for themselves but for people on their list.

need to be protected in the wintertime. But a good selection of fruit trees and also blackberries, blueberries, things of that sort this time of year.

some time with them. Maybe they're not able to plant themselves, but you could plant it with them and then sit, drink a cup of coffee and just spend a little bit of time. And I'm telling you that that is one of the most amazing gifts that they may ever receive, because time with a memorial gift like that is so cool.

we'll convert them into real gardeners with that. Joey, thanks a lot for being on.

Star of Hope. You know, two dollars and eighty five cents buys a meal, and Star of Hope serves six thousand meals a week. They can use your help. How many meals will be willing to provide? You know, together we can make a difference When you give now, you give hope, and it is especially needed at this time of year, but needed at all times of the year. And I hope you'll join me and my wife in

providing help to other people through Star of Hope. I can tell you this that I've seen the different things they do, their ministries, their compassion work out in the community, and it makes a big difference. This is not just a handout. This is actually life changing opportunity to be back under you and people need that. Go to Star

of Hope's website. It's soohmission dot org. Go there, check it out, learn more about it and consider providing meals for people that could really use them this time of year. By the way, our phone lines are open if you'd like to give us call again. We're in our last segment, so not a lot of time, but we're going to go to the phones and talk to Jim and Sugarland. Hey Jim, welcome reguardline. Yes, good morning, Yes, skip up.

and stuff. It's your call. There's not a black and white issue on this one. So if you can remove it, if not, you live with it.

and don't leave a stub. But as you go close to the trunk, right before you get to the trunk, it flares out to attach a little bit, and you want to cut it right on the outside of that flare. So you may have an one inch a little bit sticking out there or something along those lines, depending on how big the branch is.

We're going to go ahead and get on that, but I want to remind you, I say post to guard Line to my website that I use for garden Line, that is skip gardening with skip dot com. So it's really real easy to remember gardening with skip dot com. Uh, just go there. My new publications are listed with the newest at the top. I think right now the newest one is on Nema todes. I believe I wrote something on Nemo todes, but we'll be adding more to it.

So either way, look forward to, you know, helping you have a more bountiful garden and a more beautiful landscape by providing that evergreen information.

No excuse me, December second. Tuesday or in December second are at the same day. Call your local, they'll tell you what it is. The bottom line is go ahead and get it done. It may be Monday, December second. Anyway, folks are decorating. Check out their lights by the foot. That is a really cool deal where you can buy the light length you need. You tell them they'll create

that light to exactly the link that you need. Why you're at ACE, check out the incredible list of gifts from really cool kids toys to wonderful power tools and things that any do it yourself or would be glad to have. There is beautiful indoor decorations and all kinds of gift ideas, including stocking stuffers, all the way up to the Cadillac stuff like that Beautiful or Big Green Egg or Weber or Grill. They they are stocked up

there for the barbecue or on your list. What you're gonna find when you get into acis stuff you didn't expect that. That's just true. Every Ace Hardware is independently owned, and there are things when you walk in it's like I didn't know that. I was talking to someone earlier who carried a certain brand of jewelry in the Ace Hardware store. That's a very popular brand. Depending on the issue you go into, they're gonna have some cool stuff,

and so you just gotta check them out. Go to Acehardware dot com, Forward sized Houston and that's where you find the Ace Hardware stores near you. All Right, you've been listening to garden Line and music means I need to hush and put the microphone away for a week. Have a wonderful week out in your garden. I remember to have fun, enjoy those people in your life, and hold those gifts to make a really meaningful relational benefit difference