Everything you need to know for the COLD

just let's put that limit on it. I don't know, we might stretch that a little bit, but whatever would help you have a more bountiful garden, a more beautiful landscape and more fun in the process, that's what we want to talk about today. Well, the cold weather is coming. It's definitely the elephant in the room, so you know, we might as well visit about that. I know you've probably been checking the weather apps on a regular basis, trying to, you know, see what's up, what the latest

prediction is. I guess it's an exciting thing for kiddos because they're getting to perhaps face a little bit of snow, which you know, I know growing up. I grew up South San Antonio, down a little town called Jordenton, Texas. That is, when I lived there, both of the speed or both of the population signs were on the same post. It was that small. But it's got a little bit bigger right now. Anyway, I remember like two snows in my whole life, so it but one of them was

really a good one. Anyway, when you're a kid, you love for it to snow. You know, it helps the Christmas songs make sense, like you know, dashing through the snow and a one horse open slate. What snow, Mama. Well, anyway, you get to see snow over now, and then that's coming.

We got some cold weather coming too. It's going to be a good week to be spending some time indoors that I try to get as much I can get outside because I get card kevin fever cooped up indoors, so I like to get out and enjoy things on the outside. And it kind of depends on, you know, what your preferences are. But I need to be outside more,

but not this week. Done in the Houston forecast. From what I can tell, we're gonna get down about thirty nine about twenty tomorrow night and twenty one, twenty seven, thirty two. That goes all the way through Thursday, so it's gonna be a cold one. And then Tuesday, Tuesday evening especially, I believe we've got a really high chance of getting some precipitation which will be frozen because Tuesday only gets up to thirty four degrees according to the

current Houston forecast that I have. So what are we going to do about it? Well, one thing we're gonna do. They say the three peas are pipes, people and pets are pipes, plants, and pets. I guess we need a people pee in there too, pipes, plants, and pets. So I hope you've taken care of getting your pipes adequately secured.

There is a lot of ways we can do that. Remember, all you got to do is keep them from freezing hard, and so there's already some warmth in the walls of your house, so that's helping a little bit the pipe sticking out into the cold air. That's why you put those little styrofoam covers over them. You can also get a little electrical. It's a section of electrical coated electrical wire that you wrap around pipes and plug it in and it keeps them warm enough to keep them from freezing.

So that there's that. There's also wrapping pipes with styrofoam strips, if ice familiar with seeing those. And then there's a new little device called the freeze miser that is really cool. I screwed in the faucet and you know how you try to turn on the faucet's outdoor and let them drip overnight or trickle overnight. That moving water stops it

from freeze water from freezing it. You always got, you know, let's say the temperature of water inside your home that's always coming out, so it keeps it from getting too cold out there. And that freezemiser what it does when it gets really cold, it starts to leak water out. So imagine a little kind of a nipple like thing you screw into the end of the pipe and then you on your water full force and nothing comes out. And then as a temperature drops, something inside starts to

shrink and now it's letting water through. So instead of running water all night, wasting a lot of water. You end up just using water when it's needed, when it's cold enough for it. And so that's kind of a cool thing. From what I can see, they work pretty well. I'm gonna grab me a couple today. I saw a place where I had them, finally getting around to doing that, and I'll tell you where you can find them is.

You can find them at Ace Hardware stores. You know, Ace has got everything you need if you are trying to keep your pipes warm, your water from freezing, if you're trying to keep your pets safe, if you're trying

to protect your plants. So those pipe, those faucet covers, the freeze miser, the tubes of foam star foam or foam material to wrap around your pipes, a duct tape to hold it all on, Plastic sheeting to cover over things and protect them, frost blankets to take care of the I mean, it's all there at Ace Hardware, and we got Ace Hardware's all over the place. There's a

lot of them. I mean they are absolutely all over the Greater Houston area, from all the way out in Beaumont to all the way down in Wharton and in our listening area and in many places beyond that. All you have to do is go online to acehardware dot com, find the ones near you, and you'll be able to get in there and get everything you need. And for the we say the three piece for the fourth p people, we've got heaters. They've got all kinds of space heaters inside.

If you need to do any kind of things for your little generator, you got out there in case, you know, power to go out or something, they got stuff for that as well. Everything you need basically is there at ACE Hardware, So don't delay, go ahead and get it done. We're not having tonight. It's not our worst night by far, but you do want to make sure that you take care of the pipes, people, plants, and uh what did I leave out? Pipes, people, plants, I can't tell. Pets, Yeah,

the pets as well. Oh and also those clamp on lights where you put in either a one hundred and fifty flood light above or you put in an actual heat lamp to really warm things up. I'm going to be putting a heat lamp in. I've got a whole bunch of plants in my garage and they're all grouped together in the back of the garage and it's gonna stay reasonably warm in there. But just to be sure, I put a little heat lamp in shine it down on the garage floor, and that is it is. It

radiates down and then the heat rises up. We're good to go. Just remember with the heat lamp, don't point it at the plants. And if you if you don't know, if you believe that or not, well turn on a heat lamp and put your hand, you know, a foot or two away from it and just hold it there still for a while and you'll see what I'm talking about. But anyway, I'll get one of those those are a ACE to clamp on. I've already got those climpon lights. So all of it's there for you. And we've got

Ace hardware's all over the place. You know, if you're done in full shure, there's fulsher Ace hardware. There's an All Star Ace hardware, one in Spring and one in Magnolia, All Star Ace Poor levaka Ace hardware for those of you listening way down in that direction. In Spring Ace hardware up in Spring. So easy to find time for me to take a break when we come back. I will go straight to your calls and boil somebody. Everybody woke up this morning. All right, we'll be right with you.

Melanie and Ann and Robert. Welcome back the Guarden Line. Good to have you with us. We're gonna get out to the phones here in just one second. I know we're gonna be talking freezes all day. I just want to make a few comments about freeze and freeze protection. There are things that point toward more plant damage, and

there's things that point us toward less plant damage. If a plant is not ready for cold, the same plant versus a plant that's had time too as we say, hardened off, the one that hasn't been able to prepare for cold is more likely to get cold damage at the same temperature as one that has been. It's going fine because it was hardened off. That's one things that how sudden the cold comes, and how fast the temperature drops,

how much wind we have when it's cold. You know, if we say it's going to be twenty six degrees, well, is that twenty six degrees of still air? Or is that twenty six degrees with a fifteen mile an hour wind blown from the side. You know, it's going to cool off faster, you get more damage. Now, typically when the wind isn't blown and you don't have clouds, the temperature will drop lower. But I'm just saying these things

affect whether a plant will be damaged or not. Now, the things that help us have plants not get damaged. A plant that's not drought stressed, soil that has been adequately watered. Water holes heat, and when we say heat, we just mean temperature. You know that is above freezing. That's heat compared to a frozen plant. So water holes heat, so that doesn't mean drowned it and create a swamp. It means just a good deep soaking, making sure there

is moisture there, pulling the mulch away. So when the sun shines during the day, it warms up that dark soil that can then radiate that heat up into the plant in the evening times. Covers over the top of the plant, especially when they go to the ground, and they create a dead air space. So it may be twenty six degrees outside, but underneath the cover, with soil rising up in some dead air space, it's not going

to be as cold. Now, that doesn't mean, you know, you get to nineteen degrees and you're not going to freeze a plant that's not enough. These are all things that add together to provide protection or not. So it's not a black and white issue here. We've got a lot of factors that are moving putting heat underneath the cover. You know, a little bit of heat versus a lot

of heat. And you know, if you've got a small plant, it takes less heat under the cover to protect it at a given temperature than if you have something large, like a big old orange tree, for example. So that's a lot of airspace to provide heat into. It's gonna take more heat. So whether you're using light bulbs to do it or whether you're using some other way to do it, it's going to take more heat to do that.

And so each of these things, you know, it moves us toward you're probably going to get damage or you're not going to get damage. And of course the plant species varies a lot too. So what we have to do is we have to do all of these things. You know, if I had a citrus tree and it was going to get to nineteen and I was trying to cover it, I would also pull soil or very fine compost up around the trunk and make a big old giant this only time you're gonna hear me say,

make a trunk volcano. But this is it because that way, if it froze back and kill the trunk back, typically it's going to be a little warmer under eat that big pile of soil where the trunk touches it, and maybe you'll get a sprout from above the graft that can grow and replace your tree. So see what I'm saying. We're doing all these things either to move the needle, to order away from coal damage. Nature is doing those too, And so there are times when we try to cover

and protect a plant and it's not enough. It's just not going to be enough. It's too cold, it's too windy, the plant's too sensitive, on and on down the cold sensitive. But those are the things that we try to do. So I just wanted to make a mention of that because that is really important to realize and to keep that into account. So ask yourself, you know, if you're going to put lights underneath the plant, you know how

col tender is this? How big of an area am I trying to recover or to protect rather and make your decisions according to that. Let's go to other phones. Now we're going to head out to Cyprus and talk to Melanie. Hey, Melanie, good morning, and welcome to garden Line.

of heat and in a small space. If we're talking about just trying to keep the temperature about thirty two, it may be enough, but if the temperature gets lower outside, it won't be enough. Okay, if you're using you said the word heat lamp. Those are okay, are they? Is it a red kind of okay? Yeah, those put out

more heat. Those put more heat. But again, if if you had a big, old, giant orange tree with a cover over it, and you just had one of those underneath it, and the temperature is going to go into the teens, you know, that's probably not gonna be enough. You may have to have a second woman or something. So it's just a it's a it's just a factor. Someone called in yesterday and talked about a little gadget you hang in the plant where you're on your phone app,

you can tell what the temperature is. Boy, that would be really helpful because then you would know exactly how things are going out there. Not not that you would want to walk out and tend degree weather and try to add another heat lamp or anything, but but it just just think of it that way that do everything you can, and remember we don't have to make it warm enough to where we'd be comfortable under the under

the cover. We need to keep it about freezing, and so if we the main thing is if you can create dead air space, then you've got this air that you heat it up, and it's not like whim just immediately blows it right up from under there, and so that's also very important.

And there's a little device. I've not used this to try to get clover out of blue bonnets, but I use it on thistle weeds that come up in flower beds in my yards, called the Grandpa's weeder. And it's got little prongs and you don't have to bend over and pull weeds. You step on it and imagine, you know, take your two fingers and your thumb and push them

down into the ground and then pinch them together. And all you do is pull back on the handle and it pinches and pulls the weeds out, and you could loosen a lot of clover out of the soil that way without stooping. And then just go in and either rake or pull up the weeds that the clovers that you have pulled up, So that may be helpful for you.

with Skip dot com. Find that publication on freeze and frost protection. It's free, it's nine pages, it's got color pictures, and it will help. Welcome back, Welcome back to garden Line. Let's keep going this morning. I bet we talked freezes all day. Whatever you want to talk about though, we can even talk about the tomato agree last year. If you want to go that route. We're going to hit it out now to Spring Branch and talk to Robert. Hey, Robert, Welcome to guarden Line.

it gets converted to heat. LED is kind of flipped over, not that efficient like ninety ten, but it's way more efficient on light and therefore you don't get the heat. And we talk sometimes your comment is kind of give me a springboard to make a couple of things that come to mind as you say that, And we talk often about well, you can put a string of Christmas lights in there, well, not LED Christmas lights and not the little tiny, twinkly non LED Christmas lights. There's hardly

any heat comes out of those. It's the big old what's the number C four or C something. The bulbs that are like little miniature old time light bulbs. Uh, those produce a little bit of heat and you can put a string of those to help a little, but it can't be a very hard freeze for them to do a lot.

and not everybody's listening. Don't point a heat lamp at your plants. It just gets too hot. Don't put the bulbs too close to your trunk or leaves or things like that. And one other I gotta warn you again consider fire hazard. I have pictures of plants where it was a little tree, a little fruit tree, and they had put a cover over it, and then they put some fixture down near the ground and it in dead grass. And the next morning it looked like you'd burned a

trash pile out there. It was all gone. It caught on fire and burned it all up. So I mean, that's just common sense. You know, you don't stick an open plug out in rainy weather. You don't put something that could spark done in dry grass or mulch, and so just be careful with that. A low common sense will do that. In the ball, I just put a fixture underneath a trialis that I have. I just wanted to try to keep it, you know, even some of the above ground parts alive if I could. It's more

of an experiment. But I drove a steak in the ground, and I put my clamp light on the steak, so I'm sure the bulb will be above the soil and pointing down. You know, if you stick it to PVC pipe, sometime the weight of that light it'll start to sag down and next thing you know, it's not pointing where you want it to point or whatever. Anyway, more than you want to know, more than you want to know.

But just because it's gonna get cold doesn't mean you need to quit talking about plants and what to plant now, and good plants and things out there like that, plants for all seasons. Up on a highway two forty nine, which is Stunball Parkway. They're just north of Luetta. If you're going up toward Tomball, you exit Luetta and just crossover Luetta. It's a little further up on the right hand side, just a soone's throat from Luena. They've got

lots of great stuff in. They got some good cool seasoned flowers, you know, pansies and violas and the diantha, one of my favorite cool seasoned flowers. Lots of things like that to choose from. They got a good selection of vegetables, a great selection of seeds inside too. Their indoor seed selection is awesome. So why not go out and grab some of that today, Get you some seeds,

start to do your planning. You know, we can take advantage of not being able to go outside to sit down at the table with paper and pencil kind of figure out, what are you gonna plant next year? Where are you gonna put it? You got the seeds, get them all ready? Maybe you want to start some seeds yourself. And there is things like seed trays, a seed starting mix, a very fine textured like a pinting soap, a very

fine textured that you can use. Maybe you're going to get a light, an LED light to provide lighting for those plants. Lighting is the single most important thing that people seem to not get right when they try to start to grow their own transplants. So I have a publication on my website lighting for seed Starting. It's actually really interesting. Uh, and you will if you read it, you will go, oh, I get it. I did not

know that because there's a lot of factors about it. Uh, you know, just having an electrical engineer call and talk about you know, uh, plant lighting and heat. The same is true when it comes to how plant light work. Lights work. So check that publication out. I'm gonna take a break. We'll be right back, And I'm your host, Skip Richter, and you're listening to guard Line. We're here to talk about the things you need to talk about.

And I suspect the cold weather and what to do about this plant, that plant, or what works what doesn't work? I don't know. You tell me whatever you want to talk about, will do it? Seven one three two one two K T R H. We want you to have success. And I'll tell you this, A lot of people are hesitant to call in, and I get it. You know, I'm going to be on the radio and everybody's listening, and what if I make a fool of myself or something. Well,

Number one, nobody's it's just showing me. Trust me. That's shoeing me out there. I know who you are. You're sitting there listening, and if you call, we'll just visit. And I if you've listened to guard Line very long, you know that we are very welcome, welcoming of callers here. And I always like to have new folks call in. Love to have the folks who call in at other times as well, but it's always good to meet a new gardener. So what do you want to talk about today?

Let's do that. I promise to be kind. The way I used to say it, and I guess I should still do this is don't be afraid of asking a stupid question. There are no stupid questions just stupid answers. Now, I know you're sitting there thinking, yeah, I've heard some stupid questions amount time. Well that's not how I look at it. Stupid answers, that's what we're worried about. So the pressure's on me, not you. Let's talk about gardening. And I'll tell you this, if you have a question

somebody else does, I guarantee you. I can sit here in a show and answer the same question seven times in the same morning, and that's okay. I can do that. I wish everybody listened all the time, but I understand how things go. You're in, you're out. Well, just ask

your question and we will answer it for you. And I don't know if i've answered it before, I may add something different into the answer, something additional, And so somebody who's listening through the whole thing gets gets to kind of expand on what they're learning and how they can then go have success. I was mentioning plans for all season before we went to break and you know, plans for all seasons if you if you want to

get in contact with them. The website's Plans for All Seasons dot com and their phone number is two eight one three seven six sixteen forty six two eight one three seven six sixteen forty six. Swing by there and visit with those folks and get you some supplies to get ready for gardening. You know this, Like I said, this week is the week to be gardening indoors, armchair gardening, if you will. It's the week to be reading seed

catalogs and getting inspired. It's the week to be reading stuff online.

get that go out and buy fresh. We say clean, meaning it's not full of diseases. Potting soil or seed starting mix. That's good. But there are people who want to kind of make their own stuff. You know, they make composts and they screen it down really fine, and maybe they add a little bit of purli to it or sand to it or whatever their concoction is. And then you go start a seed and in a very humid, moist chamber, diseases can proliferate. And so we have a

disease called damping off. And basically what it means is your little seedling sprout and then they start to rot at the base and fall over, kind of like Paul Bunyan went through there chopping them off. They just they just melt right over. And that's that's a fungal disease. That is a problem because of that very moist, nice mild temperature chamber that you've created, which is what seas want. Seeds want moist and mild temperatures, and so how do

you avoid that. Well, if you want to make your own soil, or maybe maybe you have potting soil from a bunch of containers and you're you're done with it, you can throw it away, you can put it on the ground, just mix it into the soil like organic matter, like compost. But some people want to try to reuse it, and how do you how do you do that? Well, the you do that is you have to pasteurize it. You have to kill the bad stuff. And in this publication that I wrote and put online, it's very simple.

You know say in a publication sounds like this big deal, it's it's really simple. Basically, you can put that soil in a pan with foil over the top and put it in an oven. You need to moisten it. It's very important to have good heat transfer, good moisture, not soggy, just moist you know, Cover the pan with foil, seal it over and put it in a oven away from the heating element. And then the next step is to raise it to a certain temperature and leave it for

about thirty minutes once it hits that temperature. And I use I've used meat thermometers, I've used candy thermometers, all kinds of you know, little thermometer. Just stick them, pokehole through the soil, stick the thermometer in there and just watch the temperature on it. Check it out, check it periodically. Once it hits the temperature you want it, leave it about thirty minutes just to be sure. Now here's the warning. Don't overheat. When you overheat potting soil. It is not pleasant.

We'll just say earthy odor that can can fill the house in the oven as well. So if you are trying to heat up some soil, I realize right now as I'm saying this, you know, like one in one hundred people probably is going to do this. But one hundred and forty degrees for thirty minutes is enough to kill most fungi that are in the soil. If you want to kill bacteria and insects, you're probably gonna need to go to about one hundred and sixty degrees because they are a little more some of them are a

little more resistant to the heat. And if you're trying to get all the weed seeds, we say about one hundred and eighty, but do not go above one hundred and eighty for anything, and about thirty minutes and that'll do it. An alternative method, and this is the one I like because I don't know, it seems neat or cleaner to me, is get you all those turkey bags. You know that the bags that you would put around a turkey, they're made for the oven. They're called oven bags,

is really the name for them. I call them turkey bags because that's the size of the bag, and put your soil in that, your moist soil, pre moistened soil in that, and then put that bag on a tray in the oven, kind of flatten it out that you wouldn't want to go deeper than about four inches or so because you want heat to get all the way to the center of it effectively. And just poke a hole in it, a little slid or a hole that allows extra air to escape. And it works really well.

It's neat and clean. So those are a couple of ideas. If you didn't catch all that, go online the publications on my website, Gardening with Skip dot com. And it's even there's even a PDF version that you can print out if you want to do that. All right, Well, there we kind of went off on a tangent and some things that I think some gardeners will be interested in. Well, there's the music. We are putting an hour in the books this morning. Hey, we got three more to go.

Give us a call if you'd like to call it Duram Break. You can be one of the first folks when we come back on the air seven one three two one two k t r H seven to one three two one two kt r H. We're gonna be talking about all kinds of things. Uh, your calls, certainly. I have a few topics that I would like to visit about a little bit, and uh, one of the

things is printing tools. Come back, We're and talk a little bit about some basic printing tools things you might be interested, especially if you're in the market to purchase a tool, or if you're trying to take care of your tools, how to keep care of the top round the forward to talk to you in just a bit.

out to cut what needs to be prune this. You know how you prune various kinds of plants. That that's all helpful, but having good tools is important. And there are a lot of different pruning tools out there in the market, a lot of different kinds. In fact, I could spend the whole show talking just about all the

different pruning tools. And I'm just going to give a few quick points here when it comes to pruners that are hand pruners or that are loppers, the long ones that you know you cut a larger limb off with. There are two types of blade arrangements. One of them is called a bypass and it works like a pair of scissors. One blade passes by the other one and

clips off the branch or whatever you're cutting. The other type is called an anvil type, and there you have a flat surface and a blade comes down on it as if you were hitting a hatchet on an anvil top. You see what I'm saying, It cuts that way. I don't care for the endvie types. They are okay in some situations, but general I find that they often get a little lot of whack and you try to cut

and it didn't cut all the way through. Well, So I like the bypass types of pruners, And I realize there's reasons for each type, but the bypass types work a little bit better. When you're using a bypass pruner the side, like if you're holding scissors, typically the bottom part has a little bit more of a flat surface and the top part is more of a thin blade.

And when you're using scissors that are a bypassed type pruner, the bottom part may slightly crush the branch that where it's pressing against it, and the other type slices through. So I always put the blade against the plant, in other words, the part that's going to be left behind, put the blade against that, and then prune accordingly. Now it is I find it a little better when you can to prune cutting up. So imagine you got a trunk with a branch going up the side. I'm gonna

get you. Do this, hold your hand up, stick your thumb out to the side, and your fingers together so it looks like mittons. Okay, if I were going to cut the thumb off there, I would slice from the bottom upward and cut it off. And the reason is, especially if pruners start to get a little out of adjustment if you're cutting down, sometimes the blade will drift a little to the side and it won't cut through, and you'll end up like with this little strip kind

of hanging down. And number one, you need to sharpen the prunters and fix fix the adjustment if you can. But I just find it better to cut up. It's just one thing. I'll not always cut up, sometimes to the side or whatever. Just always remember to put the blade against the plant when you can, when the arrangement lies. Sometimes the way the branches are angled and stuff, you only have one way to get in there, and you may not even fully be able to get inside there

and cut. But do that. Always keep your punters sharp, sharp, sharp, sharp, sharp, very important. It's less wear and tear on your hands, so you don't end up with joint strain and muscle strain on your hands. The same is true with loppers when it comes to your elbows and shoulders and things like that. Sharp prunters are so important. Very sharp saw too, by the way, for that matter, So keep them sharp.

Make your cuts. If you're printing something that may be diseased, like you have a pear tree that had fire blight, for example, or a pyacantha that had fire blight. Then you want to dip your printers into alcohol and or spray them with lysol. I like the lysol approach because you just and I'm using a brand name there, but you get the idea. I like the lysol because it's fast and easy. You know, carrying around a thing of

alcohol is not that not that practical. Sometimes I'll buy a little pint essentially a pint container of isopropyle alcohol, cut the top off of it and because they are like what a dollar for those little things, and then just dip the prunters in it. You can use bleach water ten percent bleach water, but I wouldn't bleach water. Pits metal and it'll cause it to rust worse. Now, if you get through pruning and you clean your pruners well and oil them, well, it's going to be okay.

But most people don't, and so I just stay away from the bleach water because of the fact that it is a corrosive and causes that problem. So anyway, I like lysol too. And if you that way, when you make a cut, you're going to have sap and things on those prunter blades. And let's say it did have the bacteria that causes fire blade in it and you go make another cut. Now you're just spreading it. You're creating a wound and infecting the wound at the same time.

See what I'm saying. So anyway, life all works good. I spurble alcohol works good. Just get a good strong one. Just something to kill the bugs or the diseases it might be on there. That's a sanitary thing. One other t is if you're printing a plant and you got an area that has issues, prine all the whole plant except that area, and then prune that last. And that way. That's another way to avoid spreading the disease as you go from one to the other. Let's see. Those are

a couple of tips on prunters. A number three or whatever number we're on. The last while give in this quick review, is that you should buy quality prunters. There are a lot of brands out there. You get what you pay for when you buy prunters. You go to a big box store and buy a cheap set of prunters,

and you may think you're getting a good deal. I could fill a bucket full of all the pruners I was given or whatever and had, and they were cheap and they're worthless, and they after a while, I get upset and I just throw them in the trash because they're not working right. A good set of prunters is adjustable. You can replace the blade on a good set of prunters often and that allows you to keep them sharp, to keep them in good adjustment. It's easier on your hand.

It cuts better. Uh, it doesn't cause you know, problems with the way you make the cup, maybe leaving a strip or tearing a strip off of the bark or something that's not going to heal well. It's just a good way to go. Examples would be like fell Co and oh gosh, Corona is another good one, and there's some others out there. I'm not sponsored by Folk or Corona or anything. It's just those are good brands and there's some others out there that are good quality punters.

Spend some money on a good quality printers. I got prunters that I've owned for decades because they're good and they last, and it's much better to do that. All right, Time for me to take a break. We'll come back with your calls at seven one three two one two KTRH. Welcome back. To the guard line. Folks, what do you want to talk about today? I suspect when you talk about the cold a little bit, and that's going to wait and let let you tell me and your questions.

We talked about the freezes yesterday. We've been talking about a lot of this morning. By the way, if you're just tuning in, you might want to go back. I made some comments earlier on just talking about the fact that with freezes, it's not like throw a cover over, put a light bulb under it, and you're good. You know,

there's factors. There's things that make a plant more likely to freeze, to suffer freeze damage, and there are things that you can do or that nature does or doesn't do that help that plant be a little better at being resilient during a freeze and not suffering cold damage. And certain things like plant species, of course, but the conditions and things, and so as you're covering your plants, just remember if I were to give you like one or two things to remember, it's like number one, don't

do landscape lollipops. The amount of benefit that is is minimal to none, minimal to none. And instead auto drape down all the way to the ground. The cover ought

to drape all the way to the ground. And the way I describe it is, imagine if you put an umbrella over the plant that reached out over the outsides of the plant, and then you if you throw a cover over that umbrella and let it go straight to the ground like rain would fall off the umbrella, that's what we're talking about, and secure it to the soil. Create dead air space. That is very important. That allows you to take advantage of the warmth of the soil

coming up. And remember forty degrees soil is warm when it comes to freeze protection because that's almost ten degrees above freezing, right, and so you're looking at a warming and we don't have to make that plant comfortable and toasty. It's not like you're going to sit out there all night. You'd want it really warm. You probably want eighty degrees in there, but the plant, no, we just have to keep it about freezing. So that covering it right and

creating dead air space so important. No landscape lollipops. Just think of it that way. Number. Let me go into that just a second. You may be thinking, well, why is that you know you I become a couch lollipop. When I wrap up in a blanket on a cold night watching TV or something, well, my body produces heat and the blanket holds the heat. In plants don't produce any significant amount of heat at all. So all a blanket around a plant does is slow the rate of cooling.

But given enough time, it's just it's going to be just as cold inside almost as it is outside. And so just a wrap is slightly helpful. If you're going to have a temperature that drops down to thirty degrees, then it's when the sun comes up, it's real quickly back up above thirty five. Well yeah, okay, then a wrap would be some helpful for that. But in general, plants don't produce heat. That's the difference. That's why, So just remembering that is helpful. Soil has a huge reserve

of warmth in it, especially if it's moist soil. The other thing is when you apply heat, the amount of heat you need to apply is going to be based on how cold does it get and how big is the space you're trying to warm. So if you have a little space heater in your house, like you go into a little closet and you put a tiny space heater and barely turn it on. It's going to get warm in there because that's a small amount of space

burt to heal up. Now, go out to a huge living room with a vaulted ceiling and have that same space heater. It's not kind to warm that room, not much. And the same is true underneath the plant. So something down low to the ground a little bit of heat is usually good, and something larger you're going to need more.

And I can't tell you when you need to shift from an incandescent one hundred and fifty white flood light bulb to a incandescent heat lamp bulb underneath the plant, and you're just going to figure that out depending on the cold and the plant and all that. I can't tell you when you need to add a second one to it, but you can figure it out. But just remember we don't have to make it warm under there. We just have to keep it above thirty two. All right,

there we go. Hopefully that is helpful. One of the things that we really need to be doing right now is starting seeds. And if you've never grown transplants before, you're missing a whole aspect of gardening. That is a lot of fun. Now, some people grow flats and flats of transplants, of flowers and vegetables for their garden and whatnot. That's fine, and most people are not going to do that.

But can I talk you into at least growing one transplant or two, maybe grow two or three, just so you have one for sure that makes it and does well. Try something what would you like to try? Right now? It's time to plant tomatoes and peppers, and you could start eggplant now indoors as a transplant. That light is the most important factor in growing successful trans plants. Sitting them by a window is generally not going to be adequate. It's just not. They're going to stretch and lean and

get spindly and not do well. So it's important to give them good quality lighting. And you can do that with a lot of different kinds of light. There's plant lights that are like almost perfect light. They have the

wavelengths and everything exactly like the plant wants. I do have a publication on plant lighting on my website that explains the difference in plant quantity and plant or like quantity and like quality, and how far away do you put a light from a plant and all those factors, but try something like that, and I just really would encourage you to do that. I think it's fun and as you do it, you get more and more into it. Next thing, you know, you're going to be buying some

really quality lighting. So you can grow a lot of things. And I do that myself slowly over time. You know, it's not only break the bank and turn a whole room into a plant that place. Just start slow. It's easy to do and it's fun. It's so fun to do. And another reason why you should grow your own things is you can grow things that you can't buy locally. We got the best garden centers in the whole United States here, I mean North, South, East, West, and Central

independent mom and pop as they say, garden centers. We got them and they're awesome. And some of them carry a lot of things. Some of them carry dozens of tomatoes, for example, varieties to choose from. But maybe there's one that you just want to try and grow at yourself. You can do that. You know, we're we're not talking about don't buy transplants. We're talking about things that you want to grow that I've grown before. For example, if there is a particular kind of flower, or maybe a

new cultivar of flower. There's every year there's new cultivars of flower and vegetables. In fact, I'm pretty sure the earth would stop spinning on its axis if there wasn't eight hundred new tomato varieties every year for us to choose from. That is just the way it goes. So you want to try something out, you're probably initially you're gonna have to probably experiment by going and buying seeds

and growing it yourself. Now, the things that are proven, that are tried and true, especially some of the famous heirlooms that people like and things like that. We got garden centers are going to carry those for you, so you can call around a lot of them put their information online. If not, just call them if you're looking for a particular type. But what are you going? What

are you gonna try new? Another thing that I would encourage you to do this year, And I've been talking since we got going here in January about what what is your gardening resolution for the year. I know, I don't like the term resolution because usually a New Year's resolution lasts two weeks and then it's forgotten and we go on through the year. I'm talking about just a decision. Hey, I am going to you fell in the blank, and I think you need to say I am going to

try growing a transplant this year. I think I'm going to try rooting a cutting this year. And if you've never rooted cuttings before, the easiest things on earth to root, I think our basal rosemary cos colius plants. Once we get into warm weather and the colius are out there, you just basically look at the stem and say root, and roots start popping out of the sides. I mean, those are easy. Those are easy ones to root. There's information online on how to root, how to have success

with rooting, So give it a try. Try something. Maybe you have a really tall dressina, you know those strappy leaf plants with a little stalk like a palm tree stock going up, and it's too tall and you would like to make it shorter. You know that you can do an air layer on that stem. You put soil around the stem, actually putting mix around the stem up high. Let's say that just for example, let's say it's seven feet tall and you need it to be bring it

down to about four feet tall. Okay, So here's what you do. You go up to the top, and about a foot down from the top, you do an air layer. Just go look it up tells you how to do it. It's not hard to do. And once roots form in that, you cut it off below that, and now you got a new plant that you can pot up and grow or give away. And then you go down as far down as you want that top of the trunk to be and you cut it off there, and what's gonna happen.

Our buds are going to form on the sides are already actually, they're already in the trunk, you just don't see them, and they're going to sprout out. Have you ever gone to buy a corn plant at a garden center and you see this stalk that is stubbed off and then there's shoots coming out the sides of it. Pretty much every corn plant, that's how it's sold. Well, that was a tall stalk they cut off, and those shoots just popped out of the side. So you can

take a fiddlely fig that's too tall. You can take a Drsina corn plant, or you can take the drasina with the little strappy, thin leaves and you can turn a tall, lanky plant that is just unacceptable into something that's very attractive and make more plants in the process. That's what I'm saying. One thing, one thing. Do you want to try this year? If you got something around the house and you wont know how to propagate it, give me a call. We will help you do that.

We are let's see here. I'm gonna got about a minute here to go. We're going to go to Paul in Troy, Alabama. Paul, I've got about a minute or so. If you need be, we can hold you over break.

rubbing them. Maybe you got sandpaper wrapped around a little piece of two by four of them, and you're just you're kind of scratching around on them to wear that seed coat down so water soaks in, because with blue bonnets only a few of them are going to sprout unless you break that seed coat loose, get them soaked overnight, put them in very warm water, soak them overnight, and then in the morning plant them wherever you're going to plant them, and that's giving you the best headstart you

can and they will come up and you will probably get some blue butty, we're really late in the season to be doing it, but if you've already got the seed, it's worth the try. That's great.

here's the typical garden shopper. They go to some place that sells planned and typically maybe it's a place that also sells hammers and other things, and they shouldn't be buying plants there because well a lot of reasons. That's a whole nother rant. But they go in, they look around, they see something pretty, you know. It's a little tiny six pack of plants with flowers big as a tennis ball on top. And they bring those home and then they walk around the yard as to where, looking, where

am I going to put these things? And they find a little spot they scratch out the surface and put them in the ground. Unprepared soil and the way I like to put it, PLoP a poor plant in an unprepared plot, and then they start to water it and it tries to grow a while, and then first sing. You know, weeds are in there and plants not doing good and it's struggling, and then they just kind of give up and say I have a brown thumb. No, you don't have a brown thumb. You just did the

wrong thing. You weren't informed. Here's the important thing. Prepare the soil. First, create a soil plants live in their roots. Create a soil that has good aeration, good nutrient content, and the qualities of that so it can hold water, but it drains excess water away. It's got that kind of quality to it. It's got good microbial activity in

the soil. Then you put a plant in it, and it's just going to thrive because the roots take off, they hit the ground running, and that plant is happy as it can be and you're going to have success. So that's why I say spend a dollar in your

soil before you spend a dollar on your plant. That's why I say brown stuff before green stuff, just to make the point that getting the soil right is important and you know, if I could just convince you that one thing, I would be very happy because that will help a lot of people flip the switch from failure to success in their gardening. Now, the folks at Microlife, you know, they specialize in soil. Really, that's what they do. I mean, if you think about it, yeah, it's a fertilizer. Well,

it's building the soil. Microlife products have a lot of microbes in them. That is what they're all about. They are all loaded with microbes. They are all loaded with all kinds of minerals. This isn't just you know when a product like they're six two four that the only thing in it is not just six percent nitrogen, two percent phosphorus, four percent potassium. It's a lot of other stuff that you get other than that. And you take a product like Microlife Humates hum Mats plus that's a

kind of a bluish purple looking bag. Maybe I don't know what color that is. I'd say blue more than anything. Anyway, Microlife Heumates plus is zero zero four, so you get four percent potassium. But that's not why you're putting it down. I mean that helps, but it is loaded with what we call concentrated compost in a bag. Meaning when you take let's do it this way. Here's the stages of decomposition. You start with grass, clippings and leaves or whatever is organic.

Whatever material you have, you decompose it, and that's called compost. You take compost and you let it fully decomposed to its final stage, and that's called humus. And humates plus is an organic biological soil amendment that you put down. You put it in your lawns. You know, we talk about deep time aerrating and core aerating and compost op dressings and things. I would put microlight humates plus like

that out. It works really well. It takes about only ten pounds per thousand square feet that you're going to put out, but you're going to do it on a regular basis year to year. And when you put it down, what it's going to do is it's going to get into the soil. It's going to improve soil structure. The more humans you can put in the soil, the better your soil structure gets. And you can do this in flower beds, you can do it in a lot of places.

Microbes thrive in that environment and that's that's one product for Microlife. If you want to find out more about other products they have and where you can buy them, just go to Microlifefertilizer dot com Microlifefertilizer dot com. You can find all right there. I'll tell you one place you can buy it, Southwest Fertilizer. I can say that without even thinking. You know why, because because Bob at

Southwest Fertilizer carries everything. I've never had a product name come out of my mouth that you won't find in Southwest Fertilizer. It just they do. They're in Southwest Houston. That hence the name corner of Byssineton Runwick, And you just got to go by there. In fact, you know, when you when you swing by Southwest Fertilizer and walk in, take some time and look around. You'll see what I'm talking about. You may you know, you may go, wow,

I'm not into chemicals. I'm an organic gardener. Okay, Then go to Southwest Fertilizer. They have the biggest organic selection in the region At Southwest Fertilizer. They do. They have synthetic and organic options for fertilizing, controlling insects, spider mites, plant diseases like fungi and bacteria, for stopping weeds, for preventing weeds from growing, killing weeds that are already growing. They've got it all and you get to make your

choices there. I talked earlier about how important quality pruning tools are. That's what Bob carries. Quality printer. You didn't say you junk. Go in there and say, I want to know you know, what are your better brands of pruning equipment, And it's pretty much everything they carry, and you're going to have success with that, and that's important. Southwest Fertilizer dot Com is the website if you want

to find out more their phone numbers on there. I realized when I give out all these phone numbers and websites and stuff, probably not writing them all down. But just go to Southwest Fertilizer dot com. You can find out everything you need. When you're in there. The Bob has a soul probe you can check out. You have to talk to them about the terms of it, but

you can take that out to your yard. You can take a proper core vertical core soil sample and put the results together and send them in for a soil test that is very accurate as to what's going on in your yard. Just borrow essentially their sol probe, and then you'll know exactly what fertilizer supplements may be missing in your yard to get things balanced back out again.

You know, we recommend good fertilizers, but the bottom line is every yard's a little different, and there may be your yard may need something your neighbor doesn't, and you can get it fixed that way with a good sol tesk. Just go by stop with or the soil probe and fertilize intelligently that way. All right, I'm gonna run to break. I will be right back with your calls at seven three two one two ktr H. All right, let's jump right back in here on garden line. Winter is the

prime time for printing almost anything. The one thing you don't want to print in the winter is things that bloom only in the spring. So, for example, a lot of climbs roses or once blooming roses. And there's not just climbers. Other roses can be once bloomers, but something like a Lady Bank's real cool rose, love love Lady Banks, but it only blooms in the spring. Uh, and then it doesn't bloom again until next spring there something like the old time azaleas were just spring bloomers. Now we

have repeat types of azalias out there. Spyriea called bridals wreath just blooms in the spring. Texas Mountain Laurel just blooms in the springtime. Let's see what else. The Chinese fringe is an example of something that just blooms in the spring. Only flowering quints, those aren't. That's an old time plant. You don't see as much of them now as you used to. But anyway, flowering quints is one

that just blooms in the spring. All of those are blooming on bloom buds basically that were produced last the end of summer and fall. Last summer, late summer and fall, the plant was setting bloom buds for this big spring bloom. So if you prune now in the winter, you're cutting off what you would about to enjoy. We're about to enjoy in the spring. You wait until after they bloom to prune those. Now. The one exception of the spring only bloomers that comes to mind is fruit trees. Spruit

trees or spring only bloomers. But we prune those because we also need to thin those as well, a peach tree produces probably about ninety percent more peaches than it needs to carry a crop or a can, and so we do pruning and then we also do thinning after that on a peach tree or apple tree, pear tree, those kinds of things. So if it needs pruning and it's a fruit tree, you can print it like you do our other plants. But in general, spring bloomers are

only pruned after they bloom. Spring only bloomers, excuse me, So what about other things like trees and shrubs? In general we prine those in the wintertime. Hedges we prune all through the year when we're sharing a hedge. But for your trees, you need to know what you're doing, or you need to hire somebody that knows what they're doing. An affordable tree Martin spoon Moore knows what he's doing.

And when you start talking about, you know, a young tree and how do you train it right, don't just wing it and think I think I can do this. You need to know what you're doing to do this. When you start looking at a bigger tree, don't climb up a ladder and do it yourself. I mean, really, come on, man, get somebody that is professional, that knows what they're doing, and this is the best time to get that done. And Martin stays busy because he does

a good job. He's got a solid following of customers, and so you're gonna have to call him and get on the schedule as soon as possible. You know, if you want to get this printing done during the winter season, you need to call him pretty quick here. Really, in fact, they may do a little bit of printing going out into the spring, because that's also okay. You can do that. You can prune really month of the year. Some we don't want to do heavy duty preeing though at sometimes

of the year. But now's the time. It's not a long window to do it. So give him a call, go ahead and give him a call book now. In fact, I would I would do it asap because he does stay busy. You can reach him at seven one three six nine nine twenty six sixty three. Say that again, seven one three six nine nine two six six three. You can also go to the website aff of Tree Service dot com a f F Tree Service dot com. But when you call uh seven one three six ninety

nine two six sixty three. You're going to get either Martin Or's wife Joe. The owners answer the phone, and if somebody else answers the phone, you call the wrong place. Hang up seven one, three, six, nine nine two six sixty three. Give him a call. Get on the schedule. You can do other things too. He can come out. Martin does deep root feeding.

valuable plant in your landscape. So don't wait until you've butchered it already, or until you've already built this giant slab all over the root system. To ask questions. Get Martin out there as a consultation. He can come out and do that. And he'll come out take a look at your trees by the way in general and tell you what needs to be done. And so I'm just telling you don't put it off. Now's the time. We've already put it off long enough to wait until now.

So let's go ahead and get a hold of him and get that done and get it done right. You're listening to Guardline. Our phone number is seven one three two one two k t r H seven one three two one two k TRH. And boy, we are talking about all kinds of topics today. I've been told before. I don't know. You can tell me if this is

true or not. But if I just sit here, going deep in the woods talking about all these kinds of topics on gardening, people just get to listening and they don't call because it's like, no, no, no, I want to hear this. I don't I want to talk talk right now. I don't know if that's true, but it does seem to be the case at times. So over now and then I ought to shut up or threaten to sing or read out loud war and peace on the air. That would probably people. Okay, let's put an

end of this, especially the singing part. I won't do that to you today, though, well you are listening to Garden Line, and we're here to help you have a bountiful garden, a beautiful landscape, and to have more fun in the process. And I have been encouraging you this spring, well this spring, this winter, to do something new, do something new, not just for the sake of something new, but because there's so much to gardening that you have not experienced. H and I talked about starting seeds. Start

you one or two transplants this year. Why not let's try it out. You don't have to do that in the winter. I mean you could you coun wait till we get into summer and plant something that's going to grow in the heat of summer. You could do that if you want it. But now's a good time to do it. Why not trying to root a cutting, learning how to do an air layer on a plant, or learning how to root a cutting or whatever, And that's a fun thing to do. Here's another one. Here's another.

How about a terrarium. If you ever built a terraum, Those used to be popular. You know, all kinds of gardening tend to go in and out of fads, like haircuts and clothes. And if if you have never grown a terrarium before. You should try that. It's kind of cool. Now you can do it a lot of ways. You can get an old aquarium and use that the light in the aquarium right at the top of the thing, and that that does a good job for the plants that are in it. You can plant miniature plants in

there and enjoy that. You can do arrangement. You can add little you know, things like a little rock riverbed going through it, or a little figurines or whatever whatever makes you excited. You can even make it one that has that has animal life in it in the sense of a lizard. You better have a screen top on top of it, or even insects, certain kinds of insects and things that crawl around in there that are kind of cool. What do you want to do? Try something

like that. If you've never grown an African violet before, if you've never propagated an African violet before, that is amazing. You break a leaf off, stick the pettiole in the ground with the bottom of the leaf barely the little spoon on the end of the petiole that's the leaf. Stick it down to where it touches the ground. That sucker will root and it's so cool, yeah, baby African violet.

So then you can learn how to take care of those are great things for ay days and days like we're about to get into where it is so very very cold. Try something you haven't tried before. That's all I'm asking if there's a kind of plan, a category of plans to never go roun before and do some learning, you know. Of course, I'm always playing people to the website, because when I get a bunch of questions on something, I'll go ahead and write something up about it and

put it on the website. And so we're accumulating a lot. I'm about to do a major revamp of it. I'm working on it with my web designer right now. We're gonna really redo it and it's going to change a lot and have a lot of categories and information. So I'm just telling you that's coming that way. If I say it on the air, I have to do it right. But it's gonna be kind of even more cool really, lots of good information up there on that. So what are you gonna do new? When you call me, by

the way, I want to hear it. What are you going to do new this year, and I'm gonna do right now is take a break and give a new cup of coffee.

If if I were you, I would go to a hardware type store home store and get the long if you can get them in a vehicle somehow to get them home. Twenty foot sections of PBC pipe that are gray. They have a belt in on one end, so one pipe hooks into the other. But I would get two of those and take one and go over the plant, making a hoop over the plant let's say north south, the other one east west, just to give you an idea, and then when you put a cover over it, it's

like you have a little iggluo there. So those twenty foot sections should be able to come pretty close to going over that planet. It may have to bend some branches down to get it to work, but that's okay. If you lose a few leaves or twigs, that's fine. You just don't want to lose whole thing. And then I will typically use a zip tie up at the top to tie those two bows together, the arches together, and then put any kind of cover you can over it if you can find it. You need something large.

You know, it's going to have to be a big old tarp to go over there, or a really huge piece of that rolled up, a thick six mil plastic, anything you can to go over the top and create dead air space around it. You need to get some really good things that are heavy to weigh it down. Now I realize this is starting to sound like a lot of work, and it is. But that could be cinder blocks, that could be you know, little bags of

sand that you create yourself to weigh it down. Because when the wind blows, and it will we got some wind coming, I doesn't just blow it right off. And then underneath there a couple of heat lamps. I'd put two of the red heat lamps in the clamp on fixtures and point them down around the plant on two different sides. Don't plump, point them against the trunk or anything. Just point them down and that heat will rise up from the base and it'll it'll keep it warm enough

to keep it going. You're up in Conra, you're gonna get pretty cold up there. But that that would be what I would do, because yes, the temperatures we're gonna have can can kill on an urbicina olive or any variety of olive.

So I've seen people take a PVC pipe that's much thicker the kind I was talk I was like a half inch, because it's easy to make a bow out of a half inch. It's easy to bend. By the way, just if you end up doing that, you can at those home stores you can also buy little sections of rebar that are about twelve eighteen inches long, and you can drive those in the ground and then slide that PBC right over the top of it, and it makes

it real easy. Then you easy to bend it and slide it onto a PVC I mean a rebar on the other side. That works. That's what I do my house, Okay. The only other alternative would be to get a thicker PVC, like you know, let's say inch and a half two inches, and a bunch of t's and l's and make a giant box and put it around over the plant and that way. Don't glue it together. That way, you just

take it apart and store it in the garage. And if next year you need to cover it again, you can just use the same thing, or maybe buy a little longer pieces of PBC to expand the box size a little bit. But it's like playing with tinker toys. If you remember that. Yeah. I'm glad I're called alrighty, Yeah, and I just gave you a lot of work. My apologies for all the work. But seriously, the olives are at risk at the temperature you're going to have on

our coldest night. So all right, sir, thank you, thank you. You you know our advice. Our advice is free on garden line, John. But I do ask that you bring me half of the olive production for two years and drop it off at the kt r H station and we'll call it even. Does that sound fair? I hope I can do that. I'm not going to get my hopes up a lot. Appreciate the car. We got to have some fun because I just sent you out to do a lot of work. You take care of oh man,

If you'll press the olive oil, I'll take it. Take care of man by all right, folks seven one three two two k t r H. If you would like to give me a call and talk about the boy, I'm glad John call because there are other people out there that got olive trees, and olives are not super cold hardy, you know, and we had the hard freeze. I don't know how many years ago it was a number of years ago. I know, you know, parts of the area got down in single digits. Parts of the

listening area. We lost a lot of olive branches and tree they typically will live and reach sprout from the ground. But oh my gosh, what a mess. Right uh, And you got all these suckers and things coming up. But it at least at least a polyo dirt up against the bottom. The same thing is true with citrus. By the way, a lot of you are out there going,

I can't do that to protect my citrus tree. Well, if nothing else, what you can do is go buy some bags atopsoil or a very fine compost and just pile it up against the trunk about a foot and a half high. Kind of press it down a little bit because you don't want air to blow through this. You want it to be a little packed down and that will insulate the base of that plant. And when we get through all this cold, you can leave it on there a little while, but just pulled it back

out of the way. We don't like swamp aled against the trunk. Those multiple volcanoes you see around town are nonsense. They shouldn't do that. But when it comes to a night or two of protecting the base of a plant. That's important because those plants are grafted. And think about this. Let's say you have a orange tree and it's a Republic of Texas. That's a good orange for a run here, I'll use that as an example, and it'sted. It's going to be grafted almost certainly base. And let's say it's

eight feet tall, and now you get it killed. All the way back to that one foot high base of the trunk that you protected. You still have this huge root system that was balanced with an eight foot tall top. So when the new growth begins, it's going to come out like a rocket. I mean, it's gonna have to

warm up. But my point is there's a lot of roots to push new growth, and so you're going to get back to your tree size fairly quickly, faster than you would think, faster than putting a little tiny tree out there and waiting for it to grow back up to that size. So just something to think about. At the very least, you can buy some bags of malts and throw them around, or not malts, not molts, soiling

composts to put them around the base. You want density, you want it to hold the warmth really really well. All right, time for me to take a break. I'll be right back. Here we go again. We've got some more stuff to talk about today, and if you'd like, you can call. The number is seven one three two one two KTRH seven one three two one two k t RH. How can we help you have success with your plants? So we've got some cold weather we can talk about that. We've been talking about that today, certainly

can continue to do that. I would just recommend that whatever you do, you do it quickly. You know, as you put this off, other people are out there getting

the things that are needed to protect their plants. And so you may show up and you know, head to an a store for example, and get that plus it freeze miser screws onto faucets, or maybe you're looking for some of their other many things that are used to help protect our pipes and our plants and our pets and so on, heat lamps, the heat bulbs and things. You get there and they're all gone because somebody else went and got them. I know aces stocked up well,

so that is not likely to happen. But good night, don't wait. And this is coming from a person who has I'll admit it. This is in my former days before I change my ways. Who has been out there at dusk where it's the dark, you can hardly see things. The wind is blowing. It's thirty five degrees and I'm trying to cover a plant and pull something cover over the top of a plant and a twenty mile an hour wind. Yeah, don't let that be. You learn from

my mistakes. Maybe it already has been you. I don't know. If you're honest, you may have to admit that. Well. I'm going to continue on talking about some of the things that I think are pertinent for this time of the season that people need to be aware of. If you are looking to add something for blooms in your landscape this year, and I think that'd be a great idea. By the way, can you think back and thinking your landscape, what blooms in spring? Where are those flowers or are

they on a shrub at the corner of house? Are they all across the front of the house, or there's some trees around that bloom. When do they bloom? Is it spring, is it summer, or is it even in fall or wintertime? There's a few things that even bloom. Then what looks good at that time? What could you add? Because your landscape should look good twelve months out of the year. And that's not putting a weight on you,

it's just saying pick plants that are that way. So, for example, in the spring, everything wants to bloom, I mean lots of spring blooming trees and stuff. Then we get to summer and then amount of blooms drops dramatically, but there's still some great blooming plants that go through the heat of summer, especially when it comes to shrubs

and perennials. And then you get to fall and there are some fall blooming late summer and fall blooming things like Mexican bush staeds for example, things that bloom with the change in day length. So fall aster is an example of that. And so what would you add to your landscape this year? You know, now's a good time to plant a fall blooming plant because it's it's winter when we plan a lot of things. And the same is true. You can do that in spring as well,

but no need to wait. Go ahead and get those in the ground now. After we get through the freeze this week, you can buy and bring them home and put them in the garage and then you're ready to go right out and spray because everybody else can want go get one when the freeze is over. But make your landscape a year round landscape with blooms and you can do that. And if you want some suggestions, we can.

We can talk to you here about how to put together ought to put together a sheet on blooms through the year, that would be a good one to do. Make a note of that. Let's head out to the phones. We're going to go up to Willis, Texas and talk to Mike. Hey, Mike, Hey, Skip, how do you doing.

So there's a there's a delay on my broadcast. So I don't know if you're if you're hearing a radio or something going on in the background, but uh uh, if you are, it's gonna throw our cadence off pretty good here.

mulch on top. Or something. Uh but that, yeah, that would be that you could do that.

would like to avoid. If the if the temperature is mild and you prune, it'll start a process in the plant of trying to regrow. And then if you know a couple of weeks later we get a hard freeze, you could get some cold damage where other wise the plant would have been hardened off and not subjected to coldem it. So we generally don't prune in the fall for that reason. But pruning a day before a freeze is not going to cause that level of lack of heartiness.

So it doesn't matter at the time you're making this call to me, But in general, we don't want to prune and then have that done. That's why I usually save most of my pruning done till a little bit later in the winter season, before the new spring growth takes off. But later in the season is just a little bit better time. It's not night and day, but it's a little better time to do your pruning.

Think about your landscape from January to December. When are their blooming plants out there? And when could you add blooming plants? Because we can suggest plants, and I don't mean flower beds. I'm talking about shrubs and trees. Shrubs and trees even in the summertime. Crape myrtles bloom for three months there. They bloom for essentially almost almost one hundred days in the summertime.

three years, so it's not really a big deal. But I just want to mention that that it's a possibility something you might want to be aware of. But vitext is a great one for summertime, and if you share it back after a series of blooms, you'll get regrowth and some more blooms. So that's another good one. But let's spread that all through the seasons. Let's have some beautiful color through perennials and shrubs and trees that bloom at all times. And now would be a great time

to do that. All right, I'm going to take a little break. I want to remind you on my website is the publication on protecting plants from frosts and freezes. The website is gardening with skip dot com. That's also where you find some of the other new publication that I talked about, dealing with woody weeds like poison ivy in the landscape and pasteurizing putting soil. Hey, welcome back, let's keep going here. We got stuff to talk about.

When it comes to gardening and been challenging there this year. I'm not challenging that sounds horny. I've been asking you to consider doing something new this year. What are you gonna try you never tried before? Gardening is Listen, You're not going to live long enough to try all the kinds of things that you ought to want to try that are out there for gardening. And who knows, there may be something you have never even considered before that you really fall in love with. I mean, there are

people that get all into various kinds of plants. That's why there are plant societies out there, Daylily Society, African violet societies, Plumerius societies, rose, oh my gosh, definitely roses, and so on and so on. What are you gonna try? They haven't tried. Let's try something new. There is some real cool and fun things that you can do with gardening, and I suggest that you have some things you can do indoors and some things that you can do outdoors.

It's a very rewarding hobby, it really is. What was it? The other day? I was reading a quote by somebody, Oh, Rooyard Kipling, the guy I believe I think either wrote Jungle Book. Anyway, when the world's when the world wearies and ceases to satisfy, there's always the garden. That is true. Listen. There's a lot of fast paced entertainment we have in life, especially nowadays, but when it comes to just really fulfillment and stuff, it's the simple stuff that really matters. That's

why relationships and family. Oh my gosh, here I go. I'm getting outside of my area of expertise. I'm gonna quit talking about it a lot. But bottom line is stuff that really matters. Really you really enjoy things like gardening. That's the good Okay, that's the good stuff. All right. This commercial was brought to you by nobody other than just I think it's true. I want to visit a little bit about our lawn care. You know, it's early, it's too early. You're not going to be putting out

anything right now on the lawn. But it's coming, and when it comes, it's going to come fast. Kind of like the blue bonnets on the road side. You know, one day there aren't any of the next day, boom, here they come and we're we're in full swing. Well, when it comes to our lawns, and taking care of them. I put two schedules online. One is my lawn care schedule, and that's basically, what do you do to make the lawn look good? And that would be more water, fertilize,

add do core errations, add supplemental minerals as needed. That's all on that schedule. The other schedule is what makes your lawn not look good and what do you do about it? And that would be diseases and insects that would be weeds they get in the lawn. And these schedules are free. They are online, you can download them, you print them out, and I'd encourage you to do that. That way, when you go shopping, when you're looking for something, you don't have to try to remember what it was.

You can just look on the schedule or put it in the face of the person that you're shopping from, say Han, any one of these, and they can get you on. But those things are coming quickly. When we get into February, we're in the season where we need to be preventing weeds. If we're going to prevent weeds now, remember the best weed prevention is a dense, healthy lawn. But I've got some areas of my lawn. Don't tell anybody who said this. I got some areas of my

lawn that are thin. One area underneath a tree that was a little too shady is kind of looking thin, and I can already see I see some cool season weeds popping up in it. Because wherever sunlight hits the soil, nature plants a weed. So as your lawn gets thin, it becomes weedy. It just works that way. And so what do you do. Well, Number one thing you do for weed control is go to the first schedule, moll water, fertilize and do that right over the course of a

season and make your lawn dense. The next time we go into a weed sprouting season, your lawn's going to be shading out most of the weed seed problems that you would run into. So that takes the bulk of the work out of it for you. But there are times when you need something to prevent a weed seed from coming up, and the options are there on the schedule. Then there's times when weeds are already up and you need to kill an existing weed. That's called a post

emergent weed control product. And I need you to listen to this for just a minute post emergent weed control products. In other words, what do I spray on my lawn to kill you? Fill in the blank weed they're growing in my lawn there, The clover is everywhere, the the I don't know, whatever your summer, whatever your weeds are that you're dealing with, they're everywhere. How do I kill them in the lawn. It's a post emergent weed control when the weather heats up to the mid eighties, which

will be there before you know it and above. Those products can stress your lawn, especially Saint Augustine, and so if you wait to deal with weeds until that stage, then you got the issue of trying to pick something that's not quite as stressful to the lawn compared to other things. But when we take our cool season weeds, a chick weed right now, routing it right now potentially in your lawn. There is annual bluegrass that's a little grassy weed. There is chick weed, There is hendbit, There

is carpet weed. There is something called cleavers. It's our bellcrow weed. That's the one that's kind of like belcra It kind of sticks to you. And when you're dealing with those kinds of things. Now's the time to get out there and do it. And here's why they sprouted in the fall. They sit as small plants, just like our blue bonets to do all winter long, and then in the spring, as it warms up a little bit, they are gonna take off growing. They're gonna bloom, they're

gonna set seed. Once they start blooming and setting seed, even effective products that work on those weeds are not as effective once the weed becomes reproductive, the products are not going to be as effective by and large, So it's better to deal with it now. If you're gonna have to spray those chickweed, hambit clover, all those kinds of things that are in your lawn. Now, if you're gonna have to spray them, you need to go and

get that done sooner rather than later. When we get past the spreeze and the weather warms up just a little bit, we got some warm days and those weeds are really busy growing and taking in nutrients and things, that's the time to hit them with the spray because if you wait too long, it's not gonna work. And if you wait long enough, there are already gonna be weed seeds everywhere and now you've got two hundred thousand times more weeds than you did before because you didn't

either handpul the weeds spray them. And listen, I'm not here to talk you into organic or synthetic, to talk you into spray and or not spray and all that. That is your yard. I'll just tell you that in my yard, I do a lot of ham pulling because I don't like to do a lot of spray. But if you're going to spray, do it before the weeds start to bloom and set seed in the spring. That is advice for the wise. All right, time for me to take a break. I'll be right back with your calls.

Seven one three two one two KTRH. All right, folks, we're back. We got plenty more things to talk about this morning here on guard Line. Hey, I know right now you're thinking about what am I going to do this week. It's going to get so cold and all that. Well, we've been talking about it that all day. We'll keep talking about it. But I just want to ask you to not forget that when this cold gets over with, it's time to get back out there and do some

things in the garden. And one of the things we do in order to have success with our plants is provide small amounts of nutrient as a boost to them as they grow week to week, month and month, and color Star by Nelson is one of the best products I know for doing that. It is excellent. For example, the color Star has been around for forty years or so,

very very popular. If you're going to have a bed that has color that could be foliage, that could be flowers, that could be whatever you want a color bed, just get color Star and it's going to be a good blend to give the boost you need. Here's what's happened. You're blooms on the plant. That takes a lot of energy carbohydrates to make the blooms that are your flowers that you enjoy. You got to keep that plant growing so that it has new growth, new energy, captures more sunlight,

makes more blooms. Color Star gives it that boost. It's fast acting, but it also has organic nutrients sources in it that really slowly into the ground about every three or four months is probably best with Colorstar. So coming into this season of winter, we want to get a fertilization down, watered in really good scratch it into the soil and watered in and have a little push on the vigor as we come out of the winter into

spring to get more growth. Keep those things going, and if you pull those out and put some others in, it's just all the better. Just start back up with color Star again from the folks at Nelson's. Color Stars available in many places in town. And those little refill canister containers, so you buy a plastic canister of it,

you just take it back in and refill it. It's a little more, a little less expensive, and it also helps prevent a little more plastic going out there in the environment, which is of course a good thing to stop. We're going to go now to Cove, Texas and talk to Rufus. Hey, Rufus, welcome to garden Line.

Cora Nirvana, that's that's the kind of vinca we're talking about. Uh. There's a disease called uh our top aerial phytoptera that gets on them and makes them turned chocolate brown and just turns them to toast, and it goes to her resistant to that disease at least until the disease figures out how to mutate. And that's what diseases do. But uh, Cora, nerv Cora, and Nirvana Cora is the one you're gonna find.

to vary a whole lot with the conditions that's growing in. Okay, okay, but i'd allow yourself good good, all right, all right, well, thanks for the call, all right, bye bye. That is for true. You know, I talk about wallbirds because I love wallbird stores. I'll go into wildbirds stores just to look around because I learn something every time I go in. I go I didn't know they had a gadget for that, or I didn't know they've come out with this new seed,

or you know whatever. And talking to the people there, they know so much. So I mean, if you want to have success with your birds, go buy there. Now. I'll tell you something. You can buy a lot of cheap bird seed in a lot of places, and it's going to be sometimes way half of the little red bebes, way over half. And birds don't like those. They kick them out. They don't eat them unless they absolutely have to and they're starving to death. But wildbirds seeds are

made with seeds the birds eat. And you can get different blends right now in the winter winter super Blend's a good one. But they got a brand new thing out, new product, and it's cool. It's called Cardinal Confetti. Cardinal is in redbirds. Cardinal Confetti blend is exclusive to wildbirds. And they even have a couple of feeders. There's a cardinal tube feeder and a good evening cardinal feeder. Ask them about that. As part of the Cardinal Confetti collection.

The Cardinal Confetti's got saft flower, it's got black all sunflower. It's got sunflower chips, nutris, saff park, excuse me, bark butter bits, peanut halves, striped sunflower. It makes me hungry. Oh not this last one. It also has dried meal worms. I can live without that. But birds love that stuff and you can use it year round. They're gonna sell it year round. But it is an all some awesome blend, so you ought to go check that out. They also

have something called bark butter. You spread it and smear it on a tree trunk or on a feeder or where you want to spear it on your neighbor who doesn't move around a lot, and the birds will show up, and I mean they love that stuff. They It was created by Jim Carpenter, who founded Wildbird Anyway. He created it and they have documented one hundred and fifty different species of birds that come to the bark butter. It's available as bark butter bits little bite sized nuggets. Is

available also as bugs and bits. There we go put and dried millworms in it. Again. They absolutely love that stuff. It's hig in calcium it's sports, good egg development, and birds are going to be nesting very very soon, so get that stuff out and you're only going to get it at Wildbird's wild Birds Unlimited. It's WBU dot Com forward slash Houston. WBU dot Com Forward slash Houston. That will do it. Let's see, I'm looking at the clock, Roger, I do not have time to take your call for

we go to break. Sorry about that. I will make you first when we come back. Roger out in Deer Park. Look forward to talking to you. If you can hang around a little bit longer and we'll be right back with your calls.

a piston like device. It's different than that that when a temperature is reached, it pushes a door open and it kind of lifts up a little door to allow heat to escape out the top and go back down again. And you can purchase those. I've never tried using them, but I just know they're out there. People used to use them on cold frames, which is basically like a little box on the ground with a clear top, and to lift those up because the same thing happens in

a cold frame. That would be a long term kind of a potential solution. Other than that, I would just say, you know, once the temperature gets above thirty two, I would just crack a door open on it and you'll be good. You just need the heat to be able to escape a little bit. You don't have to throw it wide open or anything like that.

do that. I don't know if you ever had Apothus ivy in the house and it got too dry and it started to wilt, and then you watered it and all of a sudden, the old leaves start turning yellow and falling off after you water it. That's a moisture related response, and that can happen to plants soggy wet soils or wide fluctuations that can happen to some plant. So other than a soil moisture issue, I think it probably is a lack of nitrogen, but I generally wouldn't

worry about it a lot. Usually the older leaves turning a little yellow and a cool season of the year, that just happens, and so it doesn't mean you necessarily need to get out there and do any particular thing to it. And if if we get into spring, it starts regrowing and that situation doesn't improve. The only yellow leaves aren't going to turn green again, but you don't continue to have that problem progressing. If you do, then go and go ahead and fertilize it with a nitrogen

nitrogen based fertilizer. Any good centrus foot will have enough nitrogen in it well as usual. Thank you again, all right, you bet, you bet, And watch those blackberries. The number one thing we have with blackberries going on here is some people have high pH soils in some parts, and blackberries and a heavy clay with a higher pH they are always going to have a bleaching out or yellowing of the foliage out near the tip. But that's of

course not what you had. So but I just mentioned that because there's gonna be other people going, yeah, I got blackberries that our leaves are losing color, and they need to know about that too. Well, you take care out there, stay warm. Thank you much too. All right, thank you, thank you sir. The color that isb be another good publication to put up there. My leaves are turning color? What's going wrong? Kind of interesting? Actually, do

you know that nutrients? Okay, here we go a little bit of a nerd alert, but this can help you diagnose a problem. Nutrients typically are either mobile or immobile in a plant. Now, if a nutrient is mobile, that means that the plant can steal it from older growth and move it to new growth to support that growth. A mobile element, it could be moved. If a nutrient is immobile, then the older growth may have had enough of it. But when it runs short on that nutrient,

the new growth starts to show the deficiency. So why does that matter. We'll think of this like a brick wall, that is that has mortar in between the bricks. Versus a dry stack brick wall and a drystack brick wall. If you're building the wall and you get the end, you run out of bricks. Theoretically you go back and steal bricks from the original part of the wall and bring them forward and keep building the wall. That's a mobile element. If it was mortared in. You can't steal

a brick from back there. It's mortared in, and that's an immobile element. So what you see when you look at your plants is if the older leaves are turning yellow, that's a sign that the element that's missing is a mobile element. The plant has stolen it to support new growth. If it's occurring on the new growth but not the old growth, then that's an immobile and iron is the

prime poster element for immobile element deficiency. When the new growth has bleaching out a yellowing or even whitish on some plants, and maybe the veins are main green, but in between the veins it starts turning or it doesn't develop color, that's an iron deficiency most likely because it's immobile. And if it's the old leaves, it's going to be nitrogen, it's going to be sulfur. If the old leaves have

like a green Christmas tree in the middle. Well, that's a mobile element called magnesium with the green Christmas tree in the middle. All right, that's your NERD alert. We'll be right back. We're back. Hey, guess what. It's our last hour of the show today. We're going to wind us up at ten o'clock. So if you've got a call, I can't wait until next Saturday. Where the thing? You can give me a call. Seven thirty seven thirty seven

one three two one two. I didn't drink enough coffee this morning kt R seven one three two one two kt R h Oh. We've talked about a lot of different things this morning. Just got through talking about nutrients and mobile versus immobile nutrients. And it's kind of fun to diagnose visually what's going on, to think through it. Uh, you know, I give you these NERD alerts from time to time and I'll talk about you know, Okay, this is a little technical, but it helps to know it

for making decisions. So just the fact that you know the difference between a mobile and an immobile element, you can go online and say what elements are mobile, what elements are immobile, and so you look at a plant. It's got, you know, leaves in this place or that place. You know, okay, it's going to be one of these elements that I'm dealing with here, And so it helps you to think through things, and becoming good gardeners isn't just memorizing all the facts. It's learning how to think

about plants. And when I talk about we're going to turn your brown thumb, grain that there's no such thing as a brown thumb. There's an uninformed thumb. That's what I'm talking about. Is the more you gain understanding about how things work, the better you are at gardening, the easier it is for you to figure things out and kind of solve problems. You know, maybe there's some nutrient I didn't mention in my little spiel before break, Well, now you know at least how to think about it

and figure out what it might be. And so that's what we try to do here. Now, if you're one that just wants me to tell you what to get and where to get it to apply it, I can do that. We can certainly do that, no problem at all. But if you're someone who wants to go a low step further, maybe a master gardener or just an inquisitive gardener. Yeah, there you go. We can help you with that. We're gonna go out Tonedville now and talk to an Lisa. Hello, Analsa, Welcome to garden line. Hi.

they're going to be okay. But if you want to be extra careful throw something just over them. No heat underneath them is needed. Just something to kind of hold the soil moisture a little bit or heat a little bit.

Do you want hardscape put in? Oh my gosh, you cannot believe the gorgeous patios and walkways that they create. Their landscape lighting services are unbelievable. And they do maintenance too. By the way, you can have them come on for quarterly maintenance. If you need that done, you need a SOD installed, anything like that, they can do it at Peer Scapes. Go to piercescapes dot com pierscapes dot com.

I want you to go there. I want you to look at the pictures, even if you're not planning on having anything done, I just want you to go and see what they can do. It is amazing. And so maybe you just need a little project done, maybe you need the whole nine yards renovated. They can do either way. Peer Scapes. Let's go out to the phones again and we're gonna talk to Greg. Hey, Greg, welcome to garden Line.

worms up in the spring. Maybe a little bit of a shade over You can even kind of drape a little bit of a shade cloth over them a little bit, just to give them some time to us before the full demands are made on them, and give them the best chance that they have.

grow them out. Just just have a long tail container to diamond.

Mike from Sugarland. He grew up done in Jordan in Texas. I don't know if he's listening today, but Mike may know what we're talking about here. I talked earlier about affordable tree and I'm telling you I would trust my trees to Martin Spoon Moore. Martin's been doing this for a long time. I mean he knows what he's doing. When you call Affordable Tree at seven one, three, six, nine, nine, twenty six sixty three, Martin's gonna be the one that

enters the phone. He absolutely knows his trees. And you need to not delay you. It's time to get this done. You got to give me a call. You got to get this done. It's time to get any kind of printing done. The prime time. We're in the prime season is not gonna last a lot longer. Now. You can get printed on any month of the year, a little bit here and there, but you need to have right now, Martin, come out and look at your trees, especially if you have not had those trees cared for in a few years.

You need to come out and need to look at them. Check the branch angles, check out things are growing. Because it's better to guide a tree earlier in its life than to try to change it later in its life. And Martin knows how to do that. He does all kinds of tree services consulting. He does the deep root feeding, for example, he can do that. Martin's an expert at this. He can go to afftree service dot com or give Martin a call seven to one three six nine nine

two six sixty three. As we say, this is a mom and pop operation. Martin and his wife Joe. They answer the phones when you call seven to one three six nine nine two six six three. Well, I am up against a half hour break here. We got a half hour left in this show. If you'd like to give me a call seven one three two one two KTRH. We'll be back with your calls, and we'll start with John from Friends with Here. We welcome best pointing to

talk about there on the garden line. Not a lot of time luck to talk about it, so let's get down here.

They took Medina Plus and it is fortified essentially with micro nutrients and also a seweed extract, and it kind of took it up a level, if you will. It has all the natural soil building advantages that the Medina original Medina Soil Activator had, but it also has these extra ingredients. It makes it a good folier feed for plants. You can use it on flower, strub, trees, lawns, anything, put in a hose, in spread and sprayer and mix it up or not mix it up, just it mixes

it as it applies it to your lawn. Sebet extracts helps plants get their maximum growth and you'l potential. It enhances a lot of the natural processes in a plant that protect against the different kinds of abiotic stresses that there are also very efficient in nutrient uptake and use. As a result of that, you could use it as a root drench to stop slow down the transplant shock to kind of alleviate that. You could use it in flower beds, small areas. You could use a full of

your feed. It just has many many uses. It comes in a quirk comes in a gallon size Medina plus by the folks at Medina, And as with all Medina products, they're widely available here in the Greater Houston area. Our mom and pop garden centers, our feed stores, our ace hardware stores, our Southwest Fertilizer, all of those places are going to carry is Medina products. We're gonna We're gonna go now out to Friendswood and talk to John. Hey, John, welcome to garden Line.

got for anything? I could do in the in the spring to maybe ward off the problems I'm going to have in the fall.

But uh that that is a moment in time, So you would have to go just before the brown patch of tax and do the application. Then have you ever downloaded my lawn pest, Disease and weed management schedule from my website by.

that spot that are predisposing it to disease. Because diseases are very environmentally influenced for sure, So figuring out what that is and alleviating that would also help in that area. But yeah, you follow the schedule, and it you know, it tells you in October that's when we're starting the brown patch applications. And you know, each year's different. Coldfront comes in a little sooner with rain or later with rain, and that time can vary. But you want to get

on brown patch. You want to get on ahead of it, because once the circles are there, it's too late. Well it's too late to change that circle. It may prevent an additional one from forming. I had some one little spot in my yard got some circles on it in this fall, and then another spot all of a sudden, they appeared as we got on into what we would call winter. You know, back in December, maybe early January, I started seeing a little increase in a spot and it's just because of the weather. Yeah.

when you spray it to have more effective kill. So let's get past this freeze, get get a little bit of some temperature up and then spray them.

Do you need frost blanket. Do you need faucet covers? You got the freeze meser you screw into an outdoor faucet that causes it when it gets freezing to start leaking water. Yeah, that's cool, and then when it warms up it quits. They have those. They have pipe insulation, they have the pipe wrap insulating tape. They also have anything you need for generator maintenance kits and things they can do that they can. They can get you propane for your propane tanks, you know, replace a tank or

something like that. Maybe you need a fitting effix on one. They've got propane heaters out there, electric heaters, fire logs, firewood, heat lamps, duct tape, handwarmers, gloves, d iicers, and a freeze. I mean, what do you need? Do you need clamp lights to heat up a little bit? Heat lights and things? They got those. ACE is the place. Remember they say the three piece plants, pipes and pets and I'll throw people in. They've got gloves to keep your hands warm

and so on at ACE Hardware. ACE Hardware is all over the place, all over the place. You can find one near you. For example, go down to Port Levaka, and they got an ACE Hardware there. Ace Hardware and Sinco Ranch that's someone out there on South Mason Road as and Senco Euvaldi As on the east side of Houston, Crosby. Ace up in Crosby, just south the Chemo there's Bake

cliff Ace. I'm telling you they're everywhere. Ace Hardware. That's the place to go for everything you need for this coming freeze and certainly for caring for your plants and things as we come out of the freeze as well. I'm going to head out now on the phones. We're going to go to Nancy and Flint. Hello Nancy, Welcome to Garden Line.

looks so thrill. Should we try and do that cheepy tent that you were talking about with the heat lamp.

give them a little extra protection. But in general, azos are pretty tough, and they grow an area is colder than us here and they do.

of time, We're gonna run up to Bill and Galveston. Hey, Bill, welcome to garden Line.

to the time right now. But if you do, the little PVC arches over the plant from at least two directions, if not three, you can tie a cord to a tarp. The little gramits and a tarp, and with a little bit of a pole, you can literally pull that tarp all the way over a pretty good sized tree. You know, you can guide it over there. You don't have to get up on a ladder and literally be as high as the tree to pull it over and then secure it down. And anything you do like that is going

to help a little bit. So I hope that, hope that helps. Okay, thanks so much. All right, good luck with that. There you go. I think I'm out of time. I think I hear music starting to play. I think garden Line's done for today. We'll be back next week. Good luck making it through this coldest spell of our winter season this year. We hope all things do well. Just remember you can garden indoors, you can garden outdoors, but have where you garden, have fun. Gardening is for fun.

It's mental and physical healing and it's just fun. All right, folks, Thanks for listening in today. Glad to have you. Remember you can go to my website gardening with Skip dot com. Gardening with Skip dot Com. Lots of publications are available

up there, and I'm adding more all the time. We're gonna be adding some more information just shortly here, I got a couple of publications and adopted stick up there on the website to help you I have a more boutiful garden, the more beautiful escape and we find in the glass