Fix Your Problems Before They Happen!

quite a bit of gray leaf spot. Still. Gray leaf spot is a fungus, and one thing that is kind of a principle of most fungal problems is that it's primarily environmentally driven. There are such a thing as having a disease come in, you know, like we had a coronavirus came in to the country from outside the country. But in general, our plant diseases are here already, already in your your landscape, and they just don't take off

because the conditions aren't right. And so gray leaf spot, the conditions are moisture on the surface of the grass blades and warm temperatures, not necessarily hot temperatures, but warm temperatures. That's why it's primarily an early in the summer disease, although we can get it anytime when you create the

right conditions. So the analogy I use for this with fungi is imagine, you know, you've got a water spicket coming out of your house over on in a shady spot, and it started to leak around the connection and it was spraying a miss that was going back on the brick. If you let it do that for a few days, After about a week or so, you're going to notice

algae growing on your brick. Where did that algae come from, Well, it was it's everywhere, but it's not growing because on a dry brick surface, algae is not going to grow, but you keep it moist and suddenly here goes the algal grow. Right, that's how funge i work in the lawn. So when you overwater, actually, let me change that. When you water too frequently, you promote gray leaf spot in

your lawn. And what happens when it rains every day for a week, Well, that's not in your control, but that is what you would expect to start to happen. And nine Fiss has a product called Eagle that is kind of a go to, and it's the reason I like it for gray leaf spot and some other diseases as well, is because it's systemic. You put it down as a granule, it goes in the soil, the roots take it up, and it helps fight that. The primary things I recommend for take all root rot are systemic.

They put them on the soil, they come up into the plant, and they fight the plant from the inside. So it instead of being like a surface protectant, you spray it on a leaf so a spore can't land and infect that leaf and create a spot. This is something we get in the plumbing of the plant and it prevents it from the inside. And those work a lot better, and some of those even have the ability to do what we call curative function, where you have the start of a disease and it just shuts it

down from the inside. Anyway, that's a lot but Eagle. By the way, if you're looking for night Foss products, you're going to find Knight Fash products at places like Langham Creek Ace Hardware that's on five twenty nine up there in the Copperfield neighborhood. If you head to RCW Nursery, you find Nitrovoss products. The Tumball Parkway and Beltway eight and down in Angleton include Lake Hardware stores there, Velasco and on Dixie Dry. Both of those locations sell nitrovis products.

But the best thing with fungi is to get ahead of them. That's true of the No, we're not in the cool season when we have the big brown patch circles take lss large patch circles. But once those circles appear, it's kind of late to put a funge aside down. I mean, stop more circles from happening. But you tend to already have a mess that you got to live with all winter because grass is going to grow and fill those brown circles back in in the winter time.

So ahead of time, preventative, preventative, preventative. If you know you're having fun goal problems, preventative is the best way to do it. After the fact, we just don't have the same effects. So anyway, that is grey leaf spot. Hopefully it won't be a problem if you go to my lawn care schedule. I have two schedules on my website, and I know some of you have heard me say this a bunch, but we always have new listeners or

people that aren't listening when they listen. There is Skip's lawn care schedule, which is how do you grow a beautiful lawn, So it's fertilizing and air rating and mowing and watering and the products you use for fertilizing and when you apply them. And then on the other side, well, on the other schedule, I print mind two sided like

that on card stocks. Real handy to keep around is the lawn pest Disease and we'd management Schedule one is for insect problems and disease problems for preventing weeds that would be like a pre emergent and cultural practices that prevent weeds and then for killing existing weeds, and both of those schedules, by the way, they offer you synthetic and organic options, so you have options there as well

as some advice as you go along. So anyway, yeah, so you look for gray leaf spot and on my schedule, I've got it in starting a little bit into April all the way through the latter part of July, which is our primary season where we see the gray leaf spot and not stretching the borders a little bit out. But you never know the year, so it can happen. So there's that, that's for sure. I hope that schedule

is helpful to you. I'm about to do a little bit of an update to it, just in talking with folks and looking at some of the situations, and I just think I'm gonna move I'm gonna do a little bit of an adjustment here and there. It's not big, it doesn't amount too much in terms of you using it, but I just think we can tweak some things just a little bit. I wish there was a way to get more information on a page, because sometimes just to say here's a disease, go spray this is not adequate

in terms of really helping people minimize problems. You've heard me say this before, but when we have a problem that is affecting our lawn, almost always there is something in the process of preparing to plant, planting and caring for plants and the plants you choose that could be done to help avoid the problem. Those are called cultural practices. And I don't think in terms of there's a bug, here's a spray, That's how I kill it. Only, Okay,

there's times for that. In general, there's so much that we do to take the number of times we need to spray or apply granules down to a minimum, and that's what we want to do. We don't want to be a pesticide treadmill, where I don't care if it's organic or synthetic treadmill. You don't want to be on that treadmill if you can avoid it, and good cultural practices help you avoid that. That's what we're looking for. Okay,

So hopefully that makes a little bit of sense. But just to remember that that usually when problems appear, you can look backwards in time and see things that could have been done to minimize them. A good example of that is weeds wherever sunlight hits a soil nature plants of weed. That's just a fact. Your long gets thin, you're gonna have weeds pop up, and so dense healthy lawn, mow water, fertilized, dense healthy lawn helps avoid most weed problems.

Not all, but most we're not talking about. You know, you have no problems. If you do everything right, you still have problems. But why not minimize it instead of every time you go outside you got to spray or apply something to try to kill whatever is trying to kill your plants. Makes sense to me. The folks at Pierscapes have created a just a wonderful set of options to help Houston area homeowners have a gorgeous landscape. Now. First of all, you can have Pierscapes come in and

do quarterly maintenance for you. So maybe it's just your yards. Are you there and they come in, They look at your flower beds and things. They do the any weed control, any mulching that's needed. They make sure the irrigation is working right. And that's an important thing to do because it is getting hot here. I need to take care of that all those general maintenance things and they do it every quarter and that includes depending on their arrangement

you make with them. They can do a color change every quarter if you want, or they can do one color change or two color changes a year, meaning, Okay, the pansies are starting to melt in the heat, let's put in some warm season fly that sort of thing. They also can do significant revamps of your landscape, from creating a whole landscape from scratch, to renovating an existing landscape, to just adding lighting or fixing a poorly drained area

or dealing with the irrigation. Piercescapes dot Com is the website and you need to look at it because that's where you see the kind of work they do. It's amazing. Two eight one three seven oh fifty sixty two eight one three seven o fifty sixty piercescapes dot Com. I'm gonna take a break. I'll be right back when you get hot outside. Mm hm, so time to find some waterfolks, boy, I tell you that how many of you loved Maybe you still do? You don't you know? You don't have

to mid out. You can tell me. I won't tell anybody running through the sprinklers outside, remember that? How about slipping slides? Little plastic on the ground and have some on Yep, that's summertime and you never get too old for that. By the way, I'm officially giving us all permission to run and play in the water when we

want to. You know, there's times when I've got a picture of one of my daughters and we were in the garden and I was asking her to water, and I looked over there and she had one of those handguns that sprays, you know, a missed kind of showery missed out, and she had it pointed straight up in the air, and it was just like she's standing under a waterfall and she's having the best time. I guess

my plans were getting watered a little bit. But anyway, water gotta have it, especially when you live done here in the summertime. You're listening to the Guardline. I'm your host, Skip Richter, and we're here to help you have a beautiful garden, hopefully a beautiful landscape as well, and a bountiful one whether you're growing vegetables or flowers or herbs or just a gorgeous lawn. We want you to have

success with that. That's why we're here. You can give me a call seven one three two one two Kati r H seven one three two one two k t r H. I've got some things in the emails. The way I work that here, I'm not able to type out answers to all the emails. Just too many people that can send me emails and I just can't. I just don't have the time with my other projects and

things to be able to do that. And so what I ask is that if you want to ask a question and a photo would be helpful, please please do send it and then call in. We've got a number of people that have sent me some photos that'll be calling in, and what we'll do is I'll have time to look at the photo and then when they call

we can talk about it. And you know what I found that when somebody describes something, and it may be me describing something to you, and then in your mind's eye you picture it and then you actually see it in a picture, it's like, Okay, that's not what I was picturing at all. And that happens to me a lot. You know, someone says, well, I got this plan and it's whatever, and then when I see the pictures, like, oh okay, well that's different. Pictures are important. Right, picture's

worth a thousand words. So when you send me a picture, I ask couple of things. One, make sure it's in good sharp focus. If I see I've had people hold a weed or something up in their hand and take a picture and the camera focuses on the background and not on the weed. Well, fuzzy pictures give fuzzy answers, and you don't want a fuzzy answer. You want a sharp answer, an accurate answer, and so good sharp pictures

are important. Check them for you send them. Get as close as you can to things that may need to be examined, like here's this little grass seedling coming up in the lawn. Well, you got to get really close for me to see that. Other I'll just say, yeah, that's some kind of grass and I don't know what it is. And so close whenever you can, when that's appropriate. Sometimes a picture of the overall setting is important. That

helps me a lot. And then finally, when you send it, if you can attach it to the email rather than rather than embed it in the text. When I'm trying to do radio walk into your gum at the same time, it's just easier for me to click on it and open it when it's an attachment that's a little paper clip symbol, that is a little easier. I can't open them out of the text bit anyway, if you could do that, that that just helps a little bit for

me to do it. So anyway, there you go, send a picture, follow up with a phone call, and we will help get you success. And that is a service that I think is really valuable because you know, a lot of people see problems like there's spots in my lawn and then they go to a store and just say, yeah, I need something for lawn disease, and maybe you get a product, but it's not the right product for the

disease you have. And especially true for weeds. We had a lot of a bazillion different weeds and although there are products that control a lot of weeds, there is not one product that fixes everything. And so it's kind of going the doctor. You know, you say doctor, I don't feel well, and he starts writing you a prescription. Say wait a minute, how can you write a prescription for a quote I don't feel well. We need to know why I don't feel well, then write me a prescription.

That's kind of how it is with recommending insecticide or fungicide or herbicide, And that is true whether it's synthetic or organic. You need to know what you're going after in order to have success, and then the timing and on it. So anyway, there's a little spiel hopefully that will make sense. But it is a free service. You

can do that as often as you like. Send me the photos, follow up with questions on garden Line and we'll be happy to help you that way our phone number seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Guess what I was doing this morning at four am? Well, I was. That's a little earlier than I normally get up for the show. So I'm a barbeque a brisket

on a barbecue this morning. I've got a nice barbecue pit that got from Ace Hardware as a matter of fact, and it's a pellet grill, so it you know, feeds the little pellets in and so you can set it where it just like cooks for ten hours if you want. It's amazing what comes out of it. But anyway, I was out, I'd gotten it spent. It's spent the night in the refrigerator after having all the rub applied to it, and now it's out there and it's slowly working its

way through. We'll have it tonight. But Ace Hardware has so many good options for that. I talked to someone yesterday who was a Big Green Egg fan, and I want to tell you something. And now this is just my opinion, but Big Green Eggs are a cult. It really is a cult. I'm pretty sure because everybody I know that has a Big Green Egg, it's like that's all they could talk about. That's all. I mean, it's just like that's the only barbecue pit that exists. I

get it, and it's a wonderful, branderful brand. But they've got you know, you got to Ace Hardwer. You're going to find Tragger, which is pellet grills and things. You're going to find Rectag, which pellet grills and things. You're gonna find Weber and other brands and all the stuff that you need to go with them, you know, the little meat probes that tell you the temperature. Ace Hardware is set up for making indoor and outdoor living more pleasant. It is, and I have found so many things there

that have just made it nice. I mean, when I say indoor and outdoor, let's do outdoor living. How about a string of lights on the patio. We set some of those up so in the evenings when it finally cools off enough in the summer to want to be a little outside, you just turn on the lights and you go out and you enjoy the evenings out there. Maybe another thing that we've done is, you know, setting up the different lawn furnitures and things that make it

kind of nice to recline. Ace Hardware's got you covered on a lot of that as well. And then when it comes to fan or any other thing. My daughter and son in law put a fan up on their back patio that just kind of oscillates, rent sits under the eaves and oscillate. It makes it such a nice area, so pleasant, and Ace has got you covered on all that. Maybe your deck needs receiling, don't let those things go too far before you do the redo the preservation of

the wood on that deck. Ace has got you covered for all of that. And then of course gardening, all kinds of gardening, lawn care of the fertilizer stuff on my schedule for past weeks, Diseases and fertilizers. You're gonna find it. ACE Hardware. You can go to ACE Hardware Texas. Don't forget Texas. ACE Hardware Texas dot com. That is our regional ACE Hardware group. Here on garden Line. ACE

Hardware Texas dot Com. You're gonna find stores like Ospas ACE on Kirkandal up in the Woodlands, All Seasons, ACE up in Willis on Interstate forty five North, just up in Willis Chambers, ACE on Broadway Street. Down in Galveston Bay on Seventh Street north south east west Central. ACE Hardware has got you covered. Go to Acehardware Texas dot

com and find some cool stuff. By the way, when you're in there too, guys and ladies who do the do it yourselfers, check out all the quality tools things from Blackendecker, stan Lee, Oak, Milwaukee Craftsman, and de Walt, for example. They've got you covered. I'm looking here at the clock. Later on today we're gonna have someone from Mosquito Dunks in and we're going to talk about Mosquito dunks and how they work and some of the specifics of them. You know, I talked about sitting outside, boy

can Mosquito has ever spoiled the show there. Mosquita dunks are a little beige donut floats in water. It takes them about a month to fully dissolve and go away, and they release a bacteria that kills mosquito larvae. And they work and you can find them everywhere. Feed stores are independent nurseries, gardens, ace hardware stores. Mosquito dunks are critical in the Southeast Texas area to have to go through summer because it will rain and mosquitoes can reproduce.

We'll be right back after a short break. Alrighty, welcome back to garden line. Good to have you with us, always, always good to have you with us. I have two happy well, I got a bunch of happy places, but two primary happy places for me is being out in the garden, being out in the landscape mesum with plants, digging in the dirt, having fun, and talking to gardeners.

I love visiting with gardeners. Gardeners are in buy and large and I've you know, I had a career for thirty five years and Agrolife Extension Texan and Agrolife Extension Service as a county horder culturist, and I wish I had a little counter on me as to how many gardeners I talked to over all those years. But I'll tell you this, gardeners, buy and large are just nice people.

They're just good people. You know. They've chosen a hobby that is laid back, natural, if you will, and they're just good to talk with and they're fun and they're excited about it. And when you're a gardener, you aren't. You have to be to some degree a hopeful optimist because you pick up these little pieces of detritus called seeds that just look like what is that. I mean, there's like a little piece of a leaf or a

chunk of bark that fell off. I mean, there's tiny little things and you put it in the ground and when you look at that seed, a gardener sees tomatoes or a gardener sees zenias or sunflowers or whatever, and you put it in the ground and it comes up, and it's just that whole process is renewing, fun process. I love talking to gardeners. Gardeners and good people by and large. They're just a really, really good group. So that's part of that happy place that I'm talking about

in my landscape. Sometimes I like to talk about what I'm doing in the landscape. Maybe some of you are going through the same things. I do a constant weed patrol. Not that I'm out there just to find weeds, but every time I walk through the yard, my eyes just after a while, you know, they sort of subconsciously you see weeds. Have you ever heard about somebody that is

good at finding counterfeit bills? You know, they handle so much real money that a bill comes through and there's just something about it that they notice something's wrong here, right, because it's just automatic. Well, that's how I am with weeds. And I'm walking through my lawn and I'm just seeing that there's a weed over there, there's a weed over there or here. You know, earlier it was annual bluegrass.

Oh gosh, that's a mess, and those little seat heads on it, I just could spot them, and I just stop, reach down, get to the bottom of it, pull it out of the ground, and keep walking. And wherever I get I got a handful of weeds or something, I throw them in a bucket. And it's just an ongoing

thing to do that. And if you do, you can actually do a lot in controlling weeds without waiting until you have this big weed problem, and there's giant, ugly weeds everywhere, and now you're out there digging them up and pulling them all all up, and it's just this major hot mess with the fire ants and the one hundred degree sun eating your lunch. And so just think about that, just a small patrol. I don't even go

out to pull weeds. I just am going around from here to there to get a garden hose, to walk into the garden, to go over here and plant something or whatever. All right, just a thought. Let's head out to Brookshire now, and we're going to visit with Ken this morning. Hello Ken, and welcome to garden Line. Hey, welcome.

mountains and you get a little more frequent rains. But anyway, kidding aside the bottle brush or any plant like that, where you're seeing selective dying out of branches, follow that branch downward with a really good close examination, and where you know, here's here's living branches and then there's there's a dead one. Does that dead one go all the way to the ground. Is it its own shoot or

does it attached to a living branch? And if it attaches to a living branch somewhere in there, you're either going to see like borer holes with an insect that's chomping through it and cutting the water supply off to it. Or you may see a canker like sunken areas of the bark or split bark where the bark has died back and the inner wood is exposed. There's going to be something like that that has caused that branch that I if it goes all the way in the ground,

it could be a couple things. It could be its own plant. Sometimes growers will stick there orfore plants in a pot and it grows just as a single bush, but it's really several plants, and so you may have lost an individual plant, but the other plants are alive and fine. So do the Sherlock Holmes can and see if you can figure out which of those things is happening. But it's going to be one of the above. It's going to be a borer insect, it's going to be

a canker disease killing the bark. It's going to be a it's its own plant and maybe a root rot kind of thing going on with it. But it's gonna be one of those.

worth a visit anyway. But but they will sell you the kinds that grow here and that that's very important. And that's why I love our independent nursery so much, because you know, they're not a box store that just gets shipments all over the country and may or may not have stuff that should be planted here. So yeah, Nelson Water Gardens can do that. And and those varieties are are hardier than normal avocados than the regular store

bought has avocado kind of thing. Okay, and you're still going to have to protect yeah, let me said one thing. You're still going to have to protect an avocado when we have our colder temperatures that can occur occasionally. Okay, so they're not fully hardy, Okay, go ahead. You had another question.

And when we say hot, you know we're talking. You got your attic, and I've seen things like one hundred and fifty hundred and sixty degrees up there in the attic, which is just insane, and that heat radiates under your house and you pay for it. And sometimes have you ever noticed like your AC can't even catch up in the summer. You got to set on I don't know what seventy three, let's say, and all spends a day not below seventy six because it just can't keep up

with it. Well, their things you can do to fix that, and you need to call Arctic Insulation Solutions. Their website is this Arctic Houston dot com. Arctic is arc tic Houston dot com eight three to two five, eight six, twenty eight ninety three. They can do full radiant barriers up in your attic, drop temperature by about thirty degrees or more. They can do fiberglass insulation, nice thick, high R value insulation. Not hard to do, real easy for

them to get up there and do it. They can do solar attic fans, which come on when the temperature rises above eighty five and the humidity is above seventy five or the humidity is above seventy five, and they're basically just pulling air through that attic. You know, it's much better to have the outside temperature air up in the attic than one hundred and fifty degree air up in the attic. They can do all of that and more. They serve all the way from Berkshire to Baytown, from

Willistown to Galveston. Arctic Installation Solutions eight three to two, five eight six, twenty eight ninety three arttic a rc Tichuston dot com. Let's go back out here to Ken and Brookshire. So Ken, you've got a live oak tree and you're talking about watering and having success with it. The number one thing we can do to make our trees go faster is to get the grass competition away from them as far away as we can.

that's one number two. When you water a good deep soaking, it's going to take at least an inch maybe a little more water to thoroughly wet that soil deeply. A newly planted tree, a fairly new the first couple of years especially needs a good soaking, primarily in the area underneath the branch spread of the tree. That's where the focus of the watering should be. But that's important. And then fertilizing is important, but not as important as the

first two. But fertilizing at a moderate rate gets you a lawn fertilizer. Look at how thick that trunk is, and for every inch of trunk thickness, you give it one or two cups of lawn fertilizer sprinkled around the tree, and not just at the base of the tree, but in a circular area around it. Watered and really good. But the nutrients are the third most important thing. The lack of competition and good soaking. So it never lacks for water because in the early stages you want it

to grow as fast as you can. That's different when it becomes a big, mature tree.

out there. But a tree hugger sprinkler is a little green thing that's hinged and you put it up to the tree and it's a circle that goes around the tree.

There's different sizes of it. You hook your hose to it, and you could even put a timer on your hose, and if you have a brand new tree, you can set this thing where it just barely the sprinkler just barely comes up a couple of inches and goes right back down, and you're watering that root ball, which is important early on, and then you turn it up more and more to where eventually you can water a very

big circle. Maybe your tree's five years old and you're still trying to get it to grow fast, right uh, And so that would be another another possibility.

As you start getting going, you know what happens some people. Here's here's the levels of gardening. There's the I want it to look pretty out there. I'm gonna have somebody to do it. That is one. The next level is I'm gonna have somebody to do some things, but I want to get out and dabble and you know, get some dart under my fingernails out in the flower beds and the garden and stuff. That's another level of gardening.

And then it proceeds into the danger zone. That's where you are revamping stuff, turning up your building structures to hold vines, to create an ar utrellis, and you start, well, actually, there's a four stage and this is where I'm sorry,

it's this is where people need professional help. And that is when you find a plant that you're obsessed with, kind of like me and Okra, and you just dive into it and you become and I don't want to pick on any society members or anything, but you have one species, you know, and you have every existing variety of that species, and when a new one comes out, you got to have that. And then in the final stages of this, we need to make a medical warning

commercial for this. Anyway, in the final stages, you're actually crossing the plants to breed your own new varieties of that species. That's the stage I've hit with Okra It's it's I need intervention. I love messing with plants. And you know, I'm joking about this as if it's a problem. It's not a problem. It's fun. We have a good time doing it. But oh boy o boyl boy, that's gardening. Well, here comes some music. I means we're about to put

this hour in the books. Hey, if you want to be first up on garden Line when we come back seven one three two one two k t r H. Seven one three two one two k.

on and on. An independent garden center is free expert advice, a place filled with plants that want to grow here and people that want to help you have success and know what they're talking about. Hey, good morning, Good Sunday morning, gardeners. Glad to have you with us today. We are talking about gardening. Uh seven krh. So you reach me here so you can ask kind of questions you want to ask,

kind of try to cover a little bit of everything. Uh. For those of you down in the in the southeast Houston region, Moss Nursery is is the go to premiere place down that direction. It's over in Seabrook, Texas, and uh it's on Toddville Road, by the way. Everybody that lives over there or has for a while knows about Moss Nursery because it's just the place has been around for seventy years. It's a family operated and it's eight acres in size, by the way, my gosh, and it's huge.

Allow yourself some time because it's fun. It is a blast to go through Moss Nursery, just turning every corner to see the next thing. There's always going to be cool yard art and pottery and plants and pottery thing, all kinds of great pottery over there. The plants selection is everything you could possibly want. Do you need shade plants? Do you need succulents? Do you need fruit trees? Do you need shrubs? Do you want things that bloom in the heat of summer? Do you want things that produce

like edible vegetables and flowers? Mean, excuse me, herbs. Well you need flowers too, by the way. But anyway, they've got you covered and it's a fun place to shop. While you're there, check out some of the quirky stuff. You know, Jim is always bringing in some unusual things from his travels and whatnot. And then they have the artwork, the quirky design t shirts that he's created. There's one called the eyeball plant, and you just got to see it. It is a very unusual thing, but you know, that's

that's Moss Nursery. It's everything you would possibly need in a garden center. And even more. Moss Nursery. Seabrook, Texas m aas nursery dot com, maas nursery dot com. Let's go to the woodlands. Now we're going to talk to Mike. Hello, Mike, Welcome to Guardline.

spots on them and make the spots go away. The infection you have there in those spots that that's killed area, that it's dead area, it's going to still look like that, but it does prevent additional infection and it shuts those infected spots down. So it's it's better as a preventative, But if you don't get it down as a preventative, at least get it in as soon as you can to shut it down. Great, thank you, Yeah, you bet, Thanks for the call. Appreciate that. By the way, it's

a night fast product called Eagle. All righty, let's head now to Houston and talk to Carter. Hey, Carter, welcome to garden Line.

I think there are some zenias that have some resistance to it, and I couldn't name a cultivar now, but in the future, as you look for seeds, just check for that and see if you can find anything that has some resistance to it. One of the safest ways to fight powdery mildew with a spray is to use nam oil it's the name oil. Now. When it gets hot, oils can burn plain, So you want to do it early in the morning.

It's a type of a bacillis like BT kills insects. Serenade is a bacillis that kills powdery mildew and some other funk, some other fungi, and then there's several synthetic products that will control powdery mildew.

then compost top dressing following the cororation. Cororation opens up holes in the soil that gets oxygen in the root system. We say it breathes life down into the root system in a sense. Compost top dressing some of it falls in those holes, some stays on the surface, and it decomposes in time. It's microbially rich and your lawn responds. Someone sent me pictures of the lawn the other day that they had done a corroration compost top dressing in

and it was like good night. It was beautiful, absolutely beautiful. Year Round Houston covers the area inside the Beltway and the website is the name Year Round Houston dot Com. Eight three two eight eight four fifty three thirty five eight three two eight eight four fifty three thirty five. I need to take a little break here and when I come back, rufous In Cove, you'll be our first up.

All right, folks, welcome back. Good to have you with us here on Guardline if you have a question, you can give me a call seven one three two one two kt RH. If you did not do summer fertilizing yet, it's still okay to get it done. It's a good time to do it. Nitropos Super Turf the silver bag

from Nitropos. It's a nineteen four to ten fertilizer gradually releases for like sixteen weeks or four months essentially, and that'll carry you all the way up to our fall fertilization at this point, especially when you're returning those clippings. It gradually feeds, which is the way you want to feed your turf in the summertime. It well, plants take up nutrients every day. They don't take up a year's worth of nutrients in one week and then start it

at the rest of the time. You want a fertilizer that feeds low and that's what Nitropos does. You're gonna find Nighto Foss products at places like a hardware city I'm Memorial Drive. You're gonna find night Foss products at plants, twell Seasons on two forty nine. You're gonna find them at Bearings Hardware and West Timer and on this and that and the M and D H Hardware ACE Hardware up there in Rosenberg area. M and D all places that carry Night to Foss products. Let's head out now

to the phones. We're gonna talk to Rufus in Cove, Texas. Hey, Cove, Rufous from Cove. How's it going.

eyed click beetle that you're looking at. And you said it jumped or no it's not, and there's not a way to no bottom the fast answers. No, they're just not a practical way to control them. The amount of damage you're getting from them is not a big deal. Uh, don't worry about it. Careful when you pick them up though, they've they've got a set of jaws on the front, So don't stick your hand in front of its mouth, all right, man, thanks a lot, rufus, Take care. Yeah,

nature is so cool. So many unusual things out there in nature that is that is a cool deal. Kids will think that is really wake especially the click You know that there's several kinds of click beetles that we run into in our landscapes and you lamb on their back and they just like it's like they just pop this little hinge and it flips them right over. It's kind of cool. The folks that Nelson Plant Food have

so many lines. They got the turf Star line, which are the things you use for your lawn, a turf Star several great products in that line. They've got the nutri Star line, which is specifically products for a type of plant. Like there's a nutri Star for vegetables. There's a nutri Star for bougain via. If you've got a bougain villa and you want to give the proper kind of fertilizing and the right ratios to it. Nelson Nutrastar bougain Va is the one for palms and ornamental grasses.

And by the way, did you know palms are actually a grass type plant. They're not broad leaf plants like other trees. They are essentially a more kin to grass. Well, Nutristar palm and ornamental is just for those. There's neutral Stars for Plumeria. There's lots of different nutri Star lines from the folks at Nelson Plant Food, and all you have to do is go to your local garden centers, and typically that's where you're going to uncover and counter them.

You'll find them sometimes at ace hardware stores. You're going to find them at feed stores. They're widely available here in the Greater Houston area. There's about a dozen places around town that will let you refill the jars and refill stations where you go in, you take your empty jar, you fill it up. It's more economical and you avoid throwing away more plastic, which we all do too much of that already. So Nelson Plant Food Nutral Star lines

specifically for the plants that you're going after. And you gotta fertilize. That's something that people don't really, I think consider enough. A lot of times, you know, I get calls and say, well, my plant's there, it's growing, it looks okay, but it just really isn't taking off. And then you throw a little fertilizer right and suddenly it is. And you would think, well, that's it. By news, you fertilize,

it makes plants grow. But a lot of times people don't consider the fact that you know, in nature, plants are growing on the decomposing organic matter and the mineral content of the soil that's dissolving away off the little essentially rock soil particles. And that's fine, you get a nice even growth and everything. But when you're trying to push something along. You may be planting a sweet corn in your garden and you're trying to get the most

yields you can out of it. That takes an extra boost of nitrogen more than one actually in the course of that crop being grown. And so when we fertilize, we get more of that. When you've got a flowering plant, that is it flowered really good and now it's just kind of dwindling down. A petinues tend to do that as it as they go into their season. You fertilize and you think, well, I don't I don't want leaves.

I want flowers, but flowers you have to have leaves, And so supporting and promoting new growth creates more foliage. Those are solar panels that capture the sun and make plant food, and then you see more flowers and you see more fruit on your plants. So even though you look at fertilizers and it's kind of in people's minds that well, I'm gonna produce flowers, I need lots of the middle number and not so much to that first number. No,

you you actually need you need both. And yes, phosphorus is important for roots and for flowering and whatnot, but nitrogen is important too, So keep your plants boosted in order to maintain good growth and good health. Don't overdo it. Never overdo it. It's kind of like us. We can eat too much, especially of certain things. And although I'd rather not hear that, but good good nutrition for success. Hey, our phone number if you'd like to give me a call.

Seven one three two one two kt r H seven one three two one two ktr H. I was out on my patio yesterday and it was late in the day, the time when meskis go nuts. I mean, you know they I've had mosquitos in the backyards are bad. I was afraid that when my little granddaughter came outside, they were going to grab her, pick her up and take her across the fence to some other huge, huge mosquitoes. Lots of mosquitoes yesterday I did. I don't think I

had one, and that's unusual not even have one. And it's because I've got the mosquito buckets from pest Bros. And they're in my landscape and they're maintained. That's what pest Bros does. Pest Bros. Comes out each month to maintain those buckets for you. And you know the way they work two things. Number one, they make the mosquitoes come to the bucket and then they mosquitoes lay eggs in the water. And in the water is two things. One ascent that the mosquito smell that makes them go

to the buckets. Just like mosquitoes are attracted to our carbon dioxide out of our breath, they're also attracted to the especially the smell in these buckets. They go there, they lay eggs. A lot eggs hatch into larva that will never become mosquitos. It shuts them down. While they're there, the mosquito picks up granules, not granules, little dust particles off of a screen that it sits on in the bucket. And when it flies off, everywhere that mosquito lands on water.

You know, mosquitoes can literally land on water. Some of that particle gets in the water and now that water can't grow mosquitos either. And this is safe. It's not gonna kill you know, birds and the family pet or cat that goes out and drinks some of the water. This is good stuff. And then there's a fungus that gets on its feet. Can you tell I'm getting excited? Anytime fire ants or mosquitos are suffering, I get excited. And that fungus within a week kills the mosquito itself.

So we wanted to live long enough to go out there, and all those water places that we don't even know about, I want those shut down too. That's how the buckets work, all right. Pestpros doesn't just do mosquito buckets. They do termites, and they do cockroaches inside, and they do rats in the outside of the varmints and stuff. The pestbros dot com,

thepestbros dot com. That's the website, thepestbros dot com. If you want to get MC call get a quote two eight one two o six forty six seventy two eight one two o six forty six seventy They cover the greater Houston area, and by greater I mean all the way from Texas City down south up to the Woodlands, from Baytown on the east, all the way west to the Kadi area. If you hear my voice pest Bros. Probably comes to your house Dpestbros dot com two eight

one two o six forty six seventy. I'm telling you, uh, nothing kills every mosquito. You know, there's always mosquitos flying in from places. But this is amazing. I've never seen anything like it. And now I used to get the foggers and nuke my landscape, you know, to kill everything. I didn't. I hated it. I didn't want to do that, but my gosh, you know. And then there's the misquita, the diseases mosquitoes spread around. Ugh. Anyway, time for me

to take a break here in just a second. If you'd like to give me a call, be first up coming off the break. If you're the fastest to dial seven one three two one two kt r H. That's seven one three two one two kt rh. We'll be back with your calls. And I want to talk just a little bit about fruit growing and some things that I've noticed in terms of calls and emails from people trying to grow fruit. So stick around. We'll be right back. All right, we're back. Welcome back to garden Line. We're

here to help you have success. If you'd like to give me a call. We can help work through some issues in the garden or some questions or maybe and this is fun. You know, not everything in gardening is a problem. Maybe we can suggest some plans or some approaches to success with plans that that is fun. Here here's the thought. This is something that I probably ought to talk about this more. But when you do a line landscape, you often are looking at you're in a

garden center and you're seeing all these pretty flowers. Ooh, I like that, I like that, And maybe you're taking it to the level of well combining the colors that are pleasing to you, or some plants that are taller, shorter, and you know, so when you look at a back fence, you've got some taller plants in the back and some shorter ones in the front. So esthetically it looks good to you. But think about the four seasons. The four seasons.

We live in a mild climate, and even in winter here we can have color and we can have plants that are interesting. The cinnamon colored exfoliating bark on a Natchez krpe myrtle is beautiful in the winter time. Do you see what I'm talking about? And then there's flowers and stuff. Think about all four seasons. In spring, it's easy to get blooms. Everything's blooming in spring, it seems like. But there are also things that bloom through the summer. They are very tough here, they can make it here.

And then we have things that only bloom in the fall. They pop up for their show in the fall season. So when you put in your lands, always be thinking about and as you you know, may come home every day and you look at your landscape through the seasons, look at what's missing, you know. So and typically in our Houston area landscapes, summer becomes a sea of green, green grass, green groundcovers, green shrubs, green trees. And where's the color? Well, green's the color. Okay, where are the

other colors? So think about the four seasons when you plan your landscape. Let's seat out now to Marene in Lakeside of States. Hello, Marene, welcome to garden Line.

to fully block that light. Uh. And then the other thing about this eater is it's a little slower to decompose a little bit, but that depends too on particle size. Uh, there's not right wrong and that it is more expensive.

don't think it's a great choice. Hey, Marine, thank you very much. I appreciate, appreciate call to all right, you bet you take care? Yeah, that's the case. Southwest Fertilizer Corner Abyssina and Renwick in Southwest Houston is your one stop shop for everything you need as far as supplies and tools equipment for your gardening, okay fertilizing. Ever, fertilizer is ever kind of out of my mouth is a

Southwest Fertilizer. Every insect control, disease control, weed control that's ever come out of my mouth and more or at Southwest Fertilizer. If you're a synthetic gardener or an organic gardener, the best selection each of you will find is at Southwest Ferdalize. Their organic selection is bigger than anybody I know in the whole region. If you need tools, quality tools, ninety foot long wall of tools, quality tools, and then the things that aren't in other places so much. You know,

I talk about the kneeling benches. They do carry the kneeling bench that I like. They also carry the little tool that makes my weed wiper. You go my website guarding with skip dot com. Look at the weed wiper. You can build one of those. Bob's got the tool you start with to build it, the graber tool you start with. It's all there. Southwest Fertilizer dot Com, corner, Abyssinett and Runwick. Really friendly service, really great quality products

and a selection like none other. Seven to one, three six six six, seventeen forty four. I was visiting with somebody the other day who was bragging on Affordable Tree Service. Affordable Tree Service Martin Spoonmore's company. You've been hearing about Affordable Tree Service. Gosh, Randy talked about them for years and years. They had been around doing this for a very long time, and they know what they're doing. That's the bottom line. You can give them a call seven

one three six ninety nine two six sixty three. If you want to know more about their services, you can go to the website aff Tree Service dot com. There you'll learn that they do consultations, bids are free. Uh, they do pruning, they do deep root feeding, they do pest and disease control. If you need a stump ground,

they do that. And if you're gonna do any construction around her toe, if you are gonna mess with the tree's root system, that includes dropping a sidewalk on top of it, that includes digging a trench within the branch broad of the tree, have them come out and do preconstruction care to protect that extremely valuable part of your landscape, that tree. They know what they're doing. Seven one three six nine nine two six sixty three. It's a family business.

You're probably gonna talk to Martin's mom when you call gardenline customers are their priority. You're telling them you heard about it on garden Line seven one three six nine nine two six six three. I was taking care of some plants. I've got some plants that haven't been fertilized while they're in containers, and you know containers are it's even more important to fertilize because that's a confined root system and they don't have a large boume of soil

to draw nutrients and water from. And what did I do. I grab my Microlife Biomatrix orange label. It's a seven to one three. That's what I typically use indoors because it doesn't smell at all, and it's a nice organic fertilizer highend nitrogen to boost the foliage growth, which most are indoor plants or foliage plants. But I was doing some fertilizing outside on some plants that were struggling, and I grab my Microlife Ocean Harvest. That's a blue label.

That's a fish based fertilizer of four to two three fertilizer. Mix it in water, give them a dose. I'll probably do it about three times, maybe a week and a half apart. Something like that. Just to get them a really good boost. They're going. It's not gonna burn plants. These aren't salt based fertilizers. You can find out about more of the Microlife fertilizers and where to find them, which I'll save you some trouble. It's everywhere, uh but

Microlife Fertilizer dot com, Microlifeurleisure dot com. I'll take a little break here and we'll be back for our last segment of this hour. There you go, a little George straight for you this morning on garden Line. Hey, our phone number seven one three two one two k t r H seven one three two one two k t r H. If you have metal furniture or metal ornament or anything metal outside in your landscape, you need to call Houston Powder Coders to have them turn it into

something special, I mean, really nice. I grew up with those tubular metal chairs. You know, they kind of came in primary colors, you know, like red and blue and whatnot, yellow and whatnot. Uh, And you could kind of bounce on them because the metal tubes curved that none of those things well, after a while, they they're rusty. The bolts are rusty. You take them into Houston powder coders, and they will put in new, fresh stainless steel hardware.

They will give them a nice coating and it's brand new. It is like brand new. Same thing true with those little expanded metal outdoor metal table furniture and chairs. Same thing as true with some metal that's hanging on the back fence or the side brick of your house. You know, something decorative and ornamental. If it's metal, they can coat it. You're talking about cast iron, wrought iron, aluminum patio furniture. They do the repair that's needed. The little welding here

and there might be needed. They can do some of that. Houstonpowdercoats dot Com two eight one six seven six thirty eight eighty eight two eight one six seven six thirty eight eighty eight. We're going to head now to Southwest Euston and talk to Carolyn this morning. Hello Carolyn, welcome to garden Line.

that's right. Okay, that is that's what I would do, and then and then water with that, and I would water with that. Now you're going to grow the oakrah, how long in these containers? Are you going to transplant it out? Or what?

gonna need some way to stabilize that. But I would say if you tried three in there, you just gotta be real comfort because they're going to go into stress really fast because that is a very small volume of soil. Even for one okra, you can do it. One time I grew okra in in a solo cup, a red solo cup got about twelve inches tall and it had an okra pod on top. So if you keep it moist, you can grow okra in a lot of things. But the problem is keeping it moist, it just pumps that

root ball dry so fast. You're still with me, Carolyn, Well, I think I think we lost her there anyway, But that was the bottom That was the bottom line. It kind of covered the things we were talking about. Anyway, planks for all seasons. It's the garden center that's there on Tomball Parkway Highway to forty nine, right where it comes into Luetta or just north of that. So if

you're going north. Let's say, just for sake of example, you're from Houston going north toward Tumble, you exit Luetta, cross over Lueta, and it's on the right hand side right there. It just faces two forty nine. Since nineteen seventy three. The Flowery family, they've been doing this a long time. They know this area and their customers know them. That old region. I mean, everybody knows about plants for all seasons, and they go there and they depend on

them because they're experts. You know. That's that independent nursery thing I talk about all the time. You walk in there, you're talking to gardeners who garden where you live, who garden the same area you live in, that have been around for decades, seeing new species, new plant varieties. They know what works and what doesn't work. They're not going to sell you a blue spruce tree that belongs to Colorado's. That's kind of just a silly example. The point is

they got the right kinds of plants. They got gorgeous pottery. I got some pots from there myself, the beautiful Glaci pottery. And then shrubs, trees, vegetables, herbs, flowers, annuals, trailing plants for hanging baskets, combo plants for containers. They've got it all plants for all seasons. Dot COM's the website. Here's the number. Two eight one six seven six sixteen forty six. Two eight one six seven six sixteen forty six are true lawn and garden experts. You were listening to garden Line.

I'm gonna give you the phone number, even though we're just knocking me take a call before we go to break. But if you'd like to be one the first up, now'd be a great time to dial in. Seven one three two one two k t r H. That is seven one three two one two k t r H went out in the yard yesterday and had some limbs that had fallen down, and it just reminded we had a storm came through as rough. Well remember the storms from last summer. When storms come, they'll knock the power

out by knocking down tree limbs and stuff. And that's where the Generac automatic standby generator from Quality Home Products comes in. It comes on automatically. Quality Home is a standout organization. Absolutely, the customer service is like none other. You can go to the website qualitytx dot com or you can call them. That's seven to one to three quality. But do it act now because it takes a while

to get all this set up. But they do everything for you and you are not going to find a company that has better customer ratings, however you go about looking at it, whether it's the Better Business Bureau, whether it's Houston Chronicles best of the Best, whether you know five star ratings, fourteen thousand of those. By the way, this is the company to get your generator from. They

are honest. They're a local company, family owned here in Houston since nineteen eighty nine, and they do have financing options available. Quality Home Products of Texas, qualitytx dot com. Well, times up for this hour, we'll be back. What kind of questions do you have? What are we going to talk about when we come back. Well, well, welcome back, Welcome back to Gardenline. I'm your host, Skip Richter, and we are here to help you have success in the garden.

One of the things we deal with in summer here in the greater Houston area are mosquitoes. You know mosquitos, right, and there is a simple little product out there called mosquito dunks. You hear me talk about mosquito Dunks all the time. I've asked Heather stick Me from Mosquito Dunks to come on as a guest this morning and we're going to kind of pick her brain and talk about all things related to mosquitoes and so, Heather, are you there,

I'm here. Good morning, Skip, good morning. Thanks for coming on. I appreciate you taking some time out to talk about mosquitos. I said earlier this morning that mosquitoes can be so bad. One time I went outside with my granddaughter and I'm pretty sure they tried to pick her up and carry her across the fence to the neighbors yard. It's like a ton.

of how we're going to do things. But any kind of mosquito related things, just feel free to give us a call. Well, Heather, thanks again for coming on. I'd like you to tell us a little bit about the product mosquito dunks.

things like these mosquito dunks come in handy. One of the one of the things I think people don't make this connection. But you mentioned bacillistheringiensis israeliensis strain israeliansis. Everybody that's a gardener pretty much knows about BT. And when we say BT, we're talking about a strain called Kurshtaki that kills caterpillars spread on foliage. Caterpillars eat it, caterpillars get sick and die. This is a different strain of BT that works on mosquitoes, and I believe it works

on fungus nuts too. Is that correct?

diseases that mosquitoes carry. I don't know if you're an expert on mosquito disease caused diseases, you are transmitted diseases, but you probably have some thoughts on that as well.

that it's really true. When you look at the number of deaths through history that have been caused by mosquitoes, I think it exceeds everything else as far as creatures are concerned.

The BT I the type of BT that's in mosquito dunks. Can you tell me kind of how it works? How does it kill a mosquito? Some people kind of like to get into the nerdy part of this.

and it's almost like it pulls them in. I don't know of any way a mosquito would breed or develop like inside your house, but somehow they would be coming in from the outside. Heather, do you have any thoughts on that?

win to run over to another call right here. Somebody's got an idea mosquitoes. We talked to Adolph in Menville. Hey, Adolf, got some thoughts here.

up and down the street. That would be a big mess.

You can't you can't do that practically all over the landscape. But that is interesting. Now, these this bt i basilosthere gensis Israelian, the bti and mosquito dunks. It does not hurt people or pets or birds or you can put in your coy pond or you know, if you got goldfish in a pond or little thing outside. It's not gonna hurt livestock. It's not gonna hurt beneficial insects, birds or any of the wildlife. That's correct, right, that is correct.

been there very long. But it doesn't take mosquitos long to go through their life cycle, does it.

we see here in this area. I'm up against a heartbreak here in twenty seconds, Heather, I want you to come back, and I'd like to shift gears a little bit and talk about some of the other products that you guys at Summit Solutions have some at Responsible Solutions, and I just think it's great that we have something that doesn't hurt all the things we care about outside, but it does take out the mosquitos you know, to

have an organic option like that is wonderful. Folks will be right back, all right, welcome back, Welcome back to garden Line. This hour, we are visiting with Heather Stickney from Summit Responsible Solutions. They are the makers of Mosquito dunks and Mosquito Bits, which are one of the best, safest, most common sense ways I can think of to stop mosquito larva from developing and turning into those nasty, adult, flying and biting mosquitos that we have to deal with. Heather,

welcome back to garden Line. It's good to have you back, and I want to to shift gears for a moment outside of the mosquito dunks and bets and tell us about some of the other products that you guys carry. I generally don't talk about those a lot online, so I'd like to hear about some of that.

based spray. Permethron has been widely used in mosquito control for many, many years, and that will actually help knock down and control that adult population. So you can kill the adults, and you can kill the larva using a combination of the dunks and bits and then the mosquito and that barrier.

But so you would use the mosquito in that barrier, sprang it onto the foliage of those of the plants, the shrubs and things. Yeah, that makes sense. I get that. Anything else or go ahead, go ahead. But you were going to add some well.

We make a product called Green Armor insect Repellent, which is designed as a clothing and gear treatment, So you can actually treat your pants, your shoes, your socks, your shirts, your ball caps, backpacks, tents, canvas chairs that you might use outside sit in with this product called green Armor. It works as a repellent and it will also kill mosquitoes, ticks, which can be problematic, gnats, I'm sorry, mites, and chiggers.

So just sort of an added layer of protection to skin based repellent.

for us, come back one more time? Certainly, Thank you, Heather. All right, we'll be right back, folks. All right, welcome back, folks. We are visiting with Heather Stickney from Summit Responsible Solutions. They're the makers of mosquito dunks that you hear me talk about all the time here on garden Line. A natural natural product that is a disease of mosquito larva. So you put it in and put them in water, they float along. They released that type of BT. By the way, BT.

You know we have BT for caterpillars. This is a different strain of BT that kills mosquito larva and also kills fungus gnats and Heather, what was the what was the other thing? Did you say blackfly larva or what was? Okay? Good? Yeah, And by the way, these are approved for use in organic production, so if you you know, if someone has an organic operation, this would be a type of a product that could be used for that. How long will

they last? How long do they retain their potency? Heather, if someone had mosquita dunks, maybe they bought them two years ago or something.

I think we have a thing in gardening. Uh, I'm having some fun here with the listeners and you, but we have a thing here in gardening called gorilla gardening. And basically what it means is gardeners good on the sidewalk and they drop flower seeds in the sidewalk cracks, or they stick a little fruit plant over in a corner somewhere, and it's like they're they're out there doing all this gardening stuff as they walk through town. I

think maybe we need to be gorilla mosquito controllers. You know, you can climb over the fence at night and throw mosquito dunks into your neighbor's stagnant water that they won't deal with. And it's pretty I know you are just get some granules and sling them over the fence. No, seriously, you know, to offer to I am serious about what I'm about to say that that was a joke, but uh, to offer even to give your neighbors some bits or dunks to put in in some water or something like that.

It makes sense for you because you don't want them mosquitos breeding across the fence line and then flying over to your place. And so the more you can get neighbors to cooperate and to do these sort of things too, the better off it'll be at your house.

on heartworms. Well, heartworms are spread by mosquitoes as they do the blood feeding on the dogs, and so this would be yet another benefit of using the dunks and things to keep the mosquitoes down. It's for your for your your pets like that. Absolutely anyway, fun fact, uh so, uh one one other kind of curiosity and I have heard mosquito folks talk about this before. But why is it that mosquitos itch when they when they do their

feeding on you? Why is that an itchy thing? Do you want to comment on that?

You know, you go to feed stores. We got a lot of feed stores that are sponsors that are just they're really good about carrying quality products, and they're going to carry the mosquito dunk products or mosquito dunks mosquito bits, now you know the different. Remember the dunks float on water.

You can break them up if you need a smaller chunk of a dunk, but they float on water about thirty days, covering one hundred square feet, doesn't matter how deep, because the mosquitoes are all floating up there at the top. And then the mosquito bits give a faster action, don't last as long. But if you need to just swing a bunch of bits over a larger area, you know your neighbors swamp in the backyard, you could do that and approach with the bits. Heather, thanks so much the music.

I don't know if you can hear it, but it means that I've got to quit talking here pretty quick. This being great having you on today. I appreciate you coming on.

three two one two k t RH. Get all kinds of calls on all kinds of things, and so happy to visit with you and help you have a more bountiful garden, a more beautiful landscape, and certainly more fun in the process. Arctic Installation Solutions is the company that goes into your attic and make sure that your house is more efficient when it comes to keeping the heat out and keeping the cool in. That's the bottom line. You can go to their website Arctic Houston dot com.

You can give them a call eight three to two five eight six twenty eight ninety three. They will come out. They serve the whole region here. They will come out and they can do things like put radiant barrier in the attic to keep it thirty degrees or more cooler up there. They can put an attic fan in. Then when it heats up a little bit with heat and humidity, the fan comes on either one heat or humidity. And you don't want a hot humid attict growing mold or

other things. That fan comes on, and I mean it starts moving the air fifteen hundred qubic feet per minute and gets all that extra hot air one hundred and fifty degree or more air up there and moves it out. That saves They can go in and do some ceiling up of the places in your house where air can come through the walls. For example, you go around to if you've ever taken the wall plate off of a plug or a switch, there's space there. It's not air sealed.

Have you ever looked, maybe you replaced a ceiling fan and you took that little flange off the ceiling, there's a gap there. And when you're talking about one hundred and fifty degrees above that ceiling, and then you're down in your house trying to keep it cool. When they go in and do all that ceiling it's like taking a window in your living room that's sitting there open and heat's coming in and it's closing the window. It

really works. Artican solutions solutions all kinds of ways. They can help you take that nice cool air that you paid for and keep it in your house. Eight three, two, five, eight six twenty eight ninety three. Let's go to spring now, and we're going to visit with Julie. Hey, Julie, welcome to Gardenline.

of cracks the vine but not breaks it. You know, like your elbow. If you make your elbow your arms straight, and then bring it to a ninety degree angle that elbow right there, that's the wound on that vine. When you do that and place that under the surface in your container, you could set a brick on it. You could take a bent coat hanger U shaped and pin it down into the container and then wet that container

and keep it moist. You could even put a little trail of water underneath it, and in time that wound or callous and then root. And I think that would be a good way to get that passion vine to root. When you do a cutting, you've now removed it from all nourishment, all water, and it's touching. Go trying to get a quick root down before the thing dries up and dies. With this technique I just described, it's called layering. It's easier to root viiny types of things that way.

So you might try that, or digging it up passion. If this is wild passion vine, it's gonna roots, sucker and you're gonna get it's gonna be coming up all over, and so you ought to be able to dig one up pretty easily.

and water to get them nice and moist. Put it in a bucket of whatever you're gonna grow, potting so or whatever, and then put it in a very bright, shady spot, maybe on the east side of the house morning sun or wherever it gives morning sun and afternoon shade, because it's gonna then have to develop new roots and

start to send out a shoot. And if you dig it and have all those leaves on it, you've taken off a lot of the roots and digging it no matter how careful you are, and all those leaves are pumping out water and they're gonna shrivel and turn brown, and you've actually gone more backwards than just digging it, cutting it back to about six inches high, and then letting it restart from there as if it were let's say you went back there right now and you just

cut some off about six inches high, it would come sprouting right back out of the ground. That's kind of what we're doing.

that's good, that's important. But there's sense. There's fragrances from flowers that make it an added layer of enjoyment. There's the sounds like a bird's and we love sitting outside and hearing the sounds of birds, and then the visual course of watching the birds fly around and they're antics and stuff. Wild Birds Unlimited is the place you need to go. And there's several reasons I say that. Number One, they got quality products. Wildbirds Unlimited sells quality feeders, quality

bird houses, and quality bird seed. Bird feed. Okay, we're talking about blends. Like right now, they have the only place you're gonna get nesting super blend as Wildbird's Unlimited, and it's perfect for this season. We still have birds nesting out there. Very it's designed for that. They you know, when we go into the winter season, there'll be different kinds of seed blends and you know, things like bark butter that's smeared on bark and whatnot. There's a lot

of options from Wildbirds Unlimited, but it's quality. When you buy a pound of bird feed or seed at Wildbirds Unlimited, you get a pound of stuff that goes into the bird especially the no mess blends where even the sunflowers have the seeds taken off. It's not a bunch of junk that's thrown in there because it's cheap to add, and then the birds kick it out and donate it. Wildbirds Unlimited has six stores right in Houston area. There

is the Cypress Store on Barker Cypress. There's the Pearland Store on East Broadway, the clear Lake on El Dorado Boulevard, and Clare Lake. In Kingwood. There is a wild Bird's Unlimited on Kingwood Drive and then in West Houston on Memorial Drive and in Southwest Houston on bel Air. So lots of good places to go. Wild birds unlimited. That's what you need to do. Time for me to take a quick break. When we come back, Logan and Katie, you'll be our first stop. You haven't heard Ryan Reynolds

and Ferrell. Seeing that you have, you've missed a comedy routine. Pretty funny, Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds. We're gonna go out to Katie now and talk to Logan. Hey, Logan, welcome to garden Line.

fertilizing increases the growth rate of grass. And so what happens is, you know, Saint Augustine is like a bunch of runners just crawling around on top of the ground. Unlike Bermuda or Zoezia, they also have underground and so with those runners on top of the ground, they start to climb on top of each other. So the more runnerth you get, the faster it grows. The more you know, you just kind of put all your fingers together like

one stacked on top of the other. The more it just starts to do that and a shoot comes out, and if it gets pointed upward, you know it doesn't have the mindset of oh I got to go back down again necessarily, and it just ends up on the surface. So some correoration with compost top dressing can help reduce thatch layers and get that to go away over time. Cutting back on nitrogen fertilizing your fertilization rates or frequency also helps, and then watering enough to keep the lawn

healthy but not just pushing it. You know, with a lot of extra unnecessary water. Those are all steps that can help move it in the other direction. But it's not a black and white issue where you do this and the runners all go down to the soil again. Okay, yeah, all right, that's what's happening. Sure, yeah, that's why it's happening. And just got a part of the deal with that grass especially, So thanks a lot. I do appreciate your call.

Appreciate you called logan. Uh, you're listening to guard Line. My phone number here on garden Line is seven one three two one two kt r H seven to one three two one two k t r H. Now, Uh, if you are wanting an organic type product for a fast feed on your lawn in the summer, a real quick feed, the folks at Night Trust have put together one and it's called sweet Green, and sweet green is eleven percent nitrogen uh, and it dissolves away real fast,

got high carbon content, so microbs love it. They love the carbon. Uh. And you put it down, you watered in. My next door neighbor actually put down some sweet green a while back, and we were talking across the fence the other day and he was just saying, man, I mean that that stuff works, and it did. I mean it's beautiful lawn, it's green. Now, that's not a slow release like the Night Silver bag the super Turf Sweet Green is. It's going to release and it's going to

give you quick results. You don't want to overdo it. No fertilizer should be overdone. But what I would do if I were going to use the Sweet Green, I would it would be, well, let's break it up and let's do a little bit now and a little bit, you know, maybe four weeks from now and a little bit four weeks from then, and you can do small doses. I like it because if you just need to give a real quick result, some of the slow releases are going to spread that feeding out over time and maybe

you need to get in. I need to give that lawn a shot of nitrogen. Get this thing going. Swegering's perfect for that, and it works really well. And again, you know I talk about slow release and the advantages of it, Well, you take a quick release and you just break it up into smaller applications and you accomplish the same thing. I just for paralyze them more often to do that. Now, where do you get night Foss

products a lot of places, a lot of places. You go to Fisher's Hardware down in Baytown, if you're up in Brenham Plants some thing carries night Foss products plans for all seasons on two forty nine, right where Luetta comes in to two forty nine. That is a company that carries them as well. Ur CW Nursery carries night Foss products. Go up into the KD area KTA Is Hardware on Pin Oak and kt at Sincle Ranch on Mason Road, both of those places where you're going to

get night Foss products. Sweet Green being a night Foss product. If you have some questions you like to visit about on garden line seven one three two to one two k t r H seven to one three two one two k t r H, give us a call and we can talk about that. I mentioned before one of the breaks amitted ago that I want to talk about fruit trees a little bit. Get a lot of questions on fruit trees, and this summer I've gotten several questions from people that said, my fruit tree is not producing.

It's not producing well. Maybe a fruiter here or there or whatever, but is not producing well. What are some reasons for that, Well, here are some reasons for that. Number one, they have to be pollinated, and so if you kill all the bugs, the insects, the pollinators insects like honey bees and others, where you're not going to get the pollen transfer. And so that's a possible cause of it. Some fruit trees require two different varieties to

cross pollinate in order to set fruit. They're not self fruitful. They have to have a different variety to pollinate them. That would be true of apples. A lot of pears are that way, most plums are that way. Peaches are not they're self fruitful. Pigs self fruitful, you're not going to worry about that. Grapes you don't have to do varieties for grapes or for per semmons, you know, for example. So there's both kinds of fruit, but that is one.

So if you have a variety and it doesn't have a partner, and it needs a different partner to pollinate, then you're gonna have to find a different variety and planet planet so they could pollinate each other. Another possible cause is lack of sunlight. Sun shines on leaves. Leaves are solar panels. Solar panels fuel energy production in the plant.

That the energy is called carbohydrates. So in sun you get a lot of carbohydrates, means you get more fruits at and you get more fruit development, more blooming, and more fruit development. Okay, So as your tree goes into less and less sun, the tree is still living, it looks okay, but the bloom production goes down, and so that could be another reason why we're not seeing fruit. And then there's there are other reasons, like the wrong

number of chill hours in the variety. Sometimes stresses can have an effect on that and cause some things tend to abort. For someone a real bad about aborting fruit or early on, not later in the fruit's life, but early on. So those are a few other things you might want to consider. Let's head out now to Pattison and we're going to visit with Susan. Hey, Susan, welcome to garden line.

the better off your results are going to be. So for me, I put it out at a way lower rate than you think going Let's say north south, and then go go east west. And if you have a little left over, that's okay too. You can set the thing down less and apply it over the he's real even spread Whatever you can do to even that spread out is helpful.

a time, now you've got the problem. Okay, I got to add more than I should have had to put on in the first place, and and it's just better to go light and then go back over it in a different direction.

lot of places they carry that. He's a mite. In our area, we're gonna have to take a little break here for the news. Uh. When I come back, Stephen Rosenberg and Martha and Menville you'll be our first two up. Look forward to visiting with you back on Garden Line if you've got some questions. Seven one three two one two k t r H seven one three two one two five eight seven four. Hey, welcome back to Garden Line. Good to have you with us. We're going to head

out now to Rosenberg and talk to Steve. Hi. Steve, welcome to garden Line.

Southwest Houston and Bob Sellso's grabber tools. They're not that expensive. You take it and I'll show you how to put sponges on it, and then you would wipe a product or you would soak those sponges in a product that kills johnsngrass. And because Johnson grass comes up higher than your Bermuda grass without even bending over. Those little tools

are about three feet long. You can just reach down with a cup of coffee in one hand and the tool in the other and walk through your yard and just kind of squeeze it and pull those sponges up against the leaves of the Johnson grass and it'll translocate down and kill it. And you may not get it all in the first time you do it, but on another Saturday morning or something, you just go out in there and you do that and you can get rid of it. And I know you got a lot of it.

But there's just the only other option to you would be to squirt a herbicide on it and have dead spots in your Bermuda grass that would then have to grow back in. That's an option. I think. This other option is Oh wow, I like the weed wiper. That's why I came up with that.

twice more a week. Apart, there's the Medina Plus and the Medina Plus has that original Medina Soil Activator, a great product, plus forty different trace elements including things like certain types of minerals like iron and zinc and magnesium and so on, other kinds of plant influencing substances, you know, things that affect plant growth. Hormone type ingredients and vitamin

type ingredients are in it. It's going to give you better growth, better development, therefore better fruits at you get better blooming out of it, and you use that for transplants also if you want to, if you want to go that route, there's a lot of great Medina products out there. They got the humate humic acid. It comes in a liquid, but most of these come in a quart and in a gallon size. But the liquid humus

humate liquid humus from Medina is an excellent product. Humus is the final decomposed stage of organic matter composts, and it contains the humic and the fulvic acid that are excellent for working on soil structure and helping that soil have a good developed structure and for doing things that really stimulate the soil microbial content, the microbial populations of the soil. That is what that humic acid can do.

All of those are Medina products, and all of them are so widely available to take a whole show to tell all the places you can buy Medina products here in the Houston area, feed stores, garden centers, ace hardware stores, and on and on and on down the list. And I was talking about Southwest Fertilizer a second ago. Yes, Southwest Fertilizer, of course, also has a wide variety of Medina products. We're going to head now out to Manville,

Texas and talk to Martha. Hello, Martha, welcome to garden Line.

are soggy. They can't get oxygen. That's a problem. Plants get too dry and they can't get water, that's a problem. I don't know if you have Apothus ivy in your house, but if you ever let it get dry and then you water it, the old leaves turn yellow. After that it perks back up, but the old leaves get cast off, and so water fluctuations can do that to plants. It could be a lack of nitrogen, but the way you're describing it as turning yellow and falling off doesn't sound

like a lack of nitrogen to me. I think it's a sole moisture issue.

I hope that helps. I'm ninety nine percent sure we're looking at something in terms of soil moisture. You may have to dig down with a little hand trial about four to six inches and feel the soil and see if it's adequately moist too soggy, too dry, you know, whatever it is. But I do appreciate you calling in this morning. Thank you very much. Okay, you welcome, bye bye. All right, all right, I gotta go to a break, folks. We'll be back with our last segment of the day. Well, well, welcome,

welcome back to Garden Line. Got our last segment of the day. Here, last segment of the weekend. I appreciate you listening to guarden Line. I don't take the fact for granted that we got folks that are taking time out in their data listen to garden Line. Hopefully we are keeping it informative and a little bit enjoyable as we go through there. If you would like to give me a call, I've got time for a call. Maybe

two right now if you hurry. Uh seven one three two one two ktr H seven one three two one two KTRH. ACE Hardware Stores are you know, their motto is ACE is a place and you can just kind of fill in the blank after that. ACE is the place for all kinds of standard hardware needs, you know, traditional hardware, things like plumbing and lighting and wiring and switches and paint and on and on the hardware stuff. ACE is also the place for indoor and outdoor living.

ACE is a place for quality tools. ACE is a place for the things that you need to maintain your property, the equipment, the tools and things like that. ACE Hardware Stores just they serve the community. Not too long ago, we're talking someone from ACE about the fact that they serve the Children's Texas Children's Hospital here in the Houston area with fundraising that they do coming up. This is a little further out, but I want you to be aware of this coming up. ACE is having an event.

It is I know it's far out, but to stick with me here October twelfth, Sunday, October twelfth, from five thirty to eight thirty pm. And basically what it is, it's Ace at Top Golf. You've been to Top Golf before. I love Top Golf to support Texas Children's Hospital through the text through the Children's Miracle Network Hospitals. It's really a great cause. And as we heard on the other

day at Bill murphon from the acepon JOHNS. Rude talking about, you know, the transforming stories about lives, kids lives here in the greater Houston area. So the Texas Children's Hospital serves nearly five million patients annually. So when you support this cause, ninety percent of your money to Texas Children's Hospital goes to patient services, one percent to charitable care, and one percent to eight education, one percent of research. But basically it's going it's going to the kids and

all the proceeds stay right here in Texas. So why am I talking about all this? Well, the ACE Hardware Texas Retailer Group, my group here in the greater Houston area, and other Ace Hardware stores they're going to be sponsoring on Sunday, October twelfth, five thirty to eight thirty an event at Top Golf, a fundraiser. Maybe your organization would like to talk about supporting that, being a sponsor or a supporter of that. All you got to do is

reach out. Here is a email Okay, Brick at Acehardware dot com, Brick at Acehardware dot com, and here is the phone number two eight one two two three fourteen hundred. Two eight one two two three fourteen hundred. Some of our Ace Hardware stores in our Houston area, part of our Ace Hardware Texas Retailer Group, are heading this up. Again. It's further out there, but maybe you've got a company or an organization and then you want to help with us.

Maybe you are just interested and you love, you know, going out to Top Golf and having some fun out there. They can tell you more about it that I'm telling you here, by the way, that the location is going to be the Top Golf at five sixty Spring Park Center Boulevard in Spring, Texas. Top golf at five sixty Spring Park Center Boulevard in Spring, Texas. So go check them out and be a support for that. What it's

fun and it's a really really good cause. We are now going to go out to the woodlands and visit with Deb. Hello, Deb, Welcome to garden Line.

conservatively on it. There is a product from Nelson called Genesis and it is a more of an organic type fertilizer as opposed to be an AsSalt based type fertilizer. And so that would be fine, but just you know, any fertilizer, especially the synthetics, their salts and so they dissolve and they release and they're available. Color Stars is going to give you a longer feed time. But the main thing you need for those plants is water. Make

sure your watering system is working. Whether they get fertilizer or not is not as important as whether they get water or water. And yeah, yeah, as the water. And so what you've given me is mostly color blooming plants. That's why I suggested color Star. You know, the asparagus, fern and foliage plants like that they'll benefit from it too.

can listen to past garden Line shows. You can go to the website KTRH website, go to the garden Line page and you can listen live there. You can also listen to pass shows there. You can also go to my website which I keep telling you guys about gardening with skip dot com. There's a place to click on right at the top. There, there's a place to click and listen to guarden Line live or past shows. You can get the iHeartMedia app. That's the way I listen

to garden Line and other shows. Okay, I have the iHeartMedia app there and I can listen to pass shows, listen live. It's on my phone. My phone's always with me. I may not be around a radio, but I'm always around my phone. iHeartMedia app. A little white square with a red circle inside makes it easy. Well, thank you

for being a listener. I do want to just re mention again that our sponsors or the reason you get to listen to garden Line, the reason I get to be on guarden Line, the sponsors or the reason anyone watches TV or listens to radio, and thank them when you go see our sponsors. Support our sponsors, they are the reason that's why we get to listen for free. I hope you have a great week out in the garden. Remember do all the things that help plants thrive, but mostly have fun.