From Dirt to Delight

some flower bedwork to do. There's a bed that we've been preparing, and you know how I always say bronze stuff before green stuff. Well, I'm actually going to take my own advice and get out there and mix in some quality compost materials, get that bed up a little bit. The area it's not poorly drained, but it's not you know, wonderfully drained either. So I'm going to raise the bed level up a little bit just so when it rains too much, which at times it does. We're going to

make sure we have good drainage. You know, plant roots do not like to be underwater. There are very few plants that survive in a swamp like environment where there just isn't good oxygen to the root system. So that's that's important to get that, get that right and make sure that we can give those plants the setting that they want. I've got a few other things to do. I've got some planting to do. I started planting alliums

the other day, and I'm late getting this done. I'll just say right up front, this should have been done a couple of months ago, probably, but anyway, it's still okay to do it. The garlic is something I just got in the other day, a couple of different kinds of garlic that we're going to have going through the wintertime. It's pretty hardy, pretty cold hardy here. Unless we just have one of those absolute unusually hard freezes, we'll carry

it through so harvested next year. I've got some shallots that are already growing, looking really good, and I need to plant my onions. I got a lot of different kinds of onions we're trying. I always like to try different ones. You know, there's red onions, white onions, yellow onions, and a lot of different types. And when you go to a local place that is a let's say mom and pop that is an independent garden center and you purchase your stuff there or a feed store. A lot

of our feed stores carry onions as well. They're going to carry the kind that want to grow here. Same is true with potatoes. When you're planting potatoes, it's coming up in February, you want to make sure and get the cultivars that do well here, because not all onions do here do well here. I won't drone on and bore you, but there are short day onions and long day onions, and it depends on what part of the country you're in as to what kind you might want

to plant. But I got to finish getting that done. For those of you who haven't tried onions, A lot of our garden centers and feed stores still have a supply out there for you. You can still put them in the ground the sooner of the batter too, by the way, but you want to make sure when you plan them, plant them about as deep as the first joint on your index finger. Okay, so look at your finger first joint with that little lesson an inch. Go ahead and plant them at that depth and then keep

them going. We like to say, I haven't hit the ground running. When you put them in the ground, you'll start of course, keeping them moist. Roots will start to form, very important time. Take care of them then and then small amounts of nitrogen gradually pretty much all through from now until harvest time. And here's why. An onion is the base of the leaves of the plant. The onion bulb that we eat is the swollen base of the leaves. So you cut an onion in half, and you see

the rings right. Each ring is the base of one of the leaves up on the plant. So if you have an onion that has struggled along, survived but not thrived, and it's got five leaves on it, how big of a bulb can you have? Not very big? You got about five rings. That's that's what it can do. The bigger that onion gets, the stronger it gets, the thicker and more rings that you're going to have, and they just do well.

to have them bigger. It's less tedious to chop a bunch of them up that way. But anyway, there's a few tips there on growing onions. Now, if you'd like to give us a call, this is, by the way, a call in show, not a monologue. So let me give you a phone number. Seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. For those of you that have a Christmas tree in your house, don't forget that you need to keep a good supply of water, especially

when you first set that thing up. You know, they do a fresh cut on the trunk. You PLoP it down in a in some water, and it's going to drink quite a bit of water. That'll slow down a lot as time goes on, but you got to always keep water in there, don't let it dry out. That is important for maintaining as best you can nice supple needles for as long as you can into the season. There's nothing like a fresh Christmas tree. The scent of a fresh Christmas tree is so good, so take care

of that. We do not have a cat in our house, but I was looking. I was looking this week at I don't know, just cats and Christmas trees. You know something somebody posted online. There were just a series of Oh my gosh, it was every kind of disaster you can imagine, and some that you can't. So you might want to have a conversation with kitty if you got one around the house, and make sure that they understand what they're not to do in your Christmas tree outside

in the garden. This is a time of year when we appreciate the fact that we have planted burying plants. Plants are produced in the winter, and we have some really good choices out there. Of course, Holly's that's number one. Holly's are the most common famous plant for holiday decorating. Through the cool season that there is that would include a number of different types of hollies that produce berries.

Cut the little branches sections of branches often use them for decorating around perhaps a nice meal table, or creating a wreath or something along those lines. For those of you who live out in the country and you got some of the ash or not ash juniper Eastern red cedar ash juniper Central Texas, the eastern red cedar branches can be cut and they make a wonderful wreath as well have a nice fragrance to them. Also, I'm going to come back and talk a little bit about plants

to put in the landscape for decorating. In a moment. Right now, we're going to go to a break. Good morning, we got sleepyheads. We got a show to do here. We are going to be talking gardening until ten am to day. Welcome to Garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter, and let's talk about the things you're interested in. You can give me a call at seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two

one two fifty eight seventy four. If you are looking for a show place during the holidays, Pierce Caapes is the one you need to call they you know, they absolutely can do anything pretty much that you need done outside. Do you do you need beautiful landscape lighting? Do you want to have a complete rehaul of the landscape, maybe just creation of a beautiful stone patio area with the

landscape lighting. Make sure the drainage is right in those areas where you want a plant that tend to be a little bit soggy, they can fix that as well a little bit of adjustments to the irrigation system. They can take care of that. Any kind of hardscape, drainage, irrigation, construction, landscape, lighting, pathway, you name it. They've got designers in staff that can help you create beautiful, beautiful curbobile for your landscape. You

go to pierscapes dot com. That's the website. I just prefer you go there first because there you can see all the kinds of work that they do. Now they're numbers two, eight, one, three, seven, fifty sixty, but you can find that on the website too, piercescapes dot com. Pierscapes dot com. You can also get on board with

them to do quarterly maintenance. That's once every three months they come out they spruce up the flower beds, do any weeding, any mulching, and any trimming that needs to be done, some fertilizing, making sure irrigation is right, changing the seasonal color out. You know, as we go from season to season, we put in fresh new annuals so it always looks good. Pierscapes is good at that. In fact,

they are absolute professionals when it comes to that. You are listening to Gardenline and I'm your host, Skip Richter, and we're here to talk about the things that make gardening more success. The way I like to put it is, I want to help you have a beautiful garden, a bountiful garden, and more fun in the process. That's what we're aiming for. Gardening should be fun, and it is. I was starting to set up my lens, my light

on lighting, my lighting for growing plants. Yesterday. I've got the I've got a couple of racks that I set up that I do that with, and I was putting the lights in it and finishing up a publication on landscape lighting, and I wanted to I want to just talk about that. Just Oh, it's already online. My web guys already got it up online. If you go to gardening with skip dot com. I have a publication I just put up hot off the presses. You may be the first to see it if you go click right now.

Quality lighting for growing transplants. A lack of good light is probably the number one mistake we gardeners make when starting our own transplants, and it's gitting to be that time. Get You need to get your supplies together. That would include trays for growing them in, and I sometimes I use the you know, the regular what they call seventy two cell trays, and I grow in those. You can get them with a little mini greenhouse clear cover over it. If you want to do that. You need to get

your seed starting mix. Seed starting mix is basically potting soil that's been ground up really really fine, so it's perfect for planting seeds at just the right depth. That's not real chunky stuff, it's very finely ground stuff. That would include heating mats if you're going to start them in a cold area. I start mining a garage. It gets quite cool in there, and I use a little heating mat under them and that works well. And then of course lighting well, lighting is the mistake we make.

You know, you start some seeds. You have these, You have this vision of beautiful landscape plants or transplants, and what happens is you end up with something that's lanky, stretching to ward lights, spinley. It's gonna break if you mess with it. It gets out in the gard, it's not going to perform. Well, I know, I've been there. And all you need is a little bit of knowledge plant lighting and some reasonly priced fixtures, and you can do this. You know, if you want to go on

the cheap, you can basically get a fixture. I refer to them as shop lights, but I just mean it's a long, skinny fixture with a couple of tubes in it. That's basically what I'm talking about. You can get a fixture like that that has a very bluish light that would be called cool white bulb. You know, having you

go in the store, you got daylight bulbs. You've got those kind of orange e fireplace glow color, red light reddish into the spectrum bulbs, and you know, you can set it for each kind of room of your house, the kind of mood and everything like that. You want to cool white and a warm white, cool white, blue, worm white I'll say yellow color lighting, and that range gets you the amount of each part of the spectrum as close as you can get without just diving in

and buying a quality plant light. But it'll get you by I'm growing a tomato or a pepper seedling, because you're only going to do that for a few weeks, and you specially need the blue light on the end of it. But anyway, I've done that before. I used to when I use fluorescent tubes, I would put one fluorescent tube cool white, one fluorescent tube warm white, and I grew transplants for years that way. I had two shop fixtures, so I had four bulbs, two cool, too warm,

and they were alternating. You put those things fluorescent tubes. I had to get them down about two or three inches from the plants to get the outaode amount of light. I know, read the article. I make a statement in there that in here. Let me just say it right now. This is going to be hard for you to believe. But if you put a light one foot above a plant, a bright light or a dim light or whatever kind

of light you have, doesn't matter. Put it one foot away from the plant, and you measure the light intensity level on that plant, and then you move the light two feet away from the plant. Most people would say, well, it's a little dimmer, but not much. No, it's a lot. Did you know that it is one for its twenty five percent of what the light was at one foot. When you moved to two feet, you doubled that distance, and you didn't get half the light or more. You

got a fourth the light. Now read the article, explain it why in there. Give you a link if you are information, if you'll learn more. But it's very important to keep your lights down where the plants need a high intensity light. Now, some lights are so bright you put them down low and you'll fright. I mean, your plants will get all weird because it is just way too bright for them. But follow the lighting quality. You can do it, like I said, on the cheap if

you don't do it that way. But if you're really serious about growing transplants, and maybe you want to grow some to the point of blooming, so your tomatoes when they go out in the garden already have blooms on them. There you need quality lighting. And I talk about what quality lighting is. Uh, it's I think it's an interesting article. Personally because as I learned this material years ago, as I learned about plant lighting, I just was fascinated by

what it takes, what plants use, how this works. And I can just cut, you know, kind of give you a little preview here of the article and it is or the publication. Basically, what we see with our eyes and what plants get with their leaves are different things. It's light. Light is light, but we see light in terms of it's you know, it's a white light because it has all the colors of the spectrum in it. Plants see it in the different wavelengths because those wavelengths

do different things in plants. If you get them on the red end of the wavelength, that is helping them bloom and fruit, and it does some other things that's in the article. If you get on the blue end, that's the vegetative growth end of lighting. But then each of the wavelengths has the functions that it has and so your light needs to do that. So you can buy a nice quality grow light and that will help you to have success with your transplants or with growing things out more.

them strong. So go to my website gardening with skip dot com and find quality lighting for growing transplants. It's a brand new publication I just put online. If you live down in the Richmond Rosenberg area, you're fortunate to

have in Jenny Gardens right there in your backyard. You know, you can go, oh, I don't know what is it FM three fifty nine just north of Richmond on the Katie fullsher side on FM three point fifty nine right where it comes in there to FM seven twenty three, And Jenny Gardens is the kind of place where it doesn't matter what month of the year you go out there, you're going to find some really cool stuff. An unmatched selection of plants, shrubs, trees, vegetables, herbs, flowers, you know,

in anything you can imagine out there. They they always have a good selection of the very best plants. Of course, they also have a very helpful team about as enthusiastic as you can get. They bring in all kinds of expertise to the place so that when you go up and ask someone a question, you get expert advice. You can take them photos and samples and things if you

want to get help with stuff. You can also find wonderful Christmas gifts right now, any kind of holiday gifts where I'm talking about you know, wind chimes all the way into special beautiful indoor decorations, whimsicle garden art. Oh gosh, they got a ton of that stuff. It's really really nice. They have a good selection of seeds for those of you who are going to be doing some seeds starting.

And then you know, when you get there, you're going to find all the quality products I talk about on Gardenline, products from Microlife and nitrofoss and Nilsen plant food and Medina soil products and molts, Nature's Way, airloom soils and Landscaper's Pride. It's really easy to find anything you need there, including help for success. Enchanted Gardens Richmond dot com. That's the website, Enchanted Gardens Richmond dot com. Well, here we are.

It feels like these breaks are coming so fast. Today it's time for another one. I'm going to quit talking here and I'll be back in a minute if you would like to give me a call in the meantime seven one three two one two k t RH seven to one three two one two k t r H.

we can grow here that work really well. I was mentioning earlier the fact that you can use yopon berries or holly berry in general. Yopon is a type of holly, but all kinds of holly berries are great for decorating. Yopon's great too. Just remember the scientific name, the proper botanical name of yopon is ready for this ilix, which is the genus of Holly's vomittoria. You heard it here first, maybe not first, but that means don't put it in

your mouth. It is a purjective. So if you got little kids that don't understand, just because it's pretty in red, it doesn't mean it's candy to go in the mouth, don't bring the yopons in, the berries in because you know it's not poisonous in the sense of like some points like plants like an oleander or something that would be. But it is a purgative, and you don't want to do that. So Yopon's a good one. I like to use some of the holly fern. There's a holly fern

that is just a real leathery leaf, real beautiful. Makes an excellent greenery and arrangements. It works really well. Holly fern's a great easy fern to grow here. Doesn't have the fern like leaf when you picture a fern that kind of frond leaf, it's not quite like that. It's dark green, glossy and a little bit broader leaf than standard ferns, but it's a great one. Beauty berry. Beauty

berry is a native plant here in our area. It drops its foliage in the fall to reveal beautiful purplish colored, purple, lavender colored berries that are in clusters and they look really nice in arrangements. Depending on the time of year, you can find some nice arrangement there. There's a lot of other plants that we can bring in. I mentioned the eastern red cedar is a good one. Grows wild

out in the countryside, even on a road side. You'll get some cedar branches that would be good for decorating as well. Also, it has a nice scent, So think about that when you're planting plants. Look at your landscape right now, where might you want to plant some things that could also be used for decorating and not just holiday decorating, but decorating all through the year. I mean, you know, you think about this. You go to a florist and you get arrangements all year that have greenery

and flowers in them. What are some things you can plant so that your landscape or your garden becomes a source of those kinds of things. I think that would work well now when we're putting in plants of any kind, and there is not a better planting season of the year than we're in right now. I know it's holidays, we're busy, and we got things going, but just know this, preparing your soil, getting ready for planting, planting as soon

as you can. Just I'll leave it that way, as soon as you can get it into the ground, give it every day possible before next summer arrives. That's the goal now. Landscaper's Pride has a number of quality products of over two dozen different quality products for soil blends, for growing pretty much anything you can grow. They also have quality mulches and twelve months out of the year three hundred and sixty five days out of the year is the time to mulch. Is always it's time to molt.

You want to keep a blanket malts over the surface to protect the soil, stop erosion, prevent crusting, keep the soil temperatures moderated and winter and in summer, and keep weeds down. Who loves pulling weeds well? Keep sol multed with their black velvet molts. It's a hardwood malt. It's basically an immature compost you know, hadn't really fully composted, but it's a decomposing hardwood mult naturally dark, full of life. It's screened to be bulky enough to make a really

quality malt. And it's beautiful, and it's not dyed. Black velvet is not dyed malts. That's a natural black color. Cedar malts really attractive for the holidays. Got that nice cedar or aroma in it, a beautiful reddish color when you put it out fresh. And then there's topsoil from Landscaper's Pride. Now this is a sandy loam compost mix. You can use it as top dressing. If you've got some low spots in your yard. You know you're trying

to repair your yard, get it back right again. Maybe next spring you're gon be doing some more sodding some areas that struggled. Landscapers Pride top soil is great for filling in those low areas, for leveling things out, or even just in part of your bedprop A quality sandy loam with compost mix is a good part of making quality bed now. You can go to Landscaperspride dot com find out more about it.

Think about the meadows of the world, who running around doing all kinds of soil prep and stuff to them. What's happened is, year after year for ages, plants and plant parts have been growing and dying and falling on the ground, creating malts, creating soil and making it richer and richer, more beautiful, more beautiful. That is how microlife

helps is by shortcutting that same natural process. So when you get a microlife fertilizer, you're getting a natural, plant based organic fertilizer that is loaded with microbes of all types. You put that out on the ground and it does what organic matter does in nature. It becomes part of the soil and improves soil structure. It helps stimulate biological activity and you get one of these microlife products, and that is exactly what you're doing. You are helping move

nature forward quickly if you will. We don't want to wait eighty years for the tropical rainforest to build soil. We want it now because we've got a plant. Microlife helps do that. It gives this natural source of nutrients. It decompose away as microbes chew them up. And all microlife products are loaded with quality microbes and quality nutrients from nature. That's how it works. Microlife Fertilizer dot Com is the website. It's widely available here in the Houston area.

Makes it really really easy for you to have success with your gardens and landscapes. I don't care if it's a lawn, if it's a flower bed, if it's a vegetable garden. Microlife products are designed for all of those. They got. They have products for acid loving plants, they have products for fruit and fruit trees, and certainly for the lawn and flower beds. You just pick the product

and it will help you to have that kind of success. Well, you're listening to garden Line our phone number, I'm gonna give you the number before I go to break here because you can give a call and be the very first up when we come back. Seven to one three two one two five eight seven four, seven to one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Don't forget to go buy my website and check out the Quality Lighting for Growing Transplants article. It is hot off the presses,

and I would say this. Everybody needs to grow some transplants for fun. And if you want to do it, don't do it until you read this article so that you can have the best chance of success possible. We'll be right back because sometimes I can just sit and listen to music and I forget I'm supposed to do it radio shows. Well here we are, welcome to Garden Line. I'm back. I'm back on tasks at last. Oh goosh yeah.

going to find lots of quality products. You hear me talk about fertilizers and soils and things on guardline, You're going to find them there. It Plants for all seasons. But probably the most important thing that a lot of people don't think about is the quality of advice that you get, the quality of guidance that you get. You're not shopping at some big box store where people are hired to do the garden center that may not know hardly anything about gardening, or may think they do, but

they don't. You're talking to people that have been gardeners in our area for a very long time. They've been helping gardeners for a very long time. And that's what you get at Plants for All Seasons. You can take them pictures, you can take them samples in a bag, you know, for diagnosis or for identification, to get a solution to help help you to have success. This is a full service retail garden center. It's located again just north of Luetta on two forty nine on the northbound

feeder road Plants for all seasons. Dot com is a website. Here's a phone number two eight one, three seven six sixteen forty six. Right now. They are loaded up with some wonderful ideas for Christmas gifts for everyone on your list, So go check it out. Plans for all Seasons. I always love going in there visiting with the whole team. They are a pleasure to visit with because they know what they're talking about and they're friendly. That's important too.

I wanted to tell you about something that I just put this on my website a while back. Do you, guys, I know pretty much all the listeners unless you just joined recently garden Line listening audience, you knew Randy Lemon. Randy Lemon held the chair I'm sitting in for over twenty five years. He was a legend in the greater Houston area and certainly the gardening world. Everyone knew Randy. Randy had an entertaining style, he had very helpful advice.

He benefited I don't know countless people over the years his host here garden Line. You, in fact, me exactly be one of those kind of people. Randy and I go way back. We lived in a dorm at A and M together Moses Hall. And I've known Randy, knew Randy for a very very long time. You know Randy just he was he was let's just say this, he was a presidentce. You couldn't miss Randy when he was

in the room, that is for sure. Well, Dean Nelson Nelson Plant Food set up a scholarship in Randy's name to honor and remember Randy's wife and his contribution to the gardening world. And that scholarship. We've talked about it a while back, but we're making another push for that now.

This scholarship, by the way, goes every year to a horticulture student at Texas A and M. Now, if you knew Randy, you know how much he loved Texas A and M, and how you can just imagine how proud he would be knowing that there's a scholarship in his name going to train a new generation of horticulture folks. I think that is a really really cool thing, and I'd like to ask you if you would would you consider making a donation toward that scholarship. We are trying

to raise some more money. We'll continue to build it up. The more we can produce, the more good we can do with it. This will be something that goes goes on year after year after year. And you can give a couple of ways. You can go online to the Texas A and M Foundation website and give that way online with a correct card. You can also get by check by making a checkout to Texas A and M Foundation and in the memo writing Lemon Scholarship. Now, I'm not going to read you all the address in the

r L and all that kind of stuff. Go to my website Gardening with Skip dot com. It is the most recent post on the website, the Randy Lemon Scholarship. It tells you how to give online. It tells you how to get by check. If you would do that, But for those of you who enjoyed listening to Randy all those years, who benefited from Randy's advice all those years, I would just make that appeal. Would you consider doing that.

I think it is a wonderful cause, and I think that the dividends of you being generous in that way really help the gardening world here in the Greater Houston area. I'm a product of the NM Horticulture program that is where I got my start in horticulture in terms of professional knowledge and learning, and I think it would be great to start preparing more generations a horticulturist, and this scholarship will do just that. That is near and dear to my heart. I think it would be a great

way to remember Randy. You're listening to garden Line. The phone number here is seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. You hear me talk about quality home products of Texas a lot. You know, that's where you go get your Generac automatic standby generator. And of course they have other products that they sell there, but Generac is just a just a trusted name when it comes to generators. But it's not just the product that

you're buying. Yes, it's a quality product, it's this that you get. Quality home is known. They are recognized with many awards and many very happy customers lauding them interviews, UH for the kind of service they give. If you happen to be a licensed electrician or a plumbing pro and you're looking for a new career opportunity, you should can say are applying to work with Quality Home. Quality Home uses in house people for their electricity and the plumbing.

They don't sub that out, and it is a job with competitive pay. They have comprehensive medical, dental, vision coverage, four O one K, retirement plans for one K matching, by the way, holiday paid time off, basically career advancement opportunities. It's a stable, reliable, reputable organization.

a company, it's good citizen. It's a great place to work. Quality Here's here's the website. This is where you go if you would like to put in an application Quality TX dot com qualitytx dot com. By the way, that's also where you go if you're interested in talking to them about getting a Generac automatic standby generator installed at your place. I don't know what it is today. Every time I look at the clock, it's like, no, that can't be right, But it is right. And I'm running

out of time on this segment as well. We're going to take a break at the top of the hour. In the meantime, though, I did want to, I did want to go on a little bit more about doing some decorations indoors all through the season long there. If you've never grown cut flowers, you should right now be thinking about preparing a bed that's dedicated just to that. Now you can mix cut flowers all through the landscape.

We have a couple of beds in my garden, my vegetable garden where we grow as any as and other things like that. My life. My wife loves cosmos. She's got some in her garden. Yes, we have separate gardens, not that we can't go in each other's garden, but she just kind of has her nice, pretty garden off to the side where she grows flowers. But it is so easy to grow cut flowers in the landscape or in a garden. I would say the number one simplest

gardening cut flower gardening one on one is Zenias. Zennias you can buy a bunch of seeds are not very expensive. You can get all kinds. You can get tall types, you can get bedding plant types. You can get single flower types that would be more like a daisy like flower. You can get a multiple double flowers that almost look like well they do look like a mom, a chrysanthemum, a mom. Just beautiful, absolutely beautiful. It's easy, easy to do.

But lots of good information online. That's another fact sheet I need to write up as on growing cut flowers. Put that on the website too. Well, you get the idea. But think about as you play your landscape, so as you do your garden plantings, as you create even shrubs down to shrubs in the landscape. What is beautiful for decorations?

And there are so many really cool things out there, uh Chinese witch, hazel oil pedal on that beautiful burgundy foliage, especially with some sun on the foliage, A little lots of other things we can choose. How do you make your landscape? Source of the door? All right, can't take it break, Let me come back, Frank from Houston.

to the phones to talk to Frank. Hello, Frank, welcome to garden Line.

You know, sometimes we get all kind of I don't know what the word is, but kind of tied up and not about whether we're having success or how do you garden? I don't know how to do this. I don't have a green thumb. You know. People worry about that and it becomes a stress to try to have success. You know, I think that plant's going to die. Relax, just relax, listen. You have got to kill a lot of plants to become a good gardener. I'm going to put it that way. I'm giving you permission to kill

some plants or to have some struggle. That's how we learn. No, we're here to help you cut down on the number you kill and the number of the struggle. But just relax and have fun. As you learn about it, it becomes more fun. And once you figure out what a plant wants, whether that plant is an azalea or a desert rose, once you figure out kind of the knack of it, the amount of light, the amount of the

temperatures it takes, the soils and things. Once you figure that out, it just becomes fun and it looks easy. And people say you got a green thumb, and you just look at them, and if you want to take credit for it, you can say yes, I do. I would prefer you look at them and say no, I just have an informed thumb. Skip helped inform my moumb on garden Line. Your thumb gets smarter, your plants do better. That's kind of how it works. So let's educate that thumb and get you off to success. You can do

that listening here to Gardenline. You also do that going into our quality garden centers. You know a place like RCW Nursery. RCW is the nursery that is on Tomball Parkway at Beltway eight right where those two come together. Two forty nine and belt Way eight. That is where RCW is. The website is RCW Nurseries dot com. RCW nurseries dot com. You know, with RCW you have got

folks that have been doing this a long time. By the way, they grow their own trees and large shrubs up in Plantersville, and they have got as some of the best deals you're going to find anytime anywhere right now. For example, twenty percent off camellias, two kinds of committees, Japonicas and Susanquez. One blooms in the December time, one blooms in the January time. That just to may oversimplify it. Uh, they have azaleas twenty percent, all their shrubs twenty percent off.

If you like metal yard art and arbors, and boy do I ever I'm talking about the you know, the metal structure and arbor as well as the hilarious uh yard art that they have there at plants at the RCW. Uh they've got thirty percent off that.

are gorgeous. Camellias are almost like a winter rows on an evergreen plant. I guess that's one way you could look at it. I love those things. Lots of perennials at RCWS, lots of annual color. They always have what's in season. I'm sitting here checking my time again. I gotta go take a little break and we'll come back and talk to you more. If you'd like to give me a call, go ahead and get on the boards now with Jonathan seven one three two one two KTRH.

We'll talk to you when we come back. Welcome back to guard Light. You know, ACE Hardware stores are the place you go when you need fill in the blank, and that's why they say ACE is the place right now. ACE is an awesome place to go for your holiday lights and your holiday decorations. That's indoor and outdoor. They have something called lights by the foot. I think that's the coolest thing. So instead of buying this light that's a given length, you know, ten foot, twenty foot whatever,

maybe you need one that's seventeen feet seventeen feet long. Well, you can purchase by the foot your holiday light strings. Just go by there and ask them how on earth do you do that? And they'll tell you. ACE is a place for really cool gifts as well. Do you have a do it yourself or on your list? Maybe some tools that would work well. Do you need things for the shop? Do you need things for the kitchen? Do you need things for decorating indoors? Do you need

toys for the kids? Ace Hardware has all the above? All the above. Now we have a lot of ACE Hardware stores around the listening area. For example, out there in Orange you've got Child's Building Supply on Highway six near Bear Creek. There's Hamilton Hardware just off Highway six near Bear Creek Park. There's Auspas Ace up in the Woodlands. And then you can go to either Kingwood or a task Asita and find a K and Mace Hardware two

locations Kingwood and a task aseda just examples. Go to acehardware dot com, find the store locator, find the store near you. Let's go out to Fairfield. Now we're gonna head to Fairfield and talk to Marty. Hey, welcome to.

doesn't like to plant. But I thought I would try to get her interested by giving her something she could keep inside, something interesting or a cool plant, or something hydro upon it. I don't know what might you think off the top of your head or you can answer later whichever.

It's called sense of area snake plants another name for it, uh and zz plant z Z is another one that you know, highlight, low light, you water it, you forget to water it. They're pretty forgoing. They're not necessarily everybody would think is the most beautiful go.

Chinese evergreen is best. Those. You can get them in standard green or green with kind of silvery color markings in the leaf. But I like the kind that have red or coral in the leaves. They are very beautiful. Now there are other beautiful houseplants, but again we're trying to help her have success. So you know, going to a prayer plant, for example, a moranta, those are a little more tricky, so I would try a Chinese evergreen.

It takes lower light, not as low as some plants, not as low as a closet plant, for example, but if you just give it moderate light, it'll do okay. The orchids, the little moth orchids that you see for sale, ever wear, that's another pretty easy plant. It has some basic care that you give it. But as far as plants go, I neglect mine so much that I have to I had to take the phone out of the room because they kept calling the society cruelty to plants

to turn it in. But they're they're tough, and even the neglected ones are bloom blooming again this year, and so that would be an easy one to do.

and then when the fall comes they bloom again. They really bloom easy. And I can tell you that's that thing blooms a neglect.

a little bit more of a challenge. And like I said, we wanted to have success. That's that's the main thing.

Fragrant plants. There are plants plants that have a wonderful fragrance that could be that could be planted and grown. There's a lot of things that go along with standard gardening. If you got to Moss Nursery and Seabrook, I love going there, by the way. It is a true destination. Everybody down that area, Chemon, Seabrook and everything they know. Moss Nursery been around long long time. Eight acres eight acre Gardener's paradise is what it amounts to right now.

Moss has got as they always do everything that is for the seasons, and if you're looking for house plants, easy to grow houseplants, everything from like a little four inch pot, very very economical, up to a six foot tall beautiful plant. They're greenhouse for house plants is outstanding and I would even recommend you go there. You're going to be wanting to buy fruit trees soon, you're going to be putting in vegetables and flowers and things. Moss

has got you covered on all that. Here's the website Maas Nursery dot com. Maas Nursery dot com. They're on Toddville Road out there in Seabrook and onf you go. First of all, allow yourself some time because there is a lot to see wandering through that eight acres A lot are really cool, aren't garden ornament? You know, statuaries and fountains and all concrete, uh, figurines and all. It's just cool. I promise this. Every time you turn the corner, it's gonna be like, oh wow, I've never seen one

of those before. That's that's how it is out there at Moss Nursery. You were listening to the garden line. If you'd like to give us a call seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four, seven to one three two one two five eight seven four. The uh as we get close to the holidays, you know, people get busy and things, and uh it gets quieter on the phones, and so if you've ever you know, I'd call in, but I don't want to wait online or anything. Well, first of all, we work at not

letting people wait online, do our best at that. But right now is a good time. Days like this are a good time. If you'd like to give it, give us a call. If you want to have success with plants, you got to fix the soil first, brown stuff before green stuff. And the one stop shop for all brown stuff is CNA Malts. Cienamlch is south of Houston near Highway six and two eighty eight. They're actually on FM

five twenty one now. Cienamltch has every kind of soil amendment product that you would need, certainly composts in every type and form. They carry products from Landscaper's Pride, They carry products from heirloom soils. For example. They have that if you need fertilizers that you hear me talk about. That's part of the brown stuff, part of the soil microlife Azamite, Nelson, turf Star, Nitrefoss products, and Medina products.

take a break, I'll be right back. Welcome back to garden Line. We are glad you are listening today. I appreciate that. I hope you enjoy garden Line. And if we can help you have success, then I'll call that a good day, a very very good day. That is what we're here for. We want you to have success. You know that I was talking to Marty a minute ago about holiday gift plants and the folks out at

Neilson water Gardens. You know, and now you think about water gardens, what's water gardens and nursery right, So anything water garden, they're the experts, just absolutely nationally recognized experts, from beautiful water gardens to those disappearing fountains, to the fish, to the plants and them to everything else. But do you know they also have a really good selection of plants in the garden center and right now inside the

nursery house plants. We're talking about gift plants with Marty a minute ago, and I mentioned a number of different plants. Well they've got them all there decorating and you know the zzy plant that I was talking about, they have those. They're beautifully decorated. They also, by the way, have a great sense of humor. They say that all their plants are sugar free, calorie free, gluten free, so that's hilarious.

Twenty five percent off all of those interior plants, including succulents until December twenty eighth, So get it done if you need a quality gift, a beautiful gift. By the way, their houseplant section is just awesome, awesome. They still have Christmas trees too, by the way, and with each Christmas tree you get a free point seta so that's kind of cool. If you haven't gotten your tree yet, you put it off. Maybe you like trees to stay fresh as long as possible, so you don't want to buy

them too early. Whatever, Well, go get it. Now's the time. Nelson Water Garden and Nursery. They're in Katie Fort Benroad. You go out to Katie I ten turn north on Katie Fort Benroad. That would be turning right coming out of Houston and it's just a little bit up there on the right hand side. Nelsonwatergardens dot Com. Check them out. That's kind of cool. Gluten free plants, sugar free, calorie free. It seems like that's the deal. I see that put on stuff that never had gluten to begin with. Kind

of like plants. Well, or at least not you're not going to eat it, but anyway, I appreciate a good sense of humor. You are listening to Garden Line and we're here to help you have a bountiful garden. We're help you have a beautiful landscape and hopefully more fun in the process. You know, We've got a lot of different things that we can talk about today. I'd like

to kind of shift gears a little bit. I've been talking about some indoor decore and whatnot, and talk a little bit about planning for spring gardening, you know that once we come out of the Christmas season, sometimes in Christmas and New Year's typically I'll begin planting my spring garden transplants indoors that would be tomatoes and peppers and

things like that. Now it's early, right, it is early, and you're going to think, well, the tomato is going to outgrow that little six pack, Well, yes it will, but then it goes into a four inch pot, and then it even goes into a six inch or a gallon pot before it makes it out into my garden. Now, and if you're going to plan an agro tomatoes, you don't want gallon sized plants. But that would be crazy.

But if you're just putting a few into a vegetable garden, why not why not have a tomato that is already blooming, maybe even fruiting by the time it goes out super super head start that way and you can start these indoors. I have put up on my website gardening with skip dot com publications called quality Lighting for Growing Transplants, And I think this is really going to help you. I spend a lot of time working on it, just trying to get the basics down what I do on there

as I talk about. First of all, poor lighting is the number one thing that goes wrong when people try to grow transplants, those spindley transplants that are not getting the light they need. Light drives everything is good quality seed starting mix important. Yes, is the right amount of moisture important? Yes. Are temperatures helpful? Yes? But lighting light

shines on the leaves and makes plant food. We talk about fertilizers plant food, but really fertilizer goes in the plant, sun shines on the leaf, and the plant makes plant food ca carbohydrates. So the quality of your light, the amount of your light is very important to successful transplants. Now, if you want to keep a plant over winter, Like I mentioned earlier, a lot of my houseplants of outside during the summer, and I don't have room for them inside.

The place could look like a jungle. I guess it could, but we're just not quite into that type of decorating. Of a lot of plants, but not that many, So I put them out in the garage underneath a really good quality light and keep them there for the wintertime. Cooler tempts in the garage slow them down a lot. I mean, they basically just sit there. I don't have to water them much, but it's easy. So look at that publication Quality Lighting for Growing Transplants. It is free.

You can't top me down on that price. It is free. And it goes into the spectrum of light. You know, remember, did you in school, when you're in science, have a prism where you shine the light in and like the rainbow and out the other side. What we see is white is really a mix of almost all the colors. Essentially, plants see those colors individually, and they do individual things blue light, to oversimplify, blue light helps with vegetative growth.

The red part of the spectrum helps with blooming and fruiting. Now they do other things as well. I go into it in the publication a little bit more. But those parts of the spectrum are important. And when you buy a light for your home, for home lighting, that is a light you're buying for your eyes, right, And it has things on the package like the number of lumens that it has and the watts that it has. That stuff's not important for plants. Plants care about the light

bands that are photosynthetically active. In other words, when a blue light or a red light, or an orange spectrum or a green spectrum, yellow spectrum. When that shines on a plant leaf, does it stimulate photosynthesis or not? Now, there's other factors that are very important, and each of the bands do that. So when you buy a human light, you are getting an attractive light to our eyes, but probably not a mix of colors in the amounts that plants want. Can you get by with some human lights? Yes?

I grew up with a wow. Grew up during all my early plant seeds starting time, I would use a warm white fluorescent tube and a cool white fluorescent tube in one of those shop light fixtures, And I had two shop like fixtures, two four foot fixtures, cool white, worm white, cool white, warm white in the fixtures, and I would hang them right over the plants, about three inches above them. And I would get by with growing a tomato transplant or a basal transplant whatever I was

trying to grow under those. But when you start carrying plants further in, you're trying to get them to bloom, or you're wanting to care for a longer term, or you want them you grow tomatoes indoors and have them fruit. If you have the right kind of lighting to do it. That's where we got to start looking for that. So remember lumens the way they put it as lumens or for humans, par Is for plants, par is the photosynthetically active radiation. So I'm not gonna get too nerdy on you.

It's all in the publication. Talks about the amount of light. How long do you run your lights when you're starting seats. It's in there talks about that are what are the concepts about distance from the light. It makes a huge difference to get that light as close as you can to the plants. And then there's some other tips. It's all free. It's all on gardening with skip dot com. So this year I would challenge you to grow some

transplants if you never had before. If you have before, I would challenge you to take your game up a notch and get you a better setup to do better with it. And by the way, talking about gifts and stuff, a plant lighting system would be a great gift for the gardener in your list. All right, we're gonna take a break. I'll be right back. All right, welcome back to guard Line. Did you know that Tom Hanks wrote most of the music for that movie that it was

a great movie. By the way, we set back in the nineteen fifties bands trying to get on the radio with that early rock. What's going on? Anyway, I'm impressed. He's a great, great actor, one of those actors when he's in a show, you know he's not going to disappoint. But to have the talent also to write music for it period music like that was pretty cool. Anyway, you

can tell I'm impressed. So, speaking of impressed, if you love a hometown feed store, if you like that old time feed store, I feel League City feed is that, and I've been impressed when I go in there because I love that. I love the smell of a feed store. You know, you go in and it just has a I don't know, earthy. I don't have a better adjective for it, but a nice fragrance that just I just it makes me happy because I grew up going into

feedstore Sloe like League City feed. Now, for those of you down in League City, of course, all the communities around it, from San Leone, Webster, El Cominarial, Santa Fe, Dickinson, all that region, this is your hometown feed store and they are open Monday through Saturday nine to six, so you can swing by after work if you need to pick up something closed on Sundays. Here's a phone number.

You write this down to eight one three three two sixteen twelve to eight one three three two sixteen twelve. The Thunderbergs have been operating this store since oh gosh, over forty years now, and it's the kind of place where you go and you find the fertilizers I talk about, like products from nitrofoss or from microlife, or from Nilsen plant food or maybe azamite, that very important ingredient in taking care of our lawns, and I think vegetable gardens too.

It's there you're going to find the things to control pests and weeds and diseases. You're going to find premium pet foods. And if you got backyard chickens, they have the products you need for your backyard chickens, from feed to feeders to bedding, as they like say, everything but the chickens. They've got it covered at League City Feed. Where is it now? It's on Highway three, just a few blocks south of Highway ninety six in League City, and you should swing by there. Tell them skips it

high from garden line when you swing by. I was what was I talking about before? When I was talking about quality? Oh, I know, Christmas gifts are any time of the year gifts. You know, you don't have to wait for some special holiday to give a gout of lighting for plants if you know a gardener who wants to take it up a notch. Quality lighting is important most of our homes. It's hard to even grow a house plant in due to the poor light levels, lack

of quality lighting in the plants. And you could buy you could buy something that's like the whole setup. You know, you buy it. It's got a rack, it's got the lights on it and everything. Those are pricey, but it's beautiful. I mean, it's something that's attractive to put in the house. You know, hanging a shop light over the kitchen counter may not be esthetically acceptable, and so you can buy a nice one. But you can also put together a

package of things. My article on lighting recommends a certain kinds of light. And you can go online and buy a high quality light and someone can figure out where to put it themselves. You know, they put it in their garage like I have mine. Maybe you would just want to buy the whole package for starting seed, like a tray with the seventy two cells in it, a bag of seed starting mix. Those trays come with a little clear dome that goes over them, or real real

easy to find. You can buy a more expensive version, so that same thing too, and then maybe a pack of seeds. If you know they like to grow vegetables, we'll get them a pack of tomato seeds or pack of pepper seeds, and a pack of eggplant seeds, or maybe some spinach or whatever you want to give them. Just let them have at it. But a quality light, a heating mat, there's another one that you could do. If you're going to I guard, I start my seeds in the garage. It's cold in the garage, not too cold,

but it's cool in the garage. So in order to get the seeds up and going, you want that soil temperature to be about seventy eight to eighty degrees for a lot of the warm season plant seeds. And so when the garage is fifty degrees, you just put a little heating mat underneath it. It warms the soil in the little trays. And to have warm soil for the roots but cool air for the tops is a great combination for growing a good stocky houseplant. And to have a quality light and know how to use it is

very important. Now when you go online to buy lights, you know you're going online, or if you even go shopping around different businesses for lights, a lot of times what you see is not very good quality. It's not going to work. They may call it a plant light, but it's not. You know, you go on a place like Amazon and you see these lights that look like spiders sticking out in all directions, and they're they're kind of that purple color which is a combination of blue

and red wavelengths. First of all, that horrible looking on your eyes in the house. But you can do better than that. And so a lot of those don't tell you the specifics of the plant. I saw a plant light the other day and when the fine print it said how many how much available plant available wavelengths are there, And you'd have to stick that thing about four inches from a plant to do any good, I mean just about.

And that's you know, they show pictures of it hanging from a ceiling, you know, ten feet away from a plant, it's not going to work. You need a quality light that's made for that. So go to your local garden centers, go to a place that knows what they're talking about, or if you do shop online for them, make sure you're getting a quality plant. And if you don't see letters like pa R or PPFD, those are two things to look for, then you're probably talking to a seller

who really doesn't know what they're talking about. Or maybe they know, but they're not going to tell you that the light just is inadequate. So get a good quality light if you want to grow things in a longer term. There are houseplants that take a little bit more light to look good, and you can even get home fixtures. You know, a light that chines from the ceiling or

hangs down from the ceiling. I use the stand up kind of a gooseneck like structure that for where you put it behind the couch so you come over your shoulder and you could read. And I just put a quality plant like bulb in that, and I've got a Norfolk Island pine that's now about four and a half feet tall and just thick and lush, and one for that light. It would be a mess, but great gift,

great gift idea. Well, you're listening to garden Line. Our phone number is seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. You can give me a call, talk to Jonathan, have him get you on the boards. And when we come back from the break that we're about to take here, you will be the first step. What kind of gardening questions can we help you? Then that's

what we're here for. I just want to remind you again that on my website is a new post, the newest thing on the website, the Randy Lemon Scholarship. Randy was a legend here in the Greater Houston area for decades as a host of garden Line. If you knew Randy, or if you heard Randy on the air, you knew he was one of a kind. For sure. He loved text, A and M and there has been a scholarship set up. I emails from Nelson Platforms and Randy you can get to.

I would like you to check it out on my website, Stott. I think it's a great cause and I know Randy would be trapped.

a little bit. The thing most people do is put a systemic insecticide in the ground and the roots take it up, and then the insects that are sucking juices out of your crpe myrtle stems, they pick up that poison and it kills them that way, and it doesn't That way is not killing you know, some beneficial insect that's out there on the plant. That would be after we get a little bit of warming and the crank myrtle begins to grow and it's actively taking up nutrients

and things. That's when you do that trench for that. But that's basically the option. You can ignore them. They are not going to kill your creape myrtle. They make it look bad, but they do have natural enemies which build up to help keep them moderately under control.

Is this the kind that the holes in it are kind of diamond shaped?

I would try that. I know that Heirloom Soils also has a leaf mault compost that is screening Europe and Porter. But Heirloom Soils they are up in the Porter area, but they sell all over town. They have a wide number of outlets across the area, and you may find their leaf mold compost as well. Either way, you've got a quality product with the of those two.

their fungal compost. It's called the Fungal Friday Sale. You gotta do it on Friday, Fungal Friday. Twenty percent off fungal compost. If you're looking for veggie and herbicx. If you're looking for a top dressing leaf old compost, they have got that there. I was just talking with someone a moment ago about that. That Nature's Way. They sell it by the bag. It's available in some stores around our community, or you can just go up there and get it. They're up on the road to Tombaal Highway

forty five. You get to where fourteen eighty eight comes in from the west and you turn right across the railroad tracks right there Nature's Way. They're on Sherbrook Circle. Nature's Way Resources the phone number if you'd like to give them a call, get the specifics nine three six two seven three twelve one hundred ninety three six seven three twelve hundred. You will not go wrong with products that are made right and have long been a leader in this industry and our region. We're going to go

to the phones now and talk to Leslie in Conroe. Hello, Leslie, Welcome to garden Line.

Don't leave any stuff just I mean right up against because there's a bunch of bugs at the bottom and you don't want it to continue to sprout like that. There is a product called sucker stopper. Sucker stopper it's a plant hormone and you spray it on those cuts and it helps prevent them from re sprouting so fast. It's not going to eliminate all of it, but it helps. And then take those three that are growing and train them.

Let you know, they'll come up a distance and then they'll fork into two, and then each of those will fork into two more, and you're just kind of snipping and guiding and creating this beautiful structure that's aesthetic to you as they grow. But you can wait until late winter to do that pruning. You don't have to do it now. But when you do have some of that sucker stopper around where you can spray on them.

There's plants right now, the holiday gift plants, you know that things like Christmas cactus, Thanksgiving cactus, those kinds of things are there. If you're looking for gifts for kids, they're Bungalow, which is a little gift shop area. There have some wonderful little holiday books for kids and other things as well. They have gifts for the lady on the list. They've got gifts, you know, for anybody that's interested in plants. They're going to be having on December

twenty second, right before the holiday. They're going to having a holiday centerpiece workshop. Now you need to do this. Now, it's a ticketed event. It's eighty five bucks. But here is the deal. You'll go in there on December that's a Sunday, by the way, December twenty second, and you will build your own holiday centerpiece and it will be epic and you get to take it home. So not only do you have fun and learn how to do it, but you make this wonderful arrangement that you can take

home if you want. You can just you know, go and purchase holiday decor already ready to go. They've got uh, fall wreaths, stems, garland, outdoor decor, all kinds of stuff like that ready to go. When you go to Buchanans, you're gonna get good advice, you're gonna get quality plants and quality products, and you're gonna have a good time. I can just tell you that Buchanan's Native Plants on Eleventh Street in the Heights. I always wander the place just to see what's new. What did they have now?

What new kind of thing they have? In Boy, if you're in if you're into natives, fall is for planting, so is winter. By the way, go ahead and get those things and get them in the ground. They have the best supply of native plants of anybody in the whole region. And they can point you to the one that does what you wanted to do. For example, I want one for butterflies, or I want one for pollinators, or I want one that's evergreen. You just tell them

they know what they're doing. I love birds, and I got to tell you that the folks at Wallbirds they just have the best stuff that. It's the case. You take bird seed, for example, you go hying buy bird seed anywhere, Well, yes you can, but look at a bag of bird seed, cheap bird seed, and you'll see little red bebes in it. And those are not eaten much by birds. They generally kind of get kicked on the ground so they can sprout under your bird feeders.

And now you got another thing to do with Wallbirds. Unlimited creates seed blends that birds will eat one hundred percent of this stuff in the seed blend, and so It's really a more economical way to go about it because instead of buying a bag of seed and half of it is unused, you get all the seed that

you purchased when you buy from Wallbirds. Now, right now, I would recommend their Wilbirds Unlimited Winter super blend loaded with fat, loaded with protein, much needed by birds as we get colder and colder and their natural food supplies out in nature become more and more sparse. Very important to do that. Wildbirds is the place for gifts to someone you know. I had a call earlier about a

plant recommendation for someone that wasn't a gardener. Well, an anybody on your list, gardener or not, will appreciate being able to see the birds and hear the birds that are attracted in by a quality feeder, for a bird house, for all kinds of things that Wilbirds has. And if you have a bird lover on your list, the book written by Wilbird's founder, you can find it at All Birds. Just say I want the book written by your founder. It is an outstanding book on the birds of the

region and how to take care of them. Well, let's see here I mentioned what was I talking about earlier? I get going here and I sort of sidetracked myself. Oh, I think it was more about lighting and gifts and things like that. I think a gift certificate is another good way to go when it comes to people on your list. Gift certificates allowed them to get what they want. And when you get a gift certificate from one of the places we talk about here on garden Line, we're

talking about places that have everything. I mean, if you can't walk into you know, we can as plants and find something that interests you. You may not even want to grow a touch of plant, go into the bungalow and you'll find really cool gifts in there. And are our folks just are good at carrying quality equipment, And so why not a gift certificate from someone that is on your list. I think that's a good idea. I would love getting a gift certificate, by the way, And

for gardeners, you can never have enough tools. Maybe we'll talk about maybe I'll talk about that when I come back. What are my favorite tools that would make good gifts for the gardeners on your list? You know, if you know someone that's a wood shop guy, Oh, there's always a new tool they have to have, right, you know, do it yourself repair guy. The tools are their life.

It's the same thing for gardeners. Quality quality tools make gardening more fun and they help you out better success because they just do a better job and they're less wear and tear on your joints in the process. Plus some of them are just too cool, just too cool. All right, I'm going to take a break. If you'd like to give me a call and get on the boards seven to one three two one two KTRH will be right back. A little boogie woogie. Welcome back to

the garden Line. Glad you're with us today. We got a lot more things to discuss. One thing that I did want to talk to you about is a product that Nelson Plant Food created over forty years ago. It's called color Star. I'm sure you've heard of it. It's famous in the in the industry. A color Star is a fertilizer to help keep your flowering plants blooming. And in order to do that, you need to feed them. You need to give them nitrogen. Believe it or not,

because when you get foliage growth, you catch carbohydrates. When you catch carbohydrates or make carbohydrates. You create blooms, and that's what color strais. It is well known. They ship I don't know how much of it to states all around the country. I mean it's a popular product because it works. Professional landscapers know and purchase color Star for doing just that. You apply it about every three to four months during the growing season. You can apply it.

You should apply it now for your cool season bed, your pansies and violas and things like that. You want to keep them growing and blooming up their best. You do color straw you buy by the canister. Many places around town will do refills of your Nelson plant food products. So that just makes it an even more economical way to go. Widely available with better garden centers, feed stores, ace hardware stores, Southwest fertilizer, you can find color Star

easy to find and it really does work. We're going to go now to Kingwood and talk to Bill. Hello, Bill, Welcome to garden Line.

it comes out and it blooms. You know, it doesn't understand what month of the year we're in, but that is just a stress response and you can't do anything about it. Those ballooms enjoy them while you haven't. They'll be gone and hopefully next year we'll get back in and sink.

unloaded in my barn himself. And so I really have always been to use Nelson stuff because I just think that he's a really hard worker and a really really bright guy.

got to water, fertilize, and mow it. And those three things mow, water, fertilize or the secret to success. So you could go with a drought. There is a Saint augustine called cobalt was released by A and M not too long ago, cobalt, and it is quite drought resistant because it has such a good, deep, robust roots system. And so if you're doing Saint Augustine in that spot, I think I would recommend that one for you.

And that's no fun. Makes it all scratchy. Yeah, yeah, that's one. Those are in it and invades flower bed. That's I'm kind of going off on bermuda here, but those are its drawbacks. Its strengths are if you mow it regularly, it's the prettiest grass on earth. I mean, that's what golf course greens are made out of.

and League City Feed is a traditional feed store. You're going to find everything you can imagine for livestock, for pets, you name it. If you want one of the fertilizers I talk about on Guardline, they carry it at D and D Feed. Did I say I think I crossed over there? My brain switched D and E feed outside of Tombo. Now, one thing that's really cool about D and D is that you can order online. That's a new thing. Just give them a call two eight, one

three five, one seventy one forty four. You can go to their online store. Just give them a call, they'll te to do it and you can just do the ordering right there online. It makes it really really simple and easy to do if you're looking for a cool gift too. By the way, Leak City carries case knives, cases, a quality pocket knife, very high quality pocket knife, and they have a bunch of different options and so pretty much, jaybody on your list would appreciate having a quality case knife.

And when you're in there at D and D, just ask them to see the knives. I think that you'll be impressed with what they have. They're also going to carry things like the heirloom soils that I talk about, the turf Star by Nelson, micro Life Products, nitrofoss Products, Medina products. You get the idea. It's it's just everything you need to have success. They're at League City feet again. If you're looking for them, go on twenty nine to twenty west from Tomball about three miles out and there

on the left hand side. Two eight, one three five, one seventy one forty four. Well, it's time for me to take a break. Jim and Houston. You will be our first when we come right back. All right, we're back. Welcome by the Garden Line. Glad to have you with us today. I'm going to head straight out to the phones here and we're going to talk to Jim in Houston. Hello, Jim, good morning.

But Jim, it's a wonderful plant. I know y'all fell in love with them out there in Hawaii, uh, and we need to help you have more blooming success this year with it. Part of that is a good quality plant food.

that I like to grow. One of my mentors, doctor Bill Welch, oh gosh, the man, is a walking encyclopedia. He is the author of Perennial Garden Color and Plants of Gardening, books on old roses and other things. He said something, and this is where I first hearted. At least, he's talking about old rose growers that go to like cemeteries and they find rose bushes just growing there among

the headstones, you know, that were planted. Nobody's fufuing them and babying and spraying them with fungicides and all that. They're just living on nature out there, doctor Weltch. Bill's statement on it is if dead people can grow it, you can too. I like that Plumeria is not quite a seminary plant. It's not that hard. If dead people can grow it, you can too. Gosh, well, you're listening to garden Line, and I wanted to tell you a little bit about encented forest down there in the Richmond

Rosenberg area. Chented Forest, as you know, is the place to go for pretty much any kind of plant you need at any time, but right now, right now, in addition to an outstanding gift shop full of quality items, just really beautiful, one of the kind stuff that you will love, they've got a forty discount on what's called hollaballs, inflated hollaballs, So imagine giant ornaments. I mean when I say giant, I mean up to like what two and a half three feet or something in size and down

and you hang them underneath your trees. You've got a big gold live oak tree in the front yard, and you got these ornaments hanging off the tree. They're really cool. Forty percent off the inflated hollaballs for your land skate. But also they've gotten in some strawberries, new strawberries. They got Sequoia and Chandler and eversweet, and it's a really good deal. You got a whole bundle of them and get them in the ground. Now, if you get them in the ground right away, water them in, plant them

at the depth that they originally grew. And here's the secret on strawberries that you know at the very base of the plant, that's where the leaves come out of, and that's where the roots come out of. Right in that line between leaves and roots, that's the depth of strawberry planting. Water them in well and then begin to give them fertilization on through the wintertime. Strawberries grow in the winter slowly, but they grow and they get stronger

and stronger. And the better the plant is when we come out into spring, the better your production is going to be. So stop in at Enchanted Forest and get you some there on FM twenty seven fifty nine outside of Richmond, Texas. So if you're going towards sugar and you twenty seven to fifty nine is off to the right, uh. Enchanted for us. Here's the website that write this one down. It's a great website with lots of good information. Enchanted Forest, Richmond,

TX dot com. Enchanted Forest, Richmond, TX dot com. You're listening to garden Line and our phone number finally got quite on the phones again here phone number seven one three two one two kt r H seven to one three two one two k t r H. You can give us a call. I don't know, We're probably going to go to a break here pretty quick, but if you want to go ahead and get on the board, you can be the first up when we come right back.

have larger sizes if you want. But basically, when you're planning, just get a couple of tablespoons, put them in a gallon of water and watered in real good. I'll tell you what I'll also do is soak the root system in it. You know you've got a tree or shrub or something, just put it in a bucket. Is that the container in a bucket or a whatteb or whatever, and put some of that in the tub to soak up in that root system. And then when you get ready to plant, you're ready to go. So it makes

it really easy. I will also soak seeds. If I'm going to do some seed starting in, put a tablespoon of humid humic acid in a gallon of water and soak them until the seed swells up and they're ready to go. And you will have success with that. All part of another one of the wonderful products that the folks at Medina have come up with. You are listening to garden Line and we're here to try to help you have fun in gardening. We want you to have success.

We want you to get beauty and bounty out of the things that you grow, and that is exactly what we do. Going to the last break, I think music kind of cut me out a little bit, but I just wanted to say it again. The Randy Lemon Scholarship. We're rejuvenating that, bringing it back to the fore front. You know, Randy, he was a legend here in the

scenario in the gardening world. I mean his entertaining style, the helpful advice he provided to people for over two decades here in the Houston area on garden Line helped a lot of people have more success. You may be one of those people. Dean Nelson set up a scholarship a while back in Randy's name at Texas A and M for a horticulture student, and that is what we're talking about. If you will go to my website Gardening with Skip dot com, the top item is Randy Lemons Scholarship.

You can go online and give it tells you how you can give by check It tells you how. Just go to that website. Would you consider making a donation to the scholarship fund that lives on in remembrance of Randy benefitings horticulture students at his alma mater and Mine, Texas and M University. Well let's see here. I hear music, which means I got to quit talk to him? And what does it else? I mean it means you are one more hour left and the show today? You'd like

to give us a call? Seven one three two one two k t r H.

we used to dial. Now we just punch buttons. Right, all you gotta do is punch buttons seven to one three two kt rh and we'd be glad to visit with you. How do we help you so that you can have a more bountiful garden, a more beautiful landscape, and more fun in the process. That's kind of what it's all about. Let's see, I had a few things that I wanted to go over to. I talked about wanting to encourage you to try transplants this year, growing your own translists. I don't mean all of them. You

don't grow everything you're grow, but try growing some. Get your little light set up and do that. I think you will find that it is a really fun thing because listen, you know we're talking about the end of December and in January. You are inside when you don't want to be outside, probably, and you're starting little seeds under a light. You're watching them grow. You're getting the full experience. But the real reason that I like to do this is if you wanted to start things from cuttings,

you can start those under your lights. I mean, you have some cuttings of different kinds of plants you'd like to propagate, or if you want a variety, you just can't find locally. And that's true. You know, they're probably a thousand tomato varieties out there. I don't know how many there are, but there are a lot of tomato varieties.

And you go into the best garden centers we got, and I mean they may carry a couple dozen different ones in some places, but there's going to be things that are too new or that just aren't asked for anymore. But they are good old varieties that are fun to grow. You can grow those yourself and all you got to do is get a back of a seed, the supplies you need and go for it. And it's a lot of fun. And once you learn how to start seeds, once you learn how to start cuttings, it just adds

another aspect to gardening, another fun aspect to gardening. And the best part about it is, well, take a day like today. We kind of had some misty, drizzly weather this morning. You could be inside gardening with your new setup. So I want to encourage you to give that a try this year. We'll help you have success. Just give us a call here on Guardline and we will be happy to work with you. We're going to go out now to Chapel Hill and talk to Rachel. Hello, Rachel, welcome to garden Mine.

It's going to be growing in either moss or little wood chips, and take a look at the root system. If some of it looks kind of brown, kind of gray, brown, water soaked, rotting, kind of shriveling kind of things. You can cut all of those off and then repot it with a little fresh orchid bark or sphagnum moss in the container. And when we get into when we get past the wintertime, start to fertilize it lightly and water

it periodically. Now, you don't want to keep them too wet, but if you take any fertilizer and you take it down to the lowest level on the label, you can even cut down from that a little more. And each time you water, you just give it a drench with that with that solution it could be an organic product or synthetic product, and just gradually get it in a very bright light location. I keep mine in the bathroom. We got a real bright window in there. Uh and uh,

and it it's bright, but it's not direct sun. And and they do well in that location. And it's not hard keeping them going, but you just need to kind of rejuvenate them and get them going again. You may want to wait a while, though, because sometimes they'll send out a little side shoot. If it just recently finished blooming.

that we've got Nelson plant food product. Anything that comes out of my mouth on garden line is going to be there. Southwest Fertilizer. That's just how it is. If you're an organic gardener. They have the biggest selection of organic products in the whole region. They do Southwest Fertilizer in the southwest side of Houston, corner Bus and Nutt

and Renwick. When you go in there, grab your lawnmower blade, take them in and get those things sharpened because it's going to be mowing season again for you know it. Don't wait for the rush, go ahead and get them doing that.

regular first fertilization. It's about the time you've mowed the lawn twice, but it's on the schedule, okay.

So catch them before they start growing.

they do. They have everything, you know. Azamite is a micro nutrient or trace mineral, same thing, trace minerals supplement that we put out on our lawns, and we put it on our vegetable garden. You put in flower beds too. Asumite provides those trace minerals that are essential for plant growth, but not needed in large amounts. That's why we say trace, just a trace of them is all you need. Now you have a salt test done and see where you are on nutrients. That's the best way to fertilize, whether

you're using lawn fertilizer or azmite or anything else. But as a general guide, I would recommend that you put out the asamite. You put out periodically. It's up to you. Just depends on the actual nutrient levels in your soil at the time as to how much or how often you want to use it. But it goes a long way. A forty four pound bag will cover about six to twelve thousand square feet now in the vegetable garden. I use it at ten pounds per thousand square feet. Ten

pounds per thousand square feet in a vegetable garden. There's a thing in soul science called li bigs. Let's see libigs barrel. It's called the law of medicnce minimum li bigs barrel. So imagine I want you to picture this

for me. You know what a a whiskey barrel wine barrel looks like, right, So imagine that you took the staves going up in that barrel and on one of them you wrote in for nitrogen, and on one p for phosphorus, and on one K for potassium, and all the way around the barrel to where you're writing, like zinc and iron and manganese and all these trace minerals. And then you cut those staves off at a certain height and let's say almost all of them were up at the top, but one stave is only halfway up

the barrel. How much water could you put in the barrel? Only as much as the most limiting height stave will allow. That makes sense. Well, that's how it is with nutrients. If a nutrient, maybe you have plenty of everything in your soil, but you have a nutrient that is limited. That is how much plant production, growth, health you're going to be able to have. So you want to bring the even the trace minerals up to a good amount

in the soil bank account. And think of it as that you're not feeding a plant like you know here you give it a spoonful of fertilizer and it eats it. You're building the soil when you fertilize, so that when those roots need twenty different nutrients out there sixteen primaries, but we have some others that are important too, and when it needs some of that, it's there in the soil bank account, and your grass lawn can grow, your peach tree can grow and produce well, your rosemary herb

can grow and produce well. At the flowers, the vegetables, whatever you're growing. And that that is why we talk about azemiti as a trace mineral supplement, very very important. So hopefully that made a little bit of sense. People get a little confused on minerals and nutrients, like is it too late to use as might No, it's never too late. It is not something we're putting on like nitrogen we do certain times of the year to make the grass grow. It's something we're putting on to build

a saw bank account. So when the grass wants that particular element, it's there, it's ready to go. Hope that helps. If you have had some trees that have had some issues this year, you probably ought to give Martin spoon Moore a call. Martin is that Affordable Tree Service. Affordable Tree Service is our go to company on garden Line when it comes to tree trimming. Now, this October through February cooler season window is when a lot of pruning gets done. It's the best time to get most types

of pruning done. Although you can prune all times of the year, and the Martin stays busy. Martin does excellent work. And when you do a good job, when you have good service, good price, good job, you stay busy. And so don't delay. Tell him you're from you heard about him on guarden line. Get you up toward the front of the line. Give him a call seven one, three, six, nine, nine, twenty six sixty three. Have him come out. Take a

look at your trees. Look at the overall health. How are they doing, or any branches needing to be removed. If you have young trees, do they need any training to help them get off to a good start. You know, if you don't train a tree when it's young, when it gets old, you're gonna have a mess, and you're gonna get out of chainsaw and you're gonna make big wounds trying to get things back to where they should have been trained to a long time ago. Martin can

advise you on that. If you're gonna have any construction done around a tree, he can advise you on that and tell you how to do it so you don't hurt your tree. Listen, Martin knows what he's talking about. He's been doing this a long time here in the Greater Houston area. His website is a fftree Service dot com. Or you can call seven one three six nine twenty six sixty three. You're gonna need to talk to Martin

or Joe. If you don't, you call the wrong place seven to one three six nine nine twenty six sixty three. Get on his schedule so he can come out and take care of your trees. They are the single most valuable plants in your landscape. They do a lot of things for us, very very important. I was talking about gifts for gardeners and ideas for gifts and items for gardeners. Gardening books are another great idea. You know, if someone

is really into herb growing. Now there's a book produced a long time ago, and oh my gosh, the names escaping me now. Madeline Hill and Gwyn Barclay are the authors of it, Texas Herb Growing. Maybe the name of it my brain just went blank on it. I'll figure it out anyway. That is a good book. Doug Wells wrote a book called a Garden Almanac for Texas and it tells you what to do each month of the year. I've got one out there called Texas month by month gardening,

same kind of thing. There are books that are excellent on flowers, books that are excellent on antique roses. Doctor Welch I had one called Perennial Garden Color that is the standard for Texas perennials, the old time perennials on the new ones. Perennial Garden Color a great gift book for that, And there are many other books out there. I guess I ought to put a list of recommended books on the website. That'd be a probably a good edition,

but a good quality book. You know, it can be a freezing coals leading day outside and you can get open that book and you've gone back into gardening again. You're dreaming and you're learning, and you're getting better getting more information on it. So a book is a good a good gift for gardeners. Now they're they're coffee table books. I'm not a huge fan of coffee table books, but they are beautiful for looking at you know, you put them on the table and people look at them and

get inspired. But I like the blue collar meat and potatoes, get down in the dirt and get it done kind of book. But we mentioned before a subscription to Texas Gardener magazine is a gift. Texas Gardener is, to my knowledge, the last remaining private gardening magazine for state, for a state in the country, Texas the last one to still have a gardening magazine for Texas. Or's not a Nebraska Gardening or a New Jersey Gardening and so on. But

there's a Texas Gardener magazine written by Texas gardeners. I know almost all the authors in it, and they're excellent, and it's written for Texas gardeners. So anybody who either is a gardener or wants to be a gardener, get them a subscription to that. You can do a print subscription, you can do an online subscription where you view the magazine online. That's kind of popular now, or you can

do both. You can do it either way. Anyway you go by Texas garden is the website for that if you want to be part of that good local inspiration. And by the way, if you're heard the term that all politics is local, have you ever heard that, well, I would like to say all gardening advice is local too.

magazine written in Texas helpful for that. And gardening shows. Local gardening shows like garden Line here in the Greater Houston are very helpful for getting good local advice. You can also get the kind of advice when you go visit one of our independent garden centers here in the Grider Houston area. I talk about them on garden Line all the time. You know, they are north, south, east, west, and central, no matter where they live, all directions and central.

We have got quality garden centers with staff that know what they're talking about. And you know you've heard me ripe about this before, but I had been into big box stores, and here we go big box stores and stores that sell everything from pajamas to microwaves to plants, those kind of places. The likelihood of getting good advice or slim. I went into one one time, and I'd set up to train employees at it. I was saying, I'm doing a good thing here, just getting some training in.

And I went to talk to the manager and he was gone. The garden center manager was gone, and the new guy was in. I said, oh, I'm supposed to be here doing her training. Okay. I said, well, so where are you from? And he goes, oh, I was at the jewelry counter and they moved me to gardening. Okay, and you're selling chemicals that people are going to use on their lawns. I've been to a big box store before. I was looking at the wall of products up there on the wall, and a young lady walked up, May

I help you? And I always like to ask a question or two just to see if they are able to help, And turns out I asked, oh, what were you doing for this?

gift certificates and the importance of that. I mentioned that our local garden centers, of course have the quality plants and advice and many products in their gift shops that just are outstanding for gift ideas, that is for sure. Do you know Ace Hardware also has some really good gift ideas I love. I was in an ACE gosh when was this about three weeks ago? And looking at the kids toys? Do you think of Ace when you

think of kid's toys? Were you should? And there were a lot of cool stuff, a lot of and some some of the retro kinds of things, you know, like Lincoln logs. How many of you remember Lincoln logs. I played with Lincoln logs to the cows came home and the dogs chewed them up. I loved those things. And you can still buy some cool ptro types of toys

like that at ACE Hardware's as well. Remember every Ace Hardware stores independently owned, so each although it is an ACE and has the standard ACE things there, it's going to have the flavor, if you will, of the owner. It's going to have its own unique version of all the kinds of things that they can carry. But I can tell you this, when you walk into ACE you will find at least a dozen things that you did not know you could buy locally at your local Ace

Hardware store. By the way, time to get in there, get your landscape lighting, get your decorations outdoors, get your lighting and decorations for indoors as well. They are ready to go at ACE Hardware store for this holiday season and they are stocked up. You need to get by there and check it out. All Star Ace Hardware, for example,

is in Spring and in Magnolia, two different locations. You know, there's a lot of ACE Hardware's in the Greater Houston area, Lake Conroe Ace Hardware another place for those of you on the side you Valdi Street Ace Hardware and up in brunn and Brunna Ace Hardware just examples of the many ACE Hardware stores in our area. You can go to Acehardware dot com find the st Or locator and find the stores. Yes that's plural, the East Hardburre stores near you. We're going to head out to Richmond now

and talk to Margaret. Hello, Margaret, welcome to garden Line.

but they are typically circulure in their shape. And so the good news is it's not killing your grass, and those runners stay alive, and when it warms up a little bit, they'll start to grow new grass blades and it'll fill back in green again. Then bad news. While they're well, you don't have to treat. The bad news is is those bear is now sunlight is hitting the soil and you're more likely to have weed seeds start

to grow. So you can put a pre emergent herbicide out to stop weed seeds, or just know that you're going to be dealing with them in those areas and be ready to do that. There are fungicides that will stop brown patch from occurring, but once you have the circles, they don't make the circle green. It's already you missed the boat on those spots. Some people, when they get a few of those circles, they'll go ahead and treat with the fungicide so that you don't get more of

them to stop more from forming. And if you if you go to my website, it's an easy website to remember, I'm Skip Rickter. The website is gardening with Skip, Gardening with Skip dot com. I have lawn care schedules to tell you how to mow, water and fertilize, and then I have a schedule that's the lawn pest and disease and weed management schedule. And as you go from January through December, it's a big chart January to December, and there'll be a line for weed prevention, a line for

weed control of existing weeds. There's a line for insects, a line for diseases, and it tells you when all that needs to be done so you can avoid those in the future.

There's a bazillion woodworking tools. If someone is in a kind of home repair, do it yourself, do it yourselfers and things like that, then you know a good tool is going to be happy, happiness for them when they get it. If it is a gardener on your list or somebody who wants to be a gardener, a quality tool for them is important as well. And listen, I have owned a lot of tools over time over my time, and sometimes they are cheap, and cheap is a good

word for them because they don't last. They don't last. Buy I'm a quality tool. Buy I'm a quality pruner set that is excellent idea. Pruners are saws. One of my favorite tools is a soil knife. Soil knife is like a big old booie knife with a curve cupped blade with serrated on one side. It is excellent for working in the soil. There are other ideas on tools like the kneeling bench. I always talk about Southwest Fertilizer. Bob's got the kneeling benches down there. It folds up,

you store it, you bring it out. It's a seat. If you'll turn it one way, you flip it over it's a kneeling bench and the legs become handles to get back up off your knees. If you're north of forty you know what I'm talking about. Lots of good tools out there for gardeners. We're gonna take a little break here and we'll be back. Welcome back to garden Line. Good to have you with us today. Hey, we got a short amount of time here. Got a few calls to get through. I did have someone that asked about

last week. Luis Tomorrow called in and we were talking about Christmas gift ideas from Warren Southern Gardens and Kingwood Garden Center, and someone asked about what were the locations for those. Warren Southern Gardens is in Kingwood, Texas and it is on North Park Drive. Kingwood Garden Center is on in Kingwood, Texas and it's on Stone Hollow Drive. Both are open seven days a week. Run Southern Gardens,

North Park Drive, Kingwood Garden Center, Stonehaller Drive. It is not fair that the people in Kingwood have both of those garden centers right in the backyard right there. That is a that is a great thing. All right, We're gonna run out to the phones here and talk to Billy and Tomball. Hey Billy, welcome to garden Line. Hey, hey, I just going Thanks for taking my call.

decay in time, even pressure treated lumber. But I've made beds out like two by ten pressure treated lumber before, and you can do that. Some people don't want to do that because there's chemicals in it, and that's fine. That's fine. The other way to go probably the I think one of the best ways to go is to use a metal bed that has a treatment to the metal like galvanization. Usually they have even better stuff now to do that, and then is painted on the outside.

That gives you the most life out of that bed. It doesn't rust away like a piece of tin would rust. So those I used to have a sponsor called Vego Garden Beds. They are in North Houston, located in North Houston. They produce a lot of those products. As you get to a nicer, nicer bed like that, the prices do go up, but I think they're pretty reasonably priced, and

you can find some that have corrugated sides. You can get them in various colors that are earth tones, you know, like a tan or a brown or other variations on that, and they work really well. The thing I like about those is they're very The walls are thin enough to where if you've got a small area and you want to fit a bunch of beds in, it doesn't the

bed itself doesn't take up as much space. I used to make beds out of cinder blocks, which you could also do by cinder blocks a couple of bucks apiece and lay them on the ground. And now you've got an eight inch tall bed that you put soil on. But there you're losing. You're losing eight inches on both sides of a bed, and so you start taking up more of your yard that way. Sure.

it for example? Right, And we found minimal, minimal amount of that. But some people will put plastic lining around the bed wood that they don't want to leach in. It's good to everybody, but I do know that like a Vego bed made out of that not galvanized bit. It's like galvanizing and then painting it. Those things, they'll have their food grade. There's nothing to leach or anything like that. So it's just up to you. Some people worry about fly ash put into cinder blocks as being

a potential health hazard. I don't worry about that stuff myself, but I respect the fact that people do. So it's all up to you.

them together. That way you have less area of your garage or wherever you're storing them taken up right, Okay, water them?