gardening tips for bugs

H Garden Line with skip rictor shoes, crazy heresies, gasp you can just watch him as wosis gas so many good things to seepbot basic ways, gassies like gas baby can you did? Doubles back again? Not a sign? Glasses a gas the sun, beamon of a tree, bring the gasses and gas can starting you did? Good morning, Glad to have you with us this morning. Welcome to garden Line. We're looking forward to whatever things are of interest you. What are your questions about gardening? What have you what

would you like tried? Is there something we can help you with in terms of diagnosing, identifying, or do you just like to talk about gardening. I can certainly understand that one for sure. If you would like to give us a call, our phone number is seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. I am really I'm actually really enjoying the weather that we've been having. I enjoy a mix of the weather, and you know, we've got to have times

where it rains, time where it doesn't some sunshine. Of course, it's summer. We can gripe about the heat, but it's summer. It's part of the deal. All we need to do is focus on getting our work done in the early morning hours, in the late afternoon hours or very late or I should say early evening actually ours. Uh. Just always want to be safe, and I encourage you. I know, when I was a

kiddo, I was pretty invincible. Nothing would kill me. And then one day I don't know how I was, but it was up in the teens or early twenties, I ended up with almost having a heat stroke from being out in the sun and just working and work in those a time where we were doing a lot of physical work and farm work and different kinds of things. I overloaded and as a result, it almost knocked me down. Good.

Heat stroke and heat exhaustion and all those things are serious, and I encourage you to know and obey the warning signs when you see someone or when you start feeling things, feeling flush. There's just a lot of symptoms of it. I'm not a doctor, so I won't tell you what they all are. You can find those out yourself. But when you start noticing things just aren't quite right, you need to take care of it. But even before that, you need to plan so that you don't get into that situation

because a lot of those problems sneak up on us. And that's what happened to me. I thought I was fine. I mean, just gut up and go right, you can do it. But well, I tell you what, it's life threatening, so don't mess with it. Another thing we don't want to mess with is our skin. Skin damage is cumulative, and the more you're out getting sun on your skin. Number number one, it's there's the danger of long term skin damage that has all kinds of issues that

we have to deal with. But there's also the fact that you know it, it's cooler to wear a long sleeved cotton type shirt or something else that's got a good SPF factor because it's it's actually your Your perspiration soaks into the materials and then evaporates away, cooling you off. The sun doesn't actually hit your skin and heat it up that way. Uh, And I've made that

switch to over the years too. What I'm going to get out, even though it's summer, long sleeve, loose fitting shirt, it just works really really well SPF sunscreens, making sure you wear a hat or something if you're if you have bare skin, you're ears your head, your neck, all those things. Here, I am lecturing you like your mom. Well I'm not really, I'm just saying from one friend to another, Hey, let's take care of ourselves. We want a garden for a really long time and

enjoy it. And just something that's kind of been in my mind lately as things have really heated up and the weather is heated up, so drank plenty of water. That's another one. It sneaks up on you. All right, Well you're listening to garden Line. I'm gonna stop the advice that was unsolicited and we'll just start talking about gardening. The fire beds that I have are I've been taking care of them, putting some nice quality multures down.

Had a shredded mulch that I was I have been using now for a while from Nature's Way Resources. Nature's Way is a wonderful company that really was at the lead of quality soil care products. You know the mantra stuff before green stuff. Well, Nature's Way is all about the brown stuff. They're up there almost a conro up I forty five about where fourteen eighty eight comes in.

They're on the east side, just across the railroad tracks. Real easy to get to, and the quality products they have, there's just so many. I mean, I could spend the whole hour just naming and describing some of the mini products that they carry. If you're looking for specific mixes like

for ctrus or for cactus or something like that, they have it. If you want to grow blueberries or azaleas or something that likes acid loving condition or acid conditions guardinias Headrangis, they've got a blueberry mix that works great for that.

They were the ones who actually created, in partnership with the Houston Roads Society, the premium rose soil blend that's out there on the market, and it just goes on and on. Anything you need you need some expanded shale mixed with composts to help create a long term loose of that clay soil. Nature's Way has that they stay, i would say, on the cutting edge of how things go in the soil making, the compost making, the bed

mix making industries. They take their time to do it right, and when you get a product from Nature's Way, you know that you're going to improve your soil significantly, or in the case of mulches, you can go on the surface that you're going to create a high quality mulch, and that's that's some of the material that I've been using this past week is some of their double aged double or native age double ground mulch. That is an excellent,

outstanding molts. They have many other really high quality ones as well, but that's just one I've been using and I think it works super super well. Nature's Way is open Monday through Friday from eight to five and Saturday from eight am to two pm. They're closed today, they'll be back open tomorrow as well. If you want to give them a call, it's nine three six three two one sixty nine ninety three six three two one sixty nine ninety.

They have some outstanding opportunities to get quality products at a very very good price right now. Tell them that you heard about them on garden Line. This is important. Have your attention just for a moment here because this is important. Tell them you heard about it on garden Line, and you will get a huge discount on all kinds of soil based products there at Nature's Way.

And now's a good time to do it. I realize it's hot outside, but little early morning work and stuff fall planting is just around the corner. We're going to be planting starting planting our vegetable gardens. Actually we kind of already have a way of tomatoes and whatnot, but we'll be doing a lot of vegetable garden planning in September, even late August. Flowers, same kinds

of things. If you're going to put any kind of a woody shrub or perennial or tree in the ground, there's not a better time than fall. But now's the time to get your soil red. Get the brown stuff first and then the green stuff. And Nature's Way Resources can help you get super high quality brown stuff. And by the way, that is also their website,

Naturesway Resources dot com. You're listening to the Garden Line. Our phone number is seven one three two one two KTRH and we're gonna take a little break here and when we come back, we will go to Mike in Northwest Houston and kick things off on the phones. Welcome back to guard Line. Hey, we're glad you're listening this morning. I hope you have a cup of coffee or whatever it takes to get those eyes open. And we got a lot to talk about because we want you to have a beautiful, beautiful

landscape. We want you to have a bountiful garden, whether it's vegetables or flowers or herbs, and it all is available to you. All it takes is some good information to get you off on the right foot. Like I like to say, there's no brown thumbs, there's uninformed thumbs. And we're here to inform your thumb. And we're going to head straight out to the phones right now and talk to Mike in northwest Houston. Well, good morning, Mike, and welcome to guard Line. Hello Mike or Texas State Guardsmen.

Yeah, I'm here. Okay, go ahead, can you hear me? Okay, yeah. Let me give a quick shout out to all the state Texas State Guardsmen who are out helping with the pass out supplies and water and ice to everybody that suffered from the hurricane. The question is because they're doing good work. The question is, with all the rain and all the water on the ground right now, is there anything we should do to try to take advantage of it or to head off issues? Are we talking about

the context of like a lawn or what? Yeah? Like yeah, around the house? I mean, yeah, not mass We don't Yeah, I probably misled you with that. But anyway, just when we get off you know, when we go off duty and we go home with all this rain, is there something we should do to take advantage of it or to make things better. Well, we got a lot of water on the ground, right. We don't want to work the soil when it's very very wet,

especially clay soils that destroys the structure. And then when they dry out, we got little blocks of concrete in the ground that are very hard to work with. But when it's moist, you know, dry, it's hard and hard and you don't can't work it. Super wet, you don't want to

work it. But in the middle there's this sweet spot where it crumbles apart, and that would be a good time to do any kind of soil preparation because you know, we could go back into a drought period for a month, and if anything you can do to get your beds ready for fall or for any future planting, take advantage whether they say make hay while the sunshines, well, this is a great time to be able to do some soil improvement. As it begins to dry out just to a little bit more so

you would want to avoid that. It's also an easier time when the soil is moist to pull up weeds when you're you know, going to do some hand pulling, or if you've got one of those little tools like Grandpa's weeder that just pulls the pop pops them out of the ground, you never have to bend over. When the soil is moist, they come out easy and it's much less work. And then it gets dry it's harder to do. This would be important time to stay ahead on mowing because the number one thing

making those that grass grow right now is the water. As it gets dry, grass is going to slow down. But boy, when it gets good rainfall, it's as if you fertilized it. The grass really takes off growing. So stand ahead on that. Those are a few things. Look, I just wondered if there was like, you know, like hey, seize the moment. Yeah, those are some of the things I think. I think also more so than just the fact that we had a bunch of rain,

is where we are on the calendar. And you know that I've said earlier when I started the show talking about vegetable plantings for fall, there's times when you need to get them in so that you get your crop before the first frost hits or something like that. And so we want to be watching those and stand ahead of that. But it's always a good time to build the soil. Mike, I appreciate you call a sure, Yeah called before, I'll call again, all right, look forward to it. Yeah,

that you know, there's all these adages out there. And someone told me the other day that I speak in adages a lot, or speak in sayings a lot and stuff. But it's a thing that comes to mind, like right then, you know that make haywell, the sunshines. He who hesitates is lost. A stitch in time will save nine. That they're true. There's a reason there's adages. They're true. I say this about pest control

a lot too. The sooner you respond to a pest problem, the more options you have, and the more least toxic options you have, and the more benefits you can do. So let me give you an example. If you have caterpillars that are chomping on your plants, if you jump in there early on with a square to bet on the foliage, they eat it, they get sick, they die, and it's very effective. The older, the caterpillars get BT becomes less effective. Plus with each molting they get bigger

jaws and they eat more leaf area per day. And so you can go from oh, there's a caterpillar on my plant to oh, I don't have any leaves on my plant pretty quick, and so early response is important. And the caterpillar is just an example. That's true of many other pest issues. Stink bugs when they're young are much more susceptible to a spray. By

the time they get older, they have wings flying around. It takes some pretty potent stuff, synthetic perithoids and whatnot to truly knock them down and kill them. And they're everywhere, and your sprays aren't as effective because you don't have a little cluster of them like when they hatch out as babies don't hesitate on things. If you've got little weeds popping up everywhere, just a slice of the hoe barely underneath the surface, and you just wipe them all out

with almost no work. Once they're established and got good root systems. Now you're hacking away at them, they're already entangled with your plants, are taking water, they're taking nutrients. If you pull them up, you may be damaging some of the plant roots around them. You see what I'm saying, That principle of sooner rather than later, get it done now, and it's

so much better if you're an organic gardener. Especially, this is even more important because our options, in the organic arsenal or the organic pest control options that we have are most effective when the pests are very very young, and you can step in and take action at that time. So that's just a little bit of a ti there to think about. I see a lot of times, you know, I get calls from people, a lot of times when the problem is already so far along that it's kind of late to do

anything. So the analogy or the example that I always uses the guy that's coming home from work at five o'clock. You know, he's hammered from the day of work, and he's shuffling along looking down, and he doesn't notice a problem in his trees up above until he hears leaves rustling under his feet that he's shuffling through, and then he looks up and sees the problem. Well, it's a little bit late to do any good for it, all right, Well, our phone number if you'd like to give us a call

seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Puerscapes is a It's an outstanding company when it comes to anything to make your landscape more beautiful, more effective, make the work that you're doing out there much more productive. And here's what I'm talking about. You need a good design. They can do that. They can design the whole landscape or they can just do some

designs for parts of it. Do you need work on your irrigation system so those hard earned dollars you're spending squirting drinking water on your lawn and plants are more efficiently spent, most efficient. Most irrigation systems are not designed efficiently and they become inefficient as heads get misaligned and other issues happen. Peers Scapes can fix that. Would you like to see some hardscape perhaps, or maybe some landscape lighting. Do you have an area that just is poorly drained and as

a result, plants are not performing there very well. Peers Scapes can fix that. They do all of that. Do you have landscape beds that are blaw and you want them to be up kept and looking at their best? Hire them as a quarterly maintenance service to come in, do some cheese, seasonal color changes, to do any kind of weeding and fertilizing, check the area, gation, mulching, if trimming is needed, to do that, and they keep them in tiptop shape. See Pierce Scapes does all of that

and much more. Go to the website peerscapes dot com. Look at the examples of the work that they can do. It is very impressive. Or give them a call two eight one three seven oh fifty sixty two eight one three seven zero five zero six zero. Now it would be a great time to give Pierscapes a call. Fall is coming and that is an awesome season to do major renovations in the landscape. Give them a call now, get

on the boards with them. What any design work that's needed. You know, just making sure you're scheduled out there and have them come out and transform your place into something beautiful because when fall comes and the temperatures cool off, you're going to spend a lot more time wanting to live outside and enjoy that landscape. Our phone number is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one two five eight seven four. If you'd like

to give us a call. We'll talk about the things that are most of interest to you. If you haven't done summer fertilization, now's the time to get it done. You still can do summer fertilization now. I would recommend a slow release product being my first option, and the reason for that is grass takes up a little nitrogen every day. It doesn't take up a year's

worth of nitrogen in one week. And sometimes people want to go out and just dump a bunch of immediately available nitrogen down and feed the lawn for the summer, and it doesn't work that way. Excessive amounts they wash away, they volatilize the way into the atmosphere. They cause a flush of grass top growth at the expent of root growth, and none of that is good. That's a less resilient grass plant to grub, damage to droughts and other things.

Nitrofoss Superturf is the fertilizer that is a slow release. It's a silver bag by Nitroposs. It will feed your lawn all the way through the coming weeks and months, all the way up until it's time to do fall fertilization. Nitrofos Superturf is widely available. Like all nitrofoss products. You're going to find it in many different places. Ace Hardware Stores, the Plantation Ace out there in the Richmond area. You're going to find it at Southwest Fertilizer down

on businest Runwick and many many other locations. DND feed up and tom Ball carries it easy to find Nitropos Superturf and now's the time to get that down. We're going to take a little break now for the news and I will be right back. If you'd like to get on the boards, give us a call seven one three two one two KTRH. Fine. Thanks for tuning in this morning. We got plenty of things we can talk about when it comes to gardens and taking care of gardens and things you know, plans for

all seasons. On two forty nine, which is Tomball Parkway is a long term nursery, a family operated nursery, one of our independent garden centers. That the kind we go to when we want good information, when we want quality plants, and we want service that is very important when it comes to garden centers and plants for all seasons. Is that kind of garden center you know, they've been around since nineteen seventy three. The Flowerty family has been

operating plants for all seasons. They are experts when it comes to the plants that grow here, how to care for and plant and care for plants here, and just helping you along the way. If you've got a brown thumb, walk in there and they'll turn it green with good information, with good guidance. You can bring them samples, you can bring them pictures. Whatever you need, they will help you. Maybe it's a product that you need

to manage a particular pest. Listen. They've been through decades of answering these same questions. They know what works, they know it doesn't work. Go to Plants for all seasons. From their education to the selection that they have, the fact that they do liver all kinds of things. They are true lawn and garden experts. Plants for all Seasons dot Com two eight one three seven six, sixteen forty six two eight one three seven six one six four

six. We're going to go to the phones now and head out to Humboldt to talk to Lee. Hello, Lee, good morning. I want to RePOP my orchid, but it's in a plastic container. And I don't know the particular names of the orchids carts, okay, but it has two shoes going through the plastic container. Can I cut that plastic container off? And what do I need to buy to RePOP my ipit? You can cut it off. Let me ask this question. Did you get it at like a

grocery store? I got it your home depot in Walmart. Okay, all right, so that tells me what kind of orchid it is. You've got a moth orchid and those are the easiest orchid to grow. And so what you want to do is you want to take it out of the old container. If I don't quite follow the going through the container, but cut it away however you need to do it to get that orchid free. You want to cut off any dead roots, and you can see they're shrunken down.

They're not plump and healthy looking. Usually those are lower down on the stem, the lowest roots, and as the stem grows up, roots keep coming out of the stem higher and higher on the stem, and save those roots. You want to pot it up in a good orchid mix. And we've got some great garden centers that provide some really quality mixes for growing orchids that are going to be very chunky, like chunks of bark may They may have

a little bit of charcoal in them. They could have some kind of an expanded shale or haydike kind of material, or clay dried clay balls in them, anything like that swagn of moss. Those orchids need really good drainage. You want them to be able to get moisture and hold a little bit in the mix. But they live on the outside of a tree in the jungle. They cling to the barks. You get wet when it rains and then they dry out. There's no soggy, wet soil for an orchid, So

make sure you get a true quality orchid mix for that. And being out there in the Humbul area, you got some ace hardware stores that are going to have that kind of mix that you can use. You're not too far away from Kingwood where there's worn in southern gardens. Kingwood garden centers gonna have those kind of mixes as well, and so that's important. You want to get a little bit larger pot. You don't need a large large pot,

but i'd bump it up to the next size pot. And then once you get it potted up, water it in a few times with a very fertilizer solution, something that you know, you mix in water to loote down. It can be organic or synthetic, but a very dilute solution, and just as you water, do that and it'll give it a little bit of a

boost to get it growing. Make sure you give it as much light as you can, whether it's in a bright window where the sun doesn't hit it directly, or if you got it outside in a very very shady area, that is the key, and it'll start growing and next thing you know it's going to be going through its bloom cycle. Again. Well, thank you very much, because I'm in beginner it is. I love orchids, but

I've never tried to repot one, but thank you. You pick the right one that is the probably the easiest orchid to grow, and the more you work with it, the better you get. And sometimes you know, you may have one that you lose, but overall you're going to have success. And you may see them growing and growing and or just they're alive and they're sitting there and they won't bloom, and that's usually because of a lack of

adequate sunlight or not getting They need sunlight, they need indirect light. Excuse me, I shouldn't have said sunlight in that sense. They need bright indirect light. They like. They don't be at all less than great light area. If you want the top performance out of them, they'll grow in less light. They'll sit there, they'll get darker green, but they're not going to bloom for you if they don't get adequate light. Okay, okay, well, thank you very much. All right, Lee, Thanks, I

appreciate your call very much. Thanks a lot. Star of Hope has been around for many, many years in the Houston Areia, to be exact, they just celebrated their one hundred and seventeenth anniversary one hundred and seventeen years. They're one of the oldest and largest homeless providers in America. Over a thousand homeless people, a thousand homeless and nearly homeless men, women and children every day are helped by Star of Hope. They serve about six thousand meals a

week. They have a van that goes out right now, you know, with the excessive heat and things, people that need help, but they don't just do handouts. They do that, but they don't just do handouts. They are about changing lives. They're changing lives in a christ centered community that turns lives, that turns families around, jobs, hope, freedom from substance abuse, help for the kids, that help in getting back on their feet, for people that are willing to follow the program and stay with it,

They change lives. I cannot think of a better way to spend your dollar to put your compassion to work than Star of Hope ministries. You can go and learn more, and I hope you will sohmission dot org. There's ways you can volunteer, there's things you can donate, and when it comes down to donating, you know it doesn't take much to provide it everything. Do you know that for two dollars and eighty cents they can serve someone a meal

two dollars and eighty cent donation? I mean that is that is chicken feed for us, and yet it's huge for someone else who doesn't have in needs and it's trying to make a difference for them and their family. Star Hope Missions. I can't recommend it any stronger. Let's go out now to Rose Sharon and we're going to talk to the Dennis. Hello, Dennis, Hi, how are you doing? Hello? Hello? Hello? Can you hear me? All right? I believe we're going to take a break. Dennis,

hang on if you're there. We're going to come back to you when we get back from break. But our phone number if you'd like to give us a call seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four play tram ad Buck Sexton. Can you hop about the guard line? Good to have you with us this morning. We got a lot of things we can talk about. One thing I want to talk about is trees that this storm that

just went through was devastating. I was talking to somebody yesterday and they were describing to me in their section of Houston the trees that they have seen, the damage that they've seen, and it just it's like a war zone. Whenever storm's hit, trees are at risk and proper pruning and care. Proper begins with proper training, but it even goes into as a tree is old

or some selective pruning can be helpful when storms come. Whether it's a hurricane and we're in the start now of a very what's predicted to be a big, big, hurricane season, but it could also be just regular storms that aren't attached to hurricanes, like the one we had a while back that devastated

so many trees. Affordable Tree Service Martin Spoon Moore is a company that can come out and they can make sure that everything that's possible that can be done for that tree is done so that it has the best chance that we can provide it in getting through these storms without serious damage. I can't stress enough the importance of proper tree care coming in to the storm season that we are now already into. You can call them at seven to one three six nine

nine twenty six sixty three. That's seven one three six nine nine two six six three, or go to the website aff Tree Service dot com. Aff Tree Service dot com have Martin Spoon Moore come out. Of course, he doesn't just do tree trimming. They do deeper feeding, They do deeper watering during drought times. They can also come out and advise you as you're doing

any kind of a work around the tree. It is so important to have a tree service person that knows what they're talking about to guide you before you do damage that is not easily fixable, like putting a trench too close to the trunk and other things like that. Call Affordable Tree seven one three six nine nine two six six three. I'm going to go to the phones now and we're going to head out to Rose Sharon to talk to Dennis. Hey, Dennis, Welcome to garden Line. Hello, Skip. I want to

do a follow up question. Can you hear me? Yes, sir, I wanted to I've talked to you before about the assassin sting bus and you gave me good tips on how to sweep them into a bucket of soapy water and try to get them off of the tomatoes. I want to know if there's something I can do to prevent them from coming to my garden. They've

just moved. They've wiped out the tomatoes, and then they moved onto the honey dews, and now they're moving onto the watermelons, And is there anything I can do to prevent them and make them go to somebody else's garden? Well, the fast answers know, But there's things that are somewhat like that. For example, there are crops that we call trap crops that they like, and if you can get those out and get the stink bugs to those.

You can spray them and control them early on on those crops before then here comes your tomatoes and now they're moving, oh there to your tomatoes. So it helps to have a trap crop. It's not a panacea for sure, but things like sunflowers, the little sun they love sunflowers really, any kind of a grain like that. Pearl millet is one we've used in the past as a trap crop, but they come to them like the little sunflowers. Another one they like a cardoon, the little blooms on cardoons, which

is a thistle looking kind of an artichoke looking plant. They love those. There are some other plants that you can use as trap crops, but you just put them out there and get them doing their thing early. The stink bugs when they're coming along there's no tomatoes to hit yet, or the other plants that peach, fruit and other things that they like to feed on, and then you just spray them on those plants. So it's almost like a

bait station, if you will. For those starbugs. Yeah, I haven't had problem with these previously, but the last two years they've come on me hard and I have them. They're a problem. Yeah, Well, they I don't know how you've missed them before, because they they're ubiquitous. They're all around. And I tell Gardner, learn what the eggs look like. You go online google that, find out what they look like. Learn what the nymphs look like, because they don't look the same when they're new hatched

as they do when they're adults. And so once you know what you're looking for. At those early stages, they don't have wings, and they're easy to just vacuum or swat into water or however you want to go about it, or spray them. They're more susceptible to sprays at that stage too. Okay, I thank you for your time, sir. All right, good luck in that battle. I know that's a formidable foe. You got your your sights on there, Dennis. Thank you, Thank you a lot for

the call. Our phone number is seven to one three two one two kt RH seven one three two one two kt r H. Talking about bugs, Nitrophis has a product called bug out Max. Bug Out Max is a granule that you put in your lawn and then you put a little bit of water on it to wash the product off the granule and into the thatch and lawn surface area where it goes to work. Do you know if you have pets,

they get fleas when they go out in the yard. Those fleas can actually be dropping off into the thatch of the grass where eggs are laid, where you can have nymphs that are growing, and then they become adults and the dog runs by or the cat goes by and they hop up on them and bring them back inside. So part of breaking that cycle of fleas and ticks is dealing with them not just on your pet, but also outdoors in the thatch, and night Fuss bug Out Max is very effective for that.

Also, chinchbugs here they come. We're about to enter chinchbug season, soid webworm season, if we're going to have one this year, is going to be occurring. It could be occurring starting now, but it typically comes a little bit later, but it can really occur anytime. And if you look at my garden line schedule, my skip erchter, lawn care, pests, disease and weed management schedule, you'll see exactly when to do treatments for these

particular kinds of pests. Night Foss Bugout Max is widely available, being a night foss product. You're going to find it at RCW Nursery. You're going to find it at the Ace Hardware Storing Kingwater a task Casita. You're going to find it at Stanton Shopping Center down in alvin As well. Night foss bug out Max for what bugs You? That ought to be the slogan for what bugs You. You're listening to Garden Line and our phone number is seven

one three two one two kt rh IL. You'd like to give us a call, we will be happy to visit with you about the things that are most of interest to you. A couple of things I was wanting to visit about out in my gardens. I'm still doing planting in the vegetable garden. I kind of have to do it as I can get around to it, because it seem to be run around doing a lot of other things, like

sitting here doing the radio show, and as I'm getting things planted. First of all, in this he eat, it helps to have some sort of a shade over the planting row. You don't have to and I plan oakroh without shade over the row, for example, but if you provide a little bit of shade just to help those soil temperatures. It helps the seeds get going and get started. And when you're planting, the most important watering that you do is before you plant, I want to just pause and let that

sink in. Well, there's no plants, why would I water. Well, here's why. When you give the bed a good soaking, let's say a day or two before you plant, that water soaks down inches below the surface, down into the soil. So then when you put your seed in, yes, you're going to water it again. But when it germinates and sends that root down, it's not dry soil down there, it's already a

bank account of nutrients. Because in those first days, even the first week or two, when that seedling is getting started, if it dries out from the minute it starts to germinate, if it dries out, it dies, And so having that bank account down in the soil is really important, especially in this heat. So preplant watering. Then when you plant a light watering. For some types of tiny seeds, you want to use a mist because you don't want to dislodge them and splash them all over the place. But

that is a secret to getting going. And then of course having a little shade over the row. If there's at all a question about it, or we weigh above germination temperature, a shade over the row will help them get started. You can just leave it on for a week or two and then take it off. You don't need to leave it there, but that's important because if you measure the soil temperature an inch below the surface, which that's where seeds are, right an inch or less below the surface. If you

do that, you're going to find that it is blazing hot. Just like your sidewalk, and certainly just like the asphalt. It gets blazing hot on the soil surface, and that's where your seeds are. Give them moisture, give them a little bit of shade. That's a tip for success starting seeds out in your summer garden. Well, here we are, I hear music. That must mean it's time for the top of the hour news. I want to remind you that you've heard me talk about these schedules, the lawn

care schedule and my disease past week management schedule. Those are on my website at Gardeningwithskip dot com Gardening with Skip dot com. Go check them out, print them out, carry them with you when you go shopping because you'll see exactly what your options are and you show the folks this is the product I need, or put them in the garage so next time you fertilize, you got them right there to help and guide you. We'll be right back.

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any of the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to kt r H Garden Line with Skip rictor It's shows Basy gas trip. Just watch him as wakes the spot bases gas by can you not s gas Sun? Themons of Welcome to guard Line. Welcome back to guard Line. Good to have you with us. If you'd like to give us a call, ask a question about gardening. Let's help you have a more bountiful garden, a more

beautiful landscape. Well, here's the number seven to one three two one two kt r H seven one three two one two kt r H. Landscaper's Pride has been making quality products both for in the soil and on the soil for a long time. Landscaper's Pride, you can think of it as a way of recycling nature back into wonderful things for our plants. And right now with the sun blazing down, multch, maultch. Maultch is so important. There are very few products that the list of benefits is as long as is the

list for mulch. Because maltch helps prevent crusting of the soil from rain drops crusting. It prevents erosion of the soil. It takes the impact of that rain and lets it percolate right down into the soil. It moderates soil temperature. I was talking about that earlier, Very important because soil gets Take a thermometer out when you have a warm, hot day, stick a thermometer down in the soil. I'll put it on two inches and just measure how hot

that really is down there. That is too hot for roots, that's too hot for seedlings to germinate up in the top, especially on the top inch. Most fixes that, most does other things. It decomposes over time to feed the soil. Think about the forest. Who fertilizes the forest? I mean, I know there's you know, some parrot poop fallen around, but what actually is providing nutrients for the soil in the forest. The trees drop their leaves, then they drop more leaves on them, They decompose away,

they release their nutrients. Microbes are certainly involved in the whole process, and it just gets better. And so I could go on and on about the benefits of mulch, and landscaper's pride has got some quality. Whence they've got black velvet mult which is a naturally dark colored, beautiful velvety dense multch. It's not dyed maults it is, but it is a very dark, beautiful

malts. That's why we call it black velvet. They have hardwood multes, shredded hardwood, not ground up palettes like some cheap junk out there on the market. Is but true shredded hardwood trees, organic hardwood based mult is ideal for walkways and flower beds recreational areas. Then they've got pine bark the most popular one. It's the slowest perhaps in the decomposition rate, but a lot of people love pine bark. I like the cedar malts, and I like

the cypress moults too. For example, cedar malts that nice aroma that comes with fresh cedar, and then the beautiful red streaking that is occurring there naturally within the product itself. And then cypress molts and nice light color mults that really stays in place and doesn't tend to wash away at all. Very durable,

very very excellent. All of these excellent choices from Landscaper's Pride. Go to Landscaper's Pride landscapers Pride dot com and there you'll find all the places where you can buy these and believe me, they are widely available throughout the greater Houston area. You can also learn more about each of these products there at that website. Well, you're listening to Guardline and we're here to help you have success in what you're trying to do. So if you get any kinds

of questions we can assist you with. We'd be more than happy to do that. I want to make a I want to make a point about wasps. I know when I say the word wasp, a lot of people cringe because the first thing we think of are those paper wasp nests up under the eaves. But there's many kinds of wasp. There's little, tiny, tiny knat size parasitoid wasp, and this is cool stuff. They lay eggs and in for example, one type lays eggs inside an aphid, and the egg

hatches and consumes the interior body of the aphid. The aphid swells up and get troll luffy and big, and then the wasp comes crawling out. It's like watching the movie Alien on an entomological level. Pretty cool stuff. There are wasps that are predators, and those paper wasps that we have are predators. Do you know the number one food of paper wasps is caterpillars, that's their number one food. And so if you have a butterfly garden, yeah,

probably not so big of a fan of paper wasps. But if you've got cabbage and broccoli and you got loopers on them, if you've got tomatoes and you got hornworms on them, if you've got anything. The caterpillars are eating webworms. Those webworms we went through earlier. By the way, I expect another big return of those in the next generation of the summer, So just hang on, stay tuned for that. But webworms, wasp pull those back. They estimated I think it was a group of entomologists in the Midwest

Langrene University entomologists. We're doing an estimate and they figured about seven thousand caterpillars per season for a good sized paper wasp nest. That is a lot of caterpillar That's a lot of pest control for you. Now, if they sting you and you're allergic, well that's life threatening and we don't want to Nobody wants to get stung, even if you're not allergic. But wasp nests, they are out of the way. Just know that's what they're doing. They're

working for you. So if you get rid of the nest, I certainly understand that in an area where it's a threat to you, but consider areas where they're not a threat. Just leaving them alone because they're out there working for you. That's what they do. So just a little bit of a

different glimpse inside of wasps, especially those paper wasps. When I was a kid growing up, every summer I got stung by wasps, and I distinctly remember one summer, probably because I was crawling around in places I shouldn't be doing things I shouldn't do, but I distinctly remember one summer I had gone through the whole summer and a school was about to start and I had not been stung, and it was just like, yes, I did it. I did it. That day a ball went underneath the bush, I reached

under to get it, and whammo, they got me. So I don't know if I ever made it to the summer not getting stung by wasps, but uh, yeah, that was my experience with them. But I appreciate the work that they do now and just stay out of their way. Stay out of their way. Well, if you'd like to give us a call, our number is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven

one three two one two five eight seven four. You know. Sweet Green is a product by Nitrofoss that is an organic type fertilizer for your lawn. It's it's very high in the first number, eleven percent nitrogen. It's made from a base of molasses, and with microbial activity on the molasses, it's turned in actually to a fertilizer. Uh. And this fertilizer is very immediately available, dissolves very quickly, smells wonderful too. By the way that molasses

space. When you put a sugar based substance of the soil, beneficial microbes just thrive, especially the bacteria. They love that carbon based material. That's their food, and so they go right to work on it. That's why

organic gardeners often will use molasses in their gardening. Well, Sweet Green, that product becomes available for your grass very quickly, and I would recommend if you're going to apply it, since it's eleven percent nitrogen, you're going to want to put about a total of about ten pounds per thousand square feet.

Split it in half, but five pounds now, and then six to eight weeks from now, do another five pounds, and by doing that you will spread that nutrient release out over time and have very very good results from sweet Green. Sweet Green from nitrofos, and like all nitrofoss products, very widely available. You go down to Laporte to Fisher's Hardware on Broadway. They've got

it there. In Angleton Lake Hardware and Angleton of Alasco. They have it there are up in Montgomery Gym's Hardware on Liberty another place where you can find nitrofoss products such as this sweet green. I was doing some soul prep work this past week, and a part of part of the job and putting in a new garden is number one. Getting rid of any noxious perennial weeds that

are very difficult to control. You know, if you've got a flower bed that's already in and it is invaded with nut grass and bermuda grass is probably the two prime public enemies number one in two, and I don't know which is one and which is two, but it's very difficult to get in there and control those without hurting your flowers and it's our If it's a vegetable garden, spring things on stuff you're going to eat, you don't do that,

But if you do it ahead of time, you can do. There's a lot you can do to control it, both from an organic and a synthetic standpoint. For most weeds, nut's edge is a little bit of a bigger challenge. I don't know a great organic solution for nutsedge other than hand digging repeatedly. Every time it's stix, it's head above soil. You dig down and get that nut and pull it out. But the bottom line is do your preps ahead of time to get rid of problems before you begin that soil

building process. And I'll talk about that a little bit more in just a moment. Right now, we're going to take a break and I'll be right back. Every hurricane season is different. It only takes one again. Low where a friend, there is a friend. Welcome back to Guardline. Good to have you with us this morning. What do we want to talk about?

You tell me our phone number if you'd like to give me a call seven one three two one two kt r H seven one three two one two kt r H. So I was talking about soul prep before we went to break, and how it's important to get rid of noxious weeds before you put the plants in. It's much easier, Our options are better. Uh, it's just better, better, better in every way. If you've got a lawn full of weeds and you're about to redo it and replant size, now's

your chance. You get out there. You water it to get those weeds growing. Yes, that's right, get the weeds growing, because then you're going to kill it, whether you scrape it up, whether you spray it, well, however you're going to go about it, you're going to get rid of them. But most of the sprays you use on weeds post emergent to kill existing weeds work best, if not only, when the weed is

actively growing. When the weed is actively growing, so you want those weeds to be happy and healthy and growing, and that's when the products do the most work. If that weed is stressed, drought stressed, or whatever, the products just don't have the same effect, believe it or not. And so get them going, get that lawn, get all the stuff you're dealing

with under control before you put the lawn grasp back in. Because once a lawn is in, now we're having a little bit of a challenge finding things that we can put down on the weeds is not going to hurt your lawn, and that is the whole idea is to avoid damage to the lawn, but to make sure that we're getting things ready to go to put that new lawn back in. That's kind of what that what that amounts to. I think that you will you will agree that when it comes to having a beautiful

and a bountiful garden and whatnot. You do want to have one that you're not fighting. We nobody enjoys that, right I don't. In fact, I don't like spray at all. To be honest, my idea of a great Saturday is not to mess, mix up smelly water, to spray on stuff. It's to enjoy plants. It's to enjoy nature. To have success. Well, there's times when we have to step in and do things, but let's minimize them. Minimize those times by gardening smarter rather than harder.

I guess you could say, uh, I've told you a lot about Nelson Water Garden out in Katie, Nelson Water Garden and nursery. Don't forget that part. And nursery right now is having their summer plant sale. They are having all kinds of fruit trees and shrubs and citrus specifically for example, that are on a very significant sale, like fruit trees and shrubs normally forty bucks, now twenty bucks. Citrus, she's seventy five, now thirty five.

Your boy, there's not a better time, and now's a great time to put that citrus in. Just keep it wet, keep it moist. When you plant, we take it out of the container, put it in the ground. Remember the roots are all still in that cylinder you pulled out of the container. So keep watering right there and just beyond that and keep it going and it will get well established. And at this opportunity to get a deal like that, you're not going to do better than that. That is

awesome. Any kind of products you need, you know, they carry the microlife products. They carry asumite and things like that out of Nilson Water Garden and nursery take advantage of it. They have sales of roses going on. There's a really good sale on roses and on azaleas as well. And I realize that it's hot outside, but if you plant a plant properly, you can have very good excess, even planting in the summertime. The key is

in your mind to remember where the roots are. You can have moist soil, but that little roots cellular pumps dry faster than the water can wick in from the moist soil around it. So keep the root cylinder moist, not

soggy, not's oversaturated where roots can't get oxygen, but just moist. And that's going to require a little amount of daily water right there to keep it going cushing with the soil around it moist as well, so that as the roots expand they can get in. But that's a secret to success on summer planting, regular watering. I tell people. The visual that seems to work for me maybe it will for you, is imagine that you just took the pot that you purchased with the plant, and you dug a hole and set

the pot down in the hole with the plant inside. Where would you water? Well, of course you water right there in the pot because there's not roots outside the pot, because there's a pot there to stop it that way, and you'll water properly with the new plants that you put in in the summertime. Just always remember that excess water. Excess water excludes oxygen in a blazing summer heat, it's as bad or worse than not having enough water. So touch and go. But you can do it. You can have success.

Nelson Water Garden, by the way, if you haven't been by there there, you got to Katie on Iten and you turn north on Katie Fort Ben Road and they're just across the tracks a little bit upstreet there on the right hand side. Their water gardens are outstanding and listen on a blazing summer

day, I think it was it's like going to the park. You get your friends, getting the cargo out there and sit among all those are stroll among all those water features, hearing the beautiful sound of water, seeing the beautiful features too. You're gonna want to have that in your backyard. I know I did when I first went out there. That was the first thing I thought, is, Okay, I gotta have this because it is so

therapeutic. And you know, when you have the sound of water, it brings birds in more also, and the birds will find it, they will show up and they'll be very grateful for that. You can get all that you have them come in and install a feature, or you can just do it yourself. They're more than happy to give you the supplies and tell you how to do it if you're do it yourself. For that's another option that you can take. All of this is out there at Nelson Water Garden and

Nursery out in Katie Oh. I have not told you this about Nelson Water Garden before, and every time I think back on talking about them, I thought, why did not tell them? You ought to see the indoor houseplants that they have in that store. They are beautiful. If you want house plants that aren't just green, that offer patterns and structure and different texture in

the foliage and all kinds of things. They have a great selection right in the big middle of the store when you walk in, and they are beautiful, and I would encourage you to stop by there because you know, summer is a great season to be taking care of the house plants in our house, and that's a way to bring nature indoors. Check out the house plants that they have. I'm telling you that the selection is really really beautiful.

You're listening to Guardenline. Our phone number is seven one three two one two kt r H. Seven one three two one two kt r H. You'd like to give me a call, let's do that. Perhaps you have a sample or a symptom or something you want identified or diagnosed. You can email me and if you give us a call in this or call our producer say you want to send in a photo and then call back. I'm not able

to hand type out responses to all the emails I get. Occasionally in certain situations where where that is needed I do that, but what I ask is send me the picture. You need to send it ahead of time, then call on a Saturday or Sunday morning between six and ten and we will talk

about it. But it really helps to have a picture. So many times someone's describing something, and I tell you, as an extension agent with texas A and m Agrolife Extension for thirty five years, innumerable times someone would describe something in a situation to me and then I would either go to the site and see what they were talking about, or then they would send me a picture and it was like completely different from what I had pictured. And maybe

it was me listening properly, maybe it was them describing accurately. But I'm telling you, a picture helps a lot with a diagnosis. And if we're going to suggest that you have to go spend some money and do some work to fix the situation, we do not want you wasting your money in time. We want to make sure we diagnose it accurately and send you to the right if it's a product, to the right product that's going to work effectively with what you're dealing with. We have a flower bed. It's actually a

veggo garden bed, one of those up above ground metal. They are coated and painted and super high quality beds. Our Veggo garden bed is loaded with flowers. This particular one is an L shape, big L shaped bed that's loaded with flowers on the patio. So it kind of goes around a corner of the patio, so as you're walking around, you just kind of walk over there. And my wife loves flowers, and boy, is it ever looking good. We've got all kinds of summer tolerant flowers in it, angelonias

and pentas. This sunbelievable sunflower which, by the way, pause them in it. I need your attention to step for a second sun believable sunflower. It's called Helianthus. That's a genus of sunflowers that bogger just grows and they say it produces a thousand blooms over the course of a season. It's because it blooms for so long. But they're a little shiny, not shiny, little bright, attractive sunflowers that are just happy. I mean, you look

at it and it just makes you happy. If you like little deal of tiny cut flowers, it would be great for that. You can do that. But anyway, sunbelievable. We got to keep looking good. Another one that's looking good is pirates pearl little tiny white flowers, beautiful. All right, well I'm talking about flowers. We're gonna take a little break here for the news. We'll be right back. The number seven one three two one two k t r H boards are open if you'd like to get a good

head start. Welcome back, Welcome back to guard Line. Good to have you with us. What would you like to talk about if you have a question you would like to visit with with me about uh seven one three two one two k t r H. Seven one three two one two k t r H. You know, ACE hardware stores are ubiquitous here in the Houston area. And what I'm trying to say is, no matter where you live, there's going to be an ACE hardware store somewhere near you, probably more

than one. There's forty of them here in the greater Houston area. And when you go into Ace, you know you're going to find this stuff you hear me talk about on Guardline. For example, fertilizers. They're going to carry them all. They've got a wide variety fertilizers, excellent, excellent, selection. You know you're going to be able to find the tools that you need, for example, hoses, garden tools, do you need in any kind of specific things like maybe a mosquito foger, or maybe you want to

decorate the back patio with some beautiful lights or other things. ACE just has it all. Ace is the place. That's the motto or the slogan for them. Ace is the place, and ACE is a place for all the things you need. ACE is a place for your fire and control. ACE is a place for your mosquito management, whether it's buying the mosquito dunks to put out in water and shut those things down that way, or as I mentioned, a fog or any other kinds of things. ACE is the place

beautiful outdoors activities, the barbecues and things. We just started using our pit again a while back. We'd used it and the kind of had gone through some time where we hadn't been using it, and so here we are back out again enjoying the outdoors and getting the barbecue and done. And boy ACE

can set you up with every aspect of that that you might need. You can find ACE hardware stores all over the place by going to the website Acehardware dot com, Acehardware dot Com and then find the store locator, tell it where you live, give it your zip code or whatever, and it'll show you all the stores that are close to you. It makes it really easy.

And when you know, when you go into ACE, you're going to be greeted with that old fashioned customer service by people who know what they're talking about and take you right too what it is you're looking for so that you have success, whether you're fixing a faucet or turning your outdoors into a beautiful, beautiful environment to enjoy. ACE Hardware can help you with all of that.

We are doing some I was talking about soil preparation well ago, and I was mentioning the importance of getting rid of noxious weeds before they start to invade to a point where it's hard to control them in your plants. Well, another thing about soil prep is making sure you build a swill up so that when it drains, when it rains a lot, it drains. Well, that's important. We can't control the rainfall, we can't control our irrigation.

Most people over water, especially the lawns, and miswater the lawns. But when you build up a raised bed, it you always know that the excess water is going to drain away. When you make soil that is improved with organic matter and in some cases expanded shale, you can have that good internal drainage to the soil. Plus when you add organic matter, the microbes go nuts because they get They love to break that down and feed on it,

and the whole root zone environment is better. And I know you hear it's like a broken record, mixing compost, mixing, compost, mixing, compost, But it's true. It's what nature does slowly over time. We just want results now, like this fall. I want beautiful flowers, so I can't wait for nature over decades to improve the soil. I'm going to get some quality composts, mix it in and jumpstart the whole process. But why is that? And I just want to talk about that just a little

bit. Number One, it keeps the soil open. So if you have a sandy soil, decomposed organic matter composts, those little particles act like a little sponges that whole moisture and hold nutrients sand it just runs straight through. It's like broken glass. The water and nutrients just wash right through it. But when you have organic matter and it helps it hold. If you have a clay soil on the other end of the particle sized spectrum, clay soils

become dense. I mean, you can make a little bowl a lot of modeling clay and put water in it and it just sits there like a little pond. Right. It doesn't drain well at all. In fact, you know our Houston black clays, in the absence of roots and organic matter, just the clay, it takes in water at about one eighth of an inch an hour. So if you want to get an inch in the yard, you need it to rain one eighth of an inch an hour for eight hours.

Now when does it do that? But when you add organic matter to a clay, that mass, that sticky gooey doesn't drain. No oxygen getting very far down in the soil suddenly starts to become clumps and it becomes what we call friable. It breaks apart easy, and you're creating structure inside those structure that you could see if you looked under a microscope, for example, or a good handless you can see that structure in the soil, and that

brings oxygen in the soil. It makes water drained through the soil, and when you bring oxygen down you get a deeper, more extensive root system and you get more microbial activity. And microbes are doing all kinds of things. Do you know There are microbes that are releasing substances that are antibiotics that help fight disease for the root. There's microbes that can grab nitrogen out of the

ox out of the soil. Air. Right now, when you're listening to me, you're breathing about seventy eight percent nitrogen in the air you're breathing. Well, that nitrogen does plants no good until it's in a form they can use. There are microbes that make it in a form plants can use. Have you ever wondered how there could be giant meadows across America? They're just beautiful and no one's running through there with a fertilizer spreader. Well, I

mean, they're not performing like a lawn would perform. Mo momo and trapes across it and all that kind of stuff. But it's all being done by microbes and by nature in the soil, and so that is another thing that they can do. There are many other things. There are microbes that fight insects. DT is a microbe. It's a bacillis that attacks insects. There are microbes that fight diseases. There's another one, And forgive me for the long word, but Basillis amila lico facians. Isn't that a fun word how

to impress friends and influence gardeners anyway? That one helps plants fight disease. There And I mean, we could just talk for days on all the things microbes are doing. And you are creating that environs and your soil when you add organic matter, when you improve aeration, when you improve the structure of the soil. So just to say mixing composts isn't just like we're putting a little fertilizer down. It's like we're changing the root zone. And plants live

in their roots, and then roots are happy and thriving. Your plant's going to be happy and thriving. And most of our plant problems are not just diseases and insects above surface. They're the things that are going on to stress the plant underground. Drought, compacted soil, poor nutrient levels, poor moisture levels, too much, too little, and all that. And you can get all that done by just improving your soil. Hardline goodhead with us.

As always, we love to talk to gardeners, and I think that's what we're going to do here. We're going to head straight out to full Sure Texas and talk to Clint. Good morning Clint, and welcome to garden Line. Hey morning, Skip, I got a good one for you, all right. So my neighbor has an entire Permuta lawn. I have an entire Saint Augustine lawn and we have no separation, no rocks, nothing to divide our lawns. He has gone one hundred and ten percent this year and it's

starting to encroach into my Saint Augustine. What or is there anything I can do in your existing situation? There is not a lot you can do. Those two will exist together. There are things that benefit Saint Augustine a little over Bermuda. There are things that benefit Bermuda a little over Saint Augustine.

For example, shade. Saint Augustine has the edge droughty condition stresses. Bermuda tends to have the edge that there's not a spray that's available over the counter where you can go in and kill one grass without killing both of the grasses, and that's a challenge. So you know, I don't I don't know what to suggest to you on that particular one, other than you know, there's always a possibility of killing the line between you putting a vertical barrier in

and then trying that, but you know the bermuda. You got to get the barrier down far enough the bermuda doesn't go under it, and then you're going to have the fact that those are both crawling across the top of it, and so you're constantly edging. And I just don't think there's a practical solution. And your question is one that has been asked a million times because this is an ongoing problem for folks. Yeah, it was an issue before,

so I never really paid much attention to it. And this year, like I said, he's really taking some care of his lawn and it's looking great, but it's started to really come over to mind. And he goes out there and pulls all the Saint Augustine runners out of his yard because he hates Saint Augustine. So we're both kind of in the same position. I consider the metallic or metal barrier to separate and dig a little trench. But like you mentioned that, we have to take care of the top and it

goes under, so yeah, I guess that's true. Yeah, I would take more than just that bit edging material you'd have to get. I don't know. I've suggested at least eight inches down in the ground to make sure you're getting underneath that bermuda. I don't know how far how deep it can go. I'm sure there's variations, but yeah, that's it. If you ever end up redoing your lawn, call us back. There's some things you can do up front to kind of help avoid that, but at this point

it's not not very well appreciate it not very doable. I appreciate it. Thank you, all right, you take care. Thanks thanks for the call. Yeah, we need a good silver bullet on that. There there are for people listening. There are things that a garden, a quality garden, or lawn care full lawn care service can do to help with that. There are some things that aren't available homeowners that that can be done. They're very expensive and so you know, for one person to try to do it,

number one, you can't get hold of it. Number two, it's just to prohibitive to try to do it. But long care, if you've got a really good long care service, not just somebody somebody that mows and blows there may be talk to them about it. Maybe they can they can help you with some other options there. RCW Nursery is right there where Tomball Parkway, which is high Way to forty nine, right where it comes into belt Wagh eight. And you know RCW has been around a long time. The

Whimson family. Not only do they have RCW, but they actually grow their own trees up in Plantersville. And so when you go to RCW to get a tree or shrub, a large shrub, you're getting stuff that wants to live here. They know what to plant. They don't they're not going to say you a blue spruce, for example, for crying out loud. They know what grows well here, and so you can know that when you get plants from there, they're going to be successful. They have an outstanding rose

selection. And I tell you RCW is always having things on sale. Right now, they've got Cajun Bess twenty five percent off, fifteen percent off all of their trees. There's other great deals there at RCW. If you've not seen Cajun hibiscus. You need to go. You can go to their website and or their Facebook page and see pictures of it. RCW Nursery's Facebook page. In fact, if you had a garden line this morning, I posted

a picture of my Cajun hibiscus I've got. You know. They come in many shapes and form or colors and hues, and they're just beautiful, gorgeous, gaudy. I'll tell you, you have a yard full of pink flamingos and one Cajun hibiscus, and no one's going even notice that you had pink flamingos. That's how gaudy these flowers are. They are absolutely wonderful. I love mine. Go go look at the garden line facebook page right now and you'll see the one who just posted is one that I have that I just

love it. And it's blooming and blooming and blooming. Takes the heat like nobody's business. I have mine and a container, so I have to make sure and keep it watered. You put them in the ground. But Cajun is one of those beautiful types of modern hibiscus are just so stunning. Let's go back to the phones. We're going to head out and talk to page. Hello Page, Hi, Welcome to Gardendline. Thank you, thank you.

I have snails everywhere, and so I've tried the granules that you put around, and every time I put them down, it rains, so that don't know. They're pot plants. Mostly we don't have any other in the ground plants. They're all pot plants. Yeah, okay, well I would You're going to need to use a bait for them, and there's a couple of them out there. You just have to do it for it rains. But the baits. It's important to get a fresh bait so the snails will

be interested in eating it. It's like if someone threw food out that was spoiled in front of you, you wouldn't want to eat it. So the bait does no good if the snails aren't interested. Uh. And so what you do is you get a fresh bait. There's one called slug O s

l Ego. There's one called slug O, plus there are other bait products on the market, and you put a fresh one out, sprinkle a little bit on the surface of your pots, or you can put it in a little tray if you want to sell a little tray in there to have them crawl in. Just make sure they can get into it to feed on it, and it works pretty good. And just do enough to where you really

get them. There's a thing with snails page called bait shyness, And what happens is they get in and they eat a little bit of bait, but they don't need enough to kill them. And then maybe the bait is older and not as effective and they get sick, and then after that, if they recover, then they're not going to go back and eat that bait anymore. They've kind of learned their lesson. So you want to use a fresh bait, get plenty of it out there, and that is the best way

to manage them. There's cultural things, you know, the wetter you keep it, the more mulch and organic matter decomposing and things you have, the more kind of a problem with slugs and snails you may have. But just that in and of itself is not going to get rid of the snails. You're going to have to do the bait. Okay, So could you also

put it on the ground around the pots. Yeah, that's what we're well wherever the snails are going to go and If the snails aren't going out around the pots, then the bait out there is not going to do any good. But wherever the snails are, that's where you want to put it, and you can just have a little bait station. Sometimes I'll use like a little tray like I don't know, jar lid or something turned upside down and sat down kind of low into the soil so they can crawl right into it,

and that works pretty good. But you can also just drink sprinkle the pellets right on the ground. They're typically are pellets, and that that'll work too well. Used there's a lot sorry, go ahead, So I've used slug I've used Slugo a lot, and okay, you're getting it always rains or something. So after rains and Slugo is wet, how you're it going to solve in the dirt? You have to clean it out, you know, it'll just dissolve a That's one reason I like the little trays because you

can set them in and take them out and stuff. But Slugo is an iron based product, so it doesn't hurt for it to get down in the soil. There are other products that have more of a poisoned pesticide type ingredient, and that there's one called Deadline Deadline that is a slug and snail bait, so you can choose. You may want to try switching to a different type of product. There is a Slugo plus that not only is a bait

for snails and slugs, but it controls certain other insects as well. You might want to switch to that, to Slugo plus and try it, or just switch to something else, but just stay with it. Remember fresh bait. Get it out there, get it where they can get to it, and that's your best bet. The only is go ahead. Should you change it every day? Not every day, but about every week. Okay, all right, we'll be right back, folks. Thank you very much.

Welcome back to the garden Line. Thanks for joining us today. I hope you're enjoying this beautiful Sunday morning. We're still the cool time of the day. That's always a good thing to get out enjoy that. A little bit. Just was talking to some of my dogs. We've got a couple of Golden Retrievers, and those things love to hang out with you. It's almost like having a built in stalker. Everywhere you go. They're right with you. They love to go for a walk, get outside, play just but

mainly just hang out. They're also garden dogs. Now. I don't know if I've told you this before, but our first one, Ellie, the female, she helped me one time. In fact, I put I posted this to my Instagram account. A long while back. I went out and planted some I think they were. Yeah, it was purple cone flowers, plants out in the garden. And I went inside, got a drink of water, and you know, just freshen up, come back outside again.

And when I got opened the door, right there on the doorstep was my echinacious, my purple cone flower. Ellie had gone out and retrieved it because that's in her name, so I did not know that's what retriever meant. I've tried to teach Ellie to retrieve weeds, but she hasn't learned that yet. She needs to, and that would be very, very helpful. But she's getting to an age an hour where she's not so bad about retrieving the things I don't want her to retrieve. Now. Her brother Tax is also

hanging out, and he's the more enthusiastic one. We call him our affable affable knucklehead. That's the best way I can describe tax. We love that guy, all right. Well, hopefully it maybe someone out there who is a dog enthusiast could develop a gardening dog. Wouldn't that be a great idea where you go, hey, Rover, go right there. I need a hole that's six inches wide and eight inches deep. I've got some compost over here. I need you to mix about an inch of compost in the bottom

of the hole. You know that, wouldn't that be a great idea. I'd had a lot of money for a dog like that. I don't know about you, but that's that's the way it goes. Anyway, welcome to Guardline. We'll drive to have you with us. You know, soil is what it's all about. And if you think about nature a minute, and it kind of dawns on you that nobody rakes the forest, nobody bags the meadow, nobody fertilizes the forest. How does nature take care of plants?

Nature take share plants by taking anything that's organic and turning it back into soil. You know, in the meadows, it may be cowpies. In the forest, it may be deer droppings or whatever. It may be leaves that fall on the ground. It may be branches that hit the ground, and they all just decompose away. Because microbes are run in the world. I don't know if you know this, but microbes run the world. And when it comes to microbes, an organic fertilizer like microlife that's what it's That's what

microlife products are all about. Microlife products help the microbial activity in this world. They help I guess supercharge it would be a good way to put it. Number One, they're loaded with microbes themselves. Microlife products have a huge, longline list of beneficial microbes in them, but they also have the ingredients that is the product itself that helps stimulate microbial activity. And we have a lot of good microbes, good beneficial, good fungi, tenel mice seats that

are a good bacteria. They're out there in the soil. And when you do something like hu mats plus that's a zero zero for the purple bag. It's concentrated compost in a bag. The granules go out in your soil, they work their way down into the soil and over time, whether you're using microlife hu mates plus or they're green bag. The six two four. You're adding organic granules to the soil and it just gets better and better over time at night. Nature does not fix things overnight. It doesn't. It's not

a quick fix thing. Nature builds and develops. You leave a forest alone and nature will turn it into the best soil on the planet. We go in scrape away the trees and start farming it, not taking care of it, and we can destroy what nature is created, or on the other hand, we can build and continue to build toward that. And that's how microlife products are based. You can go to Microlife Fertilizer dot org, Microlife Fertilizer dot org, see all their products, see where to get them, and

they're ubiquitous everywhere. You hear me talk about garden centers and feed stores and Southwest Fertilizer, ace hardware stores, Microlife all of those stores you're going to ease easy to find it and mini products for acid loving plants, for your lawn, for house plants. Whatever you want to do, there's a product there for it. But it's based on the concept that nature knows how to build soil and we can come alongside nature and help enhance that process. With

microlife products. You are listening to Garden Line. Our phone number is seven to one three two one two k t r H seven one three two one two k t r H. I was working out, and uh, yesterday, I said yesterday day before my wife. My wife was repotting some of her strings and we were getting those set up. I was also doing some things with some other container plants that I have. I've got I've got several

that are in hold. I'm one of these people I wouldn't tell you to do this, but he's kind of like, don't do as I do, do as I say, you know, kind of thing. But I see plants I want, I buy them, I bring them home and they sit on my patio or my porch until I get a round to it to put

them in the ground. And I find that sometimes well, let's just say that if there was a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Plants and these potted plants have had a phone on them, I would get reported because I forget to water or I get busy, and I do this well, trying to get those things in the ground so they'll be happy. And we've got some beautiful gingers that are about to go in the ground, some calalilies that

we need to move into the ground. And the first step though, one reason they're sitting there is because I know you don't PLoP a plant into an unprepared plot. I love saying it that way. It's a tongue twister. You build the soil first, and that's what these guys are waiting on. They're waiting on me to get off the radio and go outside, dig, dig some holt, and get the soil ready to go so they can have success. But that's the key to it. I don't know if you're a

plant collector like me, but I am. You can always tell a plant collector. You know, some people understand design and beauty and organization, and that's called landscape design, and that's that's wonderful. I'm very very supportive of that. But for a lot of us, it's kind of more about, oh, I don't have that cajun hibiscus, I need one of those, or I don't have that such and such tamato plant. So we're always looking

for something we don't have. And when you put a landscape together that way, it's like a bomb went off in a garden center and everything rooted where it landed. Seriously, if if you're guilty of this, you know what I'm talking about. I'm talking about me too. But anyway, just you got to have a plant. So you buy a plant, you get home, and you go, Okay, now where am I going to put this? If you're that kind of gardener, I feel your pain and I also

know your joy because that is a lot of fun. But it does help to get someone a little bit of design a little forethought. Now's a good time to do that. Fall planting season is coming. Why not right now, go ahead and get things organized, come up with a plan, get some help with it if you need to, and let's start redoing beds and building beds and building that designed beauty into things. You know, turn our bomb went off in the garden Center landscape into something that has a little bit

more organization and design. I think it's something we can all do a little bit better job of. All right, well, let's go out to the phones. Now we're going to talk to Donna in Beaumont. Hello, Donna, welcome to guard Line. HIK. My question is I've had a luna rose plant. I think it's in the high discus family and it's been in the pot for like two years. I thought it died in the freeze last winter, but I just kept with playing and watering it and it came back

and I was so happy. But last week and we had lots of brain I think it might have drowned. It just looks like somebody sprayed weed killer on it. It is just the leaves have all shriveled up. It looks terrible and I don't know if there's any hope that maybe it will come back again, or if I should cut some of the branches the stands back. Yeah, okay, Donald, I tell you what. I have to go to a break right now. I didn't want to get your question, but

hang on. When we come back, we're going to tackle that one. That's a very very good question. If you'd like to be on guard Line dolls seven one three two one two kt r H and we'll be right back to take your call too. Gome back to guard Line. Thanks for listening this morning. I hope you're having a wonderful Sunday morning. Uh, this is certainly going to be a good day. Any day is a good day. I think, do you enter it the right way? When I was

outside a little bit of time. A couple of days ago, I was outside, just enjoying time outside, just thinking about it. How good it is to be able to be out and enjoying nature, breathing good air, you know, even if it's kind of warm in your sweating and stuff. There's just a gratification to be able to get out and turn your space into a more beautiful space, a more productive space. And I think that we

were meant to be in a garden. I just think that, you know, for those of you who are gardeners or horticulturists or whatever, you are absolutely doing the kind of thing that as human beings we were just designed to do. And I know I'm biased, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong. That does not be biased, does not mean inherently that you're wrong. So I think you will agree with that, at least those of you who are gardeners, and I hope you enjoy it. Let's go back out to the

phones. We were talking to Donna and Beaumont, and Donna, you mentioned it was a kind of a hibiscus family, some sort of roads. Could you describe the leaf size and also the blooms for me, please the bloom is probably it's like a truly a high discus bloom. If I stretch out all the fingers of my hand, the bloom is big fat, but the plant don't stay small. It's like maybe a football. Okay, oh wow, okay. And so these these blooms are probably either pink, red,

white, or a mix of those colors deep pink. Okay, So you've got a you've got a southern hibiscus. The perennial rose mallow is another name for it. And those are excellent plants. They like moist soil, and so if it gets dry, they can turn to toast pretty quick. If you had significant root damage, you would also see the same results as being dry, and that if you don't have root, you can't take up moisture, and so that's a possibility. You said that they turned brown pretty rapidly.

Is that correct? Well, I was actually I was kind of in and out all last week and it was raining a lot here in Beaumont, and I had I had put it one of those little saucers underneath it because I was having to water it because before that it was really really hot every day and and it would kind of get a little wilted. So I bought one of those little saucers to put underneath it. But then when it rained

and rained and rained, it just sat in the rain. The roots and everything it was in the rainy, you know, standing and kind of standing in water. And then I noticed that what I calmed down and finished with my project I was working on. Then I, uh, I noticed that it just was wilting. The leaves are withering up. It just it looks like somebody took weed children and straight on it. It looks very sad. Yeah, so it's in a container. About how how why does that container

or tall wheel on your car? It it's not that big. Let me, let me just take a look, get it right quick. Let me if it's not any bigger than the steering wheel on your car. I think the container is a little small to sustain the southern rose mellow plant. It was like, you know, the top is about I'd say it's probably be a foot across and it's probably about foot deep. Okay, Well, something has happened in the roots and who knows. You know, both drought and

excessive water. Southern rose mellow is pretty tolerant of wet feet, and so I don't think that it's the saucer you put underneath it. But I guess it's always possible that some sort of a root rod or whatever has gotten at alved. I think it would benefit from being moved to a larger container, just because the demands are so high on these plants in summertime. They're pumping a lot of water, and the only place that plant can get water is

the soil and the container. So if you have a cubic foot of soil versus two cubic feet of soil, the plant that's in two cubic feed is going to have a lot more moisture bak account to draw from, So that would be one thing I would do. Sometimes I've seen decay take those things down, and it usually when I look into it, it's usually due to some sort of a decay or a wound or a root rot or something like that at or below the ground level, So you might check around for that.

If you lean the pot over and slid this out of the pot sideways, don't try to pull it up, just slide it out. Look at the roots around the outside of the container. They should be very nice, plump, white roots. If what you're seeing is shriveled or or looks like a cigarette filter with the kind of brown and black staining gray. That kind

of stuff. That's the sign of a root rot. And what you would do is take a I use like an little butcher or something or a soil knife to just cut away the outsides of the root ball, get back into some living roots, and then pot it back up again. Get it out of the direct sun because it doesn't have the roots needed to put up with

the demands a full sun. But give it good light but not direct sun, and try to get it in some fresh saw mix and try to get it going again, and then you can move it back out into Okay, okay, thank you, I will try that. Thank you so much. Good luck with that, all right, send me a picture if you get it to recover. Okay, all right, all right, thank you. Bye. I love those spots. I love Southern rose mallow. That's the one I was talking about earlier. The Cajun series, the Cajun hibiscus.

Oh gosh, those are so so beautiful. I uh, there are a lot of gorgeous types of biscus breeders just keep doing things that is like we hadn't seen that before and that when it comes to hibiscus, and I think it's exciting. You can't get a gaudier, more beautiful, more heat tolerant flower than a good quality tropical hibiscus or the southern rose mello, the perennial one that we were just talking about there with Donna. Excellent choices. Remember

this about the hibiscus, especially that tropical rose mellal. Each bloom lasts a day. So if you have one, or if you're thinking about getting one, let me just give you a couple of little tips here. Each they produce a lot of buds, and a bloom opens up, stays open through the day, and then toward the end of the day it sort of shrivels up and it's done. One day, that's what you get. But there's another bloom and another bloom. There's all these blooms laying in wait for their

turn in the sun. And so if you take care of a plant, have lots of branches, you fertilize it, it looks good. You're gonna have a lot of blooms. You're always gonna have blooms on that plant. But each bloom just lasts a day. But if you have one of those tropical hibiscuits. What you can do is, let's say that you were going to have a garden party this evening or any evening. Well, hibiscus balloons

aren't going to look good at that time of the day. But you could pick them as they're starting to open up and put them in the refrigerator and leave them. That's right, not in water. I'm talking about. Break the bloom off. Stick it in the refrigerator. You do not need to put it in water. It's not going to take up water anyway, and it will be preserved. And then that evening bring it out of the refrigerator and use it as decoration. You lay them around a table and they will

sit there looking just like they're on a plant for a long time. They don't just wilt immediately. I mean, I guess if you put them in the sun, they would. But I know people that will get like a fish bowl, you know those old fish bowl people goldfish in and they'll float the bloom in there. Just for a unique way to decorate with hibiscus blooms.

But remember, you can have a hibiscus ballooms at night for decoration, but you got to pick them put them in the refrigerator early on, before you know, they begin decline for the day and you'll get several hours out of those things when you pull them out. I think it's a pretty cool deal. Hopefully you do too. You are listening to Guardenline. Our number is seven to one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three

two one two five eight seven four. We just had hurricane barrel barrel come through and oh my gosh, did it ever devastate our electrical grid again? We had the other storms before that did people were without power for a long long time. Quality Home Products of Texas is a company where you can get a quality generator such as a Generaic automatic standby generator, super high quality product there now they have right now, by the way, I should mention this,

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about it, contact them. There's a process in getting a whole home generator set up, but it starts with you giving them a call. And let's do that now, because we got a lot of storm seasons still left. We're going to take a break now for the news. I'll be right back Houston's News, Why there were traffic plus breaking news or seven. This is used radio seven kt R H five everywhere. Welcome back to the garden Line. Good to have you with us, Glad to be here, Glad to

be talking about gardening. Listen, it's early in the morning, and one of my favorite things to do early in the morning is to enjoy the birds that are in our backyard. Whether I'm sitting inside looking out watching them,

and yeah, I can hear their songs from inside the house. I mean they really it's a cacophony of bird noises when when it gets really really early in the morning sun's about to come up, or going outside and just enjoying them there and Wallbirds Unlimited can help you turn your landscape into that kind of an enjoyable paradise where you get to enjoy the music of the birds and the antics of the birds and the beauty of the birds. We have some little

finches that seem to be a specially fond of our feeders. The little kind of a reddish color to them. Trying to think of the name of the finch, but anyway, we really enjoy that. And so you can too go to wild Birds Unlimited and check out all of the things they have to offer. WPU dot com, Forward Slash Houston, WBU dot com Forward Slash Houston. They're six stores and there you're going to find the supplies you need.

You may find a bird feeder that you like. My favorite is still that one that's the squirrel excluding feeder, but there's so many other excellments. I use more than one kind of feeder. Then they have their quality blends like the Super Blend. If you're going to take any kind of a trip and you need something that'll last out there, get one of their seeds cylinders.

It's packed with seeds and it takes the birds a little while to peck on them, and when you come back, you're still going to have some available food for the birds still present there because they don't just chomp it all up. It also makes them hang out a little bit longer to try to get those seeds out, and you get more time to watch them when they're

out there. While Bird's unlimited for whatever you're looking for, from bird baths to bird houses, to bird seed, to good information to help guide you on success with birds, and for that matter, for those of you that really love birds in the yard and love to bring them in because you know that a lot of them help you with your insect management around the property. Well, for those of you you need to know about the Merlin app M E R l I N like Merlin the Magician. It's from Cornell University,

but it is the most amazing bird app I've ever seen. I have my Merlin app. I can walk outside and I hear a bird singing and I'm not a bird expert, and I just turn on the app and say what is that? And it listens and it tells me what bird it is. It gives me a picture of the bird, and it tells me more information. Is that cool or what? Merlin app can do a lot of other things too, But if you're a bird enthusiastic, got to get the Merlin

app. It's free, by the way, believe it or not. All right, you're listening to Guardline. Our phone numbers one, three, two and two k t r H. We're going to head out now to Missouri City and talk to Dan Dan Spring in the garden line. I have a crate myrtle that was cliented probably forty one years ago, and uh, it's it seems to be I didn't know if they had a lifespan, but it seems to be sending up shoots from Uh. It looks like a crate myrtle

is coming up different places in my flower bed. Does that? Do they have a lifespan? Well, every you know, every living thing essentially has some sort of a lifespan. But it's not like at a certain you know, X number of years all CRP myrtle's croak on you. Uh so I would they they are quite long lived, and there are some beautiful specimens that have been a very very long They've been around a very very long time,

so I wouldn't be thinking this is a lifespan. Uh did it? Did you used to not have the creat myrtle shoots coming up and now you do? Or has this been something? Yeah? Yeah, I didn't have them coming up. Now I do. And I thought it might have been that drought year we had. Maybe it was trying to say this, so I

don't know. Yeah, well the drought year did it did damage, but the coal spells that we had also depending on your Missouri city, it depends on what air part of the areas you go further north, Especially, we had crepe myrtles that were killed to the ground by an early hard December freeze when they weren't ready for winter. Creat myrtles were very hearty, but they weren't ready for it. So it could be a number of factors. But when you look at the plant itself, does it look good still? Yeah,

it's still blooming and uh yeah. So what I've done is I've just tooken a taken a sharp shooter shovel and pulled these out and then planted them somewhere else. I don't know if I don't know if they'll survive or not a bit. They probably would if they look Okay, if you do, if you want them, really want them to survive, I'd wait and do that in early November, and you'll have much better success with the transplant because it has all winter winter to settle in before it has to face the demands

of summer heat. Moving a man can be done, but it's it's a high risk. So these could be you know, we always have to leave them. It could be seedlings, because great myrtles can produce viable seed, and it could be that. But it could also be boot sprouts. As you're talking about. Forty one years ago, I pruned it back and I stuck one of the cuttings into some soil and it came up six foot tall. It's been blooming ever since. Wow, that's impressive and I have no

I have no experience doing that. Well. I just think it has to be attributed to clean living and fancy horticulture techniques. That's the only thing I can think of. Okay, Well, I forgive you credit for that. Ran you get thanks for the call. Enjoy that CP myrtles are. They're very, very tough plants. I'm amazed really and how tough they are because you look at them and I don't know, you just wouldn't think that they're going to be that amazingly resilient. But they are pretty darn tough plants.

But any plant can succumb to any kind of situation if the conditions are right. Something that to be aware of the worst thing that's happened to crape myrtles around here is the crepe myrtle bark scale. That is a critter that I believe it came from Asia, which is where the crape myrtle's from. Uh, And it gets on crate myrtles. You start to see black everywhere on

the leaves, on the trunk, on things under the crate myrtle. And it's because crep myrtle bark scale is a soft scale that sucks the sugary juices out of the plant's trunk and branches and then it essentially pees out a sugary water because it's not in it for the sugar, it's in it for other things in the sap. And when that falls. We call that honeydew, and it's just like if you mix sugar water up and sprayed it on something, you would see a city mold grow on that sugary substance. And that's

what the black is all about. So the black isn't the disease. It's just the salt of the insect that we're dealing with. They're hard to control. They're very difficult to manage. They generally don't kill crape myrtles, but they sure make them look ugly, and there are different ways to control them, and there's not a good silver bullet trying to manage them. Some people will use a soapy brush, a soft brush and wash the black off.

They'll spray oil on them, which first you would think, well, oil would be a good control those brainsecticides on them, but the scale are protected and we have to go to some pretty significant links to try to control them. Just remember, they don't kill scrape myrtle, So I've known people that just leave them and ignore them. Their number one enemy that I've seen is the twice stabbed Lady beetle, and I just took some pictures of some yesterday.

But the twice stabbed lady beetle is a black lady beetle that has two red spots on each side, hence the name twice stabbed. They love creat myrtle bark scale and if you're not spraying all the time, they're going to find it. They will not eradicate it, but they will help keep it under control. What it's time for me to take a little break. We will be right back our phone number if you want to get on the boards. We've got a wide open board right now, so this would be a

good time. Seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. That's seven one three two one two five eight seven four. It's a complicated I'll tie up. I hate to see waiting. Welcome back to garden Line. Hey, we're glad to have you with us today. Thanks for being part of garden Line. This is a ongoing conversation among friends, right we're talking about the things that are of interest to us as gardeners and ways to have

better success. Uh. You know, we're talking about creameral bark scale coming through and there are systemic products that will go up in the plant and kill the scale because the scale is sucking juices out of the plant. So when you put the poison in the plumbing, those scale or they have access to it, and something crawling around on the surface of the plant would not be exposed to it, as opposed to putting a spray on the outside of the

plant. So those drenches are an option. The problem is that gets into the nectar and can be a part of the issue that bees have to struggle with, So we hate to do that when we don't have to try to avoid that if possible. Just regular treatments are available that you can use when the scale are crawling around as babies typically March April somewhere in there is when you'll start to see that here in the Houston area, and those could be

used. Then when the scale don't have the protective coating, they are the babies crawling around fixing to set up shop and put on a protective coating. So that's an option and you can get all those kind of products. For example, at Southwest Fertilizer. Southwest has everything that you could possibly need to have success in your garden your landscape. They have the tools, they have the supplies and secticide, fungicide, herbicide. Certainly fertilizers wide variety of fertilizers.

There knowledgeable staff that can look at your situation and listen, look at a picture, look at a sample, talk to you, make sure they know what to do that, what is effect, what is happening on your plant, and then select the product that'll work against it. Is what I'm trying to say. They're excellent at that, and they do that and they have it all. If Southwest doesn't have it, you don't need it. For example, new fairly new product by Medina called has to Grow supergrow Plus.

As to Grow supergrol Plus is a sixteen zero two fertilizer in a quart bottle that attaches to a garden hose. It covers four thousand square feet and you can do that in about ten minutes. So you hook it up and you just go to town and spray your lawn. It's going to have the sixteen zero two nutrient ratio that's an excellent one for the summertime. It's going to provide in addition to that, by the way, part of the nitrogen,

about a fifth of it is in a slow release form. It's going to provide a keylated form of iron to help those yellow spots green up. It's going to provide molasses, which we already talked about earlier today, how molasses helps microbes in the soil. It's going to provide humic acid, and it's also it also contains the products that help enhance growth, like seaweed extract all By has to grow supergrow plus. Medina product has to grow supergrow plus.

And again you can find that at many places, including Southwest Fertilizer, which has everything. Let's go back to the phones now. I'm going to talk to Houston or talk to Justin out here in Houston. Hey, Justin, Hey, how you doing. I got a little bit of a problem. I keep being told that this weed in my yard is like different names,

so it's hard to try to find something to kill it. Everybody's seen it if you live in Houston. It looks kind of like sant Augustine, but it grows faster, and it has those stocks that come up that bend over and have like a seed pod and their little black seeds and you know, I stick to your jeans and everything when you walk past them. They're kind of sticky, you know what that is? And I kill it.

Yeah, I got your email, and I just replied to it. It's in that thing where it takes it a minute to send, But if you were, can you take some photos of it and attach it and send them to me. We've still got time today and i'd be glad to talk about it on the air. But it could be one of two or three things, and I don't just guess, so let me. Could you get me a picture and then let me give you a better, more accurate answer,

Yes, sir, thank you? All right, Well you will have a reply already from me when you get to your phone, hopefully or your computer action. Actually, thanks. I feel free to call back on or I may just talk about it. Either way sounds good. I'm here, all right, you bet. I appreciate that very much. Let's go back to the phone's Baytown. We're going to talk to Ronnie. Hello, Ronnie Hello. My question is about something to replace some trees that we lost the storms.

There was a fast growing tree that was advertised on the radio at some point, but I didn't get the name. I'm supposed to go about four or five feet a year. They do not reproduce no nuts or seeds, and I'm looking for something like that. Do you any suggestion Okay, I don't know which one that was, but I do know this almost with that exception, the phrase grow fast, die young applies to trees. The things that grow really quick tend to be very weak wooded and also tend to not

live as long or start to fall apart over time. And so I would rather than looking for something that is the fastest growing tree out there, I would decide a couple things. Number one, do you want it for shade or do you want it for blooms? And then pick a plant that is going to grow pretty darn fast, but that really fits that bill really well. So which of which are you looking you're looking for shade? Okay, all right, So one thing that would be a good option for shade that's

going to be fast growing is a red oak. Red oaks do very very well here there. If you've got a good deep soil, A shoe mard type of red oak is good. If you have an area that tends to be a little bit poorly drained, then the nut tall n u TTL nutall type of red oak is going to perform well in any kind of soil,

but including the saggi wet type. So red oak would be a good fast growing You fertilize them, you take care of them, you make a big mulched area around them where they're not competing with grass, and they'll grow fast. They'll grow fast, but they'll be a long term tree. Another one would be a Chinese elm. Chinese elms have beautiful gray and rust colored exfoliating bark, so they're very attractive. I mean even in winter when there's no

leaves in the tree. It's an attractive tree for that reason. And you'll see these around town. If you do a search on line for Chinese elm, you kind of see what I'm talking about. Those grew very fast and they also are a good, longer lived tree. Tho those are two examples. There are others out there. There's a green ash, not Arizona ash, but a green ash or a Texas ash. Those are both good trees

that grow pretty fast as well. So there's three options for you. It is Thank you, sir, and have a good day, all right, Ran, Thanks for call. Appreciate that. Good luck getting that. You know, the best time to plant a tree is forty years ago. Have youall ever heard that? You know what the second best time is today?

That's right. You like to see it that way because it makes a point, you know another I'm just full oftenings to another thing that I like here, I've heard that I enjoy it is a society is great When old men plant trees under which shade they will never say, in other words, I'm doing this for the next generation. And that's true, isn't it. I mean, when you think about the value of your home, remember the days when Arizona ash was everywhere, and after about twenty May eighty thirty years,

they just started falling apart and got to start over. Can you imagine this big, beautiful shade tree that someday, whether you or someone in your family is selling the home, it's just all the more valuable, and you've got to enjoy it all along your way. It makes sense go for stuff that lasts and that's quality, not just fast. It's my Disney line I call program. Welcome to KTRH Garden Line with scip Ricker's just watch him as a world us so many things to see, not a sign. Well, welcome

back to your garden line. Good to have you back with us. As we start our final hour of the day, start, we're looking forward to helping you and whatever way you need to have a beautiful garden and a bountiful garden certainly a beautiful landscape. All you have to do is give us call seven one three two one two k t r H. Seven one three two one two k t r H. And we are going to head straight out to the phones right now and talk to Alan in sugar Land. Hello,

Alan, welcome them the garden line. Good morning, Skip, thanks for taking my call. I have a question regarding some vinca that have come up from sea. Uh hav them planting planting venca in a raised dead last year and then also some large pots and now the u this year the siege from last year's plants started sprouting. But a lot of them just sprout up maybe uh inch inch and a half and then they just don't do anything. Is it a soil issue or what would you think it could be? Are they

turn it well? Are they turning kind of a blackish color and dying? You know the green? They're green? They're just stunted. Yeah. Well, first I would get a little hand trout, dig one up and uh look at the roots, wash the soil off, look at the roots and are they normal little long, slender roots, healthy going out in all directions, or are they rotted? Or do you see little bumps on the roots, little knots, like a string of pearls kind of thing that would indicate

nematodes. The bumps the rots would indicate a root rot. And then if everything looks normal, then we're looking at either some moisture or possibly some kind of nutrient. But when you had the venka there before, it grew well, right, yes, uh huh, so I would I would tend to not think it's a nutrient problem because the old vinka was happy to be there, so this one should not be that stunted. Okay. And I had put a thin layer of compost on the raised bed, and now some of

them were doing good. They're going well, I said. Others they just kind of sit there dormant. Okay, Well, adequate soew moisture, adequate sow moisture, A little boost of fertilizer would be fine. There's no problem with that. Just moderning. Oh, yeah, that'd be fine, that'd be great. Scratch it, scratch it into the soil service. Yeah, sixty four is a good one. Scratch it in a little bit into the soil surface, throw some mulch over the top. That's going to do two

things. Number one, that microlife is going to break down or release nutrients better because it'll stay moist that way. But also you'll be moderating the soil temperature and the little tender seedlings dealing with the full brunt of the sun in the heat. That may be a factor, but I I first would make sure and dig that plant. Dig a plant up, wash soil off, look at it, uh, look at the roots and if we can.

If you see nematodes, that's a whole another monster. If you see like bb size or something, or it depends on the root size, but yeah, they could be down starting off as little as bebes. But as the roots get bigger, the nematodes get bigger. Sometimes it just looks like a little like a you know, if I like a giant snake swallowed a rabbit or an animal, it had that bump in the middle of it going down the snake. It's sort of like that, but there'll be more than one

of them. But in bad cases there's so many that they're just lined up and the root looks like the Michelin manned with all the lumps and everything else. So just look and if you have a question, you can take a picture of it up close, good sharp focus, send it to me and I'll make an assessment of that. I'll be happy to help you that. One more quick question. I've got some cana lily and some caterpillars got out of there and I've been spraying them with BT and it seemed to be doing

somewhat good. But how often do I spray the BT only? ET only lasts about a day or two where it's effective and then it begins breaking down being a natural product. So if you spray BET, you got to get it out there on the leaves. Cann Of leaves tend to ball up water and it runs off. If you have your notice that about spraying them, your spray doesn't stick to the leaf really well. So you can get a

product called a spreader sticker. So you know you're out there in the sugar Land area, you were just a hop, skipping or jump away from a Southwest fertilizer Bob's got some there spreader sticker type products. Ace hardware stores are gonna have spreader sticker type products depending on where you're located. Find the local one and mix that in the water and that helps it stick to the cann of leaves. Spinosaid maybe a better option for your cann of leaf roller.

That's the caterpillar you're dealing with. They get inside the leaf and you can't get a spray to them. Spinosid soaks into the leaf tissue and so you have to spray it regularly. But it lasts longer than the BT. But it also because it soaks in, Like if you spray one side of a leaf and the caterpillars feeding on the other side or something, they're still going to get that poison in them. Could you sell that for me? Yes?

S p I N O S A D. Spindosid. Now there's a dozen other insecticides I could tell you to spray that would kill the can of leaf rollers, some systemic and others spinosa and BT or two natural organic products and very low talks. And so we generally start with those those things. Okay, all right, thank you for your time, and I have a big day. All right. You take care too. You know, earlier, earlier, folks, I was talking about wasp. Remember I was saying

how paper wasp their number one food sources caterpillars. Well, I was looking at some cannons I used to have. I redid the bed and did something else with it. But I had some cannas and I was watching. I could look at the patch and see right where the leaf rollers were because there weren't leaves. They'd eating them. And I was watching paper wasp red wasp in this case, going in to the pack. I knew what they were in there for, and I kind of crawled around a little bit and found

them eating, and they had a can of leaf rogram. They were chewing them up. They were in there as predators, hunting those little boogers down. And when you see wasp flying around your plants, they're there for one or two reasons. They're looking for food. Because they're predators. They're looking for food, and that food is primarily caterpillars. Or number two, they're

looking for extra floral nectaries. Extra floral nectaries. Now, I'll tell you about those when we come back from break, So stay tuned our phone number seven one three two one two kt r H. Welcome back to Guardline. Glad you're with us today, Very glad you're with us listening if you'd like to give us a call seven one three, two one two five eight seven four and a right for break. I kind of gave you a little teaser there that I was going to talk about something a little bit different. We

were talking about the canna leaf rovers. Remember those can of lefros. I was talking about wasp coming in and they were hauling them away. Wasp or predators. They're flying around your plants. One of the things they're doing is they're looking for some to eat. And something eat usually is a caterpillar. When you're a paper wasp, a red wasp or one of those yellow and brown striped paper wasps, that's what they're doing. But the other thing that

they're doing is they're looking for something called extra floral nectaries. Extra floral nectaries. Now, we all know that flowers have nectar. Bees go for that and butterflies go for that. But do you know that plants have other spots on the plant that produce nectar. Most people don't know that these are called

extra floral nectaries. Outside the flowers, there's other places you will find a little spots along a stem or maybe we're a leaf at the base of a leaf, like if you were a look at a peach leaf, for example, it has a little stalk that attaches to the stem at the base. But right at the base of the leaf before it gets right to that stalk, they're these little orbs, these little bump those are extra floral nectaries.

You'll see them on black eyed peas, You'll see them on just lots of different plants, and they bring in They attract beneficial insects to feed on that. That's one of the reasons the plant is making them. And you'll see wasps sitting on a stem and they're kind of just walking around in that area, just doing something. You're going and what are they doing there? There's no caterpillar there. That's what they're doing there, And i'd attract them in.

And it's not just the big paper wasps, it's little tiny beneficial wasps of other types. So extra floal nectaries kind of a cool fun fact. I guess that's our cool fun fact of the day. Well, you're listening to Guardline and I you hear me advocate for Star Hope Mission a lot, and it's because I believe in Star Hope Mission. Star of Hope has been around for one hundred and seventeen years, My wife and I are supporters of Star of Hope because we believe in Star of Hope. I've seen the work

that they do. I've heard the stories of lives that they've changed. You know, there are christ centered community dedicated to meeting the needs of homeless men, women and children. They're really their goal is not just a handout, but positive life change. They have structured programs that focus on things like spiritual growth or education, how to get a job, life management, a lot of life skills that people don't just necessarily have or maybe they weren't taught as

they grew up. Recovery from substance abuse another big part of what Star of Hope does. You can get involved certain you can donate. I can't think of a better way to put your compassion into action by providing donations for Star of Hope missions. They have an outreach called Love in Action. It's a van goes out. It distributes things to people like right now, water is

a huge thing to people that are homeless on the street. Hygiene kits they call them hope bags that contain the option, you know, things like toothpaste and little toothbrush and other things like that. They're providing that. You can volunteer that way, be a ride along on one of their Love and Action vans. You can help assemble Hope bags. You can be part of the upcoming soon they'll be doing the back to school events as well during the holidays,

food baskets. You can sponsor a family. There are so many ways to find out the way that best fits you, but by all means, do something. Star of Hope is the place, soohmission dot org. Sohmission dot org learn more about them, hear the story. I think you will like. I did find it to be a very compelling and a great way to put your your your love, your mercy, your generosity into action with Star Hope. Our phone number is seven one three two one two fifty eight

seventy four. If you would like to give us a call, we'd be happy to visit with you about the things that you are interested in in your guard in your landscape, what is what are what issues are plaguing your landscape that we could help with. We'd be happy to do that. Nelson Plant Food is a premier fertilizer company. They have many, many types of products.

And when I say that, I'm talking about lawn products. For example, they're turf products, a turf Star line outstanding, just outstanding products. For example, if you are really interested, for example, in a slow release fertilizer, they've got the Slow Relief turf Star Slow and easy and it'll feed for three to four months. You do it now, you're not con fertilized again until spring. That's just an example. They have many other products

in the turf Star line as well. They've got the Color Star line. You know, when you're looking at a color Star products, you're looking at things that really make blooms pop. Just outstanding blends for your flower beds to just keep them looking good all the time. And then they have specialty products for azalia's boogavillias, citrus fruit, avocados, crape myrtles, hibiscus, palms, plumerias, roses, trees and shrubs, vegetables. You get the idea.

There is a Nelson product for anything you're going to want to grow, and their high quality. I like the little Color Star and some of the nutri Stars that come in the containers because those containers are refillable. There are several of our garden centers that will provide a refill spot where you can take your old plastic container in and get a good deal on a refill because you're not buying the whole bottle and more plastic in the environment. That's one of

the things that Nelson does, and so check them out. You can go to Nelson Plantfood dot comf you want to learn more about their products, but you're going to find them all over the place, widely available. For example, ACE Hardware stores carry Nelson plant Food products. Now you can go to ACE. What forty Ace Hardware stores around here? Not hard to find one of those, So you know you're going to find Nel some products near you

and again just widely available. ACE Hardware is also going to be the place where you get all the supplies that you need for your garden, for your lawn, for your flower beds, your herb garden, your trees or shrub your containers. Do you need a potting saw mix, Do you need fertilizer? Do you need something else to enhance those plants, to protect them from

pastor diseases, to control weeds? ACE has all of that. Are you sitting outside trying to enjoy the cooler evenings late in the day and the mosquitoes are eating you alive. Go to ACE. They've got the mosquito dunks that you put in water to shut down the larvae. They've got a foger machine. They have all kinds of things to help you make your outdoor space more livable. Certainly anytime fire ants pop up. In fact today, later today, I hope to be able to get out and do some fire ant baiting

because I saw two mounds on my property. I can't believe that I was so. I was so they would show up on my property. But that's allum. This rain brings them to the surface, and a good quality bait spread out over an area is a great way to shut them down. ACE is the place easy to find. And I mentioned those mosquito dunks. You know, mosquito dunks are a very effective way to kill mosquito larvae. So what you do is you put a dunk it covers about ten one hundred square

feet of water about a ten by ten area. Or you can break them up into granules and throw a little bits in those catch basins under your pod or in a maybe you got an area yesterday someone called and they had a tree with a low cavity where water was sitting inside the tree trunk. Throw some mosquito dunks in there, because that is mosquito breeding heaven in those little hollow tree spaces up in the gutters that don't drain, well, there's a

little sag. Mosquito dunks are a very effective product, again, available at ACE and many many places, easy, easy to find. Don't harm fish, don't harm birds, don't harm beneficial insect like bees, and certainly don't harm your pets. So you can't beat that for an effective product. Let's head out to Richmond and we're going to talk to Alan. Now. Hello, Allen, Hey, good morning. I got a couple of quick questions

for you. First one, I've got a live oak that has just gotten way too big for the plot of land where I live, Like every other house in our neighborhood, they should have never they had us originally with two live oaks, and anyway, I want to get rid of that, but we have to replace it with another hardwood tree. Do you have one that you like that doesn't get too tall and too huge of a canopy? Well? Are you? Can it be deciduous? Is that okay? As opposed

to evergreen like a live oak? Yeah? Yes, Okay, I don't know how large too large o's for you. But the Chinese fringe tree, as yeah, I was looking at that was nice. Shaggy white blooms. They do very well in the Houston area. Shaggy white blooms. There's so many of them that you actually get a nice fragrance off the tree in the spring when they bloom. They grow a little on the slower side, but again with fertilizer and care and keeping the grass away and getting a big mulched

area, you can speed them up considerably. But that's a beautiful tree. I would say maybe twenty feet. I've seen bigger ones. We used to have a bigger one at the Bear Creek Extension office in West Houston before the floods came through and took out the office. But that Chinese fringe would be a nice tree for that. Crape myrtles, there's some big, beautiful crape myrtle Some get up to thirty five feet tall, like Natchez with the white

blooms. That particular one has a beautiful cinnamon colored bark. But there are many other other types of crape myrtles that will do really well. Okay, yeah, yeah, I like that. I was reading about some other fringe trees, but I'll definitely check out the Chinese fringe tree for sure. Yeah. Well, if you like native plants, there's a native fringe It's also commonly called grand Sea gray beard. It's native to East Texas. It's not as showy as Chinese fringe, but it is a native tree, and it

does have pretty low blows. They're not just quite as billowy and white as is the Chinese French. But either way, it's a good plan. Okay, great. And my other question was, as far as I'm thinking about, I've got a small area in my backyard with we have the transformer box that I just want to put some I was thinking about putting up making a little wildflower garden. Is now a good time to even consider that or just do I need to wait to the spring or how would that work? No,

I would do it in the fall, for sure. In the fall, I would I would hold off a little bit. Now. I mean, you could plant seeds now, like blue bonnets cast their seed in the spring and they're gonna come up in the fall. They're just sitting there now.

But I would wait, probably until we get into September, maybe a little later in September, and do the seeding then, because what you're going to want to do is go in and mow everything down really low, probably rake the area out a little bit, just so you can get sunlight down to the soil for those wildflower seeds to germinate, and then sprinkle the seeds, rake them in, scratch them in. Do you know any kind of a scratching of the soil surface to loosen it up so the seeds fall down

and contact the soil really well, and water it in well. And if you do that in late September, they'll sprop pretty quick and they'll get up and get going for you for sitting through the winter and then coming out in the spring. Perfect. That sounds great. Well, thanks for your help. I appreciate it. You bet. I appreciate the call. Thanks a lot. Yeah, I was just just writing an article for Texas Gardener magazine, which, by the way, if you don't get Texas Gardener, you

should. It is an outstanding magazine. I'll tell you a little bit more about it, and i'll tell you about the article that I've got coming out in there that I think you'll be interested in. As well. For right now we're gonna take a little break. It is time for the news. If you'd like to give chrysal call again. We got a good open board

right now. You could be first up if you're the first to call seven to one three two one two kt r H seven one three two one two kt r H and I will be right back claiming welcome back to the garden line. Hey, it is good to have you with us. Are glad look always look forward to talking to folks about gardening. I can't think of a better thing to do than to visit with gardeners about gardening. I found, by and large, gardeners are just great folks to be around. I

enjoy visiting with gardeners. I always find that I don't know, they're just well, you know, how what do people say that they're good people kind of thing. It's like they're enjoyable. They they picked a hobby that they enjoy and it's just a it's just a pleasure to hang out. Of course, you got to put up with bragging. You got to put up with bragging. You know. You tell them I tomato and it was wonderful. Oh yeah, well mine was twice that big in three weeks earlier. So

there, Well, we'll put up with that. We'll allow a little bit of bragging on guard line. Not too much, it's a little bit. We're on the phones right now and head to Austin and talk to Anna. Hello, Anna and Austin. Hi on a high skip. I send an email as Texas zombiing grounds, Travis County. There you go. Okay, all right, I did get your I got your pictures, as a matter

of fact, I did. Yes. What do you think about that leaf discoloration you know on those eagles and hollis the little specking on the outsides. It could be something nutritional that is possible. So a good complete lawn food that has micronutrients and things in it, that would not be a bad idea. I think the fact that your holly has dropped some leaves Holly's will do that. Any kind of a stress drought stress is one that we can often get into. It hadn't been a real drought a year like it was last

year. But when hollys don't get water, they don't do well. And I always tell people when you plan a holly, count on handwatering it the first three years That didn't mean you can't have a sprinkler system. It just means sometimes sprinklers get blocked. The spray goes out and it hits leaves that sort of block it, and then there are certain parts of the root zone that don't get that water that they should be getting. That's why when you

handwater, you can purposefully go all around it and do that. So that's one. Again, it's not been a super droughty year, but something that could be contributing to the leaf drop soggy conditions too. If on the opposite is true. Let's say you've got a heavy clay soil, it's not in a good raised bed, good drainage, excess amount of water, and we've had a couple of doozy rains this year that can contribute as well as can

of course people just overwatering. But I don't see a lot that concerns me other than maybe a little nutrition and make sure that the root zone has adequate water but not too much. Okay, well that's good to hear. I was worried about a fungus or something like that, so okay, well it's not This is definitely not a fungus. That's for sure, okay, good, and the pH of the soil is going to be okay. I was reading something about adding vinegar to water or whatever. If your pH is not

right. Yeah, so don't don't do the vinegar. That's happen now, that's what happens when people who think they know stuff are turned loose online. We get okay, well this three yes, okay, Well, I'll continue to watch the water and certainly do the as you say nutrition. Okay, well, thank you. I just was worried that it was on its way out, all right, man. Let me let me add one thing to

it. I would get some microlife their reddish bag. It's for acid loving plants like blueberries, guardens azalias, all those kinds of plants, and I would start using that around your hollies. Hollies like a little more acidic environment. They don't have to have that, not to the degree of hydrandua or

blueberry, but it does help them. And microlife acidic fertilizer is going to release slowly, So follow that abel, sprinkle it out around your holly's, scratch it into the mulch, because you want that fertilizer to say moist so it decomposes more rapidly, and it will feed and it will slowly acidify that root zone over time as you continue to use it. So I think that

would be good. Plus, the microlife is going to have micro nutrients in it because it comes from organic materials, so naturally has whatever nutrients we're in that organic matter. And so if you got a little bit of a shortage of micros, you could do that. You could also put a little bit of azamite out. I don't know if you've ever used azmite before. Normally we put it on a lawn, but I would follow the label, don't overdo it. Any nutrient you need the right amount, not too much.

And that's true of micros as well. So the azamite, follow the label, Sprinkle it around your hollies and water it in really good between all of that stuff. Hopefully they'll they'll bounce back and you'll start to see better growth. Okay, well, thank you very much. I appreciate it. All right, thank you, I appreciate that. I appreciate you. You take care, all right. It always happens this way. At the end of guard line, we get when it rains, it poors. Here we go

garden. Let's see Karen in Houston. How can we help the day? Karen, Welcome to garden Line. Good morning. I planted a Myers lemon in my yard last year. It did find the first year, but the new growth this year the leaves are shrivelly and look unhealthy. And I'm not sure. I've tried mem oil, thinking it might be something microscopic that I can't see, but that's not healthy. Karen, tell me the name of the plant, Polae again. It's a Myers lemon tree Myers. Okay,

yeah. Shrivellly is probably an insect called citrus leaf miner. It's a little fly. It lays an egg in the leaf and the leaf tunnels in between the upper and lower surfaces. And as it makes all its little squiggly lined tunnels, if you get up close and look at them, you may see some little skinny black thread like lines going around back and forth, zigzagging around through there. That's the leaf miner and it will cause a crinkling of the

leaf as it's growing. It happens primarily to the new tender shoots that are growing. You can ignore them. They're not going to kill the tree. You can ignore them if you want to shut them down. Then whenever you have new growth, you spray it with something containing spinosid. And I can spell that for you while you're grabbing a pen or pencil there. That spinosid is an organic product that soaks in the tissue and it'll kill the leaf miners.

But you want to spray the new growth. No sense spraying the old dark green, leathery leaves. They're not going to get leaf miner or if they had it, it's already gone. So the new growth SPI no sa D spino sad and that'll do it. And if you want to be extra sure that's what it is, grab a sample, take it to a good quality garden center like we talk about on garden Line, show them what you got, put it in a zip lock bag and they'll tell you if that's

what it is. Okay, great, thank you so much. I appreciate it. All right, you bet, thanks for a call. All right, folks, we are going to have to take a little break here at the top. We got one little segment left, and I'll thankful of calls. So those of you on there hang on. We'll get to you. James, will you be first, and then Greg, and then I think James Another, James and Lee coming up. We are gonna hop and jump right out here and see how many of these phone calls we can catch before

the end of the show. Today, we're going to go to Meadow's place now and talk to James. Hello, James, Hello. Skip With all the rain we had, I had an outbreak of grass burrs in my Saint Augustine. I treated everything with sedge gender and have pretty well killed all those spots. My question is to improve the recovery of the area, I had planned to use some leaf mo compost and then water it in with soil activator. Is there anything better that I could apply to help growth recovery in these

areas? Those are all just fine. Leaf mo compost about a third half an inch of it on the surface is very helpful. If the soil as compacted and that's part of the problem, you can do an aerration on it. But if not, that's fine too. The watering it in as you described is also a good idea. Hopefully the grass will have time to fill back in and do well. There is a product from Medina called has to Grow super Grow Plus. It's a quart bottle that hooks to your garden hose

and it covers four thousand square feet. It's got a lot of other things in it in addition to the sixteen zero two fertilizer, and I would probably use that on those areas and try just to try to give it a boost. If it's got any iron deficiency in it, it'll help with that as well. I think that'd be a good way to go about it, or a real quick thing, though, Greg. I don't know if you've ever seen my schedules online at my website, but there's a turf care schedule and

a disease, pest and weeds management schedule. On the second one, you will see exactly when to apply the preventative herbicide a barricade to stop grassbirds. And you're going to do that in the probably let's see where you all right, you would do that in your area. I would do it in mid February or late February would be fine, and then I would do it again about sixty days later to carry it on through the season just to prevent the

grasspers from showing back up again next year. Okay, what was that supergrowth you recommend it? Also? Yeah, from Medina has to grow products there are several has to grow products. This one is called super grow Plus Super Grow Plus. We'll go to an ACE Hardware store. They're going to have it. An ACE Hardware new you is going to carry that. Okay, appreciate all the information, Thank you, sir. All right, and download that schedule from Gardening with Skip dot com Gardening with sk I've got it.

I've been following it most of the year. Okay, okay, good good, glad to hear that. Take care, have a good rest of your weekend. We're going to go now to Conrad and talk to Greg. Hey, Greg mor good morning, Good morning to you. I'm done fine. How can we help my daughter about Father's Day? Brought me a couple of those sacks and bechanal and sons, lime and lemon trees. Yes, huh they're potted trees from lose okay and uh first office. And no, there's

no no directions on how to how to care for it. No no uh planning instructions, no fertilizing instructions. I was wondering what I could use as a lime tree and a lemon tree, and I was warrant there's any kind of fertilizer you'd recommend for them. I gotta right now, I gotta ref bottom and something bigger and fertilizing. There's a lot of things that you can use that'll do well for citrus. Uh. You know, it's not just

certain magic formulas that you have to have. But I know Nelson Plant Food, for example, has these little canisters, plastic canisters with a screw on lid of a centrus type fertilizer. And so you go to an Ace hardware store, you're probably gonna find it there. A lot of our garden centers Europe in conro I bet they have it out at A and A Plants on the east side of Montgomery that that's probably a place you call them to be sure, but they're going to have something like that, and just follow the

label. Just get your a little tea spoon in there and sprinkle it around and water it in really good to get good growth. The most important thing on those is to get them in a bigger container than you bought them in. They probably came in a gallon container based on what you told me, Yeah, and so you need them to be in a much bigger container so that they have soil, a quality soil mix. Get your quality soil mix,

and then make sure you keep it adequately moist. That's the biggest challenge with growing centrus and a container is in the summer, it's pumping a lot of water, it's thirsty, it's hot, and we just have to make sure that the bank account of soil in that container stays moist. Right, But it can go in a container. It's got a picture of a of a container. I guess you get it's not gonna be very big. I think I said it's gonna plant seven feet apart and it'll get like seven feet

tall three feet wide. That'll be I guess that's so I figured the container. Yeah, containers better because you can wheel that container into the garage on a freezing night. Both the limen right to take a hard freeze. Uh. So I would get, you know, I would get something probably The next step could be something about five gallons of soil about that size. You can kind of figure it out what you want to get a nice pretty container

for that. Uh and then eventually you're gonna get almost up to a half whiskey barrel size a container where you'll need a little dolly to run it around the yard and into the garage, right, Okay, but you don't have to do Okay. My last question is, like Karen said earlier about her her lemon tree had like those those bad leaves on the top of my line,

that same line plans doing the same problem. And I've had them sitting side beside, but it's only affecting the line with those leaves greenfully on top. Yeah, it's okay, that's just where they happen to have landed. They take they attack all types of citrus, but that's a citrus leaf miner, and I would get spinosid. And anytime a new flesh of growth comes out, tender new tissues that haven't hardened off and gotten leathery, spray those

with spinocid. I just wanted to I just wonder why gon't want and not the other sitting side beside, because I'm just I didn't replan them yet. But okay, I I just don't know the answer to that. But anyway, that that that's what you do, all right, Greg, Hey, thanks thanks a lot for the call, much appreciated. We're going to go now out to Lee and Tomball. Hello, Lee, good morning, three fig leaves, three fig trees to growing good one is looking sickly, crinkly,

leaves looking yellow. I just showed you talk to somebody about spinosa. If I should put that on there? Uh, you said fig right, I'm barely able to hear you. You can get a little closer to the phone. That would help, did you say, fig Yeah, so that spinosaid, you don't need that for the figs. It could be different things. You said, crinkly, the leaves are crinkly. Yeah, leaves are crankling like they're drying out or something. But the stems look green. They

get plenty of water. Water once in water. Yeah, Well, different things can affect figs. Figs get nematodes which block the water movement through the roots, and so even though they're getting watered, the water and making it up there and so you're getting the equivalent of drought symptoms, which can be yellow and of older leaves, browning of older leaves, you know, the drying up kind of thing. That may be what's going on. Uh, it could. It could also be a disease called fig rust. Why don't

we do this. I'm gonna put you on hold, and I want you to send me some close up pictures so I can see that, and then let's talk about it next weekend and we can we can figure that out. Okay, but hang on, Chris is going to take pick up your call here as I hang it, hang it out, all right. I'm gonna go real quick, James, it's already music playing. But can I give you a quick answer. How can we help? Yeah, this fall messed up my old streets pretty bad. How much limbs cannot cut off of it

without hurt them. Any limb that's broken, damaged, whatever's got to come off. So whether you want to prune that much or not, it's kind of beside the point. It's got to come off so you can take care of the tree. Go ahead and do them on a pruning you need to do at this point. If it's a damaged limb, anything that can wait until February. Wait until February. All thank you very much. I will be back next week