Happy Fathers Day!

Kat r H Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to kt r H Garden Line with Skip Richard's shoes crazys. Just watch him as things to set crazy again. Not a sign gas. So good Sunday morning. I want to wish each of you are really nice Sunday morning. It is a nice day outside. Glad to have you with us today. You're listening to Garden Line and what are we doing. We're here to help you have a more bountiful garden and a more

beautiful landscape. That's our goal. So all you got to do is give a call if you'd like to talk about something regarding your garden. Maybe you've never done a garden before, let's talk about that. There are a lot of ways to get into growing things without having to just dive in full force. For example, there's containers. If you've never grown vegetables before, there is a great opportunity to grow them. Just a really nice large container.

For example, if you're going to do vegetables like a tomato, then I would say five gallons minimum absolute minimum, more like ten gallons to do really well with it. And why does that matter? Well, it matters because the plant has to be able to get water and nutrients, and everything it gets has to come out of the container. So I don't care whether you're growing a petunia or a tomato or an herb in a container, that whole

root system is abnormally confined for that plant. Okay, if you were looking at a tomato growing out in the garden, it have roots going down pretty deep actually, and pretty far in all different directions, drawing from moisture and nutrients that are in the soil. In a container, it's limited to that amount of soil. So the more soil you have, the better you are. That means you water less often. That means you have less drought stress.

That means the nutrient availability is greater because there's a bigger volume, a bigger bank account for them to draw from. So why not try garden and a container this year? If you haven't done it before, give it a try. Now. It's not tomato planting season, that's for sure, But you can plant herbs. There are other vegetables you can grow in summer. You can grow flowers, beautiful container gardens of flowers. Oh and by the way, there's no rule that you have to keep your flowers and your food

apart. There are flowers that are edible. There are ways to mix both blooming beauty and bounty in the same garden, and I would encourage you to do that. For example, what's the Swiss charred bright lights. It's got all these beautiful colors of ribbed leaves and Swiss charred. Of course it's an edible charred, but my goodness, that is gorgeous and a colorful container at the right time of the year when it's happy. So consider some of that.

What are you gonna do different this year? What are you gonna try new that you haven't done before. We're gonna head straight out to the phones and we're gonna go to Montgomery and talk to Albert. Hello, Albert, Hello, skip make show you have. I love the patience you have with the callers. Thank you. Are you gonna try my patients now? Albert? Oh, I think it's I think this is a pretty simple question. I just I've bought a ten gallon a red oak tree, and uh,

I've been struggling with how to dig the hole. Can you give me some pointers on how to dig the hole so I can get this tree to grow. Please. Yeah, well, you know we don't want to dig a hole deeper than the root cylinder that you're about to pull out of the container and plant. Okay, because you know you've probably dug trenches or holes before where you thought you filled them up level, and then later you came and they were all sunking in because it swell settles over time, and you want

the plant to be at the right level. And the right level for a tree is so the topmost root is right at about the soil line. So now you know, if you bought the tree, it may have been re potted several times as it grew, and it may not be that the topmost root is at the top of the container anymore. But just dig down wherever the topmost root is that is at the level of the soil, and then you just measure down and that's how deep you dig your hole. From the

topmost root to the bottom of the container cylinder. That's how deep the hole is. And people talk about digging holes that are two and a half times as wide as the root cylinder. That's fine, that's a good rule of thumb you can do that. I've gotten to where I just don't like bending and stooping and lifting dirt, and I pay for it the next day if I do too much of that. So what I'll do is dig a hole big enough to get the thing in, but then use a spading fork go

around the plant. Like imagine your tree is sitting in the hole at the right level, uh, and it's not a huge hole. But then you take your spading fork and you're going around in the soil around that hole, and you're sort of pushing the fork down and pulling it back to crack it open. So you're basically loosening the soil with ever having a stoop and pick it up, and you know, hurts your back on that, and it accomplishes the same thing, whether you dig out the soil and then put the

soil back in or whether you just loosen it up really good. Either way you can help that tree get established and then always water really really good to settle all the soil in as best you can. Well, when you pull it out of the container, the root, you're like in a circular circular do you cut those or loosen them up? Or yeah, you need to they don't unwind underground, and if it's a small enough circle, like let's say if it was in a one gallon pot. Well, that little one,

that little spaghetti sized root going around a one gallon pot. In about eight years, it's going to be big enough and the trunk's going to be big enough to where they're going to come together, and that root's going to end up being a strangling route. We call them a girdling root around the trunk, which is a bad thing. That's why, that's why we cut them. All right, you have a great Father's day, Skip, Thank you, good to talk to you. You as well. Thank you very

much for the call over. Take care, Thank you, Bye bye bye bye. Plants for All Seasons is a is a wonderful garden center. It's up it's up on Tomball Parkway Highway two forty nine, which if you're going from Houston to Tomball you exit Louetta a crossover Luetta and a trade there on the right hand side. They've been around for a long time, the Flowery family, I think is about nineteen seventy three they began Plants for All Seasons

and they've been going strong ever since. You know, the expertise not only within the family members but and it is family operation, but within the staff as well, the other staff as well. It's excellent. And so when you go in there, you get good advice, you get good direction. They will help you. But let's say you want to do one of those beautiful color containers I was talking about. They could kind of walk you through and go here, these are some plants would be good for maybe the center

of your container. Here's some ideas from the others. What do you like? In other words, they make sure you have success. You know, you come back in later. You got a bug on your plant, you bring in in a bag and they identify it, Yeah, don't worry about it, or well, yeah you need to control it, and here's what you use, and they have that on hand. And it's that kind of

service. It's that kind of walking along with you as you're learning to garden and as you're you know, trying to create that beautiful homescape that eden around your house. That's what Plants for All Seasons does. You can go to the website Plants for All Seasons dot com, Plunts for All Seasons dot com, or you can go to the phone and just call them up seven or not seven two eight one three seven six sixteen forty six. Let me do that again. Two eight one three seven six, sixteen forty six. Plunts

for all seasons. Right there at two forty nine and Lueta, it's starting to warm up outside. I know you guys realize this. I had a week last week out in the landscape where I'm doing a lot of different kinds of work. I started talking about it yesterday. We have a bed that just had the worst clay soil I've ever seen in my life in it. I mean it was, it just is a sticky mess. And so we've done several things. I've done a drainage pipe away from there, kind of

an underground French strain to get the excess water out of that area. And i even excavated a little bit of the clay out and put a whole bunch of expanded shale in, mixed it into the soil, and then I've got a whole bunch of organic materials, bed mixes, compost that kind of thing, mixing that into the soil as well, getting my nutrient levels up, putting some fertilizer down. And this next week will be time to be planting.

But that was a lot of preparation. But it's more fun, isn't it, just to get flowers and put them in the bed and then hopefully enjoy them. But I'll tell you, if you want to be able to enjoy them, to realize that enjoyment, you got to get the right first. That's really important. That bed has been there for about a year. In fact's been there longer than that. When we moved into the particular house that we're in right now, that bed it's just never been right. It's

never been right. And I finally just bit the bullet and went in and redid it. And now we're gonna have a nice bed with nice flowers, and I don't have to worry about it going forward. Just some swell amending here and there as we go. But if you think about it that way, you can take your garden areas just one at a time and get the swill right. That is so important to get it right, And part of

that is getting the nutrient levels right. And I know, normally when I'm talking about fertilizers and things, I'm talking about for your lawn, because that's kind of the elephant in the room around our Landscapes's got to get that lawn care, but there are a lot of other ways that we can enhance our garden success with fertilizers, even sometimes ones that are with the lawn. I'm going to talk about that a little bit when I come back. Right now,

we're going to take a quick break and I'll be right back. Our number is seven three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Welcome back. Good to have you here with us on Garden Line. What kind of gardening questions can we assist you with today? That's what we're here for. Give us a call when you're when you've got something you'd like to discuss, such as maybe it's vegetables or flowers or fruit. Certainly lawns and trees. Lawns

and trees are the big ones. That's what the phone rings about most of the time. So I was talking about lawn care and lawn care, fertilizers and other things. You know. Microlife they have some excellent products for the lawn, their Humantes Plus it's a purple bag that works really well. It's concentrated compost in a bag. That's what it amounts to. It provides benefits that help not only with the microbial activity in your soil, but also with

the physical characteristics of the soil. Humus is something that does assist in developing a good friable structure to the soil, meaning it breaks apart. It's not just a mass of clay with poor drainage compaction. It listens it up and over time, as you improve your soil with organic matter, including with humans

like microlife humates plus, you're going to see those benefits. I would also say that if you were doing any kind of vegetable gardening that these kinds of products are also very effective because it's it's plants with roots growing in soil, and so you need to follow the kind of the design that nature created out there that has a wonderful, loose, open soil that builds better and better

over time. That's kind of how it works. We tend to tear soil up by not taking care of it, and if you just look at how nature functions, soil gets better and better each year. That's what that's what we're aiming for, and micro life fertilizers can help you with that. The green bag that we would put on our lawns, the six to four good Summer fertilizer good fertilizer throughout the year. It is also one that I would use in my vegetable garden. I would use it in a flower garden.

We use it in a bed that you are growing herbs in. It's a good all purpose fertilizer. The six to four green bag. There's a lot of other products. I like Microlifs. They have a number of things such as the seaweed product, fish emulsion type product, and other general fertilizers. The orange bottle, the seven percent nitrogen liquid is an excellent I use it for houseplants. I use it for a lot of other things. You're not

going to go wrong with these. Just take one look. If you want to give us a call talk about a particular kind of plant, we can be a little more specific. I can be a little more specific on recommending these, but in general, you're going to find success with all of them. And I know I say this because you know we put on bags or bottles or whatever. We say this is a biscus food, or this is a tomato food, or this is a whatever rose food, and those are

all true in their guidelines. Excuse me, Ben. In general, plants need the nutrients that they're lacking, and so if you were to have a soil let's say that the phosphorus was already through the roof high, just for example, well, then a high phosphorus fertilizer that might otherwise be a good one wouldn't be the one for you for that particular situation because you were supplementing

what your soil needs. That's why we often go with a three one two kind of ratio, because in general that's kind of what plants tend to take up in terms of the ratio for especially a leafy green growth on plants. Anyway, just some thoughts on it. One of the things that is difficult to encourage people to do or difficult to talk people into doing, is soil testing. And you know it's just you'd rather go take your money and go

buy a plant, right, or fertilizer or something. And when you say, well, go spend a little on soil testing, you know it's not that expensive. But what soil testing does is it gives you your snapshot in time, so you know exactly what's already in your soil. Is it balanced, is it imbalanced? Is something excessive? Is something deficient? All the above? You know, all of that and you know the pH of your soil as well, and then you can fertilize more intelligently and more targeted in

a more targeted way. So if not, we go with these general guides like use a three one two on your lawn and put it out and put it out so that you're putting a pound of nitrogen per thousands square feet. Those are all guidelines, and there most of the time they're just fine. They're just fine, they work fine. But the ultimate is periodically test your soil and find out what you need. It may be that my standard recommendations for you at your yard are not the best choice and that we would need

to adjust that based on a soil test result. Does that make sense? Analogy I like to use is if I walked into a kitchen and somebody was in the process of putting together a cake. You know, they had the mixing bowl and had some flour in there and other things, and I walk in the room and they go, hey, do I need to add more sugar, more salt? Do I need any more baking powder in this? How would I answer that question? Because I, number one, I don't

have the recipe, but I don't know what's already in the bowl. And if they've already added all those well then no, you don't need to add those. And so I use that as an analogy because to just say every soil needs a certain thing is it's a good guess, but it's better to know exactly what's already in the soil and then fertilize accordingly. All right, Hopefully that wasn't too too dry and nerdy. But it's a simple, simple

point, but it sure will help you have success. Our phone number is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one two five eight seven four. I had a good time yesterday. I want to thank the folks at the wall Birds Unlimited in bel Air for having me out after the show. We were out there. I always like going into Wadbirds because they're fun. I got to meet some nice folks while we are

out there too, give aways some nice products. And thanks to Products for donating some really cool stuff that we're able to give away yesterday for folks that came by. You know, Wildbirds is an ideal spot if you're looking for a great gift for Dad. And guess what today is For those of you who have let it sneak up this far, here's your chance. Wildbird's Unlimited. They have wonderful feeders, they have wonderful bird houses. They have all

kinds of accessories for birds. I was visiting with them about some of the bird watering devices and the little they have a little gadget that drips water and that makes the water and the bird bath have constantly have ripples in it, and as a result, mosquitoes don't like to lay their eggs in water that's moving and that little dripping movement. It's a little simple gadget, but that's really a great idea. But we were looking at bird They have excellent books

on birds. It's easy to find something for dad. And Wildbirds Unlimited. It just is. And the quality feed that they have is outstanding. I picked up some myself. I'm doing kind of a blend of two of their feeds myself right now. And I just enjoy Wilbird Unlimited quality feeds because when you buy a pound of it, you get a pound of stuff that's bird food, not the stuff birds kick on the ground because they don't like to eat it. And I think that's important. And if you've been dealing with

squirrels and you're all frustrated with that. Go into Wilbirds and say, hey, what are the options, and they're going to give you four or five ways where you can help avoid problems with squirrels getting in and stealing everything that you're wanting to feed the birds with. I know some of you are out there feeding squirrels, but that's a whole other thing. Wilberd, Hey,

how do you find one? There's six of them WBU dot com forward slash Houston WBU dot com forward slash Houston that will help you find the wildbirds near you. Excuse me, I'm having a time of it this morning. If you have never tried growing and grafting different kinds of fruit, you ought to

consider that. There's just something to try out. It's not something you would necessarily do right now, but there it is not that difficult to learn how to graft, or that difficult to learn how to bud to attach a bud. There's a lot of good for information online. I know the Agrolife Extension Service, the Horticulture Department has some publications that teach you how to graft. There's good videos online to learn how to do it. But it's really a

cool hobby. And if you let's say you had a citrus tree and a freeze killed it back, and now the rootstock sprots up and you got this thorny rootstock. What do you do. Well, you can dig it up, you can buy another one, put it in that's fine, totally legit. Or you can try your hand grafting it yourself. Get some bud wood from somebody who has a particular let's say, a satsuma or I don't know, a lemon, something you're mere lemon, something you're interested in, and

just graft it on yourself. And it's not that difficult. And if you mess up and it doesn't work, well, you get another you to try it again, because you're not killing the plant in order to just craft. It pretty easy to do. Well, It's time for me to take a little break here and let the news do the news. It is going to be probably, I'll tell you what. Let's do this. We're gonna take

a little break. When I come back, I want to talk to you a little bit about some general tree care and we're going to go to the phones, and Charles you'll be there first. Stup, Welcome to garden line this morning. Good have you with us? What are we going to talk about? That would be your call. So we're going to start and let Charles answer that question. Up in Huntsville. How are you doing, Charles, Good morning. I am forty miles north of Huntsville, Alabama, in

southern Tennessee. Oh that yeah. I've got fifty four sweet cord plants in my in my garden, and I fertilized with ten ten ten before I planted them, and then once they sprouted, I used as a mic. They're about four tall, but they haven't tasseled yet. They haven't got that little brown spike yet. Okay, they're about four feet. Does it do any good to fertilize them at this point? As far as the quality of the

corn, the sweet corn usually usually how fertilized trails the corn. I'll get the soil right for I even plant, and I think that's what you said you did, you put some ten ten ten in. I would then when it gets about knee high, I will usually side dress them with just some nitrogen. I mean, you can use more than just nitrogen, but it's

primarily the nitrogen that you're needing. So a turf type fertilizer that's hiering nitrogen would be fine, or even just something that is just nitrogen would be fine too, and then that gives them the boost. Corn is a heavy feeder, and in order to keep it growing and producing well, just making sure it has plenty of nitrogen is important. Okay, yeah, So the thing about it, though, you know, it depends on what's already in your

soil. So if you ever have a soil test, that will be educational because it may be usually over time, we don't need to keep using something like a ten ten ten usually that that's going to change a little bit, because that mental number tends to build up. Well, I was using the information that I shouldn't plant until the ground temperature was sixty degrees, but I noticed the real farmer across the road has a huge, big field of field corn, and he put his when it was fifty and now his is already

starting to tassele out. But right, well, if field corn does better germinating in cooler soil, if you're going to do like a sweet corn, then and especially if you're going to do a super sweet that so one needs to build a considerably warmer to do equally well, so you're not necessarily too late. Well, I know it's about four foot tall. Now, I just noticed when I drive by the other farmer's field, his is way ahead of month. Okay, all right, well may well have sweet corn by

the fourth of July. Well, I appreciate the information. Thank you, sir, thanks for listening up there. I appreciate it. Good luck with that corn. You know, one thing I found about corn, Charles, is somehow the raccoons know the day you're gonna pick it. I have more than once been ready to go out the next morning and pick my corn,

and that night the coons got in it and chewed it all up. So when we hunted in South Dakota, you could get out and you could go drive around and there'd be corn field corn growing, and there was just a line you could draw a rumor on it. It was so straight where the deer had eaten. They down the line, whole line of corn. There you go. We don't have any problems with the raccoons because we've got dogs. Raccoons away from it. All right, there you go. We'll good

to talk to you. Take care of Thank you, bye bye. Yeah, that is that you talk about frustrating in the morning, is like, what were they doing, like sitting off in the edge of the woods, listening to me say I'm gonna pick it tomorrow, and they go, we got to get in there tonight. We're won't get any corn out of this deal. It almost feels like that. So I wanted I told you a while ago, I wanted to talk about trees a little bit. Our trees

are the most valuable single plants in our landscape. They provide incredible benefits. Number one, a shade when it's summer. Having shade, whether it's shade on the roof of your house or the side west wall of your house, or just shade for you sitting out in a patio. It's a valuable thing to have those trees. We need to pick trees carefully before we plant them because we're going to be living with them for a long time, right or

somebody will. And to pick a quality tree species, one that's going to last. It's going to be strong wooded, that has a great structure, that just has a reputation for being long lived. That's important. It may be a flowering tree, though, and that again, picking one that is going to perform well and do well. Here is important. Once you have a tree, you need to take care of it, and that involves a number of things. From the time it's young, it needs to be pruned

properly. We start off we say train the tree, meaning you're pruning it in a way that develops a good, strong st structure. And this is something that you can learn by getting out and doing some reading and studying about it. And there's a lot of good information out there online, or you can hire somebody to come do it for you. But whatever you do, you need to have it done right. And that's important because when you mistrain a tree, you can end up creating problems that down the line you just

never really overcome. And when you butcher a tree by printing it wrong, you do damage that is a lifetime And I see a lot of this from so called professional tree prunters. And we have some very reputable folks through the Houston area that know how to print trees. And then we have a lot of people that own a chainsaw a pickup and that's kind of their level of expertise. And I see the work they do driving down the streets. I

see really bad prunting jobs. Affordable Tree Service Martin spoon Moore. The reason we talk about Martin is he knows how to do this. He's been doing it for many years now. He's got the expertise to do it. He knows Houston, he knows our trees. He understands what it means to live in storm Alley here where we get the hurricanes and all the other kinds of storms that come through like the one that did the other day. If you have a tree that hadn't been looked at and examined by a professional in a

while, you ought to give Martin a call. Let me give you a phone number. It's seven one three six nine nine twenty six sixty three. Martin knows exactly how to take care of your trees. And whether you call him at seven one three sixty nine nine twenty six sixty three, or go to the website Afftree Service dot com, have him come out. Schedule for him to come out. Tell him your guardline listener that puts you at the front of the line for Affordable tree In Martin spoon Moore. But have him

come out and look what is needed. Is there some deadwood? Are there some narrow branch angles that need to be pruned and removed. What need What does your tree need? He will tell you and he'll do the job right. And that's the bottom line. And so don't wait until after the storm and you're looking for somebody to come chainsaw the limbs and throw them in the back of a truck that fell out of the tree. Get ahead of it and get your trees in the best condition because again, very valuable parts.

They're valuable to if you ever resell your home. One of the most important things in terms of a nice home resale is a beautiful landscape with beautiful trees around it. That is a very important thing. And you can have that, but you got to take care of them. Don't trust your trees with is somebody who owns a chainsaw. That's the bottom line for that. I wanted to point out. Next. Let's see schedule here in front of me. Next June the twenty ninth, it's two weeks from today, June the

twenty ninth. I'm going to be at Langham Creek Ace Hardware. That's over kind of in the Copperfield neighborhood. For those of you sort of West Houston know the Copperfield area. Langham Creek's over in that area, and I'll be at the Ace Hardware there on Saturday after the show, two weeks from yesterday, and I hope you go ahead and put that on your calendar. That'll

be my last appearance of the season. So here's your chance, one last chance if you want to bring some samples by or just come by and meet. I'd always love to meet people that are listeners to Garden Line, So make that note Langham Creek Ace Hardware. I'll tell you more about it as we get closer, but it's two weeks out from right now, eleven thirty to one thirty on that Saturday. We're going to take a break, get some information here, and come right back. Our phone number if you want

to get on the board with Chris. Seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Welcome back to the garden Line. Good to have you with us. If you'd like to give us a call and talk gardening, here's the number you want to write this down. Seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. We're gonna go out to Brenham and talk to Mike. Hello, Mike, Hello, sir, how are you? I'm well, thank you.

How can we help today? I have two apple trees. One of them is a pink lady, and I think the other is uh kalla, I don't remember what. They had a lot of growth this year and I did some hand of pollinating and it worked really well good, probably too well. I've got clusters of apples on little limbs that are I don't know, half the size of a diameter of a pencil. Yeah. So anyway, so first off is that should I find those apples out? I mean, I've

got clusters of five apples on a little limbs like that. Yeah, you need to. It's how big are the apples right now? Right now they're golf ball are a little bit bigger. Yeah, So going forward in future years, go try to get them thinned before they certainly reached the size of your thumb the end of your thumb, okay, last joint of your thumb.

That that would be kind of a goal to get them done. Now, on an apple looms, it has a cluster of blooms and there's one in the middle that's called a king blossom, and it's bigger, and that would be the one that's most important. If you get that pollinated, it'll make the best, biggest apple on the cluster. But the others are there too, and sometimes something happens to the main one, and it's good to have some others around, But you thin them to one per cluster, So

that's pulling a lot of apples off. But yeah, one per cluster is all you should have on an apple tree. Okay, okay. Additionally, the there's been a lot of above ground growth, but with the storms and whatnot, those both those apple trees have have and I took off their supports. They were about three years old. They're leaning, they've they've had they've been leaning over. I had to put supports back on. Yeah, to keep them, to keep them upright. Is there something I can do?

And I had been using root activator and stuff like that. There's something I can do to help strengthen the strengthen truth just mainly the thing that strengthens would on whether it's a fruit tree or a shade tree or whatever, is movement and stretching of those tissues. And they get stronger if you do that. And so if you were to take a tree trunk when it's a little skinny trunk and tie it to a post tight. It would never develop the strength

if you took the post away to snap off. But when it moves in the wind, that slight movement, that stretching, it gets stronger and stronger. It's kind of like our muscles working out getting stronger. It's the same principle in nature. And so if you can allow it some movement, you got to stick it out, but a little bit of movement in time it will get stronger. Do you know offhand what rootstock your apples are on? Usually? Okay, that's fine, that's fine. That affects sometimes tree growth

too. I see, should I trim the canopy if you will? I mean, they're not twelve foot tall now, But should I trim it out just kind of limit the sale effect? I would. I would trim it only to take away things that don't have a long term purpose in the canopy. Everywhere you have foliage, it's producing carbohydrates, which is setting fruit buds when we get into mid to late summer. That's so you need that and for next year. And it also is strengthening the plant, helping it grow

bigger. And better root system, cutter top growth. So I wouldn't prune just to prune. But if you go online, there's a website called Aggie Horticulture and they have free publications on there. There's one in the fruit section on apple trees, and it shows you how to prine and apple. It's

a little different approach than when we're pruning peaches. It's hard to describe on the air, but the bottom line is you want branches that are spaced apart enough so that you get good air movement through there and good light down into that. We say, into the canopy of the tree. You don't want your treat to become an umbrella with all the foliage and fruit around the top and outside. Okay, yes, sir, Yes, sir, okay, awesome, awesome. I appreciate your time. All right, well, good

luck with that. Thanks, Mike, appreciate the call, Yes sir, take care. Nelson Plant Food has a wide variety of quality plant foods. You know, have the turf Star line. And by the way, if you haven't done summer fertilizing Slow and Easy by Nelson Plant Food, part of their turf Star line of products gives you a very very nice smooth, gradual

release on from the time you put it down. You get a little nutrient release then, and then it just continues to do that and all the way up to like three months, four months, even a little further out in time, it's still releasing that nutrient. So when you're fertilized with slow and Easy in the summer, you're done until fall. It's got a little bit of an acidifying effect, which is a good thing also, but it's high quality fertilizer, very important to do that. Now. There's a lot of

different kinds of products from Nelson Plant Food. They're nutrius Star line is especially interesting. You know, for example, if you got any kind of vines from bougainvillias to wisteria to you know, trumpet buyes and caroline adjustment, all of boog and villa plant food by Nutristar, the Nelson product is an excellent choice. They have a crape myrtle fertilizer that's also a very good blend,

works well. And the Plumeria which works with all your flowering tropicals, is just another example of a quality product in the nutri Star line from Nelson Plant Food, and they're widely available, easy to find them easy to come by. While we're talking about taking care of the soil, the importance of making sure that we have prepared the soil well with good quality organic matter is important. Now you can go out to the soil you have and you put composts

and things down and mix it in and create a nice soil. You can also just buy a soil that you put in a box, put it in a container, put it in a raised bedgarden, put it on top of the ground and grow in that. Things like the fruit berry and or excellent for that. The veggie and herb mix would be excellent for that. For succulents, the cacti and succulent mix. Airlom soils has a wide variety and they're widely available. It's really easy to find heirloom soils no matter where you

live because they're sold by the bag. You can also bat by the bulk. You can go to Heirloom Soilsoftexas dot com, Heirloomsoils off Texas dot Com and find out you can go get it. You can have them deliver it to you. You can have them bring a supersack, which is a qbcard sack that's set on your driveway. Real easy to do and very high quality products. I've used in myself. They work very very well. And remember round stuff before green stuff, the fertilizers, the soil amendments, all of

that. It's very very important. We know. Now out to conro and talk to Archie. Hey, Archie, we got about a minute. If it takes longer, I'll just hold you over the break. Okay. Hey, Well we spoke last year and had some little volunteer elm trees come out and I replanted them, and they're they're doing awesome, really are I think they're going to be fine? My question is should I trim them up? And what should I fertilize them with? Uh? You know I would?

Are you gonna are they containers right now? Are they already where they're going to finally be? Yeah? No, they're they're where they're going to be. Okay. I I went straight from a wheelbarrow where they volunteerily come up straight to the ground. Okay, So what you what you want to do with a young tree like that is as it grows, you're not going to see the first long term limb for a good while, because that first limb that is a long term limb is going to be a way above your head

high, right. I mean, if you go out to a big tree in the yard, you don't have limbs done at your waist on that tree. Uh. And so the branches that are growing out, now, I would take my prunters and I would just cut the last couple of inches out of them, just tip them. And what that does is it leaves the foe on them to make carbohydrates and move down into the plant to help that plant get bigger and stronger, get more root system, and do better and

better. And then once they hit the stage where they're about the size of the end of your thumb, let's say, about an engine diameter, then you can cut them off where they attached to the branch. But by tipping them, you dwarf them and you prevent them from taking over and using all the energy of the tree. Instead, they're more of an energy producer than an energy user. Uh. And just continue to work it up there until you finally get to a height where you're going to have a permanent branch.

And at that stage you wouldn't be tipping those Does that make sense? So blowing on all of them all about an inch from the bait. No, no, no, let me do the music is playing here. I'm going to have to come back to you on it. No, I'm talking about taking the inch, final inch out of the end of the branch. Let me come back and oh god, I'll explain it. Just saying welcome to kt r H garden line with skimp Rictor. It's just watch him as a sign welcome back to the garden line. Good to have you with us.

Look outside, will you take a look at that sky. It is beautiful. It's going to be a beautiful day. I love it. I love it, love it, love it. Hey, this is an opportunity this afternoon for you to get outside to get a little couple of things done. If you want to put around the art a little better, just go buy a garden center and pick up some applies and get ready to go for taking

your lawn and landscape to the next level. Remember it is time to be planting all kinds of things in the vegetable garden and in the flower beds. We got a lot of good heat tolerant plants that we can we can use and so there's no reason even when summer heat hits to lose the beauty and the color that we can have around the landscape. We're going to go back to the phones now. We were talking with Archie up in Conroe and Archie

we were discussing elm pruning. And I'm gonna take another kind of stab at at what I'm trying to describe. I wish I wish you could see me wave my hands in the air. And you know how I can't talk without my hands. Well anyway, Uh So, you've got this little trunk coming up out of the Ground's a young little tree and it's going to have sight and a half foot and a half foot tall right now, huh. And you want that trunk to come on up. It's going to keep growing bigger

and bigger. But rather than cutting off all the branches where they attached to the trunk and just living leaving you with a little bamboo pole coming up out of the ground, We're we're going to take the tips of those and just snip the tips out so they stop growing, but they stay there with the

leaves that are on them. And that we call that a trashy trunk because what we're doing is we're leaving them as to serve like they would be nurse limbs, meaning they're they're they've got leaves or producing carbohydrates, but they're not. The tree is not putting its energy into growing those branches. It's putting its energy into growing that upright trunk you're building and eventually the true scaffold branches

that will appear way above your head and time. So rather than just cut them off, let's take advantage of the leaves on them, and you can get more of a response in terms of tree growth. Rapid tree growth is a result to that. So just just you're what you're saying is just just clip the ones that are there about an inch and that'll kind of go dormant.

Yeah, sometimes you get even a tree comes up and it has two trunks and they want to compete with each other who's going to be boss, And if you let them do that, they just get bigger and it just

ends up being a mess and time. It's a very weak union. But if you anytime you snip the tips out of a branch, it dwarfs it and it may try growing again and you can do another trimming on it later if you need to, meaning trimming meaning just cutting the tips out, But at the end of the season, those that you tipped will just be a fraction of the diameter of the ones you let just grow, in this case

the trunk. So where will they start growing after you tip them? Yes, well, anytime you cut a branch off, you may get two or three buds at break and and and grow out in response to that. Do you see what I'm saying? Like, if you cut the top out of your little trees you got, they would have buds at form and try to replace that trunk and go back up in there. Okay, okay, okay, gotcha? Gotcha? All right? And should I should I fertilize it

now? Or moderate amounts in general, as yours is pretty small. But in general, what I say is, on these young trees, go up to the trunk with your thumb. That's my one inch measure close enough? And how many thumb wits across is it? You know? So let's just say the tree was the size of a typical broom handle, you know, that may be what inch inch and a half whatever across, And and so you would give it a cup or two of fertilizer for every inch of trunk

diameter. So if you had, if you had a broom handle, it'd get a it'd get a cup or two or three of fertilizer. And if it was the size of a Coca Cola can, that's about three inches, so that's going to be about three or six cups. And that makes it real easy, really easy to know. And you just sprinkle it around all around. It watered in really good. Okay, okay. And what what what? What type of fertilized is? I would no, I would use

lawn fertilizer whatever you use for your lawn. You hear me talk about fertilizers all the time. And just get one for your lawn and then just scoop a scoop some cups out of it for your for your trees. Yeah, okay, okay, he's doing us perfect, all right, man, Thank you appreciate it, buddy. Thank you. You have a good day you too. Take care of you. You know, the Father's Day is today.

First of all, for those of you who aren't aware, If for any reason you are still in need of a really good quality Father's Day gift, I've got a perfect idea. In fact, just take dead with you. Go to an Ace hardware store there's so many things that we dads would love to have from an ACE hardware store. I mean, you can go to the barbecue section and look in there. You can go to some of

the tools and equipment and whatnot. We always have a need for some other kinds of tools, or some better things for taking care of the lawn and the landscape outside, something to make the outdoor area more beautiful. There's just a lot of opportunities. I don't know what your dad's interested in it,

but I guarantee you Ace has got it whatever it is. There's a lot of different things, and they have some really cool stuff at the ACE Hardware stores go way beyond just what you would think of from a hardware store. You can find ACE Hardware all over town, all over the region really and in the Greater Houston area. We have forty of them. So just go to Acehardware dot com. Ace Hardware dot Com, find the store locator in

there. You go, takes you right in there where you can find exactly the nearest stores to you, and they're gonna be some close to you. We're going to head back now to Spring Branch and talk to Herta. Hello, Herta, good morning, morning, I have a kalily that I got for mothers today. Okay, but they're at least I counted ten or twelve stems in that pot. It's about a five inch pot. I think there are too many in there. There's a leaf that's yellow and another leaf that's

like a yellow brown. Okay, okay, well they do they do that, some heard it. I would just mainly if I'd worry about is it getting a good amount of light but not direct sun that they want a bright area? Okay? And is it getting they don't have to be in full sun? In fact, they shouldn't. That's the price they're in full sun. Yeah, that's that's probably a little too much for them, especially with

the sun with the temperatures we're about to get into here. But anyway, the uh so you could you could do that and then make sure you keep the soil moist but not drenched soggy. They don't like, they don't like to be in a swamp, but they do want moisture, I see, okay, And I have some athemite. Should I give them that? Oh?

You can put a little on them, but I wouldn't be careful because you could end up overdoing it by, you know, asthmight we put down like a ten pound bag over a thousand square feet easy and so I mean you would maybe a quarter teaspoon of asthmite in a little container would be enough. Okay, but they're not too crammed. Well they might be, but they grow like that, and they can grow like that. I would for now, since they're kind of new from Mother's Day, I would just leave

them alone and see how they do for you. Oh okay, okay, thank you very much. Take care all right, heardy, you take care too. Thanks for the call. Appreciate that if you have not put your summer turf fertilizers out, you still can do it. You know. We put things on a schedule as a guideline for when you ought to do things, and if you miss that date, that's okay, it's not the end of the world. Just go ahead and do it later. Get it done

though. Summer fertilizing helps build turf density and nitrophoss superturf. That's the silver bag. That's the silver bag nineteen four ten. Those are the three numbers on the bag that is designed to gradually release at least half of the nitrogen over the next two or three four months. It's a very gradual release product. And the nice thing about that is it gives you a nice green lawn, good density, but not overdoing it. You know, anytime we overdo

nutrition, it's not a good thing. And this idea that if a tea spoons good at tablespoons better, I don't care if it's pest control, fertilizing or whatever. Don't operate by that principle. Do what the plant needs. And what the plant needs in the case of a lawn is about a pound of nitrogen per thousand square feet. That's that's kind of what it amounts to. So when you use superturf and you apply it and follow the label, follow the instructions, get it down on there, get it watered in,

you're going to see that gradual release over time. You're going to see the benefit in terms of your lawn that along with some moderate applications of water here and there in the absence of rain and then regular mowing will create the most beautiful lawn that you can have. And that is I know what you're going after there. If you go out to Ace Hardware at Sincle Ranch, you're going to find nitrophost products like the superturf a task Asida Ace also has some

Lake hardware done in Clue Lake Jackson Lake Hardware. Clue in Lake Jackson is going to have Jem's Hardware up in Montgomery also another place where you're gonna find super turk and other nitrofos products as well. So we were we were discussing earlier about fruit trees and little gosh I'm looking at the time. I better take a little break here. I'll come back to that thought in just a moment. Hang on our phone number seven one three two one two fifty eight

seventy four. I'll be right back. Welcome back to Garden Line. May you with us this morning? A little Brian White for those of you who may remember that. You know I was talking about fruit while ago, and the fruit is such an enjoyable thing to add to the landscape. You know, you may not have room for orchard. Maybe you're looking at in the back like I don't. I don't have a back forty to put an orchard in. But you can grow fruit in a lot of places. Citrus trees

do well in containers, large container. That is, when we're talking about things like when I say citrus tree, I guess it's say trees and shrubs. So something like the kumquats that make more of a bush or a shrub. They do well. A lime, various types of limes, a mere lemon, even a satsuma orange could be put in a very large container, something that is the equivalent of a half whiskey barrow, but definitely made us something that won't rote out like a whiskey barrow will rote out, but something

about that volume. You can grow even a satsumn. If you just have room for a tree or two, why not make it part of your landscape. I used to have a peach tree that was I just used it like I would a small tree in the landscape, and it just happened to produce fruit for me. Also beautiful blooms. Peaches do not require pollinators. Plums generally do, but not always. And if you don't know, you can

always go online and find out. The Aggie Horticulture website. Aggie Horticulture has a fruit section and every single plant that species you can imagine is on there. I mean, if you want a publication on peaches and plums, there's one on apples on pears. There's one on avocados, there's one on several more than one on citrus that they have. I'm just saying it's free advice, and it's very good advice. They'll suggest varieties for you. They'll tay

hot a parnum and things make it easier on yourself. But try something like a fruit. Maybe you have an arbor area, how about some grapes on an arbor. If you're going to do that and you want to grow some grapes on an arbor, I would recommend one called Southern Sensation Seedless SSS. Southern Sensation Seedless. That is one of the newest grapes that we have. It's actually comes out of the breeding program up in Arkansas, but it is one that doesn't do well for them there, but it sure does for us

down here. That's the same breeding program that produced a lot of the blackberries that we like so much down in this area. The blackberries, if they have a Native American name like Navajo or rappa hoo, those kind of names, they came out of the Arkansas breeding program and they also produced Southern Sensation Seedless, which is an excellent I believe Arkansas breed is that great pretty sure. Anyway, it's a good one, So it'd be a good one for

an arbor if you'd like to do that. I think it would be an excellent way to add something of interest and yummy at the same time to your landscape. And just with a little good advice you can you can get off to a good start on that. Quality Home Products of Texas is a company that really specializes in doing it right when it comes to taking care of the customers. Let me just brag on them for just a minute. Eight times they have won the Pinnacle Award by the Better Business Bureau. It is the

most prestigious customer service award BBB offers and they've won it eight times. That's that in and of itself, is amazing. This is a family owned company. It's been around since nineteen eighty nine. But when you go in and say, hey, I need a let's say, a generator, a generaic generator. First of all, by the way, three hundred and fifty dollars off all their generators right now and a free ten year warranty on their air cooled units. The generators that they do. You sit down with them and

they find the generator that it fits you. It's going to be a Generaic because that's a super high quality generator. They're gonna do all the work of getting you through the process of having that thing set up, and that includes everything from getting permission from Hoa's or whoever is part of that process. They do this, They know how to do all that. They'll take care of

all that for you. They will also put the pad down, create the pad to put it on, they'll set it up and once you once they walk away, power goes out, the thing comes on, and you're in good shape because you've gotten a good generator from a good company that knows how to do customer service. Three hundred and sixty five days a year, twenty four hours a day, seventy of course they're there, and that's why they're so highly related. That's why fourteen thousand people have given them a five star

rating from that company. That's why seventy seven thousand homeowners have been served by their company. Because word gets out and there is nothing that replaces quality service. Nothing, And when you take a quality product like Generak and a quality company like quality home Products, you're not going to go wrong. The website

is easy, it's QUALITYTX dot com QUALITYTX dot com. The phone number is seven to one to three Quality. And so if you've even thought about doing a generator, because here we are again in a big, long hurricane season, well you should give them a call, sit down, start the process. Just get some information, get sit down with them, give them a call and check it out, because it takes a while to get the whole thing done and you don't want to delay. So now it'd be a great

time to go ahead and do that. And you know, we don't don't have to have a hurricane to lose power. We learned that the other day again, didn't we That is for sure. I enjoy houseplants that have color in the foliage. I don't know, you know, it used to be I don't know, maybe it seems to me like it used to be that all houseplants were just green. You know, you had a green ivy, maybe splotches of yellow and apothos or something, but it's basically green on green.

And now there are so many other colors and patterns and things. And it's not like they weren't there before. It's just that we have so many more options now. When COVID came along and we were all shoved inside the house for a while. Houseplants became popular, and boy did that whole world ever go crazy in terms of all these new kinds of plants. And I

think they're beautiful. And I like uglionima that's Chinese evergreen. There are some types of it that have kind of a coral and a pink and a reddish color in the foliage that is just beautiful. There's various kinds of variegated houseplants. Why not do some different colors in the house just by choosing plants that you know can do that. And we have a lot of good new ones now. Morana prayer plant is an excellent one for providing a very interesting pattern

of color to the to the foliage. So I would encourage you to do that. You know, the summertime is maybe you don't want to be outside when it's hundred degrees outside, But there's always things you can be doing indoors, including with your houseplants, doing some cuttings, starting some new things, giving them a little fertilizer is needed. Just to remember that the number one problem we make with houseplants is we overwater them. Number two, as we

underwater them. So it's like you're walking down the line here, you're going to go to the left, to the right, one of the other vis really not that hard. You want a really good, well drained mix. That's number one, because if you overwater, you want it to run out. You don't want it to turn into a soggy swamp that doesn't drain. So a good pot that has holes that drain away. You give it a good drenching, set it and sink, let it all drain out, and

then you're good for a while. Don't water again until it dries out. Now, for some tricks, there's two tricks that you can use. One of them the most basic one. And I was talking with someone yesterday when I was at Wabird's Unlimited in bel Air. We were talking about testing plants for water and discussing the idea that if you take a pencil and you sharpen it, that fresh cut would end as you've sharpened it. You stick that

pencil down into the soil and just go ahead and stick it. I usually go like two inches in and pull it out and look at it, and

go another two inches, pull it out and look at it. And you're testing for moisture at different levels, because when you have moisture, either you'll see actual moisture soaked into that wood because instead of having you know, like it's real slick with the oils of your fingers and stuff, you've sharpened it fresh and now you have a fresh cut on there, moisture shows up real easy, or kind of like when you're baking a cake and you put a

little toothpick in it and you pull it out, and that's one way you tell of like a pound cakes ready, you know, is there stuff clinging to the toothpick or not. Well, soil will also cling to that fresh cut pencil edge or surface that you did, and so you can do a real quick test that way. I also test just by picking them up. You know, once you have a plant for a while and you kind of know how heavy it is, you pick it up when it's full of moisture.

Almost all the weight of a plant is the water you put in the pot. I mean, that's a huge, huge part of the weight. And so you can pick it up right away and ooh, this is really light. This is going to need water, and you kind of get better at that. But that pencil is a great way to go, or the toothpick. You can use a toothpick. My wife has some little succulents and very tiny containers, and she uses a little toothpick because a pencil would just

kind of push the whole thing out of the pot. But a toothpick works well just for testing. For that, We're going to take a little break here. Our phone number is seven one three two one two KTRH. I'll be right back. We got some bright sun coming outside. It's going to be a beautiful day. Take a look look outside. Wow, what do they call that Chamber of Commas? Weather? A good day to get out

there. Hey, you've got any Father's Day shopping left to do? I tell you a lot of our garden centers are all chocked up and ready to go. I've got some really good deals going on various things. I was checking out some of the things going on online, and oh my gosh, it'd be a good time to get out and purchase some things, even if it wasn't for a Father's Day gift. This is good sales going on all around in our garden centers. Landscaper's Pride is a company that is, first

of all, it's a local company. It's been around here in our region for a good while now, providing quality products. And they have a wide variety of blends of soils and composts and all kinds of things, so twenty something different products that they produce. But right now I want to talk about the mulches because mulch is very important for summer, and I know it's I'll be thinking, Okay, how exciting can you get putting bronze stuff on top

of the ground. Well, I'll tell you how exciting I get. As excited as I get when I know I'm not going to be pulling weeds by hand in one hundred degree heat with fire ants biting me in the middle of summer because I maltched. But for summertime arrived, That's how excited I get. My plants are going to do better. Do you know how hot the

soil gets when the surface is unmulched, He gets very hot. I mean, go put your hand, Go put your hand on bear dirt sometime on a hot summer summer day, and then think about how would a root that needs to be operating probably would like to be in the seventy degree range, if not fifty degree range somewhere in there. They do pretty well all through that range, and then we're going to take them up to over one hundred degrees up near the surface. And yes, it does get that hot.

Well, mulch helps avoid that. So meanwhile, back at the comments about Landscaper's Pride, they've got a cypress moultz that is locally sourced. Cypress logs cyper smults is really good about kind of when it gets wet, it sits in, stays in place really well. It's got a nice light color to it, and it doesn't tend to just float away and move around it it really kind of honkers down. Cedar mulch is nice because it has an aroma to it. I think it's really nice and it goes away in time as

it ages, but it's just a beautiful natural red streaking. It's a very attractive kind of melt. Pine bark multch is the most popular. It's the one. It's again beautiful colored, a little slow to decompose, which is good, which is also true of the cedar and the cypers. And then hardwood malts hardwood materials ground up and they are put into a moltch that holds well in its place. It's good for walkways too, by the way,

and then of course Landscapers Pride has their black velvet. Black velvet is not dyed. It is naturally velvety, dense, beautiful moults and it just it just works well whatever you use. Get some bags of it. You can find Landscapers Pride all over the place. You can go to Landscaperspride dot com the website find out where to get it. But it's widely available. But whatever you do, get some and get it out there and get it down about three inches thick. Put it over the beds, keep the soil cool,

protect the soil from erosion, stop weed seeds from getting started. And it's just a win win. And always remember this when you're adding more malts. Don't take the ol malt away. Throw the new mulch on top of it. Let the ol malt slowly decompose. That's what nature does in the forest. No need to take the old out just when it's getting pretty good in terms of releasing its nutrients back into the soil. So give the n skippers Pride to a shot. I think you think you'll be impressed with the

kinds of products that they that they carry I have. Let's see all. I want to give you a phone number again, our phone number if you'd like to give us a call if you have a question. Uh seven to one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one two five eight seven four. Don't forget my website, Gardening with skip dot com. It's a new site. I haven't had it that long and we're slowly building it out right now. The main thing you're going to find there are

my two schedules. The lawn care schedule, which is how to grow a lawn. It talks about mowing, watering, fertilizing, errating, doing the micronutrient top dressing, talks about all that. The other schedule lawn Pest, Disease and weed management schedule. That's about what goes wrong with the lawn insects, when do they occur and what do you do about them? Diseases, weeds, How do you prevent them with premurden, how do you kill them with a post emergent, How do you grow your lawn so you don't have

so much of a weed problem. It's all on there. Whether you're interested in organic or synthetic options, they're both on both of those schedules, and the schedules are free, so you know you can't beat that. Just print them out and there you go. You're ready to go for for it. I have a beautiful, beautiful lawn. Makes it takes all the guesswork out in the wondering, makes that simple. All right, let's see here I

wanted to We're going to go the phones here in just a second. I wanted I did want to make one quick comment though about this, the whole lawn care thing. Just remember that whenever you're going for the best lawn you can have, it is important to fertilize, It is important to water as you need to. But the most single most important thing is a good sharp mower and mowing regularly. That is the single most important thing. It's not the only by any means. But the more often you hedge your lawn,

think of it that way. A lawnmower hedges your lawn. The more you trim a hedge, the dentsuer the hedge gets, the prettier the hedge gets. If you let a hedge grow two feet out into the walkway and you cut it back two feet, it won't kill it, but it's your will look bad and it'll be thin, and you'll be able to see right into

the hedge right. You trim regularly to keep it dense. The same is true with your lawn moh regularly get a good sharp more for good clean cuts, not a whole bunch of big old brown tips on the ends of every grass blade. A good sharp mower on a regular basis, that's important. We're going to head now out to sugar Land and talk to June. Hello, June, Hi. I was calling to see about what kind of mulch to use on hydraineas and I have. I was questioning if pine mulch is

good or which mulch is the best I have Limelight hydrainus. You know, they don't care what kind of mult you put on them. They'll be happy with They'll just be excited that you Molted pine bark is fine. Pine needles, pine straw as we call it, is fry. You can do that. You can use, you know, shredded hardwoodmulch if you like. Generally, with hedrangs, we go with something a little more on the acidic side. We generally go with the pine needles and pine bark kinds of things.

But listen, you can just melting. Ajdranga is doing the right thing. Okay, that's all I need get to know. That's okay, all right, thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you. I have a great day you too. You take care. Appreciate that. Let's see here we're going to go now to k in Paarland. Hello. Okay, good morning, Skid, good morning. Thank you for taking my call.

I have a couple of questions. One is about round up. I have a bed that has a variegated hibiscus in the middle and amarilla is all around. It's kind of round, but the weeds have taken over in it. Can I use round up at all in there with a protective cardboard barrier? You know? Next you can. You can use it if you don't get in on anything desirable. So however you go about doing that, you can do that. Now, if the weeds are grassy weeds, you have other

options. There are some grass killers that don't kill broad leaf plants. So the plants you describe that are your good plants, these grass killers wouldn't ca kill them. If you actually, I don't think these are not grassy weeds. They're they're feathery little yeah. Okay. The other question was I have a couple I've just received a couple of small trellises that I ordered. I was wondering about something that is heat and preest tolerant both. Who doesn't want

that? You know you're looking for a vine. You're looking for a vine? Okay, a vine? Yeah? Buy anything like like what am I trying to say? Passion flower or okay? Uh, let me, let's come back. I'm gonna run to a break right here, and let's come back to that. But but uh and be thinking about how big of an area of this can encompass, and then we'll recommend a vine based on that. But hang on, Calby, right back with you when we get on the other side. And then Bob and Kingwood you'll be the next up.

All right, time for a little break. Seven kt r h. All right, welcome back to gardenine. Let's get back into gardening. We're gonna go back to the phones and talk to Kay in pairland. Ka, how big of a vine area do you want to have? I mean, is this something like ten feet long or what? What dimensions? Well? I

have I have a bed that's full forty feet forty feet long. Oh wow, okay, so you got room for a vine it's you know, three three to four feet deep, three feet deep probably, okay, I don't it can go out on the ground too in something that big, because I have two trellises, and I would separate them, okay, and I would like to put two different things on them. Actually, okay, Well, there there's so many vine options. There's some things that are woody vines that

would be something like westeria, for example. There is another when we say woody. When I say woody, I don't necessarily mean in the sense of like tree trunk wood. I mean like for example, the coral vine is a vine that grows above ground, but it last year after year. It's like a shrub, you know, it doesn't die back to the ground. Coral vine has beautiful little coral reddish color, pink, tubular blossoms that hummingbirds

like. It is a I'm sorry coral honeysuckle does. Coral vine comes out of a sweet potato out of the ground, and it will run for a long it'll take over the world. But it has beautiful blooms, especially late summer and fall in clusters. They look like little pink clusters of flowers. That's a good one. I like. Let's see, butterfly pee is a good one that has very small, deep, deep blue, beautiful blooms. It's very tame, but it's an annual vine that comes back from a seed

each year. So there's so many options. Confederate jasmine or are star jasmine is an evergreen that has wonderfully fragrant blooms that are white. That is another one you might be interested in. Soot does it die back? Men to be an almanda. Both are tropicals, and they're beautiful, little kind of a morning glory looking bloom that is gorgeous. But they don't take hard freezes. Okay, okay, I know passion flower can be very invasive. You

can, yeah, sometimes all of them probably can. Well, but it'll come out, it'll go out in the yard and pop up in the yard somewhere. A lot of the types of passion vine will and so you have to be a little careful with that. But it's a beautiful flower, one of the most beautiful. That's a great list, and I do appreciate it so very much, and I enjoy your program every every weekday. All right, Thanks appreciate you listening. Have a blessed day. Well, thank you,

kay, I appreciate that. Thank you very much. Bye bye bye bye, all right our phone number seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one two five eight seven four. If you are looking for a little bit of help keeping your flower beds looking their best, your landscape beds, then you ought to give Pierscapes a call. Pierscapes

does something called quarterly maintenance. Now, normally, when I think of pair scapes, and you too, probably you think about just gorgeous landscape renovations. I mean we're talking about hard scapes and outdoor lighting and improved drainage and just on and on. I mean, they all kinds of features. They they can create whatever kind of thing up to the taj Mahal you are looking for. But they also come out and they do things like check your irrigation system.

If you need a summer's coming, it's pretty much already here. You need to get out there and have I have this system checked, make sure it's efficient, make sure it's working, there's there's everything's aligned, it's you know, it's in good shape. That is important because when you provide a good even distribution of water, you save water because you're going to end up watering enough to keep the dry spots wet, and it wastes water when you

have an air inefficient system as a result of that. But talk to Pierce Scapes about their their quarterly maintenance too. By the way, they come out once a quarter they will do weeding and fertilizing and mulching. They'll change out color if you want it. Two times a year, three times a year, four times a year to have them take out a set of plants and put in a new set of color plants for the next season that's coming on, they can do that. They'll inspect the irrigation in those beds. It's

really easy. Piercescapes dot com, Pierce scapes dot com. If you want to give them a call, write this number down two eight one three seven oh fifty sixty two eight one three seven oh fifty sixty and do go to the website perscapes dot com and see the kinds of works that they do. It's pretty amazing, very in fact, it's very amazing, very impressed with that. Let's see here. We are going to now go back to the phones and head to Kingwood and talk to Bob. Hello Bob, Yes,

hello Skip. I have a Asian orange that I bought in the pot about six inches wide maybe six inches high. I bought about two months ago, and I didn't replant it though it was about maybe three foot tall. You know how in the store they were already starting a flower on top, big long, skinny thing. Asian orange. You're talking about, like I said, an edible orange. Okay, yes, they call them CALAMANSI they're only about the size of a big, big marble. Oh, a klamandon,

yes, I then, yeah, you got it, now gotcha. The last two I planned died is there is what's the smallest pot or I guess that's the way to ask it. The smallest sized pot I could put it in. Yeah, you know, here's the deal. The smaller the pot

is, the more touching go taking care of it is. So you could grow a kalamandan and a little pot that was like two or three gallons, but you're going to be watering it all the time, and if you forget it, you're going to get in trouble because it's going to redamage it to set it back like that I would if I had a kalamandan, I would try to get it into something that had about at least ten gallons, maybe fifteen, so that it does better and you can move those. Even though

that's a heavy container. You can put a little dolly underneath it and a strap around it and take it in when we're going to have really bad cold weather too. Right, So you were scaring me with the two or three gallon. Obviously ten gallon I can water it once every couple of days. Yeah, yeah, well yeah, the bigger the container, the more water it can hold, the less often you have to worry, the less likely

it is to have. So really it's only the watering part, the roots and all that, and the bearing fruit will be okay, Yes, it's the thing is it's the root system that's the confining factor that only nutrients are available from that pot. The only water is available from what's in that pot. So the bigger the pot, the more of a bank account that you have, and that makes it a little more resilient, a little more forgiving if you forget to water. For example, I had one that went about

fifteen foot tall and about eight foot wide. Now, question, you're gonna have to have a bigger You have to a much bigger pot than the little ones I'm talking about to get a plant that size. Yeah, oh for sure. Sure. But my question meaning that analogy was how big do a root system go out on something like that? Is that a rule of thumb that the wider the plant is what you see above the ground, the roots

or underground? Yeah, just in general. Yeah, if it was in the ground, your roots will be about twice the height of the tree in all directions about Oh really, yeah, yeah, twice the height of the tree in general directly, And that's a generalization. And so last question. On the internet, I see these pictures of people that got like plants in a little small two gallon container. They're only about the plants only maybe about two foot tall. And you see papayas on there. Yeah, mango,

do that fake pictures or they really do it like that? That's mostly blooney. Hey Bob, we got to we've got to run here for the top there. If you want to continue the discussion, hang on, keep you through the hour and then we'll come back to you. But i'll later occupacture. Take care, all right, man, we're putting an hour in the books there. It was beautiful, beautiful weather outside. Folks, this afternoon

would be a good time to get out and about. If you don't want to you don't want to do any planting or puttering like that around the yard, at least go out and visit one of our garden centers. Take take Dad with you. There are some really cool stuff out there that I think you would like. A lot of our folks are still selling fruit trees, and some of them even have some really good deals on fruit trees. And here there's plenty of good things. Get outside and enjoy with Dad. I'm

gonna take a little break here. I will be back. Just a reminder two weeks from yesterday, I will be at the Langham Creek Langcumbe Creek Ace Hardware that's in West Houston, kind of in the old Copperfield neighborhood area. Hope you'll come out and see me two weeks from yesterday Langham Creek Ace. Are welcome to kt r H Garden Line with Scared Ricter. It's just watch him as many things to welcome back to the guard line. Good to have you. It's good to have you with us today. We uh talking about

all kinds of things. Gardening wants you to have success, a more beautiful garden, a more bountiful garden. The goal is to enjoy it. You know that. That's the thing a lot of people. I've heard this many times over my career, as people saying, you know, I'd like to garden, but I just don't know how. Or I tried growing something and it died, and it's like, well, okay, that's okay. We can walk you through that. But first of all, let's just take the

pressure off. In order to be a good gardener, you got to kill a lot of plants. Can I just tell you that, Go ahead and get out of your system. Don't be afraid you plant something, you try it, it doesn't work, that's okay. We can put you know, a whole vegetable gardens and flower gardens and all kinds of things out there, and sometimes things thrive, sometimes things don't. That we can't control the weather, you know, insects have their own opinion about how things are going to

go, and we have to deal with that. It's okay, though, It's okay to not have things do well. We can always start over. A garden is never finished. Did you know that. You know, we think about, well, I'm gonna landscape my home, this beautiful thing, and I'm done. No, it's never done. Things grow up. There's always a time when it's time to pull that out and plant something else there. Maybe shrubs get overgrown and you're just having trouble keeping control of them.

Maybe an area that was really beautiful and sunny and everything was doing good, and now the trees years down the line have gotten bigger and it's too shady. Pull them out, redo it. It's a shade garden. Now,

let's do some of that. It's okay to do that. There is a there's a little toy from years ago some of you remember, called an etch a sketch, and you would draw with two knobs, and one knob goes left right, one knob goes up down, and inevitably it is impossible to draw, especially a circle with an edge of sketch, because your brain goes backwards and you end up going left when you meant to go right or whatever. And it's like, oh man, I messed it up. What do

you do? What did you do with your etcher sketch? You turned it upside down? You shook it and then you brought it back down again. You had a blank slate. You got to start over. Rototillers or the equivalent of shaking an etch of sketch. In other words, I'm sort of joking. But if you plant something and it doesn't do good, pull it out, put something else in. That is okay. You know. Part of the fun of gardening is knowing that nature is forever changing. It's forever

it's just evolving out there in front of us. We may have a planting that grows up and it fills in nicely, or we may find that this plant is struggling there, pull it up, put it somewhere else, or get rid of it and put a new plant in that spot. Will figure it out, and that's part of the fun of it. Part of the fun of it is just getting out there and doing it, and don't worry about failing. You're not going to fail. All you can do is quit. Okay, you're not going to fail, So don't quit. Just keep

trying. There's a lot of fun things we can do. And you know, there's some people that they want everything. They want to hire it done, and that's okay. Somebody comes in they do the landscaping for them. They take care of the landscaping for them. That's all okay. There's other people on the other end of the spectrum that are all do it yourselfers and they don't even want to buy a plant. They want to buy a seed and grow their own plant to plant. Well, whatever, whatever you like,

our garden centers can help you have success. We've got all these great feed stores, these hardware stores, places like Southwest Fertilizers that have the supplies you need to have success with it. And we have so much expertise here in the Houston area to kind of guide you so that you can find exactly the types of plants that you want to have the kind of garden that you want. And I'll tell you this more than once I have had a bunch of plants in and they look good, and I just at a point where

it's like, yeah, I'm gonna try something different. I'm gonna try something else a little bit different there, and that's okay to do. Think about your wardrobe. Do you only get rid of a item of clothing when it is completely worn out you practically see through it? Or is there such a thing as you know what I'd like to change my style a little bit. I would like to try some different things. And that's kind of how gardening

is. By the way, on the item of clothing thing, if I were asking myself that, the answer would probably be, yeah, he only gets rid of it when it's completely worn out. By one of my daughters one time posted to I think it was Facebook account or whatever. She says, Well, I see old pictures of mom and dad, I think she sure looks pretty in that dress. And when I see pictures of mom and dad, I think he still wears that shirt. That's the truth. Guilty

at charge. But when it comes to my garden, I changed things out a little bit more. All right, enough of that nonsense. Let's go back to the phones. We're going to head to Northwest Euston and talk to Donald. Hello, Donald, oh boy, thank you for answering. I'm back again. Happy Father's Day. This is my Father's Day gift, by the way, talking to somebody who actually knows what they're talking about. All

right, well, I'll pretend to at least. Well, Okay, the pine tree issue in the front lawn that has the roots that grow above the grass, well, okay, that has to just stay as it is. I measured it. It's about thirty inches wide as the yardstick goes, and it's thirty years old, thirty or thirty two years old. Now the issue is with the little pine bark holes that I saw in it. We talked about what was actually the name of that blight that happened is some years ago.

You remember that was really terrible because on my on my street, like four or five big pine trees just turn and com oh brown, and well, I don't know a blight on pine we deal with, of course, lightning strikes or is an issue on big pines especially, but we also have some pine bark beetles that will underneath the bark. Yeah, I guess that's what they were called. Anyhow, I saw what they did, you know,

years ago. It's like ten years ago if that happened. However, the reason I'm calling you, I'm gonna I checked the holes and there's no sap and told me that's great, okay, But I want to take a calking gun and stick a little nose of a calking gun in there and put a little plug of cock in there to make sure nothing else gets in there? Would that be okay? It wouldn't be necessary, Donald, and I

don't think it would help a lot. These beetles, they drill in in between the where the outer bark kind of sticks out, and then you kind of have a furrow in between where it's it's a shorter distance to get inside. They go in right there, and so even if you cocked a hole, something else isn't going to go in that hole to cause damage, and the beatle, if it were in the hole, would just come out somewhere

else. Well, I might seem overcritical here. What I'm going to do is take straws and put straws in the hole and take a picture of it with my phone, so I know which ones are there now, and that way I can save that picture and then if I see any kind of a new hole, I can go look at the picture. Oh that one wasn't there before. Okay, here's the main issue. My neighbor had a pine tree cut down right next door, was a nine hundred dollars cut down.

It was way smaller than mine, and this one probably cost me twenty or twenty five hundred dollars to have it taken down the hole the way, So it's a big issue. It's a big issue, and you could always hire, you know, somebody to come out and take a look at it and do an assessment to determine if there's something else that maybe we're not even discussing that they would see on the tree. And I have called Lewis Flurry before. He said, you know, his guys come out and they're very straightforward

and did what we had to do. This was a dip my older a different house that I had. However, Okay, if you have trees that big trees, you better be careful because big trees equal big money whether they're up there and they stay up there. This one made it through this tornado that we had. Yeah, wonderful because I had it thinned down and I don't want to lose it because if I if I lose it, there's no possibility of putting another one. Yeah, you won't take care of the ones

you have. That's why what they're talking about. Yeah, you're trees and your kids, take care of the ones you have. There you go, that's good advice. Donald, Happy Father's day, man, Thank you, Thank you all right, you take care. That is good advice. Absolutely, we were I was talking about this being Father's Day. And you know, Ace Hardware Store is just an excellent place to get a Father's Day gift. You're not going to do better if you've not already gotten some kind of

gift for Dad. Go to Ice Hardware because there is so much there. In fact, I if I I would take Dad at this point, let's go this afternoon, Dad, Let's head out there. There is so many cool tools. There's all kinds of stuff for barbecuing, and I could just go on and on and on. Ace has so many cool things that your dad would love, really he would. Speaking from a dad, it's always a good idea to have another tool. It's always a good idea to have

some of the gadget for barbequing and whatnot. Just go and check it out. You're not gonna find a better place for Father's Day shopping than a good Ace Hardware store with all of the things that they carry to make things just beautiful in the backyard, make it enjoyable in the backyard. Ace Hardware is all over the place here in the southeast Houston area or Southeast Texas area around Houston. We got forty stores around us here. You can go to Acehardware

dot com. Acehardware dot com find the store locator and the stores nearest to you, and they are stocked up and they've got some really cool stuff. I was in an ac of the today walking through just looking at some of the new kinds of things that they have been bringing in. And it's always

changing. You know. ACE hard restores are independently owned. The guy who is the owner of the store where you would go shop is going to be some maybe you know, different than some guy down the street that owns an ACE Hardware store, and so they can each do with their stores like they

want. And that's why no two identical, although they are very very similar in terms of you got all the basics that are going to be there that you would expect from ACE, but there's also some cool new things that a store owner may decide to bring in and do, and I think that's kind of kind of nice, kind of fun too. As a matter of fact, in the category of do it yourself in and starting seeds and things, now is a good time to be collecting your supplies for what we're going to

be doing for a fall garden here pretty soon. For example, tomatoes. We can grow tomatoes in the fall, but you need to get those things planted in July in order to have time for the tomato plants to be able to produce before the temperatures cool off and growth slows to a stop. And so planting the seeds and starting your own seeds in an outdoor area is a

good idea. You can do it indoors initially if you've got good light, but since we're in the warm season here, I would go outside to a very bright spot underneath the tree where there's no direct sun, but it's very bright and get those things started and growing. Do that in the next few weeks here, and get ready to go for fall planting. Later on. We're going to be starting transplants for things like broccoli and cabbage and cauliflower and

whatnot as we get further in to the late part of summer. But right now it would be a time to begin to get started. If you want to do peppers, maybe you want some jlopenias or some eggplant starting from seed. Just go to your garden centers, go to your feed stores and things, grab the supplies you need and start some things yourself. Give it a shot. All right. We got to take a little break here. I will be right back the number seven three fifty eight seventy four. Welcome back.

We got some sunshine outside. Good day to be outside today. I know it's a little on the warm side, but hey, it's okay. We we live here, we can we can deal with it. We can deal with it, and there's plenty to do. I hope you haven't a good Father's Day. For all the dads out there and family's out there in general, we certainly do wish you a very, very happy Father's day. Let's head out to the woodlands and we're going to talk to Katie. Hello

Katie, Well, good morning, Master Skip. How are you this morning? I'm good. Harr are you today? What? Thanks for that title. I've been itching to do that for ever since you got on this show.

Okay, so much all you do? Okay. So I was wondering if I could add on to that pine bark beetle conversation, that kind of crazy town straws and plugging it. So last summer noticed on the bottom of one of our trees looked like a bunch of sawdust, and I thought my granddaughter was cutting and I asked her, I said, what are you doing over here? To cause all this sawdust. Well it turned out to be. We called a tree service. They came out and it was a pine

bark beetle infestation. And what he told us was that the pine bark beetles are always trying to get into your trees, and when they find a weak one, the female goes in and she releases a pheromone and it tells all the females to come and, you know, totally masticate this tree. So basically I looked around at all our trees. Oh my gosh, probably about ten of them had signs of this. It looked like little white lumps all

over the tree, which was the beginning of the infestation. So he looked up to the crown of our tree and he said, you have a good The good news is it's not yellowing yet. He said, I think I can save your trees. And so they came out and they did three springs two months in between. So bam bam bam, and they rate all of our trees for less than what it would cost to cut one down. Let's good, and totally save them all. Well good. They must have had

some good equipment to get up and spray pretty high on the trunk. Yeah, they came completely masked and with these big sprayers, we watched the whole thing and they went way up the trunk and they did everyone. And they recommend an annual spray. We have not done that this year yet. We're considering it. But it was a fantastic three months or three treatment process.

And I'm really excited to announce because the problem with those pine bark beetles he was telling us, is they just jumped from tree to tree to tree. And I saw them a lot on the path while I was out walking dogs. And it can be devastating to all of your trees. And like he said, one tree, one of those big pine trees could literally cost two

to three thousand to down. Yeah, they can get expensive. Well, yeah, there's a lot of thing to do if they get in ahead of them, you know, once the tree has severely infested did it, it's usually too late to be able to save them. But fortunately they were able to catch her. There's a you got to spray about eighty percent of the height of the trunk to effectively do it. For most of the beatles. There's like five different about five different beetles that attack pines. Here in our

area. One of them attacks down low, about eight feet off the ground and below, but the rest of them go way way up the tree. I think that might have been the type that we had, the ones that were eight feet in below, because we didn't see it much higher than that. Okay, but it was very effective. And I think that this guy instead of doing the whole straws and plugging it, which sounds to be a little bit, if I could say so, ridiculous, because they're just going

to keep on coming back. Like you said, they're very they're very slender, they can slip in anywhere, and there's no way that he's going to be able to Well, you're you're correct about the tree being stressed and being a magnet for those beetles. They smell that, and I've been amazed.

And I've lived up in the Willis Conroy area for a number of years, and up there you would have a let's say, a lightning strike hit a tree and not be so bad that it would kill the tree, but it would it would knock the bark off one side, and then all of a sudden you'd find pine marked beetles in it before too long. It's because that that stress tree is just like sending out a clarion call and the beetles head that way. So yeah, And he said it was based on the drought.

So thet before last we had a very bad drought, and he said those trees that were severely impacted by the groat are now showing signs of weakness. Yeah, that's true. So interesting that that's true. All right, Katie, Well good, I'm glad you were able to turn yours around. Thanks for calling filling in on that Happy Father's Day. Bye bye. Take care. If you are looking for a organic product, there's a high level of nitrogen in it for unorganic. Naturally speaking, organic products tend to be

lower in concentration of nutrients. That's on. Nature does things. But Sweet Green is a molasses based product through microbial activity, turned into an eleven percent nitrogen fertilizer and it's a product that is produced by Nitrofoss sold by Nitropos. It is available widely, like all Nitrofoss products are. You can find it at places like Shades of Texas down in South Houston a Fisher's Hardware, both the one in South Houston on Southmore and the one down in the port on

Broadway Street has it as well. You're going to find it a King web Ace hardware for example, and the arburgate up in tombol. Sweet green is the kind of product that you put it down and when you water it in or when rain waters it in, it just dissolves away and moves in. And it's a high carbon material. Any kind of a sugar is a high carbon material, molasses based, and that really fires up the microbes. They need carbon, and that's why organic gardeners often will put molasses on the garden,

on the soil for that reason. Provides that in addition to the fact that it's just eleven percent nitrogen out there, it takes about about ten pounds of sweet green per thousand square feet to cover an area and to provide that nutrient to carry you on into summer. You can do it now, I would probably if you do it now, do it again in about eight weeks, and that ought to carry you into the fall fertilization season. Those two applications of this week green. And by the way, did I mention this

It smells good. It smells wonderful too. We're going to head out now to the phones and just a moment. When we do, Luishi will be our first up. In the meantime, it is time to get Jared in here for the news and talk about what else is going on out there, out and about in the greater Houston area. I'll be right back, says, Your moment is you can thank me later, all right, all right, if we do nothing else on garden Line, we stretch your musical experience

a little bit. How about that cuckoo yodel. Let's go to the phones. We're gonna talk to Luise. Louise, what's up. Well, I'm in beautiful downtown a leaf and it's a group to stay. But I have a tiger little it's from sitting on my porch for twenty six years, and every once while there's some leaf damagines. So I put slogo in and I've been doing that for the last month, and it's just getting destroyed on the leaves, hole, eating and everything. So what could it possibly be besides

snails? So do you see trails on the leaves, the slim trails, the dried slime stuff? No, yeah, ass just gaping holes. Oh okay, so it's more like holes in the leaf as opposed to being eaten from the edges in like some chewing from the edge of the leaf. In it's more holes in the leaf. It seems like it's more on the body rather than the edges of each leave. Okay, all right, it could

be a beetle, it could be a caterpillar either way. Some of those critters are nocturnal, so you go out in the day and you don't see them, and then at night they're doing their work. You might try going out with a flashlight see what you find, because there's some time a day when it's going to be doing the damage. And if you can find out what it is doing it, then it's easier to prescribe the right product to

control them. For example, if it's a caterpillar BT or spinocid, either one will control caterpillars quite well, and it will and the spinocid will control beetles in addition to caterpillars, So it could be that you would want to try that. There's also a product called neme and it's not the name oil. It's the name that has the chemical in it. It's a natural chemical

in the plant. It's called acid direct and it's just aza is the ingredient start and either either name or spinocid would probably be a better shotgun approach because it's going to work on both caterpillars and beetles. But if you found out exactly what it is, we might switch to a different recommended product if we knew exactly what. All right, Well, all TV I on it. Yeah, I'll all your direction. All right, you know, sounds good? Okay, take care of thanks, look all right, all right?

Bye bye. Our phone number is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one two five eight seven four. Uh. The Southwest Fertilizer Bob you know, talk about Bob Patterson all the time here in Southwest Fertilizer, because that is a place where you're going to find any supply you need to take care of your garden and your landscape. And that

would include every fertilizer I talk about on Guardline. It would include every kind of pest control, whether it's disease or insect or weeds that you're going after. Bob's going to have a supply of all the things you need for that. They get a little shop in the back for small engine repair. They carry a lot of different tools an eighty foot long wall of tools as a matter of fact, and so no matter what the tool is, some really nice high quality ones too, by the way, you can find them there.

Do you need a fertilizer spreader, Do you need a little hand carriage spreadder maybe that you put the fire ant bait out with, or do you need fireant bait? And the chancewer is probably you do. This is fire ant season and when we use baits, it's an easy way to put a very low rate of a pesticide out there that works really well because you're not nuke in the whole yard to kill everything in the yard. You're basically putting out a little bait that they will pick up, take back, feed to

the queen, feed to the colony, and it takes them out. That way, it's much easier way to do it. And of course Bob's got plenty of that stuff on hand. If I talk about a product on guardline, it's at Southwest Fertilizer. Because if they don't have it, you don't need it. It's as simple as that. They're in the corner of Bissinet and Renwick. Bissonet and Renwick. You can go to the website south West Fertilizer dot com. Southwest Fertilizer dot com. Let's go now to Spring Branch

and we're going to talk to Christine. Good morning. How are you. I'm fine, what's up? I just moved into a house and the front yard has been pretty good shape. But the backyard is just like full of weeds. And when I say weeds, I mean like little bushes waist tie. One of them is that jewel of opar with the little pink flowers, and the other one has little gold flowers when it's wet. When it's wet,

I can pull them up out of the dirt fairly easily. But I mean this is an entire backyard of these, so that's going to take forever. Is there something I can just like spray that will kill them? There's no grass. There are a couple of crape myrtles out there that I don't want to harm, okay, and there's a bush or two that are some sort of hedge or something that I wouldn't want to kill. But other than

that, well, there's different ways to go about it. I think were at mine, I would probably I think the better thing to do would be, can you just mow it all down to the ground just about as a as a first step. Well, I mean these things are like waist high, and some of the little trunks are fairly thick, I mean, like

okay, the thickness of my little finger. Okay, okay. Well, other than mowing it, you know down, If you mow it down, you get to start there, and then as weed seeds come up, or as these trunks as you described, start to re sprout, then you can put a spray down and it's easy to control everything. When you got things waist high, you're blowing a lot of spray up all over the place trying to spray all these things. You want to be real careful with it.

If the breeze is blowing at all and you have a little bit of a mist from your spray that drifts and it gets on something desirable, you're going to hurt it. The advantage of being able to start down at the dirt level almost is that you know you're you're putting a course spray right down. It's just a different type and amount of application. So if you whether you hand pull them, whether you mow them with whatever you do, I would

do that because even if you sprayed and killed everything. You still have waste high weeds that are now dead. You got to get out of there somehow, either by pulling or mowing. So that's that's how I would approach it. Be real careful with the glycas because anything desirable that you get it on, it'll kill it. So a low, low pressure spray, don't pump it up so much that you get a fine mist drifting around, just a

real course drop. Okay, Okay, Well, and I can also I mean, I don't know how much I'm going to get done in this heat, but I can also wait and see what happens during the winter, if things die back or what happens, you know, because there's a lot of other work that still needs to be done too. Well. Yeah, and it may even be better just to you know, have somebody come in with a big lit a weed eater or whatever it takes to knock it all down.

But once you get ahead of it, then as it starts to reach brought out, you can you can spray and kill the things and plant the things you wanted with something like a round up or something like that. Like that, that only because that is a broad spectrum. So if it's a grass or a broadly if it's going to kill it either way, depending on specifically, if I saw the exact layout and all this, I may have a different opinion on it, But I think in general that that's a good

way to get started. Just take your time, get ahead of it. But the more you can when it sprouts, spray those weeds, get ahead of all the You got a really good supply of weed seed that's sitting there, that's been building up for years in that place, probably right right, All right, christ thank you, take care, appreciate the call. We're gonna have to run for a break here. When we come back. Georgie will be first up. Dennis Marene you will be right after that. All

right. Now, all of you Beach Boys fans out there, how many of you knew that the Beach Boys sang a song named Vegetables about vegetables. I did not listened to Beach Boys my whole life. That was a surprise to me. As we're gonna head out now to Jersey Village and talk to George. Hello, George, Hey, Skip, that's a horrible song, by the way, horror I mean, aren't you disappointed? I like the beach boys too, but no, that's pretty terrible. Anyhow, I want

to grow on apricot tree, but we're not. I'm not encumbered by poor quality music. I'm happy to play it. Yeah yeah, right, who put that on for you? You gotta manager that doesn't know. Unfortunately, that's all on me. Anyhow, I want to grow an apricot tree. So do you know anything about those that which one you recommend them? We don't have a good apricot for this area. There are a few out there. The problem with apricot here is our winter fluctuations and tempered or such that

we just have a hard time with them. They the tree will grow, the tree grows, but we just don't get good fruit set. And then you'll have a year where you have great fruit set, and then you'll go several years without. And it's a combination of chilling hours being right. So there's an overiety called Blenheim that used to be tried a lot. But I'm just telling you, unless you just have a lot of space and want to try, I wouldn't give you great hopes of getting to eat apricots as a

result. Okay, the ones in the supermarcers are horrible. They're mushy and they have no flavor. So anyhow, yeah, all right, well so far the text and M was looking at a couple of newer cultivars a while back, and I don't know that anything ever came out of that, but we're just trying to find some that, you know, they grow well in other climates, but for something, it's about our winter fluctuations. I'm told

that they just have a hard time with that. Yeah, my brother had one that was delicious, So I called him yesterday, the one that lives in California, and now he said, give me, give me some of that. He says, well, it got hit by lightning and they had to take it out and he doesn't what it was. So yeah, I know, so all right, thanks. Any how, when you have to

come up with one, let me know. Okay, yeah, when you you know, I was, let me go right here while we're sitting here, Well, I'm going to check on this and see if there's any update up there on the Eggy Horticulture website on those, but I don't think there is at this point. Is that where I would look to check on that? Yeah, Horticulture, how they have a free section of the website, and there's a publication on all kinds of fruit. It would probably go.

It probably be in the stone Fruit publication, which includes peaches and plums. So yeah, all right, I'll go look right, George, you bet, Thank you appreciate it, sir. Let's go to Marine now. Hello Marine, Oh, good morning, good morning. I called to you yesterday about some leaf mold and on the tree, and I sent some pictures Ken, did you have to review those? I did, and yes, that

was a water oak. That is true a water oak. Yeah, And what I see in the photos there is a leaf spot that's most likely fungal in nature. It could be back to your involved in it too, but mostly it looks like a fungal leaf spot to me. There is not a practical way to spray a whole water oak tree. And these kind of spots are not something that is going to kill your tree. They're not doing it any good. And apparently the weather we've had have just really promoted the spot

growth. And I know you're losing a lot of leaves from it, but at this stage, like the pictures you showed me, those leaves, even if you spray them, they're they're going to be cast off the tree is not going to hold onto those leaves. So I guess the bottom line is we just don't, as a general rule, go out and spray our water oaks or any of the oaks really all the time, just because they might get these diseases. I think it's just kind of fluke that this year was

really bad for that one. Okay, my neighbor just ask can this sungus travel from one tree to another? A fungus can because they float through the air, oh, on the spores, and they're present, and you just don't see them because they haven't sprouted in an infected the leaf yet. But they're actually out there in nature, and a lot of things are that way. You don't take moss or algae for example. You know, you look at the side of your house and there's maybe bricks on it, and you

think, well, there's no algae there. We'll start spraying that brick with water every day, with a constant mist of water, and within a week or two suddenly got algae growing on the brick. Well where did it come from? Well, it was there all along. You just created the environment where the algae could grow. That's how it is with these leaf spots on your trees and things. We get some rain, we get the right conditions, and now this disease attacks. But it was always around, it just

wasn't a threat. Okay, So I think I read online that if you spray your water oak before it starts budding, that it might keep the sungus from coming on next year. Is that true or not? Well, not this fungus. But there is one called oak leaf blister that causes the leaves to be bumpy. They're more like a spinach leaf than a normal leaf. You know how spinach is bumpy. Oak leaf blister does that. Of course, those bumps turn brown and then the leaves fall off and it attacks water

oak. It attacks I'll attack live oak and other oaks too, And that's a spring thing. So we can do a copper spray early before the buds come out to help cut down on oak leaf blister. That's another one that some years it's bad and some years it's not. And so do you really want to be on a schedule where every year you're having to spray your trees because when it, even when it shows up, the leaves look bad, they fall off and the tree puts out new leaves and life goes on.

So unless you go ahead ahead, we'll just continue the rest. We'll keep falling and falling and falling all summer. Or do you think it'll stop. I think at some point it's gonna stop and and not do that anymore. But there's a really serious a lot of leaf spot on those leaves, and so they're they're gone. Okay, thank you? All right, I hear the music, So either you and I have to sing or we have to hang up. I think we ought to hang up. Day by good we

will be back, Dennis and Roy. You will be the first two up. I know you've been waiting a bit. I appreciate that, but we we will be our first two up in that order, Dennis and Ryan when we come back. Don't forget. If you want more information on taking care of your lawn, my lawn care schedules are online at gardening with Skip dot com. Gardening with Skip dot com, that's me. We'll be happy to

help you along. Give us a call if you'd like to get on the boards and be ready to go for the next hour, which we have one more of today. Seven one three two one two k t r H seven one three two one two. K t r H. Wait right back with your calls and with more from garden Line. Welcome to k t r H. Garden Line with Scamp Ricter. It's crazy Trim. Just watch him as many good things to say. Hey, welcome back to the garden lines. Thank you, we're back. We're here. Let's do this. We are

here to answer your gardening question. Seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy two five eight seven four. We're going to go to Dennis out in Memorial right off the boat here. Hey Dennis, say good morning. Skip quick question. I just recently moved into a new home and trying to do some early late late spring, early summer re landscaping. So I've got some roses underneath a tree that just aren't doing well. They don't get any sun

and obviously they're competing with water with the tree. What could I plant this time of year for some some color, some flowers underneath a tree like that. Uh So it's a lot of shade, is what you're telling me? Right? Is there any sun? Yeah, well enough shade. It's a smallish backyard patio. But the tree isn't huge, but it I looked one of the rose bushes gets a bit of there's rose bushes under there now. The ones that don't get any sun have no flowers. The one that gets

sun has flowers. And it makes me think that they're just too much shade or something like that. That's it. Roses need six hours of sun really to begin to perform well. So are you talking about replacing the roses? When you say plant something under there, you mean pull the roses out there? Yeah, okay, I would. I don't think there's much hope of ever getting a nice rose bush undernaate that tree when you're when you're in a bright area, that opens the door for the hydranges, for example, is

an option. You need to keep them adequately moist. They don't like to dry out, but they like a very very bright shade. A littled apple sign here and there, but some bright shade and they'll they'll put up with that and do well for you. You've got a lot of annual types of flowers that you can put in an area like that. Of course, impatients

and kalladiums do well in the shade if it's a bright shade. Persian shield is a foliage plant with purplish silver foliage that's truly attractive that would do well in an area like that. There are some salvias Salvia garon nittka. It's called it's blue, a niche sage that does well in a very very bright shade area and it gets up about four feet high, has kind of a bluish purple colored flowers that are attractive hummingbirds. So that's another app option.

You know, a lot of ways you can go in a spot like that. Well great. A couple of quick follow up questions and patients. I've done the sun patients out in areas, you know in Houston, sun patients out the sun. They're fantastic. You're saying just regular patients. If I use that, you could do regular patients, or you could do sun patients. Some patients will grow in less sun. They're just able to take more sun than regular impatients are. And so you know you can you could do

either one of them in an area. Wishbone flower does good, Terina, it does good in an area like that. There's there's just a number of options, kind of depends on what you want to look at, what you find, what you find attractive. Well, hydrangees tell me I've had hydranges before in kind of a shady area and they never did well. Okay, well, do you really think that's an option underneath a tree that gets a

lot of shade. Yeah, that's an option. They're not an easy plant, though, I'll acknowledge that getting the water right on them, and you know, keeping them adequately fertilized, getting the water they need, never letting them dry out. So if you want to make it a little easier on yourself, you know, we could go a different direction than the than the hydranges would be. But okay, well, thanks so much. Another one is a shrimp plant does well in a in a bright, shady type area.

That would be another good choice for that that you might say that one again. Shrimp plant. It's very unusual looking. It's blooms look sort of like shrimp if you have to look at a picture of it online to see what they're talking about. But that's that would be a pretty we for an area like that. Okay, I've never heard of that one. Well, thanks so much. And you're in the you're in the Memorial area, go up to Buchanan's plants. They're just down the road from you. Uh.

They have an excellent selection of shade loving plants. So you could walk through there and take a look at it and you know, have them help you pick something out because they're gonna have an excellent selection. Okay, thanks a lot. All right, Dennis, thank you appreciate the call. Thanks a lot. Let's go now to Richmond. We're going to talk to Roy. Hello, Roy, thanks for waiting. Good morning, Skip. Happy Father's

Day to you and to all the fathers out there. Thanks. I have a poison ivy that I have put chemicals on there from the box stores and all that, and that that just keeps growing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a Is it a vine that's attached to a tree going up a tree? Or how's it growing? No, it's just on the it's just on the on the grass. Oh okay, so it's like coming up out of your lawn. Some of you on the fence line. Oh, on the fence line. Okay. Roy. What you need to do is you

need to get a product that contains an ingredient. Do you have a pin or pencil handy there, it's triclo peer t r I c l O p y R. You will find it in things that are called like poison ivy killer or a brush killer or stump killer. But triclo peer is the ingredient, uh, And you can spray it on the poison ivy, but don't get the triclo peer on anything desirable like your lawn or flowers or things like

that. Another way to approach it is if your poison ivy is like little trunks, little vines coming up that you would cut off, you can dab the triclo peer right on those cut surfaces. So what I would do would be go to a paint supply store by those little wooden handled foam brushes, you know the kind I'm talking about, and you dip it, dip it in the tricle paer, and then when you cut the poison ivy off, you just dip it right on that cut surface. Just dab it right on

the You have to spray it and get on everything else. You can do that, or you could, you know, apply it anyway that's practical to you along the vines of the poison ivy and it'll work. So whether you put it on the leaves, the cut stump, or on the vine, tricle a pear is pretty effective. And I would I would give it a shot at that it's going to die back. Just remember that dead poison ivy still has that oil in it, so never burn it because that in the

smoke that oil will volatilize. It's very dangerous. And be real careful, you know, get it into a bag because even dry dead poison ivy will will cause skin irritation. Well, great, thank you, skip all right, good lucke o you right, take care of good day you as well. Thank you very much. Appreciate that we're gonna take a little break here in a second, Lily and James or our first two up when we come back. Thank you guys for hanging on with us a little bit longer online.

I will be back shortly. We'll continue garden Line. If you have any questions, I would like to give us a call. Seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Seven to one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Give us a call. We'll talk about the things that interest you. Welcome back to Guarden Line. Good to have you with us. We're rocking and rolling this morning. Let's head out to Humble, Texas. We're going to talk to Lily. Hello, lily, Good morning.

How are you. I'm good, I'm good. What's up. I have a lot of different kind of plants. I just want to know if there's a staple fertilized that I can put on them. You know I have, Oh, go ahead. You're like wanting one fertilizer for a whole bunch of stuff, right, nice, fair enough, fair enough. You know

I use lawn fertilizer for a lot of things. I just do. And you know, there's situations where I would say, now, don't use that, use something different because you need a little extra phosphorus or some other thing. But in general I find that a good lawn fertilizer, if you got it on hand, just use it for whatever you need it for and it'll work pretty good. I put it on my fruit treeways, I put it on my lawns. I put it in vegetable gardens and so on. On

flowering plants. You can, you sure can. And here's the thing. You know, we know that like phosphorus for examples, it plays a big role in flowering. But a lot of soils already have phosphorus in adequate amounts. Not all do, but some do. But also a big thing about flowering is having good vigor to produce leaves, to catch sunlight to make sugars that build flowers. That that's how the plant is able to flower. And so nitrogen is also an important part of a flowering plant's success. And nitrogen

is the big number in the lawn fertilizer. Okay, so is there a certain number that you would suggest or no, just like a three one to two kind of ratio of nutrients. We've got a lot of different ones. I don't know. If you have a particular lawn fertilizer you like, it'll probably be okay to use on that. I use Natural Fuss. That's what I then go with that one you could use if you've got night Fuss, if you've got some of the Imperial the red bag, that's an immediately available

fertilizer, that would be a good one for a lot of things. You know, for our lawns, we're thinking more slow release long term right now, but if you had a little flower bed and you're going to have plants in it for a couple of months, just use a more immediate release, or maybe a vegetable garden, you know, a tomato plant. You could put some of that imperial around a tomato plant if you want. And I'm answering this not to say that no one should buy any other kinds of fertilizer.

I'm just saying your question was if I could I buy one fertilizer and just use it for a lot of stuff in the answer is yes, And if you're going to do that, I would do it with a lawn fertilizer. Okay. I have a list of twenty different kinds of things that I have. It's fertilized individually. Yeah, we'll just kind of okay, go

for it and see how they do. And all I ask is that whatever produce and flowers you produce, you bring half of them to the KTR studio and drop them off for me and we'll call it even I will do I know where it's at. That's a fair trade, isn't it. Free advice? Thank you, free produce, Lily, you have fun out there and Numble, thanks for your call, appreciate that. Thank you, Bye bye bye. All right, we're going to keep moving here. Yeah, we're

talking about fertilizers. And one thing I should have mentioned to Lily. Another good one is astro grow. It's a Supergrow Plus by Medina Medina Supergrow Plus, it's a sixteen zero two. It's a hoose end fertilizer. So that one's kind of cool because you know, it takes what maybe ten minutes to go over about four thousand square feet along, which is what one of those bottles will carry. It's got a really good blend of nutrients, and it's

got a lot of extra things. Got some keylated iron in it. It's got molasses and humic acid. In other words, it is low did with things to make your plants happy. And I saw a picture the other day someone who used Supergrow Plus the lawn fertilizer on their tomato plants, and I mean they looked awesome. They were in great shape. They're very happy to have that. Plants can't read, they don't know what is or is not a lawn fertilizer. But anyway, the Supergrow Plus from Medina is an excellent

product. It gave some away yesterday when we were at at Wibird's Unlimited in bel Air. So that is just one of those new products on the market that I'm really excited about. A Medina super Grow Plus and it's a sixteen zero too. It's got a hose end hookup one court bottle, easy, easy to use, and it works. It does work. I can tell you that for sure. Let's head to northeast Texas. We're going to talk to James. Hey, James, where is Northeast Texas? Up around Marshall.

I've got a house here that we've remodeled and put in a driveway and a new garage. Really tore up the yard in the sprinkler system. So we took all of that out and put it back down and we put sant augustine grass in about a month ago. And it's really looking great, really looks sure good. But now, what what kind of fertilizer should I put on in the in the beginning of summer here when it's about to get hot. Yeah, we don't have the nitroplus products up here. You don't do

that super green super green Okay, I'm not familiar with that. I'm not familiar. Well, well you just mentioned product oh, a super supergrow plus. You could do that. That that is more. You know, it's a hose end, so it's going to give you a lot of immediate release and about a fifth of the nitrogen is slow release and supercrow plus. Uh. And so it would be fine. You would just do that in smaller doses over time. So you may do it now, you may do it

like two months from now, do it again. But if you're going to go with just a typical traditional lawn fertilization, I would do something very slow release. Uh. And if you don't have like the nitrophiles up there, do you have Nelson plant food products up in that area? I haven't seen that. Okay, it's mostly the big box stores. Okay, yeah, well let's see here. But I can get to Houston sometime and describe some bring it back with you when you come the the Nelson plant food there is.

Let me think, I think they may have one up in your area. You said you were in Marshall. Marshall, Marshall area. Yeah, they've got a website where they have all their their located. I know they're in the df W area. I don't know how far out they consider DFW go, and I think Marshall's too far from f W. But but but if they do go pretty far out from there, and what's the product? Nelson's would be slow and easy. That's their version, okay, Okay,

Nelson same. It's a you spread it with a fertilizer spread walk behind fertilizers udder, yeah, okay, yeah, So I'm just sitting here looking in Houston stuff. Yeah, they might have it. But next time you come down this way, describe some if you've got If you've got the super Girl Plus, go ahead and get it and do it for the next two fertilizations this summer, and then you'll be ready for the fall fertilization, which we would put on you know when we go back. Do you have you seen

my schedules online? Yes? Okay, all right, good, well then that that lists them right there, and yeah, makes it easy skip. Thank you very much, and happy Father's Day and you too, and have a good time up there at your place up in northeast Texas. All right,

we are. Let's see, I got some room here, got a little time here for some calls if you'd like seven to one three two one two k t r H. Seven one three two one two k t r H. If you are dealing with bugs in the lawn, and I'm talking about things like ants, of course, but also chinch bugs, webworms, those are coming up. We're on the verge of those seasons. In fact, I thought I saw an area look like chinchbugs other day, and I got on my hands and knees and crawled around in the grass for a while

and never found any. So dodge that bullet. But they'll come, they'll get here. Well. Nitrofoss bug Out Max is a product that works well. It's very persistent too. You put it down and within forty eight hours it's killed the bugs. But it's going to continue to provide that for the whole summer season. It stays with it, so later when chinchbugs or side web worms come along, you've already got that product in place and that works

really well. You're going to find bug out Max in a number of different places. You know, nitrofos products in general are widely available. You're going to find them at places like the Ace Hardware stores for example, the one that is in the area just north central m and d Ace Hardware is up in the Houston area. Are going to have those kinds of products. You're going to find them at the plantation Ace out there in Richmond, for example,

just another example places where you're going to find nitropost products. Pretty much when you say it is hardware you know, they're going to have nitrofosts there, including that bug out Max. See, we're going to go back to the phones, and this time we're going to Cyprus to talk to Linda. Hello, Linda, Do I have a Linda there? Okay, let's see. I'm put you back on hold. Linda. I think we may have a get my producer involved. Here we go. Do we have Linda?

Yeah? All right, I got you back on hold. We may have to see what's going on there to get Linda connected back in with the call. When we've had the questions about, you know, fertilizers and whatnot, and just remember fertilizers are supplemental nutrients. The soil has nutrients in it,

compost decomposing away has nutrients in it. And we don't have to apply and supply everything that a plant needs in order to survive, but we do supplement, and when we supplement, we're able to get more out of our plants. See, it's one thing for a plant just to survive out there in nature. It's another one. You want a lawn that's dense and keeps regrowing back in and getting denser and denser and better. Or you want a rose bush and you want blooms and blooms and blooms. That's where we come in

with our supplements and our fertilizers, and that's where we do. You know, that extra boost that provides what the plants need. But never forget that the number one thing that makes blooms and fruit on any plant, whether it's an annual flower, whether it's a tomato, or whether it's a peach or you name it, the number one thing that makes blooms and fruit is sunshine shining on leaves. That's what makes blooms and fruit. Our fertilizer creates more

leafy growth. It can, the nitrogen can, and it provides more ability for the food factories that drive blooming successful blooming. So always keeping a plant

healthy a is a bait thing you can do. Now, all the other nutrients, the phosphorus we know that plays a big part in bloom production, Potassium, magnesium, a lot of other things like that, but ultimately, what we're trying to do is create a healthy leaf because when you have a healthy leaf that the sun shines on, then that plant is capable of producing and blooming like you would want it to. Let's go back to cypress. We're gonna talk to Linda. You there, Linda, Hello, alrighty,

let's see maybe Chris, could you check into that one for me. I'm gonna go now to talk to Donna. Hello, Donna, Hi, good morning. How are you? Thank you for taking and we don't have a Donna there? All right? I tell you what, Linda, Donna and Rachel. I'm gonna take a break and when I come back, I will give another try at it and we'll see if we can get one of you guys on on here. And we'll be right up with that. We're gonna

take a little break for the news. Got Jared walking in the door, tell us a little bit about what's going on around the greater Houston area, and I will be back. Remember if you need my lawn care schedules, which we keep talking about today, gardening with skip dot com. They're free, can't beat that. Print them up, take them with you so you can put your finger on them and go wherever you're purchasing stuff. This is the one I need right here, This is the one, and they can

get you set up with that. We'll be right back all right. We're back. Welcome back to Garden Line. I'm your host, skip Rictor. We're here to answer your gardening questions. We're going to start off by heading to Donna. Hello, Donna, how are you this morning? Hi? Good morning, I'm great and you I'm good. I'm good. What can we do for you? Thank you for taking my call. I have some great myrtles that have this kind of a dark, patchy look on the leaves.

They don't look healthy, but it's still thriving, but they're not blooming, and I'm wondering, is there what can I treat that with? Okay, you may be seeing city mold. A city mold grow on sugary substances produced by insects, and crape myrtles have aphids that will produce city mold or the honeydew that city mode grows on. Crape myrtles also have crept mertle bark

scale that can weaken the plant a little bit. You'll notice on the trunks little white flecks, a real small white flex and kind of a black city material when you have crepe myrtle bark scale. So those are possibilities of what's going on there. Crapes bloom they need good sunlight, so if it's getting at least six hours of sun, then it ought to be blooming. If not, part of the problem may be a lack of sun to the leaves, but it also could be these pests that are sort of blocking the sun

by creating that city mold on the leaves. You see what I'm saying. It's almost like instead of having a nice clear solar panel, now you've got a dirty solar panel that the sun can't get through. Right, they're in full sun, okay, but you know, the new growth doesn't seem to have any of that on there. It's the old growth, but they do.

They do look kind of a dirty, moldy. You can't really scrape anything off, but well, usually if you something is happening, Yeah, usually if you kind of lick your thumb and rub the top of the leaf, if you're thumbs, you're wet, it'll come right off. And it's a it's a superficial, but think of it as like a dried sugar with a soot, moldy soot growing on it. It's kind of what it amounts

to. But anyway, some people will use like kind of a soapy spray to spray on there, and a lot of times it go dry and kind of flake off. That's sort of something you just have to try out and see how that works for you. If it's aphids, insecticidal soap sprays work really well and blasting them off. If it is the crape myrtle bark scale, that's going to be a little bit more of a job to try to get it under control. But in the meantime, I would fertilize it.

I would do whatever you can do to get some vigor in that plant, because for crapes to bloom, they need good vigor and that's the best look and crapes when you have good vigor. So cleaning up the leaves a little bit if we can, but boosting them with some lawn fertilizer to give them get them stuck. And somebody's saying, name oil, Is that something that I need to spray them with? Name oil would help? If it was aphids, it would work pretty good on those. It's not going to help

with the scale much. Knem oil is. It doesn't. It has a little bit of an insecticide in it, but it mainly works by smothering insects being because it's oil. Because it's an oil. Okay, So Okay, yeah, gosh, I love my crape myrtles, but they're just they're not blooming. Well, I think what's going on. Yeah, I think getting that vigor back in them is good. You may want to do a little bit of a spring. You don't want to be careful because crapes, honey

bees really need crepes in the summer. That's one of the sources of pollen for them, a nectar. And so when we start nuking our crapes to kill all the bugs on them, we can do a lot of damage to the bees too, and we'd really rather avoid that, of course. Okay, fair enough. And then I have a mandavilla that I've planted this year that was beautiful, absolutely beautiful, thriving divines were climbing, and then one day it just started wilting and then just completely died off, no matter how

much I've fed it. Are they very very sensitive to heat? No, they can take the heat. Is it in a container or was it in a container? No, it's in the ground. It's in the ground. I'm wondering about root rot or so moisture levels, you know, of course being too dry as bad, but being soggy the roots can't get oxygen. And we see a lot of root right issues and plants like that when they don't have good drainage. So a water extreme would be one of the first

things that I would look to for that. Mando Villa is a pretty pretty good tough plant, doesn't have a lot of problems, but like a lot of plants, when the roots get water logged, we into some long term problems, especially in hot, hot weather where the demands are so high. Yeah, I suspect that's what it was. I was heartbroke. It was beautiful. But thank you again for taking my call. I appreciate it. All right, don I thank you, appreciate the call. Take care.

Let's see, we're going to go now to Chapel Hill and talk to Rachel. Hello, Rachel, are you there? Hello? Hi, how can we help? Thanks for taking my call. Just question about we planted a bunch of new trees, not little babies, but you know, maybe ninety gallons okay, you know, and I just want to know what to fertilize them with. I use lawn fertilizer. There are some fertilizers that are just for trees. They make them for that. Nitrofoss makes one for woody plants

that's in little plastic canisters. You can buy it by the bag too, sometimes depending on where you're shopping. But a lot of times I use land fertilizer and I find that that works just fine. And so here's what I will do. Get you a loan fertilizer that does not have weed control on it, definitely not a weed control product, just fertilizer, and then apply it at a rate of one to two cups per inch of trunk diameter.

So how long ago did you put those trees in? Probably well when it was still cool, okay, very cool, so probably six months, six months? Okay, Well, the root system is still largely where that those cylinders went into the ground, those ninety gallon containers went in the ground. It has begun reaching out, but it's not like it's a full root system that's reaching out in all directions. So focus you're fertilizing on the area beneath

the branch spread of the tree. Put most of that down. So let's say on a ninety pounds, what you are, your trunks are about what almost the size of a coke can, or a little smaller, maybe a little bit smaller not much, little small. Well, let's just say that's about a three inch diameter trunk. Then you would put three to six cups of lawn fertilizer all around it and watered and really good. You could do it again in six weeks and six weeks later. Just stop by the time

you get about the beginning of August. Stop your your furtilyzation. Then okay, okay, And I poured some medina has to grow around him. Does that help at all? I'm sorry, say that one more time. You poured some what medina has to grow around the us. That's helpful, that's helpful. Yeah, okay. And there's several different has to grow, some of them different nutrient mix than others. But that that's nothing wrong with that. That's fine. Okay, great, thank you very much. All right,

Rachel, thank you. I appreciate the call very much. We're gonna take a little break here June in sugar Land. You will be the first up when we come back. Here we go a little bit of break for the news, and I'll be right back. Welcome back, Welcome back to guard Line, Little Lenyard skinnerd. For those of you who remember that, we're going to head out now to sugar Land and talk to June. Hello, June, Hi, I was wondering, do I need to fertilize or

feed my hydraene here? Yes, you should use something for acid loving plants. Ideally gets you a product that is for acid loving plants, and follow the label carefully, a little gradual feeding over time. You can do it more than once. Uh, just to provide good nutrition so that they can have the vigor necessary to grow foliage and make a nice healthy plant that blooms well. Okay, acid polish, Okay, Yeah, I got you something a little acidifying, so you know you're down. You're in the sugar Land

area. You got a lot of good places to get a good oh yeah forest. Yeah, and they're gonna they're gonna have it. Just tell them I need I need something for kind of an acidic a type plant like like okay adranger for example. It's not essential, okay, not essential for her drangers, but I think they do a little better with those. Well, mina blooming beautiful right now. But I thought my landscaper said, June, I think you're supposed to be using iron and stuff on them. You're on

the ground, And I said, I have no idea. Well, June, if you if you see the new growth, the young leaves that are forming at the end of the shoots, if you see it starting to look a little yellowish, or maybe the veins are green, but the in between the veins is a yellowish. That's a sign you do need to supplement with some iron. But just in general, I wouldn't grab the iron and apply it until the plant is okay, I'll get the extent. Yeah, okay,

that's great. Thank you so much. You have a great day, happy fall this day, well, thank you, jin and you have a wonderful rest of your weekend as well. Thank you. You're out in West Houston. I want to tell you about your home town nursery, your local nursery. That is what you tell me. You hear me talk about it all the time. Nelson Water Garden. It's out there in Katie, Texas. You just head out to Katie. It's just right on the outside of

town. That's why I call it our West Houston Garden Center. Nelson Nursery and water Garden is it's a one of a kind place. And because they carry one of a kind things, of course, they're a water garden. Specialty. They've been doing that. They're nationally known for that. So do you need fish, do you need fountains? Do you need water plants? Plants that can survive submerged in water, or lily pads, those kind of

beautiful things that are just gorgeous to have. They've got all of that, they've got the disappearing fountains, but their nursery is chock full of all kinds of very very valuable things that you just don't find everywhere. Last time I went out to Nelson's, I was visiting a throut and I was really surprised. I mean, they had things like, for example, they have three different kinds three different varieties of elderberries. Did you know that? Did you

know there are three? They're more than that, but three different varieties of elderberries. That's pretty cool, that's pretty amazing. They have got an excellent selection of fertilizers and things. You know, you heard me earlier talking about Nelson Turf Star, Slow and Easy, Well it's out there at Nelson Water Garden nursery and water Garden. They have clemitis that are just beautiful, very beautiful out there, and many many other things plumerias and fruit trees and everything

you can imagine. But one thing I haven't mentioned much on Nelson Water Garden is their houseplants. Their indoor plant selection. When you walk in from the parking lot, you walk into the store, it is stunning. Remember how earlier I said a lot of houseplants, or just to see a green, it's like green this green, that green that. Well, if you want to see some variegations, some colors, some really like you notice it from across the room. Houseplant, they've got those there. They've got things like

the money tree. They got the allocacias of various types of calathea. I mentioned moranta, the prayer plant. They also have the kalathias there that are just beautiful and so go buy and check it out. The beautiful plants, excellent condition, beautiful health. I was there the other day. I had to grab some particular things going into that new flower bed we've been working on getting ready for that. But Nelson Water Garden is always chuck full of what

you need. And when it comes to herbs, excellent excellent selections of herbs as well. They still are stocked up on fruit trees, figs and blackberries and various kinds of citrus like grapefruit, lemon, lime, satsumas, mandarin, other mandarin types of orange, blood orange. They've got it all there. Nelson Water Garden, the nursery and water gardens specifically. Hey, here's the website, Nelsonwatergardens dot com. Nelson Watergardens dot com. Stop by and

check them out. But I have to warn you that I don't say I didn't warn you. When you go there and you walk out back, you will be enthralled by this water wonder world they've created with the disappearing fountains and everything, and you're going to have to have one to go home. I can tell you that you're going to want one for your backyard. I do every time I go there, whether it's a waterfall or a disappearing fountain, it is inspirational. Take some friends with you and run out there and check

out what it is that I keep talking about for all of that. All right, Well, here we are. We're on guard line. We're running the end of it, toward the end of the show here today. You know we're here every Friday, excuse me, Saturday. I'm here on Friday too, But I'm not on the air. We're every Saturday from six am to ten am and every Sunday from six am to ten am. If you want to listen to us, you don't just have to have a radio. You can listen on your phone. Gets you an iHeartMedia app or some other

app and just tune in to guarden Line. You can listen to me live. You can listen to pass shows. We basically turn those into a podcast where you can listen to pass shows. So if you hear me talk about something and you didn't get a chance to write it down, you can just go on there and you can check it out and find out more. That way makes it makes it easy to keep track of I enjoy so much getting to talk to gardeners, getting to help you to have success. That is

one of the things that I most enjoy it. I just find that gardeners are They're just a fun group of people because they're out there trying to make the world a more beautiful, better place. And you're also doing the hobby

that I think is the best hobby in the world. You know, I know it's hot outside, we're moving into summertime, and you don't want to be out a lot in that but make room early in the morning to get out and do a little bit, because every time you're outside interacting with nature and plants, not only are you getting the exercise, but you are getting a lot of mental therapy. I'm telling you that all aspects of gardening I

find to be pretty much therapeutic. I joked about this once before, and although I'm kidding about it, I'm also serious and that I feel this way, and that is that when I go home and look at a bed full of guard of weeds and I kneel down and start working through that bed, it is therapeutic in that you stand up and you look at the work you've done, and you can see the result of your hands right there. And

a lot of things in life. You know, if you've got a job where you go and you work all day, you're doing stuff, you're working, but at the end of the day, it's like, what did I even get done today? Well, gardening tells you right away what you got done, and then you get out there. Take advantage of that, get

out, get some kids involved, to your kiddos. If you have never grown vegetables with your kids, today this afternoon be a good day to get you a container, get some quality potting mix to go in it, and let's grow something. Let's do something with kids that help them be set up for a lifestyle of eating healthier and just surviving better. And for those of us that are a little getting older through the years here, gardening keeps you

young. That's just one way to put it. It keeps yea. All right, we will be back and we will see you again next weekend here on Guardenline. Thanks for being a listener. Don't forget to check out my website at gardening with Skip dot com. MHM.