Here Comes Spring

Katie r H Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to Katie r H Garden Line. With skip rictor it's sho crazy gas trim just watch him as we may suppotasys gassing a side gas sun Bemon of gaz Well, welcome to garden Line. We got a good Saturday today. How many of you appreciate the fact that it can rain around here, but we're pretty much done with much it'd have been raining

around here. I think we got a lot of cabin fever going on Houston style. You know, we don't get so cold that we're typically hiding inside for days while the snow drifts pile up, but we can sure get cabin fever from the rainfall periods we have around here. Well, guess what today we got some Chamber of Commerce weather coming in. We Saturday and Sunday is going to be great, so it's a good time to get out there.

Our garden centers are getting in some good stock of some of the things we need, certainly the supplies you need to go ahead and stock up on things, you know, garden centers, our feed stores. We have a lot of great suppliers that provide the products we talk about here on garden Line, and it would be a good time to purchase your fertilizers a little literally for standard fertilization, but it is still worth picking some up having it on hand

that way you got it. Who knows you may be out one day and have some extra time and thinking, let me just knock that out and you don't have to go run down and buy some. You already got it on hand, so you know what you're gonna want to get. If you got any questions about things like that, you can give us a call. Our phone number is seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one

three two one two fifty eight seventy four. That makes it really easy to get a hold of us, and we can talk about all kinds of things. I want to spend a little bit of time. In fact, I suspect we may spend a lot of time based on what you were interested in talking about, but spend a little bit of time talking about dealing with that extra rain that we got. What do we do? You know you walk out in the yard, I know when it just finished raining. It's not

unusual at all to see puddles of water. But a day after a rain, hey, it's about time for that to go away. By the time you go past a day. We call that poor drainage, or at least I would that may Sometimes you can have a water standing for two or three days and that that's just too soggy wet. You know. Ideal drainage it ought to move out of there within eight hours and you're done. But we don't always have that. We got some heavy clay soils here that hold water

very very well. So if you're a farmer rancher wanting to put in a farm pond, that's a good thing. If you are a gardener trying to you know, not have a swamp in the back, it's not a good thing. Most plants cannot tolerate what we call wet feet, meaning soggy wet roots. And why is that plants like water? Well, the reason is plant roots need oxygen. A few plants have worked out ways to deal with oversaturated soil, but in general, when you submerge roots for an extended period

of time, the plant's going to go downhill. I don't care if it is a houseplant that you're overwatering or if it is a landscape plant, and so what we need to do is we need to get that water away. It's good to get to wet that whole soil volume, and then it's good to not have rain or irrigation for a while and allow that to dry out. And if that's not happening at your house, you need to fix it now. Put a post on Facebook that goes into some of the information on

what are your options. I'll talk about a little bit of that today. I just want to remind you again our phone number if you'd like to give us a call seven one three two one two five eight seven four. So when the rain ends, which it has now leave for most of the area last time I checked. If you see this water standing, uh, it's time to step in. And you've got a few options. So first of

all, where did that water come from? Can it be rerouted? Maybe it's coming out of the down spouts from your your gutters and they're dumping all the water that's going to a certain spot where you have the problem. There are things you can put on the bottom of the down spout to direct that water somewhere else. That'd be an option. Sometimes a grade change is all

that's needed. You know, you have water that is sheeting across the lawn and it's going to one area and just a slight swale could take it to a different spot. That's an option to Secondly, maybe if it's not too bad of a situation, putting raised beds in would get those roots above the water table. So you know, I mean, we're not talking about six inches deep a water standing. We're just talking about it's just staying there and then it goes away. And remember that when you don't see water on the

surface, still underground it is wet. Have you ever gone to the beach and you're walking on the sand, you get down close to the water, you dig down, and all of a sudden, water starts coming up in the hole. Yeah, it's called a water table, and you have that in your yard. And so maybe you don't see the problem on top is a puddle, but it's there and the soil. In those kind of situations, coming up with a raised bed would work just fine. Get them up

high enough. Remember, all race beds are going to sink down in time, especially if they have a lot of organic matter in them, which our bed mixes do. So get it up a little extra high, knowing that it's going to sink down. Number three a third option, if it's really minor, you can do a lot for internal drainage by mixing in some compost and some expanded shale, both of those together into the soil that you have, so that the openings within that soil are larger and water can drain out

easier and air can move in better. And so that would be for very minor situations. But just just improving the structure of the soil, that's what we're talking about. You can't change if it's a clay, the fact that it's a clay, but you can make it a better clay by improving the structure of it. Number four, there's another one. You can just what do they say, when life gives us lemons, make lemonade. You can

just plant things that want to be there. We do have plants that tolerate soggy soil and the problem spots that you have, why not put something like a button bush. It's a native shrub that can live in that. Louisiana iris love a bright, bright, shady area, maybe a little bit of sun dappled through the day and they can survive in that thing where water tends to come and go. Cannes, Yeah, cannes can actually live in water. They do well. The Texas star hibiscus several of our hibiscus, but

native along the Gulf coast called Texas star. It's not native to Texas, but it's native along the Gulf coast that will put up with very wet areas. Elephant ears or many others. Lots of different options there, but essentially, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade, and a good a lot of good native plants to choose from along those lines as well. And then finally you can just hire somebody, a professional to install some subsurface drainage and

take that water away. And I'm going to talk about that a little bit more when we come back. Right now, we're going to take a break. Our phone number is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Welcome back to Garden Line. We're glad you're listening this morning on what is going to be a good Saturday. Listen, if you've been cooped up this week because of the rain and the rain and the rain, I got good news for you today is going to be a good day. It is,

and tomorrow's gonna be a good day. And we got some good days in a row here, which is kind of nice that temperatures mild. We're not worried about, you know, frosts and freezes. We kind of push that rain out of the way, get the sun out there, let it warm up things, and just continue heading us toward the spring season that we're all looking for. Remember that it's not spring now, but it is time to be ready for spring now. And I said this, I think it

was last week. I used to know a gardener's ninety two years old. His name is Alden Colston, and he made a statement real sm but it's always stuck with me. He said, you can always add water, but you can't take it away. And that is true. That's why we don't overwater. You actually can take it away, but it takes a little bit

more of a task to do that. And I was going through a moment ago some of the tips for when you walk out and you see puddles that are been there more than a day after it rained, that is a significant enough drainage problem that you need to do something about it. And went through a number of things a moment ago that you could do just to kind of recap quick for those of you who jumped in. If those down spouts are dumping water in an area, or where is that water coming from, in

other words, how do you change that. You can reroute the down spout spill out point to somewhere else. You can use slight grain changes to change water that is heading across the yard into a low spot. Maybe it just depends on the layout of the land. You can do raised beds that help with minor drainage problems. You can add compost an expanded shale to improve the

internal drainage of the soil. If the you know, if you have six inches of standing water, that's not going to fix it, but for minor problems of soggy soil, that can fix it, do a lot of good for it. Next, you can do plants that like it there. They actually they're native to you know, a bog or you know the side of a pond or a creek or whatever where the water table is up there higher and they do well with that. And then finally doing subsurface drainage. Now,

subsurface drainage relies primarily on the fact that water runs downhill. That was a revelation, wasn't it. Well, Because it runs downhill. All you need to do is find a place for the water can get into a drain, find that low spot. There's different things that professionals can do to put a screen over it, and most doesn't get in as bad. You know, you can get water down in there and then direct it to wherever is lower for the water to run off to or run out of, whether it's

out at the curb or wherever you go with it. And you need a professional to do this because we're talking about very slight drops in elevation that you just can't see with your eye. But as you go over a distance, you want that pipe to be gradually sloping down to get that water off the site and out to a lower area. In other words, it's like a bathtub drain. It's taking the water from the tub and it's taking it somewhere

else. And that's real simple. Sometimes it happens a lot in this area because you know, we don't have a lot of change in elevation here. It's not like we live in the hill country of Central Texas, and so you may have an area that doesn't drain well and there's really no place to take it that's lower or significantly enough lower to do the job. A professional can come in then put a drainage box underground and actually have a pump that

takes the water that spills into that and sends it off somewhere else. Even if that wolf of course, would be uphill. You can do it that way. But again, good professional help is needed on that because you need them to work well, and a lot of the do it yourself kinds of situations just aren't going to cut it well. A company that does that is Peerscapes. You've heard me talk about Peerscapes before. They absolutely do pretty much

anything you need done, from lighting to hardescapes to whatever. But right now, topic of the day is drainage, and you can have them come out, get them scheduled, have them come out, take a look look at the situation, you know, do the little site lines to see how far does it drop from here to there, and make the decisions on how to fix that problem. That's what they specialize in is fixing your landscape problems and creating beautiful showplaces. And if you go to their website you can see what

I'm talking about it's scapes dot com. Pierce P. E. A r C. Scapes dot com. You can give them a call at two eight one three seven oh fifty sixty two eight one three seven five zero six zero. Don't mess around, get it. Get the call in, you know, so you can get them scheduled to come out. Do you need an irrigation tune up? Do you need any other kind of work done? Let's get it scheduled now so that you can get in line to get that work

done on your property as soon as you can. And they really know what they're doing, Jason and the whole whole team there, they will do it for you. Don't wait until you run into another rainy spell later and we're right back in this situation. Your plants aren't thriving because of it, go ahead and get it fixed. That is the topic of the day. Rain, rain, rain, What do we do? What do we do about all this rain? When plants sit in anaerobic conditions, meaning no oxygen to

the roots because they're underwater. We couldn't breathe underwater, right, neither can they, And so when that happens, roots start to shut down and you can actually have a plant wilt in standing water, and that wird you think of wilting is the roots are dry. Well, if the roots are shut down, it can't take up what it needs, and you can have wilting too. You also have root diseases that move in. There are some diseases. This is kind of interesting. I guess if I was a plant pathologist,

I would say it's really cool. I don't find it cool, I just find it interesting. But there are plant diseases that the spores instead of floating through the air, they swim through the water and soil profile. So think of tadpoles, you know, yell a little tadpole with a tail on it. They have spores that actually do that. If I top there is an example of one of those. We call them water moles, and it'll

cause major root rots on a number of different types of plants. And and so whether whatever kind of rot it is, soggy conditions open the door of that. And so you may find that you're losing a plant because you have a top there, or rhizactonia or some other root rot. But really you're losing the plant because the soil state's too wet for too long, and so

that's that's another another reason that we deal with this. If you want to have flower beds, if you want to have vegetable gardens, raised boxes or that's the only way to go. I mean, they absolutely makes it so simple and you don't have to worry about drainage. I mean, if you get a good sized rais box, your roots are going to be just fine. It's going to do really well. Hey, our phone number if you'd like to give us a call talk about something of interest to you is seven

one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. It is still prime time to be planting trees and shrubs, to be planting perennials, whether it's flowering perennials, ornamental grasses, ground covers. This is a prime time to do it, and we're doing it now because summer is coming and we want to give those plants the most many as many weeks as possible prior to hot weather to get root systems

established. That little thing you put in the ground that's a very confined root system, you're not going to do very very well in terms of resilience until it gets roots established, so get them planted. Now. It's a good time to plant roses and a good time in the vegetable garden to plant. We're starting to hit the potato season here real quick. In fact, we can be doing it right now. Plants for all seasons. By the way, they've got a great selection. I was noticing there, David Austin roses,

really good selection of those, and it's time to plant those. By the way, in this time of the year, you can plant roses bear root, or you can plant them as container grown, or you can plant them as container rised. With the difference, well, bear root is bare root, container grown was grown in that container. Containerized means you take a bear root rose, you put in a container, you put soil around it, and that way it has some resilience. If you don't get it planted

right away, you're okay, it's going to get those roots started. So when you do plant it, it hits the ground running. Now when you go to like I could, plants for all seasons. For example, if you buy them in the bare root stage, you save about ten bucks over waiting until they pot them up for you. And so it just makes sense unless you just need to you know, have them hang on for a few weeks before you're going to be able to get them planted, but it's a

good time for that. They also have potatoes, by the way, I noticed they had the kennebec i like the red, white and gold, and that would be the red lesoda, the kennebecs of white potato, and the

Yukon gold is that buttery looking yellowish gold potato. That's really cool. You want to make your potato cuts on so that they have one or two eyes little buds from the potato tuber on each cut, and then set them with the cut faces up so the air can move through real good and let them dry out, kind of scab over a little bit for two or three days, and they should be good to go now. If your soil is too wet to get out there. But you don't want to set potatoes in a

swamp, they will rot. But what you can do is you can plant them a little like a four inch pot and get them started growing, so you're getting the roots going, getting them moving while you get your potato beds ready to put them out there. Potatoes are growing containers too, by the way, if you do it right. But anyway, all that's the Plants for All Seasons. Hey, if you want to give them a call, it's two eight one, three, seven six, sixteen forty six or the

website Plants for All Seasons dot com. Easy to find. They're on two forty nine heading north toward Tomboal. You just exited Luetta Road crossover Luetta and they're right there on the side of two forty nine. Real easy to find them. We are going to be talking about a lot of different things today. I want to spend a little bit of time on fruit trees here in a bet, not right this moment, but I suspect we're going to talk a little bit about wetspots and drainage and what can you do and things like

that. When you hear Garden Line every show, I think I talk about what is the most important thing if you want to have success with your plants, And the answer is the soil, brown stuff before grain stuff. Just remember it that way. Brown stuff is the soil and the nutrients and drainage. Green stuff, of course, is all the fun stuff you go buy at the garden center. That's the pretty things with the flowers on top and so on. But brown stuff first so fix your drainage problems before you put

in a new planting. Too. If you want to put in a new garden, make sure that you design it in a way where you're not going to have to deal with soggy, wet soil conditions. And you can do that. It's not that difficult to do. You can have success quite easily really with that. Uh. Water is a good thing, and as we know, when it's there's too much water is a bad thing. When I was living in the Houston area, I've been through two serious floods where we

lost our office completely. We were out at Bear Creek Park at the Extension office and we went completely underwater and it was like knee deep in the building. Uh, and had to rebuild. And then here comes Harvey and it was all the way to the roof. And so I understand what it means to have too much water and how around here sometimes when it rains at pours

Nikki, that's what the little Martin Morton salt girl said. That's what I said on there right when its carrying an umbrella spilling salt out in Chicago. Really, I believe that's where the plant is well when it rains at poor. So anyway, I'm gonna turn over to Nikki here for the news. If you would like to give me a call, get on the board with Josh so we can talk. Seven to one three two one two fifty eight seventy four, seven to one three two one two five eight seven four.

We'll be back in just a moment with your calls. We're also going to talk a little bit about fruit trees and how to have success with fruit trees here in the Greater Houston area. Welcome back to garden Line. We are glad you're listening today, looking forward to talking to you about the things that interest you. It is. We are on the doorstep of spring. In fact, I would say that in some ways it's already begun. Our milder weather is starting to creep in. We're going to see more and more.

Now hear this. Clearly, I'm not saying we're not gonna have another frost or freeze, of course not. We are before well before the last average frost or freeze date, so there is a likelihood that we'll have another one. Doesn't mean it'll happen. Every year is different, but it just means that it's time to be getting ready. Right now is a good time to be growing transplants. Are you interested in growing some of your own transplants?

Have you ever started your own peppers or tomatoes or eggplant before? Those take about six to eight weeks, depending on growing conditions to get them ready to go outside. You start them now and they'll be ready to go definitely by the time the last frost or freeze has passed. It's kind of fun to do too, by the way, I don't know if you've ever done that

before, but I really love growing owne transplants. I've got to set up in the house right now where I'm growing some things, and we've got peppers, we've got eggplant. I do have some cool seasons that I'm still going to be putting out. There are some of the cruciferous vegetables. Those are the ones that are just packed with all kinds of phyto nutrients that really help our health, from fighting cancer to other kinds of things heart disease and other

issues that result from our poor food choices in many cases. But chryciferous vegetables would include broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, col robbie. There's a one that's not new to me, yet it was new a couple of years ago to me. But it's called chi jimasi c chi j i m s ai something like that, and that's what one seed company calls it. It's a cross

between two different cruciferous vegetables, and it's a leafy green. A lot of those can have a little bit of a mustardy taste, and mustard can be a pretty pungent flavor, and a lot of people aren't into that, but chi jimasai is very very low in that pungency. It tastes really good. It's a super dark blue or dark green leaf, I mean, just as dark as you can imagine of green, and very healthy. Grows fast, easy, easy to grow. Now I've got some seedlings of that started.

We've got several other things, got a little bit of lettuce started. By the way, when you plant lettuce plant, think about this. How many heads of lettuce or how many romain heads or whatever leaf lettuce you're buying, How much do you eat in a week? Not a lot, Even if you have salads every day, there's not a ton of lettuce there. So when you plant, don't plant a fifty foot row of lettuce it's going to be ready to eat and you're not gonna be able to eat at all.

Plant in small amounts, you do, think about it, about a week's worth of lettuce plants, plant them, and then a week or two later plant some more, and a week or two later plant some more, and that way is you go through. You'll always have fresh lettuce coming on. There's two ways to go about it. One is to let it reach its essentially full size and then harvest the whole plant. Another way is just to mow the leaves off. Take some scissors or whatever you want, and just

cut the tops off, and the bases will keep growing. When you cut all the top leaves off, the center we'll just keep pushing up new leaves, and it's just like mowing the lawn. You mow it and it grows back. You mow it and it grows back, and you can do your vegetables that way too. Now's a good time to plant things like carrots, for example, and radishes. Some of the root crops we're getting really close

to time to plant beats. I might put some out a little bit early, but if you're ready to cover them up when we have a good hard freeze. If another one shows up, then you're good to go. But starting seeds is easy. You need a good quality mix. And by the way, the folks that landscapers Pride, they have a number of different mixes that they have. The website, by the way is Landscaperspride dot com.

But they have a rosemix, They've got the black velvet molts that we talk about here on garden Line, and then a forty pound bag of a potting soil. The potting soil is made with age, pine bark and sand and blended organics. You can use it as it is. I would use it as a seed starting mix. The potting saw is a great one for starting new tomato seedlings as well, very economical. Lots of different places you can

find it. Go to Landscaperspride dot com find out about their twenty seven different bag products that they have, and hey, get started this season for too long. We're going to talk about if you want to grow up swash or a cucumber transplant. Those are coming a little bit later, but you're going to need some of that on hand. We're going to head out now to Kingwood and talk to Kathy. Hello, Kathy, all right, don't know do. I didn't get a hold of Kathy there, so well let's try

that one more time. Matthew Kingwood, Welcome to garden Line. Thanks, thank you so much. I love your show. Thank you. I've got acres of not literally acres, but it feels like acres of plants that froze that are just mush wandering jews and hibiscus and just aga panthers and everything that just looks horrible. It's not dry frozen stuff, it's wet frozen stuff. So I'm wondering if I should clean that out. Well, you have two

options. One is just to learn to tolerate the ugly for now. Should we have another freeze, then that mush on top that's going to dry out would be a protection for the crown of the point below. If you can't take the look and caun't adjust to the look, then you can clean it out, but be ready to throw a little bit of multuor compost over those crowns as a protection for them, and the new growth can come back up through that. But I you know, ideal would be, hey, just

wait and when it was fine, yeah good. I was worried about some kind of bacteria setting in or fungus because of it. So well looking, yeah, we can have those kinds of things, but in general that frozen back, the plants are going to be just fine. Sometimes. I know, with things like palm trees, they've got that bud at the top of the tree that that's where everything comes from, and we got to protect it.

And so because water can catch inside that top of the pecan, a pecan palm trunk, well we'll toss a little bit of a copper top funderside or something up there just to protect them. But I think with the you're describing, I wouldn't worry about it. Great, all right, I appreciate you. All right, Kathy, thanks for the call. I have fun out there in Kingwood. It's gonna be two good days. I'm ready there you go, I'm ready to Hey, we're gonna take a little break here.

It's time. We're gonna be back in just a moment. If you'd like to give us a call. Seven to one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Welcome back to garden Lione. We're glad you're listening and looking forward to visiting with you. What do you want to talk about today? Well, here's how you get a chance to do that. Dolls seven two one two five eight seven four. I'm going to go up to Willis now we're going to talk

to Mike. Hello, Mike, Hey, how you don't skip? I'm good, that's up. I'm looking to do some pruning for the blueberries I have and some stone fruit. But I was planning on using the cuttings off the blueberries to do starts. And this was curious. What type of soil and horn use homer and growth that powder to use to start the cuttings and stuff like that. You should You should probably go online and look a little bit. With blueberries, we typically do some little hardwood cuttings. This time

of the hardwood means it's the tissues that came through the winter. They're already hardened off there they're sort of woody. If you will, you can also do semi hardwood on a lot of plants where it's in between that's succulent and where it is now. You do want to use a hormone, get a good quality hormone to dip the cuttings in. Put them in something that is very well drained. It could be like fifty percent pearl light fifty percent peet. That would be an example of a good mix. You just you want

it to stay very well drained, not underwater. I will push a little hole with a pencil in that mix, put the cutting that's been dipped in hormone in, and then push the soil gently up against it. The reason is if you put the hormone on it and then push the cutting in, it's like the soil is wiping the hormone off the surface of the cutting. You see what I'm saying. So make a little hole to set it in, just a little thin hole, and keep it moist, have a cover

over it. Get it in good sunlight. I mean good light, but not direct sunlight. And so as the new leaves begin to come out, they have plenty of light because that's important to make the carbs they need to make the roots. Yeah, tell me in a greenhouse. But okay, what type of hormones of it? Because I was told that some hormones aren't good for fruit. That you eat hormone powders or is that I think that's

a mix. I don't know that that what you were told kind of sounds like a compilation of different I just say no, don't worry about that. The rooting of hormone is typically a powder, but can also be a liquid. Our garden centers carry them. They're not hard to find. You just

want to get a fresh one. You to keep it in the refrigerator and a seal jar, and when you use it, tap a little bit out of the jar and use that for what you're rolling the cutting in or dipping the cutting in, and don't put it back in the jar and contaminate the jar. Don't stick your cutting done in the jar and contaminate the jar. How about the spray peat moss or I'm saying that right, let's get stagna

mos. Yeah, it's kind of stringy. So like when you taking a cutting out, I don't know, I can see you breaking off some roots and it usually we just use a ground up spagnum moss, not spagnum pete, not not the stringy stuff you would line a ding basket with, for example. Okay, well to meet you at the Master Gardener. I think that you were going to give a speak talk there. I am I'm coming up to Montgomery County to give a talk on organic gardening to the master gardeners

up there. Yeah, looking forward to it. Okay, all right, Mike, we'll have fun up there. And well, I used to have a peach orchard and a strawberry patch out east of Willis many years ago before we ended up moving to another city. Well, actually that's where my orchard is. It's in between Cleveland and Cold Springs. Okay, hundred acres up there, but nice, I don't We don't live up there, but were

we lived in Willis? All right, sir, Well, hey, thanks for the call, and good luck with getting those blueberries taken care of. You know, we were talking about wet and rain and everything, but we were also still dealing with the frase and your plants that were from the back. They're going to start waking up as the weather warms up a little bit, and when they do, you want to provide what they need to get back on their feet again. They've lost a lot of tissues from the cold.

They have to regrow. They're in a depleted state because plants need leaves to make carbohydrates to support growth, and microlife has their ocean harvest, which is a four two three nutrient ratio. Liquid and you can spray it on the plant. You can drench it on the soil. I would recommend doing both. If there's leaves, spray it on also, but definitely drench it on the soil. You can follow that with a four excive me six two four, which is the green bag, the stuff we typically talk about for

lawns. It's good for all kinds of things, any kind of plant. You can put that around it and then a couple of weeks later just go ahead and do the ocean harvest again as the liquid and that'll take care of it. You can find Microlife products all over the place. They're available wide variety of areas. You can go to Microlifefertilizer dot com find out where to

go at them. League City Feed, for example, those of you done in League City and all the surrounding communities like Dickinson and Santa Fe and clear Lake City, Baylett, Lamark, all those areas. League City Feed is your hometown feed store. And if I talk about a fertilize like Microlife here on the air, they've got it at League City Feed. The phone number there is two eight one three three two one six one two two eight one

three three two one six one two. They're real easy to find. They're on Highway three, just a few blocks south of Highway ninety six, and they're open practically all the time Monday through Saturday, nine am to six pm, closed on Sunday, and so it's really easy to find a time to swing by there and grab all of those things, including pet feed and pest control products and other things at League City Feed. We're going to head out now to East Houston and talk to Tom. Hello. Tom, Hello,

sure, how can we help today? Thank you for except for my phone call. Yes, sir, Yes, I'm I am a caretaker, and I believe that I did damage on a rubber tree okay, rubber plant okay. And I did not bring it in from the frost okay. And I covered it up with a sheet and it looks bad. Okay. Do I have any Does the plant have any hope? It does? Right? It does? Just you know, it could be anything from it's completely gone to it's going to be pretty good. It depends on how cold of God,

for how long, and what was damaged. I would Tom, you could do a couple of things. You can scratch the bark with your thumbnail and look to see if it's a creamy green color underneath, or if it's kind of a paper sack brown, meaning it's dead, and follow it from the end all the way down toward the base to see if there's any life. If it were me, I would just bring it in if you don't mind looking at it, get it, get it into protection, and bring it

back out when the weather's okay, and give it some time. It's not going to want to grow till it warms up. That's why coming inside might help a little bit. But let the plant tell you where to prune it. I certainly will tell you if it's still alive, because when you start to see sprouts, that's where you're going to have to pune it back to. So that may be at the base where you just have a few buds at the base that lived and the whole trunk's gone. But the plant will

tell you. Just give it time and know that it takes some time and warmth before it's going to want to start reach sprouting. Oh my gosh, Well, hopefully it won't be too bad. Hey, Tom, I'm about to have to run here. I appreciate your call very much. Good luck, yes, sir, good luck. With that rubber truck. I've dealt with those myself before. Kind of interesting. The mystery that we deal with when it comes to freezes and figuring out what is and it's not going to

make it. And plants always surprise me. There were there are several times where I thought, you know, I plant's gone. I just again around to taking it out, and all of a sudden, here comes some new life they. I guess you could say they have a very strong will to live. If at all possible, they're going to do that. Uh. We're going to take a little break for the top of the hour in the news. If you would like to give us a call, call Josh at

seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Let him get you on the on the board so we can talk to you when we come back. I just want to remind you today I'm going to be heading out to the Brasses home show out in Fort Bene County. Uh. I always enjoy going out to the home show. Is getting a chance to visit with folks, talk about what's going on. Uh. If you have samples you would like to bring out, bring them, put them in a sip lock bag.

Bring them to me. Let's take a look. If you have photos and they're in sharp focus, bring them on your phone and we'll take a look at those. We can diagnose, we can identify, Uh, if you want me to, I can also do last rites. I'll bring some with me. Anyway, you get the idea. Let's have some fun. I love to meet folks. I'm gonna be giving away a few containers of a brand new product from Nelson Flat Food that I'm gonna be telling you about

here in a little bit. Uh. And so with people show up, I don't know, we'll have some kind of a participation quiz or who drew, who drove the furthest We'll come up with something. But we'll be out there for now. We'll be right back. K T r H. Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to Katy r H Garden Line with skimped Richter. Just watch him as so many good piece suits. Welcome back. We're glad you're listening in

on garden Line today and you'd like to give us a call. What do you want to talk about? Any kind of question identifying plants, diagnosing problems, getting recommendations for plants, for gardening, for how to have success. We can do that seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three, two one two five eight seven four in the aftermath of all the rain. You know, if you have drainage problems, now just watch it for a day or two. You know, if water stands over a

day, you got a drainage problem. And if it stands over two days, you really got a drainage problem. Low areas and clay soil. Just think of it as a big farm pond. That's what you got out there, and it holds water very well. Unfortunately, you got to do something about it. And I mentioned in my post to Facebook. By the way, if you want to go to Facebook to the garden Line page, we hope you'll follow us on there. I've got some information on five different options

for what do you do when you got a wet sagi area. And one of the things is build a raised bed. You can raise the soil up by essentially bringing in a quality mix that plants will thrive in, putting it on ground and planting in that. And examples would be and by the way, the folks at Airloom Soils. They have a bunch of different product combos that I think are just excellent. For example, rose soil, they've got

a roast soil mix. It's very good for raised beds, not just roses, but shrubs and trees and perennials even will do very well in that. They have a veggie and herb mix that you can buy that. By the way, airloom products are available in bags and they're also available in bulk as quantities as supplies last. They also have leaf mold composts that is an excellent high quality compost for top dressing lawns, for even mixing in the soil, or I like to use it as a surface mulch. I think it does

very very well as a surface mulch. All of that can be done if you've got plants that are struggling. Mix a little bit of some of those into the bed itself. Just carefully mix it in around the plants, just a little bit, get it going, provide that extra nutrition. You know, when you got good microriza, when you've got good biological activity in the soil, it changes the root environment in a way that helps plants. And that's what we're all about brown stuff before green stuff. These are just three

examples of really quality brown stuff from the folks at Airloom Soils. Not hard to find those products either. They're sold all over town by the bag. You can buy them again, as I said, by the bulk, give them a call. Here's a website, Heirloom Soilsoftexas dot com. That's simple Heirloom Soils of Texas dot com and that will get you right to the information you need to find the products and to if you're going to go get the bulk to know where to do that as well. Let's go out to Seabrook

and we're going to talk to Lisa. Good morning, Lisa. I have a question about growing lavender and pot. Does it do well as a potted plant. Lavender does not like our climate. The rain, the humidity, and the summer heat are all really really hard on lavender. Even over you know, you got to Fredericksburg kind of central Texas where it's a little dryer and things. It even struggles out there in a pot. You're giving it the best chance you can because you can put a good quality mix in there.

You can control how much water you give it. You can even move it to a you know, late day shade to help it out a little bit in the hot summer weather, and so you can do that. Spanish lavender is probably one of the easier ones to grow. Spanish lavender, the French provincial the provincial lavender. It's kind of tough, but if you can keep it, don't we the foliage. Don't have a sprinkler spraying it. Put it in the pot like you ask about, and then keep it moist

but not soggy. I think you may have You can at least keep the plants going and have a good measure of success. Thank you, you bet. I have fun with that lavender. There have been a lot of attempts to grow lavender here in Texas. Commercially. There are certainly several attempts that lavender farms. I've gone to see several of them, and you know, you go see them initially they look good, and then you come back a year or so later and there are these huge dead spots in the field,

and it's just the challenge of growing it here. But I think at least I had the right idea put it in a container where you control more things. Let's head out now to Bear Creek Park and talk to Jerry. Hello Jerry, good morning, sir. You're talking about a plant. I'll teach them Assaiah. I tried googling in id Let me. I can try spelling it for you, but it's it's hi ji chi jemassi. But if you start with that chi ji, just start with there and you go to a

website the sea company called Baker Creek Seed. They're the ones that call it chi jim Assi. Other companies will sell crosses of the same two parents and call them other things. I can't remember now what they call theirs. But chi Jimasi is just a It's a simple, easy one. It's one that I always think gardeners need to try something new every year. And I try a number of things new every year, but that would be one that I think a lot of people are gonna like be impressed with its growth. Okay,

No, Baker Creek. Baker Creek Seed up in Missouri, Mansfield, Missouri. Mansfield, Missouri, that's where Laura Ingles Wilder wrote the Little House Books. Originally Mansfield, Missouri. That's not where they were the story is from. It's up in Minnesota. But that's where interl your life. She settled in and wrote those books. That was a fun fact worth the price of passion. I get this wrong. I uncle back and listen to the podcast there, don't you. Yeah, that's a good thing. I should

mention that more on the air. But if you miss a show or like you hear me say something and what did you say? You can you can go listen to it on podcasts. Okay, Jerry, did you did you stay? Do you have any flood problems in Bear Creek? Well, I'm not sure. I have been home in thirty five days. Okay the rehab Siner and copper Gill. Okay, okay, okay, Well you should try that chie Ja Messiah thing. And I wish you well. I hope.

I wish you a recovery there. And I used to work in the Bear Creek Park area, so I know how what happens when it rains too much after a yes, oh boy, yep. A lot of your neighbors didn't fare as well, did they? That was that was a booger, all right, sir? Welly I do wish you well, and good luck finding those seeds. I think it's fun to grow, you know, gardeners have to be optimist. You do, and and there there's reason to be optimistic.

Nature is full of beautiful plants. I don't care if you want visual beauty, if you want culinary flavors, if you if you want to just grow your own food, vegetables and fruit and things flowers. It's just if there's so many things out there, and we always should try something new. Now, I don't recommend doing something ill advised. You know, if you go in a vacation to Colorado, don't bring a blue spruce back or one

of those blue Colorado columbines their state flower. They're not going to grow here. If you're want a columbine, we got columbines that will grow here, but not the blue one from Colorado. Uh and the blue spruce. I mean, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Plants should meet you at the Texas border and take that thing away from you. Anyway, let's take a break our phone number seven one three two one two fifty eight to seventy

four. I'll be right back, all right. That's for your listening pleasure. This morning. You're listening to Garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter, and we're here to talk about all kinds of things related to gardening, and even we can talk about some things on the periphery, let's say, of gardening, uh, taking care of the landscape and the backyard and whatnot. A lot of folks are really interested in backyard chickens. I don't

know if you're one of those, but we've been through that. I tell you, I can probably look back at seven different times we've had backyard chickens different places, we've lived in things, and it's a lot of fun. People just like enjoy doing that taking care of them. But we're getting close to time to go get you some baby chicks and to get started. In fact, the folks at D and D Feed up in tumble They I believe it's February or the eighth that they're going to start getting those in. You

can go to their website. D and D Feed's website, the D and D Feed and supply real easy to eat to find. It's called ddfeed dot com. Just give them a call too. Two eight one three five one seventy one forty four two eight one three five one seventy one forty four. They are on twenty nine twenty just west of tumble, and they have everything by the way they need. They've got their their fertilizers in the ones you

hear me talk about here on guarden line. Are there if you need disease, pest, weed control, if you need things like their loomrose, soil and age leaf compost and fruit berry and citrus, veggie and herb, those ones I was just talking about. Yep, they got those at D and D feed as well, and later on we get a lot of new things in. They also have potatoes, by the way, if you need the red Leasda, the white Kennebec or the yellow Yukon gold, they've got them.

But hey, don't wait around, because go ahead and get them. They can sit on your counter for a while if you want, or you can go ahead and cut them. Get them ready to kind of scab over a little bit and be ready to plant so they don't rot in the cool soils, cool wet soils of spring. All that is available at D and D. Feat again the number two eight, one, three, five, one seventy one forty four. We're gonna now head out to Sweeney and talk to Tom. Hello, Tom, Hello, how are you doing today?

I'm doing good? What's happening in Sweeney, Texas. Oh, lot of wet weather right now? Okay, all right, well we got rid of that. I called and canceled it. It should be done now. It ought to wind up for you today. Well, good for you. Thanks. Yeah, right. I was I'm gonna plant some save potatoes next month, and I was just checking to see what kind of fertilizer I need to for them. Yeah, that's a good question, Tom. I'm gonna give

you kind of more than one answer here. The first of all, a soil test tells you what you already have, which tells you what you need to add. So that's the best answer to your question. We don't have that in front of us right now, so we'll give the next best answer. As you're mixing composts and things into the soil, it's just getting better and better and that's always a good idea. And then as a boost, what I will typically do is I will use just a lawn type fertilizer for

potatoes. And here's why. With potatoes, you're growing the tubers, which are extensions of the stem that are filled with carbohydrates. You need leaves, healthy foliage to make carbohydrates. So you can have potatoes on the plants. So anything you do that stimulates the leaf growth is going to provide more of a top to create more of a harvest. And so you get you. I don't know what kind of fertilizer you use for your lawn, Well you have a particular range. I hadn't put anything, damn, you know,

triple thirteen or Okay, I'd switch. I would switch over to something that's got a ratio instead of a one one one like triple thirteen does like three one two. Lots of that first number, not much of the middle, and then a moderate amount of the second. And that's considering that we don't know what's already in your soil. But that's a pretty good place to start. Yeah, alrighty, well, thank you for all the help. I

appreciate it. Yes, sir, have fun. And all I ask is that you bring half the potatoes and drop them off at the station and we'll call it out. Thank you, thank you. All right, you take care. Yeah, the potatoes are it's it's we're hitting potato season. You know, they don't the potato plant itself is not going to tolerate a freeze, but we put them in the ground and they come up, and sometimes you'll get a little bit of a freeze, they'll blow burn the tops,

but then they just kind of re sprout from under there. I would throw a mulch over them. If you get them planted a little early, throw a mulch over them. And whenever we're going to have a frieze, just go ahead and cover them up. It's okay. They'll come through it.

In fact, one of the strategies, one of the best strategies for growing potatoes is you put them in let's say, something like a little bit of a trench, and as they grow, you throw more compost and soil in around them, and they keep pushing their stems up through it, and then you end up with about eight inches or so of buried stem and that's where your potatoes are going to form. So that's important to remember. A potato, like a new potato, an Irish potato, you know those kinds of

things, they're not roots like a sweet potatoes. They're stems. So when you plant that potato, I seed peace. We call it a seed piece. It's a section of potato that you cut up and let the edges or the fresh cuts kind of dry up before you plant it. The roots go down and the stem comes up and the potatoes come off the stem. It's as simple as that. You grow potatoes and containers too. They do really,

really, really well in a container. Talking about the topics, you know, really of the season right now for gardeners is number one, we just had a really bad freeze and number two we've got a lot of rain and we're dealing with that. But if you you know, we talk about plant recovery from the freeze. But what about pipes? You know, do you have some issues with pipes that you need to do repair on maybe you know irrigation system, little minor repairs and things. Well, Ace Hardware is

going to have that. Any kind of plumbing repair parts you need, they're going to have it. Anything to repair your sprinklers. You know, this Christmas, maybe your brother in law came over and backing out of the driveway, he ran across the corner of the yard and yep, that's where the wrinkler head is. And maybe you don't know damage has been done yet, but boy you will when you turn it on. What do you do?

Well, Ace Hardware, They'll get you fixed up. We're going to be talking a lot about all the products that they have, because they have everything. Do you need fertilizers, do you need mulchus, just any kind of tools and things, things to control pests and diseases. ACE Hardware is easy to find. You know forty of them here in the Greater Houston area. Just go to Acehardware dot Com, find the store locator and you can find the ones near you, and there is an ACE Hardware near you. That's

as simple as that. I fortunately did not have any pipe damage in this last freeze, and I bought the little and ACE carries these those little covers that go over your faucets outdoors, and the little things you put around your pipes to protect. Boy, it's always good to have those on hand. Years ago I had a little spot where I put those things, and I know right where to go get them when the coal weather arrives. But I'm glad to not have to mess with that, for sure. We were talking

about potatoes and how to grow them. There's a lot of different kinds of grape vegetables. There are a lot of fun to grow. I grew potatoes one time in a basket like one of those little wooden baskets with the metal wire handles. Just drilled a hole in the bottom and put the seed piece

in the soil that had been worked up and right over it. After I buried it, I put the basket with that hole in it, and so when the potato sprouted, it came up inside the basket, and I throw mulch in there, composty stuff, and as it grows Philip, Philip, Philip, by the time you get that basket completely full, you will have then the vines coming out and growing over the top. And this is a conversation piece. When it's time to harvest, you just cut it loose at

the ground. And now this isn't going to make the basket last. It's that moist soil is going to decay. But you'll get that first season out of it. And all your potatoes are in the basket because they're not roots, they're stems, so when they come up, all the potatoes form in the basket. I've done that with five gallon buckets. You gotta have really good drainage on those lots of holes drilled in it too. But there's a

lot of fun ways to get kids and have fun. Then you just take the basket again, cut underneath it to get it loose from the soil and dump it out, and now are all these perfectly formed, beautiful potatoes because they're growing in nice loose COMPOSTI mix. Kind of a fun way to do

it. Getting kids involved in gardening is I think an important thing. We do need to get the kids involved because it's a lifetime of health when we learn to eat right and not being afraid of vegetables, not pushing them around the plate, afraid to eat them. But you grow them yourself, you're more likelydium. That's how it works with kiddos. And another thing that is fun if you've got little bitty ones, little bitty ones, the is to plant radish seeds on the ground. I would put them in like a big

tray. Maybe you only have about four inches of soil in a tray, and you put the radish seeds in there, and then you lay hardware cloth, like the little half inch square hardware cloth like you'd have underneath the rabbit cake. You lay that on the surface and the radish is sprout up through it and they just grow. And then when it's harvest time, you just pick up the hardware cloths this big wire sheet wash off the soil, and on one side you got the radish tops and on the other side you have

these nice, little, beautifully formed radishes. And radishes are about a twenty eight day crop, so kids and people like me with very low patients can have fast results. But that's kind of cool to see about. If you do that, would you post it to our Facebook or tell us about it? And we would love to see it on our Facebook. You can't post it to our Facebook, but you can connect it to garden Line Facebook. That would be so cool. It is cool. It is cool now eating

radishes for kids, that's a whole nother. Yeah. Hot, this kid still doesn't like radishes, but are you not? Well? We won't talk about that. The Radish Grower Association of America is probably wonderful if there is a thing. Yeah, yeah, they're fabulous. My dad liked those little red radishes and they just were hot. I didn't care for them. There's actually a big one, though, Nikki. It's the size of a turnip, and it's white toward the bottom and green light green toward the top,

but when you cut through it, it's red inside. We call it the watermelon radish because it's like green on the outside, red on the inside, and it's it's pretty mild too. So I mean, if I guess it's the gateway drugged rabits eat a radish, a watermelon radish might work. We're going to be right back. It's time for Nicky in the news. Seven to one three two one two, five, eight seven four. Good morning, and welcome to garden Line. We are talking about things, hopefully that

are of interest to you today. One way you can make sure that happens is to give us a call and ask your question. Seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one two five eight seven four. I was this past week with all the rain, and I spent a lot of time looking from inside through the window at the outside, and we're just noticing all the birds that were gathering at our feet. Er, we've got one of the those wild birds squirrel excluding feeders. If you haven't

seen one of those, you got to go check them out. They are amazing, quite a contraption, and to foil a squirrel's evil plans is not easy. They want the bird seed that we're given to the birds bird feed so Anyway, I was watching that and looking at all the different kinds of birds that we had, and I was real surprised. There's just a lot of variety coming in, all kinds of different beautiful species. And you know, this is a season when we still need to be feeding taking care of

our birds. We're still doing a little bit of the winter super blend, that's the one that has lots of fats and proteins to help them get, you know, get through this winter. It's pretty duck being a bird out there when you've got freezing, freezing cold weather and you're dealing with that and trying to find food and whatnot. Well why not help them find food in your yard. And when you do that, they'll be back food and water

and all the things we provide. Housing. By the way, speaking of housing bluebirds or starting to look for their nest boxes, if you would like to have bluebirds, and now's the time to get a nest box out Purple Martins. There, we're just on the doorstep of when they start showing up. The scout's coming out looking for a place to make a home. If you've got a nice Purple Martin house up on a pole, maybe they'll set up shop there, they'll find your place and if you've had them coming back

from year after year, they already know where you live. Now. There are a lot of different Wildbirds locations, six of them around town. It's really easy to find. Go to WBU dot com forwards slash Houston, WBU dot com forward slash Houston find a Wildbird's near you. Also, you want to follow them on the social media because they they're always having new tips and ideas. There's good videos, there's good information on birding. It's just really

really excellent, excellent website and excellent social media posts. Two that they do at Walberds. I was like that love going into those places too. It's like a candy story for me and go go in and in seeing all the cool new stuff that they have. Well, you're listening to Gardenline. 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 mentioned earlier that I'm going to be at the Brasses Home and Garden Show, which is down in Rosenberg now. It's at the Fort Bend Epicenter. It's yesterday, today, and tomorrow. I'll be there Today. When the show's over, I'm gonna get some things packed up and head over that way. I'll be giving a seminar

at twelve and I will also be giving one at one o'clock. At twelve o'clock, I'm gonna be talking about landscape recovery after the freeze, and I'll talk about some other things, some general tips for spring and garden success. And then at one o'clock we're going to be doing a lot of Q and A and who knows. Typically i'll go in, I'll plan on talking about something, and then here come all the questions, and we we head off in the things that the people that show up want to talk about, so

we can do that too. But that's all at the Fort Bend Epicenter in Rosenberg, Texas, and I hope you'll come out. If you have a sample you want to bring, put it in a ziplock bag or twist type bag, close it up and bring it in. We'll take a look at it. If you have photos on your phone in good sharp focus, bring those. I'd be glad to see those as well. Kind of you know, figure out what might be ailing your plants, or maybe it's a plant

you want to identify it something like that. We'll be their home and garden show BRI's Fort Bend Epicenter to day after the show garden line. I'll probably get there about eleven leven thirty. I'll be talking twelve and one again, so hope you come out. Let's head back to the phone. We're going to go out to Jersey Village and talk to Clara. Hello Clara, Good morning, skit morning. I have a question for you regarding adding that expanded

our expandable coconut fiber to your garden soils. These race beds have been in for about eight years now, okay, and as I've added soil, of course, it's become more and more compacted. So I was wondering about using that to kind of like bluff it up. Well, you could generally, though, with the cocoa fibers coconut fibers where we call a coconut core. We're putting that in planting mixes like potting soil kinds of things. It would be pretty cost per to do it, you know, just to a large

area. I would recommend instead, if you're wanting to improve your soil, get a good bed mix and spread it out there. How big of an area do you need to cover? This is probably three and a half feet wide by twenty five fee? Okay? And what are you wanting to grow in that bed? Typically? I grow tomatoes, cucumbers, spell tempers, okay, just household household type, you know, summer and all stream beas okay, good vegetans, and yes, and I do rotate where the cucumbers

are planted and where the tomatoes are planting. Okay, well I would I would grab you a bed mix the airlom soils folks. They have one called Edgie and Herb that does very well. And you can find bags of that over where you live out there in the Jersey Village area if you go up to you got a couple of great ace hardwarares M and d is up there in the Cypress area, and then the one on Jones Road as well. Good supplies of those kind of things. Just buy you some bags, toss

them down the way about. I probably put it if you've already got soiled in there, I'd probably put it about three inches deep and then mix it in, you know, as deep as is practical for you with a swaden park or whatever you're going to use to kind of improve it a little bit, and I think you'll have real good success. Okay, and then use how about using the coconut fiber or coconut core to do the seedlings, to do seeds? You can, but you don't want to use just that.

It has each component, and a potting mix has its own purpose. You know, the peat moss or the cocoa core that's going to hold water very well, the things like pearlite and vermiculite that's going to help drainage be better. So you wouldn't want to grow and straight peat moss or and straight cocoa core, but you can mix it in. Okay, Okay, Well, you know we're all starting to think about these gardens. I know we are, that is for sure. Yeah. I used to live up in the

Cypress area, by the way. One day, it actually dawned on me why they call it Jersey Village. I did not know this, but that was big dairy farm country. That's why we have Darry Ashford Street and Jersey Village and there's some other landmarks of that of that day in time. Yes, yes, all right. As a native Ustonian, we've watched the concentric circle theory, grow and grow and grow. I'm telling you, I think

we're at it. We're at our outermost belt at this point, well at this point, at this point, I'm afraid that Brunham and College Station are going to be the edge of Houston if it keeps going like it is in that in your direction at least. Hey, yes, that is very true. Thank you, thank you for the call. I appreciate that. Clara. You take care. We're going to take a little break here and we'll be back. Our number is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy

four. The sun is on the way. In fact, the sun is shining right now. It's just shining on the other side of some clouds and maybe a little over the horizon, depending on when you're where you're listening to Garden Line from We're going to have a good day. These cloudy conditions they're going to start to break up and move away. We got the rain behind us, so today is a good day to get out there. Let's go

visit a garden center. Let's go pick up some supplies at some of our garden centers and feed stores, ace hardware, those kinds of places we talk about. Get ready for spring. It's coming. I'm not going to tell you to fertilize today, but you could buy the fertilizer and be ready to go. So when you're ready to put it out, all you got to do is head out there and do it. You don't have to go buy

it at that point in time. I hope that there's a stock of whichever you prefer, whichever kind you like to use, at the places that you prefer to purchase them. Go ahead and get out there and get started. It's definitely time in the vegetable garden. We can continue planting cool seasoned crops like broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, cole Robbie. I've got some sweet peas, some sugar snap peas that I'm about to put out. I've always planted

them directly in the garden. It's a big old seed, easy to direct seed in the garden, and I just decided this year I was going to start them inside, and I'm glad I did, because right after I got them started, we had this horrific cold spell that came in, and had they been up, that would have been a little bit of a problem for them. So instead they're in these little transplant cells, and I'm going to put them out in the garden here pretty soon. And they're already up and

growing. It's about time to move them out as far as the plant condition is concerned. But you can do that right now direct seed those out. Lettuce and spinach can still be planted out in the garden. Root crops like carrots and beets and beats. Actually they're a little coal tender, but you can grow them if you're just willing to protect them. When we have our next little freeze, they'll be all right. Lots of things to plant right

now in the vegetable garden. In the cool season garden, you can still plant some cool season flowers. They're you know, with summer and warmer weather coming, they're not going to be long for this world, but they still would look good and help spruce things up. And it's getting closer and closer to the time when we begin to plant our warm season. We want to get that danger of frost past us to start to put out things like petunias

and other beautiful flowers in the garden. It's a great time to plant herb transplants. Let's see where are we right now. It's a tad bit early to plant basil indoors as a transplant, but you could if you just don't mind growing it into a bigger plant. Basil likes warm weather. It does not want you to stick it out there and the night becomes fifty degrees. In fact, I'm waiting to plant mine another at least two weeks, probably to start a transplant indoors. There's a lot we can plant. It won't

be long before we're putting in squashing cucumbers. It's transplants if we would like to do it that way. I mentioned potatoes. It's a time to plant fruit trees, and I want to talk about fruit trees a little bit here. I'm probably going to do that the next hour. But it's time for all of that. And your lawn. Your lawn's asleep, but it's going to be waking up pretty soon. And you know, when the lawn gets going, we get some spring growth on it. Anything you can do to

stimulate and help that lawn be healthy is important. And the roots are where the lawn lives. I mean that is, if the roots aren't happy, no plant's happy. So you've got to make the roots happy first, and green pro they do that I don't know if you've heard me talk about them before, but green Pro does compost stop dressing, and they can do the deep time aeration that punches the holes in the soil, pops the little plug out and leaves it on the surface where it can melt away. They follow

that up. They got really cool machines that put the compost out for you, and they know the right kind of compost to use, very fine texture that settles in real well. And with that aeration and compost top dressing, your lawn just it just gets better and better. And so you want to give them a call and get a schedule. Get on the schedule so they

can do that. And all you have to do is go to greenpro dot net greenpro dot net and you can find out more about their services, what it costs, where they can where they can go, depending on how far away you are. You know, there's a there's a little bit more of a charge to get out to that location. But this is the kind of service that probably does more for your lawn than any one single thing we do. We know we got a water in the summer. We know we've got

to fertilize our launch to have good growth. But when you use green pro, what you're doing is you're making the soil right for those roots to thrive. And that is more than half the battle right there. And what do we say all the time brown stuff for green stuff? Aeration and top dressing is taking care of the brown stuff so the green stuff, that beautiful lawn you want to have can really happen. I guess I'm going to become a broken record, but I want you all to go, Okay, Guarden Line,

I know what he's gonna say. He's gonna say brown stuff before green sale. Hopefully we can get that so into the psyche of all Houston area gardeners that we just see much more success. One of the frustrating things for me in helping people garden, and I've been doing this for a long time, thirty five years with Texas A and m Agrolife Extension Service. I worked in Missouri as a fruit grower advisor prior to that for a few years and

now continuing on radio on Garden Line doing the same thing. One of the frustrations is someone who goes out and does something that has no hope of success and then they call and how do I fix it. Now. I don't mean don't call, Please call and let's fix it. We want to help you have success, but I would rather have helped before whatever was done was done, so we could help you get off the right feet. And here's what this looks like. Someone who's you know, not really gotten into gardening,

but wants to. They go somewhere and it typically is going to be some you know, big box store that has plants over on the side. They go in to buy a hammer or whatever else. They see the plants. They go over there. Oh they're pretty, you know, let's grab them. They bring a flat home and they walk around the yard looking for where to put them. Well, number one, are those plants even adapted to here? Are the varieties even adapted to? Here? What condition are

those plants in? Our Mom and pops? They know how to take care of plants, and they know how to get you the varieties and species that do well here. Well, so you stand there, you look around, where am I going to plant them? You scratch back the weeds in the grass, You make a bed and you put them in it, and the soil is not properly prepared, and then you wait and they struggle and the next thing, weeds are in there, and by the time we get to

May or June, it is just basically weeds. So you just mow over the whole thing and say I can't garden. That is wrong. You can garden. You just started off wrong, and we want to help you start with success. That's why I say brown stuff before green stuff. It's fun buying plants, and we should. I mean, my gosh, I love that, but take care of the soil. First broken record. But I'm telling you I could sit here all day and tell you the best tomato varieties,

the best flower varieties, all that kind of stuff. But if you don't do the other then you're just you're just spinning your wheels. Let's go out to Manville and we're going to talk to eight off. Eight off. I got a little bit of time here. How can we help Yes, you're real quick. I know you've discussed it before. What I called the fruit trees. They're small. Should I go ahead and uncover those? Yes?

Absolutely, And you don't need to cover them up. In fact, once we're going to not have a freezing night, you don't need to cover them up. You can pull that cover off. Okay, great, thank you you met Well, that was fast and easy. Good luck out there in Menville with your fruit trees. Uh uh, that's that is a that is a good question. I appreciate people asking questions because, uh, you know, it's what what is the deal that this is a thing about guys,

Right, we don't ask for directions. We refuse to ask for directions and stuff. Well, I don't know if that's fully true, but some of you are saying, oh, yes it is, yes it is. But when when we get things we take care of and get them right, it's just better. And and again I was, I was, you know, harping on a minute ago about getting the soul ready before you plant.

Yeah, I want you to be inspired, have spring fever by plants come home, make the place beautiful, have a beautiful, bountiful, healthy garden, all of that kind of stuff. But just check a little bit and be careful. Oh my gosh, social media, I don't know where to start. I'm gonna not rant. That's my gift to you. But so much stuff on social media is just flat wrong. It is just flat wrong. Some of it is because it's for another area, not this area,

not your area. Some of it Some of it is because people become experts overnight. Gardening and medicine seems to be the same thing. People that have all this, do this, do that, you need this, you need that, and they don't know what they're talking about. And it just is frustrating because I watch people waste money in time and have disappointment because of that kind of thing, and I don't want to see that. You don't want to see that. Of course, that's why we have resources for you.

Aggie Horticulture website, Aggie hyphen Horticulture dot TAMU dot edu twenty and publications on every vegetable you can imagine growing and fruit and herbs, and it's just on and on and on. There lots of good information. Call Garden Line, visit your county Extension office, your Egro Life Extension off you got one in your county. We've got some some uh, We've got offices and all the

counties around here. We had a horticulturist down at Fort Bend County and Galveston County and Brazoria County and Orange County and Harris County and Montgomery County and Brass County. There's plenty of help out there to help you along the right We'll be right back. Kat r H Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome q kt r H Garden Line with skip rictor it's trim just watch him as Welcome back to garden Line.

We are happy to have you with us today. What do we want to talk about? You got a question, give us a call seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. We were talking earlier about recovering from the freeze, the

different kinds of things we can do for our plants. The bottom line is all the top growth are a lot of it, depending on the plant was frozen back, and so the plant's got to regrow that and that top growth if it had leaves on it, if it was an evergreen for example, or a winter annual for example, that kind of top growth was making carbohydrates to strengthen and support that plan and help it do more growth, more blooms.

Now it's using stored carbohydrates to try to regrow. So, in other words, bottom line, we've got to help our plants, got to take care of them, making sure they have adequate nutrition. Mixing in a little compost around them is always a good idea to do on plants. Also, things like Medina plus Medina plus and Medina seaweed both are very helpful for plants. They these two products are liquid. You can put them in a watering

can drench them over the soil when new growth begins. You can use them as a folio or spray too, and that is very helpful as well for the plants. But making sure that that root system as it begins to wake up and push growth, has the nutrition that it needs. That's what's important. And you know, some things are not going to grow for a good while. They're just going to be sleepy heads and take a while before it

warms up enough to grow. Other things are going to bounce back pretty quick, and so you just need to watch your plants, take good care of them, make sure that whatever's in your power to do, you do. And they know how to deal with this. Plants are designed for all kinds of the vicissitudes of nature that they just find a way to bounce back. And so I have great hope for that. Now. If it's if you put a houseplant pathos ivy outside and it got down to twenty five degree or

something. Well, you can just do last rites and get rid of it. But for most of our plants that are outdoors, there are a lot of them. I think we're gonna have good, good results on this. Let's head out to Brenham, Texas and we're going to talk to Dan. Hello. Dan, Yes, I have a question about my bad yard from the freeze. Who got down the ten eleven degrees? Have several nayses? Brown, What do I do? And when do I do it? You have Saint Augustine. Yes, for right now, just hang on that that

grass is not going to want to grow until it warms up. That you can put fertilizer on it, water on it, not put what it's not going to grow. Uh, temperature, that's what's going to make it grow. We're gonna be that warms up. Yeah, is it is. It starts to warm up, it'll start to wake up. Your grass is not dormant like dormant trees are. It's the fancy word is quiescent. It is

sleeping. Uh, it's still alive. We have some warm Like if we went through a week where we had seventy five degrees or so that grasp. I would start making carbohydrates and you know, getting going and stuff a little bit, and then it'll go back to sleep again, because it's not going dormant, it's just it's just going to sleep with the temperature. So what I would do is get ready to go on your spring fertilization. Some people

start really early on that. I generally wait until about the time I've mowed the lawn twice. On my schedule, I've got April first is a time to begin fertilizing in this area. If you're done in Galveston, you know it's going to warm up sooner than it is if you're up in Huntskill listening to the show, what about fruiting plants that got burned in the freeze if you can, if you can stand to look at the ugly, just leave it for low growing plants that just kind of turned to mush. That's a

protection for the base the crown of that plant. The other thing about pruning is if you end up cutting into living woods, it stimulates growth, and we may have enough freeze left in us and we don't want to stimulate it. So if you can put up with looking at the ugly. The plant will tell you where to prune. When spring huts, you'll see where the buds come out, and that's where you prone to if you're patient. On hey, do you have a copy of my lawn care schedule by any chance?

Dan? Yes? I do? Okay, good? Well on there it lists when to fertilize and all your product options for synthetic and organic, whichever you want to go. Okay, all right, have fun and Brunham enjoy a bluebellt ice cream for me. Oh yes, you take care, bye bye. That's that is some good ice cream right there. Let's go to Caldwell and talk to Don. Hey, Don, is this Callwell, Texas or Carwell County, Texas? All right, sir, how can we

help? Just have some questions about a few years ago my mother in law has some guys come in and mow, and I think they brought grass birds, and we don't have good grass at all. She planted some san augustine, but it does come out in spots, but I didn't know whether to, you know, just skim the top off and plant some soya, soysa or whatever it is that I see in the magazines. But okay, it's so tired of digging grass birds out of the carpet. Yeah, and also

about planning a garden. How to you know in sandy soil. I've planted some tomatoes. I have great bushes and no tomatoes, so I don't know what I'm doing wrong. Huh. All right, Well that that's a lot of questions in one so let's uh. First of all, I was just talking about my online schedules. There's a lawn care schedule, and there's a lawn pest disease and weed management schedule, and they're at guard with Skip dot

com gardening with Skip dot com. They're free. You just print them out or look at them on your computer and it tells you when to fertilize them with what. And the main important thing coming into spring is getting that fertilizer down for the lawn to get going. Now, the grass burds you kind

of have to catch twenty two on your hands. If you're gonna sod, you don't want to sod after you put down the pre emergent because the pre emergent stubs root growth, and that's how it kills the weed seeds trying to get started and it will have the same effect on your side that you laid on top. It's gonna have trouble getting roots down. So I would you can do one or two things you can just I probably if you have to sod. If you need to sod, I would go ahead and do that.

Maybe if you've got a bunch of things there, weeds and other things, you would just kill everything so that you can level the ground out and and put new sod down and get going fresh. And then as far as things like grass, pro seeds and things, we can deal with them later. But I'd say right now, unless you see sprigs of grass within you know, ten twelve inches of each other, that you could get it to refill in by the by midsummer, I think probably putting some new fresh grass

down. But if you have Saint Augustine, don't just put zoisia in it. If you want to go to zeusia, get rid of everything and so that zoysia sod can touch the soil, have good contact with the soil, and you're not going to want You're not going to get much results from that until it warms up a little bit more. Okay, do that answered? Or did that just muddy the water. Well, so do I skim the skim the top of the grass off to get what's there, and then read

resoil and then put the Saint Augustine down. I'll just switched to some of the top of grass. Well, Saint Augustine is fine. If it's in the shade, it's going to be your most shade tolerant. You know what, Don, we are hitting a hard break. Can you hang on when we come back. This is going to go on a little bit. Let's let's finish this conversation in just just a minute. Thank you for hanging with us. Uh, here's here's a break phone number seven one three two one

two five eight seven four. I will be right back. Welcome back to garden Line. We're looking forward to visiting with you about the questions that you want to talk about. Our phone number is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. I'm going to go back to Calwell. We're visiting with Don about some turf options. Don, Saint Augustine is the best turf when you have a lot of shade. It's the most shade tolerant when you

get out in the sun. The challenge with Saint Augustine. You can grow it, it just isn't as drought tolerant, and so Bermuda and Zuezia pass it by in terms of drought tolerance out in the sun. Every grass has its pros and cons, though there's not like one that's the one you got to plant. Are you there? I am here. Okay, I've got some shade, but it's not it's not massive. Okay, I've got big sections of the yard that are full sunshine. Okay, well here, here's

here's the bottom line. It just kind of to bring it down to brass tacks on the choice. Saint Augustine will take more shade, and it also if you don't mow regularly, it still looks okay. Zoisia will also take a decent amount of shade, so it probably would be okay in your spot. It requires a sharp mower, and if you don't, if you cut it down low, you have to use a real type mower like a barber

pole spiral blade as opposed to a propeller blade like standard mowers have. And if you if you don't have a sharp blade on a propeller blade mower, it tends to knock the Zoisia over and it gets a little lumpy when you cut it a little higher rate. That would be And if you do zoysia, I would do the broader leaf types of zoysia, the varieties like Jammer and I'm trying to think of some of the more modern ones el Toro, Jammer a couple of examples of those, but either one would do fine.

You just realize they all have their pros and cons. But if you're gonna sod, you got to get that old stuff out of there. Randy used to say kill, till and phil, meaning kill the kill, the weeds, of grass, the everything, fill it up to level any areas out and then or tillot if you need to loosen the soil up, level it out real good, and then plant the grass on top. If you don't need to do the leveling and everything, just get the organic matter off the

top. Like if you spray and kill weeds, you still have that dry dead weed on top of the soil, so the sod can't touch the soil. It sits on the dry dead weed. Do you see what I mean? So you were talking about scraping it off that that would be helpful if you could do that okay, Okay, Yeah, And if it's a perennial weed though, that's where spraying is more important because you chop the top off

and it just comes back through there. Yeah. I think spraying killing first and then killing and then repotting is going to be the best plan, probably so, And I wouldn't get in a big hurry about it. Some of the weeds that are a problem through the summer, they're going to be waiting

to really show up until it warms up a little bit. So let them go ahead and come up, and then when you do get rid of them, you can kind of get it all done, hopefully with one application and be done with it and then whenever you can get that sod in and get it laid. So last question, what about gar name? What's the without buying a hundred sacks of it? Because I was gonna do a pretty deepent area where I could do some tomatoes and yeah, for a variety of plants

that we eat every every day, okay, and especially beats. I was interested in beats because there's health health issues. How big of an area are you looking at? Probably twenty four Okay, Yeah, it's going to take a bit to do that. By the way, if you go to Airloom Soil's website, they have a calculator on there that is really helpful. And the calculator you can tell it you know what size area and how deep you want to put the stuff, and it tells you exactly how any qbicyards you're

going to need, and you probably want to do. That's Airlooms Soilsoftexas dot Com calculator. Find out how much you need and you're gonna want to buy a bulk for that big of an area, and so you know that way you can go ahead and get it spread out and mix it in a little bit with the soil you have, and then keep building it up with the quality bed mix. If you can get it up probably about ten inches eleven inches or so that that ought to be enough for putting in the bed and

so you can order it. You know our soil yards down here in the Houston area. Transportation is the big cost, and so getting it all the way out to Caldwell, Texas is going to get a little cost prohibitive. But you can talk to the folks at Airloom find out what they have, or Nature's way is up in Conro area, that would be another option. Or since you're in callwell the recycle place gosh, I can't say the name of it up up there north and just to the west and north of Brian,

Texas is pretty close to you. You got to go get it. But they have a compost up there that I've checked. It's a good compost and if you go get it, you can do that. That's probably the most convenient for you. But you could talk to our soil yards and get a price on what it would cost to get one of our good mixes, like a veggy mix up to your area too. Okay, Well, I've got to try rock and get Okay, get that soil. Yeah, I

just I can't say the name. It's the same name as the landfill up there, and it's escaping me at the very moment, but it is north. There's a thing called Lake Brian that's up north and west of Brian, uh and it's it's out real close to that the facility Twin Oaks, Twin Oaks, Twin Oaks landfill and just just hunt it down online and you can find it. Okay, it's called it's called twin Oaks, like two Oak trees twin oaks. Yeah, it's close. They don't deliver, they just

make it. It's part of the recycling program for those communities up there, and so that that is yeah for you. I think that might be the easiest thing to do. All right, Well, I appreciate your show. Thank you for doing a great job. We appreciate it. Thanks, sir. I appreciate your call very much, very much. You know the the uh folks at Southwest Fertilizer. I was visiting with them yesterday and they are

on the verge of getting a product in all kinds of new things. If you need past control, disease control, weed control, they've got all the fertilizers. They're sitting there waiting for you. I mean, do you need early weed control. We'll be talking about that soon. Do you need,

you know, to do some fertilizing of your lawn or whatever. They've got it all Southwest Feed or Southwest Fertilizer rather now they're on Bisonet, a corner of Bisonet and Runwick in Houston. It's it's not hard at all to find them. If you want to get them a call seven to one three six six, six seventeen forty four. I was just in yesterday admiring their seed

collection. They've they've got all kinds of packets of seed, but they have these bulk binds, and you're not going to do better on a price for seed than bulk bends. You just have a little scoop in there, and you scoop it out and put it in a little envelope. And it is the most economical way to plant a vegetable garden for sure. And they're stocked up well in that, but it's just going to continue to get better and

better. If they don't have it at Southwest Fertilizer, you don't need it because they pretty much have everything you can imagine, certainly everything that I would recommend here on Garden Line. We're going to head out to Katie now and talk to Roy. Hello. Roy, Hey, thanks for taking my call. I just I have a couple of real quick questions. The first time ever. I'm getting ready to do some container fruit trees that I'm gonna buy from the county in I guess in a couple of weeks, okay, and

I want to get I want to get my containers ready. What is the best mix that you you know, soil, mixed and everything that you would suggest. And then my part beat to that is I read the I went to the A and M web page that you suggested and everything, and they talk about the biggest problem of overwatering. So can you kind of give me some detail on how not to make sure I don't overwater? Yeah, in

containers, the way you don't overwaters you use a mix. It drains well and you make sure you have lots of holes in the bottom of that container where water can drip right out if it gets too wet, so that that is important. If it's in the ground, that's a different discussion. But in containers, there are a number of mixes. I've grown things like that. In rose soil, I've grown it. There's also a couple of fruit mixes. The folks set Nature's Way up in the conroad direction and out at

airloomsils both have a mix for that. You can buy it by the bag. If you're doing containers, you don't need to buy it by the bulk. So they're going to be for sale around you. So you know out there in Katie you got some ace hardware stores that are going to have that kind of material. Real handy make it real easy for you. Remember to give them as much soil as you can. I don't know specifically the fruits are growing, but any fruit in a container has a confined root system.

In the ground, it would have roots going way out in all directions. In a container, it's confined. So the more soil you give them, the less drought stress, moisture stress, and nutrient stress you're going to have because they have a bigger volume for that soil bank account. Yeah, it's going to be mostly the liming and oranges. But I'm I'm really tempted that I saw there they sell an apple tree that does only needs one hundred hours

of cold. I guess can that apple tree you think work in a container? Well? It it it could. I don't know what rootstock it's on. There are some dwarfing rootstocks, oh gosh, the M seven M nine M seven would be examples of apple dwarfing rootstocks that would help. I tell you one thing, though, an apple we're outside the range of apples. You can grow them here, but the variety choices and the fruit quality and things aren't always what you might be hoping for. A lot of other fruit

we can do better with. But if you're determined to grow an apple once like that or the way you need to go. Okay, well, thank you very much for your help. I really appreciate it. All right, Roy, thank you. I appreciate your call very much, and we'd like to talk to the rest of you as well. Our phone number is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. We're going to go to Nikki for the news here and we'll be right back. Welcome back to Gardenline.

We're glad you're with us today. What are we going to talk about? You tell me seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. You know, we've been talking about this rain, this excessive amount of rain that we got in a lot of parts of the area. I was talking to the folks at Anti Crosing Porium yesterday at the OBA Science Day event, by the way, that was a great event put on by the Organic Horticulture Benefits Alliance and visiting with

folks at Antie and they got like fourteen inches of rain up there. That's a lot, I know, a lot. You know. You get up around tom Ball and whatnot. There's areas run seven inches and as you go down south, I think, oh three four five six inches, and a lot of areas around here depends on where you are, but that was a lot. So what happens, Well, we we got to get that water

away from our plant roots. And I did a Facebook post that talks about five different things you can do to help improve the roots situation get that water away, And that's at the garden Line Facebook page, which I hope you will like and join and follow. But another issue with that rain is our is the soils shifting. You know, this summer, it got incredibly dry and the soil shrunk up. Our clay soil shrink and swell. They shrink and swell. When they get dry, they get shrinked. They shrink.

When they get wet, they swell and boy are they ever swollen now. And that is that rex havoc on our foundations, the home foundation and your driveway, your sidewalks. It does it all And fix my slab. They are specialists in this. They know what they're doing. Uh, they've been doing this for thirty or twenty three years. Ty Strickland of the folks give

them a call to eight one two five five forty nine forty nine. If you see cracks in your sheet rock or in your bricks on the outside, give tie a call to eight one two five five forty nine forty nine, or go to fixmslab dot com. Listen when they do it, tell them your guardline listener. Free estimates for gardenline listeners, and they're committed to a fair price. They show up on time the way we like to say it is on time, fair price fixed. That's fixmslab dot com. That's Tys

Tricklin and fix my slab foundation repair. We're going to head now out to sugar Land and talk to Greg. Hello. Greg, Yes, one would be the best time for me to put that barricade down. Well, yeah, that's an excellent question. On my schedule, I talk about applying pre emergence. You can begin in mid January and go all the way through February.

I generally focus on February. Here's the deal. Every year, the lawn weeds of different species are sprouting at various times, and so it's not like we go, you know, black and white, like today's too early, tomorrow's on time. It depends on the year. But for those of you that are further south in like sugar Land, then going a little earlier is fine for listeners that are further up north. And you know, waiting into February is good too. So I would say probably not. Hey Greg,

are you there? Yes? Okay, So I would get it down Let's say sometime toward the end of January here, early February for your area would be just fine. Remember you have to water it in with about a half inch of rain just to move it, or irrigation just to move it into the soil surface. Now, I know the last thing you want to do today is irrogate, but it's going to dry out a little more, and when it does, get that down. But you got to move it

off the granules into the soil surface. That's where it's able to control weed seats. Okay, okay, So I'm going to have to work it in just with water, just a little bit of water. We'll get it in. Okay. Yeah, that's all you got to do. That's all. You don't have to scratch it down or you don't want to scratch it in or anything. Just water and it'll go in. And listen, Greg, when you're using any pre emergent control, including barricade. Follow the label carefully

when you start going. If a teaspoon's good, a tablespoon's better, you can do damage and you want to follow the labels so it does what it's supposed to do and no more. Okay, alrighty, thank you so much. Thank you appreciate that call very very much. See we're going to go now out to northwest Houston and talk to Donald. Hello. Donald, Oh, how are you glad to be up? I'd like to ask you a question about over airating the soil after it's been growing hay for a couple of

years and now it's stagnant. And I have a five foot wide one and twenty six spike six inch spike roller and can you over airrate? Can you like make too many holes in the ground? No, not really. But what happens when you airrate is there is some grass plant damage. You know, if that's spine comes down right up on top of a grass runner or something, you know, you get some wounding there. So we don't want to go more than what we need to do. And I would think one

time over should be good. If you wanted to crisscross and do it back the other way, that'd be fine. Right. Well, we had fifty had a cattle on there or so, and they aerate it with their feet pretty good, make holes and all that. But now that it's wet out, when it's dry in the summer, you can't aerate it all because it's you know, the clay as hard as a rock. Yeah, And you

can fill up this drum to you with water. It's five feet by about twenty inches around, so you can bring it up to about one thousand pounds I guess whatever. Ye fifty gallons of waterways And so the only thing that had been growing there is was hay, but that was we stopped cattle and

with auctioned the cattle and now have the hay field about thirty acres. And that would have been in the year nineteen so nineteen twenty twenty two, so it's been three or four years since there's been any cattle walking on it. And we don't want to grow anything. We don't what to grow on it. I was thinking about putting getting BlackBerry bushes that are thornless and plant them and then the birds eat the blackberries and they spread them out all over the

place, and then you have free blackberries. You know, never heard that one before. Well, I'm not a pastor, guy Donald. Is this in Harris County? In love Lady Texas? Love Lady? What county is that? Lovely? Houston County? Houston County. You have a Houston County Extension office up there, and I would call your ag agent in Houston County. I've not heard of like air raiding pastures like that. I'm it's just because that's not my area. But talk to your county extension agent in Houston

County. I can't think of the guy's name right now, but he can talk to you about that better. But yeah, you're right. When the soil gets dry, you need a jackhammer to airrate. You can't do it. And the purpose of it is also to keep it from puddling up, because if you do go out there to mow and you've got you know, puddles, the puddles will stay there and you don't need to get your tractor stuck in a puddle of mud. And then the harder you pull it,

the deeper it goes. And yeah it is. We have one tractor that's John Dearwood four wheel drive, a great, big monster tractor. You know, so all right, that one gets through anything, but we don't need to pull that little roller behind that great big tractors. Well, yeah, that makes sense, but yeah, I just that's about as far as I can advise you. But I do appreciate the call and good luck with that. Sounds like you have a nice little piece of property out there. Thank

you, thank you very much. I'm going to have to run. It's time for a break here. Our phone number is seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. We'll be right back after the break. Call Josh and get you on the boards and you can be first up. Welcome back to Garden Line.

Thanks for listening today. Now I look outside and I see lots of clouds, but I'm telling you those clouds are staying on the move, and we have asked them to hold and not drop any water, and they've agreed to that. The weather man even agrees with that. And so here we are. Tomorrow we're going to get some sun and patches through today. It's a good day to be outside getting some things done. Tomorrow is gonna be downright sunny even, and boy do we ever have a good week. This week,

it's warming up considerably, and so that reminds me. When the temperatures start going up, we start to think about things like what's happening with the plants, including the weeds. Those are plants too. When the soil temperature it's a certain point, depends on the weeds. Some weeds it's around fifty five degrees, some weeds it's a little warmer. That's when we start to see weed seed germination, and getting ahead of those with something to prevent the

weed seeds from establishing is important. It's easier to deal with it that way than to have weeds growing in and among your grass plants. And now we're trying to kill weeds binochiar grass. That then we start running into some challenges depending on the weed and the species of grass that you have. And so pre emergence season is upon us. It doesn't mean you have to get it out today by any means, but it's coming up here, and so it

wouldn't hurt for those of you who are further south down Galveston direction. That would be an earlier application because all it takes is, you know, a few days of the right temperature like a week like we're going into and we may start to see some germination occurring. Normally, I would say put your pre emergence down in February because that's when that usually gets us ahead of most of the weeds. But when I say in February, I really mean early

to mid February. And here's the trade off. When you put a product down, it you watered in and it moves into the soil. So when a weed seed germinates it, it prevents that little route from establishing. They work different ways, but that's one way, and it prevents the root from establishing. And so if you wait until the weed has already put down a route and is growing, then unless you catch it really early in the process, you're not going to have any effect. It's like swinging at a baseball

after the catcher's already holding it in. Is MIT a little bit too late then, so you want to do it ahead of that. Now, for those of you further north you start to getting up, let's say you go as far as Conroe, Bryan College Station, certainly Huntsville up in those areas, we're looking at more of an endo February type of application for getting those down most years, but remember every year is different, and so just be aware. That's why I'm saying and said it last week and I'm saying it

today. Go ahead and get the products that you need. They'll wait until the day you want to apply them. To go get them, I mean, you can do that, but get them and have them there on hand ready to go, so when the time comes, you're ready to apply them. Now. If you have not bookmarked my website, I encourage you to do that because on there, number one, I write things from time to time. I'm about to post one on soil testing. It's coming up in

the next few days. But up there you'll find the long care Schedule, which talks about fertilizing, air rating, mowing, and watering your lawn for success. It gives you stuff to do from January to December. It lists the products that you would apply. It even as a link to the soil test forms. And then there's the Lawn Past, Disease and Weed Management schedule that does just that. What insects occur in our typical lawns here, and

when do they occur and what do you do about them? What diseases occur and when do they occur? And what do you do about them? What about weeds? Oh my gosh, what about preventing them with a pre emergent or killing them with a post emergent? What do you do? How do you go about that? It's all there on the schedule. And again, if you choose synthetic, choose organic options, the options are there for you and I encourage you. And all that is that gardening with Skip dot com.

Gardening with Skip that's me dot com and you can find that and more. Like been talking for a while about new updates coming, and boy do we ever have a lot of new updates that are coming to the website. So I've been talking about talking about fruit trees, talking about talking about and I'm going to talk about it. Fruit trees are one of the really cool

things we can add to our landscapes. And when I say fruit trees, I mean fruit trees, vines and bushes, grape vines, blueberry bushes, BlackBerry bushes, and then all the different kinds of fruit trees that we have. And winter is a great time to plant those container grown bear root. There's a lot of bear root now I know, buchanans and the heights has just gotten their ship the first shipment of the the bear root fruit trees.

They've got peaches, they've got plums, they've got pears, they've got a lot of other things as well. Uh, And so you know you can you can go that root. You can also purchase from them plants that are in containers. And so however you go about it, you want to first think about what fruit do you want to grow and do you have a good spot. And a good spot for fruit generally centers on two things. Is it well drained and if the area is not well drained, create a big

mound to grow it on. It could be about a foot high, or you can have a container about you know, foot or so deep a box. I say a container, I mean you know a box. You can use landscape timbers or whatever you want to make a box. Or you can grow them in something like a vego bed, a big ring a vego bed could be done. But you want to have plenty of drainage for the roots. Number two, you want to have sunlight because listen, on fruit trees,

we're growing them for the fruit, not for the foliage. And so in order to have fruit, you need sun shine. Shining on leaves to make carbohydrates. You can grow a peach tree in quite a bit of shade. It'll be spindley and it'll never give you peaches. But if you put it in sun you get the peaches, which that's why we're growing them. So drainage and sunlight. Those are the two most important things. Right with them is a good variety, and you want to pick varieties that do well

here. And we don't have time to go into all of those, but you go to a quality nursery, a mom and pop nursery like Buchanans, and you're going to be able to find exactly the varieties you want because they're not going to sell you stuff that doesn't do well here. That's not how mom and pops stand business. Now. Buchanans is on eleventh Street in the Heights, and by the way, today after my show today, they're going to have a program on going native there. It's a free program, free

class at Buchanans from ten to eleven am. In fact, you could go to that and then run down and see me at the four Bend the brass Is Garden showing for it, Ben. But those classes are free and Native is so important. You know, we dealt with all this rain that we've had and struggling through that. We don't have to worry about about rain when we plant a plant that likes to be in wet conditions. And a good example, and this is a native is button bush Buchan and sells button bush.

Button bush makes a very large shrub with beautiful little button like blooms, very unusual looking blooms. And it's also a butterfly plant too as well, So ask them about that when you go by there. I was talking with Dean Nelson Nelson Fertilizer the other day and we were discussing their new Genesis Tramps Plant Mix. Genesis Transplant Mix, what is that. That's a six one

three fertilizer designed to aid in that relocation process. You mix it in with the mix that you're going to plant in and it helps get them off to a good It's got beneficial bacteria, it's got indo and ecto microreizo fungi which helps the roots with nutrients. It's got humates to help the soil, got a lot of other nutrients that encourage enzyme production and just enhances the biology of

the soil. As well. That's a nutri Star Genesis transplant mix. I'm going to bring I believe almost a dozen bottles or jars of that down to the Fort Bend or the Brasis Garden show in Fort Bend at the Fort Bend Center, and I'll be giving those away. We're gonna have some sort of little way to figure that out as to who would win one of those, But come down, let's visit. I'll be down there after the show today.

I'm gonna start giving a talk at twelve. I'll do another one at one o'clock with basically lots of Q and a bring me samples and stuff, and who knows, maybe you'll win one of the nutri Star Genesis transplant mixes from the folks at Nelson's Fertilizers. I have some saw mix and I'm planting putting the Genesis in for my transplanting that I'm about to be doing in some things. And I always like that, by the way, when you're out

shopping and doing then else it's their turf Star weedonator. That's another one that's timely. It kills existing weed that is not a pre emergent. It kills those little winter broad leaves that are about to take off and grow like crazy. That's a turf star Weedlater, Well, we're glad you're listening to garden Line today. We're going to come back. I've got another hour here before

we head out. We'll be back again tomorrow morning. If you have friends or family, or even people from other areas they're interested in the garden Line, tell them about it. Tell them that it is a way to learn a lot about gardening. Maybe they don't live right here, but we have a lot of good general advice on gardening. Maybe the exact fruit tree I tell you a plant doesn't apply in Atlanta. Yeah, we had some of them from Atlanta listening last week, and typical we get those kind of calls.

But they can also they can listen live online at the kg r H website, or they can get their iHeart app and just subscribe to garden Line and you can listen there. You can also listen to pass shows there, which is kind of helpful. Well, we're glad you're a listener. Take our little break and we'll be right back, Katie r H. Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to kat r H Garden Line with Skip rictor Crazy Trip. You just

watch him as things Supt. Bazy Welcome back, well, come back to Garden Line. We have put in an order for the rain to stop, for sunshine to arrive. The rain is gone. It's not supposed to rain anymore for us this weekend. And that's good news because we got a lot of get out in garden getting our supplies and our plants and all kinds of things ready to go to do this weekend. And now the clouds are going to be kind of passing through today. Don't worry. They're a little soggy

bottom looking. But like I said, the weatherman has assured me that we're done with the rain for now. Tomorrow, big sunny day and it's going to chill out a little bit. I think you may have heard that on the weather I was just kind of looking into the weather and what's to be expected. And we've got Sunday night gonna drop down some cool temperatures. That's

that little front kind of pushing things a little cooler for us. Some of you in the northern parts of the listening area are going to get pretty close to frostable temperatures. You know, you can have a frost above thirty two degrees. That's kind of an interesting fun fact too for another day. Uh, it's gonna hit down around thirty six here in the Houston some parts of the Houston area low cold or farther north. So just hang on to that

froshcloth just in case you need. It might get down to that temperature. But oh my gosh, what a day. Sixty six sixty eight seventy, sixty eight seventy that's wonderful temperatures right there. Lots of good things can happen out in the garden. Let's head, We're going to go ahead and start taking some calls here. Our phone number is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four, and let's go to Lake Conroe. Talk to d Hello, d Hi, how are you doing well? Thank you? Good

good. I have had marillas and lots of them, and all of the stems, the foliagees all on the ground. Now, So what do you? What do you suggest I do? First? Tell me what to do? Well, if it were mine, I would just ignore them and leave them alone. Yeah, that dead mush on top is just going to be a little protective cover. If we were to have another good hard freeze, which could happen, it'll be there to protect it. If you can't if you get stand the look of it, can't, as we say, learn

to tolerate ugly for a little while. Then you can pull it all out of there, cut it out of there. And but I would be ready to throw a little compost or mulch over those bulbs, because if we do have another co front, you don't have that protective mush, dried mush on top, and so you're going to have to do a little more to protect them. Very good, Okay, I'll do that. I'll just and just deteriorate or I should never never clean it up. Oh, you can clean

it up a little bit later. You know, new growth will start to push up out of there and you can get it out of there. I just like to get us past. You know, right now we expect another freeze. You know, we're still at a point where it would be probably more likely then we'll have another cold snap. Then we won't. But you can't predict the weather, so we just kind of prepare. Among those people that's kind of conservative about that stuff, do I wear a belt and suspenders

just in case. That's yeah. If you want to gamble and run with scissors, hey, go for it. You can do it either way. Another question I have is about Pride of Barbados yesterday. Maybe I did it too early, but in the past I've always cut them way down and it comes in the original plants probably fifteen years old, and it grows real tall to six feet and all of the buds and blooms are you know, have been off since maybe August or September or something like that or October, I

don't remember. But anyway, I cut them way back as I have done in the past, and they come out from the base of the original. Oh it's huge now, about one and a half feet wide, you know, are around And was that too early to do that? No, you can do that. The freeze we had probably took it all the way to the ground. For Pride of Barbatas. I even throw a little bit of a kind of a multi composting material over the base going into winter, just

to protect that crown so they can can reach sprout from there. But they will, and most of this area here, it's it's mild enough to where we don't have to worry about them. There. They're slow to wake up, though I like to put it there. They are as they sleep as late as a teenager on Saturday morning, and so when when it gets to about late May, they're interested in starting to grow, you know, So don't don't give up on them if you don't see sprouts. And that would

be true with chrysanthemums. They're all butting out new growth. Now. Yeah, yeah, just just wait. You know, when you prone, it stimulates new growth, and so it's gonna you know, let let's not encourage growth just yet because growth new tender growth, and then here comes another freeze. That's not a good comment. Okay, Well I'll wait until later, maybe later end of February or into March or something, and I need to transplant a bunch of them if I have a lot of them. Good.

Yeah, Well is your pride of Barbados. I bet it's beautiful in the summertime, Oh my gosh. Yes, Well I'll live them a golfwell on one of the holes. But it's right on the lake too, and everyone stops by and talks about my Peggy Martin roses, and it's absolutely beautiful. They hang over the wall. You're doing everything right. You must hang out at A and A plants and produce because they're down the street from you. I go everywhere, and I started a lot of them. I love the

way you said last week or the week before that, I don't. I can't listen to all of it because I don't wake up better. But today I'm at a point because I needed to know about the marillas and other things. Nada. I thought we could be friends, but now I just found out. You're not even willing to sell an alarm clock to get up to hear me first thing, so you don't miss a single word. I'm sorry

you come on too early. And today I thought with a fifteen and I said, get out of the bed and don't listen to the Hey, I agree with you. I come on too early the time the alarm clock goes off in the morning. I won't even tell you what time I have to get up to get ready and get up. I've got so other gosh, what does he think is awake so early in the morning. Maybe you'd be surprised. You would be surprised. A lot of people are morning people.

All right, question now about Roses, You talked about roses one time on my way to churches when I listened to you on Sunday. But anyway, you talked about roses, and I have three beautiful hybrid pink roses. They're just bigger than the saucer when they bloom, and one of them has been there for probably going on a year and a half. Uh huh, I've got I've got about thirty seconds, so let me say about it. I'd like that what moved, and also the prunem I think you said later in

the month, So that's what I'll do. D do it do it a S A P. Because we're planning bear route now, so what you're going to be is digging it up and having a bear root plant that you put right back in the ground, settle the soil watered in good and it should be good. Hey d thank you. I've enjoyed the call. Good good luck up there in the Lake Conroy area with your plants. We're going to

take a break when we come back. We've got some folks on the line if you'd like to call seven one three two one two five eight seven four. All right, you're back with the garden line, and we got some people to talk to. Here, we're going to run right out to let's see. Start off, we're going to go to the heights and talk to Mike. Hello, Mike good Martin. Yeah, pow are you? I'm

well, sir, good sir. I got a question. After all this rain we have had all week long, and yesterday, of course, I was wondering, is it time can I put shredded mult around my shrubs in the front yard or do they need to dry out more? Or any time? I can see the the the the piping of my sprinkler system, and I wanted to kind of cover that and maybe cover the base of the plants just before the next freeze or cold spell. Yeah, either one would be

fine. Mike, don't worry about it. I mean, if you want to leave it open, let a little more evaporation from the surface, But that's going to be kind of a minor thing that takes time, especially in the temperatures we're about to go into. So anytimes a good time to put the mulch out, okay, So I could go ahead, and a good time to do it now, yeah you could, okay. Also, I liked your earlier this morning. You mentioned our Saint Augustine is sleeping, it's

resting. Yeah, it gives me hope. That's right, Well I took it osh. Saint Augustine took a real hit last year on the summer, so it's going to be interesting seeing what all we're dealing with this year. So it's taken two hits, one from the drought and then one then that's all this rain we've got there, you go, All you need to do is throw in a bunch of dogs to trapes it down all day long and a handful of maybe a invite the kindergartens from the local preschool to stomp through

it a little bit. Well, let me ask you this. I've got I have a yard man who comes to here and I call it the chariot. It's a big, tall riding line. More that he stands up off Should he stay off of that right now? While that grass is in that condition, Well, it's more the soil. Now, those particular mowers have pretty good you know how snowshoe distribute your weight so your foot doesn't go right down through the snow. They do a pretty good job of that kind of

thing. So they don't compact the soil like a little narrow blade or wheel wood, or like your foot stomping down on the soil. I rather not pound on the soil whenever it's it's wet. But I think that's if they need to get in there to most something right now, it'd be mowing weeds though, really because the grass is Yeah, so if they could hold off, that's fine. But uh, those mowers are not too bad about that,

Okay, so maybe we'll hold off on it all. Yeah. And if you feel like you have some silk compaction when we get into spring a little bit there, you know, call the folks at Greenpro have them come out and do a deep time aeration and that fixes it. Yeah. Good idea approach. You may need that already. Okay, Well, thank you so much, and you've given me hope. Thank you, Mike. I appreciate your call very much. Let's see, we are now going to go

talk to Charles out in Deer Park. Hello, Charles, good morning. How are you starting. I'm doing well. I'm doing well. How can we help you? Just got a quick question. Got a quick question about my milk weed. I grow Texas native milkweed out in the backyard. Thirty forty plants, froze last year, pulled it all up, replanted, froze again this year. No big deal. Will it come back or do I

need to cut it and pull it? Is this the one that has the orange flowers, yes, and the red and the little red and orange flowers for the monarchs okay, the native Okay, So that one should be a perennial comeback. Really, so if I just trim it back to six inches or something like that, maybe if you need to, yeah, cutting it back. I'm trying to just My only hesitation is making sure I'm thinking about the same species you're talking about, because there's a lot of different different types

of milk weed. But yeah, that was the only one I can buy. It's the only one I can buy here in Houston. I go over to the Heights someplace I forgetting out exactly the name of it. Well, yeah, I think you'll be fine. I just wait and watch let nature take its course on it. Yeah, okay. Because the one that's a little lower growing and has big clusters of little orange blooms, that is the Asclepias tuberosa, And it is one that is a perennial that we'll returned.

Yeah, this grows. I've got some stalks that are six foot long, I mean, so they don't fall over the dry so they don't fall over the walkway, and and that kind of thing. Okay, we're not talking about the native. Maybe there's a there's a swamp milk weed, there's a periri milk weed. There's a number of difference. The one in most gardens is tropical milkweed, and it has skinny, little pencil sized stalks that come up to the heights you talked about, and they'll have a little cluster at

the end. Now that's that's not a native. That's that is a introduced species. And a lot of times it if you had it mulched, if it may have made it through the freeze. Otherwise it probably killed it. But that thing received so much that it's going to be coming back somewhere. I have little stalks popping up all over the yard, and that's fine because that's going to get mowed every week. Yeah, well I would aad. I've got about a thirty foot bed or so that I grow it in.

All right, Well I would, Yeah, I would just kind of wait and see it. It's gonna it's gonna show up again it volunteers a lot. Yes it does, Yes, it does. All right, Thank you very much. Thank you, Charles. Appreciate appreciate your phone call very much. Let's see where we're going to go. Now, let's go to West Houston and talk to Jim. Hello, Jim, Hey, Skip, good to talk to you. I got a question for you. Uh dot Condra in my yard? What's the best way to spot treat that? You can

buy a product that has a blend of different ingredients in it. Something called trimech is an example that has three as the name implies, it has three different herbicides to put together in it. Make sure it's label for your lawn spray with that. There are some other products like celsius we use, especially

as the temperature gets warmer. Some of those things that we could get away with in late winter early spring become problematic in damaging your lawn when the weather gets too hot, so we switch over to something called celsius, like the temperature celsius. So that would be those would be two options. The folks that Nelson have their turf star weedonator. If you wet the lawn or catch it when it's wet and then put that out it sticks to the grass leaves.

You don't want to do it during a rainstorm or right before a rainstorm. You just want it to be damp, so the little granule stick to the weed leaves and it would kill them. And then it also has a very slow release fertilizer that's going to take a while to Yeah, I'm sorry. The reason I'm asking now is, you know, with the threes and the rain and it's the greenest thing in my yard, I fever really worried

about too much. But it's so easily easy to see right now. It would be pretty easy for me to you know, you pop up sprayer and and you know, just hit this stuff out right now where you can see it in the past. I'm kind of the genre. If it's green, I just cut it. But I can take care of this stuff right now because I can see it. Yeah. Well, bon Night and and furlom both make a a good product. The fur looms, I believe, is called weed free Zone and I say in the right number name on that uh.

And the bon Night is weed Beater Ultra. And either of those can be mixed in water in your sprayer and you can spray just follow them labor and be careful because it kills. It kill broadleaf things, so you spray it on broadly flowers and they'll kill them. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's why I wanted to get down right on top of it. Why I can say it'd be really easy to treat this week with the weather kind of drying out. Yeah, it would, and we're going to get some warmer

temperatures. That's another thing on these post emergent herbicides is if the weed is in a dormant or a quiescent state where it's really not growing due to temperature, for example, they don't work as well, and so you may have better luck when the weeds are you know, kind of coming alive and waking up because the temperature is more suitable. Go, I'm I'm wasting my time to do it right now. You think on the dichondra. With the week we're having, I might give it a shot and see how that works.

We're going to get up around seventy for two or three days here after we go through the cold spell. Don't spray to day after we go through the culture. Yeah. Yeah, I was gonna get it like middle of next week or something after it dried out pretty good. Yeah, yeah, that's right. All kay, good luck, Thanks love love your show. Thanks sir, I appreciate that. I appreciate that those of you out there in

Kingwood. I was talking to somebody king with the other day. You've got Warren's Garden Center, Warren's Southern Gardens, you know it if you live out there, and you've also got Kingwood Garden Center. You got two garden centers. Room really handy there for you live in out that area. Warrens is stocked up on all the things you need to help your plants recover and get

back growing again from the freeze. So that would be things like that Microlife three way combo where we talk about ocean harvests drenching the plants and then following that with a six four green bag fertilizer, and then about a week later drenching again with the ocean harvest. That ocean harvest is going to give them some immediate availability of nutrients. It's a fish fertilizer. The sixty four is more of a little bit longer term. Now Warrens has got that. They

have all kinds of fertilizer we talk about here on Garden line. They've got the mulches and the soil mixes and the everything you need. They even have some extra restock on frostcloth. I believe to check that. Check them out about that. They got plenty of seeds, plenty of seeds ready to go for your spring gardens. So, I mean, you know, if you've ever been out to Warrens, there's always something going on there. There's always

a lot of just really cool flowers and vegetables and plants and whatnot. And they have great classes out there that you need to sign up for their list to get notified about things. I always love to go out and visit at Warrens and Kingwood, a garden center out there in that area. The you know, in spring we get we get the spring fever a little bit early, I think, and so when we do that, we tend to kind of get a rush and go and do things. And I always tell people,

no way to plant your tomatoes. Don't plan them now. But you go somewhere and they'll be tomatoes for sale, you know some places. Well if you end up unable to resist and you buy them, you're gonna have to bring them home and you have to pot them up. In a little bigger container and grow them for a while, get them plenty of light, as much light as you can, and bump them up once or twice until there's time to plant tomatoes. But timeliness is really important on all of those

things. Hey, I wonder tell you about an event. I mentioned it last week, but on February eighth, the Fort Ben County Extension Office Boon Holiday and the team out there, they are going to have the thirty thirty ninth annual Fort Ben Regional Vegetable Conference. So if you're a commercial grower or if you're a homeowner that just likes to grow vegetables, there is a day

full of information at a really good price. I mean if you, let's see about forty bucks at this point for registration and you can just contact the Extension office out there to get more information on it. That is on February eighth. That's an all day thing at the Fort the Fort Ben Regional Vegetable Conference, So I think you ought to check it out. I've spoken out there before. By the way. The website is Fort Ben dot agralife dot org, Fort Bend dot a g R I L I f E dot org.

Great event it's time for Nicky and the news. Give us call seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Welcome back to garden Line. You know, we've talked about a lot of different things today, but one thing I haven't talked about is our trees. Most of your trees are dormant right now. We've got things like live oaks that have green leaves on them all through the wintertime. But we're in the big middle right now pruning

season. And before you turn your trees loose to anybody, know that that person has to be a professional that knows what they're doing. The guy that's stuck the business card in your door and owns a pickup and a chainsaw, they can do more damage. They can do permanent damage. The tree never fully recovers from a bad pruning job. Martin Spoon Moore Affordable Tree. They know what they're doing. Martin's been doing this for a very long time,

about thirty years now in the Houston area. You can get Martin to call at seven one three six nine nine twenty six sixty three seven one three six nine nine two six sixty three. Write that down or go to the website. Eight Fftree service dot Com. Now you want to get on the schedule. Anything that is going to be done too and around your trees, Martin

needs to be part of it. And here's why. If somebody is going to put in a new water line, an irrigation system or you know, trench, if you're going to add a new slab or driveway over part of the root system, if anything like that that's going to be done around them, you need to call Martin to come in and look first before they do some significant damage. There's things we can do beforehand, afterand after it's done.

It's a mess. It's hard to do. Tell Martin, tell them when you call that your garden line listener, get to the front of the line again the phone number seven one, three, six, nine nine twenty six sixty three. Let's get that pruning done during the best time ever, which is right now. I mean prune tree anytime of the year, but now sure is the best time. We're going to head now out to talk

to Jim and Paarland. Hello, Jim, good morning. Skip in October, I put down carbo load, yes, sir on my Zorasia and Saint Augustine. Okay, I had already had some weedy uh killer in it. Should I still go ahead and put down some barricades? You said, when did you put it down the month October? October? Yeah? I would yes. Uh, let's see October, this, November, December, January's

three months. It's probably doing a little bit of good for you. Still that stuff is pretty persistent, but this is getting, you know, out toward the edge of the time. I would, I would say, do the barricade. Let's see, you are in Paarland, so you can probably do that at the end of this month or early next month. Okay, all right, appreciate it, Thank you, Thank you, jam Weekend, Yes, sir, and as always, Jim, on any of these products, follow the label. That's very important. Okay, all right, take

care. Let's see We're going to go now to Pinehurst and talk to Vicky. Hey, Vicky, hare things up in Pinehurst? Uh, Wendy, Okay, I have questions. And I heard you talking about er last Saturday, and I looked it up and it's not on Nelson's website, so I had to google it and finally brought it up. But last year I used the bruces Brew for pre emergent and and they I think they had pre emergent

in it last year, which they do not have this year. But I'm wondering if I used the barricade, Now can I do the We didn't either we didn't ate, or when can I do that? Okay? I did cart like the gentleman before me last October? Okay, Well, the Bruces Brew does not have a pre mergon and it's just just a standard, fairly immediately available a fertilizer on the Bruce's Brew in compared to a lot of the other products that they have. Now, now you did, I'm sorry the

names of all the products jumbled up in my head? When did you last apply what I did? The carbos in October? Like the man ahead of me sick and I had to wait. So you you want to put another premrgon out now? Right? Yeah? Yeah, same same kind of thing. I would, you know, playing her shirlot further north up there, and I would say probably early February would be a good time to put that down. You may wait till mid month and get away with it just fine.

We just don't know how early spring is going to start, so that would that would probably be a good time for you. But again, follow the label carefully on the rate. If it says a certain amount, use that amountain morey and watered in. Okay, so the which I want an early green up. But can I use the then is my fertilizer or do I need to just do the briefest bruise. If you're if you're going to put down a pre emergent product like a barricade, for example, you don't

also do well the weedonator. It's a different kind of of weed control a barricade, and the carbolode has a pre emergent in it. The weedenator is a post emergent, so it doesn't prevent weeds, it kills existing weeds. So if you wanted to do the weedonator, I would do that in the next three weeks if you could, Yes, because what you're putting it out for is in your lawn. You would use it if in your lawn you've got little chick weed and clover and hind bit and cleavers or velcrow weed.

You know, in all those cool season weeds. When the weak weeds are wet, the leaves are wet, you put it out in the granule, stick to the weed leaf and then they kill that weed. They don't prevent summer weeds from coming up. They killed the weeds that are there. And if you got in your lawn and you do not have a broad little broad leaf weeds, don't expect things knee high out there. I'm talking about little bitty things in the grass. If you don't see that, then you don't

need a post emergent on that lawn. You just go on with the regular fertilization, okay. And it does say it provides it does say it provides a quick green up. Well, it has more than one kind of nitrogen in it, and some of the types are released in the first six weeks after you apply them. That'd be like ammonia and U rhea, Okay, And later on, as the soil warms and the microbes become more active,

there's a couple of slowly available types of nitrogen that gradually release. So you're going to get a long term or release out of the weed Nator, But there are other products that will do that too. Generally in the spring, if you've got your weeds taken care of and you don't need the post emergent, just go with a fertilizer and follow that I have such a large yard.

I've got thirty nine thousand square feet three quarters of a nic or so you need to set up bleachers and have football games out there, right that c line like to do the all in one. It's just okay, take me a little more so, no barricade, just the weedonater or barricade. Also okay, weedonator kills. Weeds that right now are visible and above ground

in your lawn that are broad leaves. The barricade or the carbo loade have a pre emergent that prevents the warm season weeds from waking up and establishing when it warms up just a bit. Okay, so what are you going after that? That's the question. Yeah, understate it's not either or it's it's two different things for two different situations. Okay, thank you so much. All right, good luck, Thanks for the call, Vicky. I appreciate

that we're gonna take a little break here. Uh Mark, when we come back, you will be our first up and our phone number is seven one three two one two five eight seven four. Welcome back to the garden Line. Glad you're listening today. We're going to jump right out and get on the phones here. Our phone number is seven one three two one two five eight seven four. We're going to go to Mark Mark. Are you in Joplin, Missouri? I'm just south of there right now? Okay, I'm

on my way. Well, good about the shellco oppers that I kept running over with my track here, Yeah, that's not good for him. Oh I didn't hurt them at all. Let me tell you, well, it's some questions about my peach tree. Okay, Yeah, it looks like it's got some uh runners coming up out of the roots, you know, away from the main tree. I was wondering, is that commons? That is it? No? How far away from the trunk? Are we talking about? Maybe about four or five? Yeah, peach roots don't do that.

Maybe what's happened is a peach pit got buried there or something, and you're you're getting a seedling coming up. Cool. Yeah, but that works because there's quite a few of them, and I really would like more peach trees. Yeah. Well, uh, the thing with seedlings is you don't know what they're going to be. You know, you you picked peaches to plants that are well adapted varieties for your area, and that seedling is going to be different, just like a child is never identical to mom or dad,

although mine have been accused of being identical to me when they misbehave. But seriously, they were not identical to the parents. So the the if you do a seedling, you're probably gonna want to graft it over to an improved variety. Okay, well this one was grafted. It was given to us in two thousand and six when we moved to property. Okay, so yeah, so what that works? Well, yeah, so the tree you have has got a rootstock and then they grafted. Do you remember what variety it

is? No, that's okay, it doesn't matter. It was grafted to an improved variety, and so when it pollinates and has seeds, the genetics get all mixed up, and so the babies will not be identical to the mama plant. That's all I'm saying. But yeah, you can do that. In fact, I used to work at the State Fruit Growing Experiment station there in Mountain Grove, which is about one hundred miles to the east of

you. I don't know if you've been out that way or not, but they developed the ose Art gold apple there and and there what was the peach that that they did they do loring. I think they may have done loring there, but anyway, uh, the Topaz. So you got your Peach Country. I live west of Houston. Oh you're just in Joplin. Yeah yeah, okay to pick I'm going to pick up a load job. I see. What are you listening on iHeart app? Or how are you listening? Oh? Yes, sir? Okay, well good, all right,

it's a great thanks and slice breads. Let me tell you, isn't that the slickest thing, especially when you've got to have a lot of windshield time? Yeah, that's that's good. Even people that live around Houston can listen on the iHeart app because you know that way. You're not always around the radio, but you're a run garden line, that's right. And you give away your age there with the cointy scissors and running with them. Well, because we used to get told that in school all the time. But I

was to throw it out. Yeah, well I know I'll give away my age. Last weekend I got thinking after I said it. I was describing gardening like an Etra sketch. You turn them upside down and shake them and you get to start drawing all over again, And after I said that, I thought, I wonder how many people out there know what an extra sketch is. So, yeah, we used to try and get all the grain pills off there and see what was behind it. There you go, all

right, hey, thanks for the call, Good luck with it. Now. I assume was this question all about a peach in Jopplin or a peach down in Houston? Just unclear? It one? Okay? All right? Good? Yeah, the whole different group, a whole different group of peaches down here. Oh yeah, So I could just go ahead and cut one of those out and transplant it for an experiment, you could, but just know that it's going to take number one. It takes longer. I like

to use human analogies because it's easy to understand. A child is not able to reproduce until they hit a certain age. Neither is a peach seedling. When you graft it, it's like you're taking older wood and putting it on that seedling, and you can get into peaches a lot faster. So if you wait for that seedling to start producing peaches, it may be seven years, ten years. I don't know how long it'll take, but it'll take

a longer time than with a grafted tree. That's another thing. Yeah, that's fine because it originally took a yeah, about two years I think for it to finally get up and start producing in the beginning. Yeah, hey, Mark, I have not been watching my clock. I'm going to have to run. But thank you very much for the call. I appreciate that. You know, any kind of supplies that you need are going to be

at ACE Hardware. It's just as simple as that. To fertilizers. We've been talking about all these we control products, you know, the barricade and products from Nelson's and other things, and they're there at Ace Hardware. They have all of it. Now, could they also, of course, have the things to fix your plumbing? Do you have broken pipes? Did somebody back over a sprinkler head? And you need to repair irrigation? Ace Hardware. ACE Hardware is the answer. Ace is a place for you fill in

the blank. Now. You can go to Acehardware dot Com find the store locator. There's forty of them near you in the Greater Houston area. Check them out at ACE Hardware. I've got one more call. I'm gonna get to you out here. We're going to go to Brenham and talk to Leonard. And Leonard I believe I've got about a minute left, so we'll see what we can do. Good morning. I have two evergreen oak trees in my front yard. They've been having problems for years. I believe in they're

getting worse. One of them especially, they have a little bitty balls on the each leaf. I've had a tree man out and he said, oh, that's nothing to worry about, but I think it's get weaker and weaker the tree. I mean they had like nine ten little bitty ball. Some they bigger. Okay, I got a question for you. Are they about Are they about half the size of an English pea? And maybe they're reddish

at times and brownish at times? Are they larger and fuzzy? Maybe maybe a little smaller than an English Yeah, but you discussed that is but they get bigger, they're smaller and then they get bigger. That's a there's a gold wasp that does that. And in general, they have their own natural enemies and you don't have to worry about them. And plus if you did try to spray them, you would have to spray a lot in order to catch them. When they're out because the spray doesn't go in that gall to

kill the larvae inside. So I would say, look like it's getting weaker. Well, it's getting weaker not just because of that, though. Something's wrong, something strangling the trunk. It's not enough water, too much water, there's something else going on. Adequate moisture, but good drainage, a little fertilizer to get it boosts along. If you want, I'm gonna put you on Hoole right now and Josh will give you an email. You can send me some pictures of the gall and of the tree and I'll go into

more depth than I have time for right now. Okay, I'm gonna put you on hole leard if you want to do that, I'll get to get an email that Josh is about to give you. Well, you've been listening to Garden Line. Here we go. Boy, day's going fast. Today just seems like we got started and here we are. We're going to be back tomorrow at six am. Don't forget today. I'm going to head down to Fort Benn County to the Home and Garden show down there. It's the

Brasses Home and Garden Show in Fort Bend at the Epicenter. They're in Rosenberg, Texas. I'm gonna be there giving a talk at twelve and another one at one answering your gardening questions. Come on by, I'd love to meet you. I'm even going to give away of Nelson's brand new fertilizer