Keys to Gardening

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 Escape Rictor It's crazy what a trim Just watch him as so many ties. The sept Crazy Gas Club not a sign. Welcome to garden Line. Good Sunday morning. Congratulations on being up at this hour of the morning. I

appreciate you being here to listen to garden Line. If you look at the window and your neighbor's lights are off, you want to go bang on the door because they're missing guard Line. You need to tell them that and they will be so appreciative if you do. Maybe not today, though maybe not today. Well, I just want to talk about a few things before we get going here. First of all, I should give you our phone number if you'd like to call in seven one three two one two five eight seven

four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. That'll get you right in here on the phone with me and we can discuss whatever is of interest to you. Well, first of all, I want to start off and think the folks out at enchanted for us any and the whole crew out

there for having me out there yesterday. I had a great time. Got to talk to a lot of gardeners, A lot of you brought in samples of this, that and the other to look at, and we even wandered around the nursery a little bit with a few few of you and picked out some plants if we were trying to fill in some spots on areas where it

was a little bit of a challenge. I always like that, you know, I I'll caricature the question, but I get these questions and it's like, Okay, I need a plant that is green year round, that blooms year round, that doesn't get any diseases, doesn't get any insects, that grows quickly to the size I want, and then doesn't grow anymore. You get the idea what I'm talking about. Oh, and it grows in absolutely

zero light. And so you know, as I'm listening to these qualifications of what they want, I'm kind of going, Okay, eliminate that group, eliminate that, And I'm left with, Well, there are silk plants and there are plastic plants, and both of those do well. Silk plants, however, do get dust mites and I'm told might be attacked by silkworms. Just wondering. I'm just saying, seriously, though, good time out there

at the encented forest in Gendi Forest. For those of you who haven't been there, it's outside of Richmond as you're going north Church sugar Lands off to the right. It's on FM twenty seven fifty nine. And they always have beautiful things. I was admiring some of the hibiscus that they had yesterday. The vine, a lot of the vine that the native coral honeysuckle vine is

just beautiful. Of course, they got plenty of that out there. And oh my gosh, if you were into butterfly gardening, they are ready to go. They even give you a caterpillar to go home with you. We had some little samples there of milkweed that had monarch caterpillars already on it, so we take them home. The kids get to watch that whole process go through the crystalist to the adult stage. We saw some go fridillary caterpillars on

passion vine and other things. But if you want to create a butterfly garden out there, they have not just the plants, but if you want you can go home with a caterpillar. I find that to be very very very interesting. You know, at Enchanted Forest, you're always going to find plenty of what you're looking for in a wide variety, and the plants are an outstanding shape. I was admiring some of the salvias that they had, and oh my gosh, they have so many varieties out there, and just standing

there the butterflies and the bees and even a hummingbird coming by. Those folks know where the enchanted Forest is and they hang out there because they got the good stuff. Anyway, thank you, thank you for having me out. It's a good time out there. If you're looking for a natural fertilizer to put out in your lawn, you ought to consider sweet Green. Sweet Green

is by Nitrofoss and it is a fertilizer that's made. It starts off as a molasses base through microbial activity, it's turned into an eleven percent nitrogen fertilizer, which is pretty amazing. It really is amazing. That is one of the higher rates or higher levels of nitrogen you're going to find in organic products. Sweet green is available widespread. You're going to find it at places like

Bearings Hardware, both on Bissinet and in West Timer. You're going to find it out in Richmond Rosenberg at the Plantation Ace Hardware out there on three point fifty nine. You're also going to find it at Hiden and Feed on Stuben Airline, kind of up north part of Houston. It is, it is a very effective product. It smells great too, by the way. Bringing

it home, you'll enjoy enjoy the fragrance of it. But it's easy to spread, easy to put out there, and it really stimulates microbial activity because microbes, especially bacteria, they love sugars, carbohydrates, simple sugars, and this is one of the things that is very, very stimulating to their activity. Get you that green lawn. Our phone number is seven one three two

two fifty eight seventy four if you'd like to give us a call. If you are planning on doing some yard work later today or getting out and doing shopping whatever, it's going to be a good day for it, Absolutely good day for it. I would highly recommend that the first thing you do when you're trying to revamp any area or create a bed in any area of your yard is to take care of getting the soil right. That is so very

important. I see shoppers all the time. They go to a store, they grab a flat of plants, and they head home and walk around trying to figure out where am I going to put these things? And that that is not a good way to have success. Start with the soil. Ciena Maultch down south of Houston. That's an example of a place that has awesome so in fact, they're now carrying the airloom soils leaf molt compost. So if you want to do some top dressing you're a do it yourselfer, well

you can do it there. Leave mole compost has many many uses. But at Siena you're going to find everything. You're going to find a vegetable and nerb mix, You're going to find all the blends that you need to have success with your plants. They also have all the fertilizer I talk about here on guardline. So how do you get to Ciena Maltch. Well, first of all, let me just give you a website. Why don't we start

there. That's a good way to begin. Cienamultch dot com. They're located on FM five point twenty one just north of Roast Sharing FM five north of Roach Scherner. They're closed today, closed on Sunday, but Monday through Friday seven thirty to five, Saturday seven thirty to two. It's easy to swing by there and grab what you need. And when you do start with a quality product from Siena Mulch, your soil is going to be so inviting that

the roots will thrive. And when the roots thrive, the plants thrive. That's how that works. We're going to head now out to Katie and we're going to talk to Hank. Hello, Hank, Hi, good morning morning. I had a question about the fertilizer. I think it's ncor Falls maybe bruces Brew. That's a Nelson product. Uh huh yeah, mate, Okay, Nelson, I apologize. Do you know anything about it? Yeah.

It's a good immediate release fertilizer. Anytime you want to put something down, whether you're doing early greenup or whether you're just wanting a quick boost, it is designed for that. Hey, Hank, can can I get you to hang on? We're hitting a break here, but I do want to keep talking with you about this. We'll be right, ok, you bet, and just hang on a second. Our phone number seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Welcome back to Guardline. We are glad to

have you back. I was talking about enchanted for us while ago, and I forgot to mention this morning eleven am today, Uh, Clay is going to get Dan excuse me, is going to get out there and give a little spring time talk. That's right, little springtime talk. We're gonna be. Uh he's going to be just discussing all kinds of things to be doing right now in the spring, and just whatever your questions are and concerns,

come on out and he'll help solve them for you. They're gonna have cousins main Lobster truck out there too, and that's but again that starts at eleven o'clock, so you can get there put it in your order for lobster. It takes them about thirty minutes to make a wonderful dish and then you're ready to go enjoy a good meal and a nice stroller on a wonderful place. I'm going to go back to Katie and we were talking with Hank about bruces

Brew. So, Hank, do you have some additional questions about it or how do you use it or anything? I think I'm pretty good on it. But I've used it, and I think that really worked well as far as greening up and making a rich color. But on a time release, truly, I'm more apt to save it, says, you know, set and set a square foot, cut it and have and do it more often. Well, you could do that. I mean, you can use something

like Bruce's brew and just apply it in small doses. But a lot of people don't want to do that because you're having to fertilized three times instead of once, for example. But anyway, you do have that option to go either way. The slow and easy is Nelson's gradual release version. Is there anything you would put with bruceus Brew, say every other one that just keep your yard as happy as it could be? Now, bruceus Brew pretty well

covers it. You should be good to go. It's got a three one two ratio of nutrients and they my experience has been it works very well, makes a very beautiful green lawn. I put the micro like humates on my yard once a year. Yeah, that often enough. Well, the humates has got a little potassium in it the third number, but you're putting it down to provide the humous addition to the soil to improve soil structure and for

the other benefits that humus involves. So although it has a little potassium in it, don't think of it so much as fertilizing as a building building soil and improving the root zone of the plant. Yes, sir, I understand that, But I was going to ask how often should I do it? There's not a black and white answer on that one. Some people do it

a couple times a year, some people do it once a year. You can do as much as you want, you know it just it's a matter of with any kind of organic system, we're gradually building the soil over time, and so each addition, each growing season, as you return the clippings, as you do occasional aerrations, those are all part of a long term soil improvement that gives long term results for your lawn benefit. One more question. I'll let you go and thank you for everything we do. You prefer

bruces grew over microlife six two. Those are two different creatures. They both have the same ratio of nutrients. One is synthetic, it's going to dissolve and release very quickly. Microlife will also release fairly quickly. But microbes break those particles down and release the nutrients out of them, and so it's is your preference organic or synthetic. That's kind of one of the differences because the ratio is very similar. Now in the microlife, you're going to have a

lot of other nutrients because it's coming from plant materials. So you know, a plant that took up boron or zinc or manganese, you're going to have those nutrients present in the in the fertilizer itself too. But I you know, either way, you're not going to go wrong. Thank you, all right, thank you. I appreciate that very much. If you're looking to purchase a tree, you need to give the folks at Verdant Tree Farm McAll

now. Verdant has three locations. There's the one out on the West side on Barker Cypress down in Pearland, there's one on Broadway Street and up in the Heights where Yell and I ten come together as another Verdant Tree Farm. The website you need to go there, it is very informative. Verdanttreefarm dot com Verdant Treefarm dot Com. There you can scroll through a lot of the

different trees they carry and have good information on each of those trees. So if you're thinking about this or that palm tree, you want to know the differences. It'll tell you on there. Or you can just call them up or drop in, take up, take a picture of your yard and say what do you think would work here? You tag your trees, they bring them, they plant them, and that equal success. You know, the best time to plant the trees forty years ago. Second best time is today,

so go ahead and take advantage of that. They offer a one year warranty with the installation of the tree. That means they plant the tree. So they absolutely have the stock you need, quality stock. They absolutely know what they're doing when it comes to planting. And if you're looking to hang a hammock soon they have trees all the way up to seven hundred gallons. That is a big tree. And so yeah, you can even get a good head start that way with the Verdant Tree Farm. I'm going to go

out to Spring now we're going to talk to Chris. Hello, Chris, Hey, go on skip. How you doing. I'm good, I'm good. How are you very well? Just getting off work and I have a question about a blueberry smoothie rosa sharing And last year I had a lot of bloom I guess call it bloom lock. They just wouldn't open up fully or wouldn't open up at all, And same thing this year. There nothing's opening

up for me. So I'm just wondering if you had a product, not just a chemical, because I think I called maybe last year maybe and had a chemical, but I couldn't find anything to help this plan out. And those blooms start opening up, I'm not sure what's doing that, or the petals brown on the outside as the bloom would try to open. It could be thrips that are in the blooms that are affecting them. I don't think. I'm not certain of that at all, but that's one possibility. And

if it were thrips, sprays of spinocid can be helpful for that. It's hard to get the spinocid into where the thrips are, or get any spray into where the thrill. If you don't mind, why don't you take some pictures of it when the sun comes up and send them to me here on garden line. Let me take a look at them, and I'll pursue it a little bit further, nothing is ringing a bell right off hand as to what that that might be. Yeah, that's a beautiful plan. Yeah,

I'd love to see it in full action. But again nothing, just a lot of blooms and they just keep kind of just going on. They don't open up. All right, Well, I'm gonna put you on hold and uh just get an email from Josh and let me see some pictures, especially close up to the blooms. That would be very helpful. All right, take care. Yeah, that that is very unusual rose of Sharon not opening

up. I'm gonna have to hunt that one down. See see what else can cause that I know on roses on rose bushes, sometimes we get pedal blights and as that pedal is trying to as a bloom is trying to open up, the pedal blight kills the pedal. So instead of a soft supple tissue that will open up, is that rose on furls. Uh, you now have a little hard, dried pedal strap. Essentially it's going around the bloom and it just can't unfurl. And that that is a fungal problem.

He and the rows of Sharon didn't indicate any browning or anything of the buds and pedals. So I don't know. We'll see, see. I we can figure that one out. Rows of Sharon is an old Southern favorite, really really really popular. Hank was talking about microlife, fertilizer and the humans plus. Humage plus is are purple bag for those of you who aren't familiar with it, and it is basically it amounts to concentrated compost in a bag. So I mean, the way I like to describe it is, you've

got a pilo leaves, you decompose them. You got compost, You have compost, you let it decompose all the way you have humus. Humus is that final state a very good place for microbes to thrive. It's a very good thing for soil structure building, for developing a good quality soil and putting that as a supplement out there to your lawn can have benefits long term.

So just with lawns, we want instant gratification. I understand that, but a lot of things we do in addition to Hey, you throw fertilizer out, the lung gets green. I get that. That's that's fine, But long term, what are you doing to build to build the soil to build the root system to improve on things. That's why you hear me talk about correoration and compost, top dressing and things like that. Microlife has a wide variety of products. They also have the standard green bag that's the six two

four and it's an excellent fertilizer. It will it will easily turn your lawn into a really healthy, dense lawn. It's I wouldn't call it fully slow release, but it's not an immediate release either. It's kind of in between there, and that's how it is with organic type products and microbile. They break down the nutrients that are in them. The six two four, if you will, gets released into the soil for the plant roots to benefit and

grass benefits as a result. Microlife Fertilizer dot COM's website there you can learn about all their other products. I could sit here all day just talking about all the different products for micro Life Fertilizers. They pretty much have everything that you would need for your organic gardening, landscaping and lawn care in one place, and they're widely available to Our phone number is seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.

You can give me a call. We can talk about the things that are of most interest to you. I Uh, I'm going to be at RCW Nurseries next Saturday. I'll tell you more about that as we go through the morning, but I'd just like you to get that on your calendar and come by and see me. RCW. That's the nursery where belt WAG eight and FM or Highway two forty nine, Tomball Parkway come together, really easy to get to. Uh. They've got a lot of cool stuff out there.

I'll be there answering questions. We'll be doing the standard thing, meeting, talking with people, helping diagnose, help identify issues, pointing you toward the plant that I think is going to give you the most success in what you're looking to try to accomplish. When was the last time you were in an ACE hardware store. I was the one the other day looking at their barbecue pits. Oh my gosh, they got the big green egg, they

got the trigger. I'm slobbery and somebody's having a mop up on Aisle five because I'm just drooling thinking about this barbecue. Well, you know, ACE is a place to get all your fertilizers. It's a place to get all your fire ant control, it's a place to get your mosquito control and repellent type products. ACE is easy to find. There are forty of them. Go to Acehardware dot Com find the store locator. It'll give you the stores. And I do mean that plural near you. There's forty of them in

the Greater Houston area. It's easy to find an ACE and you know when you walk in there, if I've talked about it on guarden Line, they're going to have it at Ace Hardware. It's as simple as that. It's a one stop shop, makes it really easy, really convenient, and you know you're going to get quality product and you're gonna get quality service too, which is really important. Well, I'm gonna turn the microphone over to Nikki for the news. We'll be right back if you'd like to call seven one

three two one two kt r H. Welcome back to Garden Mine. Good to have you with us today. Hey, if you're out in Kingwood, you got Warren's seven Garden. You got Kingwood Garden Center out there, and I'm telling you Warrens is just continuing to offer some really great deals out there. Their most sale is still going on and four for fifteen dollars through the month of April. Here they've got a great stock of the kalladium bulbs and the plants, the low kaladium plants. If you've got a shady area you

want color and you want it instantly, there you go. Kalladiums. Boogainvillias. Another sale there two you can buy two and get ten percent by two at the regular price, get ten percent off and that's going to last through the twenty first of the month. Lots of tropical color, oh my gosh, in you know Houston with our hot, warm, sultry climate. Place a place it's like hibiscus, oleander passion. Find men to Villa x or. They all love that kind of weather and they'll really put on a show

for you, a gaudy show if you will. Lots of gallon sized color. Also listen to this they've got if you're looking for slow release for your lawn. The super Turf from Nitrofoss and Slow and Easy from Nelson are both in stock there at Warrence and Kingwood Garden Center. Just another reason to swing by there. We're going to go out now to Alvin Texas and talk to Danny. Hello Danny, Good morning, Stiff, and good morning Nikki.

I'm like you just for a few minutes. Talk about the two clovers from the forties we had that we welcome so much, the three pedal with John dear Green to make the shape pedals. Is that Irish clover? I don't know based on that description, it's not enough for me to tell you specifically which clover that is. Okay, well, it was a real common one that we had all my life, that same five years. But here just

recently we've had this one that's a plague. That's uh, that's either sandburs, Chinese sandburds or Kakka birs that has the three three little petals that they're not John near Green. They're just a green with the wine bottle shaped pedals, three of them that are such a nuisance, such a nuisance. But on them when you talk about when you talk about a bird, you talk about little flat spirally bird that's not real real strong points like a grass bird

would be, but a little bit a little bit softer pointed. Well, mainly they're they're they're going on in the clovers in the grass. It's down low. It mainly was growing horizontally, but here, just in just this last year, it's growing vertically and it gets into the chain link fence and it gets into the chain link gates. We came open the gate. Okay, Yeah, So we have a number of plants that somewhat fit similar descriptions.

There's various clovers and there's also something called medic but it doesn't matter which it is. You can control them with the broad leaf weed control products. It'd be best to put it on your calendar in future years to start that a little earlier, before the clover hits the stage of growth. It's easier and you prevent seed production. But anything that is designed for post emergent broad

leaf weed control will knock those clovers out. So a product like it's not it's not that I'm want to get rid of the clover, it's the sandburs that are in. The sand burs are just the grass taking over. Okay, sanbur. And I want to know what the name of that is, the proper name. Is it cocker burs, sandburs or Chinese sandburs? Well, and how do they multiply? Are the little seeds coming out or is it the burrs. That is there seeds in there, or is there burrs

that fly in the air or whatever their seeds. There are seeds inside the sand burr. The sandburr seed with a little pokey points on it to stick in the foot they had. That's the seed structure that holds the seed of the of the sandbur Now, the once they're in your grass, it's hard

to kill them without killing the grass because they're a grass plant. But using a product like barricade by nitrophoss, for example, getting that done by the end of February will help prevent It will give you about sixty or maybe more days, sixty to ninety days of protection and then you'd have to repeat it again to carry on through summer. For the grass burr, the sand burr, but skip I'm trying to compare it to brushia orango. Bush orangos a

nuisance. But bushia orango only last one year. But these sandburs, if we call them that, they just grow on like grass does. But they're not grass or weeds. Is that right? Yes, If it's the if it's what I'm thinking about. The The only other thing I know to do, Danny on this one is for you to just pull them up, set them on a dark surface, take a good clock picture of them, and then then I know we're talking about the same plant. But samber is a

grass plant. It's a weed. People call it grassbur two around here. It's an annual comes up in the spring and then it just creates those seeds that that sentence you a lot more problems I'm looking at to eradicate them, just to try to dig them up. If what the ground they're in sandy, sandy black sandy soil, you know, tok so black, and they only seem to be spreading where it's higher and drier. Yeah, Also they grow in dramways where there's limbstone or sandstone. Yeah, Danny, the samber

does love poor sandy soils. That is very characteristic of it. So even just fertilizing kind of gives your other plants a little advantage over them. But yeah, if you want to do the pulling them up when the soil is more, that's a good idea in the sense that it removes all those seats. Hey, I need to run onto another call, but I appreciate your calling. Good luck getting ahead of the Okay, thank you, bet. Yeah, they can be a problem. I was out at Chenney Forest.

I was talking about being out there yesterday and someone was coming by. We're giving away some Medina products and they were asking me about the Medina has to grow twelve four to eight liquid lawn food plus and now they have Medina has several products that you can hook up to the end of a hose. This is one of them. It's a little little bottle. You know, got

the content that you're wanting to put out. You hook it to the hose and you essentially just go over your lawn spray in the lawn with water water mixed with this product the little applicator. It blends the product as the water flows through the end of the of the bottle, and it makes a real nice application. You can do that about once every quarter through the growing season. Like in other words, you do it in the spring, you do it again in early summer. You can do a bit a late summer.

You can do it again in the fall if you want to early fall. And the has to grow twelve four eight. By the way, congratulations to the lucky winner of that. It really does a quick green. I tried it one year on my lawn just to see how it works. I always like to do that with the products I talked about, and it works very

well, very very well. So if you got a really crummy lawn, or if you're removing the grass clippings, you need to do it every month, just every month, get out there and give it a boost of that. This would be in lieu of your standard fertilization. The has to Grow by Medina twelve four eight liquid lown food plus it's an affective product. We're going to go out now to Cyprus and talk to Melanie. Hello, Melanie, Hi, Skip. I just used some has to Grow yesterday on a

newly sawed yard. Well, just I only had a small part. Is that okay to use on there? Oh? Yes, uh huh absolutely? And what about potted plants? Can you use it in your potted plants too? Are we talking now about the long food twelve four eight has to grow or past to grow? Yeah, regular astro grow they have. They have several products that have I think it's regular has to grow. I didn't say lawn on it, So the regular has to grow. Yes, you can

use that anywhere anytime for anything. I mean you're adding basically, you're you're improving the microbial content, you're improving the soil. It's a it's a general purpose. There are two has to grows. One has twelve four eight and it typically used for lawns, and then there's six twelve six has to grow that that one contained. That's the one. I always say use it when you're transplanting plants because it's phosphorus. I was doing. Yeah, hihosphor's very

good. And one more question, I use that. We made that. That stuff is beautiful. It worked great. I get it about the end of February. But now should I put something else on? I've got sweet Green and I've got hummates plus both. You're just loaded up there. I'm loaded up. I'm gonna use I'm going to use something. But should I

use something now or just wait? Well, the weed Nator is a slow release fertilizer in addition to having the weed control in it, and so it's going to give you if you put it out at the proper rate, it's going to give me. It's going to feed that lawn for several months. So you don't need to come back with something else right now. Now humates you can use that. That's not something that's going to make the lawn just take off growing. It's not a it's not a nitrogen fertilizer, so you

could use that on any other slow release. I'd wait and do that a little further into the summer. All right, Melane, I'm gonna have you onto a break, but thank you for the call. Appreciate that. All right, love you take care of seven one three two one two k t r H is the number. We'll be right back. Welcome back to garden Line. Good to have you with us today. Hey, we are here to talk about gardening. What do you want to talk about? I tell

you one thing I want to talk about is your trees. If you take good care of your trees, they will make your property more and more valuable. They will make your outdoor settings more and more enjoyable, providing shade, providing ballooms, whatever kind of tree you have. Trust your trees to Affordable Tree Service. Martin Spoon Moore has been doing this for over thirty years now.

He knows what he's talking about. He knows what he's doing. By the way, when you call, tell him you are a guarden Line listener and that'll get you to the front of the line because he stays very, very busy, So don't expect, you know, call today and he's there tomorrow. I mean, it might happen. But when you do things right and you have a reputation like he does, you stay busy, you stay booked up. So give him a call, have him come in, Have

him look at your trees. Do you need any pruning? Do you need some feeding of the trees to support them? You want to make sure they're ready for the storm. Do you want to do anything around the tree? Definitely call him before you take action like a trench or a sidewalk or something like that. He knows how to guide you and to do the best to protect the tree. Afftree Service dot com. That's his website. Afftree Service dot Com. The phone number seven one three six nine nine twenty six sixty

three. Martin and his wife Joe. They answer their own phone. So if you don't talk to Martin or Joe, hang up. You call the wrong place. Martin or Joe seven one three six twenty six sixty three. Affordable Tree Service. We're going to go now out to Jersey Village and talk with Ed. Hello, Ed, good morning. Skip sent you in some photos yesterday. I had discussed with you yesterday about some rosebush issues I have. Yes, I saw those very unusual. They don't they don't fit in

any specific cause. My first thought on them was that maybe you got some broad leaf herbicide drift onto them, something like that happened. It looks a little like that. Also, there are some things that look a little bit like a virus, but the pattern of it isn't quite right. If it's a virus, you just keep watching them. If it's a virus, the new growth is not going to be coming out normal. All the new growth that's where viruses show up most, and it will not be coming out normal.

The third possibility is some type of a piercing sucking insect that's working in the leaves and as they're trying to develop, it's causing a deformation of the leaf. But not all the symptoms and the photos you sent me fit that either. So it's somewhere in those yeah, free And I don't have anything on my other bushes that are you know, close by, So I don't think it's some kind of varmit. Okay, Well, like it would be a little insect like a piercing sucking plant hopper type of insect doing that.

I think I would just watch them and if the growth, the growth, if this problem gets worse, especially with new growth, then I'd say it's the virus and I'd get the rose out of there, because an insect can transmit that to other healthy roses. Yeah. Well, I've noticed some of the real pretty new purple growth that you know you first get on your rose bush. It's it's it's into that. Yeah, I can see it.

It's in the new I think I worry about a virus just because it spreads, and so why don't you get that rose and get it out of the area where any other roses are. It's in a container, I can see, so yes, move it, move it away, find it, find the equivalent of your on site rose hospital and move it over there. Let's

watch, let's wash that patient. Because I'm leaning toward you're going to need to get rid of it, but I don't want to that just yet based on yeah, only well it's I trimmed it back real hard year before last. It had a little bit of it again last year, okay, and uh you know this is my third year. Yeah, with that and uh yeah, the nursery couldn't tell me what it was, and now you've put your eyes on it, so I'm I'm having to agree with you. Okay.

Well, I'm leaning towards virus now, and just to be safe, we're going to put it somewhere else where. It's not so easy for a bug to fly from that rosebuster or any Secondly, if you do any pruning, make that the last one you prune or oh yes, pun uh spray your pruners with al and you know, scrub them off. But I would just make it the last one you prune and then still clean your prunters with lyesol M. Well, thank you, skip all right, good luck with

it, and keep me posted. I'd like to know if it develops now, I'd get it moved away. I was already contemplating that, so we'll do it. Yeah, all right, And I don't think the consent is going to touch this one. I think you yeah, I think it has it. I'll tell you that. Okay, very good, Thanks ed sire. Take yeah, you bet you take care. Speaking of roses Anti rosen Porium up there in Independence, Texas, do you know where that is?

It's north of Brenham between Brenham and Brian College Station. Uh, it is a wonderland. When you go to the Anti rosen Porium, it's just like you've entered another place in time. And of course they are loaded with all kinds of antique roses. People from all over the country order roses from Anti Crows and Poorium because they know that not only do they have a selection, but they got quality stock. They grow them in three gallon containers, so

you get a little bit better, more robust rose bush. To start with. Uh, they are going to be having some educational things going on on t about the something they call tinker Garden. It's a kids in the Garden program Tinkergarden, and it's going to be from kids age two to eight years old. It's six weeks long. The curriculum starts April nineteenth and twentieth at one pm and it goes all the way through mid May. Now you just

have to call them. You can call them at ninety seven nine eight three, six fifty five forty eight, or you can go to the website Antique Roseemporium dot com. Also in the twentieth there's a beekeeping one oh one class at ten am. They're going to have a specialist there, president of the Texas Central Texas Beekeepers, and they're going to be this person, Carl's going to be telling you all about on observation Hive. You'll get to see it's

really really cool antiq Roseen. But also while you're out there, I mean make sure you go out with an empty car pickup because you're going to want to bring home a lot of the cool plants. They have roses, but they have so so much more. Let's go out out of Huntsville and we're going to talk to Charles. Hello, Charles, good morning. I've got the only fertilizer I've got available is twelve twelve twelve, and I've got an apple tree at a pear tree, and I need to fertilize it. We're

expecting to rain about the next two days. All right, you want to take your thumb and measure how many thumbwds wide are those tree trunks. So let's just say one was as big as a Coca Cola can. That's about three thumbwds across, about three inches across. You would get three to six cups of that fertilizer. Now you've got it, So I'm saying use it. But after this I want you to switch to more of a lawn type fertilizer on your fruit trees. But it doesn't hurt to do this once or

you know, twice or anything. You just don't want to ongo constantly put that high level of phosphorus in it. That's the only thing. All right, gotch That was good? Thank you. One to two cups per thumb with across the trunk. All right, good luck with those all I ask on guardline. Our advice is free, but we do ask you to bring half the fruit and leave it here at the station and we'll call it even. All right, Well, actually I take the fruit and feed it to

the deer. Oh my gosh, you're breaking my heart. Thanks for the call, Charles. I appreciate that very much. Hey, you've heard me talk about superturf this morning. Superturf is night is nineteen four ten fertilizer. It's got ninety percent nitrogen, four percent phosphorus, low number, ten percent potassium. It's got fifty percent of the nitrogen is slow release, four percent of iron content in the fertilizer for good greenup. This is going to feed

your lawn for two or three months. Nitrofoss's silver bag Superturf fertilizer super super widely available. You're going to find it at pretty much every ace hardware store you could think of, and it places like Southwest Fertilizer down in south West Houston. It's easy to find nitropossprout ducks all over because they're so widely available. We're going to take a little break. It's the top of the hour.

Put one hour in the books. Here for the news and if you would like to give us a call, Josh you gets you on the boards if you dial seven one three two one two k t r H. Seven one three two one two k t r H. I want to remind you next Saturday, April twentieth, after this show, from eleven thirty to one thirty, I'll be at RCW Nursery. I'm going to be giving away four bags for forty pound forty four pound bags of a'sm I'm going to be giving

away four three sixty tree stabilizers because RCW carries those four tree stabilizers. If you've got a young tree or don't planning the young tree, you need one of these that they're very very effective, but that's at RCW Nursery. Of course I'll be answering your questions. If you got a plant problem, put in a ziplock bags, zip it up. Don't want to be carrying stuff around the nursery. Bring it in. Let me take a look at it in the bag. Bring me pictures of things are kite that don't look right

around the landscape. We'll try to solve those for you as well. Well. 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 Katie r H. Garden Line with Escape Richard. It's crazy Trim. Just watch him as so many gooties, the super brazy. Welcome back to the guard Line. Good to have you back. We're talking gardening today, isn't that a surprise? What do you want to talk about? We'll talk about lawns

and trees and shrubs and tomatoes. And I've yet to get a call about Cole Robbie. So if you've got a question about Cole Robbie, why don't you make it the first I've ever gotten about Core Robbie. I always joke about three T's trees sharp and tomatoes. That's the thing that makes the phone ring. At the Agro Life Extension office and also at garden Line, people always when it's vegetables, Tomatoes is the number one question that we get.

We get some squash, we get some cucumbers. We had other things occasionally Okra, which gets me excited. Love Okra. I am the defender of Okra. I guess you could say I'm on a soapbox about Okra. You could say that too, wonderful plant. Just if you want to know more about it, just call. We'll spend an hour on the phone talking about Okra. That's how excited about Okra. Am Why would I be excited about it? Well, it's a wonderful plant, and it thinks this place we

live down here is heaven. I'm telling you, Hot sull Tree. It just Okra just laughs and goes, what are you talking about? This is heaven. This is God's country down here. I love this place. That's another reason I like it. You know our gardens, well, I'm kind of on a little bit of a box there. Our gardens they typically here in Texas are spring and fall and winter gardens. That's primarily it. When

we get to summer. They're crops that will grow through summer, but they're fewer than they are in the spring of the fall, and even even really in the cool season. But there are crops that can handle it. Oka can absolutely take summer. There's no reason your summer garden should dwindle away. You get you a good drip irrigation system so you're not out there in the blazing sun all the time. Get things established, build good soil, build

good so I'm gonna say that one more time. Build good soil. That's a number one step. Get your drip irrigation system so you water efficiently. Get your timer on the end of your hose. You can set those things. I want you to water three days a week for one hour a day or whatever. Well, how you want to set it, and it does it all for you. And then get you the crops for summer, like okra, like sweet potatoes, they love summer heat. There's a crop called

molakia. It's a green very popular, especially in parts of the Mideast and other areas, and it also is musulaginous like okra, but it's a very very willing to grow here in our climate. Malibar is sometimes called Malabar spinach. When when you see the word spinach, it's used on about eight different vegetables and only one of them is spinach. Malabar is not spinach, but they call it that because it's a green and we don't know what to call

it, so let's call it malabar spinach. There's one called Egyptian spinach that's more of a silosia type plant. It's not a spinach, but it takes the summer heat well too. And there are many others. There many other things that can grow through the summer heat. So don't let the upcoming summer season be a reason for you to not have things going on in the vegetable

garden. We have a lot of things that just blaze right through long after tomatoes want to quit setting, and cucumbers and squash aren't doing as well. Go ahead and turn your summer garden into a bountiful place with a little forethought, a little bit of wisdom like that. While Ago I was talking about the three sixty tree stabilizers, I'm giving four of them away next Saturday at

RCW Nursery. Well, what is the tree stabilizer? It is a very strong arm, a stiff plastic arm that grabs the tree and grabs the steak. And so instead of having these gar wires to trip over and you're having to buy wire and you're having to cut up garden hoses to go around the tree so the wire doesn't cut in and then you trip over them. No,

this you put in like a teapost. Just hammer in a teapost not too far from the tree, pretty close actually, and the three sixty tree stabilizer grabs it, strap it a little bit, loose over on the tree so the tree can move just a little bit, and leave it on until your tree is well rooted. If you only use two of them, one from a right angle, one from a left angle, if you will, maybe north south east west is probably a better way to put it. Then

that just gives you absolute three sixty. Anyway the wind blows, you've got a tree that is being held in place without too much excess movement. Now you can find it at our cw you can find it be Cannon, you can find it at Arborgate Plants for all seasons. Southwest Fertilizer carries them, and Hora s Hidden Gardens down in Alvin Jorge has them. Down there to

three sixty tree stabilizer. Listen, these things last. This is an investment that you your neighbor, you know, your your kids and cousins say, hey, we're planting a tree. You go ah, let me get my tree stabilizer. Here. I'm done with it. My tree is in good shape, and you just loan it to them to go. I mean, it's a product that is well made, and it's so fast and easy compared to wires and steaks and all that kind of business. Let's go out to

Northwest Chiefs and we're going to talk to Paula. Hello, Paula, good morning. Skip. Every year I have problems with yellow leaves on my tomato plants. I sent you an email with pictures and then I'll sent you another email yesterday with real close up pictures after I cut them off. Yeah, I saw them. I saw those. It is every year, right. It is somewhat natural that older tomato leaves tend to pick up issues and start to turn yellow or have leaf spots and things like that. Okay, that's

kind of normal. Looking at your totatoes. Overall, you've got a lot of healthy leaves, and I would not worry about this I saw a little bit of early blight on these leaves. Is that me? That's a fungal disease. But listen, it's ubiquitous, it's going to be here. You can fund aside them all the time to try to avoid it. I just let it. I let it go, prune off the old leaves that have it, and just keep that tomato plant fertilized and healthy. Most years that's

just fine. Occasionally you need to get in there with the funger side and spray to shut it down. But I tend to be kind of slow to grab the spray Wand just because I I'd rather spend my saturdays doing something else other than mixing up stinky, stinky water. You know that that would be make me feel good, thank you well good that was free, So that that's what I would do. But pick all those older nies off and get them out of there, because those brown spots have got spoils that are going

to read. In fact, if corking water the ground rather than the plant, that helps. Every time you wet the foliage, you increase foliage diseases. Now they're in growboxes and there's a water reservoir in the bottom. Oh that's right, that's right. Yeah, yeah, did you make those grow boxes? My husband did well. You need to hang on to him. He did a great job. Those are great, great looking. So they are. I love them, love them. Our master gardeners used to make

those grow boxes when I was in Austin, Texas Master Gardener Group. Wow, they would make those things up. And it's pretty cool. You can find the plans online. Folks. Just get your big old rubber made top. Yes you can, and yeh and it's pretty cool. But hey, Paula, thank you, oh, thank you. We can we can go worry worry about world peace and hunger and and not worry about these tomatoes for

the rest of the pot. Thank you for I appreciate that. Uh. The uh time to go to another break is hit here, and so I'm just going to give you a phone number and get out of the way. Seven one three two one two k t r H. Welcome back to Welcome back to the guard Line. Good to have you with us today. What are we going to talk about? Something related to gardening? Get us a call seven one three two one two k t r H. We Uh, you know it's important uh to at this point in the season to go ahead

and switch over to a slow release fertilizer on your lawn. And the reason is it gradually releases your lawn is be taking up nutrients every day for the next two or three months and on through the season. Really and by putting down a turf Star Slow and Easy. That's prime example twenty two two ten. That's the numbers on the bag. That nitrogen is designed to gradual release

over two or three months. Really the nutrients that are in there. Some people say it even lasts longer for them, but it's a quality product by Nelson, which is the only kind of thing they make. It also has sulfur in it, by the way, which helps with our high pH soils. It helps a little bit with the fact that iron becomes tied up and makes it a little more available to the plants when you can drop that pH

dust a little bit. Now, a forty pound bag of Nelson's Slow and Easy covers five thousand square feet by promoting by feeding it gradually, it promotes slow even growth. It also helps develop a good root system. If you just dump a whole bunch of nitrogen at once on the grass plants, they grow a lot of top growth at the expensive roots, so you're watering more. It's less drought resilient, it's less able to handle a little bit of

damage from grubs under the soil. Nelson's Turf Star Slow and Easy helps avoid those kind of things. They say it'll feed in some cases up to even six months. But I can tell you this, when you put it down, you know you're going to have a beautiful lawn for a very very long time. I want to. By the way, too, people often ask

me where can I get this? Where can I get that? Well, if you're up in the in the Lake Conro area, Triple A or at Triple A A and A Plants and Produce in Montgomery, they have Nelson's Plant Food, they have this Slow and Easy turf Star. By the way, Ana carries everything. I mean, they have nitropos, they have microlife, they have airloom soils, they have Nature's Way leaf compost. You can hire Ana Plants and Produce. You can hire their landscape crew to come out there.

If you have one live in one of those subdivisions up by the lake, they'll come out there and they'll do some landscape work for you. If you need a little bed renovated or something like that. Just call them, just find out about the details. They can tell you. They're on the east side of Montgomery on one oh five for all of the folks up there, Montgomery, Conroe, Lake Conroe. This is your hometown garden center. And of course they're going to have all the plants that you're looking for,

and now's a good time to pick them up and to plant them. I'm going to go to Jamie now up in Spring, Texas. Hello, Jamie, Hi, good morning, skip morning. I had I had sent you some pictures. I talked to you last week and I had sent you some pictures of my yard. I wasn't sure if I had thatch or I know I have that, but you know, I'm just not sure what to do if I need to scrape some off and put new soil down or in grass.

But anyway, you had said to call you this weekend. Okay, uh, let's see was this a Would it have been Janet that it came through ass Not Janet. I'm not seeing your email, Jamie, could you fooh boy? Okay? Well when did you see Assue him? Maybe Wednesday? And you wrote back and said you've had a lot of emails. Oh, yes, yes, well I uh okay, is it would it had come in from two eight one the aery code two eight one? Is that possible? Okay, let me see if I there we go. I got

him. Oh we got a You have a cat that likes to be in every picture? Is that right? Yeah? He's just what a photo bomber? Uh? All right, yes, I did see your picture. Sorry, I just didn't have your Uh. The the lawn shows to me signs of damage from take call root rot, which kills grasp I canilling roots. It is often associated with droughty conditions that anything that stresses and weakens the lawn

opens the door for take all root rot to come in. It could also be that chinchbugs were involved, but based on what I see in the picture, I don't think chinchbugs were the big issue. I think it was a matter of perhaps droughty conditions, not being able to get enough water to it, and then the take all root rot itself. That's what it looks like now. There is so much lawn damage there. It's kind of a toss up as to whether you resid or whether you take the sprigs that are alive,

get them healthy and try to get it to fill back in. If you can get them healthy, they're close enough together to fill that lawn back in by midsummer, but that is going to require proper watering on a regular basis, a little bit of aeration. That's such a small area you could just use a spading for it to go straight down in the ground and kind of a hole open and just do it in all those places. In fact,

make the cat do it. It seems to like to liver. Make those holes as many as you can, put a little compost top dressing, leaf mold compost top dressing on that and just rake it in watered in really good. Also, do your spring fertilizing with a gradual slow release. I've been talking about different ones all morning. But do everything you can to create a wonderful root zone and let's try to get that growth back. Spraying for

the take all now is generally not very effective. If you go online to gardening with skip dot com, that's my website, there will be a lawn care schedule and then another one that says lawn pest disease and weed management. And if you look at that one and the disease section, it's the great or the tan part. When you get over to October, there'll be a treatment for take all and then a retreatment in November for take all. Those

are the two most important ones. Okay, okay, okay, we're kind of outside the spring treatment for take all, but the fall is more important. But I would say, let's culturally do everything we can to get that lawn in tip top shape. And the things I described aerration, compost top dressing, and fertilization. I would do the fertilization first, then the aerration, then the compost top dressing, and what good. Okay, I've got the aerration coming this week, so I'll get that part. Oh wonderful.

Okay, that's good, that's good. I can't I see some pine trees. I'm assuming it's it's still pretty sunny where that lawn is. Is that true? Yes? That gets the east morning sun. Okay, okay, well, it would be good to get a little more sun on it, a little more energy. But keep the foot traffic off as best you can, and let's see if we can bring it back that way. All right, Okay, so you want me to actually dig up some sprigs and replace, try to put some new grass and those if you if you want to

do the fast easy, it's to reside that spot. I'm just saying, if you want to avoid the cost expensive residing, you have enough sprigs where you might be able to get it to fill back in. Pretty good for you, So it's your choice either way. All right, Okay, great, okay, thank you so much. All right, appreciate the call. Thank you. Jamis. If you are living in this area, you most likely have a clay soil our Houston black clay soils shrink and swell. What

does that mean? They get wet, they get bigger, they get dry, they shrink up, and you see cracks everywhere. Cracks everywhere, including in the brick outside your house, in the sheet rock inside your house, doors sticking, driveways and sidewalks, cracking. All of that can be fixed by Ty Strickland. He is the owner of Fixed my Slab Foundation Repair. Tie has been doing this for twenty three years. He knows how to do it. I've sat down with him and picked his brain for an hour,

just you know, what about this? What about that? How do you do this? And he knows this stuff? Trust me, he really does. Tell him. You're a guardenline listener, you get a free estimate. That's what he will do. Ty is committed to charging a fair price, to showing up on time, and to fixing it right. That's the kind of service we like to talk about here on guarden Line. You can call him two eight one two five five forty nine forty nine, or go to

the website fixmislab dot com. Remember, tell him your Guardenline listener for a free estimate and have them come by, take a look, assess, and do it right. We're going to now go to Baytown and talk to Wayne. Hello Wayne, Hey, Wayne, you hello, Ski. Are you doing doing today? I'm good, sir. How can we help today? Question? Bought some celebrity celebrity tomato, put them in the ground maybe a week before Easter, and just wonder how many weeks does it take before I

maybe start seeing some blooms on these plants. Depends on the age of the plant when you bought them, how big then mature they were. You should see some blooms within a few weeks. If the plants are growing healthy and getting plenty of sunlight. Yeah, they're very healthy. I bought them out there at the feed store. You recommend in Mount Bellevue. Yes, huh

and very healthy and bought some of the soil and it's organic. The name the picture is like two big red tomatoes with a big yellow carrot on the side of it. All right, well, if you put an improved soil in, you got your plants in, just make sure they don't like for water, and fertilize them gradually a little bit every few weeks, and you should be getting some tomatoes pretty soon if they're in good sunlight. Okay, let's go to fertilizer real quick. What should I buy or and one should

I maybe fertilize them? I would? You know, if you bought a lawn fertilizer from them, you could just use that on your tomatoes. That would be just fine. If you want to buy just a specific vegetable fertilizer, you can find those from Nitrofosh, you can find those from Nelson Plant Food there. You know, there are a number of different ones on the market, But a lot of times I'll just use my lawn fertilizer on the tomatoes in a pinch, rather than driving all over town trying to find something

else. You know, if you're oh, okay, what number would that be triple thirteen or no, no, no, no, it's it's like on my schedule at gardening with Skip dot com. One of those fertilizers on the schedule, it's going to be more like a fifteen to five to ten or you know one of those yeah, one of those kind of ratio fertilizers. All right, okay, well, I appreciate the information. And should I fertilize them now or just waite a few weeks? No, go ahead

and fertilize them now. Get it going, get it moving. Okay, thank you sir. All right, good luck with that. Appreciate that. You know. Nitro Foss fertilizers like Superturf the nineteen four ten their slow release, and that is what you need to be switching to for your lawns right now. We want to gradually feed that lawn. Superturf has got fifty percent of the nitrogen in slow release. It's got a supplemental iron in it,

which is very important. Superturf is the silver bag. Nitroposs's silver bag makes it really easy to pick out when you go to growers outlet up there in Willis or when you go out to enchanted forests down in the Richmond Rosenberg area, or perhaps RCW Nursery on I forty five, where I'm going to be next Saturday. Well, it's time for Nicky in the news. We'll be right back our phone number seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.

Welcome back to garden Line. Good to have you with us today. We are going to talk about all kinds of things related gardening. First, I want to tell you about Channing Gardens down in Richmond Rosenberg area. If anyone lives down in that area, you've probably already been. If not, crawl out from under the rock go check this place out. It is on FM three fifty nine north of Richmond, like you're heading Katie direction out of Richmond FM three fifty nine. It is a showplace. It is a destination

nursery. It's as simple as that. I mean, I couldn't begin to describe all the things they have. Because if there is a plant that you've heard about that people love, whether it's bog and vieas for summer color or annuals or perennials, or ornamental grasses or roses, tree shrubs, herbs, vegetables, everything they've got it They've got it all right there at Enchanted Gardens. They specialize in carrying everything, including the fertilizers we have on guard Line,

and they have a ton of landscape bling. I'm talking about the stuff that it just adds the whimsy, is that right, whimsy, Yeah, to the landscape, just fun stuff. Go check it out and see what I'm talking about again. Enchanted Gardens, Richmond. That's the website in Chandigardensrichmond dot com and they're open today, by the way, from ten am to four pm. It is going to be a good day to get out and about why not drive over there and check them out. When you're there,

you're going to find all the fertilizers I talk about here on Guardline. You're going to find the soils that we talk about here on Guardenline, and that is important, you know. So perhaps you're interested in Microlife, you want to get some of the Microlife fertilized, the humates plus that I've been talking about, the green bag, the six to four that I've been talking about, they've got it there. You know. Microlife has a lot of quality

products that are widely available. You can you can go on their website Microlifefertilizer dot com and you can learn about each one. They have products that are fish and Molson type products. They've got seaweed type products. They have a wide, wide variety. Do you have azaleas or camellias or blueberries and you want an acidic type plant food, that would be the pink bag from Microlife.

And so when you start off with quality fertilizer like that and you buy quality plants like you're going to find out there in Chiney Guard, You're just you're on your way to success. You are on your way to success. And without hesitation, I can tell you I've used the micro Life products a number of times in my landscapes, and I always have been pleased with the results. I want to go out now to Cyprus, Texas, and we're going to talk to Sandy. Hello Sandy, Good morning, skip Happy Sunday.

I have a question my blueberries. My blueberry plant. It's the nick container. It's a big, big plant. But the last free some of it died. So I have branches that look dead, but then they've got branches that branched off that are green. Should I click the dead looking ones to save the Yes, whole plant. Yeah, just take the dead out. If it's dead, it's dead, so you might as well get it

out of there. Any little twiggy growth, you know, the little tweagy stuff inside that's not going to be productive, go ahead and take it out. I would start doing more regular watering and fertilizing unless you already are doing that. A boost a fertilizer like that Microlife pink bag for example. That is a natural slow release fertilizer, and all that organic material is very beneficial. Blueberries really like that. Water it regularly with a good quality water.

One of the things we do that blueberries don't like is we use waters that have high salt content or high sodium content or other issues by carbonates and other compound they don't like. So as much as you can do like rain water from a rain barrel, the happier that blueberry will be. And also do birds like blueberries because I get lots of Okay, so I just made something around it because I get them all the time, and then I can't dig

them because yep, that's that's your birds. Yeah, you gotta have some sort of netting over it, you know, depending on the set up around the house. I mean, you can just throw a netting on it. They may land on it and try to peck through the netting with the berries that it's sitting on. Some people put a little PVC hoop, a big long PVC that's arched into a hoop, and that way the netting sits over

the bush. On that PVC hoop. You have to do kind of like a north south hoop and an east west hoop, so it holds it all up. But a lot of different ways to go about it. Just yeah, you gotta you gotta screen those guys out. Okay, thank you so very much. All right. You take quality soils. You know, let's say you're gonna plant blueberries, you need a quality soil mix. They have a fruit and veged fruit mix. Specifically at the heirloom Soils they have a

veggie and herb mix. By the way, the fruit is called fruit berry and centrus mix. There's a vege herb mixed at Airloom Soils, which, by the way, one hundred and nineteen dollars of qbicyard in bulk. If you go out there, you can pick it up on your trailer. You can have them deliver it and dump it in the driveway. You can have them bring a supersack out. Just think of one of those grocery sacks from the grocery store that's cloth and it holds a qbicyard. Yeah, that would

be a big grocery store sack. You've got a lot of groceries in that. Well. They're going to have that at Airloom Soils. Just go to Airloomsoilsoftexas dot com. By the way, on that website you'll find an outstanding soil calculator that will help you determine exactly how much you need. That is important. That is important. Now I've just mentioned a few of their products. They have many other quality products, and you need to go to Airloomsoilsoftexas

dot com and learn more about them. They're available by bulk, of course, but they're also available in bags in many, many, many locations all around the Greater Houston area. And beyond that is important. That first step, the soil, the soil, the soil. That's where it all begins. I keep talking about it. I was in my garden the other day.

I think I mentioned this yesterday, and I had not had a mosquito problem this year until I got out there and started pulling out some plants and some debris and stuff, and I'm telling you, those guys were swarming me. That reminds me time to get the mosquito dunks and put those out. Where do you have standing water? Do you have a sagging roof gutter? Do you have a dog bowl, a water bowl that's just been sitting out there, or a bird bath that has stagnant water in it. Well,

mosquitos, it doesn't take them long. They can raise They can go through the whole life cycle in just a couple of weeks right there. In a small small amount of water, and I mean small, like a thimble full of water, a mosquito could grow up in literally, So what do you do? You put mosquito dunks in larger bodies of water and it releases a disease of mosquitos. Isn't that cool? And it doesn't hurt anything, doesn't hurt birds, doesn't hurt the family, cat out of the water. I

mean, it is absolutely organic safe to use mosquito dunks. You can find them a lot of places. Almost every independent nursery we talk about, and feed store we talk about, and certainly the ace hardware stores we talk about are going to carry those mosquito dunks. You can break them up if you just need little pieces. There's also a mosquito bits that Summit Responsible Solutions also makes a bag of mosquito bits, and I guess think of them like grape

nuts, remember that cereal. That's kind of what they remind me of. And you can just scatter a few of those here and there. The instructions are on the bag as to how much to use. When you put a doughnut or a dunk out there and it's floating in the water, it's going to give you about thirty days or more. It's going to protect about one hundred square feet of water surface. So and that's where the regulars are are up there on the surface of those water areas. So check for where the

mosquitos are. Toss a dunk in that area, and you just pretty well take care of them with that them in the spray pesticides out there to kill the adult mosquitoes flying around. Nobody likes squitas. Don't be a skeeter breeder. That is a good motto. I think. Next Saturday, after the

show eleven thirty one, two hours I'll be at Rcdew Nurseries. Rcdew Nurseries is the get it, got it nursery if they don't have it, and they probably already do have it, but if they don't have it, they can do their best to find it for you if it's available on the market and bring it in so you can know that when you go there, just ask them if they have it. I'll tell you things I have. They've got the best selection of roses you wi't see anywhere, pages and pages of

roses. They have got an awesome selection of hibiscus and boogainbilia, and shrubs and trees which they grow themselves up there in Plannersville. You need annuals and perennials and shrubs. They've got everything like that. They're at two forty nine and belt wait eight you need to write that down. Next Saturday, I'll be there eleven thirty to one thirty, So I hope you come out and see me, bring me some samples and things like that, and we will

just be good to go. Be happy to diagnose, identify and recommend it, recommend solutions for you. Time to take a break seven one three two one two KTRH I'll be right back. Oh, we're just gonna western swing right into this next segment with a sleep at the wheel. You're listening to guardline. We are happy to visit with you about the things that interest you. What is of interest to you? I mentioned while ago I was gonna be at RCW Nursery this next Saturday from eleven thirty to one thirty, and

while I'm there, I may be given away azamite. I'm actually giving away a lot of asamite, four forty four pound bags of azumite. While I'm there, I may be given away the four tree stabilizers. Two uh. People often ask me if they talk about as mite like fertilizer, and it is because it has nutrients in it. But I need you to separate in your mind between the fertilizers that you put on your lawn to make it grow fast and big and green and all that and have density. That's what we

normally think of is lawn fertilizing. Asimite has nutrients, but they're trace minerals. They're not the minerals that make the grass take off growing, but they're essential to plant growth. Plants need. We used to always say sixteen nutrient elements. Now we know it's up to around twenty different things that are part of various processes a plant has to have. So if you take something a plant needs a menuscule amount of, but the word need is in there.

It's an essential trace mineral. If you took that out of the soil, the plant couldn't grow, and so supplying that into the soil bank account is important so that it's there just in small amounts, but it's there so that your plant has it when it needs it. And that's what asmite does. You can take asumi, you can blend it with composts when you're putting it out on a garden bed, or mixing it into the soil. You can go about it a lot of ways. Just follow the label instructions. It

doesn't take a lot in order to have success. I mean, when you overdo anything, I don't care if it's nitrogen fertilizer or trace minerals or anything. That's not a good thing. So do it in moderation. Follow the label and it will provide that bank account of all those trace minerals that are important for plant growth and for success. That's that is what as might does. So show up at RCW next Saturday. Who knows, Maybe you'll win a bag. If not, you can pick one up there. They sure

carry it. Our phone number is seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. I was at the house before I headed down for the radio show, at the house taking care of a few things. We were redoing so much. You've heard me talk about redoing my lawn. Boy was that ever a project? Eighteen

hundred square feet of four different kinds of turf grasses. I've got two Zoisias and two Seen Augustine's, very new Saint Augustine's that we are looking at to evaluate. So when I answer your gardening questions here, I'll at least be able to say, yeah, it works and or it doesn't work or whatever. I know it's going to work because these have been tested as part of the Southern turf trials that go on between all the langre institutions across the South.

Uh So, when you're going to release a new Saint Augustine, like A and M just released a release one called Cobalt, and so Cobalt was tested in Georgia and in Mississippi and you know Louisiana and all these universities that are testing the same groups of lines of turf grass to see how they do. And before it gets released, it's had to prove itself. And so we know they're going to be successful. I just want some hands on experience

with them, and that's what we're going to do. I've got him in sun I've got them in a lot of shade, and I have two golden retrievers, So we're going to find out how weare tolerant they are because they get they get the zoomies when they get to go outside and run around. Anyway, that's been busy. Now next is the flower beds. I've got some wonderful salvias I picked up the other day that I'm putting into flower beds. I've got an old blush rose, one of my favorite antiquroses, old

blush that's in a bed and it's been struggling along. The bed had heavy clay soil. I know better than that, but we had the rose, didn't have a spot for it. We put it in there. I'm about to pull it up and we're going to rework that bed. Now that I've got my drainage pipes in for the bed, and here we go. We'll be off to the races. Anytime you need a product that I talk about

on Garden Line, any fertilizer. If you have an insect issue, a disease issue, if you have a problem with weeds, maybe you need a pre emergent, you know, like we always talk about pre emergent herbicides to prevent weeds from establishing, like barricade from nitrophiles. Maybe you need a post emergent. I've got weeds, I got a spriam now and kill them. Southwest Fertilizer has all of that. There's nothing you need for your garden,

landscape, lawn, you name it that Southwest Fertilizer doesn't have. If they don't have it, you don't need it. We'll put it that way, because they have it. They have everything everything you can imagine. Do you need fire ink control? Do you need baits? Do you need individual mound treatments? Do you want all this stuff I've been talking about synthetic? Do you want all this stuff I've been talking about inorganic? They've got it at

Southwest Fertilizer. Bob and Aaron and the team there they can identify things. You bring a sample, you bring a photo in. I recommend doing that. Don't you say, well, I got this weed I need to kill. No, show them what it is, because they'll point you to the product or products that are most effective against it. And that way you know you have success. And as they say, that alone is worth the price of admission. Southwest Fertilizer dot com. They're on the corner of Bissinet and

Renwick and Southward wes Houston. If you've never been by there, I don't care where you live and you're listening to the show, you need to go by. You will be very impressed and the way they stock up and you're a home with plenty of the things that you need to have a bountiful garden and a beautiful landscape. I'm going to head out to Katie now and talk to Jean. Hello, Jean, Hi, I have a question about fire

ants. I need to know what you recommend for treating the lawn and the garden with the product and also a name of a product that I can use in the garden without poisoning my vegies. Okay, the only fire ant bait I know of that is registered for garden vegetable gardens is come and get it by FURTI loan fur to loan, can't get. It's a light blue bag. It's the chemical and it is spinosid, which is an organic andsecticide attracts them. They eat it, they get the spinosa. It does the job.

Anytime you're using a fireant bait gene, you want to make sure it's fresh. I was talking somebody the other day who had tried a certain fireant bait and they said it didn't work. And I know it works. So but if it's a soybean oil and a corn grip base, and if it gets rancid, the intern can pick it up and it's not gonna A bait doesn't work if they won't eat it, And so make sure it's fresh when you go to put it out. Make sure the ants are out foraging.

And one way to do it is to get a paper, a paper, a potato chip, throw free potato chips out there on the lawn and just wait a while, come back fifty minutes later, and if fire ants are on them, that means they're out feeding, and that's prime time for putting it out. In the summer, we wait till late in the day to put them out, but two weeks later, any mounds that are still around, you can do an individual mound treatment on those, But always start with

the bait because that is the least toxic. You put very little bait out. You don't dump it on the mound. You spread it evenly over your whole property because anywhere there fire it. If you can talk your neighbors into bating too at the same time, the results will last even longer because you won't have fire names across the line that come right back into your yard. So the more people that do that, the better off. It is, all right, all right? Now the product name for the lawn, is

it the same as of what I use for the garden. You can, you can use come and get it. But in the lawns and stuff you also have options. There's one called extinguish, there's one called amdro. Those are two other examples of good fire baits that will work. Okay, Now, if I put it in the lawn and my garden is raised when it rains, do you think that if I use andro or the rain my wash

underneath the garden, no problem. If your garden is small, the answer, are going to leave the garden and go out there and find it anyway? Yeah, no, it won't watch all right, good luck with that controling those fis. Thank you for the call. Ting Hey, you can go to your ACE hardware stores out there and Katie, you've got a couple of them, uh and they will have debates I'm talking about all right, Thank you you bet take care. Uh I uh see, we're by time

to go to a break here I am. When we come back, I want to talk about a couple of things related to house plants and your calls as well. Our phone number is seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two kt r H. I want to remind you next Saturday, I'm going to be at where you've been listening this morning. I'm gonna be at RCW Nursery eleven thirty to one thirty. I'm going to be giving away four bags of as A my forty four pound bags,

four of them, four of the three sixty tree stabilized. You will need one of these. These are the best way I've ever seen physic brand new product. I throw away the wires, throw away all the steaks and things to trip over and all the trouble and hassle. Get you a three sixty tree stabilizer. They carry them there at RCW Nursery. I'll be answering your gardening questions. I'd love to meet gardeners. Bring me pictures or samples of plants in bags. Please put them in as as a blog bag.

Bring them on in. Let's take a look at them. We'll diagnose, we'll identify. I'll take a look at pictures if you want. Here's an area in my yard where I can't get such a substr pro What can I do. We'll help you with that. Walk around there and find you the right plants that'll fit that area. We'll be right back from break again. Seven one three two one two KTRH. KTRH Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to KTRH Garden

Line with Skip Rict. It's the crazy here mans it in the bass. He's like gas. They be can use it? Why a shrimp? Just watch him as world Golden Star. The grasses like gas and became you so many con takes the sap hoops in the bad ing the bassis like Gas and began you Damos clubs back Chicken, but Canada sound in the red the glassies like gascind you so beam and down gets it in the grass. He's like Gas they be can use your handle by first starting in and out of the

dreaming ing in the basses like Gas become you Ja. Everything is so clean, can see and every thing here Sunday, the hand, the rim so so m son, so many Welcome back to the guard Line. Good to have you with us today. Was enjoying the Have you ever heard that much of the song before? That is a cool song, you know that's been

around garden Line, that music for a very very long time. Randy brought that on and it was just kind of the theme of it and I've just kept it with us here because familiarity is a good thing, right, So we're keeping it with us for a little while here. I don't know. Maybe someday we'll come up with something new. We have to have to figure that out, but not for today. Buchanans plants in the heights. When you go to Buchanans, you know you were going to enter a wonderland that

has absolutely everything you need. It is like a little hideaway in the heights. Really, you know, you're going along there on Eleventh Street, East eleventh Street, and all of a sudden you look over there and boom, there it is. And when you walk inside, you've entered another world, a world where if you want native plants, well, there's a reason we call it Buchanans native plants. They have all kinds of native options there.

Do you need houseplants or vegetables or anything. Do you need the fertilized I talk about on guardenline, the soils we talk about on garden line. Buchanans carries all that because what they do is they focus on quality products and quality plants, and especially quality service, knowledgeable folks to help guide you. Very valuable in a shopping experience at a garden center is to have knowledgeable folks,

and Buchanans has that they also have. You know, it's been we go through these periods where we have rain here, and it rains and rains, and we got to go, Okay, how do I fix the drainage? Well, how about making lemonade out of those lemons? Get something from Buchanans, like a rain lily, like an iris, like bog coneflowers or inland coos or cannons. All of those plants will be very happy in a soggy

mess that other plants are going. I can't live there. Buchanans as plants that can, so go check them out Leven streetom Heights, Buchanans Plants dot Com. We're going to go now to Cyprus and talk to Martha. Hello, Martha high Skip. I have been following the fertilization schedule for years, but I am being nondated with dollar weed. Okay, it's just taking over the gas. Looks great, but it's got a lot of dollared in it.

Yeah, well, there are different different approaches to it. First of all, Culturally, when you have wet soil, dollar weed will proliferate. So if it's in your control and in your control would be like, don't water as much. Can't control the rain, but you can't control how much you water. If you've got water that's being diverted to that area, that could be diverted somewhere else. That would be another option. But culturally dried out a little bit and that helps. From a spray standpoint, we got

a couple of different products out there. The fact There are several that you can use on dollar weed. One of them is something called Celsius. Celsius is a product that is a post emergent broad leaf weed killer, and so that's what you need. You've already got dollar weed up and growing. You see the leaves, You spray the celsius on there and it works. Bonnie has something called weed Beater Ultra. Now, the weed Beater Ultra, if you're going to use it, you need to use it soon, and you

need to do it. I would do it in the morning. Once the temperatures get up in the mid to upper eighties, I start to back away from those kind of products because they're very good on weeds, but they're a little hard on Saint Augustine in those warmer temperatures. So weed Beater Ultra you can use in the morning for the next several weeks. Actually we can still get good use out of it. Or the celsius will be another option.

How do you spell the celsius like the temperature celsius fahrenheit and celsius the same course. Yeah, go ahead, do you you spray it on? Yeah? Sign you mix it up and spray it. It comes in a those I prefer no, I prefer a pump up sprayer for a weed control.

You could do it through a hose. You're putting out way more than you need to just because hose is putting out all these big droplets, and so I prefer to be able to just spray it enough to dampen the weed surfaces, and that that will that will be the best way to go about it. You don't need to drench the weeds with it. In fact, you want to avoid when using herbicides washing them down in the soil. Well, they have damage the grass, not the not the bone eyed weed beater ultra.

If the temperature is below let's say the mid eighties, you don't have a problem. If you're using celsius, you can probably go up in the lower nineties and still be okay up there in Cypress, are you like north of two ninety or south of two ninety. Okay, Well you've got you've got M and D supply on Luetta Road. Uh, and you've also yeah set up I go, yeah, there you go. They're gonna they're gonna

have these products. Just just call them up or go buy okay, right, Okay, it takes a lot of skip bye bye, Thanks for the call. I appreciate that very much. We love feed stores here on Garden Line and League City. Feed is just one of those feed stores I love going into. In fact, I was in there just the other day visiting with Madison. Uh and uh, you know, we I love to go by and visit the folks there. But Wes was out. I don't know where he was gallianting off to at that time, but I didn't get to

talk to him, talk to Madison. Her brother were there. Uh. It's just one of those. Oh and Rushak Ruschak is a Dalmatian. You got to go meet more Ruschak. Can you think of a better name than than Ruschak for a Dalmatian? You know, it's kind of like a psychiatrist says, look at that dog and tell me what you see That that's Ruschak. They're on Highway three, a few blocks south of ninety six, near

in the League City area. So if you're in Santa Fe or Webster, el Kamina, Reale, Clearlake, Lamark, San Leone Baycliff Dickinson, this is your backyard feed store. And you go by there, you're going to find all the fertilizers that I talk about on Guarden Line. Of course, it's a feed short premium pet food. You got backyard chickens. They got food for that too. It is the kind of place that'll take your bags out for you and deliver them for you, just like the old time service

was been around since forty years. The Thunderberg's third generation now running that feed store at League City Feed. Here's a phone number two eight one three three two sixteen twelve. I'm going to head up to Conro now and talk to Bill. Oh excuse me, I'm not going to head up to Conra and talk to Bill just yet. Bill, you will be first up. I spoke too quick. I got to go to a break. I get so excited about this stuff. I forget the clock. We'll be right back.

Welcome back to Garden Line. Good to have you with us today. Have you been to Plants for all seasons lately? That's the nursery. It's on Tombo Parkway Highway to forty nine. If you're going north up toward Tombull from Houston, you cross exit Lutta across over Luetta and A's right there on the right hand side. Been there a long long time. The Flowerdy family has created a brilliant just an institution for that whole region up there. A lot

of people know plants for all seasons. They love it. They go there because they know when they go there, they're gonna get plants they grow here. They don't carry stuff that you're going to take home and kill it right

away because it don't belong here. You're going to get advice, and boy, this is the this is the elephant in the room when it comes to the importance of choosing an independent garden center, a local owned, independent garden center, and that is advice from people who know what they're talking about. They are experts and all kinds of things. Plants. You can bring them, samples, you can bring them pictures, you can just talk with them.

I got a shady area, I need this. They're going to direct you to the things you need that will work because they if you've got a brown thumb, they'll turn it green. If you've got a green thumb, well, you've probably already been there because you know that when you get the right soil mixes, the right fertilizers, the right plants, and you do

things the right way, you have success. And that's what Plants for All Seasons will help you do the website Plants for All Seasons dot Com the phone number two eight one three seven six sixteen forty six get your green on It Plants for All Seasons dot Com. Let's go up to Conra. Now we're going to talk to Bill. Hello Bill, Hi, skip Hey. Question.

I've got a parking strip that it looks like the contractors just covered up the bermuda with Saint Augustine's sad and over time it's just all save bermuda and I dug it up yesterday. But the roots are really really deep, and my question is how deep do I have to pull the roots up? Or should I be using some I mean, all the green is gone, a lot of the roots are gone, but you're still I'm gonna have to cover it with dirt. Should I use round up at this stage and try to

kill the last little bits off? Or I would? You know that hand digging is an option, but you're always going to miss a few, and so you're going to wait a while. Let it reach sprout and stick its head up again. You see that green sprout, and then go down in there and find that rhizome underground and dig it all out and that that's tedious. You can do it that way. The alternative is to spray it with something that will go through the plant, kill the whole plant and round up

wud do that. I prefer to say glay because round up is just one brand. Sure that's the ingredient. There are grass only killers. They the most common one begins with the boys name Seth se t H and you'll they'll say grass be gone or something like that. On the label. You'll tell you it's a grass killer. But against with Seth those work too. They're not white as effective as round up or glyphissay at taking out the whole bermuda plant, but they they're good. They're very good, and so that would

be the alternative. Some people don't want to use the glaphas say, so you have a different alternative. But you got to get some grass up so you can spray the green stuff. You need green stuff to spray. And this is going to be a little bit of a process. If you get in a hurry and you say, oh, let's go and put soil down and sod, it's going to grow itself back into the problem again. Because you can get it all. You don't want that. I know you don't

want to say. Okay, well, how long you have to wait after you put down some kind of killer spray. Well, it takes I'd give it about a week to move into the grass and start to really do its work. By then you can do whatever you're going to do, and the

grass is already going downhill. As far as the plants you want to put in, you can spray soil, kill the weeds on it, wait about a week, just kind of rot it till it in a couple days later, put the seeds in the ground or transplants, and it won't hurt them. It it ties up with the soil and it basically think of it this way. All these products we're talking about for killing grass, they they kill green grass plant parts. Okay, so they don't make the soil toxic to

grass. So so yeah, you well, I'm going to put Saint Augustine's sod on top of you know where it is because I want the grass. Look, yeah, there were So give it a give it a week to give it a week to work, lightly rototie the area, and then lay your side down. A couple of days later, you'll be fine, okay, all right, thank you, thank you. Good luck Bill, good luck. Uh. Compost stop dressing is one of the most important things that we can do if you really want to take an area that won't go grass

and help it grow grass. Now, if it's because of shade, well no, you need sunlight. But if it's because of compaction, which happens our clay soils are tight there. We call them heavy soils and foot traffic and things, they compact and compost top dressing with aeration first to air eate. Then you put the compost top dressing down over the top and it falls in the holes and it opens up that soil. It gets oxygen down in the soil so the roots can thrive, and it just improves it over time.

You can do it again and again over the years as needed. In general, with a heavy compaction, you may have to repeat it periodically, but oftentimes yeah, you don't. But that initial application is very very effective. Green Pro does that. Green Pro is up there. Actually they're in the Magnolia area, but they serve about forty five mile radius for Magnolia. So if you're done in you know, down to about roughly I ten and over to about Interstate forty five just to draw rough lines. That's about the

area that they serve. They charge depending on how far are you wait for travel because they're bringing in a lot of heavy equipment and a lot of bulky quality, finely screened compost to do that, so about forty five miles from Magnolia. They're who you need to contact. So here's how you do it. You call them two eight one three five one forty seven thirty three two eight one three five one forty seven thirty three, or go to the website

greenpro dot net greenpro dot net. If you've got a lawn that looks like heck, and you're and a boy, I get these pictures from you guys all the time here on guarden Line, and the lawn is just like there's a few sprig gegrass here there in Yonder and that's just really struggling. How do I bring it back? Well, that's one of the steps in it that, along with proper watering, fertilizing, and then of course mowing,

is the secret to success with a turf grass lawn. I was talking with Jason at Pure Scapes the other day and we were just talking about, you know, the spring we're having in the industry and things like that, and they're staying busy. And you know, a good reputable landscaper is going to be busy. They're going to be booking weeks, if not months in advance. Depending on the size of job you need to get done. Puer scapes can do pretty much anything that you need. Do you need a patio,

a stone patio. Do you want a stone walkways? Do you need construction of landscape beds? How about landscape lighting? Landscape lighting pathways? How about hard scapes of other types, porous heartscapes or concrete heartscapes. Do you need drainage improved? Most people do around here. Do you need your irrigation checked on or adjusted or redone or fixed? They do all of that stuff. But the thing they do that I think you really need to know about is

quarterly bed maintenance. You can hire them to come out once a quarter and they trim, they weed, they fertilize, They check out the irrigation system, see if it's still working right. They aerate, they do seasonal color, They do mulching in the bed. They do all of that kind of stuff and just keep your beds looking good. So that way through the year, all twelve months of the year. You've got some of somebody coming out quarterly. They need a new color change, now, well arrange it.

Do you want two color changes a year, three or four? They can do all of that at Pierce Scapes. So how do you get a hold of them. Well, you can go online, go to the website Piercescapes dot com. You're going to see some awesome pictures there by the way of the work they can do our give them a call. Two eight one three seven oh fifty sixty two eight one three seven oh five zero six zero.

I said, I wanted to talk about houseplants, and I do. We are in the process at our house of kind of renovating some of the houseplants. We had one. It was a string. It stayed a little too wet. I was part of the cause of that. I didn't realize. My wife and I both were watering the thing, and it was in a little too much soil for the size of the plant. And so when you get a little plant in a big pot full of soil, it's hard not

to overwater because there aren't roots out there and all that soil. Yet pulling water out of it, so it just sits there and stays soggy. And so that's just kind of a thing you might want to watch out for. But we're doing some trimming. I got several plants that just got apathos excuse me, a not apothos. Philodendron looks kind of like apothos. It got real long and stringy. I mean it had like ten foot strings on it, and I want to keep it as just a mound of beautiful foliage.

So I'm doing some trimming and cleaning up on it. Always with houseplants, one of the most important things is getting them in the right lighting. You need success. Now, there's two things you can say about lighting. There's how much light does it take to keep it alive, and there's how much light does it take for it to thrive. Those are two different things. More light to thrive than to keep it alive. We have low lighthouse plants to do well, but they don't thrive in that condition. You get them

in a little brighter light and they thrive. Sometimes I'll move plants by the window, or put them under an artificial light, or put them even outside on a bright porch that's covered so they don't get direct sun to kind of rejuvenate them and get them going and then bring them inside for the decorating. But it's easy to have a room full of house plants. And when you put house plants in the house, it just makes it feel more at home. It just softens less sterile. I guess the setting. It just makes

it inviting. We're made to be around plants, you know that. We know at the Kingwood. Now we're going to talk to Bill. Hello. Bill. My question are involve Augustine and take off patch. Okay, I've had a problem in the past with it, and I thought I had reasonable control. But I see yellowing of the the leaves in areas. Yes, collect the areas, and I presume that's take all patch. It could be

it could either be that or it could just be an iron deficiency. So you can try putting an iron supplement on it and see if that clears up. If it does, then it wasn't take all pack. Yeah. Yeah, well I'm assuming I have been assuming that it take all pack. Okay, And hey Bill, I got it about have about thirty seconds to break, so let's see if we can do this. If not, I'll hold you to the console. And Mike will Yes, I have put on in

two week periods, but is there anything I'm afraid that's preventive? Is there something I can put on to kill it? There's not a good curative for it. You can hold it in place with sprays, but there's not a good curative. If you can find something that has a zoxystrobin in it, have to go online to garden Gardening with Skip dot com. That's my website. Hey, I'm gonna have to stop here. Let me come back and finish entering that for you. Bill, thanks for that call. Time for

Nicky in the news. Well, we are welcome back to your garden line. Good to have you with us today. We're going to go right back to Bill. We were visiting the Bill up in Kingwood. Bill, we were talking about dealing with the take all root rot, and on my schedule at Gardening with Skip dot com you will see that in October and November are two very important treatments if you're dealing with take all root rot. That is a key time to get in and get ahead of it. And we do

two treatments separated. If you can find a zoxystrobin products, that's a little bit better. There is a per called Heritage that is very hard to find. It is exoxistrob and if you find it, get it. That's it. Scott's makes one called disease X. Disease X by Scott's is also a zoxystroban, but I would switch to that product. There are some other options, but I think that just in one shot deal that that's probably as good

you're going to do in terms of the U application rate. A lot of times on the bags they'll they'll say, uh, you know, preventative. I mean, they won't take credit for curing, right along the lines of what you've just said. But is there Well, I know there's a HANSWERD to the micro content in the soil, but increasing the dosage beyond what's done on the bag, you can't answer that, can you. Well, I would never say don't follow the label in this particular case. I would not

do that for other reasons. For example, some of these products have a little bit of a growth regulator effect on your grass. Some of the PUNO sides do, and by excessive use them. It's almost this isn't a good analogy, but it sort of makes sense. It's almost like a chemotherapy thing where you're fighting a problem, but you're also taking a toll on the patient, and so yeah, I would not I would not go above the label on these products for fungicides for your loan. Yeah. No, no,

I mean obviously the patient. It's giving it a toll taken on them by that they're already struggling, Yeah, without you giving them Yeah all right. No, No, I had seen that reference in a relative to northern grasses as a cross in the York. Okay, No, I've tried to heard each and before, but I will get back to it and just any previous years. Yeah, just get to my label or get to my schedule on gardening with Skip dot Com. Thanks a lot for the call, Bill,

I appreciate that you know Landscaper's Pride. I keep talking about the importance of soil, the importance of soil. Landscaper's Pride has twenty seven different bag and they also sell by bulk too. Landscaper's Pride is always local. It's the top quality resource. They've been in business since two thousand and two, so over twenty years of experience now, so they know exactly what they're doing.

They have a rosemex for example, very effective for any of the woody ornamental plants or any things that are a little preferring maybe of a little bit lower pH soil. It's got fresh and composted pine, box pagnum and slow release fertilizer. Gardner's Magic just another example, contains humus green pine, composted dry cels and a chicken pellet fertilizer that lasts up to three months. Other quality examples from Landscaper's Pride. To look for a pot dirt which is actually an

organic certified soil blend and premium pinting soil as well. You're not going to go wrong with Landscaper's Pride. Go to the website Landscaperspride dot com and find out where to get it because it is widely available. Let's head after Brenham now and talk to Leonard. Hello, Lenyard, good morning morning. I've got about thirty Japanese boxwoods, you know as a hedge, and one by one they're just sort of dying off on me, and i mean really dying.

They just look brown inside the green. The ones who was sighted at the moment look really good. But I'm afraid that it's going to catch is some kind of disease or something. Yeah, it could be. Is your soil sandy or clay or what. Oh, it's up close to the house, and I think when they built the house twenty years ago that they probably put some sand in there. But it's predominantly white gumbo around here. And

a number of things can affect boxwoods. Nematodes can attack the roots that they generally are worse than a sandy soil, the blights of the upper growth. There are diseases. There's one called boxwood blight that's very serious, very difficult to deal with. There are some root root fungi that plug the plumbing of the plant. And when you have a boxwood that's half dead, you know you're going to lose it. You pull it up, take your knife and

slice down through the stem. Slice through the stem, and instead of being a fresh, creamy color underneath there like you would expect, it'll be brown streak, almost like a cigarette butt stain, you know, that old black, brown gray thing. It'll look like that. That is a sign of one of the vascular wilts that can occur. So it could be a lot of things if you have a row of them. So you got some value

here. I would dig one up that is still alive but on its way out, and I would take it up to you can drive it up to the path lab up at A and M. It's on the West campus.

Or you can ship it and have them go ahead and analyze it. Get some soil, shake the excess soil off the roots, but get it all boxed up in a big old trash bag and take it in there and let them figure out which of these it is, because then they can prescribe which of the fungicides if that's what's needed, you would use and you could then try to save the rest of yours to go out and just start trying this and that product willie nilly, you're is probably not a good way to go.

So fertilizer of any can it won't give it well, fertilizer. Fertilizer will give it a boost, but what you're describing, fertilizer's not going to fix. Yeah, yeah, that diet it is. And you need to know which of the organisms is involved so that we can try to shut that down as soon as possible before you lose a lot. Okay, are they dying? Are they dying in like a row like you know, it hits this one and then the next one, then the next one. Yeah.

Well yes, if they're close together, it seems like it'll it'll get in a row and three of them ago and uh well, uh, let's let's get ahead of it because you need you need to get a good drink. If that's the case, there's probably gonna end up being a fungicide drench you put on the all the all around the root system. But let's let's start

with a good diagnosis. You can go online. The website is Plant Clinic dot t a m U dot e d U, Texas and m Education Plant Clinic dot TAMU dot e d U. There's a form there you can fill out, or you can just drive them up there and and get the form filled out there. All right, very good, thank you. Do you have time for one and more? Real quick, real quick. I've got

two nice raised beds. I've grown tomatoes every year, and I've spent a lot of time with my mulch and everything else, and they look about a foot and a half right now. They look pretty good, but some of them are sort of yellowish in the lee's onmosis because they're kind of new. Uh if I can put some iron or something in that the help. Is it the older leaves at the bottom of the plant first, or is it the new leaves at the top of the plant turning yellow? I think probably

you're right at the bottom. Or it's got some holes in them. Some of them's got actually got of holes, and it don't look like bugs. Yeah, well, it could be a beatle or a caterpillar, but we're not worried about those. I would get a good quality fertilizer. You'd like a lawn fertilizer that has a high nitrogen content, and sprinkle that on there and watered in and see if it brings it back. If it's just generally

yellowing, it sounds to me like nitrogen. And it could be occasionally getting too dry, but with the weather we've had, I don't think it's the latter. Yeah, I keep it not too water, but yeah, but water. And I thank you very much. In big help. You bet a couple of tablespoons a lawn fertilizer or sprinkled around and watered in. We'll see on each plant, Yeah, on each butt. That'll tell you whether it's a nitrogen problem or not. Thank you. You appreciate your call.

Wow, we're already at another break. It seems like we're By the time I get rollin, I have to hit the brakes again. Well, here we go seven one three, two, one two fifty eight seventy four. Welcome back to Gardenline. Good to have you with us today. Hey, are you gonna pot up some plants? Maybe for indoors like houseplants, maybe for outdoors. Jungle Land distributed by nitroposs is a quality soil mix. It's got Canadian blonde pete mixed with four different sources of aged organic matter and the

microrise of fungi that help the roots to thrive. You know those fungi that essentially make the root system more efficient. Jungle Land indoor plants has the water saving crystals in it. Jungle Land flour and vegetable planting soil will do good for anything you want to put in outside. Where do you get jungle land, Well, katie Is Hardware has it out there on Pinoak in Katie Ace Hardware City on Memorial Drive down the Memorial area, and one more place,

how about Stanton Shopping Center in Alvin. All places you're going to be able to get jungle land I'm going to head out now to Dickinson and talk to Janice. Hello, Jennis, all there, I have a very nice bird of paradise. The foliage is lovely, but it won't bloom. And also the same problem with aga panther. I've used the color star and not doing the job well. They need you know, they do well in a really really bright shade, but they need enough sunlight and it gets a little too

shady. They just don't have the energy to bloom. It gets plenty of sun It's a very puzzling situation. Is the bird of paradise? How long has it been in? More than a year? Oh? Yeah, I think I planted it last year in a nice big pot. Yeah. They normally do bloom pretty well. Uh. I don't know what to tay you if if you're giving it adequate moisture. It doesn't need to be in a swamp, for sure, it needs good drainage. But if you're giving it

a good, good, adequate moisture to keep drought stress out. If you're fertilizing it with a quality product like that, you should be getting blooms. Add sunlight, and I don't know what to tell you about that plant. Not blooming if you're doing those things for it. Now, the agapanthus those, you know, we do need a little brighter light for those. They I see them in tall high shade, you know where it's real bright shade. But they they also need that good nutrition. And if you're if you're

which which of the products are you using? Did you say color Star? Yeah? For blooming, for blooming plant, that's a good one. That is a good one. Well, I tell you you're doing everything right. I don't know what's wrong with those plants that they just wouldn't bloom through it. Sometimes they can both be person could be like that. Well, I guess that's the problem in their persnicity. Well, uh, now the color

Star, I mean, excuse me. The bird of Paradise. I found that it does pretty well when it gets a little root bound too, so that may I don't know if that would would help or not, but I think that that would be one thing that I would try. If you it's in a nice big pot, so there's not much chance of it being root bound. It could happen. I'll keep seeing it. Maybe, Yeah, found Realdun's a good thing for that. We don't get to say that much about about plants. Uh, yeah, but that you know, color Star,

that's a that's an excellent, excellent fertilizer. You should be Yeah. It's got blood meal and bone meal, all kinds of good stuff in it should make them boom, but it does. And how long how long have you been using that color Star? About a year? About a year? Okay? Well, I bought it because I wanted the bird a pair at us to bloom. All my neighbors have them. They're blooming beautifully. And mine's just a like a lush tropical foliage plants. There's not such a thing

as a male female, is it. No? Man, No, there's okay, Well, I don't know. It's just a real puzzle. I guess it'll boom sooner or later. Yeah, And I just don't tell you other than be patient. It's a it's a you got a good it's a good plant. You've got it in good care from what you're telling me. Uh, And that that's a good fertilizer. So I think you're doing everything right. All right, all right, Well, I thank you for your time, you bet, thank you very much. I appreciate your call.

Uh have you been to the Arburgate latey and checked out the new parking lot and back. Oh my gosh, it is so cool any of you like me who've been out there and maybe tried to park out on the road and things, because you know, everybody wants to go to Arbrogate. I mean people love that place and for good reason. Well, now you just turned down Trishl Road, which is think of it as a little loop that goes around behind Arburgate. So coming from the east or the west on twenty nine

to twenty turned on Trichel you come up to the back of Arburgate. Just pull right in there. You got a really nice all weather pathway and they have such a good selection right now. I mean, I don't care what it is. You want fruit trees. You know, Arburgate carries fruit trees year round and they have a lot of good information by the way online on their social media on caring for fruit trees. Beverly and Angela Chandler collaborating on

some really good educational content. While you're there, pick up the one two three completely easy system. It's an organic soil food. It's a food four four to three plus calcium fertilizer. Anything with the roots. It will do well. Organic soil complete it is a soil and it contains the expanded shale, which is important in clay soils, and the organic compost complete also contains that expanded sheal. Those three products one two three together there's your brown stuff

and your plants are going to thrive in it. And you get that simply as that is arbigate. If you've been thinking about doing some bee keeping, you need to call the folks in Dayton at the Bee Supply b Supply out in Dayton. They have a number of options for educational programming, like a beginning bee keeping class for example Strong Foundation. Those classes start at nine thirty in the morning, they go to a three thirty. You even get hands

on experience doing hive inspections in the process. They have a honey extracting class coming out. Here's the website dbsupply dot com. When you're there, if you got property, let's say five to twenty acres and you're within forty or fifty miles of Dayton, they will do something called a b rental program where they bring the bees out they set them up on your property. There is an ag tax benefit from having bees on the properly and they take care of

them for you. So it's a win win deal. Need to check it out. Need to check that out at the bee supply. We're going to go now out to Conroe and talk to Larry. Hello, Larry, good morning morning. I've got excuse me. I've got a couple of pear trees that I planted from seed. Uh, from a tree that was on my uncle's property in Michigan. He claimed it was a Russet pair. And I've done an Internet search and can't find anything at all on it. But the

tree have been in the ground seven or eight years. They're thriving. The first five six years they didn't bloom at all. The last couple of years they're blooming a little bit well set, little little bitty fruit, and then they'll fall off. Those things. Marble size, marble size fruit. That's a rootstock you've got. It's a rootstock. It's not a regular pair. It's it's like the Bradford pair. That's an ornamental pair. It's that same

kind of pair. And so unfortunately the graft must have died on those. You need to get another one. Yeah, Well, the way I the way I got the seed, of course, it was an old tree that all had the best case in pears I ever tasted. Yeah, yeah, it was. It was on this last leg. I got one of the last couple of pairs off of that tree, brought them home and planted those seas. All righty well, I don't know what else to tell you,

but I'm a bear of bad news today on that Larry. But I'd find you another good quality pair and get back in business as soon as you can with it. And thank you, Thank you a lot. I appreciate the information. Yes, sir, I appreciate your call. If you live up in Tomball, you're looking for your hometown feed store. That's D and D Feed, D and DE Feed. They always are getting in deliveries of baby checks out there. And when I say baby checks, I mean all kinds

of different variety. They are on twenty nine to twenty west of Tumbull, about three miles west of two forty nine. The Dover family has been running that place since nineteen eighty nine. They've expanded it. It just keeps getting better. If I talk about a fertilizer, we talk about soil blends and stuff that they've they're d and defeat. They will take care of you. They will get it done right out there. Give them a call two eight

one three five one seventy one forty four d and defeat. We're going to put another hour in the books here. I want to remind you that next Saturday, I will be at RCW Nurseries, which is the nursery right there where Highway two forty nine Tomboll Parkway comes into Beltway eight. Easy, easy to get to, makes it really simple. I'm going to be there answering

your gardening questions, just visiting with you, helping you design. Maybe you want to create a beautiful bed and you need some plants, suggest uestions. I'll just take you around and show you some of those out there. There is going to be a lot of folks coming it has there been big shund egg that they're having out there. You don't want to miss this at RCW Nursery. Four as ofmite bags forty four pounds each, I'm gonna be giving

them away, four three sixty tree stabilizers. I'll be giving them away out there at r c W Nursery. Why are you out there? Check out the roses um the believable selection of roses and many many other kinds of plants as well. We're gonna take a break and I'll be right back. Kt r H Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to kt r H Garden Line with Skip Rickard. It's so crazy, Trim. Just watch him as the world so many things.

They're not a sor. Welcome back to the Garden Line. Good to have you with us today. It's gonna be a nice day. Have a little clouds out there, but don't worry about those. They're not going to do anything but block a little bit of the sun for a while. It's a day to get outside this afternoon. I hope you will visit one of our awesome local garden centers, our mom and Palm Pop independence however you want

to put it. Uh, those independent garden centers are the lifeblood of the industry and they're how we get good information and good plants and good advice because these are folks that are knowledgeable, These are folks that have experience with gardening. These are folks that grow the kinds of things and sell the kinds of things that you need to have success. And you just can't beat that that is the most cost efficient way in the world is is to get good quality

products with good quality advice and service after the sale. That very very important, very important. If you haven't been out to Neilson Water Garden and Nursery, you ought to go out there. I know a lot of you have been. Nelson Water Garden's been around a long time. Listen, they're national

leader when it comes to water gardening. They even created, invented the disappearing fountain that comes out of like a large container like picture this large upright urn, glazed pottery, gorgeous, beautiful water coming out of the top and down the sides. It goes into a bed of rocks underneath and it recirculates back through. It just adds It adds movement, It adds a sound of water. It adds a place that attracts birds too, by the way, in

your garden and in your landscape. And it's just stunning. And you got to go see them yourself. Go out there, take some friends, because this isn't just a regular garden center. It is a destination place when you walk in the back. First time I walked in there, I looked around and I was just stunned. It's like my first thought was, yes, one of everything. I've got to have one of everything, beautiful, all kinds of designs, whatever attracts you, whatever's interest to you. They've got

those designs. Then Nelson folks can come to your place and they can design and build a pond for your yard. They can build a waterfall, a little nice water feature for yard. They can set up one of those large pottery material placed pottery that have water coming around like I described. They can set that up, or they can help you do it yourself if you want to go about it that way. Do you need a fish pond with stunning

koi or beautifully sparkling goldfish, aquatic plants to go in your water. They have that. But they're also a nursery, a garden center, so when you go out there, you're gonna find a lot of different kinds of plants available. Nelsonwatergardens dot com. You need to know Nelsonwatergardens dot com. Go check it out, but most importantly get out there and see it, because I cannot do it service describing it on the air. It is inspirational,

absolutely inspirational. Let's go to pairline. We're going to talk to Mark. Hello, Mark, Hi, I am a country property in Brenham. Then I want to do to kill till fill thing to side the backyard, okay, And the problem is is the backyard is pretty close to the wellhead, like maybe twenty or thirty feet. I don't know what kind of a herbicide to use. I've got every weed that you can you can think of. I'm more or less a weed form. Well, you're going to use a

post emergent broad leaf or are all broadleaf and grass weed killer? There are things that just kill broad leafs, are things that just kill grass, and then there's glacis which kills But when you use any of those, you're going to follow the label real carefully and you're barely gonna wet the weeds. You do not need to drench them. Wash it done into the soil. It

doesn't work on the roots, it works on the leaves. So if you get out there only in the morning when the wind's not blowing, and you use a little coarse spray, not high pressure that creates a fog that just drifts across the landscape, but just pump it up a few times, get a little spray coming out and just barely we the foliage. You're gonna be okay, it's gonna be. It's gonna sit there for a while. It'll dry up, but it will have moved in and it'll kill everything you spray

it on. And then you can do whatever you're gonna do, rototilling, filling, anything you want to do to get the ground ready for sod. And I'd say give it a week to do its work, and after that you can start mowing the weed back. And by the way, don't mow before you spray. You want lots of leaves to catch that spray, right, Okay. So I did see some warnings about glyco eight that you shouldn't use it within fifty feet or something like that water will don't I don't know.

Well, if you use it right, I wouldn't be worried about those kinds of things, okay, So that light spraying it just on the leaves would be yeah, and it would be okay, right, it doesn't it's not gonna you know, go down in. It ties up in the soil, eventually breaks down in the soil itself. But I wouldn't be concerned about that. There is a form of life a say called radio used in ponds to kill pond weeds. So it's sprayed right on the water that one.

It's the formulations different. There's some things in regular round up type stuff that you wouldn't want to spray in your water because it's not designed for that. But you know, hey, it's your call. I'm not telling you have to use something you can use broadly. If we control products, you can use grass only products. They're all chemical. Every chemical has a potential to cause damage. You've got to use it right to avoid causing those problems.

Right. And I was thinking about resting zoysia because it gets hot out there. Man. I have a sprinkling system to keep it watered well, but I didn't know. What do you think about zoysia grass? Good grassias are good ones. I would choose a broader, a wider leaf type of zoysia. It's still going to be about a third as wide as a Saint Augustine leaf, almost almost as narrow as bermuda grass. But those are called Zoisia

japonica. And there's a lot of brands. There are a lot of brands, a lot of cultivars out there of it el Toro, Jammer or examples. The one that I think the most of is Palisades. Every time I've seen Palisades, have been very impressed with it. Now that that doesn't mean it's the only zoisia that will grow and look good, not at all. But that's if you can find it. Go with Palisades. If not,

you've got you know, you've got some other options. Everyone has its pros and cons, right, kind of like people, kind of like people like you and me, Mark, We got our pros and cons. That's right, all right, Well, I appreciate the information, all right, give it a shot. Good luck, Okay, thanks you hope you have a beautiful long come out of this. By the way, when you get that, you get that lawn. In Nelson's slow and Easy twenty two to two

ten, that's the fertilizer needs to be going down right now. It will carry you into summer. It lasts a very long time. I mean, I say two or three months. I think you can even go you know, up to as much as six months, depending on conditions and whatnot. But the nitrogen is in a slow and easy form. So even though don't let that big number twenty two scare you, that's a lot of nitrogen, but it's going to gradually be released over a long time, which is how

grass takes up nitrogen and other nutrients. So a forty pound bag will cover five thousand square feet. By promoting slow growth, you have a good balance. You have good top growth, and you have good root growth. When you dump a bunch of nitrogen on at one time, you get top growth at the expense of root growth, new some slow and easy avoids at and make some more drought resistant lawn as a result. We're going to take a little break here. We will be right back. Welcome back to the garden

line. Good to have you with us today. Hey, if you are interested in attracting birds to your landscape, and you really should be. Birds add not only their songs, which my favorite part of the morning is waking up and hearing the birds are loud mouths first thing in the morning. I don't know if you notice that or not, at least mine at my house. Are I love that love to hear their songs. I love just to watch the beauty, I mean, very attractive, their antics, watching them

win. Have a little bird bath, you know, taking a bath and the bird bath. Well, why birds Unlimited is your shop and stop for anything birds. They have very high quality material. We're talking about bird feeders, bird houses, and bird seed. You can buy cheap bird seed and it's not inexpensive. It's cheap. It's full of little red bebes and a lot of it just gonna get kicked on the ground. So maybe you paid less for the bag, but you paid more for the seed the bird got

to eat, and then you have this mess on the ground. Wawbirds has blends for every season and for every type or group of birds that you're wanting to feed. Wide variety of quality products. And they have holeless products, so like there's not even sunflower seed holes that the birds are broken open to get the seed inside. They already break the holes open and put the seed instead of the whole land seed into the mix. That's what I'm talking about.

Do you want to attract specific kinds of birds with housing with food, They can tell you how to do that. Very knowledgeable, very knowledgeable staff that will take you through the seasons. If you're dealing with squirrels getting in the bird feeder, they got solutions to that as well. Wabird's unlimited. Here's the website in Houston, WBU dot com forward slash Houston WBU dot Com Forward slash Houston. Everything from hummingbirds to the little tiny chickadees and tip mice

and other kinds of birds that are out everything you can imagine. Warbirds Unlimited is the place to learn and to bring the things home that bring them to your yard. We're going to head out now to Mike in the Woodlands. Hello, Mike, Hey are you I'm well sir. How can we help today? Yeah? I heard the previous call about saw it out from the gentleman that was on the review just a second ago. I had just had my backyard resawted with Saint Augustine about six to seven weeks ago. Okay,

uh, and it's taking. Will had a sprinkle system put it in as Will. It's taking. Well, it's growing. It's looks really really good. But my question is it seems to be bumpy when I'm walking around the backyard where the seams for the different squares of sod were. Yes. Uh, my kids like to play soccer in the backyard, so I was wondering what's the best method to kind of level it out? Yeah, you know, walking around it's kind of like you can almost almost feel like might twist

and ankle in different spots. Okay, should I try to? You know, what's what's the best methods is to level it out? Uh? And should I do? Should I do that before the first cut? I guess that's my question. It doesn't matter when you do it, but the sooner

the better. They should have laid the sod better than that. But if the if the if you do have the big gaps, I would get a little bit of a kind of a sandy loam top soil material and just kind of pour it in between those areas as best you can, you know, kind of work it down in there as the sod grows over it. It's going to fix a lot of that anyway over time. But starting off by filling in the actual gaps sounds like you got some pretty good ones in there.

I would go ahead and just get that done. You're gonna be able to see it. It's gonna take a little while for the sod to grow back over it, but before long it'll look just beautiful. Okay. And I guess that with time, the grass cuttings and things like that will feel in the small little bumps and areas. Yeah, they well they do, and the sod runners and everything and just the soil kind of settling in and

coming together a little bit better. But for the big gaps, I'd go ahead and put that top soil in the air in those areas to fill them in. And the sooner you do that, the better off, because then the grass can go right over through that. Okay, So you would use to just more like a top soil, right, more like a top soil. Yeah, if you use a compost or bed mixed type product, it's going to decompose a way and you'll be back to having a gap again.

The top soil is you know, it's stable, it's gonna it's just gonna be there. Okay, so you're playing, all right, take care, Thank you so much. All right, take care. Good to have that call. Uh. Jungle Land is a nitro foss product distributed by Nitropos and it is designed for success and containers. So the Jungle Flower and Vegetable is an outdoor mix. It should say flower and vegetable and herb, and then have an asterisk that says and everything else because it's good for all kinds of

things outdoors in a container with a good quality fertilizer in the blend. You are gonna just add a little quality night Fosh fertilizer to it and you're going to end up having bountiful flowers and vegetables as well. It drains well, it holds water well. At the same time, it just creates that perfect

environment for the roots. Even got microse of fungi in there. Indoors, there's a water saving potting soil that has the crystals in it, and that way, when you forget the water, the crystals have held onto the water. A little bit after the soil is going dry, they still have some water in it and the roots can still get access while they're waiting on you to get around or remembering to water them again. So where do you get jungle land. Well, Shades of Texas in the Woodlands has jungle d and

shanded gardens done in Richmond Rosenberg they carry Nitrofosh products like jungle land. You can get them in bo both of those places. I am going to go now out to League City and talk to Bill. Hello, Bill, Hello, how you doing. Yes, I have a question about I saw this plan at one of the box stores. I just wonder if it does okay? Here in Houston, it's called sweet broom with a yellow flower. It

does. Okay, it's a good spring bloomer. Sometimes people have trouble keeping them year to year to year, and I don't know, you know, I've never asked questions like how much sun is it getting? Or you remember to water it and whatnot like that, But it's here, is a stunning little plant in the springtime. Okay, great, thanks. I was just curious about that because I've never I'm in the industry, but I haven't seen that in any of the other commercial nurseries. Yeah, it does tend.

It does tend to come in seasonally. Here. You really see it in spring. You know, when some has a blue bonnet, it sells, and so it is a spring bloomer. I get it. Yeah, it's hard to sell a plant that doesn't have blooms on it, even though it's the most it may be the most wonderful plant in the world, but if it doesn't have blooms on it, people don't won't take it home. Okay, Hi guy, that answers my question. Thank you very much, Thank you very much. I appreciate calling it. Yeah, that is a little

bit of a soap box of mine. If you want to have success with plants, don't be fooled by giant blooms and the plants are planting. I watched people yesterday out at a chant of forest. They were going through plants and they were look. I could tell what they're doing. They're finding the ones with the most blooms on them. And I get that. I understand

that, But listen, blooms are like babies. The plant who's got to make carbohydrates to go into those blooms to firt make the bloom in the first place, but then to go in and produce the seed that often comes after the bloom, And so it's more of a draw from the plant to create and support blooms. You find the plant right next to it that is a good, healthy, green, robust plant, and get it in the ground and let the sunlight hit all those extra leaves and get going. It will

end up blooming better probably in the long run in many cases. Now that's not a black and white issue. But don't just find the big Sometimes the plant is so small and the blooms are so big that it's kind of like, my gosh, how does that plant even support all those blooms, and now you're going to take it out and put that little confined root system in the ground and try to get it established. Make it easier on yourself. Don't insist that it has the big bloom. Look at the variety name.

Maybe there's a small bloom on it. You know the color you're getting, And go out and plant it and take care of it, treat it right, and you have really good success with it. Have you been out to Moss Nursery and Seabrook Those of you down in that part of the country know about Moss Nursery. It has been around a very long time. Do you know that that place is not just another garden center. I mean, it is a it is a it's a destination, but it's like going to the

museum too. Jim brings in these all kinds of exotic things from traveling all over creation, you know, like masks and a lot of those kind of ethnic masks and things that you see. Every time you turn a corner you may see some rock sculpture thing that's got water squirting out of I mean, you just never know. At Moss Nursery, I tell you what you do know though, we're about to enter summer and they are loaded with tropicals.

Did you know there are ten to twelve different kinds of elephant ears, that's how many they have at Moss Nursery. They have gallons sizes. They've got twenty five gallon sizes. Five to six different varieties of bananas. You know there's some small bananas. You can cover them up. You can actually grow bananas here in the Greater Houston area. Bird of Paradise, that orange and blue one that we're talking about earlier, they've got those. The legularia,

that's the one. It looks like an above ground lily pad. It's got the round leaves on stems that stick up above the ground. And ligularia. If you've got a shady area and you want something that can put up with a lot of shade, ligularia and do it. Gingers one of my favorite favorite print. I need to go on and on about gingers someday. Gingers. They've got them. Philogendrins, they've got them. Do you need houseplants? Do you need cacti and succulents. You're not going to see a selection

like that. Go check out the house plant house. You can be very very impressed at Moss Nursery. Hey, Moss Nursery, eight acres of wandering and wonderfulness. If I can just coin a word. They're on Toddville Road in Seabrook. Moss Nursery dot com. That's the website, Moss Nursery dot com. Just go by fact. That's a good idea for this afternoon. Let's head out to Seabrook and we're going to talk to Joe. Hey, Joe, I was just bragging about your nursery out there. Hey Joe,

that's a different Joe. I've only got to know about eight potted roses here that pulled out of the ground, got no problem, pulled them out of the ground back in the fall, and just to relocate them, but we

haven't assigned exactly where we're going to put them at. So I got them in the thirty thirty galling spots and they're they're doing real well with foliage wise, but I'm not getting any kind of booms from them, any recommendations or well, let's say, if the time, probably if they're growing good foliage wise, that means you're good and healthy. That means you have water and

nutrients. That's important roses need a lot of sun six hours minimum. So if you can put those pots where they get lots of sun, then you're doing everything you can do and it's up to the plant to take it from there. Okay, all right. I just thought it was kind of strange that none of them, all eight of them are healthy, but just no blooms. Yeah, they will, they will have them, all right. I guess we'll get them back in the ground as soon as we can.

All right. It's a beautiful thing. Thank you, Thank you. Appreciate it. I appreciate it. Bye bye. All right. Well let's see here. What do we want to talk about now? I want to tell you about sweet Green. Sweet Green is a product from Nitrofoss and this is a cool product. It starts with molasses and then microbes get a hold of it and turn it into fertilizer. That's the fast version. But it smells

wonderful, you know, I'm molasses smells. You put it back of sweet Green in the car and you just want to drive around on a hot day for another couple of loops around town before you go home, because it smells. It's a dark good outside it is. It's really good and it stimulates my chrobial activity because they love. That's why you put molasses into organic gardening systems and things, because the microbial activity benefit. Where are you going to

buy it? Well, Sweet Green is a nitrophos product, so you're going to find it at places like Shades of Texas in the Woodlands. You're going to find it at Kingwood, at the Ace Hardware Store. You're going to find it at the Arbor Gate in Shades of Texas down on Genoa Red Bluff in southeast Houston. And so that's about all I can say about Sweet Green. I think Nikki is here and she probably has a little bit of news.

Molasses cookies. Your plants love molasses cookies. I bet you've never heard of gardening show where they tell you go buy fertilizer and drive around on a hot day and smell and I love it. But that's that's the way it does, is sleep. It's a there there. I got to tell you a little bit behind the scenes garden line information here. My producer Josh was just kind of give me half of a hard time about some of my getting lost in what reads I have and haven't done for the day. And so

I'm like Toby Keith, I'm as good once as I ever was. But anyway, all right, we'll let it go at that. Yeah, that's how the sausage gets made behind the scenes. Hey, listen, you're listening to garden Line, and we're glad you are, and we would love to have you call if you got a question for gardening seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four, seven three, two and two five eight seven four. I would describe doing the Gardening Line radio show as herding cats while

juggling state knives on roller skates on an icy pond. How about that? Is that enough degrees of difficulty to you? I know it sounds easy, but sometimes it doesn't sound easy because your host is trying to do all the above. It all right, well, at least at least I'm having fun to hope you are too. Listen, we were we were talking earlier about A's Hardware stores and the fact that whatever you need, they're going to have it. ACE is the place. That's that's their motto, The ACE is

the place. ACE is the place for getting your fertilizer. If you hear me talk about fertilizer and soil here on guardline, ACE has got it. If I tell somebody, well, you need to go get this insecticide or fungicide or herbicide, ACE has got it. It's time to treat for fire ants. This is the big season they start boiling up to the surface and boy, that'll take that'll take the fun of a party real quick. To fire ants in the art well. ACE will get you the proper baits to

have success. If you need to do individual mound treatments for the ones that escape, ACE has that product as well. Do you mosquito Do you want some of those mosquito dunks, the little messita granule materials. They've got those things mosquito bils they call. They've got those things there. And if you need to get a fogger to fog in the backyard, they've got that kind of stuff at Ace Hardware. Because ACE is a place that makes it simple.

And what else makes it simple is that they're forty of them, forty stores in the Greater Houston area. Go to Ace Hardware dot com and find the store locator and you get a big map with lots of red dots on it. Pick the one you want to go to. There's going to be one near you. Let's go out to North Jersey Village right now and we're going to talk to Candy. Hello, Candy, are you there? Do we have a candy are you looking for? Yes, sir, I'm sorry,

I had my phone on speaker. Okay, I have powdery mildew on my deal. Second year, Fresh deal, different, different deal. Can you help me? Well, Well, pottery mildew likes very very humid conditions. It doesn't like wet, but it likes high high humidity and mild temperatures. And that's kind of what we're having right now. You can you can spray with nim oil. Nim oil, but you want to be very careful. Tested on a little spot. Knem oil will kill powdery mildew. And

it is a natural organic product. We're not talking about the name that just has aser erect in it. We're talking about the oil itself. Mix it according to the label and spray it on. It will probably turn the color a little bit. Of things that tend to be a little on the kind of silvery side tend to get kind of a muddy, muddy green color when you get any kind of an oil on them. But just check it out. But as far as shutting the powdery mildew down, that'll do it.

Anything you can do to improve air circulation if that's within your power around those deal plants helps, But the knem oil is probably the best. Otherwise you're using a fungicide and you're about to eat that that deal, and so I'd rather they're not send you to a powdery mildew fund your side. Okay, so the knee oil is safe. NEMO is safe. Yeah, it's safe. Yeah, it's safe. You're in a pot. It's it's stuffed together,

and there a bunch of plants are stuffed in a pot. I just transplanted them from a pot that I that I got and maybe I should separate them. Well, and it may they may that that would help. Air movement helps, but it doesn't. Mildew likes high humidity. Powdery most most diseases like wet leaf surfaces. Mildew just likes high humidity. That's that's what

it likes in mild temperature. Okay, So you may your deal may keep growing and kind of the new growth not have that issue on it, but I would if you want to shut it down, I would try neem oil. I will try that, thank you, and be ready for it to change the color a little bit. That's fine, okay, I appreciate it, all right. You take care, Jenny, appreciate that you too.

Years ago, a fellow named doctor Larry Barnes, who at that time ran the State Plant Clinic Texas A and M. He did a study using nme oil on daisies gerber daisies, I believe it was, and they get powdery mildew really bad too. And he found that nem oil was as effective as some of the other chemical fungicide like beaylaton for example, it's really good on powdery mildew. But nem oil was an organic alternative that was very very effective

because powdery mildew sits on top of the leaf. It's a surface. That's why we see the white. That's the nicelia, the fungal strands that are on the surface, and so when you coat them with oil, it kills them. You know, it doesn't have to soak in. It doesn't have to have a chemical poison if you will, that kills the powdery mildew in that way. No, it's just a physical thing, but it works pretty good. In fact, it works very good on that well, you're listening

to garden Line. Our phone number is seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. We are now in the season where we transition into slow release fertilizers. Now you still use a fast release fertilize. There's nothing wrong with using any of the fast release fertilizers. Now you just want to go moderate with it. And you may want to even take your applications and spread them out a little bit

so they cover more time. That way, you don't have all of what should be for three months applied at one time and dissolves a way, and now it's all in solution at one time. It's better to go a little slower or get your quality product like Nitrofoss Superturf Superterf fertilizer by Nitrofoss is designed to gradually release that nitrogen into the soil over several months, several months, and that is that's really a quality, a quality way to go about it.

Because here's why grass takes up nutrients every day, every day. So the analogy I like to use trying to explain slower lease fertilizers is imagine you are a dairy farmer and you have all these cows and you figure out that each year the cows need how many bales of hay per cow and how much feed per cow? And you walk out in what is it, April, and you dump it all on the ground and say, see you next year.

How well is that going to go? Well? I mean they're gonna they're gonna feast right now, probably too much, but then they're gonna start to get hungry several months from now, right when there's nothing else left to eat. And that's why we like to fertilize gradually over time. If you use an immediate release, just break it up, put several applications on. It's a lot more work, more hassle. But why not just get a quality product like Nitrofoss the silver bag super Turf. Super Turf is easy to

find. You know, Nitrofoss products, they are They're everywhere. I mean it's very easy to find them because pretty much every ace hardware store is going to have Nitrofoss products. You're going to find them at D and D feed up in Tomball they carry Nitrofoss, including the Super Turf. Lake Hardware done in Angleton and Fisher's Hardware and Baytown. They also are places where you can get all of these quality nitrofoss products. I'm going to take a little break

here. Greg. When we come back, you will be our first up. Welcome back to Garden Line on a beautiful Sunday. It's going to be a nice one out there. Hope you this afternoon you have an opportunity to get out visit some of our garden centers, pick up some of the supplies,

maybe a feed store. We got a lot of other great places around the Greater Houstonario where you can pick up everything from plants to the products you need to have success, and that's what we want you to have being out on a good day like this this afternoon, I think I am actually going to do a little bit of planting on some things. That is a happy place for me to get out and rest, relax and just enjoy being working in the soil and planting some plants and doing some things like that. That's

what I consider a good day. I'm going to head over to a task aseda now and talk to Greg. Hell, oh, Greg, Hey, how's it going, sir? I'm well, sir. How can we help today. Well, yeah, we have a magnolia tree that's probably about twenty foot tall, and there's others in our neighborhood that we've noticed. The other ones are just completely toast, dried out, dead, and ours is about

fifty to fifty. We need some help to save ours. Okay, when magnolias die out like that, it usually is because of the heat and drought. We went through our a severe cold snap that caused splits in the bark and things like that. Last summer we lost a lot of magnolias, either in whole or in part like you're describing, and there's no bringing dead back to life. So the challenge is to take a look at that plant you know you're going to prone all the dead out, and then say, do

I still like that plant? Because you know, magnolias have a beautiful shape normally, the one it gets verely disfigured by entire branches turning birn on, you may end up with a pretty weird, bones eye looking magnolia out there in the front yard and you may decide that's not acceptable. I'm gonna put a new one in. But that's the call. That's the call that you'll have to make Oh well, okay, and what's good health? Well, what's the good health advice? We can do for hours if we decide to

keep it. Yeah, there are any type of I would fertilizer. Yeah, I would get a lawn fertilizer that is very good for magnols, just fine for magnolias, and just spread it around it. I mean, you can do a regular fertilizer if you, you know, if you were I want to go with an organic one. Microlife has a the pink bag is for acid loving plants, and magnolias do like a little bit more on the acidic side. Uh you can you repeat the name again? Micro Life.

Micro Life is an organic crow Life. It's in a pink bag. Other brands of fertilizers will also make ones for acidic loving plants. But I just use a regular fertilizer on them and find that it does well because all you're really trying to do is put some nitrogen in there to support good growth, and their root system is picking up pretty much all the other things that needs from the soil. Okay, wonderful. Yeah, So the real small quick question, Sure, is it too late to weed and feed are much still

okay, I've still got a good timing. You know, if I'm given the choice, I prefer to do those separately. There's a time to put down the fertilizer, and you we have many quality fertilizers, and then there's a time to address weed issues, whether it's a pre emergent or a post emergent. And so when you combine them in one product, those can be very good products with good weed and good feed controlling them. But it doesn't

mean it always fits the situation that you have in your yard. And so that's why I like to go, hey, here's when you're fertilize, and when you go to my schedule on gardening with Skip dot com, that free schedule shows you when to fertilize, and then it also shows you when to do weed control, whether it's a pre emergent to prevent weeds or a post emergent to kill existing weeds. And so you may call the show and say, well, I've got some I don't know, some little amaranth type weed

in there. Those are easy to kill. Or you may call and say, now I got dollar weed and I got Virginia button weed, and those are more difficult, So I'm going to recommend a different weed control for that. Then you might have it in some products. So I'm not saying don't use the combos. I'm just saying I think the best way is to go prescription on the fertilizer and prescription on the on the weed control to address exactly what you're looking at in your yard. Wonderful. Thank you for the advisor.

I hope that didn't complicate it. Go online to my schedules on at gardening with skip dot com and it lays it all out for you there, really easy to give you, yeah, what to apply and when to apply it. And if you listen to guardline you can hear where to get it all day long. Yes, sir, have a great day. Thank you. All right, Greg, take care of they're in a task Asida, you bet. You know. I when I moved to Houston, gosh, what was it twelve years ago? I don't know, probably twelve years ago,

I guess roughly. I'm not good at that time thing, but anyway, Uh, it really threw me that there was an a task asita because I grew up in Adiscosa County, south of San Antonio. Adiscosa and every time i'd see a task asita, it would just throw me. It's like, Okay, that's not the right word there, but it is. When you're in the Houston area. I've got some listeners. I talked to some listeners every now and then here from Adiscosa County that grew up over there.

Well, you've been listening to the garden line. We're going to go for a little bit longer here, but it's been a good day. I've enjoyed visiting with you and talking about the different things. Uh, if you would still like to give us a call, we got some time. We can still take some calls here. It's seven one three two one two fifty eight

seventy four. You may need to let it ring a little bit. Josh gets busy with one thing or another, but he'll get to the get the phone and get you set up and get your online so we can talk. I do want to remind you that if you're going to do lawn fertilizing, it's time to begin. It's time to start that stuff, so get out there. My preference at this point is a slow release fertilizer, one that

gradually releases over time. That would be the ideal. Remember that, and this is counterintuitive, but the single most important thing you do for lawn density is mow regularly. Now that isn't the only thing. I'm not saying you don't do anything but mow your lawn and it's going to be pretty. No, that's not true. But mowing, mowing mo The more often you mow, the denser the lawn will be. It's the same way with a hedge

you're trimming on your landscape. If you trim a hedge once a year, it's not going to have the density as if you trim it periodically through the year. Every time you cut it, what was one shoot becomes two or three shoots, and it's and then you do it again and again. So the same is true with your lawn. The second thing that's very important is to water adequately. When we don't have water. Most Stonians that I've observed

overwater their lawn or they misswater. What is the difference. Overwatering means applying more than it needs. If you look at my lawn care schedule online at gardeningwiskip dot com. As you go across the page, I show you each month of the year on average, historically which means it won't be the same this year, because ye two years are the same. But on average, how much water do we use in April, And if you look at how much water a lawn uses in April, it's about three quarters of an inch

a week on average. Now, if you have rain, that's taken care of it, and so you don't have the water. But applying the right amount of water what is miswatering. Miswatering is putting a little squirt out frequently. Proper watering is a good so looking infrequently. So if you're going to put an inch of water on, which is what we do during the summertime, that's what it needs in the absence of rainfall, then apply an inch

to soak into the soil. You may have to turn on the sprink for for a while, have it go off for forty five minutes, come back on again so you don't have runoff. But get that whole inch down in the ground. Let's use an extreme example of what I'm talking about. Let's say that you were to apply a quarter inch four times during the week. That quarter inch would hardly even wet the soil at all. It would get

on the grass, it would get on the thatch. It would promote disease because you're keeping it wet all the time, but you wouldn't have very much in the soil bank account. But when you put an inch on, it does wet the grass and the thatch. And then where does all the rest of that go. It goes on down into the soil. That's proper watering. I'm going to go to Cheryl here and a test as to Oh, we have a teske asta epidemic going on, Cheryl, how can we help?

Hi? Skip, I heard you talking to another lady this morning about dollar weed using celsius and I have selsius, but I never used it in a flower beds. I have this dollar weed growing in the grow low growing evergreen in my flower beds, and I'm wondering if I can from that. Well, it's not label for that, and I don't know the results, and I cannot tell you that's okay to use it for that because it's outside the label. You may read the label again carefully. Maybe I missed it,

but I don't think it's labeled for ornamental beds. All what you could do is you could wipe a product onto the dollar weed using a sponge applicator that they make a thing called a wick applicator and wipe it onto the dollar weed. So you're not spraying it to get on the desirable plants because you don't want to kill those, but you just kind of wipe it onto the dollar weed and it moves into the the But I use selfius on that.

We better do use something else. I would probably for that. For dollar weed, I'd probably use something like a glyphysate herbicide because you're not spraying it all over the soil and the plants. You're just wiping down. But you got to find a wiper applicator. They're not easy to find. But that would be one application that you could do for the dollar weed. And it depends on what plants are growing in that bed as to whether other things might

be applicable or not. You know, certain plants are susceptible to certain products, and so I can't just paint with a roal brock brush. All right, Okay, thank you appreciate. It's a call, and that is it. Dollar weed is a challenge in the bed. But remember dollar weed, it thrives where it's too wet, So just drying things out a little bit helps a lot. Well. I was talking about turf. I said, you got to mow regularly. That is so important for entsity. You gotta

water properly, that is very important. And finally you got to fertilize. I have had launs that ad in for lizh for two or three years. Look chartroosee green and they weren't dense. When you want density and beauty and health, to choke out the weed seeds, fertilize. Follow my schedule gardening with skip dot com. Get the skate. It's free for crying out loud, print it out, take it with you when you go shopping. Hey, we're done. We'll see you next Saturday, six am. Hope you bake it