KTRH GardenLine | 5-28-23

Ktr H Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to ktr H Garden Line with Skip Richter, So just watch him as Woody Well, good morning on a good Sunday morning, looking at darkness outside, by the lights coming. It's going to be a beautiful day and a good day to get outside for gardening. You're listening to

garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter, and our phone number you want to write this down seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. I'm was trying to get some houseplant care done yesterday after the show, trying to do some you know, general kind of trimming up on some things and watering. Notice that

I've got a couple of containers. You know, we always tell you make sure a container has drainage holes so that you don't over water it well and very inevitable. I fall in love with a container that doesn't have drainage holes. So you can do that. You just have to be real careful that you don't keep it too wet. I usually throw a little bit of charcoal in the bottom of a container because it sort of they say, sweetens the water. It helps a little bit with the souring of the soil and things

like that from saggy wet conditions. You still overwater, for sure, But I always have to stick a finger down in a poddlettle bit or a pencil. I don't know if you've ever heard about that, but you can check the moisture down in your soil by taking a sharpened pencil. And it's important that it is freshly sharpened, not you know, the oil your hands getting on that sharpened wood surface, but it needs to be freshly sharpened, and

stick it down in the soil and pull it out. And number one, if it's really wet, you can see the fact that the wood has gotten wet. But even if not that wet, you see soil sticking to the sides of the pencil. It's kind of like those of you who know how to bake a cake know that you can stick a toothpick down and some types of cakes and pull it out and see if it's ready or not by whether you know, batter or whatever from the cake is coming out of there.

But you can do the same thing with a pencil. It's just another other little tip, I guess. But I do have some containers that don't have good drainage, and so I always have to do that. But man, I love those containers. But anyway, it was just kind of grimming and checking on them, make sure everything's doing good. I have some ivy that is is trailing very long. It's actually a pothos ivy, real standard basic plant, but a good one for good reasons. There's a reason you see

it everywhere. And so as it gets along, I'll just take the vines and kind of lay them back over the hanging basket and let them drape back down again. It creates this really large clump a ball of leaves up at the hanging basket, and then you have a few few trailing down. So it just just general messing around, you know. That's that's why I always say it's a good day for gardening, because even if it were raining outside

today, I've got plenty of the house to do. In fact, I've got some seeds I need to start to that I want to plan out in the garden, and so it'd be a good time to get out and do that. But on a day this nice, we just need to get out and get going. In fact, I'm going to jump out to the calls a little early today. I have some of the comments as we go along, but let's start by going out to Cyprus and we're going to talk to

Joyce. A good morning, Joyce, Yeah, good morning. I thought I have three gallon high discus plants that I got from Mother's day, okay, and I was going to lead them in the containers that they come in. But will they get root bones? Should I be replanting them? You don't need to worry about that for a good while. Okay, they'll be

fine. You know if they as they grow, I mean if they double in size or something from what you purchased, then just you can pull them out of the container, kind of tease away the roots that are packed around the sides of the pot and put them in some fresh soil and a bigger container. But I don't think this quick after buying them. You need to do that. Now the container you got them in, was it the old

black nursery pot or what was? Yes, sir, okay, that's what you And they're probably maybe three feet tall, and I think I think plants fall seasons, says they were three gallon containers. Three gallons. Oh yeah, good, Well, by the way, that's a that's a great place to get to get plants. Would I would do one or two things if you don't like the look of the black pot, which I don't either, but then you could move them into a prettier container if you want to do

that. But something that I'll do is, if you can find a container you like the way it looks, just slip the black pot down in that container. In other words, don't add soil and replant it that way. When you're ready to bump it up, you can pull the black pot out and then you don't have to dig it out or try to get it out

of the container. You know, some container sort of curve in at the top instead of being unless say somewhat V shaped, or the top is whiter than the bottom, and it's hard to get a plant out of that because it doesn't slip out because you've got that curved in lid at the top, so or edge at the top. So that's what I'll often do, And then I'll throw some moss or something around the top, just so no one knows it's not planted in that pot. I do that with house plants and

with other things too. And I was talking earlier about if you overwater, well, if you have a container that's like that doesn't have a hole in it, that's another advantage because you can just lift the pot up and see is there too much water in there, and set it back down again. But just a few tis. There's no one way. I'm sorry, and go ahead. I was going to say. What I did is we just had you know, some of the turk are quite looking pots, and set

them inside that. But when I do transplant them, then what size container would I go to? You want to go up one size, so whatever sizer, and now you know, if you can get a two inches maybe three inches at the most up at the top, if it's a three gallon already, then you know you're you're going to get a much larger container than if it was just like a little six inch pot. But I would move up kind of one size, give yourself a little bit hand to grow.

They're going to always be a little route bound, and that's okay. You just want to watch because those things want to be in the sun and when it gets hot, they're pumping a lot of water, So having a little more volume is probably better for them. So you're saying, so I should put them in a bigger pot when it gets one, Well you can, you can as it warms up, but I would you know, there's not

a This isn't a black and white issue at all. I mean, if you want to just set them in something for now, they're going to be fine the pot they came in. They are not overgrown in that pot yet. They will be okay within a few months, but for right now, you can just go with that. I feel like you're going to be making that bump soon. That's why I was saying, set them down in another kind of pot for now, just so you have something pretty around them rather

than the black pot. Yeah exactly, Yeah, all right, well, thank you so much. Oh and then the potting soul should I use it? But I think you talked about half was it happy frog? It kind of helps contain water they have in the past here I've talked about jungle Land recently is from nitrofoss and it's it's got a it's got a blend of Canadian blonde peete with four different ages of four different types of decomposed organic matter in

it and then it has a microrhizal fungine. I really like that about it. And so when you put that, when you put that in your container, uh, it's gonna drain well, but it's also going to hold moisture adequately, and that's important. So you can get jungle land all over the place. I mean, you know everywhere nitrofoss is sold. I think you said that you you were at plants for all seasons. Well, they'll they'll have jungle land, I'm sure there. And if they don't, they'll have

they'll they'll have an aquioma for you. But I would I would just if that's where you shop, then just go back there and talk to them.

But jungle lands in a lot of different places. One last thought is make sure that is if the drainage hole for the pot is on the bottom and it's sitting on concrete or something that's fine, or a deck, if it's sitting just on a clay soil, you might want to get those little things that lift the pot up a little bit, because it you don't get good drainage when the pot essentially is sealing itself to the surface of a clay soil.

Do you know what I'm saying? Yes I do, and yes that he is sitting on a place a little That's something I would have never thought of. Yeah, give it a little, give it a little bit of boost, not much, just a little bit. All right, Well, thank you, thank you for that call, Joyce, appreciate thank you. We're going to take a break, Harry. We'll come back to you as soon as we get back from break. And if you'd like to call in seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four, let's go. Let's

go way, good morning on a good Sunday morning for gardening. We are dark outside now, but it won't be that way long. In fact, if you want, if he looks over at the neighbor's house and the light troff, go ahead and bang on the door and tell them they're missing garden line. They will. They will thank you later, not today for sure, but maybe later. We're going to head out to the Galleria area now and talk to Harry. Good morning, Harry, good morning. I'll enjoy

your show. You're doing a great job. And by the way, five h seven four is ktrh ktrh very good right, that's what it stands for KTRH five H seven four. All right, I was wondering about potting soil for herbs like regano and time and things like that. Yeah. We you know, we are fortunate here to be blessed with a lot of different, good quality kinds of potting soil. And you're not going to go wrong, you know, with any of the group. I was talking about jungle land

from night frosts a minute ago. Uh. The Heirloom Soils has an urban veggie mix, by the way, that would be excellent for that, and I would also consider that one. Uh. And then the Nature's Way provides a very quality potting soil as well. But I think you're going to find that that Airline soil um veggie and herb mix is it's going to be widely available for you. And that's that's one thing to consider. If you go to h You see you're in a galleria area right. Uh, there's an

there go ahead, which which which nurse ree do you recommend? Police? Well, if close to you, there's an Al's Handy Hardware. It's an ACE hardware store. It's on Alden Mail Route just a little south of you. Uh, and uh, just if you go on and do um Ace Hardware dot com. You can do a store locator and ACE Hardware carries all the products that we talk about here. They carry the soils, they carry the fertilizers, a wide variety of of stuff. When you go in there,

you're gonna you're gonna see what I'm talking about. But Al's Handy Hardware is on Alden mail route and that's probably the closest one to you. But just just go to Ace Hardware dot Com. They're gonna have the heirloom soils there. How do you spell that again, please airloom or yeah, it's yeah, it's it's spelled like family heirlooms, like h E I R l O okla. And but ask them for the Magian Herb mix in the Ace Hardware. Yeah, and the Ace Hardware is Ace Hardware dot Com. And

you just look for the store locator. And this store is just south of greens Point on that that's a little far away, but that's that's one closer. Yeah, there's a lot of color. By the ways, this is a tax free weekend for trees or something. Somebody said, yes, it's tax free weekend for trees, any any plants. And also for anything that's think of as water savings. So for example, mulch or putting compost in your soil, you know, to increase the rooting zone and therefore it can

get the more water, uh drip irrigation. Go ahead, Yeah, I keep up the good work. Really enjoy listening to your show. All right, well, thank you appreciate that call, Harry. You take care, Yes, sir, Now you know you're gonna find You're gonna find ACE Hardware's wherever you live, and that that email Ace hardware dot Com is really the easiest way to get down to it. I mean, you got friends and

wherever, they just tell them go to ACE hardware dot com. They can find it there and they're going to carry all the It's nice to be able to recommend places where you know they're going to have it. And that's that's been the challenge, because you know, for me to send you out on while goose Chase is trying to find something, well, that's not fun for

you and not something I certainly want to do to you. So that's why we love to have a sponsor that I'll say we'll carry all those things and just make it kind of fast, simple and easy, but they sure can get that job done. You probably heard about Dell Web Communities. Dell Webb has been building communities for active adults age fifty five and better for over seventy years. And I was excited when they contacted me because they're putting a new

community out in Full Shure. In fact, it's less than two miles from downtown Full Shure on FM three fifty nine. The reason I was one reason I was excited is because I'm going to work with them to create a community. I am working with them to create a community garden on that site for

the residents. So if you're a gardener and looking for the quality community that Dellweb has been doing for a very long time that inspired designs and the lifestyle programs that go along with that, you need to check out dellweb dot com slash Houston. Dellweb dot com slash Houston. By the way, Webb has two bees in it and you can also call them to eight one four five nine zero six zero nine. I'm really looking forward to that community garden,

you know, coming together out there. That is going to be cool. A good community garden makes for a wonderful community. And if you're a gardener, you know how much fun it is to get out and hang out with other gardeners and talk at Gardeners are the nicest, friendliest people you could meet.

We're listening to garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter and our phone number seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four if you are interested in doing some vegetable

gardening this week. We're in the hot summer weather, on the verge of the hot summer weather, and so it's time to be planning things like okra and let's see sweet potatoes, black eyed peas, all the southern peas, Southern peas like black eyed peas, purple holes, crowder peas, zipper cream peas, all of those kinds of things. Lots of greens. I was talking about some greens yesterday that are summer greens are from parts of the world

that are hot, sultry, and humid in the summer. Welcome to Southeast Texas, and so they do really well here. And so those are all things we can be planning now. We still got stuff going on in the garden from the spring garden. If you've never gardened before. I would encourage you to try gardening this year, and you can start this summer if you want, but sometime this year get out there and try planting something. Now. You could do it in a raised bed that you build, a create,

or buy. You could do it in a big container. I would suggest let's start with a container and just try your hand at it and see how things go. With a very large container for the plant size that you're going to grow, you can take it through summer without having to water it twice a day. And so for tomatoes that would be at least ten gallons for tomatoes to do well. If you're looking at peppers and eggplant at least five, preferably about ten for those also just to give them. And the

reason is they need a large volume of soil to draw water from. And the more soil you have, the more water that can hold, and the more water will be available to the roots of the plant that are confined to that container. That goes true for ornamentals as well as vegetables. But you should, you should give it a try. There's a lot of help online and for crying out loud, we're here eight hours a week on garden Line. You can give us a call and we'll walk you through it step by

step. More more than happy to do that for sure. If you have been considering growing herbs, I know we were just talking about herbs a moment ago with Harry. You really ought to give those a try. They are super easy, and they too can go in a container. In fact, there's nothing wrong with combining ornamentals with edibles, and so why not have a tall ornamental grass coming out of a container with some oregano or time spilling over

the sides. Just an idea something to think about. Let's head out to Lamark and we're going to talk to Beverley this morning. Hello Beverly, right, yes, I'm sorry to Boddy that I have a question on dollar weed grass. All right, I don't know the best thing to get rid of it. Okay, Well, first of all, Beverley, there is no bother at all. That's why we're here, So thank you for calling.

Dollar weed can be controlled with broad leaf weed killers. That are we call them post emergent because we spray them on weeds that are already there, as opposed to things we put down to prevent the seeds from germinating and coming up, so you can find there's a number of different ones out there. I'll try I'll just try to make it simple instead of sending you to seven hundred different products. The Bonide has a weed beater Ultra that's pretty good. There's

also a product called Celsius, like Fahrenheit and Celsius. It's Celsius that weed beater ultra. When it gets up in the upper eighties, at some point there, you're going to start to stress your Saint Augustine. So if you can find a little bit milder day would I would use that. The Celsius you can go a little bit warmer, probably up to about ninety two. It may go higher, but that's as high as I'm comfortable with it. And both of those will do a really good job on your dollar weed.

Okay, So Celsius it's a mean buy from Helle. Where do you get back? Yes, you're gonna find Celsius in a good quality independent garden center. You're going to find it in feed stores too. And you're down you're down south in the Lamarck area. You got two options. One is to find an Ace Hardware near you. They do a really good job of carrying

a lot of products and down in the Lamarck area. Just just go online if you still got your pin out, go online to acet Hardware dot com and then you have to select do the store locate or click on that and it'll it'll take you right to the nearest one too. I think that's the easiest way that I can get you. Thank you, sir, you have a good day, you too. Thank you so much for the call. I appreciate that. Well we are. We're rolling here this morning. The

first hour is halfway done, and these mornings sometimes go so fast. That's a good thing at least. I think they say time flies when you're having fun. Hermit's Rock says time it's fun when you're having flies. And with that dad joke, I will turn it over to Nikki. My apologies. Alright, we've still got some amber alerts to be aware of. I've got to details coming up. Well, good morning on a good Sunday morning for

gardening. We are going to be talking with you about your questions until ten am this morning, so we invite you to give us a call at seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four two one two KTRH two ways to go about dialing that you know. This weekend, the Memorial Day weekend is the Lawn and Garden tax holiday where water saving products are exempt from taxes. So this is a good time to get out there and buy plants, to buy compost, to buy soil, to buy a tree hugger sprinkler for

planting your new tree. It's a good time to get out and do all of those kinds of things. And more drip irrigation, This would be a great time to do that. Maybe you need a hose end timer so that you don't forget and let the water run all night. And the kids have a little river going down the curb to play in at your expense, this

is a good weekend for in that. And I was at Buchanans yesterday and was looking at the native plants that they carry, and they have a lot of native plants, and of course this is a great time to buy native plants. They have a good selection. They even have a table that's devoted to plants just here in Harris County that are native here, not only here, but plants that you will find in their native habitat here in Harris County. And then have a wide variety of other natives, just all kinds,

lots of really good options. If you want a little butterfly garden on some milkweed, make your little monarchs happy. It's a it's a great time to be out at Buchanans and Native plants if you want to find them there on East eleventh Street and the Heights. And if you want to just go online,

it's buchanan Plants dot com. They've got a great newsletter. They've got a good presence on Facebook and Instagram if you want to kind of keep up with them, see see what's going on and he's sales coming up or anything like that and just get some inspiration. Always love visiting out at Buchanans. You know the fertilizing for summer, now is the time to get that done. And when you fertilize, you should follow that with an application of azamite.

Azamite is a mineral source for trace elements. Now, the nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium on the fertilizer bag, the big three, they're important in large numbers. That's why they're the three numbers on every fertilizer bag. The micronutrients, the trace minerals or many of those are also essential for plant growth. They're just needed in small amounts. That's why we call them micros or trace. Not less important, just less volume. So azamite puts those

out. When you put that on your lawn, you are going to be adding that kind of mineral to your lawn. And it's just it's good for your lawn. Your trees has roots underneath there and they're going to benefit from it as well. I use azomite in the garden ten pounds per thousand square feet. And here's why. I want my vegetables to have every nutrient that my body could possibly need, which may be nutrients that a plant doesn't necessarily

need. That's why I love to use asamite. So when you think fertilizing, also think about putting out that that asamite. And for those of you who live in the southwest part of town, I need to get back there. It's been a it's been a just a bit since I've been out a Southwest fertilizer. But they're a Houston lawn and garden tradition since nineteen fifty five. I go in there, you know, as a horticulture educator if you will, just to see what are the newest products, because they're going to

have them there. They have wide variety of products, probably the greatest selection of products here in the city. They have all the fertilizers we talk about, you know, the soils and mulchas and things like that. They're going to have an organic selection like no other. So if you're an organic gardener, just because we say they have all these chemicals, well the organic products can be chemicals too. That includes a large a large volume, but they

have those there. You'll find what you need to have your organic garden there. They have their own Southwest Gold A fifteen five ten slow release fertilizer would be a good time to apply something like that. But if you have any questions, bring Maybe you're at the house and you got a weed or a bug or something going on, just put it in a bag and take it in. When you go, Bob and his team will diagnose it and they will give you the right product. They will they know what they're talking about.

They'll give you the right product and take you to it. They're in the corner of Bissonette and Renwick in Southwest Houston. You can go to Southwest Fertilizer dot Com to find out more information. Such a good day to get outside with the weather we're having, it's it's just pleasant. And I always say frontload your gardening work into the spring and maybe backloaded into the fall. Summer is a tough time. Now, I still love guardening in the summer.

I just go out early in the morning. You know, you can break a sweat in the summer going out early in the morning walking across your yard. But that's the time to get the work done in the summertime. So now you know you need to build soil, you need to plant grass, you need to fill in the blank. Now's the time to get those big projects done, because of course here comes the summer won't be that far

away. And if you have been looking at your landscape and it just you know, it's you like it. You've gone and bought the most wonderful plants and all these great nurseries and brought them home and you planted them, and but you look at it and it's just like you know that I don't know, that's just not I'm not a designer. What you need to go to Peerscapes call the folks at peer Escapes, Jason Garritty and his team will come in. They will do a design for you. It can be something small,

it could be something large. I mean it could include hardscapes, walkways, drainage, irrigation and on and on down the line. Or just be a redesign maybe of those beds in front of the house. They are professional at designing and they're professional at installation. Their employees are trained, they're certified, they have their licenses. I do what to find out more, just go to piercescapes dot com, pe a, r ce sca pees, spell that one out peerscapes dot com or give him a call to eight one three

seven zero five zero six zero. You want to get your lawn and your garden, your landscape and everything's set up to be a show place. Another idea, and I need this. My back patio has been neglected. They say the cobbler's kids go barefoot. Well, I need a good design for something like that, you know, for some beds around it. Reconsidering some of the arrangements of things I have and changing the pots up, putting in an irrigation system for my containers. If you have container plants and I love

containers. You need an irrigation system to go with them, because to go out every day, in some cases twice a day if it's a smaller container in the sun and water them, it just well in my house is not going to happen. It just won't happen if there are too many days where I'm just not even there to do it. And so a drip irrigation system, which would be a good thing to buy this weekend, by the way, a drip irrigation system with a hose end timer. It comes on when

you tell it to. I want to water Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and I want to water at seven in the morning or six in the morning or whatever. It'll come on and do that. Of course, with containers you need to water every day pretty much, but this is a good weekend to buy that too, by the way. That is water saving. But you can take an area that's a patio, for example, and really beautify it with containers. One of the things I like about containers is they make

you look good. And here's what I mean. If I have a container that is started, maybe the plants are kind of wimping out like a petunia heading into the heat of summer. Maybe you can just pick it up, move it around the side of the garage. I call that the plant hospital, and bring another one in with freshly planted plants and instantly it looks good while you take the old one and kind of rework it and get it going

to come back out again. Containers are easy and they're fun to work with, and for folks that don't have a lot of space, containers allow you to grow things in a sunny spot. Maybe you don't have a sunny spot for a garden bed, but with a container, you can go put it on a sunny spot and look looks really really good. So consider containers.

And there's so many beautiful ones. I mean, there's everything from I mean, if you just want to grow some vegetables out in the back forty and not worry about them, and you can get a big old black pot and put it out there, nurse your pot and grow in them. And then if you want something nice, you can have the most beautiful vase or urn

type container that it is a show stopper. And I would encourage you to consider this summer when you're planting, especially this week now as we're getting ready to head into the heat, and most importantly to day because it's the last day of the Memorial Weekend tax holiday. Adding a container. Hey, you're listening to garden Line. Give us a call seven one three two one two

fifty eight seventy four and Josh will get you on the board. Sweet pea, pablum, I don't know what and don Louisa, can I keep bump coming? Is he singing to his vegetables? At least that's how the way I'd like to look at it. You're listening to garden Line our phone number seven one three two two fifty eight seventy four. We're going to head straight out to Richmond now and talk to Marcy. Good morning Marcy, Good morning, Skip, Thanks for taking my call. You back, Um. You

were just talking about containers and growing vegetables and plants and containers. I have several containers that basically are from last year that have soil, and I mean they were it was good soil when I planted in them, but they're empty right now. Would that be a situation where I would use aisamite or would I just use something my micro life to kind of re energize the soil before

I plant well, okay, both, we'll do something. Aismite is is purely the trace minerals, okay, and so that is why you would use that. I might use them both. Actually, microlife is an organic product, meaning the material in that fertilizer was once alive and is now available to spread as a fertilizer. They they've gotten, they've made it into a fertilizer, and so when you put it out, microbes release it. But because it was once alive, all the micros that a plant had to have to

be alive are now in that fertilizer. Also, you know, it's like you walk out and pick a leaf off your tree. When you look at that leaf, if it didn't have all the micros that needed it wouldn't have successfully made that leaf. And if it's low, may be the like with pecans, for example, if they don't have zinc, the leaves are small and kind of rounded, and so plants have to have all the micros as well. So I would probably do them both in a container if you got

them that. There's certainly nothing wrong with that, Okay. I just kind of scatter it around and mix it in the soil little bit. Yeah, I would mix it in the soil. I think that they do a little bit better when you mix them in. I mean you can throw stuff like that on the surface, that's fine, but get it down and get it down in the root zone and in the container. You have that that privilege to do that. On a lawn. You can't really roto tail the lawn

to get things down underneath. I just don't want to waste the soil. I don't know what else to do with it really, well, no, you can. You can reuse it. The only time we don't reuse it is when it maybe you've got a nematodes in it by coming in with a plant or something, or if a disease, a root rot disease killed the plant. They're actually they're actually ways to past your eyes. Potting soil probably more trouble than anybody wants to go through. But that that kind of soil

I would throw away. But just the whole soil, I just add to it, freshen it up, put some good quality soil in there, and you can just keep going. And you can also throw it in your garden and road or till it end if you want. I mean, it's it's it was potting mix. By the way, you're fortunate to be out in Richmond and be near the Enchanted Forest and Enchanted Gardens. If I were you, I would if I'm going, Oh are you which one are you going

to today? I'm going to Gardens Gardens. Yeah. Oh, they're they're They're both amazing. I love, love, love to go out to those places and just see. I don't know, just when you walk out, isn't it inspiring? Both of them. You walk out and you're just look and it's like, oh my gosh, so many plants, so little time. I know. I'm so lucky because I do live in between both of them, so I can go to either one. Yeah, and they each

had their own unique uniqueness. Uh. Yeah, I was. Chanted Gardens had a display of bougainville Is that just looked like a million bucks and that would be a good one to bring home for now that we're going into hot weather. Yeah, good for you. You're a fortunate lady to live so close to two great garden centers. I am, well, thank you so much. Thank you for the call. I appreciate that. Yeah, the Enchanted Forest has a lot of the Salvia nemerosa and it's a it's a Salvia

nemerosa. It's a type of salvia which is in the mid family. The stays really low and the foliage is I don't know, maybe six inches or so high. It could be a little higher than that, and then the bloom stalks come above it, so it's kind of it. It is just stunning in the colors. Oh my gosh, purple and pink and blue, light, sky blue and white and everything. You use that as a border plant in a sunny area and it will it'll be amazing in many ways.

It kind of reminds me of the angelonia or summer they call it summer snap dragon in that it has a little spiky flowers and is down low. But number one plant group for me is Salvia's. I just love salvias and got a lot of plants. I love that. I really love the salvias. Pretty cool, pretty cool stuff. Salvia nemerosa. So we're when you're out shopping, I know they having a chanted forest. I'm sure they having a chanted gardens. And I would suspect a lot of our our garden centers in

different parts of town where you are going to have that. Just ask them for the salvia and nemorosa. It's a really beautiful little little sage. You know, Salvia's are there's such a wide genera of plants. We have salvias a get really tall, like the Salvia garonitica, dark dark purple, dark blue, light blue, comes in a light blue form. Argentine skies. We've got the salvia's like mystic spires that generally speaking are about waiste high.

They can get a little larger in that in time, but in general they're pretty compact. Actually you'll notice them from kneehigh to waiste high a lot just just beautiful. Then, you know, Salvia's are one of those plants at bloom on the new growth, the ends of the new growth. So nice to do when you're when you're out shopping. This weekend for garden centers are at garden centers. When I say this weekend, I guess I mean today. It is the tax free weekend. So all of our major garden centers

are Ace hardware stores. Of the feed stores we talk about, they all carry the tree hugger sprinkler. And if you have any plans to plant any plant, or if you have a tree that maybe was planted a few months ago, or a couple of years ago. Tree Hugger sprinklers water right where they need the water and so you're not wasting water. It is a water saving device and it would be another example of a tax free device. You can go to tree Hugger Sprinklers dot com if you want to learn more about

them. They come in three sizes, the seven inch, the eleven inch, and the fifteen inch. I have all three. Actually I like the seven inch when it's a small tree and I'm just planting it, maybe a rosebush. It's awesome for rosebushes too. You could put them around them, turn on the water just a little bit because you just want to wet that area, and then as plants get bigger, you can turn it on higher and higher and it'll wet a large circular area. I love those things.

Yesterday I was out at Wildbirds out at clear Lake. Had a great time out there. By the way, Wilbirds at clear Lake that's there. This is still part of their grand opening and today they're going to do the drawing for the advanced pole system for the easy squirrelproofing devices that they have. There's advanced pole system and a couple of others. The eliminator eliminator bird feeder.

That is another good one. And somebody's going to win a twenty pound bag of their no Mess bird seed blend each month for the next twelve months. So if you haven't, the drawing is on Monday. It's tomorrow, So get in there, get your name in the pot. Who knows you might get lucky and win this one. And in the meantime, going to wahbirds is cool no matter where you live. And now I was out at at the one at good night. I can't even say clear Lake, clear Lake

yesterday, but they're wahbirds all over town, seven of them. As a matter of fact. Just go to WBU dot com. That's wu BU dot com and if you would put a forward slash after that and then the word Houston WBU dot com forward slash Houston. And by the way, this is a little bit far ahead announced, but hey, we plan our schedules ahead. On Saturday, June tenth, two saturdays from yesterday, I'm going to be at the wild Birds in Kingwood. I'll be out there for a couple

of hours. I'll talk a lot about that next weekend. But if you would live in the Kingwood area, Porter, New Caney, Humble anywhere, Humble, anywhere up there. Just to consider Saturday, the tenth of June as a day to come out. Let's meet, let's talk, and let's let you see some really cool stuff that the wild birds folks have on there.

I really really was inspired. Yesterday they had a this is funny, but they had a little cork thing that you put in your wine bottle and it looks like a bird and when you pour wine, at chirps at you. So that's a conversation piece. I don't know why I picked that out of all the things they have at the store, I guess that was the one amused me, amused me the most. And if you're not, if you're not into birds, you need to think about it. Do you know

that gardening is a number one hobby and guess what's number two? Bird watching? Bird feeding? You know, just the whole bird world. And when you purchase quality products bird houses, bird feeders, and especially quality bird feed not the cheap stuff that half of it gets kicked on the ground and not eating because the birds don't like those round, red baby looking seeds. But the quality stuff that is a no mess. It just the birds number one,

get the exact kinds of seeds that they like. Each one has a different type. But it's just it's a blessing to watch. Time about sitting on our patio, you know, I just sit out there, just watch the feeder and see what's going on. My kids bought me a little bird feeder with a camera and gave it to me for Christmas, and so I get a little email every time a bird comes to the feeder. I can

set it up that way. It's how I have set it up, and it's kind of cool just be able to watch it takes pictures and know this is a little video of it as well. But birdwatching is something that's grown on me the over the past few years. And I just think consider combining the two biggest hobbies in America, uh, the gardening and bird watching, and put them together and one sit on on a patio and just really enjoy

the beautiful birds and the antics that are for birds on them. We'll be back in a little bit seven one three, two, one, two fifty eight seventy four. Get on the board. We'll talk to you first. KTRH Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to KTRH Garden Line with Skip Ricord. Just watching as well. Good Sunday morning, on a good day to talk about gardening. Good day this afternoon. Get out there and do a little bit of gardening

out in the yard. Maybe the landscape needs a little sprucing up. Get that lawn mode for the weekends over if you need to do that. You know, the more often you mow the lawn, the prettier it is. If you let it get tall, cut it way back, it's stressful to the grass and you lack the density. And when you lack density, sunlight hits the soil, and when sunlight hits the soil, nature plants of weed.

That's just kind of hot works out there, unfortunately. So we try to keep our lawns as dense as we can, keep our flower beds mulched. By the way, this is the tax free weekend for water conserving products

that that and plants. You plants tax free, the anything that helps conserve water like compost and mulch, like drip irrigation, tree hugger, sprinklers, those are all on a tax free status for this weekend which ends today of course, so if you if you haven't been out and you know, tried to chop for some of those things before, I think you should at the very least get a hose end timer that would you know, allow you to

set it and forget it, check on it periodically. But it just it just makes sense, you know, when to waste drinking water is a shame. And I mean you pay for water, you say, many of the water systems you pay for it as a water and that's what helps set the sewer rate too. Even though it's not going through the sewer, it's going on your lawn. Still you use the water, so it's it affects your sewer cost rate in many communities as well. So just another reason not to

waste the water that's out there. We're going to go out now and talk to Elizabeth in Westbury. Hello, Elizabeth, good morning morning, Thank you, Thank you so much. Um Yard developed that black fungus grass on it. Yes, and unfortunately I did spray it with some fungicide, which I found out you probably shouldn't. Yes, But my question is they everything said you just leave it alone. But my big question is I have a dog. What if she gets it on her? Paws. It won't hurt her

at all, not one bit. The black stuff is just some spores from the fungus that are up there. It's producing those. And you're right, it's not it's not a disease of the grass. What you're looking at is something that lives on the grass. And it'll go away. You can take, you know, Elizabeth, if you don't like the looks of it, or you don't want your dog having it on the pause, just get a water hose and set it to blast and just blast it right off. You

can wash it right off there. It tends to won't that spread the spores? Well, here's the thing, it's not gonna It's not gonna matter because the the spores are already out there. A lot of our fungal problems are to be used to the fancy word ubiquitous. They're everywhere, and so it's kind of like, can think about it this way, Elizabeth, if you were to take a little spray of water, a little mist of water, and let's say the side of your house you just constantly were missing it with

water, suddenly algae would appear, right uh. And it's not like the algae where did the algae come from. Well, it's everywhere. It's just you created conditions for it to grow. And that's what happens with these things that pop up and go away, and especially the things that are sacrifices. They are not parasites of the plant. I just don't worry about them. It's just part of nature. So it's it's not going to hurt the dog. It is not going to hurt your dog. It's not going to hurt

anything. But if you if you want just take a water hole and blasted off, you can do that and dog won't track it around. My second question is that I have a pecan tree. It's an old tree. It's probably been years long as this house. And last year it did not produce one single nut. Okay? Did it produce in other year's they had? Yes, okay. So pecans are one of the plants that can do what's called alternate bearing, and it because they ripen so late in the year,

you know they're a fall harvest. They're putting all their carbohydrates into making those pecan kernels and they don't have enough carbohydrates to set a bunch of buds for the following year. And so when you have a heavy crop year, it's almost always followed by a very light crop year. There are other things that

can cause them to not produce well in a particular year. But if you're looking on the tree and you're just not seeing pecans anywhere, it's some sort of an alternate bearing thing going on, most likely because you know, the neighborhood didn't change overnight where there's now no longer other trees to send pollen through the air to your pecon. It's just a matter of that's the nature of

the beast. Now. I never gave it any fertilizer or anything, and probably the only water it kits is when we get rain, and I don't water the tree. Okay, somebody said maybe it needed some zinc if pecans generally need zinc on high pH soils. But you can tell because instead of normal shaped leaves, as the leaves are coming out, they'll be they call a mouse eared, but kind of picture a mouse's ear and then picture a pecan leaf and it looks more like a mouse's ear than a normal pecan leaf.

That's a zinc deficiency symptom. I don't know. There's not a real great practical way to put a zinc on your tree. In this situation, we can we can go deeper into it, but just for the sake of simplicity, you just need to give it a good soaking when when we go into hot, dry weather like we had last summer, a good soaking every couple of weeks, every couple of weeks only, and not every day,

not every you know, just every couple of weeks a good soaking. And then if you're fertilizing your lawn, that's probably going to be enough for that large it's a large pecondry. Yes, yeah, I think that would be enough. You can give a little extra for the tree if you want. You can have somebody come in and do a deep root feeding and put some nutrient down in the soil too, But I think for now I would focus on taking care of the lawn with fertilizer that'll help the pecan, and then

watering as a rescue, watering during hot, dry summer conditions. I do you there's a green probe people to fertilize and treat my yard. Oh well, then you're you're set up. And actually what had happen with the squirrels last year did not get the cons so we're not the nit tree. And thank you so much, Skip. I really appreciate it, and I was so concerned about that black grass and my dog. All right, well you

can you can rest well, thanks for the call. You know, it is lawn fertilizing season, and nitrofoss In eighteen four ten is a good one to apply. I mean it's a fertilizer that releases slowly, so gradually, over time you get the nutrients that your lawn needs released, so you're not gonna have to fertilize again until fall if you use nitro foss Super Turf nineteen four ten. That's in the silver bags, by the way. And where

do you find nitro foss Well, pretty much ever where you live. Kan Emma, Ace Hardware and Kingwood has it a task of seed as all the Ace Hardwares are going to have it. You're gonna find it in places like Shades of Texas up in the woodlands. You're going to find it at enchanted gardens and chanted forest under Richmond Rosenberg nitro Foss Super Turf nineteen four ten. Tell us why you had to pad away for so long? Tell us why you had to p Well, good morning on a good Sunday morning. Oh

the sun is out, it's coming up. Got a little sunshine on the on the skyscrapers of Houston. See it beautiful, beautiful day coming. You're listening to garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter, and we are here to answer your gardening questions. Our phone number seven one three, two and two fifty eight seventy four or two and two kat r eight if you'd rather spell it out. We're going to head out to Spring Branch now and talk to Judy. Well, good morning, Judy. Hi there, um.

I bought a peach tree yesterday and I know they are better planet in the spring, but I want to do it now. What advice can you give me? So slip it out of the hot Make sure the hole is as deep as the soil and the container, so like if you were to pull it out of the pot and set it on the sidewalk or whatever. And how tall is that column cylinder of soil. Make the hole about that deep. You don't want to dig a lot deeper because then it'll it'll settle.

And we want to plant at the exact same level that the soil is on the trunk. So when you finish planting. There shouldn't be more soil around the trunk than there was when it was in the container. Okay, okay, Well, initially you know you're gonna you're gonna dig your hole and use the soil from the hole to go back in the hole. If your soil is a heavy clay, it actually would be good to bring in some quality mix to create a little bit of a raised bed for it. But

it needs good drainage, it needs good sunlight. If you want to have peaches, I want to have a living tree that's productive for you. So those are probably the two most important things, as good sunlight and good good drainage. How much should I water a new tree every week? So that tree in the garden center is probably getting watered every day, right, and

sometimes more than that depending on how big it is. But so when you put it in the hole, it all the roots are in that cylinder still, and it can pump that dry in a day, and you may have moist soil around it, but it's not wicking in to the old to that

container soil fast enough, so you have to do small waterings. That's why I like that tree hunter sprinkler, because you can get the little seven inch one, put it on there and turn it on a little bit, and you just wet that area and help it get roots into the soil around it. And then gradually you're wetting a larger and larger area. But if you can give it about a month of making sure that that area at least stays wet, then you'll be helping it get some roots in it so it's a

little more resilient. This first summer is the critical one for your new tree. Okay, well that's good advice. Thank you so much. All right, thank you. I appreciate that very much. If you're looking for a quality soil mix, Nature's Way Resources is that if you're fortunate enough to live up north forty five up toward Conroad direction, just south of Conro is Nature's Way Resources right where fourteen eighty eight comes in, just across on the east

side of forty five. Now, they have every kind of soil mix you can talk about. I mean that they have roast soil, leafmol composts, and so on. They also have a two acre nursery and garden center. One of the largest varieties of native plants in the Houston area. You can buy fruit, trees, native perennials, houseplants, even seasonal vegetables. There at nature's way. So don't just think soil, think soil and native plants

and other non native plants as well. When you're talking about the opportunity to, you know, look at a historical leader in this industry. That would be nature's way when we think about you know, the original rad of the rose soil here approved by the Houston Rose Society, the leaf mold compost leader. That's nature's way. And so I hope you will give them a call, check them out, and while you're there, get some plants too.

I'm going to go out to the guard let's say it's going to League City and talk to John V. Good morning, John V. Good Morrie Skip, Good morning everybody. Yes, my question is on basket flower. I received the seeds closed and closed at an Earth Day event? What city of Lake City? Okay, and so it says plant from August November. And my mother also got the seeds that she was very eager, so she actually already planted hers. And I can see the little bit of a greener you've

coming up already in the pot waiting to plant. Blind to August. Yeah, I would. I think I'd wait. I'm what I'm wondering is if we're truly talking about something called basket flower, or if you're talking about something called love in a mist. That's also it's the label on there. It says basket flower. It looks as a picture on the lay on the envelope, and it's purple, like a bloom like purple, kind of white in the center. Um a little bit, but it's all like a purple looks

like am okay, Yeah, that's probably a basket flower. That's an American native wildflower. I would I would wait, and I would do it in the fall. It would come up now. But it really, like like all of our fall biennials, they sprout in the fall and they go through winter and then they come up and really do their show, and you just have a better result overall than trying to plan them in the spring. Yes, sir, And so I'm going to put them in a correct because I

saw them. They're like a light, very like onion peels. They're very large and delicate. Yeah, well, yeah, you want to you want to make sure that they have plenty of soil if you put them in a pot because this plant can get five feet high, you know if you look at and going in the bar ditches and stuff. So they don't expect yours to get that high in a container. I'm just saying the potential for the

plant is there. Sometimes you'll see them and they're only a foot and a half high, but in general, just make sure it's a sizeable enough container. Okay, how exciting. Thank you so much, Skid, have a wonderful Sunday, you do. Thank you for the copy. I've been talking about Dell Webb this morning and yesterday as well. I don't know if you know this, but they contact me about helping them with their new Fullshire community. They're putting in a community garden on the site for residents. I mean

it's an awesome idea. You know. Dell Webb has been building these communities for active adults age fifty five and better for over seventy years. They know what they're doing. The new community is less than two miles from downtown Fullshire on three fifty nine. I think you ought to check it out. Go to Dell Webb with two bees, dellweb dot com, forward slash Houston for more information or just call them two eight, one four five nine zero six

zero nine. Let's go out to Lakeside of States and we're going to talk to Maureene this morning. Good morning, Marine, Good morning. I've moved forward with planting my ocra, doing nice leats about two foot high. Some of the plants the seeds, and so my question is, because I started from seed, and I also started my watermelon from seed, I want to get them off to a good start. Now. Already I have the microoft which but they're in pellets. Yeah, Microsoft, I know what you're talking

about. Yeah, that's okay, Yes, I just couldn't get it out, okay. So what I also have is liquid kelp or seaweeds. So because they started from just the seed, I want to make sure then I'm fertilizing them the appropriate So I was thinking of using the kelp because into a liquid form and the plants could get their nourishment quickly. Yes, what I would do is I would put down the microlife kind of scratch it into the sole surface around your ochra plants, just follow the label, and then I

would do the kelp as a spray on top. The Microlife's gonna take a little while to kick in. It's a slow release, but with the warming soil, that's going to start moving pretty fast. But right now, the seaweed as just a or the kelp as a top spray would benefit the plant. You could also drench it on the roots for a little faster results. But that way you're taking care of them today for the next few days, you know, and you're also getting something in the soil that's on its way

to really giving them a boost a fertilizer. Okay, and a part two, so to speak. On the watermelon, I did get very good results in one pot, in yucky results in a second pot. So I looked at the soil and I think that because they were pots, I might have put ozma coat on one and nothing on the other. So it's kind of a two part question, meaning I will do the same thing you just told

me to the oprah. If that is correct from my watermelon seeds, Yeah, but they are in pots and they are so I'm going to let them trail over the pot. I've run out of garden rooms so that the landscape when he mows my lawn will not have a problem. I have a very large patio and I was going to let them trail and run. Is that okay? Yes, that's okay. You need a really big pot for watermelon. It does not need to go through a drought for half a day. Even so, when you water it it's pump. They use a lot of

water when they grow them in the fields. And when you're watering it in the morning, you may water it again in the afternoon. Just make sure that pot never dries out because it'll abort flowers. You'll have something called blossom end rot on the which rots the end of your watermelon fruit. So just that's number one thing to keep in mind about. I have an automatic system. It's not a drip, it's an actual I have lots of pots um so I should be letting it run for about how many minutes to watch some

of it drain out? Will that be a good indicator? Watching watching some drain out is fine as long as it's not running. Like the soil gets a little dry and pulls away from the side of a pot, and will you water and it just runs around the side, do you know what I'm talking about? And runs off the top down the side. Yes, that would be water coming out of the pot, but that soiled and wet yet,

so with drip, that's probably not going to happen. But just you know, dig down with your fingers a couple inches and make sure the soil is moist. Okay, okay, thank you so much. Appreciate right, Maureen, thank you. I appreciate that call. I don't know if you guys have heard of Star of Hope, but if you haven't, you need

to. I think we all consider ourselves compassionate people. And you've probably been in that situation where you pull up to a street corner someone's asking for money, and you know you want to help, but you got some questions about how that money might be used. If you want to get the most from your dollar, give it to Star of Hope. You can go to Star of Hope Mission dot org. It's actually shmission dot org shmission dot org. They feed more than six thousand meals a week. They have a men's center

downtown. They have a Cornerstone Community for women and family development. They can hold one hundred and eighty single women in one hundred and thirty families. See here's what's happens. People say I want to turn my life around, they go to Star of Hope. They've got the training they need. They have food, they have access to clothing, they have training for getting a job, and even the clothing to look good and be able to go get a

job to get back on their feet. Money well spent. Put your compassion to action by giving to Star of Hope. Were good morning and a good Sunday morning. You're talking about guarding getting ready to go. I tell you this afternoon, take advantage of it. We got a long week coming up ahead, and you get to get out there and get ahead of things by just pushing things up a bit, maybe just going out and getting into some new new plants. I guess you know. I talk about people often ask

me what's your favorite plant? And I hate that question because all of them I like all of them. But I've talked about earlier my favorite group of plants or Salvia's. If I had to pick one, I would just say Salvias. All the other plants that I love are saying, hey, what about us, Well, you made me pick one. But when I say favorite new plant, that's gonna be the Cajun series of hibiscus. Now, the tropical hibiscus is just an outstanding plan. You guys have seen him at

garden centers and things. But I was walking through our CW Nursery is a good while back and it was the first time I'd encountered the Cajun hibiscus, which I don't know where I've been, but there they were colors like you cannot imagine. I mean, just I can't describe. I'm color challenged already when it comes to descriptive words. But you need to see them. You

need to check them out, go buy Rcwe haven't been there before. Cajun hibiscus, you know, they they've hit our area and they're a really popular plan a lot of around town. A lot of people have fallen in love with them. OURCW Nurseries dot Com is a website. It's that's the nursery that's on Tomball Parkway Highway two forty nine where it comes into Beltway eight.

Check them out by the way. This weekend, Remember for all our garden centers, this weekend is when we have the tax free weekend for plants and water saving supplies. So that's a reason to go to r C. The hibiscus is another reason to go. All the other plants or another reason to go, and on top of it, off, that's not enough. They got a fifteen percent sail on all their fruit trees and fifteen percent on select other trees. And they have a wide variety of other trees as well,

not every other tree, but on select ones. But how many reasons is that now piling up? To go to OURCW nurseries. But when you go there, just say, hey, skip said go see the Cajun hibiscus, and they will take you right to them. We're you're listening to garden Line. We're here to answer your gardening questions. Our phone number is seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty

eight seventy four. In my home garden, one thing that I really need to do is to add more compost to the beds that you might have noticed that you build a bed and you fill it with soil. We call it soil, but it's basically, you know, like a rose mix or a vegetable and herb mix or something like that. But then next year it's a

little lower, and the next year it's a little lower. Same thing happens in your containers because that organic matter is oxidizing way, it's on its way to hum us think of it that way, which is a good thing, but you have to add more and fluff it up, and I need to I need to do that, and I can't think of a better place, especially for those folks that are down southwest Sandy Point or Cola, Iowa,

Colony, Fresno, Quil Valley, Sienna Plantation. That's CNA Mulch. Then you go on line to Sienna mulch dot com, CNA mulch dot com and see what I'm talking about. They've got the bulk soils, they've got the bag soils, they've got the mulches that you need to put on the surface. By the way, uh, you know, mulch is the number one way we fight weeds and the number one way that we protect the soil.

Keep the temperatures moderate during the summertime really important. While you're out at Sienna, you can grab all the fertilizers who talk about they have all of those as well. Now they're closed on Sunday, but they they're open Monday through Friday seven thirty to five thirty and on Saturday seven thirty to two thirty. They're on FM five twenty one near Highway six and two eighty eight. Boy,

that area is growing like crazy. I guess you could say that about a lot of areas around Houston, but a lot of new neighborhood's going in. And you are fortunate if you live in that area to have a place like Sna Malch by the way, for a small additional charge, they can also deliver and drop it off for you, So Sena Malch check them out. But if your garden beds are settling down like mine are, it's time to fluff them up a little bit, get some get some good material in

there. And we are fortunate in the Houston area to have so many options for really quality material our phone number seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. We are hitting the time when it's fixing to get really hot and then the stress and the strain goes on our plants, and we need our plants to be in the best health that they can. If you've got a tree, tree roots

reach widely out in all areas. I think one time when I was going through school getting my degree and studying fruits and nuts and things like that, they said that a pecan root can go two and a half times the height of the tree in all directions. So think about the size of a pecan

tree. Now imagine two and a half times that distance out. So there are roots everywhere, but the majority of roots the concentration where if you've gotta you can't go to two houses down and water your neighbor's yard to water your pecuntry. But if you can focus on the area underneath the branch spread of the tree and maybe a little beyond that and give it a good soaking. When we're going through drought, focus you're feeding in that area. Now,

to make things simple, just hire Affordable Tree Service to come out. They are experts at taking care of your trees. They'll come out and you can pay them to come out and of a consultation. What needs to be trimmed back, what needs to come out, what is perfect just the way it is. And they won't oversell you. They're not going to do that. They're going to tell you if you need something and tell you if you don't

need it. You can go to aff Tree Service dot com or you can give him a call seven one three six nine nine two six sixty three. Now, either Martin or his wife Joe are going to answer the phone. How many times you call a business and the owner the owners Martin and Joe answer the phone. If Martin and Joe don't answer, hang up. You've called the wrong place with affordable in the name. But they specialize in all things from deep root feeding to fertilizing to pruning, trimming up trees, getting

ready for hurricane season. Afftree Service dot com or you can call Affordable Tree at seven one three six nine nine two six six three. I like to I like to spend time out working with some of the flower beds and the herbs and things. In fact, I got some plants that I need to take home and get planted. The pleasure of it, you know, it's fun to go out to the nursery and chop around and see those things.

You get to buy a plant and take it home. But it's also just a lot of fun, you know, to get out and plant them and pamper them along and take care of them and celebrate when the next bloom pops up on those flowers. If you need the supplies for all the kinds of things we're talking about, ACE Hardware dot Com is the place to go find your local ACE Hardware. They're not hard to find, thirty nine of them. They're gonna have every fertilizer I talk about on garden Line. They're going

to have a wide variety of pest control management products. They've got herbicides and things like that. They've got an awesome grilling section. If you are a weekend warrior with a web or Trigg or Big Green Egg and more, they've got that. Their paint studio includes Benjamin Moore paint. In other words, everything you would expect from a garden center. Ace Hardware dot Com, Ace Hardware dot Com. Oh Mama, pay my girl to be at all. He's a magic man. Good morning on a good day for gardening, as

all days are good day to talk about gardening. We are here to answer your gardening questions. If you'd like to give Josh a call seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four, he will get you on the board and we can talk about whatever you're interested in regarding gardening. Let's go out there now. We're gonna start in northwest Houston and talk to Ralph. Good morning, Ralph. Hey, Ralph. I'm gonna put you on hold and see if we can get. I can't here. Oh there you are,

there, you are? How are you doing? My vis is a garden and everything. You should have got a good program here. You know. I'm fine about my country. I got you got wat the works, I got very fruit trees and everything, and I'm Gorden doing beautiful with your help. Well knowledge, well and well, it just took watering thing. It's just hard to get to without the uh you know, this rain has gotten

me all messed up. I got to know more about water. And I'll tell you, man, is it staying too wet in your garden or what's going on? Oh, I've got to get the rain. Okay, Yeah, you know, I don't know whether it's just to keep a watering and yeah, I guess I just keep a watering. You just have to, you know, check your soil. See how it's doing. A big tree like a pecountry, it's got roots in a lot of places. And I can tell you this. Pecans are not struggling for water anywhere around the Eastern

area right now. We've we've had enough over you know the last few months that they're they're okay. A good soaking never hurts a Pecan, though, so you know, get the sprinklers, drag them out there and turn them on, and or if you got an automatic system, just give it a good soaking took you keep going, keep doing it. I got my may hold, and I got my pigs and my pocons and my tears. You know, Oh, you got a full time job, Ralph, you got a full time job, mute. But it is a great this year and

everything. But you know, it's just it's just good. It is a great hobby. But you know, and and uh, you're so much too, so knowledgeable, and I really appreciate it. Well, Ralph, I I think you appreciate the call. And yeah, gardening is a great hobby. I mean, we stay busy and sometimes we have things to fuss about. We we need something to fuss about, so usually it's the weather. But anyway, I ta we're going to go out to Kingwood now and talk

to Joe. Good morning Joe, Good morning Skip. I'd appreciate your advice on when to put out the grub killer, trying to keep the feral hogs away mainly, and then also the armadillos. Is it when the you start seeing dead June bugs on your driveway is that too late and you'd put it out when you start seeing the armadillos digging up in your beds or were is the right time to put it out? Well? The armadillo, the armadillo is it could be a sign of grubs. It could be a sign a

lot of other things too. There's other things they dig up, like earthworms and feed on. So it doesn't necessarily mean that it is. You know that you have grubs, but that is that can be a sign as far as grub killers are concerned. When the things come out that we call jim bugs, they really should be calling them may bugs around here right then, when those come out, that's a sign that they're going to be out there

laying eggs. And what happens is the eggs hatch, and after the eggs hatch, the larva feed near the surface for a while and when it starts to get hot, they go down deep. And when they go down deep, we're not going to be able to get a successful treatment of insecticide down to reach those grubs. So here's here's what's here's what's happening that we want them to hatch out. We want to get as many hatched out as we can, and then we want to apply our product before they go down deep.

So that's that's kind of the signs of it what we're looking at. I would say that I wait until you know those those mating flights that you're seeing around you see the bugs out there flying around your your lights at night and stuff, then go ahead and put the application down. That should be sometime in June. Some products last longer than others. Some insecticides just you know, go right into the plant they do their stuff, or into the

soil and they do their stuff and that's it. Others stick around a little bit. A meta cloprid is a grub control one of many products for grub control that sticks around a little bit longer in the plant. But this would be the time to stop them if you've if you've had a problem with those over the years. So when you start seeing them dead on the driveway, wait a little bit, or is that about the right time to start putting them just a little bit when you know the very first ones again, we

want them to get all their eggs laid. You don't want a treat, especially with a product that's not going to stick around. You don't want a treat and then there's still June bugs out there flying around and laying eggs. We'd like to get that egg lay and done. So that's why I usually say toward the end of June, mid mid to late June is usually a pretty good time to do that. Now, every years different, so using

the calendar to predict insects as a little iffy for the years. Yeah, and then product another one in addition, tomate a clop dialogue dialogues is another one. I think. I don't know. Dialox isn't as common of insects sight and I don't know the label, but if it's labeled for use on the lawn for grubs, that would be fine. Yeah. Yeah, it's by advanced drug killer pluses. Okay, Yeah, sounds like it sounds like it'll work. Yeah, okay, skip. Thank you for your help.

All right, thank you. I appreciate that call. Let's go to pair Land. We're going to talk to Don. Good morning, Don, Good morning, how are you. I'm well? Thank you, that's good. That's good. I planted a rose busher last week in the lawn in my flower would bed, and I was wondering, how long do I need to wait before I put off my rose food on me. Usually I give plants, you know, at least a couple of weeks to get settled in and start growing. There's no rush, but there's also no harm being done to

go ahead and put it out. You're gonna put the rose food out in a wider area than just that little cylinder of soil that you had when you got the plant out of the pot, right, So you're gonna go a little wider than that in the area you treat, and those nutrients will be down in the soil and as the rose starts to send its roots out that they'll be available to it. You might start with a little light application now, maybe three weeks later, do another light application, just kind of gradually

feed it over time and encourage good, good rapid growth. Okay, Yeah, and don't don't forget the watering if it turns dry that Oh oh no, I've been water in an area the other day. Yeah. And yes, and also before to fertalize out, should I water the plant first, then put the food out? No, you put the you put you put the food out and wash it in with an irrigation that are scratched into the soil surface. If you're if you're able to do that, if you have

a bed around it like that. But just remember that that cylinder dries out fast. When I say cylinder, I mean the soil that the rose came with. That dries out fast because all the roots are there, They pump all the water out quick. So make sure and keep that moist. Don't overdo it, but keep that moist. And once the rose gets roots in the soil around it, then you don't have to worry about that. Okay, all right, all right, thank you, all right, mo hey,

thanks for the call. Appreciate that very much. We're going to run out to spring and talk to mo Hello, mo Hi, me. My neighbors are going around about plants. Okay. He went to alberghee by all kinds of cheese, nice throwing them out in the damn street, and I pull most of them back in on my property. Sounds like the hell you got some? Are they still alive? Yeah? Uh summer peace cheese. It says piece trees, lemon trees, apple trees. And one says, uh pair, oh my god. Okay, Well get him in the ground

as quick as you can. It's gonna be touching. Go if they were pulled out of the ground. It's gonna be a little touching go as to whether they know they're in buckets. They were thrown out in buckets. Yeah, he wouldn't bought buckets of trees. And then he didn't his wife didn't like them, so okay, and she didn't even like the tomato plants he bought, so I got those. All right, Well go for him, I mean, take care, just make sure and add him to your Christmas

list for all those nice free plants. Yeah, I say. And then he threw at this this uh ten fort something back of Stephanid goes on the ground. It's in a silver bag. Okay, oh nineteen two. Wow, it's a nitrified silver bag. That's that's like gold. Hang on to that. Hey, we're gonna we're gonna winder. He through seven of those bags away. Oh my gosh. All right, well don't I don't have any I don't have any words on that one. Hey, I gotta go. We're going. Yeah, I'm gonna save it and you can tell me

later on how to put it out. All right, Mo, we gotta go to break. Thanks for the call. I appreciate that. Sounds like you went into a gold mine. Well, you're listening to garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter, and we're here every Saturday from six to ten and every Sunday for six to ten, eight hours of garden Line each

weekend. There's no excuse to not be able to listen to some of that, right if you want to give us a call seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four, or you can say it this way two one two ktr H Josh will get you on the boards and when we come back from our break, you will be the first ones up. In the meantime, I just want to remind you two weeks from now, I'm gonna be out at the wild Birds Unlimited in Kingwood. That's Saturday, June tenth.

Saturday June tenth. I'll talk about it more next weekend, either from eleven thirty to one thirty, So I hope you'll kind of schedule your weekend around being able to come by and see me. And when you do, you're gonna see why we talk so highly of Walberg's Unlimbeth on this show a major storm. KTRH. Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to KTRH Garden Line with Scarre Rictord.

Just watch him as well. Good morning, great day outside, nice Sunday morning out. This is the last day of this weekend, meaning it's the last day of that opportunity to avoid paying your state tax on the water saving plants, soils, composts, devices like treher or sprinklers, drip irrigation hose, end timer and on on and on. So this is the time you want to get out there. It's kind of like having a little bit of

a sale. You don't have to pay that extra what is an eight point something percent or whatever that is. Uh, we're going to head out first to Spring Branch this morning and we're going to start with David. Hello David, good morning. So os mister Rictor on each your help. I have a u it just overnight came out. It was like a my para tree has a web web worms. I got just worms. I don't know what they're called. Where they have a web surrounding the part of the outer branch

that they're in. There's about two spots in my para trees and it's full of paris. Okay, you know what yeah, but I should do. Yeah, I've been seeing those breakout. I saw some on some wild mulberry that the birds had planted and they were starting to cover up with those. You got a couple of options. Peartree. How big is it? First of all, it's probably like about twelve years old, and it's probably like around tall. Okay, way way too high to reach, that's for sure.

Uh. You know, when you break up the webs wasp which are their number one food is caterpillars, they will start going in there and they'll

find them and they will start hauling them away. But what I would suggest gets some kind of a long pole if you can are a very hard stream of water to break up as much of the webbing as you can and then spray it with either a product containing BT which is a wormed a caterpillar disease, or a product containing spinosaid, which is an organic fermented product that's made from soil microbes. So both of those are organic products, and they both

of them work very well against caterpillar is feeding on your plant. And by the way, I can reach the web one on me like a ry ten feet tall, but I will I'll tell you if you're not squeamish and they're down that low. I probably just reach up in there and strip the webs out by hand and then squirt the squirt the leaves are feeding on because both of those products, they need to eat the product, So spray it on

the leaves and that that'll do it. BT, you're probably gonna need to spray it about every three days for a little while, just if in your new ones hatch out and so on, Spinosa. It soaks into the tissue and it lasts a little bit longer, so that that's kind of part of the decision. I guess, okay, I certainly will. All right, Well, thank you so much. I appreciate your call. I hope that is very very helpful for you. Let's head now out to Austin County and

we're gonna talk to Doris this morning. Good morning, Doris, good morning. How are you. I'm doing well? Thank you good. I have to tomato bushes that have huge meatoes on them, but they don't seem to want to ripen. Okay, well, they will just give them some time. Once they hit they hit a mature stage. But they're still green, but they've hit the maturity stage. And after that they start that ripening process.

If they're all the way to the mature stage, you can pick them, bring them inside, set them on the counter, and they will finish ripening. And some people do that when they're worried about mocking birds, and some are squirrels coming in and ruining the show. But otherwise, just leave them on the on the plant. They will ripen. They won't just stay green forever. Unless it's one of the very very few varieties that actually is a green tomato. I don't think it is. Yeah, I don't think

so either, And I don't know why they even have those. Well that that would be confusing, wouldn't it. Yeah, just be a little patient with it, you know, if I knew, I knew that it was mature. You know, when you say full size, it's getting close to them, sure there, but when very big, okay, well, when it starts to blush a little bit, if you want again for the birds and squirrels, you can go ahead and bring it in, let it ripen on the counter, and they will taste a very good, very very good.

Okay, thank you so very much, you bet, and thank you for the call too. If you have not tried the arbor gates one two three punch the one two three completely easy system. It's an organic system. So what they give you is they have a food that feeds anything with roots, and that would be the four four three. It is going to have organic matter. It's got to have all the nutrients, the trace minerals, the main ones we look for as well the main nutrients, a slow release,

it's a quality product. The second would be the organic soil complete. Now that is made with certainly with composts and also large particle sand and expanded shale. So when you work that into a bed, the organic matter is going to continue to decompose and head toward humus, but you have that shale component that you've added in which is helping to hold the soil, keep it

open. And then finally, the organic compost complete, high quality. It's two different types of composts blended together right before they bag it, so it's got a lot of beneficial microbe diversity in it. It's well balanced too, with the micronutrients macronutrients you need like nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, but also the micronutrients that you need. So the organic one two three completely easy Blend from Arbourgate. You can go to Arbourgate dot com and learn more about it

and learn more about Arburgate Garden Center as well. I want to talk about a place that is important to me. I mean it's a it's a personal thing, and that's Star of Hope Mission. My wife and I volunteered for Star way back years ago when we lived in the in the Houston area, and it's it makes a difference in people's lives. We see homeless people around on all the time and how do how do you help? How do you put that compassion to work? Well, you do it through Star of Hope.

Now write down this email Shmission dot org. When you give to Star of Hope, just two dollars and eighty cents is a meal that's like a cup of coffee. They serve more than six thousand of those meals a week. But people that move in with Star of Hope, they have one year to go through the trainings for education, how to get a job, how to deal with substance abuse. It doesn't cost them a penny. They even

provide clothing for them and help them go out and get a job. You know, if you fall on hard times, maybe you want to get a job, but you don't have a car to get around to do it, or to show up regularly to work. Star of Hope changes lives. It's money well spent. It makes a difference. Put your compassion to work. Go to Star of Hope Shmission dot org. We're gonna take a break it

is. Let's see. I give you a phone number. We've got some room on the boards if you'd like to call in seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Josh will get you on the board, and Carolyn and Spring Branch we will be with you first thing when we come back of the seas. Good morning on a great day for gardening. This is called Chamber of Commerce. Weather that we're enjoying out there. So I hope you have a little opportunity this afternoon get out and do a little bit of

gardening yourself. That's it's the most therapeutic thing that I can think of. And that's that's not just my opinion. I mean, there's so much research to talk about the benefits of gardening on our health. Certainly physical benefits you're getting out, staying active and so on, got incredible benefits for mental benefits as well, for example, fighting depression with kids ADHD. They're actually looked at kids exposure to plants and being out in nature and things like that.

Done research studies and found that being around plants and that way hasn't an impact on the ADHD or add that a child would have. So gosh, how many reasons do we need to get out and have a good time in the garden. Let's head out to spring Branch. First thing here and we are going to visit with Carolyn this morning. Good morning, Carolyn, Good morning.

So Hi, step I just wanted to thank you. I was listening to Central Texas Gardener on Channel eight yesterday morning and you were on there and you were talking about the beneficial insects and you were talking about how the apids of the insects eat them as wait, the eggs of insects the larva.

I think, yeah, I'll get it right in a minute. Yeah, yeah, Anyway, it was really good and I especially like the idea of, uh, putting tops of plants around your garden that attract these you know, good intakes right that they can you know, have lots of time to make little ones and eat the apits, right, Yeah, that's true. Yeah, Angela Agender, I think it calls out an insectory garden. I've seen some really cool stuff she's put on the web about that and when you

when you, if you build it, they will come. How about that. That's a good way to put it. I didn't know. I didn't know Central Texas Gardener was running those. That's a for those around here who don't aren't familiar that that is a TV show on the public TV in Austin, Texas. But it comes on a thirty in the morning Saturday mornings. Interesting, Okay, I recorded. I guess, I guess I've become a rerun so whatever that whatever, goo, I appreciate. I appreciate the call.

Thank you so much. Really, you're welcome and a good day you bet bye bye bye. You take care. If you are looking for a quality soil mix, you're you're you don't need to look further than Heirloom Soils of Texas. And by the way, that's the website Airloom Soils of Texas dot com. I don't care what kind of soil you need. Do you need a ROAs soil? Do you need a vegetable vegetable and herb Blend. I was talking about that earlier. Do you need a potting mix to go

into containers? They've got it all. Now. You can go online to Airloom Soils of Texas dot com. They've got an Heirloom Soils qubic yard calculator where you can you can say things like, okay, how many wheelbarrows is in a qubic yard? You know? Or I've got x inches or feet by x inches or feet by and how much composts do I need? And boom, it tells you right then, right then, and there. They've

got those super sacks. They can bring certain ones of their mixes right out to you in a big bag, set it on the on the driveway, and it holds a cubic yard. And that's a super clean and easy way to go about it. But airlin Sels of Texas you're not going to go wrong. Super quality, super quality. We're going to head out to a tes casita right now and talk to Carol. Hello, Carol, Hello, good morning, good morning. I have a question about no SEM mosquitoes.

Do you have any solutions to get right of them? Well, I'm I always think of no sms as something you see that you get down on the coast in some areas that now, the mosquitoes themselves are quite a problem, and these are not These are not regular mosquito. Okay, these are little, tiny biting bugs. Oh. I don't have a solution for them. Maybe somebody has an idea on that. But you know, they're not on your plants where you spray your plants, or at least you don't know where

they are when they're resting on plants somewhere. I guess do the repellents not work? The mosquito repellents? Last year I was told to put bathron on my lawn, which I did. It didn't help a bit. Try everything I've read about and heard about, but I can't find anything, and they just take they take me over when I go outside. Yeah, I'm gonna look into that a little bit. That's outside the horticulture world, so I am definitely no expert on that at all, But I'll see if I can

find anything. But yeah, the bifan thrin is a good persistent insecticide in the lawn, but I doubt that no cms are coming from there. Maybe wrong about that. I've been told they're real bad about Azellua bushes and I have a lot of azala bushes. Okay, Well I'll look into it, Carol, thank you for the call. Sorry, we can give you a good solution on that. But I'll see if I can find that. Okay, I have one of the quick questions. Have a lot of high biscus

plants, and I have one. The foliage is gorgeous, but it will not bloom. I feed it just like I do all my others, but no blooms. Well, be careful that you're not overdoing the night hitrogen on it. You need a good balanced food and you know the hibiscus food. And yesterday I was giving out some of the Nelson products out at wild Birds and they have a really nice quality of hibiscus food. But when you look at the numbers, it's not like overdoing the nitrogen on it. That would

be one thing. Good sunlight, of course, is important. Lots of sunlight is important. I don't know what else would keep it from blooming. Maybe we got some hibiscus experts that could call in and give us a thought on that one. But anyway you get the idea of it, Just be patient and watch that high nitrogen. All right. Thank you for your help. All right, Carol, thank you so much for the call. You're

listening to garden line. All right, let's see, I'm your host, Skip Richter in our number seven one three, two, one two five eight seven four two one two fifty eight seventy four. Perhaps you used a pre emergent herbicide in the spring, which is a good idea for all the warm season weeds, but those don't last forever, and so we hit this season

and it's time to consider a second application as a follow up. So as those products break down in the soil, which they will, then you do another application to continue that protection against weed seed germination on into the summertime, and that would be a product called barricade. Barricade is a nitro foss product. It controls both broad leaf and grassy weeds, but it's not going to kill the weeds you already have growing in your lawn. What it's going to

do is prevent any weed seeds from germinating. So if you're still struggling to get that lawn back dense again where it chokes out most of those weeds, this is a time where in the meantime, using a barricade a product will work. You can find it at Plants and Things and Brunham DND Feed and Tamba has barricade and K and M a side in Kingwood another place where you

can find barricade from nitrofoss. If you happen to live up in the area around Magnolia, Tomballs Magnolia area up that way, Spring Creek Feed is a wonderful opportunity to go and find the products we talk about and friendly staff, courteous staff, and all of the other things that you might need, like your pet foods, your livestock foods, wildlife feed. They even have a grooming center. You can go to Spring Creek Feed. They're located in Magnolia

on FM twenty nine seventy eight. So up in Magnolia FM twenty nine seventy eight Spring Creek Feed and you can buy all of that kind of stuff. If you happen to be in FA or four h or if you're a military, if you're a senior citizen, there's discounts for all of it, all of you and if you don't see what you need, they will special order products for you. So the things we talk about on garden Line or there and anything you need just ask them and they will try to special order it

for you as well. I think we'll head back out to the phone right now, and we are going to go to Baytown and talk to Robert. Hello, Robert. Okay, I have his wife. Oh, we have hello, Robert's wife. Okay. We have a spot in the front garden that okay, rob us here. We have a funglish problem. We had a satsuma, it was infected by it. We cut it down, and now we planted a peach tree and sure enough he got it again. What can we do well, ma'am, that's a little too generic for me to

be able to tell you, because I'm still not clear there. I cannot think of a disease that attacks satsuma's and peaches, so you may have more than one thing going on. Could you take some pictures of that tree from a distance so I can see the whole tree, and then close up of leaves or anything that when you say you have a fungus on it, show me a good, well focused picture that I can put you on hold and Josh can get you an email where you can send that in and I'll be

happy to take a look. Okay, hold on Herebert he can tell you a little bit more. Okay, Um, we know we have brown rock because when the when the pies did come, only as they started rick on, they started rock with yes with fungicide, and the bark has some splits in it. Okay, yeah, the splits in the bark could be natural as the tree gets older. But if they're on the southwest side of the tree and they're very deep fissures in the bark down even to the inner wood,

that is damage from cold in the wintertime. It strikes the southwest side of the tree. So as far as the brown rock, you have to spray preventively your fungicide. Don't wait too you see it, You just have to be out there ahead of it, because it will ruin the show and most importantly any rotten fruit. Pick it up. If anything is left dried hanging on the tree, that mummy is full of spores to infect again later.

So cut those out, do that sanitation and lower your problems with the brown Right, you want to eradicate it, but at least you won't be as bad. It won't be as bad if we get that email worse pictures. All right, I'm gonna put you on hole right now. Hang on and let's see we will get Josh to take care of that. Um, let's see, we're going to head out to League City and talk to Barbara. Hello, Barbara, good morning, Yip, so good to hear your

voice. Question. I came home after being gone for a few weeks, and my tomato plants are covered in holes, tiny holes. They look like pincushions. Okay, okay, and I can't find any critters on it. All right. The holes are too small to be snails. They're all the way up to the top. I know exactly what you're talking about. That's a little beetle doing that. And if there's still enough foliage left to say,

find a product with spinosaid. It's SPI n O s A D. It soaks into the tissues, so you know, day or two after you spray, a beetle shows up and eats a leaf and it kills it. But I'm having to head to break here. We got about a minute left. But did that. I just got a pen. Could you spell that again for me? You bet? SPI n O s A D spinosa Okay, great, thank you you're my hero. Well, hey, well that was easy, Thank you very much. I appreciate the call. There,

Barbara, you're listening to the Garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Ricter, and the phone number is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. We're going to head to news now, but if you will give Josh a call, he'll get you on the boards. Nikki, did you know that spinosa is made by fermenting a soil? Micro isn't that interesting? That is fascinating. And see you start talking about a little beetle and my mind goes right to ringo. Yeah, that's funny. I'm kind of a

horticultural Cliff Claven. Also, they found it on the islands in the Caribbean and brewery waste or no sugarcane something waste. So yeah, and here we are with a wonderful organic product. Wow. Sometimes you want to go all right, gosh, I get it, Cliff Claven. Those of you who have never watched Cheers, you missed a lot number one. Cliff Claven, he's a no at all. He knows everything. Well, let's put it this way. He thinks he knows everything. But thank you for the music.

Oh gosh, best Meilvan Ever. You're listening to Garden line. I'm your host, Skipwrecter, not Cliff Claven, although I could at times be a horticultural Cliff Clayvin some one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one two five eight seven four. Let's head to northwest Houston and we're going to talk to Paula. Hello, Paula, good morning.

I have an answer for that lady who's plagued with mosquitoes. She said, she may not plagued with no seems a little different creature, but oh I thought mosquitoes. Yeah, well, what's your mosquito? Oh I'm sorry, I'm just understood. That's okay. We kind of bounced around with both of those. What's your mosquito remedy? Well, I'm retired, so I Gordon every day. In fact, I'm standing out here in my yard right now. I've been dead hitting flowers and like I said, she may not want

to hear it's this, but I'm literally covered from head to toe. I've got a sunhet on, I've got a mosquito net under the sunhet. I've got a T shirt on. I've got a light weight long sleep men shirt over that. I've got lightweight, long pants, which and I'm wearing socks and with my Gordon clogs clogs. It's so funny because I see the mosquitoes like buzzing around my head. Yeah, of course they can't get to me because I got the mosquito net on, which is I think ninety nine cents

at wal Mart or something, so it's back of a deal. Well, very good. Sounds like you're you're bundled up. Well that's good. Protect you that lu stuff. Protect your skin too, which you know the effect of the sun's rays at up over time, so it's always a good idea to protect your And then in the summertime, I have um coal packs that I put I've got one that goes underneath my hat, and then I've got

that goes around my neck, so it all works. You sound like I'm picturing like a polatoon of army people getting ready to go to battle, and you're just heading outside the garden. I know, but it's a battle with these mosquitoes, right yeah, all right, well, hey, thanks for okay, thanks for that tip, Paul, I appreciate shot the call. Yeah, the phone number seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four and by the way, I, Carol, I've during break I kind of

checked this out, and I always go to research based websites. This is information I found was from the University of Florida Extension and they basically there's not a lot you can do for no sums. They do say that DEET should be helpful, but they don't really throw all their eggs into one basket on the DEET either. I think probably, you know, other than just nuke in the yard all the time, which is not really going to help. I don't think there seems to be a really good noseum control out here.

And I've again been perusing all these things trying to figure them out for those of you who don't know what they are, which I was only vaguely familiar with them. They're basically a little like a little tiny flying midge. A midge is something when we say tiny, imagine let's see what would be this tiny almost the size of like a poppy seed. But we're you know, but the size of the end of a pencil, the lead, the width of that. That's about how big these things are. And that's why there

are no SEMs. You can't see them. Kind of gross. I could read to you what they do and why they cause a problem. But I don't know, lunch is coming up for too long and I don't want to do that to you. Yeah, we need a good no sum remedy. It sounds like if you are, if you're interested in finding out better ways to have success with your shrubs and your trees, maybe you're doing a hedge. I want to give a couple of little tidbits of advice that I think

may be hopeful for you. If you want a hedge to be a screen. Number one, you want to be an evergreen so that it's also a screen in the summertime, as I mean in the wintertime as well as in

the summertime. When those hedges, you want to get them up high enough wherever you sit or stand or whatever, you don't see what it is across the hedge that you don't want to see, or vice versa people seeing in You know, maybe you got the neighbor who's got the car up on blocks in the backyard or likes to sunbathe in his speedo and his speedo years were about three decades ago. Well, you know, you need to get some

type of a good hedge, but just high enough. It doesn't have to be twenty feet high unless you're trying to block a two story building or something or the view of it, but high enough to do that. You always want to keep the hedge where all parts of the hedge get sunlight top to bottom. So depending on the orientation of the hedge and the traveling of the sun through the sky, just think keep that in mind. I always say keep the top of the hedge a little narrower than the base because all these

hedge plants try to grow top heavy. The top wants to expand out and then you end up with an umbrella of foliage and down below it's all bare. And once you lose the foliage down low, it is very hard to get it back short of just cutting the hedge way way back and kind of starting over on rebuilding it. So always keep the top narrower, so most of your pruning is going to be up at the higher parts of the hedge.

It's not going to be as much to do down low. But where it gets good sunlight, you get good growth, you get good density. So that's just a tip. If you're interested in having a success with a hedge, you know when you're when you're planting trees and taking care of trees, the first season is critical. Number one. Planting correctly is critical.

And I'm not going to go into all of that right now, but that first summer season is a tough one because that tree had it grown in the spot where you've now planted that tree, had it come up from a seed and grown there, there'd be roots all over the place, reaching way out in all directions. But now you've bought it with this little cylinder of roots all wrapped around and you put it in the ground, so it takes time for those roots to get out. First critical summer is really important. You

know. I talked about using a sprinkler that goes around the tree and that provides and call them tree huggers, provides water right there. It can provide water right there at the base, or water or a bigger area. You can also put a little berm of soil around a tree, a little wider than the root ball, just for the early on, making sure that you know, you fill the berm up and it allsokes straight down in there. That's also a good strategy because you got to keep that dried. It pumps

dry really fast. Once roots start to get in. Then regular watering is the secret through the rest of that first year, making sure you support those roots. So it's one thing that keeps the tree alive, it's another thing to get it growing. And if it's a shade tree or a tree like that in your yard, you want it to be big enough to hang a

hammock in as fast as possible, So that means good early growth. And it's important to fertilize, but I think people don't realize that, and it comes to supporting fast growth, watering probably plays a bigger role than fertilizing, as important as fertilizing is, and so adequate watering is really important if you want to do that. Hey, you're listening to garden Line. We're about to take a break our phone number seven one three two one two fifty eight

seventy four. If you want to give Josh Cook, get on the boards, and those of you who are on the board right now, we'll be getting back to you first when we come back from break. Look they do look ye good, A good Sunday morning. I hope you are enjoying the day as much as I am. Already suns out Guy's blue really looks good out there. Good day to get out and do some gardening. It's also good day to call into garden Line the phone number seven one three two one

two fifty eight seventy four. And we are going to head out to Katie now and talk to John. Hello. John, Hey, how are you doing. I'm well, thank you. So a few years ago a bird deposited mulberry seed. Mulberry tree is growing about four feet away from my house and the utilities man, and I'm wanting to cut it down because it's it's getting fairly tall. Wife says, not so much. Keep it. Let the birds eat the berries. What's your thoughts? All right? John,

I gotta tell you a gardening advice on garden Line is free. Marriage advice is one hundred dollars an hour. So I don't know if you want to go. I don't know if I want to wade into the big middle of that. Seriously, I'm not a fan of mulberries because of the reason.

You you know, birds eat the seed and they drop them everywhere, and they come up in the fence lines and everywhere the bird stops, you know, they just land on something and with one quick flick the tail, they've planted and fertilized a mulberry seed, so I would I wouldn't keep them, but everybody, it's your yard. You're you're in your wife's yard, and so it's up to you guys as to whether you want to keep it or not. But just know that you're just gonna have more of that going on.

Mulberries can be a little messy and the birds end up getting most of them. I've had a mulberry tree. My neighbor had it across the fence in the backyard and it would load up and I always thought, yeah, the branch is hanging over this way, I may have me a mulberry. But the birds came in and cleaned them out. So the one reason you'd have it seems like the birds are kind of taking that away from us.

I don't know if that helped. One question I did have is regards to regards to the root system and the utilities, meant, is there any possibility of damage there or being really close to the foundation for house as well? You said it was four feet away. Correct, It's not gonna damage your

foundation like it would damage going underneath the sidewalk and lifting it up. But what it will do is there'll be a proliferation of mulberry roots there around the house, because that's a cool, moist area, especially if you don't have gutters in the house. But it's still and they pump the soil dry and so our soils shrink and swell, and that's how we get a damage to the foundation. And the tree roots there are part of the problem there.

I think four feet from the house is way too close. You're gonna have limbs rubbing the eaves, rubbing the shingles and so on. Yeah, if ever mine, I would get rid of it. Okay, appreciate it, all right, thank you for appreciate that. If you live up in the Montgomery area. By the way, this is the weekend where we have tax free purchases on plants, soil products, and so on. So if you're up in that area, the place you need to head right now is A

and A Plants and produce. A and A Plants is on the east side of Montgomery, so all of Lake conra Conro itself and up and down Highway forty five. Even A and A Plants is going to be an awesome source. They've got all the kinds of things we talk about on garden line, the fertilizers, the mulches and composts and things like that, awesome selection of

plants, lots and lots of plants. And one of my favorite things at A and A is the bling that comes with it, you know, the chiminy, the metal art, the flags to put out in the yard, all the different decorations, the patio furniture and so on. So why are you there pick up some of that as well, But don't forget Today is the last day for tax free so if you're up in the A and A

area, you need to check them out. This is your chance to make those kinds of purchases that help save soil moisture, helps save water, additional watering because they're more efficient. That would be including composts and including malts and so on. A and A plants and produce up there in the Montgomery just on the east side of Montgomery on Highway forty five, let's head over to Kingwood and we're gonna talk to Kenneth. Hello, Kenneth, good morning,

How are you doing. I'm well, thank you all right? I see what I did? I just had or area. They didn't put down any composts. Okay, is it that's assary quick down or is it just a good idea? Well, those are two practices that are both helpful. So if if you if you were to put a just an error, let's say you just do the aeration, that is beneficial. If you just did the

compost, that would be beneficial. But when you do them both, now you have the oxygen down in the soil and you're getting some of that organic matter down in those holes, so that helps hold the hold open. That still helps with the oxygen, but it's like you're you're mixing slowly over time organic materials down into enrich your soil. So to put them together is better than either alone, but either alone is still good. Now I've got plays all down below, we've got a little the top. Okay, yeah,

but would you get into the clay? Yeah, yeah, that's it's hard. It may be hard to get down that. You know, a narration is probably gonna go about four inches deep, and so that that may not be deep enough to get into the clay. But still it's improving the soil that you have. And we always talk about adding compost to the soil. Well, this is this is how you do it in an existing in an existing place. Hey, Kenneth, I appreciate the question very much. Thank

you, and don't forget. I'm going to be out there at while Bird's unlimited Kingwood on Saturday, June tenth, two saturdays from yesterday. We'll talk about that more next weekend if you If you need to do some lawn fertilizing for the summer, something's gonna last all summer. Nelson Plant Food Slow and

Easy twenty two two ten excellent ratio for the summertime it gradually releases. I won't nerd out on the chemistry of why that is, but just know that it gradually releases those nutrients over time twelve weeks or so, maybe even longer. That it is going to feed your along all the way to fall, so you're good until fall, especially when you return your clippings, which everybody

should do as well. If you'd like something that's a faster release, Bruce's Brew eighteen forty nine, that's fine, Just don't overdo those in the summer. You don't want to push a lot of nitrogen at one time because it just makes for more mowing. But Bruce's Brew probably overall is one of my favorite, the turf star line that Nelson's has. I hope you'll check it out. They're available a lot of places. By the way, I just

talked about Ana, they carry Nelson's. It's a place you can get it right there, as well as many of our sponsors of the show that we talk about. We are fortunate to live in a place where there are so many great garden centers this Houston. You go north, southeast, west, all over the plate Central, there's a garden center near you. I mean, we got Ace Hardwares all over for supplies, and we got feed Stars all over that I have great supplies as well. It's just it's really a

good place. I've lived in cities before that maybe there was one notable garden center not here. We got a lot of notable garden centers, So I

hope you'll take advantage of that. Just remember I'm a broken record on this, but today's the last day for the tax free weekend for plants, for compost, for Mulcha's, for water saving devices, a hos in timer, a drip irrigation system, tree hugger, sprinklers, you know, anything that's going to be part of the growing and watering or your plants that will help. This is the weekend to save the tax money off of those, so I hope you take advantage of that. Well, you're listening to garden Line.

We're going to be back for our last hour in just a moment. The number is seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Josh, you'll get you on the boards and we will look forward to talking to you about what your question is regarding gardening. KTRH Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to KTRH Garden Line with Skip Director,

so just watch him as well. Good Sunday morning to you on a beautiful day. Man, is beautiful outside this afternoon. Good time to get out there and do some gardening. And remember that plants this weekend end, soil and compost and other water saving devices are all tax free. And if you'd like to add onto that already great news, I want to suggest that you consider purchasing a tree today from Verdant Tree Farm. And here's why they're

having a Memorial Day sale twenty five percent off limited time only. It ends on May twenty ninth, that's tomorrow, twenty five percent off on all trees and all palms, and boys, summers are great time to plant a palm tree, I mean actually palm trees. It's better to plant them in the summer than it is even in the winter. And the folks at Verdant they've got all kinds of palms, the Madule palm, Sylvester, the Florida sable, the Mule palm, which is a really unique hybrid palm, Canary Island

windmill, you name it. They are the palm source and they have a lot of other kinds of trees, but palms are a specialty with those folks. If you can find the Verdant farm, the original one was out on Barker, Cyprus on the west side. Down in pair Land, they have one on West Broadway fifty nine or nine West Broadway, and then in the heights kind of a center of town three thirty seven Yell Street at ten,

lots of places. Just go on line to Verdant Tree Farm dot com and you can find where the nearest windou is and exactly how to get there and maybe learn a little bit more about some of this. This deal going on that is a twenty five percent off is huge. That is a huge, huge sale, pretty cool stuff. I was in the garden the other day

doing a little bit of work on some of my experiments. Now I want to say out loud, real crystal clear here, I'm not recommending that you plant what I'm about to tell you, but I know you everybays wondering what on earth are you gonna say. I have been working to come up with a way to grow rhubarb down here now years ago. Now you probably know I'm not from the Midwest that didn't grow up eating rhubarb or whatever part of the country that rhubarb typically grows in. But a number of years ago I

did a little experiment where we started rhubarb from seed in the fall. I actually planted it in August and little containers where we could keep it moderately cool, and then we put it out in the garden late September October, I believe, and it grew all winter, and then in the spring we got a good harvest from it. Now, if we have a very bitter cold, it will freeze rubar back, but it's by and large moderately hardy, but we took it through and in the spring, big tall, beautiful stalks.

When summer came, they started to rot and fall apart. And I mean that all the soil. This was at an organic farm in Austin that I used to work with. And so if you think about it, when strawberries you're ripening here, which is what February now, not February unless you got him undercover, March, April, maybe going into the early part to May. That's when the rhubarb was available. So if you've ever heard of strawberry rhubarb pie, then you know what I'm talking about. And you can

grow it here. It's just a overwinter biennial. It would be like you're planting a broccoli plant. You plant it in the fall, and of course well that you're harvesting before the even the Christmas time, but you get the idea. It's a cool season plant. So what I'm doing this summer is I'm trying seedlings. I found a source of some people that collect rubarb seeds, different strains from different parts of the country, and so I just bought

the seeds, put them out. We're watching them to see how long they're going to hold up. I planted them way way too late. In fact, it was spring before I got out there. I mean late winter before I got out there and plant them. But they look good. Now I'm going to watch them and see if any of them hold up. And if they do, hey, we're saving seed from that. And we're gonna try it again. Now, don't get your chops set for the great New Texas version of rhubarb. If we ever developed up it, it would be a

long time coming. And I suspect that genetically there probably isn't a heat tolerant enough rhubarb in the gene pool to grow down here. But we're going to try it. But if you miss rhubarb, you're a transplant from somewhere else and you just miss rhubarb. You can grow rhubarb in Texas in that winter fall through spring technique that I just was talking about a minute ago. If you happen to live out in Kingwood, you are rich with garden centers.

You've got Warren Southern Gardens on North Park Drive. You've got Kingwood Garden Center on Stone Hollow Drive. Both of them are open seven days a week. And here goes my broken record again. Today this is the last day of tax free purchases for plants, for compost or for soil. Now they carry everything, and both of these garden centers they carry everything. We talk about

regarding fertilizers. They have they have a filling station for the Nelson plant food in microlife jugs, so so if you buy one of those in the little plastic canisters, you can take those in and refill them. It's a little bit less expensive and you avoid adding more plastic to the waste stream, which we have heard and heard how we don't want to be doing that. They're going to carry every kind of plant that you can imagine, herbs and veggies

and citrus fruit. And by the way, now is a great time to get out there and plant some citrus roses and annuals and perennials and so on. They're really good at designing. And I was at at Warren's a good while back, and I was just really impressed with the planters that they had created a beautiful container, maybe a tall vaselight container, and they had plants spilling over the sides and going up through the middle. It's just that design

element. So you can go you can go there and just purchase those, or you can go there and kind of look and go okay, okay, I see what they did there, take a picture of it, buy some plants, and go home and do it yourself. I mean, if you're a do it yourselfer, which most gardeners aren't, you can also do it that way. But take advantage this weekend. Now's a good time to go out and purchase Warren's Southern Gardens on North Park, Kingwood Garden Center on Stonehallow

Drive. Those are really really fun places to go. See good gift shops too. By the way, if I was talking about the rue barb and rue barb in the vegetable garden, we always want to try to grow things that aren't from here, right. I don't know how many times people have attempted things like for scythia or lilac bushes because maybe they grew up in a place where those plants were prevalent and did so well and they have those memories. I always tell people if they want a lilac, the best thing they

can do is plant a crape myrtle and spray with perfume. That'll get that'll get you pretty close. I'm sorry, but that's as close as we can get to a Lilac there is. Our phone number is seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Well, good Sunday morning, beautiful weather, Chamber of Commentation. May leaders should cook calling it back start coming gardening weather, because that's really

what it means. Do you live up north toward Navasota, that whole region we're talking about collistation in Brian Navasota, all the small towns out in the countryside, beautiful to drive through by the way, if you'd like to do that one afternoon. But we're talking about Ron's Prairie, Richards Anderson, beat Eyes. Iola. Doesn't sound like fun, it is, it really is. You're fortunate to have a place called Grimes County Feeding Farm Riot out there,

two miles west of FM two forty four on State Highway thirty. Now, the folks at Grimes County Feed have done an excellent job of stocking up on these fertilizers that we talk about. They have a lot of other supplies there as well. But earlier I was talking about out slow and easy, you know from Nelson's. They've got that out there. They've got the products like the barricade from nitro files and then they have also some microlife fertilizer and

now I say some, it's quite a bit of it in stock. They keep all that in stock. It's everything you would expect of a feed store, all the supplies that we know feed stores carry, like quality dogging cat foods, but even things like pond supplies, maybe an aquatic herbicide or fish food or fish stocking. They're involved with fish stocking twice each quarter. So check out Grimes County Feed again. They're on Highway thirty two miles west of

FM two forty four. Mentioning the Microlife, I wanted to just talk about that just for a little bit. I have been. I've used Microlife in my yard for a number of years now. It's a product I love. The release of it is gradual over time, which you would expect from a slow released product. Right now, I would say the combination to keep in mind would be the six two four, which is the green bag, and the Humates plus which is the purple bag for fur to Humates plus is concentrated

compost in a bag. Because that's about what it amounts to. You get all the nutrients you get. The six two four doesn't just have nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. It's an organic furtlizer. It's got beneficial microbes, It's got all of the trace elements that we need so much to put back into our soil. If you want to find microlife pretty much ever where you hear us talk about here on guarden Line, but you can go online to Microlife

Fertilizer dot com and they'll take you right to it. I go back to the phones now, by the way, the number if you'd like to call seven one, three, two and two fifty eight seventy four, and we are going to go to bel Air and visit with Carolyn. Hello, Carolyn, good morning. How are you doing. I'm well today, thank you. I have an east facing house. It's not a big house right now. I would like to add some pretty foliage, but especially some color.

But there's one hang up. I cannot get out and do a lot of maintenance. Okay, you know, I'm just not able to. I want to know something about lantana that's been recommended to me and something that doesn't grow very tall, because I have japonica next to the wall of the house and I keep it at about three and a half feet, okay, So I want something that would be in front of that that would not be taller than that. I'd like something around two two and a half feet. Okay.

Well, lantenna would be a good choice, but you got to make sure when you go out and buy your lantenna that you're getting a dwarf type. Lantana can get you know, shoulder high some types of it, but there are are some types that hardly get a foot high. I mean they're very small, and so you would purchase them. They bloom a lot and if do you think it may be about six hours of sun there, probably okay, then I think lantenna would do maybe not quite that much, maybe not

quite okay, Well, lantenna would be a good choice. Goussion. You know, there's so many there's so many plants that I just don't know where to begin in terms of recommending them. I think that the perennial hibiscus would look pretty good there. Now it's just going to be a summer bloomer and not carry you on. But there's some very compact types of it as well. And once again, if you bought a perennial hibiscus, make sure and gets one that's very tall. In fact, it maybe a little tall for

what you were describing in that area. I may, I may pull back, but I just love that. I love that plant. A lot I had one years ago that had yelt bright yellow bloom with a deep orange throat. Okay, well with the size of a dinner plate. Oh my gosh, Well that's amazing that that is very unusual to have that color combination in that size on a plant. Lots of good, lots of good opportunities to find different things to go in the area. Certainly there's a lot of annuals.

I love Angelonia. I was talking about the Salvia nemu rosa meadow sage is what it's called beautiful plants. They're only going to get the spikes on those are only going to get about a foot part and a half high, and it does a good job and it'll stick around for you. The anything that's that's a perennial. You were mentioning not being out to just work all the time in the garden. Uh, your plan at once you're kind of done with it, maybe occasionally you would share it back a little bit to

get some more blooms, but those will be a couple of options. But good on good, I'm sorry interrupted, No, go ahead say it again. Did you say salvia Salvia nemor rosa? Just in fact, you could tell them Salvia namerosa or you could just say where's your meadow sage and they could take you to it and it lots of color options and it's really beautiful. I've been very impressed with that plant. But you know, picking you one plant or two plants for a spot is like you sent me to the

mall with a credit card and say buy me some clothes. You know I would be I would be at a loss to know what to get, right. So the same thing is true when it's that wide open on plants. But go to a good quality garden center one of our mom and pops we talk about, they are going to have ten good options for that area, if not more. Okay, the Southwest Fertilizer carry plants. They do carry some plants out front. Southwest Fertilizer has as you as you come in to

the store through the chain that kind of fencing. There's some plants that are seasonal that are behind there. And I think you can find something there too. You might check out see if they have some of them. I remember seeing some there too. Okay, okay, So I appreciate there your information so much. Thank you. All right, thank you for the call, Carolyn. I appreciate that. Let's head out now and we're going to talk

to Mike. Good morning, Mike, good morning. Real quick, about five years ago, had a couple of pine trees about fifteen feet apart, taking out ground down the stumps. Now we're starting to get depressions where they used to be, and I think it's the roots. I dug up some dirt and I dug out some roots that were paper They were thick, like eight inch roots, but they were paper thin and full of water. So I had a feeling they're smart to last. What's the smartest way to do

it besides just pouring dirt in it? Well, yeah, there, that's kind of the way to do it. You don't use a compost or malt, because those are going to go the same direction that your roots went when the plant was dead. Now you got organic matter that's just going to go away as it imposes. So use something with some stability to it, and that would be a soil, a top soil type product, and top soil

or field dirt. Well, when I hear the word field dirt, uh, my warning signals go up because a lot of stuff gets sold that's not quality because it's just used to create a mound to put a house pad on or something. So just look at it, take a look and feel it. You know, is this a quality dirt or is this just a bunch of clay. If it's red, don't don't get that. Don't get the

red field dirt kind of stuff. Because I dug down about three or four feet and I had some big o eight inch roots going straight down still. Oh yeah, I just wasn't gonna dig. I wasn't gonna dig to China. Well, you don't have to worry about those going straight down. If you've dug down a little bit like that, that's good. Yeah. Pine trees have a tap root and they can a big tap root that goes down in the ground helps anchor them. Hopefully that'll get you off to a good

start there, Mike. Okay, Yeah, I just I was hoping there was a smarter way and I had, you know, I was just hoping anyway, Thank you very much. I listened to you all the time. Well, I appreciate you listening. Thank you very much. If you want to give a quick green up to your lawn, you ought to consider the hash to grow twelve for eight. That's a beautiful ratio. Twelve four eight. That's the one where I was talking about a three one two kind of

ratio is excellent. Now this is a this is a lawn food supplement and it's got the Medina soil activator in it, and it's got the humate liquid humus in it as well. You hook it up to hos in sprayer to a little quart sized jar. You can buy bigger ones, but I use the quart size and you just spray it on the lawn. It takes about ten minutes to treat an average lawn. But because you're putting them out on a liquid there, you're going to get a quicker response. It's going to

be a very nice quick response. It'll stimulate the soil organisms that happens when we add things like a humus to the soil. I'd say do it about four times per growing season. But if you just want to get a quick start right now, your lawn's kind of struggling has to grow twelve for eight lawn food from Medina Act products. It would be a good choice. I'm gonna go out and we'll talk to Paul and Missouri City. Now, Paul, are you going to put me on the spot? Well, no,

this is an easy one for you. Okay. Um, yeah, good morning, skip, good morning. Yeah. I have a I think what's called a cannus plant that has large leaves and flour on topic. I've seen it in red, yellow, and orange. But um, you know, they tend to spread as they grow, and and I want to I want to put them in the front, but I want to build a barricade. I want to stop the prolific spread of them. Okay, So, how I guess my question is how deep do I need to go down to keep

that root system, you know, within a barricade. That's a good question. Most of the time when I see canter roots there in the top six inches of soil. Now, I don't think they're going to go deeper than that. I guess I could be wrong. But you know another what I do with my can is is I just take a sharpshooter shovel and every couple of years, as they're getting too big. I just go in there and you know, cut a circle as to here's where I want you to be,

and this pull the others out. And that's a lot of work, I know. So I understand the desire for a barrier, but I don't know if you went down about ten inches, surely that's deep enough. Yeah, okay, well, yeah, I understand the thing about to shovel them with my lousy Look, I've got some underground irrigation piping under the hair, and I hate to, hate to hate to you don't get Yeah, well, how how are you going to do a barrier with that irrigation pipe around?

Well, I mean the pipe is fairly close to the foundation of the house, so okay, so yeah, I'm clear. I'm really clear that, but I just I've done it before. Okay, Well, that's all right, that is what I would do, and I think you'll find some pretty good success with that keeping them in bounce. All right, very good, thank you. Hey, thanks for the call, Paul. I appreciate that you are listening to garden Line and we're here to answer your gardening questions.

Our phone number. Write this down so you can give us a call. Hey, we've got thirty minutes left in the whole weekend of garden Line, So get ready to give us a call. Seven one three two, one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. And by the way, Nikki has walked in the room. I forgot to tell you that somebody yesterday talked about how big of a fan you

are. So I'm thinking we need to make T shirts the Nikki Fan Club that you've got your followers and adorers out there, and so here we go. You know they used to be Lemonhead. So why aren't there some Nicky Fan Club shirt Nicki News Network. No, No, this is my thinking. I'm thinking since this is a three day weekend. Yes, I'm storing a petition that we have you work on the Mondays of three day weekends. Me. Yes, thank you for that. Yes, did I ever do

anything mean to you or what? No, it's because we love you, because we on these holiday Mondays we garden all right, Yes, that's true. It is true. On holiday Mondays. Just replay the show from the previous day on we're on podcast. Okay, well, I know it's okay. You can jump up and dance. You're listening to Guardline on a good Sunday morning for getting outside getting some stuff done this afternoon. Hey, our

phone number is SEE two two fifty eight seventy four. I wanted to talk to you about the Dellweb community going in at fullsher It's two miles outside of Fullshre from downtown Fullshre two miles to on FM three fifty nine. Now, the reason I'm excited about this community number one is Dellweb. I mean, that's the quality of the inspired designs, the lifestyle programs that come with a Dellweb community. The thing that excites me as a gardener is I'm helping them

create a community garden on site for residents. What a wonderful opportunity. You live in a beautiful community with walking trails and all of that good stuff and have a community garden there that's for you to use. Go to Dellweb dot com slash Houston for more information. D E. L W, E B B dot com slash Houston or Callumn two eight one four five nine zero six o nine. Let's head out to the phones here. I'm gonna talk to Sharon out in stagecoach. Hey, how you doing, Sharon? Great?

Thank you. I've tried a couple of times to grow poppies and I think I'm doing unless we're doing something wrong, is it any way to grow them here? Well, Sharon, poppies. You should just throw the seeds out there and you have poppies. I mean, they reseed profusely themselves, so even when you're not planting them, if you've had one, they come up, so they're pretty easy. But here's what I would recommend. Get your poppy seeds and just hold them into them, keep them inside, don't let

them get hot outside in the garage or something. And when we get to about late September early October, go ahead and throw those out on the ground and they will come up. You need to learn what they look like, so you don't think they're a weed, because they look a lot like a thistle somewhat coming up. But yeah, and they will come up. Just you need good bear soil. You need good seed to soil contact. Don't

bury them. They're a little tiny seed, so basically you can rake the soil, scatter them and then just water them in and in that water it sort of settles the soil in around the seed really nicely. But do you need to seed them. No, I mean, I guess you could. I have never fertilized poppies in my life. Of course, they're in a garden bed, so you expect this all to be a little decent there. But yeah, correct, Now what kind of you try to grow? I

probably should have asked that to begin with. Yeah, well, of course I love the red ones. Okay, so that's that's where I want. I have a strip that's like tinsotwat and and thirty foot long. It's got kind of like a wild flower garden, so that's where I want them. But I would to get them. I was wondering if I should do them in pot you know, like in seed bad things, and then transplant them. I guess you can't do that. Well, it is humanly possible,

but they don't like it. So I would recommend just throw scatter the seed out there where you want them to grow. And since it's a wildflower area, random is good. So I think you'll have success if you'll do that. Next year, you may have to clear away a little debris on the soil surface so they can get good seed to soil contact. Okay, I'll

try it again, all right, you call me. You call me back the next spring if these things came up and I want to hear all about okay, all right, all right, thank you, bet bye bye goodness. If you are interested in gardening and you don't have a spot, you don't have a garden, you're not going to dig up the dirt and go to all the trouble of all that stuff. You need to consider getting yourself a Vego garden modular metal bed. Now. Vego garden beds come in different

sizes. You can get them down eleven inches seventeen, they go they go on up in size. They're they're coated with a product that stops them from resting and corroding, and then they're coated again with a paint that is food safe paint to use. They're completely modular. So do you want an oval bed? Do you want a square bed? Do you want a bed shape like an L or a C? You pick it out, you can do

it. You can set one of the Vegos. If you get the taller sizes, you can set it down on a concrete patio and grow in that. Just fill it up with a good quality mix. If you're an organic gardener, it's especially nice because you know I don't want to use the treated wood. Well, here goes Vego. Now there's a lot of impostors out there, but go to Vego vgogarden dot com and you can learn all about them. A lot of our local independent nurseries and garden centers are starting to

carry the Vego garden beds as well, but I highly recommend them. If I were to create a brand new garden, I wouldn't think twice, it would automatically I would put in a Vego bed. They are attractive, they're beautiful, they work really really well. I want to head out now to Jersey Village and we're gonna talk to Maybeth. Hello, Maybeth, Yeah, good morning. I had black swallowtail larva on a Dell plant twelve up. Okay, what do I do? Do you want to keep? Do you

want to eat dil? Or do you want to have butterflies? The Dell is not edible right now? I mean it's fine to see, okay, and so now I don't want a deal. Well, they like dill. They probably like fennel too. I think I'm trying to think of what else are you worried about them not having to something to eat, not making it to adult stage. I don't know what to do with the farming is new to me and so I don't know. Do I just leave them? Yeah, yeah, just leave them. Watch and enjoy. You'll see some little

crysalists appear as they get ready to become a butterfly. You may not see them on the deal plant. If there's anything that's leaning against they may crawl up on that and make their crystalists. But watch for them. They're really cool, really cool to watch. It's amazing. Well, it's a bad descott a lot I've got adjacent to it, like some tis and some sage and basil and map that are all in there together. So well, thank

you. Spread sounds like you're doing a good job. If the bill, if the dill seeds land around in there, they will come up and spread. In fact, I hate to say this on the air, but I have tried to start dill as transplants before and I get them out in the garden and they just seem to be really unhappy with me. But when they come up where they want to come up, they're very happy. So just let them do what they want and weed out the ones you don't want.

Okay, this bed's so full that I think they're probably going to fall to the wayside instead of to the ground. I don't think they could reach get down to the ground. If they they'll blow off somewhere. We may have dil Yeah, so next next spring, uh maybe Mathew, definitely need to plant some cucumbers and you you're ready to go for some pickles, that would be true. So just let them go and enjoy. Let them go and enjoy. That's right. Appreciate that call. That's funny. Yeah, deal

is boy? Does is it ever willing to volunteer? That is for sure? Oh my goodness. You're listening to garden Line and we are here to answer your gardening questions. I enjoy talking to gardeners. And our phone number if you want to give us a call seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one two five eight seven four. Josh, we'll get you on the board. We're gonna take a little break here in a moment, and we will come back to answer your gardening questions.

By the way, those of you out in the general Kingwood area, Porter, New Caney, all those places, I'm going to be two saturdays from yesterday, June tenth, at the wild Birds Unlimited in Kingwood. Please come out and see me. I love to meet you. So nice meeting the folks out at the clear Lake wild Birds Unlimited. By the way, if you're still in clear Lake and you haven't registered for the drawing, they're drawing tomorrow, so don't delay. We bit barning. Wonderful day to be outside

and enjoy the weather this afternoon. Get outside, do some stuff in the yard or garden, just relax, enjoy yourself, or get out to a garden center pick up some wonderful new plants. Boy, this is a good time to do it. And again here's the reminder. This is the last day of the tax free weekend for plants, for compost, for mulch, for water saving devices. This is the time. So it's like having an almost eight percent discount on what you're what you're purchasing out there. Sounds like

a good deal to me. Let's head out to Groves and talk to Tony Well. Good morning, Tony Well, good morning to you, sir. Can you hear me? Okay? I can okay? On the vegetable guards skip and first I appreciate what you do on the vegetable garden, skip on the pathways in between each row. What can I put in there that I'm able to walk through there? You know, like maybe after a big I don't know range storm and I can't get in it. What I get my all muddy? You know what I mean? Okay, So what I do

is I put leaves in And you can put a lot of leaves. You feel, you know, you put them in there, it's like it's full up when you walk on them. As it stays moist it they sit down and then you add more and you add more one time in a thirty five thirty five garden. I'm not kidding. I put three hundred bags of leaves in one season. Just wow. And at the end of the season, now you have a trench full of compost, which is kind of nice.

You can move that up into the bed if you If you don't want to go through that process, you can just get wood chips, you know, the uh whatever access you have. Some people use those tax free, tax free the grind up and blow them into the back of the truck. Services you know, the tree grinders and stuff. They'll they'll often dump chips for you but you know that's a little bit more of an ordeal. But anyway, yeah, I just fill it with organic matter that will create an all

weather pathway. And you can't just do leaves once. You gotta several times pile them and walk on them and they sink down and then you will have a nice all weather pathway. Okay, Well, how about grass. It's

not a good idea grass clippings. Grass clippings you can only spread a little bit, like an inch or two because they will start to get mucky and stink and they'll get slippery and your fee can slide out from under you if you're sitting on something that's got thick layer of grass clippings under it that are

decaying, getting gooey. So just be a little sparing with those, okay, Because my wife is the one that told me to quit putting them in there because there was bringing in weeds and uh, well, I mean yeah it could be. Yeah, if you if you mow a weedy lawn,

you're gonna have weed seeds in those grass clippings, So that's true. Also, you don't want to use grass clippings from a lawn that's been treated with a lot of herbicides because you do some of those are a lot of persistent, a little bit persistent, right right, right, okay, all right, scamp. Well that answered my question, sir. I appreciate all what you do for Thank you so much. I appreciate appreciate your call. By the way, I want to mention I was wrong about the tax free ends

today. It's actually I believe good for Monday as well, so you can go on line check that out. But uh, maybe we get an extra day out of this deal. Uh we uh. You know, I wanted to talk to you about the Bee Supply. I've mentioned them before. I wish that I could convince you how cool it is to learn about bees. Kids would be fascinated by it. I'm fascinated by it as an adult. They do these honey bee tours out there twice a month out in Dayton,

and you get to walk around, you get to learn about bees. There's a little presentation, and then you get to taste all the different kinds of honey. It's pretty cool. Go to the b Supply dot com. It's they have an excellent website. You can learn about those tours. If you are a beekeeper or you want to learn to be a beekeeper. They have classes. They have a beginner class twice a month out there in Dayton where you get hands on and the good thing about going to and purchasing from the

B Supply is you can go back a thousand times with your questions. I mean that, and they will patiently help you and help you to have success because they want you to have success, and beekeeping is really a fun hobby. Check out the b Supply dot com. Let's go to West Katie. We're going to talk to Joe. Good morning, Joe, Good morning, Skip, thanks for taking the call. Yes, I've got a small raised band. It's four foot by eight foot. I've got three tomato plants that

are tomatoes that are rappening. But before they fully rappen, there's a small gnat that is eating chewing them up and eating them from the bottom, mostly from the bottom up, but little black gnats. My Google search says it's fungus gnats, but I don't I'm not certain about that. Okay, do you have a suggestion on what they use to persuade them from eating my tomatoes? Okay, there, it's not fungus nats most likely, unless you had a wound on your tomato, and they were able to attract them in.

When they smell the fungus gnats, you know they they it's like fruit flies. They can smell and and be attracted in. But I don't think it's fungus nats what I think may have happened. They may just be there because they're hatching out in the soil. They like a rich organic soil, which is what we typically plant in. And you may have fungus nat larva they are hatching out, becoming adults and sitting there, or it could be that there is some sort of a wound, but it's probably a different kind of

gnat that you're seeing. Sometimes the tomato will get blossom en drought where it decays on the end, and then that will attract some little things in like that. But I can't think of anything that is what you described that's located on the tomato where you described there would be a primary attacker of your tomatoes. Oh okay, But if what would be first course of action doing something

about the soil? You keep it. Go ahead, because you're right, it is rich and all that end with all the range you stayed Willie most for a period of time, so that I mean I tried to initially some liquid seven and that did not okay, you know, gave relief for a few hours. That's about it. That's interesting. Well, letting the top of the soil dry out is very helpful with fungus nuts. There's also a form of BT that's what we buy for caterpillars, but there's a form that's

different. You can't use a caterpillar BT. There's a fungus gnat type of BT. So go to where you purchase your gardening supplies and ask them for the BT that's for fungus gnats, not caterpillars, and you can spray the soil and shut them down that way too. Okay, okay, all right, well, thank you, thank you so much. All right, thank

you. I appreciate appreciate that call very much. Yeah, and by the way, out there in Katie, oh my gosh, you have you have Ace Hardware stores nearby, and no matter where you live in town, there is Ace hardware. So go to Ace hardware dot com and on that site you can find a store locator and you can find all the stores that are near you. I mean they this place. We are fortunate at thirty nine. ACE Hardware is in the Greater Houston area. I mean that is that

is just absolutely amazing. I am always uh, I always enjoy going into ACE. Just all the supplies they have. I mean, anything you need for gardening that we're talking about here, like the fertilizers and and the pesticides and all other kind of things like that, you're going to find those at an ACE Hardware. You know, depending on where you are out in the Katie area. We got one on pin Oak Road, you know, it's

not too terribly far away. There is a number of aces. There's one as you as you're going out to Katie, a little south of town, there is a really nice ACE Hardware out in um the guys you can't say the name of the town, Rosenberg area, thank you. It's down Plantation Ace Hardware. They've got some really cool supply. That's I was at that one a while back and I was really amazed at all that they had on

stock there. Super super great place for buying all the things we talk about, as well as all the hardware stuff, you know, work gardeners where we're more interested and fertilizer that we were in, light bulbs and plumbing parts and all those other things. Nice thing about ACE two is when you go in, they greet you and they know what they're talking about. I mean, I'd give my right arm for any kind of place I'm shopping at to

actually have educated people to know what they're talking about. I can tell when I walk into a garden center and if I ask a question, I can tell in the first few seconds by looking in the person's eyes, Oh, they're going to be scrambling around trying to come up with an answer rather than telling me what's actually the truth. And they know that's that's just a shame. Not going to happen today though, Well, you've been listening to Garden Line today. We are about to head out. I want to wish you

all a very very happy Memorial Day. What a wonderful holiday for remembering all of those people who sacrificed for us, some of them giving the ultimate sacrifice for us, for the freedoms we enjoy. You know, we do take things for granted. That's just our nature as human beings, and we definitely do not want to take for granted those who are willing to put their life on the line for our freedoms. For our liberty that we are so fortunate to live in the land we live in to have that kind of a group

of people and armed forces willing to take care of us. I mean, you can even stand that out to people in law enforcement, people, firefighters and other many many people that make the freedoms we enjoy, the safety and life we enjoy, the benefits we enjoy possible. And that significance is not lost on me, and I know it's not lost on you either. In the meantime, we're going to be back next Saturday. You're Saturday and Sunday

six am to ten am, So we hope you listen in. If you miss something today or missed yesterday, you can listen to us on podcast. Just take your podcast app I art Media hopefully and you can get right to garden Line and listen to us. Meantime, I just hope you will have a wonderful, successful gardening week.