KTRH GardenLine | 6-24-23

Ktr H Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to KTRH Garden Line with Skip Rictor it's so trim, just watching as many club rick A s Well, good morning, Good Saturday morning. It's still dark outside, but it's gonna be life soon and we're gonna have another day for gardening. This uh, this kind of weather has been driving a lot of folks inside just a little bit too hot.

But you know, morning time's a great time to get out there and get a little bit of things done. We still have to maintain. We will take care of the lawns and the gardens and the landscapes. Certainly are maintain our trees and whatnot, So let's get that done in the morning. I like to also work late in the day, although I find the mornings even better, better time to get up and get out and do some things. So we'll talk about some things to be doing this time of the year.

In the meantime, we'd love to have you give us a call. Our phone number is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one two five eight seven four. We are going to actually jump right on the phones this morning and head out to League City and talk to John V. Hello John V. Good morning, skib Good morning everybody on Garden line. Yes, my question is on the cosmics apple. Would I be able to plant a tree here in a city of League Sydney cosmic Crisp?

Where did you find that? That's not a no? It took fourteen years to genetically create. Uh, this is something that um, I have never tried done before. I love the I love all types of apples, and so yes, sir, yeah, well that's a that's a new one that they've been promoting. I'm what I'm trying to figure out is what is the what is the chill hours on the cosmic Crisp? Do you happen to

know offhand? I have no idea, sir. No, I just don't know if it survives here in Lake City or My first guess would be no. But since I don't know, I'm not saying that's the definitive answer. It was developed in Washington State, which makes me think it's probably not gonna do well in our chilling down here. I see, yeah, So, but I'm sitting here, I'm trying to see I can find something on it. If I do, I'll mention it on the show today. Wonderful.

Yeah, it's a it's a new thing they're really excited about up there. But I generally when they develop an apple, it's too high chill for us down here. I see, Well, wonderful, You'll have a wonderful day. Thank you, well, thank you for the call. I appreciate that you take care. Okay, goodbye, bye bye. You know, if if you haven't been by RCW Nurseries in a while, you haven't been by RCW Nurseries. I mean they are always rotating the stock that they have.

And by the way, that's a nursery up there where Tumball Parkway comes in with Beltway eight. You can go online to RCW Nurseries dot com find out more information about them, what they got going on right now. I know they still have that super duper rose list, like four pages long. That is a document worth downloading just for information. I mean, you want to know the name, the type of rose, is that a climber, is it disease resistant? How big does it get? What color of the blooms?

You see what I'm saying. Everything you can imagine, and then while you're at it, go ahead an order one. They can get them in up there. Right now, they're specializing in shrubs. They've got a lot of good shrubs, a good deal going on shrubs, and so if you need you know, some Nandina, Laura padalums, whatever kind of shrubs you're looking for, our CW Nursery is going to have that, and way,

way way more. Now they specialize in trees as well. The fifteen gallons up the two hundred gallons be on ornamental tree, something beautiful blooming, or maybe just a nice big shade tree. So give our CW Nurseries a look. You will find that they have all you need. And if they don't have it, they probably get it for you. One of the good things about visiting up at OURCW. Let's head over now to fin it and we are gonna talk to Duke. Good morning, Duke. Who Hey, I've

got an azea bush that's getting over rain. It's a pretty big size of zea bush, but it's getting over rain with vines. Is there anything I can put on that? Do you know what kind of vines they are?

Off hand? Absolutely not just some old weed vines. That sits up at the lake house until you do. Yeah, well, what I would do just grab one of them and follow it down, find out where it comes out of the ground, and I would if you can cut it off there and then dab some product I'm going to give you in a moment here right on that fresh cut surface, it'll translocate down and kill the roots and everything. Because if you tried to spray something on the vine that is on your

azzalia, you're gonna kill your azzalia. And so just yeah, all you gotta do is you know, when you cut a vine off where it comes out of the ground, everything above that's going to turn brown and it's easy to see and pull pull out of there. But by treating that stump or the base, the base of the vine, you shut the whole thing down. It doesn't come back out of the roots. And there are a few vines like pepper vine that you may get a resprout from somewhere else because they're

just coming up from so many places. But if you just stay with that in the ingredient duke that you want is called trich lopier t t R I c l O P y R, and it'll come in a number of things from the home market. It may be called poison ivy killer or it may something like that, but Traclopier's ingredient and just actually I've actually got some poison poison killer up there, so yeah, I'll definitely give that a truck.

Yeah, check that ingredient. But remember it'll kill yoursel yet. So do you just want to put it on the cut surface of that vine and that'll do it? All right? Thank you, sir, Yes, sir, thank you for the call. I appreciate that. Let's see, I'm going to head out now to Roe, Sharon, and we are going to go talk to Alex. Hello Alex, good morning, Harry. Wow, thank

you. So I was going to turn my tree tomorrow and I was wondering if I were to run the branches through a shredder, if i'd be able to use a fresh wood chippings that molten my garden or around my trees. You can, yeah, you can. You're using them as a mult which

means they're sitting on top of the surface, and that's that's okay. If you were to mix them into the soil, that's a lot of raw wood and it would draw a lot of nitrogen out of the soil, but it's not going to happen so much with them sitting right up on the surface. You could always just toss a little extra nitrogen up there into the into the mulch and kind of rake it so it falls down in the surface and watered

in, just to be extra sure. But generally a mulch is not going to affect your soil like you would have with a with a soil amendment mixed in. All right, okay, all right, well, good luck, good luck with that. That's a good, good use of that in a good way to recycle those clippings. I want to talk about a new thing that I haven't mentioned before, and that is with Microlife, and it is their commercial liquid fertilizers that are available for say commercial available for homeowners. The

first one it would be the Microlife Biomatrix. That's the orange label, the seven one three. It's a high nitrogen liquid organic but it has a lot of beneficial microbes in it, and I use it for all my houseplants. It's a it's an excellent product. You mix it in water and just use it when you water. You can very dilute and use it every time, or you can, you know, give them more of a boost and then water in between applications of it. But the other one and that's Microlife Ocean

Harvest, the blue label. That's a four two three. It's a it's a fish based material and I use it outside outside. You can mix it up follow the label as a folior spray and it won't burn. You can also use it as a drench on the soil. Now, Microlife Ocean Harvest. If you want to use it as a folior, you want to mix it at the lower rate and then spray upward from under the plant early in the morning. That is the best time and way to get nutrient into the

plant. And so either way you go with the orange label Biomatrix or the blue label Ocean Harvest, you are going to be very impressed with how quickly your plants respond. Now you can go to Microlife Fertilizer dot com for more information if you would like to find out where to buy Microlife in your area. Well, let's take a break. We are going to go ahead and stop for a break at seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.

We'll get Saturday morning on a great day for gardening. You're listening to garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter, and our phone number. Write this down so you can give a skull seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one two five eight seven four. Hey, if you've not been to Quality Feed, Quality Feed and Garden Company,

it's there in the Heights now we're all close to the Heights. Rather, it's on Lozon Street eighteen thirteen lose On, which is near the intersection of Equipment and Alesion. I used to go to the old store, Now I've been to the news store. Ken and Chris have had Quality Feed for about thirty two years now, and they've got all the kinds of things we talk about here. You know, if you're looking for the herbicides and the soils and mulches and whatnot, they've got all of that. Now be in

a feed store, of course you're going to get feed. They really do an awesome job, better than anyone I know. With the chickens. I mean they get shipments of chickens in about ever two weeks. It's amazing. So if you're into backyard chickens, this is a place you need to go check out of course, so get all the supplies you need to go with those baby chicks to take home and enjoy in your own yard. Quality feedco

dot com, Quality feedco dot com. Check them out. You will find a wide variety of products everything you need and that good old fashioned service that we love from a good old fashioned type feed store like Quality feed. Let's head out. Now we're going to go to Cyprus and visit with Joyce. Good morning, Joyce, good morning. I was going to ask about take patch. I think I'm getting it again. I had it a couple of years ago and did the aeration and the compost top dressing and all that fact.

I think a top dressed twice, it's not three times, but it looks like it's coming back. And there's a products made by Scotts. It's called disease X and I was wondering if I could put it says it takes works against takeall patch. I was wondering if I could put that down, or if it's too hot. It's not too hot, but take all patches primarily uh infecting in the fall season, a little bit in the spring, but primarily in the fall season. So I guess you know, to put

it on. Now, I don't think it is going to help a lot. If you want to try it, you can uh either way. It you know, it certainly is something that uh take all. It needs to be treated because it is, as you have learned it, it's a it's a pretty devastating uh fungus once it gets into your into your plants. That's well, it just really looks like it because you know how to see in Augustine the shoots gool out and they turn all brown and and then all of

a sudden there's just dirt there, don't grass. It might not be, but that's what it looks like to me. Okay, uh, well have an idea. Yeah, just describing basically you're you know, what you're describing as the grass is dying and and uh so that in and of itself does not necessarily mean it's take on me. It could be anything from you know, drought to burn, from a chemical to lots of things can kill grass. But take all, root rot is a disease that we have to deal

with. And that particular product. Really, any product you get that has a zoxystrobin, which is ingredient in that product, is going to be effective. It's just most of the activity of takeall has taken place. Now you've got grass, it doesn't have a good root system, and so as a weather heats up, it starts to die. And it's a little confusing because you think, well, take all seems to kill my lawn more in the

when it warms up than in the cool season. But yet it's more active in getting into the grass during the during the fall and sometimes spring season. Well I don't have an irrigation system, but you know we have watered quite well. Yeah, I think, well, and it's not a lack of water. I mean, it's a lack of roots. And so you want to be careful because if you overwater, that creates its own problems, so

be real careful about that. I think the air rating and the top dressing is always a good idea, and anything that stimulates and strengthens the grass is going to help it fight take all rot. Take all is a disease that loves to get into stressed grass. When grass is strong and healthy, not so much of a problem as when grass is weakened and its defenses are compromised. All right, well, thank you very much. All right, Joyce

thank you. I appreciate that call very much. You know, we're talking about top dressing and air rating and all that that anytime we improve the soil, we improve our plants. And the best time to improve soil is before you plant something. Now, I realize the lawn, you know, it's there for decades hopefully, and so it's not like you go in and rototil

your lawn to replant it for no good reason. But when you're putting in a flower bed, or when you're putting in a vegetable bed, or when you're preparing soil for some shrubs in a row, you want to use a high quality compost, and airloom Soils can provide just that. You can go

online to write this down Airloom Soils of Texas dot com. You will see an endless supply of all kinds of great products, from the rose soiled to various kinds of blends for houseplants or potting plant, potting soils for outdoors, and all kinds of bed mixes and combinations with shale and other things. Airloom Soils of Texas has it all. You can get it in one cubic yard. Supersacks. That means they bring a giant sack that holds a cubic yard

of soil, set it on your driveway. Now, that's very convenient. Now, if you don't know how much you need, check out their Airloom Soils cubic yard calculator. They're on the website Airloom Soils of Texas, and you can find exactly how much you need, whether it's cubic yards or whether it's how many one cubic or one square foot or two square foot bags. They've got it easy to figure and always at Airloom Soils of Texas. I want to now go out and we're going to visit with K out there in

Missouri City. K. If I can find the button, here we go. How are you this morning? I'm just fine. Thank you. Listen. My lawn is absolutely gorgeous, and I was wondering if there was anything I need to put on it to sustain it through this heat wave that we have. If it looks good now, I would leave it be and I would just focus, just focus on a good deep soaking as infrequently as you can, I would say about once a week. And now if it's in

the full blazing sun and for whatever reason your soil is somewhat limiting. You might need to water twice a week, but I would aim to get toward once a week where and it may mean you have to water several times on watering days so it soaks in and between watering, so you can get that one inch down because most soils you can't put an inch on at one time.

But if you give it a good soaking and then when you let it dry out, it brings oxygen back into the soil's roots system as that water moves out, and then you give it a good watering again, and that is is deep rooted and healthy and resilient. Of a watering schedule for lawns as you can as you can get. Okay, thank you very much. Appreciate your show. Well, good luck with the lawn. I'm glad to hear it's doing well. Usually people are complaining about it's dying. Right.

No, it's absolutely gorgeous, so I just want to make sure it stays out lake all right, Thank you, I appreciate that. Yeah, the h when you look at you know, lawns and trees and turn. In fact, I'm gonna do a talk for the Oba Palooza Oba Palooza. I'll talk about more coming up that's coming up in July. I'm going to be given a talk and the topic is the two teas, the things that make the phone ring, and that is trees and turf. Actually there's three trees,

three trees, turf and tomatoes. But the primary two or trees and turf, that that is what people call about because you know, everybody wants a big, beautiful, gorgeous lawn. They want beautiful shade trees, maybe blooming trees, and those are valuable parts of the landscape. I mean, if you're ever going to sell your house and you've got those in order,

man's that's impressive when people drive up when it's not not so much. And I know some people have different opinions about lawns, or are those who would rather not have lawns and go back to kind of a natural prairie look and other things, but they're for the most part lawnser or the popular thing that just about everybody has. Everybody wants that beautiful outdoor carpet, and so as a result, we have to figure out how to have a beautiful lawn.

And that's one of the things we do here on garden line is we talk to you about how to have a beautiful lawn, and one of the ways to have a beautiful lawn, absolutely beautiful lawn, is to fertilize it properly. And when I'm talking about fertilizing it properly, a good example of just exactly that would be Microlife's silver bag, the silver bag. If you've heard about different or Microlife fertilize. Excuse me, I said Microlife nitrofoss the silver

bag that is nineteen four ten. I got two different things running through my head here. Nineteen four ten is a slow release that nitrofoss makes that gradually feeds that soil over time. So what's going to happen is the nutrients come out slowly, and as a result, you don't get this flush of growth, you get gradual growth, you don't get a lack of root system, which over nitrogen applications can do. Because you're putting this on at a rate

about five pounds per thousand square feet. That is going to give you that gradual feed and that's going to give you the right amount of nitrogen, and you're just not going to do better than a nineteen The nitrofoss nineteen four ten fertilizers specifically formulated for our hot, humid southern climates, and it's just a wh wh When you do that once for the summertime, it carries you all the way through into your fall fertilization. You're gonna find nitro foss all over

the place. I mean, for crying out loud, a lot of our ace stores, almost all our A stores are going to carry the nitrofoss. You're gonna find it an enchanted forest and channing gardens down in the Richmond area, or maybe you're up at RCW Nursery's talking about them earlier on I forty five North. R CW carries nitrofoss as well. Our phone number is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one two five eight seventy four. When you give us a call, we can talk

about whatever you're interested in. In the meantime, I'm gonna talk about some things that I am interested in. And we were discussing the importance of lawns to people and how people just want to have that beautiful, picture perfect lawn. I find that the lawn rangers out there and you know who you are. They have this varying tolerance for lack of perfect action in a lawn.

Some people, if it's green and they mow it, that's good. It's like the old guy from Mississippio stelling you bout a while back that he says he just gets rid of all his weeds by taking off his glasses. In other words, it's all green when you take your glasses off. Other people it's like it's got to be perfect. It's got to be perfect, And so they want to have that where it looks it's absolute best. And we can do that. We can achieve that, but we do it primarily through

proper mowing, watering, and fertilizing. And I know that sounds so simplified, but it is that simple. When you mow regularly, the more often you mow, the dent your lawn. When you mow at the right height, the deeper your root system, the more resilient your lawn. When you water properly, like I was just mentioning a moment ago, with a deep soaking followed by drying out, the better your lawn is going to be. And then when you fertilize with the right ratios of products, the right kinds

of products at the right rate, at the right time. Those three together, it's simple. But it's the secret. Mo water and fertilize properly. When you do that, you can have that kind of lawn you want. Now, yes we have we just we have disease and insects we deal with. But those three are key. Well, let's take a break. Five one excuse me, seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Give Josh a call. We'll get you on the board for when we come

back from break. Then I saw her face. Well, good Saturday morning. You are listening to Garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter, and we're here to answer your gardening questions. That's what it's all about. If you'd like to give us a call, the number is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three, two one two five eight and four. So let me go back to this mo water and fertilize a little bit, because I think that for a lot of folks, they

think, well that's that's just too simple. I mean, you got to be more to it than that. Well, remember how I said, Yes, there are weeds as their diseases. Yes, they're insects and so on. Those are there, But think about this. We were talking with a Joyce in cipersub minute to go about take all root rot. Take all root rot as an opportunists. We have several different types of fungi that we deal

with in our lawns and landscapes that are opportunists. That means that if the patient is just completely healthy and everything's good, those diseases typically do not attack and get the upper hand. But when the grass in this case is weakened, then take all root rot has a chance to move in. And you know that makes sense. I mean I love to, I guess anthropomorphize things, but where you know, I'd use human examples that don't always one percent

fit, but still I think they work. And here's one. If you're tired, if you don't get good sleep, if you don't eat right, if you don't exercise, if you basically are doing all those things, you are more likely to get sick than someone who in all the other ways is as healthy as they can be. That doesn't mean that a healthy person that works out and does all that can't get sick. Of course they can It just means that it's more likely that as we weaken our bodies, we get

sick easier. Well, the same is true with your lawn, and that would be the case. Would take all root rot as an example. So when we mow, water and fertilize right, and we keep the lawn as healthy as we can, then the chances of having problems would take all become less and we have less problems with that disease. With the large patch. Now everybody calls it brown patch. That's the old name. Large patch is the big brown circles that you see in the cool season and you're seeing augustine

lawns, and it can occur in other turf grasses as well. Well. If you overdo the nitri and we're moving into that fall season where the weather cools off a little bit, you get some rain, some frequent rains, and boom, here come the big browne circles everywhere. Well, overdoing it with nitrogen makes that worse. It sets them up for a problem. Even chinch bugs on the lawn. Overdoing with nitrogen makes that a little bit more

of a problem. So mo water and fertilize helps us avoid, not eliminate, but avoid a lot of the issues that we have with insects and diseases. And then how about weeds weeds? The way I like to put it is, wherever sunlight hits the soil, nature plants a weed. So if your lawn is thin, nature will fill that in with green, and green is called a weed, okay to nature. And so anytime we create a scar on the earth where we strep back the foliage the plants and we leave

bare soil, weeds are going to come up there. And it's a you know, from an environmental standpoint, it's a good thing because it avoids soil erosion and a lot of the other issues that can happen when soil is left exposed, like crusting and erosion. And so that's just how it works. So how do we avoid weeds? Mo water, fertilize. We mow regularly with more density, less light hits the soil, less weed seeds can come up. We water properly for density, and we fertilize properly for density.

So mowater in fertilize is the best weed control in your lawn. And along with returning those clippings when you mow. Now that doesn't mean that if you just mowater and fertilize, you never have weed problems. It just means you minimize them. There's some weeds that are perennial. They'll live toe to toe with a Saint Augustine or Zoysier or Bermuda grass law and they'll just keep going. I mean, their perennial, they can survive, they can fight their

way. Those are the exceptions, but they're there. You know, Virginia button weed as an example of that, dollar weed as an example of that. But all those annual weed seeds, we can pretty much deal with those with a good, dense, healthy lawn. And that's what we're aiming for. I mean, our goal. Our goal is not to live with a turf that is dependent on products that fight everything that goes wrong. Our goal is to have the healthiest turf we can and then grab those products if and

when they're needed, if and when they're needed. If you know, we're discussing this hot weather that we've been having here, been brought up more than once already today. But when you put a new shrub in, it takes

it a while to to establish its root system. That's true with the new tree too, and I strongly encourage you to consider purchasing a tree Hugger sprinkler if you're planting shrubs or trees, or if you've already planted them, let's say in the last six months to a year, they need they're going to need extra TLC on watering when we now that we are in the one hundred degree range way too early, by the way, and but TreeHugger sprinklers they

water. You can turn them on load of water right at the base where that cylinder of soil came out of the pot and is now all the roots are right in that spot when it first goes in the ground. You can turn them up a little more and more to water a larger and larger area is that tree establishes and grows. They come in seven inch, eleven inch, and fifteen inch sizes, are easy to hook up to the water hose, put around the tree, and you just take off. Go to town

tree Hugger Sprinklers dot Com. Tree Hugger Sprinklers dot Com is where you can find a retailer near you. Pretty much the places we talk about on garden Line are going to be places at Kerry TreeHugger sprinklers dot Com. Let's head out to Cyprus this morning and we're going to talk to Vicki. Hello,

Vicki, Hi, how are You'm well? Thank you? My question is I put some slow release fertilizer down Wednesday morning, okay, and I water it in, but then we got that heavy rain Wednesday night that I wasn't expecting, right, do I need to refertilize it? You're you're okay? Unless the soil was bare enough to where the watering caused the rain caused the water to just flow across your law. I put new grass in right before we had all that rain, okay, like April, all right, I

think it was all right. So so Vicky, if the if the water did not literally wash the granules off the lawn, which it didn't in your case as you're describing it, then you're fine. Those granules are made to not dissolve right away like an immediate release fertilizer would. It's going to take them time to release those nutrients. So that's another reason for a slow release through the summer. Okay. That was my question. It's like I didn't

want to really have to redo that again. That's good new. I'm glad to be the bearer of good news. Sometimes I had to be the bearer of bad news. But yeah, that was good news. I'm also air rating it too, because I don't think the guys did it when they put the grass down. Okay, So I bought an air raider, so will that help too? Got brown? I've got some brown out there already. Yeah, if you're if your air raider pulls out plugs out of the soil,

that's the best kind. But when you open up the soil down deep and then get a little compost top dressing occasionally over the top of it, that's even better on top of it all. But an air raiding does, and they generally don't errate when they put the side down because it needs a wild for that side to get roots down in, or the air raider will just pick up the side pieces as it pokes through them. I thought he was should have air raided the dirt underneath it. Okay, No, no

need to do that. Okay, So he did do what he was supposed to. He did what he's supposed to do based on what you're telling me at least. Yeah, okay, so I should buy the air raider with the plug where the plugs it's got the two things where the plugs come out. Yes, we call those a core narrator, and the way I describe it as the other kind just sort of has a solid tine that presses a hole open in the soil. You know, as if you took a cone

shaped thing and just shoved it in the soil. The core narator pops out those little sections of soil and leaves them on the surface. That's the better of the two kinds. All right, Okay, okay, I think I saw those on Amazon. I'll buy one of them. You got it, all right, Vicky, thank you for the call. We're gonna go take a break here, and if you would like to be on garden Line, give me a call. Seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.

Everybody knew in a brand. Oh you'll get well. Good morning, good Saturday morning, on a great day for gardening. You are listening to garden Line, and our purpose here is to help you have a more bountiful garden and a more beautiful landscape. And that is exactly what we try to do. If you've got some gardening questions you'd like to call, it's seven

one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. That's two one two kt r H. If you would like to give us a call, I'm going to go back to the lawns and we're going to continue talking about some of the basic principles that I was talking about. Basically, what this amounts to is I am trying my best to convince you that the most important thing you can do for your lawn is to mow it, water it, and fertilize it property. That is the most important things we do for our law.

So we were talking about how diseases and insects and weeds are all hampered by proper mowing, watering, and fertilizing. We reduce the problems that we have by proper mowing, watering, and fertilizing of the way of the lawn. There is another practice, and I talk about it here pretty often, and that is the core aeration. Now, if your soil is a heavy clay, if your spot has a lot of compaction from foot traffic or whatever reason,

compaction, coreeration is even more important. But for any lawn that is you know, struggling with water infiltration and just the density the clay, the soil coreation could be helpful for that. And what it does is we're popping plugs out of the ground. So imagine a little hollow tube goes in the ground and it pulls out a plug of soil, a little tube of soil,

and drops it on the surface. So when you get through aerating a lawn, it looks like that there was a convention of small dogs that hung out at the lawn for a while, if you know what I'm talking about, little little thing sitting on the surface like dog droppings, and that that's kind of the the visual equivalent there. When we're talking about coreation, we follow that often with a compost top dressing. And what that means is a

very fine textured compost, not woody, chunky stuff. Ideally it would be a leaf mold compost, though that is a super high quality and a screened product that's small enough to fall down in those little spaces that the core aeration creates in the soil. So kind of look at a cross view of your law and think about it this way. Follow me on this one. You've got a cross view of your soil and there's little holes down into the soil, straight down in the soil where the soil has been removed, and now

you top dress and it falls down in those holes those holes. Oxygen moves readily sideways down into the soil from those holes, and now you've got the decaying organic matter and the root system. It's just the best thing you can do. And the root system is to get oxygen and organic matter and everything down into the soil like that. When it rains, water can move down in those holes and not just have to soak in from the surface, but

even sideways through holes that could be moving in. So do you see what I'm saying. It's a corderation sets your soil up over time to get richer and richer and better and better and be a better zone for roots to thrive. And if roots thrive, your grass can thrive. If you've got a soil that's dense, that's compacted, there's no good aeration, water can't move

in. Roots are not going to thrive, and you can't have a beautiful top grass top above ground part of your grass plant, which is what we're looking at, if you don't have a good root system to support it as well. That's what we're aiming for. So it's really simple. You know, when it comes to taking care of your soil, it's just not that difficult. I was talking last week, and I've talked about this several times, but the Dell Web Communities are putting in a new community in full shirt

that has a community garden in it. Now, if you know del Weeb, you know that for what seventy years they have been building communities for active adults fifty five and better that just have that lifestyle program that wold. It's not just a house to live in. This is a community. This is a community with programs and activities and events that are just built around you. To put it shortly, the inspired designs of Dellweb homes or second to none.

But when we talk about now adding a community garden to that, oh my my goodness. What you don't have to dig up the back forty to which is your yard to plan a garden. I mean you can go over the community garden and enjoy the fellowship and the social connections with people over there as well. Go to dellweb dot com slash Houston for more information or call

them to eight one four five nine zero six zero nine. If you're a gardener, I cannot think of a better place than the New dellweb community and fulshure on. Let's see, it's on Highway three fifty nine, just a couple of miles outside of full Sure. We you know, we're trying about a lot of different kinds of things today regarding gardening and when you're looking for a place where you can find not just the best plants selection you can imagine,

but also the best advice you can imagine. I think of plants for all seasons on Highway to forty nine. They're right there where Louetta comes in. They're on two forty nine. Now, plants for all seasons. Green thumbs know it. I mean they take pride in their lawn and garden and they go to plants for all seasons. But if you're a brown thumb and you want to turn that thumb green, you need to visit plants for all seasons as well. This is a family owned, owned and operated garden center.

Since nineteen seventy three, the Flowerties have created this dependable go to place for plants and for gardening advice. Take the pictures, bring in samples. They will tell you what's wrong, or they'll identify a plant for you. And they will direct you to the products or the plants that you need.

Now. You can call them at two eight one three seven six sixteen forty six two eight one three seven six sixteen forty six, or just go to Plants for All Seasons dot com and see all that they have to offer. Right now. They are loaded up in beautiful summer color plants. So I was looking at the other day, just so many different nice annuals that can take one hundred degree heat and still bloom and look good. Plants for All Seasons dot com. If you'd like to give us a call, our number

is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Love entering gardening questions from folks, and if if we don't get to you right before the next break, which is coming pretty quick here, we will, Josh, We'll have you on the board and you will be absolutely the first one up. When I think about where do you go for the things you need for your garden and your home here in the Greater Houston area, I think of our thirty nine locally

owned and operated hardware stores. Go to ACE Hardware dot com. To find the store nearest you, I should say the stores nearest you. With thirty nine of them, you have options. But the ACE Hardware stores carry all the fertilizers I talk about. They have a product selection that is very extensive and wide for any kind of thing, from a disease to an insect or a weed. You name it, they've got it. ACE Hardware is part of our community. Do you know that in twenty twenty two they raised half

a million dollars for the Texas Children's Hospital. They've got the ACE Rewards program where you can earn money back on your purchases. Another reason to shop at ACE. And when you look at the grills, the furniture, the decor, the lighting, the outdoor power equipment, on and on and on. Everything you need you're going to find at your local Ace Hardware. Check them

out at ACE hardware dot com. We've been talking lawns a lot this morning, and I'm going to kind of shift years unless calls want to keep going in the lawn direction. When we come back from break, I'm going to talk a little bit about some of this summer vegetable garden and flower beds there is despite the hundred degree heat. There's a lot that we can do. You know, you get out on a morning like right now, I'm looking

outside. It's daylight out there. The temperature is not that bad right now, but good time to get out, plant, take care of things and just have a beautiful and bountiful flower garden and a vegetable garden. There are vegetables we can grow in the summer. Did you know that? And I mean not just Okrah, there are a lot of other good vegetables. Fresh produce for your garden, from your garden, for the kitchen, for your

cuisine. I use fresh produce and smoothie. Believe it or not. I love to have a morning smoothie, a little protein and and that's where I get a lot of my greens in a lot of my different vegetables, root crops and greens that are so good one these days. I just need to give you a recipe I guess for the smoothie to beat all. Hey, we'll be back in a short time. Ktr H Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to KTRH

Garden Line with Skip Rictord. Just watch him as anything come chicken not a sign. Well, good morning, good Saturday morning. The sun has shown itself on the buildings downtown Houston. See the beautiful, beautiful rays of the sun coming through. It's gonna be a good day. A little breeze going on. This will be a good time to be outside. Take a radio though, she can keep listening a garden line while you're out and about doing

your gardening chores. Hey, have you ever had to deal with a foundation problem before? Now, if you have, you know that that is something that you do not want to have to get into. But if you do, you want to hire somebody that knows what they're talking about, and that would be Fix my Slab Foundation Repair. Tie Strickland has been doing this for twenty three years. It's a local small business service. They've got that foundation

experience that you need. You need someone who knows what they're talking about when they do this. If you want more information, you can go to fix my Slab dot com or give them a call at two eight one two five five forty nine forty nine. Now, before you do any home improvements, you need to get that foundation level and right, otherwise everything's going to shift. When they fix the foundation and the improvements you made or just kind of

out of whack. So first, get the foundation fixed before you do the home improvement. Secondly, you need to know that if you're a garden line listener, let them know that because it'll be a free estimate for you when you do. They they are committed to a fair price, They show up on time, they know what they're doing. The way we like to put it is on time, fair price, and fixed. That's fixed myslab dot com. And by the way, you got a driveway crack, you got

a sidewalk crack, they can deal with that as well. We live on that part of the state where we got a lot of clay soils and it's shifts and shifts and shifts. I mean you drive down Houston streets and it's like you're running through the rocky mountains up and down with all the shifting soils and whatnot that we have. That's why we need a good foundation repair company. Let's head out to Cyprus. We're on a visit with Walter this morning. Good morning Walter, Well, good morning, sir, Hey sir.

I've got a problem with NATS. I've never had it before. We have tried everything, we know, you know, bleat in the drains sprays, but the thray line insects don't seem to affect them. Okay, so we don't have any food setting around or anything. They're in your house. You're saying, yes, okay, garden, go on, you'll tomato, yeah, out back. But yeah, well, basically I think a three different places that will really encourage, you know, three situations that bring the gnats.

At number one, you got fruit laying around like fruit flies for example, and another thing other food, and you say you've checked, you don't have that. The drain is another source for nats. It can be, and so you just want to want to check that, make sure that that huh okay, and then uh let me see what's Oh, the pop plants in the house. We we can when we keep our plant soil surfaces moist fungus, nats will breed and developing that and we can end up with some

gnats from that Somewhere. Those gnats are getting the moisture and the sustenance that they need. And Walter. Other than those, I don't know where else to tell you to look. You might talk to a good you know exterminator, the Scott over at McGrath. Pest control can probably direct you to some things that either you do yourself or they come in and do for you, to try to try to shut those down. But there are several different kinds of gnats and but still they got to have water, and they gotta have

something that they're feeding on. A little bitty I mean like a pencil. Yeah, get in a pencil about that. Yeah, I know I've seen what you're talking about. I usually trace mind some food I didn't know was there. You know, maybe a one time I found a potato that had kind of gotten behind the counter and were starting to decay a little bit. And boy, I mean it was there were gnats all in there that were

coming out from behind there. I don't know where to tell you to look, but I know it's going to be some type of food source from wet saying it's supposed to track them and kill them books. I hope that's gonna work. It's socially here today, Okay, I don't know anything about those, so uh that that's outside my certain poet. Maybe we could put out not that I know of. You know it, you got to figure out what's bringing them in. And I know you've you've kind of looked and tried

enough suggested some things. But other than that, I don't know. I think I may call a pest control company and see what they what they say, Okay, sir, I appreciate your knowledge. All right, Well, good luck with them. I'm sorry you having to deal with that. That's a pain, I know. Thank you, Yes, sir, you were listening to Garden Line. Our phone number is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.

Hey, if you love out in the Kingwood area, and I mean area, I mean humble the task as seat a Porter, Valley Ranch, New Caney, all that area. You're Richwood Garden Centers out there. You've got Warning Southern Gardens on North Park Driving, Kingwood, and you've got Kingwood Garden Center on Stone Hollow Drive in Kingwood. Both of those are open seven days

a week and they have got all kinds of great plants. I was taking care of some pentas that I put in a container on my back porch this past week, and I just noticed Warrens has a excellent supply of Penta's in Penta's They're also called Egyptian starflower. They're white, they're pink, they're red, they bring in butterflies, they love bright shade. I mean, they do it in containers and everything. They've also got the Primark Freedom blackberries in

now. Primark Freedom is a thornless BlackBerry that produces on the first year in the canes, which most blackberries won't, and then also on the second year. So it's an awesome berry to try. You should you should give that one a try now. Or head over to Kingwood Garden Center where they just got in a whole bunch more of those Cajun hibiscus that I just can't quit

talking about. I mean, if if you think you know what a hibiscus flower looks like, look at a Cajun hibiscus and you're gonna see something very different. They're very very popular now in our Greater Houston area. Or grab some diamond frost. Euphobia's another little whispy plant with white flowers that absolutely laughs at our summer sun. I like it in containers, I like it in

the ground, in beds. It's a beautiful plant. Hey, Warren's and Kingwood Garden Center, you're not going to go wrong with either of those. You can find them online. They've both got the Facebook pages, They've got the Instagram pages where you can see all the plants and what's happening. Check those out and feel fortunate if you live over in that area, because you are indeed, very very fortunate. Let's see, I'm gonna mention one thing.

If you're down in the area and your League City, Santa Fe, Dickinson, San Leone, Lamarck, League City Feed is your local feedstore. Wes and Madison Funderburg have really continued that tradition that began over forty years ago in an Oprah patch of League City Feed. You can give McCall at two eight one three three two sixteen twelve. If we talk about a fertilizer on Garden Line, they're going to have it at League City. They're on Highway

three, a few blocks south of Highway ninety six. Everything else that you would expect from a feed store, from Chicken Supplies to pep food and you name it is there. And it's that old fashioned service that all of the feed stores we talk about will provide you down in that area. League City Feed. You're not going to do better Monday through Saturday nine to six and closed on Sunday. Hey, give us a call, Josh. You'll get you on the board. We're gonna take a break and you'll be first up

when we come back. Seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Good Saturday morning, on a great day for gardening. The sun is shining, it is beautiful outside. Boy, this is a time to get that kind of stuff done. We are here to talk about whatever you're interested in regarding gardening. My name is Skip Richter. I'm your host in our phone number seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Seven one

three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Now, I've talked to you about Dell Web before, but I just want to remind you that they have a brand new community coming in in Fulsher on FM three fifty nine, less than two miles from downtown fullsher If you've ever been around Dellweb, you know the quality, you know the workmanship. You know that they design their homes

and their communities for active adults age fifty five and better. The lifestyle programs designed around you, and part of that lifestyle is being able to garden. They have a community garden that I am helping them set up there at the Dellweb community in fullsher Now check it out. I hope you would go online to dellweb dot com slash Houston or give up a call two eight one four to five nine zero six zero nine find out about that community and the Dellweb

difference for yourself, including the really nice community garden for residents. Pretty excited about that. I think it's a great addition for a Dellweb community. Let's head out to Cyprus and we're going to talk to Susan this morning. Hello Susan, good morning. I wonder it is too late and too hot to fertilize your lawn. Yes, no, it's not. You want to use the fertilizer at the right rate so you don't overdo it. And you want

to use a slow release so you don't burn the lawn. Okay, So a product that's going to gradually release over time will give you the good nutrition without putting the salts down in a concentration that might cause burning. So the nitro fos product, what are the numbers that first nineteen nineteen four ten. But it's easier, it's easiest just to look for the silver bag. When you see silver, that's it. That nitro files has one silver bag,

and that's that's the one we're looking at. Thank you, does does very very well for it. Yeah, just follow the label. By the way, Susan, you want to put five pounds per thousand square feet out there? Okay? Five pounds per thousand of that of that fertilizer. All righty, thank you, Thank you very much. Bye bye. Now we're gonna head to Southwest Houston and talk to Sandy. Hello, Sandy, Hi, how could we help today? Uh? Well, I, um, you

know, pulled leeks and peas out of my garden bed. It's a raised bed, and I have the rose soil compost mix that I hit picks two to one. Okay, um do I And now I'm going to plant some oat crop and I do I put or do I did more compost yet? Uh? I don't think you need it at this time. It's warm enough now to where the microbes are really breaking down all the organic matter in that rose soil that you have. Have you done any fertilizing in the last couple

of months. No, I just pulled out all of my leaks that were there. Yeah, yeah, last week and so yeah, well and how how were the leaks doing? Did they look pretty good? Are they pretty healthy? They did? Yes? Okay, I think you're gonna be okay. If you wanted to get you a fertilizer that is a you know, geared toward a vegetable garden for example, I think you can. You can go ahead and do that. I mean that we have so many good options

out there on the market. I know Nelson Plant Food makes one for vegetables. They make an organic U fertilizer for vegetables as well that you could just mix a little bit in and just give them a little extra boost as you go into the okra anytime though, you mentioned peas. Anytime you're doing beans and peas, you want to hold off on the nitrogen because too much nitrogen causes them to vine without as much production. Okra, okra would be fine

with a little boost. Okay, Okay, thank you so much, you bet, thank you. Yeah. The Nelson's products, they know, when we think of Nelson's, we think of like the color Star line, we think of the Nutrostar line, or but now the turf Star line. And then they also have a Nature Star line, the turf Star for summer fertilizing for your lawn, The Slow and Easy as the one you want to look

for. That's the twenty two two twenty two ten. It's gonna do that gradual release over time that just absolutely provides the nutrients that the plant needs, but not all at once. It gives it to the plant gradually, which is how plants grow. That's how plants feed. So Slow and Easy twenty two two ten from Nelson's is a good one, you know. But as we're talking about the you know, the taking care of the garden, when it comes to vegetables, look for their look for their vegetable fertilizer. Look

for one of the Nature Star lines as well. It's gonna you're gonna find it. Your plants just perform exceptionally well when you provide them that kind of nutrition. Let's head out to Tanglewood now and we're going to visit with Charles. Hello, Charles, well skip with all this heat, is it okay to put the slower grow out? And how do I handle that for your lawn? Yes, yes you can. If it's a gradual feed, it's a gradually releasing fertilizer, a slow release fertilizer. You're not going to burn

your lawn if you put it out at the right rate. Okay, the best time, the earlier the day, and then watered him. Yeah, you could do that. I mean, you know, you could do it anytime of day, but because of the temperature, for human reasons, I'd say do it early in the day. All right, Okay, Well, thank you very much. Have a great day. Okay, thank you. I appreciate that call very much. You know, when you're talking about a

source for fertilizers, we're talking about all these fertilizers out here. You're not going to find a better place than Southwest Fertilizer. Southwest Fertilizer has been on let's see, they've been a lawn and garden tradition here now in the Houston area since nineteen fifty five. So you think you don't stand business that long if you're not doing a whole lot right, including customer service selection and whatnot. They're at the corner of Bissonet and Renwick. You can go online Southwest

Fertilizer dot com and see what I'm talking about. There's not going to be a product you need that you don't find in there. If they don't have it, you don't need it. That includes all the fertilizers we talk about, and then some that includes herbicides, fungicides, and secticide. That includes organics. If you want organic products, you're not going to find a better selection. The Southwest Fertilizer. They've got everything else you need. You need

your more blade sharp and they got a little shop in the back. They can do some repair on small engine. It's everything you need. Let them help you. Take a sample in, take a photo in. They will direct you. If you need a product, they won't say something if you don't. If you need a product, they'll direct you to the one you need to have good success. Let's head out now to Hempstead and we're going to talk to Greg. Hello Greg, Good morning Skip. I've got a

quick question for quick question for you. My wife and I just built a new house out out here in Hempstead, and of course there's a new side with that. Let's permute a side. My question to you is what do I do now? How do I pick up on the fertilization schedule and so on and so forth? How long go did the side? Was it put down. It was installed about her laid down about three weeks ago week. Okay, good, So it is now rooted in in this weather we're having,

you need to give it a good soaking on an infrequent basis. So if you can water once a week, even if you have to apply it in two or three, you know, cycle and soak applications on watering day, that's best. That's number one. But but yes, go ahead and fertilize. Get you a slow release product. We've been talking about them all morning that is going to gradually feed over time and you're not going to burn your lawn that way, and it'll carry you all the way through into the

fall fertilization time when you do that. Okay, so I can pick up right with the normal fertilization schedule now. Yes, And if you have a preference you know of a brand or a product like that, or we've got a lot of good ones here that are local companies, which is what we like to talk about. Just just follow the label carefully. And yeah, you're Bermuda, and you know with the Bermuda, Greg, the most important thing for beauty is regular mowing. The more often you mow it, the

better it looks. If you get it down in the inch and a half range, you know it's gonna really really look good. Okay, very good, all right. I appreciate your help. Thank you, sir. Appreciate appreciate that call very much. Now I'm a broken record when it comes to soil. I say it all the time, and I'm not ashamed of it at all, because everything starts in the soil. Plant success starts in the

soil. If you run out to some place and buy a flat of plants and bring them home and walk around the yard wondering where am I going to put these, you've already messed up. You need to get your soil right. Maybe buy the plants and buy the soil product, get them right,

bring it home and take care of that. But if you're looking for a quality soil, you are not going to do better for all of you down in the south of Houston, south southwest all through that area than CNA mal CNA Malch is north of Rocher and they're on five twenty one where Highway six and near where Highway six and two eighty eight come together. You can go

online to Cnamulch dot com and find out more about them. But all the fertilizers I've been talking about, and then some they carry them if we recommend them, they carry them at Ciena mulch dot com. So you here's your soil well for Elijah goes in the soil. You can pick up your fertilizer at the same time. Do you want bags of soil? Do you want

bolts soil, bolts, bulk soil that there we go. If you live down in that area, Quel Valley, Riverstone, Manville, Row, Sharon Lake, Olympia, Pomonia, Sweetwater, pear Land, you know, anywhere near Brasispin State Park within about a twenty mile radius. They will also provide delivery out there for the soils. You pay it delivery fee for that. Naturally, it costs money to haul big bulky things around. But they're gonna

have everything and they'll get you set up. And when you do this right, when you start with Sienna, then when you buy your plants, you buy your flowers, buy your vegetables, whatever you're going to plant, you're just gonna see a much much greater chance of success. By the way, they're open today until two thirty, closed tomorrow on Sunday, but give them a call or check them out. Saml dot com, Senamultz dot com,

You're not gonna do any better. I was out working in the garden the other day, actually two days ago, and taking care of some beds and some things like that, and I was just thinking that the next set of beds I put in in my garden, they're gonna be the vegobed. I talk about them all the time, and I am I've never been as excited about a type of vegetable bed than I am about Vego Viago As a modular

metal bed. They treat the metal so that it doesn't rest and corrode, and then they paint it with a USDA certified quality paint to hold onto it. You can make them any shape you want. Their modular so you buy the pieces. They go together very easily. You can make a long, skinny bed, a square bed, a C shaped bed. If you're an organic gardener, these vegobeds are the thing you need. And if you're not an organic gardener, I can't think of a better use of space in your

garden than these narrow edged Vego beds. There's a lot of impostors out there. Vego is a Houston company. The first in America to do the metal beds. Don't be fooled by an impostor. Go to Vego garden dot com and many of our local garden centers that we talk about on garden Line also carry the Vego beds in stock Well. It's time take a break and get some news going here. If you would like to get us, give us call, get on the boards. Seven one three two one two, five,

eight seven four. Good Saturday morning. Good day to be listening to garden Line, Good day to be talking about gardening. Give us a call. Seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two and two fifty eight seventy four. Hey, you've heard me talk about the Trusted lab before, and the Trusted lab is one organic made from the highest quality hump grown under USDA guidelines. They use a CO two extraction so it's

never touched by chemicals. They test it pesticide, solvents, heavy metals, all the things you don't want in there. They ensure they don't have it in there. You can get them in oils, soft jails, goomies, creams. I like to use a cream for muscle aches and skelet of muscular aches and things that we have. You can go online to the Trusted Lab dot com. By the way, they have a fourth of July sale coming

up here. If you've wanted to try CBD from the Trusted Lab dot com to sleep better, or for tight joints or so on, go to the Trusted Lab dot com now and shop their fourth of July sale little extra savings. This is a Texas company, Texas proud company here in our own state for trusted CBD type products. Trusted Lab. You know we're talking about plants and when it spent a little bit of time this morning on lawns. If I spent a lot of time on lawns and I said, I'd like to

talk a little bit about some flowers and vegetable things. We have so many good flowers for summer. Now I realize there's something in our psyche that happens when it gets hot. People start thinking less about gardening, and there's no reason to do that. Most landscapes become a sea of green in the summer. Green grass, green groundcovers, green shrubs, green trees, green,

green, green green. Nothing wrong with the color green, But there's a lot of colors out there that we could be choosing from I mentioned pentas earlier. Beautiful Angelonia takes the summer like a champ, the diamond frost Euphorbia takes the summer like a champ. Zennis. I mean, we could just go on and on and on, and then there's all the foliage colors that look

so good. You can get out in a morning time like this and get those things planted, or maybe very very late day if it's a lottle cooler, then let the sun kind of head toward the horizon a little bit and get these things planted. If you will water him and get them started good, they will look good for you, and they'll just keep getting better and

better and better as we go forward in time. You're you're not going to have a lack of color in your landscape if you just take care of some these wonderful planted options that we have, and our garden centers are greater Houston area garden centers that we talk about on garden Line. I mean, you're just not going to do better. I honestly mean it when I say I don't know a town that has so many awesome garden centers like the Houston area

does. North Southeast West Central. Everywhere you are there is a super independent garden center near you. And what are they They're staffed with people that know what they're talking about. They're not staffed with people that were working the jewelry counter or the lumber counter last week. They're staffed with people who know gardening, who have experienced gardening, who know the products they carry and can help you identify problems, can direct you to things that work, tell you how

to do it, and they can show you the plants. You say, I need something for shade, I want something color or whatever. They take you to what they're talking what they need, and that is so important. That is worth a lot of money. Let me tell you that. You know, when you think about what does it cost to have a plant, Well, there's the cost of the plant, But then is that plant going to live? Is it going to do what you want it to do? Are you going to plant it the right way in the white time and take

care of it because you've got expert advice helping you with that. That saves money and it just and not only that, it makes your property more valuable. It makes your property more beautiful, and it helps you enjoy it. You only to get out there and you want to enjoy your property. And that's why I just so much talk about the importance of going to a quality nursery that knows what they're talking about. And you know Buchanans and the Heights.

It's just one example that's a central and he's in north central Houston. It's on East eleventh Street. Now you can go online to be Cannons Plants dot com, Buchanansplants dot com. They've been a Houston garden center since nineteen eighty six and they specialize in Texas natives and they also specialize in pollinator type plants. Now they have everything else vegetables, houseplants, I mean, shade

plants, trees, everything you can think of, they've got it. But if you're looking for a source for let's say you want to attract butterflies and you want some velvet leaf center for the yellow butterfly, hummingbird bush for the tersa sphinx moss, or maybe fragrant mist flower for the metal marked butterfly, inland seats for the roadside skipper. Do you hear all those? I mean,

on and on and on. They're all there at Buchanans plants, and they have people that know what they're talking about, so they can direct you to on Buchanans Plants dot com. Go check them out. It's a shady, wonderful stroll through one of the most beautiful nurseries in town. You'll see what I'm talking about when you go at Buchanans Plants. Yeah, we can plant flowers. Now. The other kinds of things that I didn't mention are

all the hibiscus that's so many. There's a tropicalbiscus and they're the Southern dinner plate hibiscus, the Gulf Coast native Texas star hibiscus that can be planted at this time. Just beautiful blooms, on and on. And then when we get into vegetables, lots of heat tolerant vegetables, and most people probably couldn't name two summer vegetables. But there's sweet potato vines. You can eat the potatoes, of course, that's why we grow them the underground roots, but

you can also eat the vines. It's it's a leafy green that can be eaten. The okra is probably the most famous plant of summer. One of my favorite vegetables. Okra absolutely does well all the southern peas, black eyed peas, purple hole peas, cream peas, crowder peas. You know, tons of purple hole I mentioned black eyes. Those are all doing super super well in the summer. But then we have vegetables that are from other cultures in areas of the world that are hot and humid, welcome to Houston.

So when we think about things like molochia, that's green that is very popular in parts of the Middle East and other parts of the region, really that it just thrives in our summer heat. There's a one called water spinits that a lot of people grow here. There's an amoranth that people grow here, that vegetable amorand that's big nice leaves, and there are many many other good

options that do so super well here in our climate. There's no reason to not have fresh, healthy, locally grown locally meaning your own yard grown vegetables and your landscape, and you can certainly take care of them. Now. They will thrive if you give them adequate moisture. That's all they need is just adequate moisture and they will do really, really well. So why not why not get out and try some of these vegeta in your landscape and in

your garden. And by the way, if you don't have a traditional garden, you know I mentioned earlier just my favorite type of garden in the world is the raised bed garden. Then you're not going to do better than a raised bed garden and vegos the one we talk about all the time. But that is how I would do it. If not a large container also works. Well, well, let's take a break. Give Josh a call at seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four so he can get you

on the board and we will be right back. Was yeah, through a chap up in the garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter, and we are here to talk gardening with you our phone number seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. We are now going to head to League City and talk to John V. Hello John V. You know what, it always helps. It always helps if I actually click on the collar so I can talk to you. Sorry about that. How are you John V? Yes, Skip, this is m John V. Hello to everybody at

Garden Line. I have a question about mint, okay and herb. Now I have two strands of mint and a pop and I need more because I've got like seven different things to make from mint. Few things in mint limju Believe Mint Team Mint, chocolate chip, ice cream, and Possessha bread and others. Trying to make a list right now, making me hungry. I am hungry right now for some mint. I love mint, that's true. And what is I'm sorry? What is the question? Or should I should

I put? Should I should I put it in the garden because it's in a pot right now? I would keep it in the pot myself. You can put it in the garden. But mint takes over the world. It's like bermudograss, just it thinks everything belongs to it in all territories. And so I would. I would keep it in a big pot. I have

some in those big like giant almost almost Whiskey Girl smires containers. But if you put it in the ground, you just need something that is like a vertical wall on the soil, which is a lot of work to create that, you know, to bury a panel to block it. But other than that, you know, I wouldn't. I wouldn't worry about that. Well, I will keep it in a mint green pot to magic the mint. There you go, there you go. Yeah, make all those wonderful things.

My mom made mint jelly when I was a kid, and oh my wow, that was the most I've ever seen them all. Anyway, Hey, thanks wonderful, Thank you for the absolutely you stay had in trouble and have fun with that mint. Yeah mint mint will get us in trouble. I'll tell you for sure, that is certain. Hey, if you are, if you're a fan, and I hope you are, of the oh my gosh, I can't even say Green Pro, Green Pro our company that

does the aeration corporation and the top dressing. They also have a company called org Lawn o RG Lawn like Organic Lawn. Now they have a summer special, so if you want to have them come out and do a liquid treatment for new customers, it's twenty nine ninety nine plus tax, twenty ninety nine plus tax. The first application can be whatever they think your lawn needs the most. Maybe it's a fertilizer, a liquid feed, or maybe it's a

micronutrient. Maybe it is an insect protection prevention treatment for example. So in other words, whatever your lawn needs, you can get a twenty nine ninety nine plus tax garden line special for a new customer to come out and do that. They can do like seaweed, They can do the bug prevention. They can treat up to ten thousand square feet of grass for this deal, additional costs if it's more than ten thousand. Now they serve Katie, Cypress,

Houston, Sugarland, Richmond. They use as many organic inputs as possible to keep your lawn looking great. And you're just not going to do better than org Lawn. That's www dot org lawn dot com or give them a call eight three two three five one zero zero three two. They don't do the long term contracts. You can just harm to come out whenever you feel like you need it or what they suggest your lawn might need. They do both fully organic and organic hybrid option in their mom care. Well, let's

head out to Cypress now and we're gonna talk to Sandy. Hello, Sandy, Hi there, skip, good morning morning. My question I have is on my oquid they're growing, but I have these little bitty bitty, tiny brown looking ants. Okay, is that is that a good insect? It's not a it's not a pest of the okra, but ants ants or dairy farmers ants will haul aphids up onto a plant and then they will protect them, just like a dairy farmer would protect a herd of cattle. And then

they literally milk the apid. Now, don't try to picture what a dairy farmer does here. They use their antenna to stroke the afid and it makes them produce honeydew that the ants feed on. So it's literally like a little herd of cows for the ants. And I mean, yeah, for the Yeah, that's what they do. And so the negative of the ants is, yeah, they you know, they'll protect your aphids against things that eat aphids. But in general, I don't worry about ants. You can take

a blast of water and knock off the apids if you need to. But oaks is so tough it's just not going to be a problem. Okay, great, thank you, um, thank you so much. And I planted. Uh, I couldn't um. The tag doesn't say what it is, but it says camaro slicing tomato. Oh, carmelo? Is that it is? That a just oh my gosh, that is a good question. I'm gonna have to do a quick look on that. Carmelo is a slice or

tomato? It used to be very popular in the south of here in Louisiana, especially um the um carmelo tomato was was really a go to tomato. And so let me see if I can find out right quick. It looks like it is indeterminate, indeterminate. Oh goodness, Yeah, it's a it's a favorite, you know, an old French selection, just real, rich, flavor, beautiful. Another thing about it doesn't crack as bad as some tomatoes do, and so that's another good thing. So anyway, it's a

good one. It's a one though. I would say on carmelo, I would probably plant it in maybe mid July, so that by the time it gets a good size, our temperatures are breaking in the fall and you get a little bit of a fall fruit set on it. Okay. Well, um, since my tag didn't say I bought it at HIB, which I usually don't buy. I'm plants at Hib, but Ace Hardware didn't have they ran out of the tomatoes, okay, and so um it doesn't say on it, but I put it in like a I want to say. It's

a ten ten gallons pot. Okay, And I guess I'll just have to keep trimming it. I don't know. Well, yeah, you can just keep trimming it. I mean, keep it around. It'll be a bigger

plant and it'll do well for you when the temperature breaks. Fall is a short season for us because we've got to get past those days where it's in the mid nineties in the day and the night times are in the upper seventies, and so they can start setting fruit and then next thing you know, here comes cool weather and they slow down so much that we usually end up picking slightly green tomatoes in the fall to get them in before the first frost.

Thank you so very much, Skip your wonderful keep up the great job. Thank you, Sandy. I appreciate that call, and good luck with those tomatoes. And now, if you live down in the Richmond area, especially up towards sugar Land Way, you need to know about Enchanted Forest. I've talked about them before, but Enchanted Forest is the nursery if you're in Richmond, you go towards sugar Land, but it's it's south of fifty nine.

They have a super selection of all kinds of plants. One thing that's really of interest to me is they just got in some of the pipe vine Dutchman's pipe that attracts the I was heading ahead of myself. That attracts the pipe vine swallowtail butterflies, the pipe vine swallowtail, which is a beautiful butterfly. It's larva love to feed on the Dutchman's pipe. That's where they get the name Aristolochias, the fancy name for the plant. They've got those in

stock, but they have a whole whole lot more things in stock. If you want milkweeds, swamp milkweed Asclepius tuberosa, or the balloon milkweed or tropical milkweed or giant milkweed for your monarchs, you're not going to do better than enchanted forests down in Richmond. Now, of course they carry a lot of other stuff other than just the things I mentioned, but it's well worth a

trip. When you drive up, it is so cool the look of the play it's kind of like this old barn look to it, and it's just one of the super mom and pops that we keep bragging on that just make you want to bring family and friends and spend the day kind of wandering around and looking at all of the unlimited supply of things that they have enchanted Forest. You can find more information on them by going to my enchanted dot com.

But also if you just give them a call to eight one three or nine three seven ninety four forty nine two eight one nine three seven ninety four forty nine. I love to go out to that, but it's been a while since I've been out. In fact, it's been over a month. I need to I need to head back out there because I do really really enjoy being able to go check them out. Well, you've been listening to garden Line. We are here to answer your gardening questions. We're about to

take our hour break. Now what we got two hours in the books this morning. That means we have two left, the nine o'clock and the ten o'clock hour. Tell your family and friends about the show. If they're not listeners, we would love to have helped them have a more beautiful landscape and a more beautiful garden. Did I say eight and nine, nine and ten? Yeah, eight and nine, eight to nine and nine to ten. How about that? That's easy. You know I'm a broadcast professional. I

can't even tell you what time it is. Well, anyway, we'll be back. Give Josh a cult seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Seven one three two one two five eight seven four. I hope you're planning a day to get a little bit of stuff done out in the garden and landscape if you want to do some things with your house plants. By the way, Enchanted Forest has got a couple of really cool philodendrons, and I know they have a burken and several others. You need to check

those out. Speaking of house plants, KTRH Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to KTRA Garden Life with Scared Rector smell. Just watch him as so many good A good Saturday morning. Take a look outside, beautiful day, beautiful day, beautiful sunshine coming through. Good day for plants, and good day for gardening, and good day for talking about gardening. And that is why we're here.

Give us a call if you would like to visit seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Maybe we can help recommend a plant, help diagnose something, help identify something. Whatever you're interested in, we we will be happy to is it about that as long as it's herticultural you know I do. Sometimes people will give me a call and when I get on the

call, I find out the call really isn't about a plant question. It's we have two spouses on the call, and one of them is hoping that I will say something so that an argument they've been having with their spouse they will have a backup to it. And I always say, look, gardening advice is free. Marriage advice is one hundred dollars an hour. So you decide what you want and we will try to help with that. Sometimes there's more than one opinion in a household. Have you ever noticed that before?

Well, we're going to talk about gardens this morning, and I want to tell you, first of all, if you if you have a little piece of property, you know, a few acres outside of town, or maybe a lot of acres outside of town, and you've been thinking about getting you a nice tractor to help you get the work done, you're not going to do better than the Texas edition Cabodo. That's the L twenty five O one by Landsdown Moody. That common Lansdown and Kubota. What a combo. There's

Lansdown Moody Tractors companies all over or outlets all over this area. Here you can go to l mtractor dot com and find out more. But here's why you don't need to delay until June thirtieth. There is a deal going on that you're not going to do better than a period zero down, zero interest for seven years, eighty four months Lansdown Moody LM tractor dot Com on the

Texas Edition Caboda L twenty five one. It's got the hydrostatic transmission. If you want to add a front endloader or a box blade, or a rotary cutter, anything like that, you're not going to find a more affordable option than you have right now with Lansdown Moody LM tractor dot Com. I wanna now go. We're gonna head out to Cyprus and visit with Mike. Good morning, Mike morning, thanks for taking my call. I just bought house

and Cypress have moved from the Brennamaria into Cypress. And this house has got about half the yard that had been laid in with some landscape. It's monkey grass, okay, and it's been cut in the past. It hasn't been cut in a while. It's full of weeds. Everything from dollar weed to some other taller weeds. I'm just wondering, can you kill weeds and monkey grass without killing the monkey grass? And can I do it when it's this hot outside. You know, I've never tried treating in this heat on it.

I would say you probably can, but I would test a small area just to be sure, check it out, give a spray, see if it does. I don't think you're going to have a problem with using a broad leaf weed control product. Just to be a little extra sure, you might want to use one called celsius, like as in fahrenheit and celsius. It's a little less stressful to some plants when the weather's are hot. But I think you're probably gonna do okay with most of the broad leaf weed killers.

But again, just to be sure. That's kind of an unusual you know, there's always this new twist on a question and monkey grass one hundred degrees, you know, dollar weed. But you know, I'm just trying to think through that, and I don't want to send you in the wrong direction. But if it were mine, I would probably grab some celsius. I would treat a small area and then if it looks like it's gonna be okay, then treat the rest. Or you could just use another broadleaf weedkiller.

There's the weed beater Ultra. The Bonide puts out furtloam. I'm trying to think of what's furloams equivalent of those? Ah, I'll think of it in a minute. But anyway, a test a small area with the the only thing that the Celsius says you buy a little packet and you mix it in water and it treats a large area. So you don't want that sitting around for a week while you wait to see what it's going to do. So it's not like the other kinds where you could make a small amount to

just test with and then make more later. So that may be a reason to not do the Celsius in this situation. All right, appreciate it very much. I'll give it a try. Yeah, good luck getting that in control. Yeah that's yeah, you bet, you bet. Welcome to the new home, you know. The when we start looking at the weed problems and stuff that we have to deal with like that, I mean, it

can be it can be quite quite a challenge. I mean it really can, because we have to deal with those kinds of problems that come in on it. If you are living out in the Mont Bellevue area, or if you're down you know, all the way down in Baytown. I want to tell you about your hometown feed store, and that's Texas Feed Stop. Texas Feed Stop is on North Highway one forty six. It's just a few minutes north of I ten in Mont Bellevue. And so when you go to Texas

Feed Stop, these we were just talking about these products. You're just a moment ago with Mike on deal with monkey Grass. You're when you go to a place like Texas Feedstop, you're going to find the supplies we talk about. And there is no place like Texas Feedstop except the original Texas Feedstop out of Mont Bellevue. The Rhodes, Brian and Hope have created a beautiful little business there. I mean it's the old time feed store. Some teenager from

the Mont Bellevue community they hire from the community there. They will carry their bags out for you. I mean they're going to carry all the fertilizers that I talk about and the other things you know that you hear me talk about, like the mosquito dunks for example, a mosquito season which we're in the

big middle of that. They have it all right there, and so if you're looking for products and supplies at a reasonable cost, all the stuff we talk about, in addition to all the feed things that you would expect from a feed store. Check out Texas Feedstop just a few minutes north of i Ton on Highway one forty six in mont Bellevue. We're gonna head now down or out to Fairfield and talk to Marty. Hello Martyr yea, how are you? I'm well? Thank you good? Hey. Last week you were

talking about digging up some potatoes, getting there your sweet potatoes. Yes, how do I know? How do I know when to start working them up? Yeah? Okay, Actually that I was talking about regular potatoes, the little red new potato kind of things. The sweet potatoes. As they grow, as those roots get bigger, the soil kind of heaves up and you see cracks around the base of the plant because you got something under the ground kind of pushing up on it. Typically we let them run full course all

the way up into the fall season. It takes about one hundred and twenty days from planting before you have a good sizeable potato. Now, if you if you go earlier. You don't have the nice swollen roots. You just have little things like your fingers sticking out there that are not worth messing with. So you might want to dig around one just to check and see if you're not sure that it should be way way too early to dig a sweet potato. Well, I had some come up from last year last fall.

Okay, they's just divine. And then I did see two that popped out of the ground, and so I was told to cover them back up and let them fully mature. Well I went out looking for them and they're gone. So I guess it created out them. But I'm seeing flowers and stuff, little purple flowers. Ye, but I don't know when just start digging. They've been way way too long. I would. I would just dig down, look around, see what you see, because it's gonna be a

roll of the dice on these, Marty. I don't know how to predict whether you're going to have a good results or not. But I would just dig, you know, dig down. You don't have to completely dig one up, just check it out. Hey, I'm gonna have to run to a break, but thank you for the call. I'll make some sweet Potata comments when I come back. The phone number here is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Give Josh a call. You'll be first

stop when we come back. Good Saturday morning, on a great day for gardening, as all days are, and it could be pouring rain outside and it's a good day to be starting plants indoors, taking care of house plants. You see what I'm saying. Every day is a good day for gardening. You know we earlier today I was talking about nitrophisis silver bag and the

nineteen fourteen and the importance of that as a slow release fertilizer. I want to say about a couple of other products that are part of their Summer Essentials program, and that would be first of all, their fire ant killer nitrophiles. Fiant killer works quickly, but it prevents the queen from escaping. It kills the colony, preventing them from building new mountains. Now, if you've

dealt with fire ants, you know they are no fun. And if you like to roll around in the grass, have kids playing in the grass and so on, you do not want fire nts in the yard. And nitrofos firont killer works well on that. Now we have other insects that are coming up in our landscape soon, and that would be things like chinch bugs tend

to have their worst population as we get towards the end of summer. Then we have things like the side web worm that we never know each year it's gonna be a bad year or not on those but boy, when it's a bad year, it's a bad year. Well. Nitrofous makes a Bugout Max and it is the best consumer choice for Texas insect problems. Bug Out Max Nitropous bugout Match. It's an advanced formula. It targets a pests and invest

our lawns including up to one hundred and thirty different species of insects. Those two products, the firont killer and the bugout Max are key to success in keeping the bugs at bay and your lawn. And Nitrofosts is sold everywhere. You're gonna find nitrofoss up at Harbor Gay, You're gonna find nitrophiles up in the indfeed in Tomba. You're gonna find them down in Fisher's Hardware in Baytown, or plants and things in Brandham or many many other locations. Check out

their summer essentials of these two important insect management products. Well, let's head out to Spring and we're gonna talk to Phil. Good morning, Phil, good morning, thanks for taking my call. Yes, sir, recently I picked up a about a thirty inch tall ceramic pot. Okay, it's very large, it's very heavy, It's probably three quarter inch thick. And my question is it doesn't have a hole in the bottom. Can I drill a

hole in the bottom without tearing up the pot? You can? I am not an expert on that, but I would go to probably an ACE hardware store and ask them for a masonry type bit and ask them how do you use it? You may have to go online and do a little watch. You know, though, you you don't want a normal drill bit on this, either wood or metal bit, and you want one that's made to kind of grind its way through the ceramic. A lot of times water is involved,

and you know, putting it on there. But again, this isn't my area of expertise. But I've seen it done, I guess you could say, and you can drill the hole yourself. You just want to be real careful and go very slow, don't push too hard. On the bit and let it kind of chew its way or grind its way through there.

The only other alternative would be if you if you wanted to put a pot in a pot, maybe something that's not as attractive of a planner, and set it down in that pot and then put some moss on top, just to kind of so people don't know it's not planted. Then you could just pull that out and it would drain down into the bottom and the fact that the pot didn't drain wouldn't matter, because the pot you have in it would drain. Do you see what I'm saying. Yes, that's probably more tribula

on something that size. I do that on indoor plants all the time. Really appreciate your help. Well, good luck with that. And boy, those beautiful ceramic pots, those are those are nice things to have. Yes, they are all right, Well, thank you, sir. I do appreciate your call. Hey. Yeah, And speaking of pots and containers, if they're standing water anywhere, you're gonna have mosquitos breeding in your landscape.

That could be a saggy rain gutter, you know, I mean, one of those materials that catch water and hold water, but don't don't allow it to drain. If you know the edges are not are not tilted at an angle where they drain. Well, you got a low spot, maybe on the eaves of your house. If you've got things catch basins under your plants and they hold water for five, ten, certainly twelve days, you're gonna

have a generation mosquitoes go right through there. Mosquito dunks prevent that. You put a mosquito dunk in a large body of water, it'll cover ten square feet and it will last for a month. You can get the little granules and toss them into the bottom of the pot just for a small area, or if you want to really quickly kill a whole bunch of mosquitos in a big area fast faster than the doughnuts will dissolve, the little granules work for

that. Mosquito dunks are organic. They do not harm people. They don't harm pets, not fish, not birds, not wildlife. Very safe to use. If it's an ace hardware store, if it's a feed store, we talk about. If it's an independent garden center, we talk about they're going to have mosquito dunks. Don't be a skeeter breeder. Get some mosquito dunks and mosquito granules to take care of that. I would like to go now out to Bob in Walker County. Hello, Bob, is this are

you heavy online? Now? Yes? Or Bob? I'm actually in North harri standing. But I have a sweet gum tree and I've had a true forty years, and what I've noticed is that when it gets really hot, it has a tendency to break off and drop limbs. I did lose a couple of limbs during the recent storms. But for example, about oh maybe three weeks ago, on just one of the really hot days dry, nothing happened. I went out and I had maybe a four inch limb that had

broken off about fifteen feet long and just fall into the ground. And I've had that happened before. Is any thoughts too? I mean, the tree appears to be healthy, it's watered with a sprinkler system. Yeah, you know, it's it's lush. But I just for the life of the tree, every now and then, particularly when they get long arms on them, they break off. Yeah. I understand when you walk out to the tree, Bob, about chest high, about how how wide diameter is it?

How far across? Maybe as I said it's about forty years old. For five years old, yeah, big one. Sweet gums are not good about healing themselves. In other words, they get a break or they get something in them and it decays. And limb breakage is not unusual on those going over time. And this is an old tree, so it doesn't have the vigor that a young tree would have to close over and wound. We also

have a thing that's a sudden limb drop phenomenon that happens. It hames up a coon, trees and other things in the summertime where just out of nowhere, I mean, not a big storm or anything, you just get a limb that falls out of a tree. And there are different reasons they speculate

for it, but there's nothing that we can do anything about. So if your tree is receiving adequate care, meaning moderately moist soil, which the rainfall generally takes care of that most of the year, then I don't know anything else you can do. Certainly, when a limb falls out where you've got that wound up in the tree, having a fresh cut, clean it up and hope that it can start to heal over would be helpful, but that's just an issue that we have to deal with, and sweet gums can be

problematic, especially as they get a little bit older. To follow up questions number one, if I had read or heard somewhere that if a tree starts showing moss that grows out on the limbs, that's not a good sign. Some of the big branches, particularly lower down, could be as much as eight ten inches in diameter on the branches, and some of those do have moss growing on them. Is that a Is that an indicator or issue? No, not really. I mean in moist climates we get different things that

grow. You can get lichens that grow in a human environment that we see those a lot. We can have the resurrection fern that doesn't grow on sweet gum to my knowledge, but you see it on live oaks in Houston all the time. That's like a fern that grows on the trunks and the branches. And then there's also what you're describing moss. It may just be a regular type of moss that just indicates it stay and wet, stay moist up

there, and so it's not a disease of the tree. Last question, because of the size of it, the proximity of the house, and it's tendency to drop. I'm debating whether or not it's time to just remove it completely. Yeah. If I do that and excavate, the trouble is where it's located is exactly where I'd want to put another tree back in, right, you know, neighborhood etc. If I excavate or you know, grind out the stumps and so forth, how long can it be before I could

plant something back in the same vicinity. You know the problem with grinding it up. You have all that wood in the ground and it's going to decompose, and as it decomposes, the soil is going to sync down considerably because what was you know, once level after they finished their grind job, now it becomes a hole. So that's that's the if there were a way to you know, have that thing pulled out, and I realize you can't get a D nine caterpillar bulldozer in there to do it, But if you could

do that, you could go probably ill faster back in with something. I think you need to move over the side as much as you can to try to do that, or as they grind it, try to get as much of the wood out as you can, but that's not going to be very easy to do. So if I if I do grind it and just excavate as much of the you know, sawdust and chips and thing that I can. Yeah, do I need to leave it follow for a year or two,

or if you left it a couple of years it would help. I would throw some nitrogen on it, and I'd do that about three or four times a year, just to speed up the decomposition of all that carbon, which is basically the wood. Sure, and then you're gonna end up with a sunken area. You need to fill it back in before you do the planting. Yeah, I understood. Hey, thank you very much, you bat. I appreciate that call. Thank you very much. You know,

Dellweb has the new community. I've been talking about them for a while now. They're out in Full Sure on FM three fifty nine, less than two miles from downtown Full Sure. It's a typical Delweb community, beautiful homes, beautiful designs, lifestyle programs built around you, and this one has a community

garden that I'm helping them set up. Go to dellweb dot com slash Houston for more information or give us a call or give them a call two eight one four to five nine zero six zero nine and discover that Dellweb difference for yourself. We're going to take a break here, John and Katie. You'll be first up when we come back if you'd like to get on the board. Seven one three two one two five eight seven four. Good morning on a good Saturday morning, beautiful day out there today. Need to get out,

get to visit some of our local mom and pop garden centers. See what's going on by the way today out of Buchanans from ten am to twelve thirty pm. The folks from Heirloom Soils Luis and It's gonna be out there and they're gonna be giving away some hats and t shirts as well as samples of the products and stuff. So just another reason to head out to bukein Ands today ten am to twelve thirty pm. Check out the folks from Heirloom

Soils to make some beautiful, beautiful mixes out there. You know, we talk about gardening topics all the time and different kinds of things that are important to understand. One of the things that is important to understand is when you apply nutrients to your garden. You want to provide the things that plants need. Plants need the three big numbers on the bag, but when we are looking at all of the other things plants need that includes micronutrients as well.

Many of the microbes as well in the soil are all part of that sustaining good, healthy plant growth. If you have a vegetable garden or a flower bed, I would seriously consider getting the has to grow. It's a six twelve six higher phosphorus content hastrogrow six twelve six. It's really three products in

one. Number one, you got the nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium the six twelve six plus it has a medenus soil activator to stimulate biological activity and humate humic acid, which humic acid improves soil structure and improves nutrient uptake with the roots. And it even has seaweed extracts in it as well that helps stimulate the fruiting and the blooming. Now you can use this as a foliar application.

I would spray it upward in the morning or in the morning while the stonemats are still open, spray upward to coat the bottoms of the leaves as well as the tops of the leaves. This is not going to burn your plants. It's a salt low chemical formulation to burn that will not burn your plants. You can get in a court bottle with a little measuring cup, or if you want to use a hos In sprayer you can do that too. I like the little quart bottle where I can mix it up myself,

put it in a in a drench. Can you know a watering can or something along those lines. It's a great way with new transplants. When you put a new transplant in the ground, you need to have the HASTI twelve one on hand. A good solution with a hiphos first content is a great way to water in those new transplants and that helps get them off to a good start because they're having to hit the ground running facing one hundred gree temperatures

out here when they're brand new in the garden. But that will accomplish it. Yes, Okay, we're going to head out to Katie and talk to John. Good morning, John, good morning, how are you well. I'm doing well? Thank you. Okay. I planted some green ball to santhis six of them and they're doing well. It's set that they don't stand up. The stems with the flowers just lay down on the ground and I'm afraid to put them in deeper that have rocked the stems. But at this

point, I don't know what to do. Uh, tell me again, what is the plant? It's called a green ball, the santhus green ball, the santhis yeah stem with a very just round ball. Oh, oh, I know what you're talking about. It's a dianthus. Yes, it has a yeah, it has a little stock with it. It's just like a dandelion, but it's all green on top. Okay, yeah, well Dianthus is primarily a cool season plant, you know, so how it will

do in the heat of summer. I've never tried that particular dianthus, but green ball is very very unusual, very uh, just to say the least, just for folks that are listening. Just imagine a stalk with this little like the equivalent of a dandelion head, but much larger, but it's all green. It's all part of what would be of Diantha's flowering stalk. Yeah.

So I don't know on this. You might you might just kind of keep an eye on them and maybe a little bit early, a little bit early for him, maybe better to if it doesn't work, well try it again in the fall. Okay, So did I appreciate it? Yeah? I was hoping for more than that. But well, I know, I know, Well, are you wanting any questions? Do you have questions on caring for them in the meantime or well, I unless there's something very very

special. Yeah, if you didn't know something special, let me know. But the other than that, no, no, no, it's just you know, good soil law as always before you plant, and then good drench water man with something like the hastier. I was just talking about six towelve sixty an instance early spring, and I mean early early spring. Okay, really well, I mean you know it's just the flowers, instead of being up on the end of the stalk, are laying on the ground in the

end of the stalk. Yeah. Well, you know that could be part a heat related, it could be whend related to They make little things you can put over perennials and it's like just imagine a little flat, horizontal piece of checkerboard fencing that the stalks grow through and it keeps them from flopping over that that's a little bit of an extra trouble there to try to do that something like that. Yeah, but if the plants are looking good number one,

I'm very impressed. I would not think Dianthus would would in general be looking good right now, and that that floppiness may in part be due to the heat too. All right, well, good luck. Hey, keep me posted on it. I've never grown a green ball before, and I'd be curious to see how they do for you, especially going through summer. I'm probably gonna learn something here, so don't hesitate to let me go.

Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that, John very much. Hey, if you're looking for a tree for your landscape, you are not going to do better than Verdant Tree Farm. Verdant Tree Farm, by the way, the website is just that Verdant tree Farm dot com. Maybe I should say Verdant. I don't know. I never know which way to say that. I tend to call Verdant. They've got all sizes up to like seven hundred

gallons. I mean, they got palm trees. Awesome. I like that you can go there and you can pick out the plant that you want, and they'll tag it and they'll bring it to you and they'll plant it for you. Now, the original location, the one I've always gone to period, has been out on Barker Cyprus in West Houston, kind of near Attic Reservoir. There's one down in Parland on West Broadway, and there's one in the Heights at Edg Yale Street where I ten come together Verdant Tree Farm.

They know what they're doing. The twenty acre farm in West Houston, Barker Cyprus. Just coach, get out. You will see you'll be very impressed with the kind of trees that they grow there. They grow trees that do well here and they will advise you on which tree may do best in a particular site. So go in and let them help you pick out the perfect tree for your landscape. Remember, the best time to plant a tree is

fifty years ago. The next best time is today. I have a new bird feeder that I am putting out in the landscape, one to you know, provide a little bit of a break from the squirrels. And I have an old time bird feeder. It's one of those with a camera on it. By the way, that bird feeder now is sending me pictures of squirrels. So I need my new bird excluding feeder that I actually got it from wild Birds. And you know, wild birds is the place for all kinds

of bird stuff. I mean we are talking about you know, the seed, the houses, the squirrelproof feeder, you know the quality seed that are no waste seeds. There's wallbirds all over the I think we have seven of them here Katie Kingwood, Cypress, Pearland, Belair, West Houston and clear Lake. Just go to wabu dot com and find the wild birds near you. Hey, it's it's hot and dry. Make sure there's water for wildlife, including the birds in your landscape. And bluebirds are nesting still through July.

Cardinals, chickadees and wrens are still nesting. They need a quality super blend for that summer feeding to take care of them. So going to wilbirds. They're the experts. They will tell you exactly what you need for the birds you're interested in attracting in the time of year that you're in. Right now, Hey, we're gonna take a break. It is time for a break. In fact, it's over time seven one three, two and two five eight seven four. Josh, we'll get you on the board and you'll

be first up. Good morning bed Saturday morning, gray day for gardening, as all days are. You're listening to garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter, and if you would like to be on the air, ask a question seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. You know I have been. I've talked about Microlife fertilizers. You know the green bag and the purple bag that we use in our lawns through the year. Really that do so well.

But I haven't talked much about their liquid products. And they have a wide variety of full array of granular and liquid fertilizers, but two of them that I want to really feature and tell you about it. The first one is the Microlife Biomatrix. Now that is an orange label. I love it when when companies give us color labels or it's easy to pick the right one orange label seven one three. That's the nutrients seven percent nitrogen, one percent phosphorus,

three percent potassium. Seven one three is higher nitrogen percentage liquid organic. It has beneficial microbes in it. We know what microbes do for roots systems of plants. I use the seven one three for my house plants. It's my favorite one to take care of the plants indoors. Mix it a little bit of water. Sometimes I'll do just a full mixed strength application for a boost. Maybe I'm giving some vegetables even outside a boost to help them get

going. But generally I'll do it at a lower rate where I just constantly every time I water, I feed them with it and they do really well. It provides being a liquid, it provides a really fast release and provides your nutrients that the plants need along with those microbes they need. The second thing is the Ocean Harvest. Now that's a blue label. So first was orange, second is blue. Ocean Harvest is a four two three. It's a fish based product, and I like to use it on the outdoors plants.

If you've got container plants, if you've got plants you know in a flower bed or something you want to water them in get them going good. It's fine for that. You can also use it as a foli your feed. You want to mix it at a lower concentration. It's not going to burn your plants. It's not a salt based fertilizer and spray upward from underneath the plant early in the morning when the stonemaches are open for the best results.

But Ocean Harvest blue label or Biomatrix Orange label. I would suggest having both of those on hand if you want to find out where to buy them. Well, they're available all over the place, as is microlife in general. But Microlife Fertilizer dot com. Microlife Fertilizer dot com will tell you more about these products as well as where you can find them. So be kind

to mother nature with microlife. You know, the plants that we're taking care of right now in the house, the ones that I have are they're really happy with the summertime, and it's because it's a little warmer in summer, even indoors. You know, if you're over buy a window, it's a little warmer over there. But the light levels are really good and this is

their chance to thrive. This is also a time when we can move some plants outdoors if you need to. Now, I don't move them outdoors just to move them outdoors, but if they need a little extra light, find a spot that has just a little more light intensity than where they are inside. Don't put them in the sun. It will burn them for sure.

Move them gradually to from low light to the higher light. Even like my front covered porch area is totally shady, but the light intensity, it's so much brighter there than it is and even a bright spot indoors, So just be aware of that. Outdoors they get that extra light intensity, they kind of rejuvenate, they get ready for summer. My Norfolk pine goes out there during the summertime. That's just a good example. Some of the times the

corn plant there's sena goes up out there. But again, be real careful and remember when you move them outside, they're gonna need about twice as often to be watered as they would inside, just because of the change in temperature. So don't over water them. That's death to plants. But do water them, make sure they get adequate amount of moisture. Hey, you're listening

to garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter. If you'd like to ask a question, our phone number seven one three two one two five eight seven four. You know, I was talking about the importance of watering a little extra, but I want to make something really clear, and I was visiting with you know, some folks last week about this. But there's a tendency for people to think, if it's one hundred degrees, I got to put twice as much water on my plants. That is not the right way

to think. Because when it is hot, if you water log your plant's root systems, you will kill them faster than any other time of the year. The demands on the plant are high, and when roots can't get oxygen, they shut down, They shut down respiration. They cannot survive in completely water logged soil except for a very few species of plants that have developed ways

of doing that. When you overwater them, you will kill a plant faster in the summer than you will in the fall or spring, the cooler seasons of the year. So you want to keep the soil moist They never should lack for water in the soil. Lack for moisture, I should say.

But if you've got a standing water table and you're just overwatering, or you put a new plant in the ground and now you've dug a hole in clay, so it's an underground bathtub, and you fill it with water and keep over water and keep overwater, you're gonna kill your plants and you're gonna kill them fast. Don't do that. Dig down, Feel the soil. You know, I could tell you water this much, this mean times a week and all that. It just there's too many variables. Dig down about three

inches. Feel the soil. Is it getting a little dry to the touch, then water. If it's not, then don't water. That's the best way to go when you're when you're looking for a quality source of all the supplies you need, certainly everything I talk about on garden line, the fertilizers and so on, as well as the pest control products. That's Ace Hardware, and it's easy to find Ace Hardworkers. There's thirty nine of them. Go to ACE Hardware dot com, thirty nine in the Greater Houston area.

Go to ACE Hardware dot com and find the store locator, find the ones nearest you. You're going to find all the fertilizers, but you're also going to find all the other things for that outdoor living, you know, the barbecue area, the webber, the tragger, the big Green egg and more. All the supplies and bling that you need to go along with a good quality outdoor barbecue setup so that you can enjoy that patio furniture outdoor furniture for

example, and decour It's all there at ACE hardware dot com. Super easy, super easy. Let's head out to talk to Valerie. Now, hello, Valerie. Hi, um. I have a crape myrtle tree and the bark is falling off. It's like in big chunks. Is that normal? You mean strips, little kind of like paper things rolling up and falling off. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's normal. Yeah, that is long. Yeah. That out crepe myrtle exfoliates its outer bark and little thin sheets

and they typically kind of curl up as they dry and pop loose. That's part of the beauty of the plant. That nice smooth trunk. Some cultivars have a beautiful cinnamon color underneath. It's really really nice. Nothing to work, Oh okay, do you have time for another question? I'll tell you what. I'm probably gonna have to hold sag a little, but let's let's

give it a shot and see Vellerie. Oh okay. I have a property that slopes down to the street, and when it rains, all the dirt washes down to the street to the better and there's all these roots are showing, and I didn't know what to do whether I should just you know, get some dirt and put it down and then put sad down on top of it to hold it in place, or what's the best thing to do.

Yeah, that's about all you can do. You can just bring it up to the level of the top of those roots, or just a little bit above that. You can put some sod on it. If there's a whole lot of roots, the sod's going to have time a hard time because there's so much essentially wood in the soil that it doesn't have soil to put its roots in. It's just all tree roots. But you could try that. You could also use a groundcover like an Asian jasmine or something groundcover that covers

over the whole area. But nothing holds soil better than turf than grass, any kind of grass. Oh, okay, should I put some down on this street, like rocks or something so that the water the dirt doesn't rush, And yeah, you could do that. You could have a little bit of a stone wall or something along those lines. That would be fine too. And then of course the ultimate would be creating little tears you know, where it's like stairstep going down. But that's a whole other world. Right

there, so I would do the first things we're talking about. I think that's going to work best for you. Oh okay, thank you very much, thank you for the call. I appreciate that. Valerie. Well, if you'd like to be on guarden Line seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four, we're going to take another news break now, but give Josh you call and he'll get you right up there on the boards so we can talk to you about things that are of interest to you. I've been

talking about a lot about side this morning, or grass. We've talked a little bit about some summer vegetables. I want to talk a little bit more about some summer flowers and another strategy for color in Houston, in the greater Houston area, really all over Texas when it's blazing hot outside, and hang around when we come back. I'll do your son, katrh Garden Line does

not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to KTRH Garden Line with Skip Rictor so just watch him as mold so many good good Saturday morning, good gardening. Saturday morning. You're listening to garden Line, and I am your host skip Rictor, and we would love to talk to you about whatever is of interest to your regarding gardening. Our phone number is seven one three two one two five eight four seven one three two

one two fifty eight seventy four. I was mentioning before we went to break that I want to talk a little bit about how to have color without blooms. Now, when we are in the spring season, everything wants to bloom. I mean everything blooms in spring. It seems like there's lots of colors, lots of options and so on, and then this thing called summer arrives and it just fries stuff that doesn't survive well here when it's that blazing hot,

which a lot of things can't take the heat. Well, that doesn't mean we can't have color though. Number one, we do have a lot of blooming things. I mentioned a whole bunch of them earlier, just thinking a minute ago, I didn't mention Plumeria. Plumeria is a little sky blue flower. Beautiful. There's a white form also. They take the heat. Well. I used to look at the plant and just because there's like a little baby blue sky flower, I thought, oh it's a whimp, you

know. I judged it wrong. One year, I was working at the extension office in Travis County over in Austin, and our water went off and it was like the first of June and it was off for sixty days and we lost a lot of plants. But the plumeria or I said, did I say plumeria while ago I meant plumbago. If you're wondering what I'm talking about now, I'll clarify it's plumbago. If I didn't say that sky sky blue flowers, the plumbago looked terrible. Well, who wouldn't in one hundred

degree weather two months in the middle of summer. But it survived and it bounced back, and after that I have had a much greater appreciation for a blue plumbago as one of our good hot weather flowers. But then there's some foliage flowers too, And I'll talk about these is as we get going through here a little bit. But right now I want to start off, and we're gonna go straight out to Bear Creek Park and our Bear Creek area and

we're gonna talk to k Hello, kay, hey. I used to work out at Creek at the Aggarlive Extension office back before it flooded twice and finally went away. Oh oh dear, yeah, yeah, it's it's a dicey area for them. So here's the thing I've got. I don't know what they are, and I don't care what they are. I just need to

get rid of them. They're little, trashy, crappy little trees that start off little twigs and then get big like they start off about the size of your pinky finger, and then they grow and grow and grow until they're about as big a round as your forearm, and they get really deep roots and they are everywhere, and I hate them. I don't know that they're Chinese tallow or hackberry because I've never actually seen berries on them, but I don't care. I hate them. What do I do? There? You go,

well, you're right, you accurately describe them. You use the word crappy, which is very important in describing that kind of tree. They're woody weeds. And what happens is a bird each seed, and they come on and they fly and land on a fence or someplace or in a tree, and with one little flick of the tail, they both fertilize and plant the seed that has gone through the bird, and that's how we have poison ivy

everywhere and hackberries everywhere. Tallow trees can show up as well in our landscapes. What you need to do is you need to buy a product K that contains the ingredient triclopier, and I will spell that out in just a moment while I give you a second to grab a pen in case you don't have one. Tricopier is a woody plant killer. Farmers use it to control brush and hay pastures, but in the home guarden market it may be sold as poison ivy killer or poison oak killer or brush be gone, those kinds of

names. But it's t r i clo pyr. Follow the label. Mix it as strong as you can, almost almost straight strength. When you're doing what I'm about to tell you, and that you cut the tree off with a saw and immediately you take a little sponge brush and you dab that tricolo pier right on the fresh cut stump. Even if it's a tiny one and it translicates down. Now, if it's a big old robot root system, it may take a second application, it may die back and then reach sprout.

But in general that's the best way to kill woody weeds, including woody vines, because you're not spraying herbicide that may kill other things out onto the foliage where it can drift and land somewhere else. You're just taking a dab and putting a dab right there on the fresh cut and it's important that it's fresh cut, not two days after cutting it. So is that something that I can I'm very close to the Ace Hardware over on Barker Cypress. I

think it is. Absolutely. They'll probably have two or three or four different kinds of triclopier at the home Garden Packaging. Yeah, okay, all of mine. They're they're either up against the house or the fence line or under a tree. So you know, I think that's and it won't kill under the one tree. I've got a ring, used to have a ring. I may still of wandering jew with sporadic amarillas. It won't kill um tricola pier. I do not think triclopier will kill either wandering jew or amaryllis.

But the way I'm telling you to treat it, you will avoid that because you're gonna dab it onto the cut wood surface. Only so while you're at Ace Hardware, grab one of the little tiny foam brushes, a couple of them. I get two or three of them actually, because they're cheap. And that way, when you're done, you can just throw it away. You know, you don't have to. If you want to keep it and try to reuse it, you can, but you don't have to. So

I need to saw in some tricola pier and some brushes. That's it. That will do it. All right, Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. I appreciate that call. Okay, thank you very much. Yeah, that is a common problem that people deal with. You know. I'm always bragging about our garden centers, our mom and pops around here. And if you are up in the Montgomery area and we're talking about Lake Conro area, your hometown garden center is A and A Plants and Produce. They

are on the east side of Montgomery on one oh five. So if you live in April Sound, the Woodlands, Magnolia, Bentwater, Delago, like anywhere around Lake Conro, Huntsville, Willis even. This is a place and it is going to have everything we talk about in terms of fertilizers, it's going to have an unbelievable plant selections. Three acres filled with everything from shade trees to fruit and nut citrus, berries, vegetables, herbs, flowers, annuals, palm tree, cactus. I could just go on and on.

They have beautiful Blaine for the landscape, Mexican tellavera, terra cotta, Chimenea's metal artwork, gazebos, topiaries, you get the idea. A and a plants and produced on the east side of Montgomery on Highway one oh five. Check them out seven days a week, nine to five. Today would be a good day to go out and visit them. At Ana. We love our garden centers and our nurseries here. It just makes it so fun to get out and get that inspiration. Well, let's take a break. We'll

be right back after a break. If you'd like to call Josh at seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four, you'll be first up. Good Saturday morning. You are listening to garden Line and we are here to talk gardening. Seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. If you'd like to get in on the action, Hey, it is blazing hot season now. And by the way, I have filed my official objection, we cannot have weeks of one hundred degree temperature in June. That is just

not okay, that is wrong, wrong, wrong. Somebody somewhere screwed up. We have got to get back down in the mid nineties where we belong, or even lower nineties. I would take that too. But in the meantime, here goes the hot weather, which means our plants need water, and yards in the Greater Houston area get over watered all the time. It happens. I've lived here. I know what we're talking about. You know that every other day the neighbor sprinklers are coming on. That is not how

you water. You give a good deep soaking infrequently, aim for once a week. If you need to do twice a week, okay, we'll allow that. But once a week is what you should be aiming for a good soaking. So how do you know when to water? How do you know when you need it? Well, there is a free app that you can use call water my Yard. Does it get any simpler than that? Find the water my Yard app. You can find it on the Apple App Store.

You can find it on Google play, you download it, You put in your location, and you can even put in the kind of watering heads you use. Is it a pop up spray, solid spray, is it a rotor, is it a multi stream rotor? You know, you put in the kinds of stuff or detail there. They will tell you how much you need to water, and when you need to water. They'll even send you an email saying, hey, and I got one the other day. You've used a half inch of water in your low. This week, it's

time to apply about a half inch. Well that's good to know, because I probably would have applied an inch I'd I not known that. A free app you can't do any easier than that. I'm going to have the folks from Water my Yard on to talk a little bit later this summer more about it. But in the meantime, water my yard app over half. Listen to this. This is a scientific fact. Over half of the landscape water we apply as wasted and you paid for that. That's drinking water that you're

putting out there on your yard. It doesn't need to be done. Our plants need water, but they don't need wasted water. That doesn't do them any good. All that wasted water? Does is it gives the kid something to put their canoes in at the curb side because you left the water runner all night. All right, let's head out to Spring and we're gonna talk to Bonnie. Hello, Bonnie. Hi, I have an answer for the problem people have with squirrels attacking their tomato plants. All right, what's that?

Well, i'd like permission to send you a picture of it? Okay, you you have pound permission. I will when we're done here, I'll put you on hold and Josh will will pick up the phone and he'll tell you how to do that. Okay, perfect. So is it going to remain a secret until I see the picture? You're gonna tell us? No, you're you are gonna love it? No, No, it's got to

be a secret. All right. Well, I like I like to use I like to use photos when possible, So if you don't mind when you send it, just if you if it's okay, send me permission to keep and use your photos. That's all I ask. Oh? Yes, definitely, definitely you will want to Okay, Well, you you've got me interested. Okay, I'm gonna put your on hold. Josh, we'll pick you

up and we will learn all about squirrels. I always always enjoy, you know, callers and our listeners sending photos of things, because there's all kinds of crazy things that go on out there that I never get to see. But I have quite a collection over the years that I've put together. I have put together. If you live up in the Tamball area and you haven't been to Arbourgate Nursery, what are you living under a rock? Crawl out from under there and check it out. Arburgate is known not only all over

the Houston areas and over Texas and even beyond. People come from a long way to see this destination garden center. Now you can go to Arburgate dot com to find out more. But while you're there, in addition to all the plants that they have, and boy do they ever have a lot of plants, check out their one two three system. It is a organic food. When you're thinking about our organic plant food, Arburgates Organic Food Complete. It's a four four three plus calcium. Very good to use on anything that

has roots. If you're mixing in maybe you're doing a flower bed and you want to put some soil, some fertilizer around to get things ready so that the plant roots begin to grow, or maybe you're fertilizing after planting. That's a good choice. They have a soil for every application. That's number two and number three a completely organic compost that does a quality compost, a special blend. Not just you know, someone piled up some stuff and decomposed it

and now it's called compost. No, we're talking about a quality compost mix that has the exact same things you need, including some expanded shale. So if you're dealing with a heavy clay soil, the addition of expanded shale and compost and Arbourgates Organic Compost Complete is an especially good blend to open up that clay and improve the inner drainage in your yard. And by the way,

while you're out and about, today good day to go to Arburgate. It's always a good day to go out to Arburgate and see what they have going. I was talking about color plants, and in fact I was looking at earlier. Arbourgate has this outstanding array of color plants. They've got the mendavias that are just beautiful hot pink colors that go through it never gets hot enough and humid enough for mendavillas here in Houston, or I should say not too

hot in humid for mendavillas here in Houston. The even near in Burgia, which is a little pretty little flower, a little wispy foliage, and I use it around the edge of my containers. In fact, two days ago I planted some that are going to spill over the sides. It's got these little whitish lavender lavender centered flowers that are just really pretty. And it does well even in the heat. I mean it'll grow in spring and fall too, but it loves it does super well in the heat. It's a good

one. But talking about color, when we hit summertime, we have a secret, a little secret trick for having color in Houston area in the summer, and that is foliage. Foliage color is the mainstay that we depend on. Now. May be one of the burgundy foliaged cannas, or it may be the the green and white striped canna called let's see a Bengal tiger. There's another one too. It may be the Phasian canna that has the coral and it's just a whole bunch of color blends in it. As if you

haven't seen phasian. I think they call it tropicana. That's its trade name. You gotta check it out. It's beautiful. But what about copper plant with large, beautiful color, Joseph's Coat, a little bedding plant that has beautiful colored foliage in shady areas. Remember white is a color too, So Aztec grass draws your eye. It lines a bed, it draws your eye down a pathway. If you border the path with Aztec grass, it's not a grass. Let's think of it as loriopy monkey grass, cousin that astec

grass does so well there. Colladiums really brighten up a shady area. Collius an important summer color plant. Persian shield in a very bright shade. The brighter the light it gets, the more purpleish you get in otherwise silvery green foliage. I have some Persian shield, just potted it up in a larger pot the other day because I'm trying to get around to getting a spot ready to put it in in the garden. But persian shield is excellent. I

could go on and on. There's so many good foliage plants, and in Houston heat, when you want extra color, we have many good flowering options in summer but not as many a spring, and so we looked a foliage to fill out that dependable color to carry us through the season. Some of the burgundy leaf bagnias, beautiful of wax pagunias that just have gorgeous burgundy leaves, just lots of color, a lot of beautiful color options out there.

So I hope you will take advantage of some of those things. You know, we're entering the season where we start thinking about hurricane season. Right, it goes through summer and on in the fall, and when a hurricane blows through, your trees can have a problem with that, right if you've got trees that need limbs are removed. Maybe there's a roof line that the trees

are rubbing against the shingles on your roof. Maybe there's a dead tree that needs to come down, or a leaf or a limb hanging over your house or over your neighbor's fence, or maybe the driveway where they bark their maserati. Not a good thing for your limb to land on your neighbor's maserati. Well, affordable tree service can do all that, and then some now affordable tree they're easy to get a hold of it's seven one, three, six, nine, nine, twenty six sixty three r aff Tree Service dot com.

Aftree Service dot Com. They will come out and they'll do all the things I mentioned above. They'll take care of all of that. You can pay them to come out just to give you a consultation on your trees. What may need to be trimmed back, what may need to come out, what is fine? And they won't sell you something you don't need. At Affordable Tree. Martin has been doing this a long time. I'm Martin spoon

Moore and his wife. They answer the phones themselves. And by the way, if you if you call and it's not Martin or Joe that's entering, hang up and call back. You've called the wrong place with that affordable in the name. Now, Affordable Tree will help you when you're going to do construction. Let them come out first. It's money well spent to have them advise you on what to do to protect your trees during construction, because after the damage is done, it's a little late to fix it, and it's

money well spent. What do they say, A stitch in time saves nine or it's one of those many many adages like that in other words, don't delay, take care of things when they need to be taken care of and avoid a much much bigger problem as a result. I was visiting with the folks with Pulte Homes and Dell Webb the wall back and you know, Dell Webb is building that new community. I keep talking about it and fullser And the thing that I like this community is they've asked me to come in and

help with their community garden. They're putting a community garden in. Now imagine this. You have a Delweb home, Dellweb home in a Dellweb community with a lifestyle program that comes with being part of a Dellweb community for all active adults age fifty five and better. You're not going to do better than Dell Weeb. And now out at Fulscher, you know what, listen two miles from downtown Fulscher on three fifty nine, the new community is going to have

a community garden. You don't have to dig up the backyard to have a garden. You can go to a community garden in that first rate and you know, if it's Dellweb, it's first rate and it's going to look good. Go to Dellweb Dot com slash Houston or callum two eight one four five nine six z nine two eight one four five nine zero six zero nine.

Find out about that Dellweb difference and have a community garden in your community where you can gather and enjoy growing things and enjoy that social us that comes with a community garden. I mean that there are no better folks in the world than gardeners. I am very strongly of that opinion, because I've been working with gardeners for decades and decades now. Just so enjoy time spent with gardeners,

and you will too, as you already know that you do. There's so many things to talk about today, I don't even know where to begin. You know, we've got and we've talked lawns, We've talked vegetables, talked a little bit about flowers, a little bit about foliage plants, and the important of that. I just want to remember you that when you remind you that when you have containers, you need to keep them adequately watered. Containers dry out faster they're above ground, the sides stay warmer, the soil

stays warmer. Make sure you water them regularly and how often well it depends on the soil mix. It depends on the plant and the plant size, and it depends on the volume of soil. That's the most important thing when selecting containers. Pick bigger rather than smaller, for sure, bigger rather than smaller, so that you water them once a day, maybe twice a day at the most. I mean, it depends on again all those factors,

including the temperature. But containers are a great way to have instant color. Hey, we'll be right back. We're gonna take a break. Seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Give us a column. We'll be glad to talk with you. So rain you could allude four reads. Let's Morgan never hate troubles up for good them. Good morning, I'm beautiful morning. You're listening to garden Line and our phone number if you'd like to give us a call seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.

And without any further ado, we're going to head right out to Tumball and talk to Andrew. Hello Andrew, Hey, good morning Collins. Just to ask the real quick question. Um, we bought a peach tree last year at Arbor Gate. It's been planted in the yard and it had peaches on it when we got it, little ones. But ever since we had it and had it planned, it's been growing glute good. But there's not a single peach this year. We were wondering, do we have to have a

second peach tree in order to do that? I know you don't. Peaches are self fruitful, and so it's unusual, you know, usually and this is hard to talk people into doing, but usually we try to pull the peaches off for the first year or two just to get all the energy to go into as big a tree as you can. So years three, four and five you you have better, better crops, but the bigger tree. But it's not unusual for a young tree to not not fruit, you know,

a whole lot, just initially. But it'll be okay. Is it in good sunlight and got decent drainage in the soil, it's perfect. Yes, we were just concerned if she didn't see anything this year because it's in the twelve foot tall But no, nothing, okay, just a truth. We'll just kind of watch on the pruning of it. You want to keep as much as you can kind of an open bowl shape to it because peaches will try to grow and essentially they become an umbrella of foliage, meaning just

like an umbrella. You know, you've got the little sticks going out to hold up the umbrella, and then there's this top to the umbrella with a peach tree. When it gets that green top, it shades out all the interior foliage. And that's where I describe it as an umbrella. So if you can create more of an open bowl shape, you have peaches from everywhere from knee high all the way up to as high as you reach, and

you're not up on a ladder all the time. If you go online, there's a website it's Aggy Horticulture. You just do a search for Aggy Horticulture and when you get there, there's a fruit and nut page and there is a free publication on every kind of fruit you can imagine, including the stone fruit, which is peaches, and plums and apricots and nectarines, those kind of things. So that'll tell you how to prune and everything. You can read it online or you can just print it out. So much you bet,

thank you, Andrew. I appreciate that call. Take care. Now let's go to Austin County and we're gonna talk to Doris. Hello, Doris, Hi, how are you well? I'm well, thank you, well good. I'm having problems with these big fat green worms that had the kind of like a horn on them. Yes, they're on my tomato plant. Okay. I go out there one day and I picked one huge one off. Well here it is about a week later and I look out and I go out there and there's at least fifteen of them a boy, and now

they're on my angel trumpets. Yes, they do. They like those. They're somewhat related. You know. That's a tomato hornworm or the tobacco hornworm. They're they're both. They look similar that they both are green worms. They both have a horn on the back end. It doesn't matter which one it is. They become a real beautiful moth, a nocturnal flying especially moth. Pretty. You can go online google it and look at what the moth

looks like. But for folks that have tomatoes, you know, they're not interested in growing them for the moths or interesting growing them for the tomatoes, So that would be considered a pass problem. And you just have to decide if if you want to get rid of all of them, well, you just hand pick them off, or if you want to use a spray, get a spray that contains BT. Bee is in boy teas and tom It's a disease of caterpillars and will not kill steakbugs. They will not kill ladybugs.

It won't hurt the family pet. I mean, it's a very very safe product. But for caterpillars, when they feed on foliage that's been sprayed with BT, it's it's deadly. So I okay, somebody tell me to put self rising flour on it, let them eat it, and then they'll blow up. Um. That is a very very enjoyable mental image. But don't believe it. Don't believe it. It's kind of like people that say, put grets on your fire nt mound. They'll eat it and they'll swell

up and explode. I love the idea of a fire end exploding, but it doesn't work. Trust me. They're Southern fireants. If you put grets on fire ends, they just come up mash for bacon fat. It's I mean, yeah, there they are Southern fireance. No, it doesn't work that way. It just just get bat it's cheap, it's easy. Or you know, if with hornworms they're generally not that many. And you kind of threw me when you said, what fifteen or something. Well, normally

I just diferent sizes too. They were big ones, small ones, and little bitty was I thought, well he brought his whole family in. Yeah, well you can hand pick them too, And do you have any neighborhood kids or grandkids or kids, or if you will bring one of them over and pick one hornworm and go over and set it on a sidewalk and stomp it, it'll be like you stepped on a packet of ketchup in McDonald's. It goes squirting out this side, and you don't have to say a word,

and they just go inside. And then in fifteen minutes later, look out the kitchen window and there's gonna be six kids. They got all their friends and they're going over your plants to find hornworms to show their friends. That's called importation of natural enemies for pest control. Good, that's another technique. All right, Doris, Okay, thank you, you have a good day. You too, you too, Thank you, thank you very much

for the call. If you you're talking about men up in the Tomball area and everything, if you're if you're in D and D Feed is your hometown feed store now. It's about three miles west of Highway two forty nine on twenty nine twenty. About three miles west. The Dover family has had D and D sense, I think the open doors back in nineteen eighty nine. They expanded this summer, beautiful new space and more products than ever before.

All the fertilizers we talk about. You need pest control products, they've got it. You need soils, you know, heirloom soil, landscape pride, those kinds of thing, they've got them there. They also have plants, quality dog foods like Origin, Diamond, Victor, and Star Pro. They've got of course there. Feedstore, livestock, feed, horsecare products, things to control pests and rodents, and pool cleaners and everything you can imagine.

D and D Feed is a fun place to visit, lots to offer and quality service as you always expect from one of our good mom and pop local feed stores. Dandfeed and tom Ball three miles west of two forty nine on Highway twenty nine twenty. Let's see, we're running real short on time, Carolyn. I'm gonna have to catch you right after break but hang on, you will be the first up if you'd like to get on the board. Seven one three two one two five eight seven four. He comes, he

comes. All right, there we go, gosh, And now we're just visiting about music. You know. It is my goal in life is to play stuff you've never heard before. We try to mix it up here. By the way, I am still in search of some yodeling barbershop music. So if anyone knows that, please let me know. I will be forever in your debt. Of course, the rest of the listeners will be forever irritated at you for sending me that. But you get the idea right.

Well, you're listening to Garden Line. I am your host, Skip Richter, and it is a phone number you want to write down. Seven one three two one two five eight seven four And we are going to zoom right out to south west Houston. And talked to Carolin this morning. Hello Carolin, good morning, Good morning. I have a surprise plant. Okay, I have a little garden area beside my screen porch and between the crack between

the concrete pavers that I use and the foundation. About three weeks ago, I saw a little green leaf coming up, and I didn't pull it out. I just left it to grow because it looked kind of healthy and pretty. Okay, it's about now, it's about eight inches tall, and it looks to me like a red a red stem malabar spinach. And it's it's in the place near the place I used grow boxes. And I had the red stem malabar that in the grow box right next to where it is.

Yes, but that was two summers ago. And I don't think they're self eaters. But could that possibly be another rid Stam malabar. It absolutely could, because they definitely are self seeders. They will. I have some know that that some red and green, both in my garden last year, and I've got sprouts coming up from both of them. In fact that some people fuss that they're almost weedy, they recede so readily, but I don't. I don't worry about that. No, no, no, I'm delighted to

have another one. The malabar I have right now is the broad, the big fat leaf one, and it's not doing nearly as well as the rid stam. Yeah yeah, well, let me let me ask the best way for me to keep this one going just just fertilizer and water. It's it's okay, it's a vigorous Sure. I have some Scott Super Bloom a fertilizer. Will that be good? Now you can use that. That's not one of the ones I recommend, but that certainly, you know, if you got that on hand, go ahead and use it up, use it on

there. It's just fine. Let me ask you a question, how do you eat malabar, because that's one of those things that a lot of people aren't familiar with, and I'm always, you know, trying to think of new ways to use the vegetable. So well, I just saw tee it in olive oil. Okay, like they eat spinach in Italy. Okay, all right, and it's wonderful. I love it. And it's so handy just to go out and pluck a few leaves before dinner. Well, that's

true. You know. Earlier I was talking about we have vegetables from places in the world that are as hot and humid as our area in the summer, and they just do so well here. I wish that they'd been more of our traditional cuisine, but yeah, they're good, right, So the muse laginous. We would also say slamm. Equality of malabar doesn't bother you, and you cook it that way. And I have some Asian okra that's

red. It's really pretty and it grows beautifully down here. Well good, good, Yeah, there's some There are some Asian types of poker that that do well, some of my favorite varieties. In fact. Well that's good, okay, And I love the mental image of your taking care of the caterpillars. Okay, Well it works. Hey, you gotta have fun, you take see you take advantage of the nefarious nature of children. But it's

like, do you remember Dennis the Menace cartoons? One day? One day there's it's always like a one square cartoon, and Dennis comes in and he says, hey, mom, mister Wilson gave me a brand new pocket knife, and he asked me if I knew what was inside my drum. See what I'm talking about. There's two ways to skin a cat. Right, Hey, Carolyn, thank you, thank you for the carl. I appreciate that. Let's go to Missouri City and talk to Janey. Hello, Janey,

Hello, how are you this morning? Well? Thank you good. I didn't get to turn in earlier this morning. And you may have probably already covered this, but I think I might have the starting of some brown patch. The first area that I noticed in my yard was down by the street, between the sidewalk and the street, and it's kind of a two foot kind of a triangle shape, and it just looks like the yard is

just burned. And so then I also noticed just recently I was in the backyard and I have a large oak tree in the backyard and it shades the yard some, but I do get sun also, and I found a little round circle that's just about three inches maybe circular, And when I looked, I noticed about a foot away was another little circle. Okay, and then there's and they're not very big, and those are the only three in the backyard. But I was just wondering if that was brown patch, and should

I try to do something with it. I did fertilize in the spring. Yeah. Do you this is Saint Augustine? Right? Yes? Okay? And do you have a pet? I don't have a pet, but I have a grand dog that is visiting me. Okay, Well, so the backyard might be that because he's been here for about ten days. That's the front yard. Heath really not in the front yard all that much. Yeah, that sounds like what we call phido blight, you know, like dogs

name phido phido blight. It's I have a dog that for some reason thinks they have to go to the bathroom in the same spot every time. But anyway that the salts and stuff in the urine can do that, that doesn't sound like a disease in the back. Now in front, I'm kind of wondering about insects. We don't have brown patch, which they now call large patch this time of the year. There are some it's the genus is riise Octonia, and there are some other riise Octonia diseases of summer. But I

don't think that's what you're seeing. I think that it could be take all root ride. It could be chinch bugs going on. So you you know, other than sending a sample into the state lab from an analyzing you might get on your hands and knees and right on the edges of that little I think you describe two foot triangular on the edges kind of part the grass and look down in the thatch and at the soil surface and look for chinch bugs.

You can go online google them see what they look like they're about an eighth of inch long. They're black with white markings on them, and the young ones are a kind of a gold or a reddish brown with a white band across their back. But if you know what they look like, you can get on your hands and knees and look for them and if they're there, then you want to treat that with an insecticide like nitrofoss. Bug out.

Okay, all right out, okay, thank you very much. Yeah, just look for them first, because you know, if it's a disease and you're putting an insecticide down, that's not going to do you any good. Yeah, okay, sounds good. Thank you so much. Bad, Thank you very much. This is a beautiful time of the year in a landscape. If you have a well designed, well planted landscape, you know, we talk about beautiful plants to have. Well, maybe you're not a designer. If not, and I'm not, by the way, you need

to call Peerscapes. Peerscapes is our garden line preferred landscaper. Now. Jason Garrity and his team out there at Peerscapes, they know what they're doing. They have designers that can create beauty on a piece of paper and then fill that with plants to make it beauty. When you walk up and look at your home, maybe it's the backyard area, maybe it's a frontyard. People driving by and see the front of the house. Whatever it is, they

can design it. Do you need hardscapes or rock borders? Do you want to put in a walkway? Do you need drainage? Most people do. How do I improve the drainage? Called Peerscapes. They can do it. You can go to Piercescapes dot com, pea r ce Scapes, Peerscapes dot com or callum two eight one three seven zero five zero six zero. They are experienced, they're professionally trained. I mean they have employees that have been around for I think the average ten year over ten years, some around twenty

six years with them. This is a quality company. They've been here a long time and they take care of their customers and that is why they have such a successful business. Peerscapes dot com give him a call to I think you will enjoy the results that you see from that. Well, you've been listening to garden Line. My goodness, we have been going all morning here we're about to close it down. We will be back in the morning. I'll be here at six am till ten am tomorrow morning. Tell your friends

about garden Line. If you miss a show, or if you just want to go, hey, check this out. Have them go listen to us on podcasts. You miss a show, you can go back to podcasts. Go to whatever podcasts supplier you have. Maybe it's iHeartRadio. Well, the iHeartMedia podcast will get you there, but so will others, and just look for garden Line. There's actually another garden line around town or a roundtown around the country. A lady does I noticed that, but this is a guardenline

with skip wrector you'll find us. You can listen to past shows. Maybe if we said something you didn't write it down. That's a good way to check up on that and catch up with it. In the meantime, it's a good day to be out at a garden center. We got garden centers that have a lot of good deals going, a lot of color plants just beautiful. Remember, spend a dollar on your soil. When you spend a dollar on your plants, and you will have wonderful results as a result.