KTRH GardenLine | 8-5-23

KTRH Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to KTRH Garden Line with skip rictor smell, just watching to sei. Good morning, Good Saturday morning. On a day this is gonna be a good day for gardening. I can say that with confidence. It's still dark outside, but that won't last long. We're gonna be getting some beautiful sunshine coming out today. Good day to get out early on,

hopefully and get a few things going. Knock out a few of those outside tasks, and we got a few to do. By the way, this is you know, this is the time of year when it's so hot. It's been hot for so long that people kind of don't have a lot of motivation, you know, to get outside and do some stuff. But morning

time is a good time to do it. I still, you know it, just being outside early in the morning, I don't know, the bird songs and all kinds of other perks that I think are worth luring you outside for I can get a lot of things done and we need to. And here's why fall is coming. Now is the time to get tomatoes planted if you have them already. In fact, we're getting a little bit late on the tomato planting, but we can still get some in. If you get

a fast win going, don't take don't plant a brandywine. It's gonna take eighty days or something to get get to harvest. But something a little bit faster you can still do that. We're coming up on the time with planting potatoes and planting green beans and squash, cucumbers, all those kind of things are coming up. If you want to have you if you want to grow your own vegetables for a cool season, like broccoli or cabbage or things. Now is it time to plant those seeds and get those ready to go.

So when we get further into September, we'll be able to have a good, strong transplant that we can move out into the garden. So we'll be talking about some things like that as we go forward. Hey, I'm your host, Skip Richter. Thanks for listening this morning. Our phone number is seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Let's start off by going to Tomball and talking to Mel. Hello, Mel, Yeah, I got a problem with some

poison oak coming up at the edge of our property. You underneath some pine trees, and I'll just wonder if if I spray that stuff with a brush killer, is that going to affect the pine tree? Can not if you just get it on the poison oak and not on green parts of the pine tree. And then second, don't drench it so that you get it washing down in the roots of the tree. But you'll be fine with that.

How big? How big is the poison argument? Are the branches are excuse me, are the trunks small or are they like as big as one of your fingers? There they're buying like my fingers. See, they keep There's not a whole lot of grass going down there, but it comes up. And every time I walk by there, and I've been just bowing them over, you know, Okay, now, I mean I haven't. I haven't

done that lately. And I noticed they're they're sprouting up, so they're small yet, and I just didn't want to, you know, anyone, My pine trees are like we've been We've been living here for forty years in this place, and the pretty big anyhow, I just didn't want to affect them, you know what I'm saying. But they're they're real small, so okay, well you can spray the foliage of them as as it comes out.

You do want to do that now and you and if anything shows back up, do it again, uh sometime in August or early September, early to mid September if you can, because they're going to be going into fall storing all their carbohydrates and getting ready for spring. And that that is a good time to have poison ivy when it's you know, pulling down carbohydrates getting ready

for the upcoming winter. So you really you can do it all through September and still get pretty good control, better than many times of the year. Well, I appreciate, thank you much. Have a good day. Thank you, mel I appreciate that. Let's head out now to Navsota and we're gonna talk to Dennis. Good morning, Dennis, Good wring Skip. I have a question. I have a shrmid oak about three years ago. It's currently the about two inch diameter. It's a good twelve fifteen feet tall.

It's been doing really good. However, I don't know what The leaves have turned yellow with some round spots on it, and I don't know if it's the water at least once to twice a week. Okay, I may have really done something wrong. I have to admit this. I I don't like weeds, and there's weeds growing year around the tree and I hit it with some um it's like, uh, what do you call the killer um like anyway? Like a round up kind of thing or yeah, okay, eraser

h anyway. I try to be very careful. You have to get on the bark of the tree at all. All right, Well, Dennis, I can. I can cut in there and put your mind at ease. You symptoms you describe are not the symptoms of glyphosate damage. Good. Yeah, you didn't You didn't do that. Um So tell me again how long the tree has been in the ground. About three years ago? Three? Okay, I think you need to um, I probably. I think you probably step up the watering a little bit. Are you using an automatic system

or a hose end or what? Um? Well, actually I put an automatic system out and I use a little feeder twice a week for about an hour. Okay, and well you haven't done. I took a piece of a PBC pipe about two foot long with holes in it, and they drive it into the ground from the tree. Yeah, and I take a dripstick and I can tell how what the water level is. Okay, So sometimes if I feel a little bit the liquid I had with the garden hills, But most of the time I use the drip system and it it usually keeps

pretty good level of water in there. Okay. Well, I'll tell you at this point in that tree's life, and especially with the weather you're having up there, I think it's better to water more soil volume than a drip will do. Unless you just have that drip system covering you know, like three square feet or something. I would get I would grab a tree hugger sprinkler. You've probably heard me talk about those before. Oh yeah, but

it's a little hinged thing. You can put it around the tree. In fact, you're over in Navasota if you just you know, head over to Grimes County feed which over over toward Carlos. They got them there. They carry tree huggers over there, and and it's really easy. You hook it to the hose, you can turn the valve on the sprinkler, and then you go over to the you know, to your valve on the house your spigot and turn it on and you can set it to water, you know,

like a one foot circle. But in this case, for your tree, i'd probably get that thing cranked up pretty good. Where you're watering, oh, let's say fifteen twenty feet across. Uh, I kind of have to see the canopy. You want to water the whole canopy underneath. So imagine imagine at noonday, you're the sun is shining down. Where would the shadow of the tree be. You want to water that area plus a little beyond that. Okay, the soil here is pretty bad with the with the

clay, yes, and trucks of people of Arborgate. I dug the hole of at least two foot in diameter or two foot deep, and I treated it. I mean I put good soil and I added to the uh what do you call it? It's like little little stones in there. Okay, And so I think I did everything right and planting. It's good soil there. Now, well you may have, and you know, I think the

tree's fine. It's just the demander through the roof right now. I mean, you know, you've been how many days above one hundred degrees and it's one hundred as far as we can see looking forward so you just need to get at the volume of water. But again, you can't get enough roots around a small area to supply a whole tree, you know. So even if you had a bunch of little drippers for a tree that's hit your tree's size, then you got it wet a larger volume of soil. That's the

bottom line. And that's why I like that tree hugger because you can control that whole thing, how wide you water and everything and you start. So that's that too. Fo Yeah, yeah, go over there, talk to talk to Christen, those folks over there and they'll they'll get you set up. Hey, I appreciate that call. We are going to take a break our phone number seven one three two one two five eight seven four. Well, good morning on a great Saturday morning for getting some gardening done. It's

too dark to garden outside unless you got headlights. So let's just talk radio stuff this morning, and hopefully before long you'll be out there getting a few things caught up, because boy, this is the time of day to be outside in the summertime. We're gonna head over to League City and talk to Rob. Hello, Rob, say, good morning morning, how can we help I've got I got a tree in my front yard what the builders put

in their house, about twenty years old. But it's putting up a ground route that's bigger than my arm, and it's headed towards the foundation and it's actually where the water comes in the house and the BBC. I wondered, if I cut that with the chainsaws, they're going to kill the tree. Well, it's a percentage game, and it's also a tree conditioned game. So here's what I mean by that. Uh, you know, if you take just like one root off that isn't a huge percentage of that tree's root

system, it's probably okay. Uh, the doing more than that is a stress. But I would hold off on it until we get to fall if you're going to do it, because right now that tree needs every available route to bring up ever drop of water it can get. And so I wouldn't do that to it now for sure. Right Yeah. Yeah, it's a it's a big enough fruit and the way it's grow and it's going to be underneath the foundation, okay, and that a root that side could crush the

fight, Yeah, yeah, it could. And those kind of things happen. Something you might want to consider m Martin spoon Moore over an affordable tree there there are tree service guy and Martin can do something called an under It's an underground root barrier. So imagine just putting a wall underground. It's basically what it amounts to. And you just have to hit it and go down and and and so by the time if they do go under and come up, which they probably won't, uh, it's not going to be a problem.

So you know, cutting roots is a short term thing and it's stressful to the tree and you lose you lose the anchorage of that root on that side. So you might want to look at a longer term solution, like having a root barrier put in to protect your foundation, sidewalks, driveways, whatever whatever might be at rest. Okay, yeah, one more treat question. Um, I've got a tree in the backyard that my neighbor's bushy trees

kind of approached on my side and it's still and half the tree. Okay, you know what it is it legal to trim is tree on my side of the fence. Well, I don't know that. You'd have to talk to a lawyer on that tree. Get I'll stay, I'll stay in my yard. When and that's called horticulture. If I cut off the dead part, I mean it half the tree, you know at branches at the top and a good half of the tree on close to his side is dead.

Yeah, it's a pretty good sized tree. Yeah, if I cut that off as I mean, well that I guess I need to talk to a tree person. But yeah, I want to say the tree if it all possible. Yeah, and uh, you could you know, went if you were to call Martin that that would be another thing to ask him. You know, he probably he lives in that world. He's probably not a lawyer, but he's probably familiar with you know, kind of us. What's what's service? Hang on just a second, it's an affordable tree service? Just

one moment. Okay, all right, I'll look it up. Let me. I'll just give you the well but I had it here, I'll find it here and i'll say it on the air and just a little bit. Okay, okay, all right, thank you three? All right, you bet, thank you for the call. I appreciate that. Yeah. Yeah, you know, we're talking all kinds of things trees to day. I mentioned tree Hugger a little bit earlier. You know, they have them out

at Grimes Canny. Tree hugger sprinklers are all over the place throughout the Houston area. You're going to find them at at our home, mom and pop garden centers, You're gonna find them at as hardware. They're just they're just all over the place. And it's an excellent way to savior trees. I mean we're going through a period of time now where the demands on trees are intense. I mean they are they're having to pump a lot of water to get by, and we got to take care of them. And you need

people that know what they're doing. And I mentioned you know, Affordable Tree martin Spoon Moore. And by the way, the phone number for them is seven one three, six nine nine twenty six sixty three. Right now, deep root watering is pretty important. It's the same as deep root feeding, but it's basically injecting water down in the tree. So whatever kind of tree you have that's important to you know, those big beautiful oaks, pecans or

elms, those kind of things. You want to keep them healthy now. And it's not just looking up and saying, oh my trees dining. By the time you see that it is hard to turn that thing around. You want to keep them healthy. And so that's why good deep soakings are so so very important. That's why I brag on the tree hugger sprinkler, because

it provides that kind of soaking. You are in total control of how big of an area you water and how much water you put on, and you can get that water in the soil, not running off down the street. That's the beauty of the of the tree huggers, you know. But if you if you're interested in giving Martin a call seven one three, six nine nine twenty six sixty three, they can do the deep root watering for you. Of course, they do everything else in the world. You know.

They do pruning, they do trimming, they do stump grinding, they do whatever kind of services you need if you need. You know, if you need some old limbs taken off. You know, we're just just visiting there about a neighbor's tree, and you know, here's some dead limbs hanging over the property. Those are all shoes Martin knows how to do it with. If you go, if you want to go online instead of a phone call, it's a fftree service dot Com aff treeservice dot com. They are really

good quality folks that know what they're talking about. I'm going to head now over to Tomball and we're going to talk to Rose Marie. Hello, Rose Marie, Yes, I'm here high Skip, good morning. Hi. We recently had two create myrtle trees removed and they replace them with some type of holly trees. And these trees are you know, it's in a bad so I have this reoccurring problem with the create myrtles keep trying to pop up and I keep trying to dig them up. Okay, My problem is it's just

so close to other things around it. You know that I don't want to kill. So what do you suggest that I knew? What I suggest is that you get an ingredient and if you have a pen or pencil, grap of it here it's t r I c l o p y r trichlopier t is time try is in tricycle clo p y r. That's ingredient. You'll find it. It'll be called things like brush killer, poison, ivy killer. But what you want to do is you just want to dab it right on those crapes that are coming up. You can wipe it on the stems

as they're coming up. I put a little bit of a vegetable oil with mine if I'm doing a wipe on the sides of the stems, because that helps it stick and soak in better, not for spraying it, but for soaking it into the stem. But if you want to squirt it on the foliage, just don't drench the foliage. All you gotta do is barely get

it wet. I'll use a sponge with a concentrated form of it, and of course a glove on your hand or some other way to do it and wipe it right along those those stems and it will move down down and it will get them nip. Now, probably not all with one treatment. You may have to do it more than once, but it is very effective and that'll shut them down and it won't hurt anything else. As long as you don't just, you know, take a watering can and drench the bed with

it. That would be a huge mistake. Okay, okay, well, thank you so much. You bet, and you're gonna find that you're you're up in tom Ball area, they probably have, you know, a tricolo pier. You've got several places up there know that carry it. You're gonna be able to find it out at A D and D. You're gonna be able to find it at Arbor Gate. I bet so. It's not gonna be hard at all for you to find. Okay, well, thank you so much and I really enjoy your show. Well, thank you. I

appreciate that call. You take care. Oh, okay, you too, bye by. Yeah, there's as it's tree time. I guess it's a tree calls a tree's turf and tomatoes. Those are the three things. Fact. I'm gonna give a talk this afternoon at Obapalooza, which is at the United Way down on Wall Drive. I'll be giving my talk toward the end of the day. They're they're gonna be getting go in here pretty quick. That's gonna be an all day program, really good one. But I'm gonna

talk about two things that make phone ring. That's trees and turf. And that is for sure. And if you're looking for a quality tree, Verdant Tree Farm is a place you need to check out. And I you know, one convenient thing about Verdant is wherever you live, there's one not too far away. They've got one over in Barker, Cyprus for all those folks on the west side of town. If you're kind of central, there's one where I ten comes together with Yale Street in the Heights, the Heights area.

There's one down also in Parlin on Broadway Street. But Verdant Tree Farm they have all the different species you would want to grow that need to be grown here. They're not going to say you trash trees that should not be grown anywhere, or trash trees that shouldn't be grown here. Maybe maybe they fit some other place. They've got palm trees a selection like nobody else's business, and they have all sizes and you go pick your tree out Union shop

through and I like this one, put a tag on it. They'll bring it your house. They know how to plant it and how to advise you on how to get it established. And you're just not going to do better than that kind of service. You can go online to Verdant Tree Farm dot com and find out more information. Walk in, talk to him, take a picture of your place, say hey, I need a tree for this area. What do you guys have? What do you suggest you got something

that flowers? Do you want a shade tree. They're gonna be able to take care of that. Well, what I want to do is I want to talk about a couple of other things this morning, regarding where we are and getting ready for fall. But first, well, actually let's go out to Pasadena and we're gonna talk to Anne. Hello, Anne, how are you this morning? Good morning, I'm fine, except for my yard need some help. I think I have takeoff patch out in the grass starting in

the middle of my yard. Okay. I say that because when I looked, I was looking for chinch bugs. They am I not watering enough, et cetera, et cetera. But it looks The main thing that makes me think that is it's blacks from the roots coming up to the grass. Okay, And I understand that compost. Applying compost is about the best thing you can do well. Composts can be helpful. There's a number of things that you do for take all root rot. First of all, you need to

get it diagnosed specifically that that would be the best. And I can suggest things to do. But if we're wrong about it being take all and I can't see it so I can't tell you, then you're just wasting time. And money. What I would what I would do if it were mine and you're you're just wanting to do some things in the meantime, is I would have it deep time narated. Get one of those core narrators that pops.

They'll soil out and open up that lawn. Put in a leaf mold compost top dressing over the top, and water and in really good that is that will get you off to a good start. And then as you fertilize using a fertilizer that's a little more accentifying. That will also help. The time to treat for the take all is going to be in the fall. That season is coming up right now. Treatments that you put down spray wise are not going to be that effective. Hey, I'm gonna have to go take

a break. If you want to continue this, Anne, after break, I'll just hang on and I'll be I'll be glad. Okay. An important question on the first All right, very good. Well, you're listening to Garden Success our number her garden success garden line. What is today's show? Garden line? Seven one three two one two five eight seven four La, all right, look next door, dark outside your neighbor's lights aren't on. Go bang on the door, wake them up, tell them they're missing garden

line, and they will rise up and call you blessed. Actually they'll rise up and call you something else today. But eventually they will appreciate the favor that you did for them. You know that when it comes to success with plants, when it comes to getting through drought, it's all about the soil. If your soil is plain, little hard clay, no improvement whatsoever, you're gonna have a limited root system because the oxygen doesn't move very down far

down in the soil. You're gonna have other struggles that your plants are going through. And that is why airloom soil products are so successful. Heirloom soil has a wide variety of things. I mean they all the different mixes. I could sit here all day just reading all the different kinds of things that

they have available. But I want to tell you they have a sale going on a new lower price actually of their rose soil, which is the standard soil mix for pretty much anything you want to grow, but especially things like roses and shrubs and certainly perennials and things. Rose soil is just a good mix ninety five dollars per qubic yard. Now, if you want to have a one qb yard supersack delivered to your house, imagine this big old sack

that holds a whole cubic yard of soil. That's one hundred twenty four dollars dropped off on your property, and it's neat, it's clean, you don't have to own a pickup in a trailer and all that kind of stuff you just haven't brought right there, and you can just shovel out of it as you're doing your projects and getting beds made and soil improved or whatever you're doing. Now that's going to be available starting today. You were listening on the

right day, because this is now the new thing. I mean, you know, the quality mixes and making your soil right. It's it's just so important, and it's exciting to see the different technologies and opportunities like the supersac. I really love that. I mean, that is so convenient, so absolutely convenient. Now they're open Monday through Saturday from seven am to five pm for their bulk sales. They also have their cocktail mix for seventy five dollars.

I got about forty yards of that available now. It's just a great opportunity. It's a good deal, it's a good opportunity, and it's definitely a good quality mix. And they deliver all over town. Heirloom Soils of Texas. You'll also find their bag soils and a lot of garden centers, a lot of different ace hardware stores, different places like that, wherever good

quality products are being sold. Let's head back out. We're gonna continue a conversation we were having with any any We were talking about your takeall root rot and I think you had another follow up question you mentioned on the fertilizer. It was time I wanted to put down some more slow and easy release fertilizer. Sure, should I avoid that with the take all patch? No, not at all. No, A moderate amount of fertilizer is always good.

And the good thing about slow and easy is it's going to give you a gradual release over time, so you just don't have this, you know, this dump of all the nutrients that are all put out there at once. And by using slow and easy, you're gonna that grass is going to have an adequate supply of nutrients gradually released all the way up into the fall at this point in time, if you put it down, yeah, it's an excellent product. Okay. And when you say diagnos that take all patch for

sure, how should I do that? Well, I can look at pictures of it, but that's not the most accurate diagnosis, you know, because other things can look like take all root rot. If if the areas are irregular, if they're truly dying out not you know, then then there's a good and you know you're getting it watered adequately and it's not starting right next to a curb or driveway or something. Then I'm going to say we're probably about eighty percent sure it's take all re rode, just based on all the

things I've been seeing in the way of samples. H Well, that's my situation. I was watching for, you know, as it started turning, I was checking for chinch bugs. Water's accurate, it's good. I go out and I, you know, get down into the bottom, new to soil and okay, gotcha, d it's not dry. Yeah. Well, and and do you have a pen pencil handy? I do? Okay, I'm going to spell it out. A z O x y azoxy A z

o x y s t r O B I N strobin azoxy strobin. Now you're over in the Pasadena area, you're closer to Deer Park, Galena Park or Hobby Airport or which direction are you Deer Park? Clear? Okay, Well you've You've got an ACE Hardware store out there. It's Deer Park Lumber and Ace Hardware. It's on Center Street and Deer Park, and they will probably most likely have the azoxy strobin. Because ACE carries a lot of a lot of things like that. I would recommend you go check them out and

get some. And once we get into the fall season, well let's say we get into late September October. I would apply it then I not apply it again four weeks later. Okay, I'm gonna have to run, but I hope that helps, and good luck with it getting that lawn turned around. Okay, Okay, thank you sir. You bet. Yeah. Yeah. You can go to Ace Hardware dot Com and find ACE anywhere near you, I mean, wherever it is that there's AE. We only have thirty nine of them, so I mean, I know it's going to be hard

to find one. Close your eyes, throw a rock and you hit one. Ace Hardware dot Com. Go to their store locator and find one near you. You know, That's the thing I like about ACE. They're all over town and people call, I know, hey, you need a product, They're gonna have it. I might recommend a fertilizer, they're gonna have it. Herbicide, weed control, you know, for the fungicize, pesticide, anything you need for your lawn and garden. Is even the soils that

we talk about here. ACE Hardware is going to have those. It's just it's that one stop shop. I mean, while you're in there, and of course you're getting all your gardening stuff there, there's a lot of other things that you need that are an ACE when if you haven't been in one in a while, go check it out and you'll see what I'm talking about out I mean from inside the home to your outdoor living to ever kind of repair you can think of for your plumbing, your pipes, your electric I

mean, it's it's it's AS Hardware. They have everything. That's the one stop shop. One of the things I really really enjoy about about AS Hardware. You know, the season, because of the heat, it kind of keeps people from wanting to get out and do things. But now's the time to get stuff done. Now's even a time to get some kinds of planting done, getting ready for the fall. But now's the time to make sure you've got the supplies, whether it's it's fertilizers, whether it's soil mixes that

you're going to put down. Now's the time to get set up for all that kind of stuff. If if we're going into the fall season, you got to take all root rot, go ahead and get your products, or you're ready to go when that time comes to take care of it. And Plants for All Seasons is one of those family owned and operated garden centers that is just it's just a destination that you have to go to. And here's

why I say that. If you go to a place where they don't know what they're talking about, where people that they hired to work have no knowledge of plants, you are wasting money. You're buying plants that will die, You're getting bad advice. That's not how it is. The Plants for All Seasons. The Flowerty family has been doing this since nineteen seventy three. They're easy to find. They're right there on two forty nine, on two forty

nine, right there about where Louetta comes in. If you've got a brown thumb, they will turn it green. They're knowledgeable. You take a picture in, you take a sample in, you need a diagnosis. It's all their Plants for All Seasons. Go online to Plants for All Seasons dot com and check out what I'm talking about, or give him a call. Two eight one three seven six one six four six. I was in there just a while back, and I'm telling you the color they have, the containers,

the beautiful containers. It just makes you what makes you want to buy another pritics of land so you can plant more plants? You know. That's That's the thing I look at is we have so many plants and so little time and space. When I go into a garden center like Plants for All Seasons, it's like, oh my gosh, I wish I own more property because I've got more things I want to do. If you haven't live out in the bomb Bellvue area that's on the east side right, Texas Feed Stop

is your home. Doown feed store now. They're on Highway one forty six, just north of ten. So I ten had one forty six just a few minutes and Texas Feed stopping right there. Brian Hope Rhodes have just created a beautiful, wonderful store. And again it's a place it's easy to brag on because they're going to carry all kinds of things. From that we talk about the fertilizers, the pest control products, they're going to carry, the

soils. They even had plants seasonally coming through. You need some tomatoes and vegetables and things like that, they'll have that too. Of course, they're an outstanding feed store. I mean they're going to carry every kind of feed and an animal related product you might need. Fact, right now, I

notice they got a really good selection of various kinds of hunting things. Those of you who are out there getting the lease ready and you need, you know, various supplies for feeders and stands and supplements for the deer and other thing. They got it there too, Texas Feed Stop. Perhaps my favorite thing about it is Brian and Hope have created a place when you walk in,

you feel like family. And I just love that and you will too, and their customers do too, a very loyal customer base because they have learned that when you go there, you get the kind of help you need and you get the friendly service that you're looking for as well. Texas Feed Stop. Let's take a break. We will come back. Our phone number seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Give Josh call, he'll get you on the board. Well, good Saturday morning on what is

going to be. In fact, it already is a good day for gardening, good day to get outside. Hey, if you are interested, perhaps you'd like to retire. You've been thinking about where what would be a good place to get a home and retire and just really enjoy life, haven't continue

an active lifestyle? Well that would be Dellweb. Now, Dellweb has been building communities for active adults age fifty five and better for over seventy years, and now they've got a community down there in the full Shure Areas, a couple of miles from downtown full Shure on FM three fifty nine. Now, this community is unique, and that first was unique in that it's Dell Web. So it has all those quality lifestyle programs built around you, quality homes,

beautiful walk areas. It's just it's a gorgeous place. But it also has a community garden that I've been assisting them with and You can go to dellweb dot com slash Houston for more information or give McCall to eight one four or five nine zero six zero nine Dell Web. This new community garden means that not only do you have the beautiful Dell Web community, but you have a chance to gather together enjoy gardening with your friends. You know how it

isn't a community garden. You visit with folks, you have a good time. And I just can't think of a better combination than Dell Web and in that community garden around. Let's hit out to Cyprus and we're going to talk to Rick now. Good morning, Rick, Good morning, Hey, thank you so much for taking my call today. I've got a question about gardening. My mother could find a stick on the ground and planet and it would turn into something beautiful, and fifty years later, fifty five years later,

I'm trying to get into gardening. So I've got about a twelve by twelve spot where I put railroad ties, okay, and it's where a shed used to be, So there's no grass we're on there in my backyard, and I put four rings about fourteen inches high and about three inches in diameter inside

of that square and their metal rings. And my plan is is to put herbs in there and some vegetables, so mostly like rosemary, basil, some chives, and then I want to put in also like a serrano pepper and little cherry tomatoes possibly, and then around it I want to put lavender. The reason I want to do that is I'm trying to keep farmers out. Okay, those are all the things that I think we'll keep farmers out. But what my question is what type of soil? What type of soil should

I put in there? I heard your commercial earlier about the company that delivers a soil. What would be good gardening soil for that? And when do I plant those things? Even garlic? Possibly might put in garlic good good question. That would be Airboom soils I was talking about, and I would get their veggie and herb mix. Now, it doesn't sound like there's a lot of volume of soil that you need. If I heard the numbers right on the size of everything, so you could just buy a bunch of bags

and use that to fill it in. But if it's going to be a pretty large area, then you might want to get that cubic yard supersack delivered for that. But the veggiean herb mix is absolutely outstanding for what you're trying to do. As far as planting time, it kind of depends for the garlic that's going to come a little bit later, But right now would be the time to plant tomatoes. Now would be the time to plant peppers and eggplants and things like that. When we get into later into September or mid

to September and on. We're looking at all the cool season vegetables like broccoli that are beginning to go in at that time. They can be in October as well. But yeah, you got you got a lot of options, and you're fortunate there, you know, being in Cyprus, you're not very far from plants for all seasons just down the street that they can they can get y'all set up for the kinds of plants you're talking about. Gotcha? What about like for a rosemary and basil? When would I plant those things?

I would do that right now because once it cools off into the fifties, Basel's going to be very unhappy and heading out. Rosemary is a tough perennial. It's a subshrub and it'll just keep going I would get it planted anytime from now on into the fall would be good. Also, when you're when you're doing that, you want to when you put these plants in these transplants, you want to water them in really well, and you want to use a soluble plant food for it. And you probably have heard me talk

about Microlife's Ocean Harvest Blue label. It's a four two three fertilizer. It's in a little quart bottle. It's a blue label. You just take it, follow the label, mix it in a watering can, and each time you do the plant, you water it in, and then five or seven days later do it again, and then five to seven days later do it again. And what that does is it gets that plant root system ready to go because it's got you know, it has the fish type fertilizers in it

that it just it's really stimulating for the root system. He's not going to burn or anything. And by doing that, you get your plants going. Because right now it's a demanding time to get anything planted, but it is starting this time where we're doing all our fall planting. So like tomatoes, that needs to be done soon. I'd do it this weekend, but you know. It's funny. My mom used to put my dad with a big

fisherman and so all the fishheads and stuff. She would they would put a compost pile and they would put all the fisheads in there, and then he would get his tiller and till it up into her garden. Oh man, that's all for her. I'll work well, you know, Rick, I hope, I hope that helps. But yeah, grab that. It's the

blue label Microlife Ocean Harvest and do it about three time. You can do it more, but at least three times, because you want that plant from the time it hits the ground, for the roots to be stimulated and growing, and for the nutrients to be there and whatnot. And then you'll curse. You'll do other fertilizing as you go forward. All right, well, thank you very much. I appreciate your help today. All right, Rick, thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah, I love that. I

love the blue label. I also like the orange label. The orange label is a seven one three. That's a that is a fertilizer that actually has beneficial microbes additionally chalked into there. It is really outstanding. I use it for my house plants now. There's no reason you couldn't use it outdoors as well. It's just fine for that. But I use it for my house

plants because I I just think it's good. It's got that seven one three ratio of nutrients that makes for a really really nice start for a plant getting going and for ongoing growth. At seven one three, got a lot of the nitrogen in there to really give it a boost and get it going really really well. Hey, if you live down in the League City area, your hometown feed store is League City Feed. Now when I say League City Area, I mean Santa Fe, Dickinson, Lamark Bay Cliff, Clear Lake

City, you know all that area now West and Madison Funderberg. They are now operating the place that there I believe grandfather started forty years ago. They carry all the products we talk about, the fertilizers, the pest control products. They have premium pet food. If you've got backyard chickens or any kind of animal, they can get you set up. Give them a call to eight one three, three two sixteen twelve, or just go to the place.

It's Highway three, a few blocks south of Highway ninety six. Well, here we go. We are winding up our first hour of the day. Boy, if time is flying this morning, I'm gonna be heading out to Obapaluza, which is at the United Way on wad Drive. There's talks going on all day. I think they're about to kick it off over there this morning, and I'll be the last talk of the day. But I think he's about two thirty. But anyway, i'll be there rat Aft Show,

I'm gonna hit over that way. I'm gonna be talking about how we can learn from nature in creating more healthy lawns and more healthy trees. Really it applies to every kind of plant we would have. But a lot of time we're the problem. The way we water, the way we do or do not prepare the soil, and a lot of other things are Maybe we can blame it on an insector a disease, but really we're the one that predisposed him for the problem. Ktr H Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any

of the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to ktr H Garden Line with scared rector smell. Just watch him as well. Good morning on a beautiful, beautiful Saturday morning. Looking outside, I see the glow of the sunshine on the big buildings downtown. You know, the weather we're having is making it difficult, I know, to be out in the middle of

the day and doing kind of things. But think about your plants, and your plants are out there, and can you imagine I mean just I think sometimes we take trees and other plants for granted, but can you imagine standing out in the direct one hundred degree hot sun all day as the soil moisture content goes down a little and a little and a little more each day, you know, one hundred degrees and just blazing hot sun. It's amazing that

they're able to keep going. You know, if you were to go outside and just touch any surface that the sun is shining on, I mean, it gets blazing hot by the time, especially if we get to two to four in the afternoon, really hot down. But think about the tree leaves. They would literally cook if that tree was not pumping water fast all day long to every leaf on the entire tree. So think about that. What if those leaf temperatures went up to like one hundred and forty degrees, which

they could easily do. You know, if you were just talking about the sun shining on them. But they're essentially doing the equivalent of our perspiring in that they're transpiring water. But what happens when the water runs short, then they can't do that, They have to shut down their processes, they begin to overheat. There's a lot of issues that happen. It's a wonder any tree is alive at all, in my opinion, just based on when you

really consider the amount of stress and what they're having to go through. And that's why we want to take care of them and make sure that they have what they need. And the number one thing in our power right now is to make sure they have water. When they have adequate soil moisture, they

can get by and even in these temperatures as tough as it is. But when they don't, the tree systems begin to shut down, including photosynthesis and other things, and that tree goes into stress us and when it's in that stage, then comes things that we can't stop, we can't control. When you get hypoxial and canker in an oak tree, there's no spraying for it and making it go away. It's going to take it down, and so our job is to avoid that. And you walk out and look at your

trees this morning, and they'll look okay, most of them. They'll look okay. But what you're not seeing is the stress they're under. And that's the stress we're alleviating. So don't think about watering as just keeping a tree alive in the sense of drought. Think about watering as keeping the tree healthy, because in the weeks and months to come, the problems from the drought we're going through now, the hot weather we're going through now, that will

take its toll. And that's when we start to see problems again that you can't just have somebody come in and fix. Well, let's head out to Leak City this morning. We're gonna talk to John V. Hello, John V. Good morning, and garden wine. Yes, question this morning is on the crepe myrtles. We have one crepe myrtle. We have a two story house. We've had it since nineteen eighty nine, and it grows all the way up to the second floor. Yes, and open your windows and

look at the blooms. Yes. And so recently we had one of our gardeners come and prune everything. So I'm just now looking at that and I'm wondering how long it'll it take to have the blooms bloom again. You might get a little more bloom out of them, you know, when you take out all the little spent blooms of seedheads and you get some vigor. Make sure and give them a good watering, give them a little bit of fertilizer, not a lot. We're getting to the point where we don't want to

fertilize our trees and shrubs a lot. Okay, going into fall. They do need nutrition. But I'm just saying, you know, if it's September and you're still pushing them on nitrogen, that's probably not a good thing, you know. But but a little bit of water and some vigor and you may get some more blooms out of them. I love. That depends to be on the on the cultivar of the variety that you have. Some are better than others. Yeah, it's a light pink. I don't know which

which a species name it is. It's truly lovely. Yeah, good, well, that's the thing. Normally we don't prove crepes at this time of the year. I would in the future hold off and have them told. I told my father specifically, do not touch this crape myrtle, and do not touch my night jazz or jazz and the do not touch them. I even told a garden er not to. But again, this is not my property. I just live here with a guest, okay, so you know,

and so it is theirs and their under it's their ownership. So I'm a guest. All right. Well, I'll leave the family matters to you. I don't worry about that. It's all of a good troll. I'm the oldest. That's no big deal. But y'all have a blessing, wonderful Saturday Saturday, and thank you so much. Have a wonderful Saturday as well.

You take care, you take care. You know it is it is blazing hot, and folks at this time of the year thinking, oh my gosh, I don't want to get on plant, but now is the time to get out and plant. There are a lot of good things going on at our garden centers around this area, you know. Swinging by RCW for example the other day, Highway to forty nine where it comes into Beltway eight. RCW Nursery is a nursery where if they don't have it, they can

probably get it. I mean, they really are good about attending to their customers and making sure they have on hand what you need. I notice that has some really beautiful crape myrtles on hand. And you know crape myrtle is just what is it blooms for like ninety days or something during the summer. Varies a little bit between varieties, but they have all that. Of course, they have trees, have really good supply of trees and shrubs. They

are really really stocked up and have a nice supply. Is still of a lot of quality shrubs. Maybe you've thought about doing a plumeria but you haven't done it before. Boy, plumarias love Houston heat and humidity. That would be another good one from r CW. You know they're open today from eight to five. It'd be a good day to get out there and check them out. Tomorrow morning from ten am to five pm they'll be open as well at RCW Nurseries. And listen, fall is coming and that is the prime

time to get your roses planted. You can plan them now, but you know, make sure you get the supplies that you need. They have a selection like nobody else at OURCW nursery. Just go by there, you see what I'm talking about. I mean, it's color everywhere. Really cool. Hey, let's hell out, head out to bel Air and we're gonna talk to Mark. Good morning, Mark, good morning. Question about some eagle

stone hollies. I've got about twenty of them or so in the backyard and there's all of them are doing great, except for one is on the edge of kind of the row. And the reason I say that is because it's next next to some star jasmine and that one is not growing near the rate the others are, and it's looking a little light greenish, okay, almost yellow. And I've been real I say it's next to some star jasmine because I've been reading online that that could be the soil in that area, because

that star jasmine is showing some red leaves. Yeah, okay, curious you have any thoughts on that? And if I need to fertilize, what when and what do I do? Right? When did you plant that? Oh? Probably about three years ago? All right? Well, Mark, I am hitting on a hard break, so I'm gonna have to put you on hold. But when we come back, let me pick it up from there and we'll talk about some things to keep in mind for the Eaglestone. Sorry to take the call and have to go, but I do want to come

back all right. I'll be here all right. Thank you appreciate that. Our phone number seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Why stock op time on garden line. Hey, we are glad you're listening today. Our phone number is seven one three two one two five eight seven four

seven one fifty eight seventy four. Hey, if you're thinking about getting some landscape improvements done, you'd like to have somebody who is a professional designer who knows what they're doing come in and I don't know, turn that backyard that's a little bit blah right now into a place where you can't wait to bring people in for entertainment, for sitting outside and enjoying it. By the way, the temperatures for sitting outside and enjoying it are on the way, so

don't delay. Well. Peer Escapes, Peerscapes, Jason Garrity and the whole team there. They are exactly the kind of place that I'm talking about when I say professional designers who know what they're doing, and pretty much whatever you need to they can do it. Maybe your irrigation system needs a little bit of work done, a little improvement, a little repair. Perhaps you need to walk away put in or maybe the drainage is bad in an area. I know, remember when it used to rain. Well, it will rain

again and when it does, and we have those soggy spots. Our plants do not like that, at least most don't. They can fix that, they can put in landscape lighting. They can do anything you need to get done pretty much. Peerscapes, the designers are visiting with Bob I Candice. Those folks know what they're doing, and so if you want to give them a call, it's two eight one three seven h fifty sixty two eight one three seven h fifty sixty or or you can go online to Peerscapes dot com

peerscapes dot com and find out more information. Now'd be the time to go ahead and get them booked up. Let's go in, let's talk to them about. Here's pictures of what I got. What do you think you can do? You know, what are the plans? Because it takes a while to get everything in process, to get things drawn out and to get them installed. And fall is on the way and that is prime time for getting

a lot of things established and planted. Right now it's a little dry, it's a good time to get out and get some soil work and things like that done out there. So don't delay if you if you want to turn your place into a show place, I would get pier Escapes a call or check them out online as soon as possible, so you're ready whenever the weather is such that you can't wait to get outside and enjoy the beautiful little eden that you're you've created for yourself. Let's go back to Mark in bel Air

Mark. We were talking Eagleston Hollies and you had one. Did you say it was three years on the ground about I'm going back thinking it's closer to two clo. Yeah, the other nineteen are doing wonderful. Okay, well Holly is just an overall holly comment. First, the first year or two or three that a holly is in, you really need to be taking care with the watering on the roots. They once they're established, they're pretty tough.

I mean they're not like cactus belong in West Texas, but they're they're pretty tough. But that first two or three year it's kind of touching. Go so I would check the one that's not doing good. Is there. We're we've checked the water. You're doing good. So not too wet, not too wet, and not too dry, right I think, so okay, it shouldn't be too bad. I mean the other ones are doing great,

That's what I mean. Yeah, Well, where I was heading was sometimes you've got a sprinkler or a drip thing that's clogged, that's blocked, and the spray isn't hitting the root system, and just make sure that's right. Other than that, just adequate moisture during this heat, and moderate amounts of nutrition. You know, with a with a fertilizer, primarily nitrogen is the ingredient that they need, but they don't need a whole lot at one

time, So you want to go gradual with that. Okay, when can I If I want to do a little more fertilizer, I've read that you shouldn't do that this time of year. Maybe do I need to wait to the fall to start that? No, you don't want to wait till fall. I would go ahead. If you're gonna if you need to do something, I'd go ahead and get a little bit done. Now. It's if you have plants that are marginally hardy plants that often will freeze when we have

a bad winter. Uh, you know, bottlebrush can be that way, Japanese blueberry can be that way. Fig trees can be that way. You know, they're they're they're good plants, but they just they're just not that that fully hardy. I don't like to fertilize those after about the beginning of August because I don't want to encourage any late season growth and then we have another like last December when it got so cold and our plants weren't ready for

it. That would be the only thing. Hollies aren't prone to that. But you know, if if if you feel like it's lacking some nutrients, I would give it a light application of some fertilizer. Well at this point, yeah, it would led me that to that is it's next to some star jasmine that's showing some some red leaves, which is next to another star jasmine that's doing great. So it's like that. I don't know if that little area where the patio meets the kind of the side yard, if I

don't know, maybe some soils not right there. It could be, Yeah, it could be. I mean soils in our yards or not uniform. You know, once you get into a neighborhood, things can get weird in the soil from the time when they were building the neighborhood. You know, who knows what they did, but yeah, I would do that. I'm going to make a suggestion for you on that holly. And this is an un unusual one, but Nitrophos has a product called sweet Green. It's an

eleven percent nitrogen, zero phosphorus, four percent potassium. I would put some of that down. Now that's we think of it as a lawn furlizer, and that's what it is. It's great for lawns, but for your hollies, it would. It will be available quickly and it'll really stimulate the microbial

activity having that molasses content that it has. And I would do some light applications, you know, for a let's see eleven percent, I would probably put two cups of the sweet Green around your bushes and a big scattered evenly through an area about six eight feet wide and then watered in. And you could do that again a little bit later if you need to. But it's a light application. It's going to be good for the roots system as well as far as the microbes and stuff, and I would do that one.

And again that's the first time I've ever suggested it for a shrub, but I think in this situation that would be a really good, a good choice. The name of it is sweet Green. Yeah, it's sweet Green. It's a it's an organic from nitro foss uh and it's you know where you you're in bel air, so you know the the ace hardware's nearest you are going to have it. That's probably the closest place that you're going to find

it to you. But it's it works well. You know, I promote it for lawns, but you know, hollies are a foliage plant, and so are lawns, and so a lot of times things that make the lawn green and give vigorous growth and stuff that will do it. And I like the fact that sweet green is is gonna be when you apply just a small amount like that, it's going to be a stimulant for the for the plant without it just pushing it into lots of long, long term growth, which

we'd rather avoid that at this point in the season. Okay, great, Yeah, I'll give it a try. Thank you so much, And then do the do the Colombo Sherlock Holmes thing, walk around, look, say what's going on here? You know, is there a downspout or is there anything that it hasn't appeared in our conversation that you might notice. Okay, awesome, thank you so much. Hey, thanks a lot. I appreciate that call very much. Yeah, Nitrofuss, you know, have a number

of great products. But that's Sweet Green that's there. Their organic lawn fertilizer and in the past, uh, you know, it's real popular and last year kind of running into some shortages trying to keep it stocked. And boy, this year they got a great supply on hand and you know, an anticipation of a great demand coming up. And it's just a good one. It's good for the lawns. That's what you name mainly recommended for. But

I think in this situation that was another good application of the Nitrofuss. And they're they're easy to find, you know, all these hardwares have are most of our garden centers are going to carry the Nitrofoss feed stores. You're gonna find Nitrofoss products in our feed stores. We'd like to brag about. So just a really good choice, really good choice. Hey, if you have you got a piece of property and you've been thinking about getting a tractor.

Now, you know, maybe you've got a few acres or maybe a lot of acres, but you'd like to get out there and you need something, you know, to carry the mulch around, to haul the compost in for building beds or bringing in sacks of feed. Who knows what. Kuboda, that just really fun, cool tractor. I think it a prettytail of those orange tractors. Kuboda from the Landsdown that is that combination. You're not going

to do better than that, I mean Landsdown. They've got places all over the greater Houston area here and you can go to LM Tractor dot com as in LANSDOWNE Moody Lansdown Moody Tractor, LM tractor dot com and you can find out more about it. They got a deal going on that they have extended. And I was stunned when I first started about this deal, because let's into this zero down, zero interest for eighty four months, seven years, I mean, and with cabodas you get that whole package. I'd recommend the

L twenty five oh one that is that is one impressive tractor. You can trick it out with all the kinds of equipment, the front endloaders and everything that you need on it. But go to LM tractor dot com. Or if you just want to learn about more about Caboda, can go to Cabodo USA for more information. Landsdown, Moody and Caboda. That is a combination and you will be set up. In fact, you may not even want

to come back inside watch football this fall. Then once you get it out there and enjoin your new tractor, your new ride heading around the property a lot of fun. Hey, let's go up to Tom and Kingwood and find out what's going on in Kingwood. Hey Tom, Hey, good morning. I've got some double knockout roses cut back. Would that sweet green be good for them? You know it could with usually with roses, we're putting in more ingredients than just primarily the nitrogen, with a lottle potassium. Uh,

there would be. It would be good for a stimulation of growth and blooms. But I would I would consider one of the rose fertilizers that are out there on the market, and we've got some some really good quality ones that are designed for roses. Uh you Nitrofoss has a rose fertilizer that's specifically for that. Okay, okay, yeah they do. And what's the ingredients the numbers. I'm gonna have to pull that that up. I don't have those

three numbers in front of me, but I can. I can cut that down for you and find it. Just go where you would buy your Nitrofos stuff. You're up in Kingwood, so you're you're fortunately, yeah, you've you've got you know, you've got a number of ones in your area. The K and m Ace, go up to Porter, there's the the J and R's ace and yeah, no proble, I'm finding an ace up there and they're going to carry those things. Okay, awesome, thank you you

bet you take care. Appreciate that call Tom. Well we are gosh, we're covering a lot of ground here today. If you're in the Tomball area and you are looking for your hometown feed store, that is D and D Feed and Supply. I love to go out to D and D. The Dover family has been running DND since nineteen eighty nine. You've got a newly expanded store and when you go in there, if I'm talking about a fertilizer, it's going to be at D and D. If I'm talking about soils,

they're going to have those bags of soils for you. D and D carries a high quality line of dog food, of course, all the other foods you'd expect for your animals at a feed store. If you need other kinds of unique products, maybe you need one of those sprinklers that I keep talking about that wraps around the tree, you know, the tree huggers. Maybe you need stuff for controlling pests, rodents, things like that are cleaning

the pools. D and d's got all of that kind of stuff. DND Feed is on twenty nine twenty West in tom Ball, about three miles from two forty nine. Easy, easy to find, and when you go in there, you're going to get the service. We wouldn't brag about them and recommend them if it wasn't that way. And that is DND Feed for that whole area. That is your hometown feed store. Well time for news our number seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four not well good Saturday

morning. Look outside, the sun is out. It's a beautiful day. It's a good day for gardening. Good day to talk about gardening. Two And if you'd like to talk about gardening, give us a call. Seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four three two one, two, five eight seven four. Now, if you've heard one show that I've done here on garden Line, you have heard me talk about the importance of soil.

Soil is everything when it comes to plants. By the time you plant a plant, whether it's a seed or a transplant, and you walk away, you are already eighty percent of the way to success or failure. Right there. It's done. Now are there are other things that are important after that? Of course, you got to water, and you got to fertilize them. You got to take care of them. You've got some issues you

may have to deal with. Eighty percent is already decided. And why do I say that, Well, you've picked a spot that's sunny or shady. You've picked a spot that's well drained or not. You've chosen a species and a variety that is suited to that spot in this area or it's not. And those are all important, But even more important is the soil that it's

in. Plants need quality soil to do well. And if you you know, I mean, if you're going to grow a plant, you need to create that soil environment that it needs and that we are fortunate in the Houston area to have some really quality soil providers in our area. We really are. If you live down south of Houston in the Sienna area, you know we're talking about north of Roscheron, So this would be Cena Plantation, this would be Manville First Colony or pair Land even over by brass beIN State Park.

CNA Mulch is your soil supplier. Now. They're open Monday through Friday from seven thirty in the morning till five pm today seven thirty to two pm, So when this show's over, you need head right over there, and then they're closed on Sunday. They are on five twenty one near where Highway six and two eighty eight come together, just north of Rocheron. You can go to Ciena Mulch dot com to find out more about them. But when you go there, I mean, it's not just like you're going to buy

malls. They have. First of all, they carry all the fertilizers we talk about, and then they have mulch in bulk. They have mulch in bags. They have compost bulk compost bags, or the soil mixes we brag on, and oh my gosh, when it comes to stone and rock and all those kind of hardscape types of products, they have got an unbelievable selection. They'll deliver within about twenty miles there for a small delivery fee. So if you don't have a vehicle that can haul all that in, don't worry.

They'll bring it to you. But CNA Malt is one of those places that, let's just put it this way, they're your foundation for a successful garden. You take care of the brown stuff first, and then you will have success with the green stuff. How about that? Does that make sense? First the soil to have success with the plants. That is a secret and that's why we love SNA Malts so much. Here on Garden Line, we're going to head out to northwest Houston now and we're going to talk to

Charles. Hello, Charles, Hello, Hello, How can we help today? I have a good growth of dove weed in my backyard. How do I get rid of that doveweed? There is a there's a cinnamon type of product you can sprinkle down that does a pretty good job on it, and I am trying to remember the other herbicide that I'm Charles, I'm gonna have to come back and talk about that in a minute. It is not coming

to my head off just the top of my head. Doveweed is in the same kind of group as like wandering jew weeds, and they're they're kind of caught. They're not grasses really, and they're not broad leaves really, and they're caught in between, and it makes it kind of a challenge. Number One, the wetter you keep the area, the happier the doveweed is. So when you water a good soaking but then letting it dry out considerably before

you water again, your grass does well under that regiment. The doveweed is not as happy as when it's being kept wet all the time. So that would be a cultural thing. But Charles, I'm gonna have to come back to you on the other ingredient. I know there's a cinnamon type product that you can sprinkle on it, and the other one is just escaping me. So I guess we'll have to have to come back on that one. Okay, Okay, I'll listen to your program and find out all right, thank

you. I apologize my brain has drawn a blank on that one. So let's see. Let's head out to the hobby area right now. And is it Phinisee is? Actually is fannis name Phis? Okay? I like to find out who would you recommend for trying to grow watermelons next year? So I want to prepare whatever it is for next year. Okay. So what you want to do is you want to get a good, well drained soil

area. So if that means bringing a soil in, creating a raised bed and whatnot, it needs to be well drained, but it needs it needs to be able to hold adequate moisture. Most watermelons are in sandy soil and they water them a lot to keep to keep them moist they need full sun. You need good sun, So find a spot that's going to get at least six hours of sun, preferably more than that to have good success with the watermelons. And then finally, just plant them at the right time.

So once we get into about you know, April, you can begin planting your watermelons and they'll they'll do just fine. Here, all right, sir, I do have my backyard that it gets at least ten hours of sun there you go. All right, Well sounds like it sounds like you're well on your way to having success with those. Well, I probably would need to raise the bed. Maybe it put a place bed, but I mean it's rained pretty well back there. But yeah, it's probably better because of

our neighbors. You know, they're I don't know what they're but I mean, really we've never had any water the spaces they're back in the back yard. Who really brains towards the front of the house. Let's get along the site. But yeah, yeah, I'll wait it either way. Yeah, appreciate. Yeah. The one thing the watermelons don't want is a heavy clay soil that stays saggy wet after a good hard rain. They just don't want, all right, So you keep them out of that area and they'll do

good for you, all right, sir, appreciate your help. Thank you, sir. I appreciate that call. Hey, if you're thinking about retiring and looking for a place for gardeners at want an active lifestyle, that would be the dellweb community in full Shure. Why do I say that, because the fullshre delweb community that's going in has a community garden that I am assisting them with. And so not only do you get the beautiful dell Web homes,

the beautiful dell Weeb community, the lifestyle programs built around you. You get the chance to gather together with friends and enjoy a garden without having to dig up your own black forty and so I think that's just a win win. You can go to dellweb dot com slash Houston to get more info or give them a call two eight one four five nine zero six zero nine. If you are thinking about a move to a nice, beautiful community, that would be a great idea. Oh my goodness, we got a lot of

things we're visiting about today. One of the challenges this time of year, of course, is the heat. But despite the fact that it's hot, you gotta remember fall is coming, and therefore we have to take care of our plants to get ready for fall. And we have to do the things now that we need for fall. For example, you're gonna plant maybe broccoli or start putting in some cool season flowers coming up. You got to get the soil ready. Now's the time to do that. Early in the morning,

it's cool. Let's get those beds made. Let's get it ready to go. Our turf grasses. We are coming into the fall season. Once we get to about October, all the cool season weeds are germinating. What can you do now to make that turf as dense as possible? And that would include things like fertilizing, mowing regularly, watering deeply but infrequently. So see what I'm talking about. I mean, I can go on and on

with the list. Now's the time to begin getting ready our phone number seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four, and we'll be right back. The Devil dance Daddy, he'd have a ball in line. We're the nine Good Ground, the DNDS band in will group that Raisin lou man A three B two one dance for the night. Well, good morning. You are listening to guard Line on a beautiful Saturday morning, and we're here to

answer gardening questions. So if you're interested, give us a call. Seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. We're gonna hit out now to Tumball and talk to Ken Ken. Thanks for hanging on sure, M appreciate you taking my call was wouldn't to ask you. I've got a colony of leaf cutter ants that have moved in and I was wondering if you have a suggection on how to get rid of them. There is a there is a product called amdro ant

block that is pretty effective against leaf cutters. The problem with the you know, the regular some of the regular products that we would use for ants, they just don't work well, including regular ambro just the standard old amdro is not But andro Ant block it's got the ingredients in it are a little more effective. The problem of the leaf cutters is they cut the leaves off your plants and then they haul them down and stick them in a cave underground and

grow fungus on them to eat the fungus. So it kind of makes it hard to you know, get the pesticide to the ant. But the andro ant block is a bait that should do a pretty good job for you. Okay, I'll give shot still as oh yeah, yeah, yeah, you know you're up in the in the tom ball, are you might? I would try, I would, I would try. Um, I think you're gonna find it at Arbergate. I believe that they have it there for if not, you did call them, you know, call them first for you

run out. But I think they would have it there. A. D and D might have it out there too. I can't remember seeing it there. It might be there though, but you know, just just kind of check around. I just off the top of my head, don't don't know all the all the places it might carry that specific product. All right, Well, thank you. Yeah you're what what part of which direction from tom Ball? Are you? North? South, east, west west? Just

west, like about two and a half. Okay, so well those two places I mentioned or just kind of in your backyard, Yeah, I would start there then that that's probably gonna be your best bet. All right, good luck with those man I had. I had those things on a farm that we had up in Willis, and I had a peach orchard and I went out and overnight three peach trees that had full leaf canopy the next morning had no leaves on the I've never seen things like it. They did that

to our red buds. It took every within the spring and they took every bud that we had. Yea, took all the color off of them. Yeah. I don't know if you've seen Caddyshack, but I was Bill Murray and the ants were that gopher. I was stuffing stuff down the hole. I was ready to put dynamite down there and blow them up. I mean, that would have been the movie. It would have been the movie. All right, all right, thank you very much, bad take care Ken,

Thanks for the call. I appreciate that. I appreciate that. Well, you know, your lawn is still growing and it still needs nutrition, and now would be a good time to put out some microlife fertilizer. And we're talking about the green bag. That is like that's kind of like the universal of the microlives. I mean it is you can pretty much use it on everything. I mean, we know we have products were fruit trees and roses and azaleas and all kinds of different things. But the green bag is

just kind of like an all around great product. I mean, if you're in a vegetable gardener or an herb gardener or whatever, you're going to use it. Well for the lawn. That's a six two four the three one two ratio. It's going to release as the microbes get ahold of it and start to break those nutrients out. Now we say the three numbers six, two, four. But what's in a bag of microlife fertilizer is all kinds of beneficial microbes plus over sixty three minerals that are part of that whole group

of things that plants need. You know, plants don't just need the big three. They need that, but they also need the second group of three, the secondary nutrients, and then they need the micronutrients. I mean, you get down to things like molybdenum and zinc. Do you know that if you could take all the molybdenum out of the soil, you could not grow a grass or any plant because they have to have molebdu Well, you can't take it all out. But my point is that plants need more than the

big three, and that's what the microlife provides. If you'll top that off with the humates plus, which is the purple bag that's concentrated compost in a bag, there we are talking about all the things that are benefits of composts with the humic acids and the things that prepare that soil. You know, when you're fertilizing with microlife, you are putting on nutrients, but what you're trying to do is you're trying to build that soil so the grass just thrives.

And that includes more than nutrients. That's microbes, that's everything else that's involved in good healthy soil. Microlife's sixty four and that's a green bag and the purple bag humates. Plus we're about to put another another hour in the books here, man, that time flu this morning, that that's kind of going fast. I'm going to be heading out to Obapalooza, which what is Obapalooza. It's the OBA event that's going on at the United Way Building on

WA Drive here in the Houston area and Oba Paluza. What is OBA, by the way, OBA is the Organic Horticulture Benefits Alliance and there's a group of folks gotten together to promote the benefits of organic horticulture, both the benefits of healthy eating, healthy loving. And the Oba Paluza today is going to have a whole bunch of speakers. In fact, they are already rolling over

there. I'll be joining them after the show today. I actually given a talk today at two thirty and my talk is going to be on two of the things that make the phone ring. That's trees and turf. Why is my tree dying? Why is my grass dying? And how do we take care of that? And what I'm wanna do is I'm gonna give a look at it from the standpoint of why did we get here? How did we get here? You know? So what we there's different ways of approaching problems.

And when you call garden Line, you know you're you're hearing me talk about answers to specific problems like I have fiance, how do I kill them? Or I have this disease? How do I prevented? Or how do I kill it? And I'm going to take a step back from that, and we should You've heard me talk before about the importance of cultural practices, picking the right plant, doing all the things right. Remember how when you walk away, you're eighty percent of the way to success or failure. What

are the things we do that predispose a plant? You know, maybe your tree died of hypoxilan canker, but your tree died of hypoxillan because it had stresses that led to hypoxillin coming in. And we're going to take a step back and look at what does nature do to keep plants healthy? You know, think about the beautiful forests around the world that just live without us running through there with fertilizers and rhoto tillers and exercise and pestis. How do they

do that? What's going on there? We're gonna look at some of those principles that I had two thirty and I'll be talking about them as I am right now on the air as well. Hey, it is about time to take our next news break. But I do want to give your phone number. It's seven one two one two five eight seven four. If you would like to be on. Maybe you have a gardening question, give Josh a call and let him get you on the boards. We'll be happy to visit

with you about the things that might be of interest to you. We always try to, you know, point you to the kinds of answers, the kinds of resources that are helpful. If you've never checked out the Aggy Horticulture website, it's Agge hyphen horticulture dot TAMU, dot e du, or just go online whether you use Google or whatever your search engine and type in Aggie and horticulture. When you get there, you're gonna find a lot of good

stuff. There's a section on vegetables, where there's a little free fact sheet, full color multi page that you can look at on line or download on every vegetable that you can imagine. You go to the fruit section and there's everything from avocado to I don't know what's a fruit that begins with Z. There's everything from A to Z when it comes to fruit that's also available. It's all free. It's a resource that's available for you that can be very

very helpful. We have our fall season coming up and we'll be doing some fertilizing, So if you haven't had your soil tested, I would recommend going ahead and getting that done now so that you have time to get the soil right before we go into fall planting. So that would be soil testing dot TAMU dot edu, soil testing dot TAMU, dot DU. Let's get that right so when we fertilize, we fertilize accordingly. KTRH Garden Line does not

necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to KTRH Garden Line with Scip Director. It's just watch good morning. You are listening to garden Line on a beautiful Saturday morning. I'm your host. Skip Richter, and we are here to answer your gardening calls our phone number seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two

fifty eight seventy four. Now, if you live in the Houston area or have lived here for very long, especially if you've driven downtown down some of the streets, you know that we have soil that shrinks and swells. What does that mean, Well, when it gets wet, it expands, When it gets dry, it contracts. Our foundations have a heck of a time with it. Have you noticed maybe that your doors are sticking, Maybe there's

a crack in the brick outside or even the sheet rock inside. You see a crack forming in that you may need foundation repair and you need to not delay, catch it early on and have Tie Stricklin. And he's the owner of Fix my Slab Foundation Repair. Tie has been doing this a long time, twenty three years here in the area. He knows what he's doing. And if you're a garden line listener, if you tell them you're a garden

line listener, they actually give you a free estimate. The thing I like about Fix my Slab and you know this tiees Hoole approach to this is they're committed to a fair price and they show up on time and when they do it, it's fixed. It's done. You know they're going to do a good job of doing it. And that's the kind of folks that we like to talk about on garden Line because we want you to have success. We want you to have the issues that you need taking care of taken care of.

And that's exactly what you're going to get with Fix my Slab Foundation Repair. You can go to fix myslab dot com, fix myslab dot com or give him a call two eight one two five five forty nine forty nine. By the way, they'll do crack driveways, they'll do crack sidewalks as well. They know how to do it all. They are experienced and they do quality work. It fixed my slab. You're listening to garden Line our phone number seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four and we're going to

head right on up to north Shore and talk to Sharon. Hello, Sharon, Hi, Hi, how can we help? I have I have a yesterday, today and tomorrow in my yard and it's in the finn it's on the south side and it's not happy on that side. Okay, so I was, and it's just not well. I used to have there used to be a magnolia in the front yard, and it gave it partial shade and it was happier. But now I'm not happy at all. Is it too

late for me to dig it up? I wouldn't do it to it now because the demands are so high and you're gonna lose the vast majority of the roots system when you dig it up. I would wait and do that in the fall. Let's let it cool off a little bit, get into later October, November or something, and go ahead and move it now. And I know in the meantime, if you want to put some kind of a little shady kind of cover of whatever you can do to kind of block some

of the sun over it, that would be fine. But oh okay, they just kind of keep it moist. Yeah, yesterday to day and tomorrow. Brun Felsi is a beautiful old plant. In fact, doesn't that name? Do you know who Aban Costello is? Sharon? You remember? Yes? Yes, I'm not that young. All right, Well, I was no assumptions here. I'm just saying you remember the who's on first routine. They should have had a yesterday, today and tomorrow. You know, the

picture's name was yesterday. Never mind anyway, Yeah, that's it. That's it. That'd be a good one. Yeah. Just keep keep it as happy as you can for now. Uh. It is kind of an understory type of plan. It likes light, it needs some light, but just the blazing too much blazing Sun's kind of hard on them. Okay, because I was going to ask you what kind of light does it need? Because it was my mother's and I can't find them anywhere in the nurseries. And

I think it's blue, pink and white. It makes all the colors. Yeah, it'smell beautiful and it's getting very scraggly. It's not happy it is. I'm trying to Wars North Shore get up here. I'm on the east side off of Ubaldi and okay, on the on the sam Houson Toe Breach over there. Yeah, okay, oh boy, trying to think of you. You ought to be able to find them too locally. There are a few. I haven't found one long time, okay, yeah, because it's really sad. Yeah, yeah, well, let's keep this one alive.

And I don't think that'll be that hard to do. I just just give it a little bit of a break and make sure the soil stays moist without being saggy. That's the key, all right, Okay, and then it just likes partial sign is that what it like. A little morning sun would be good, or a very bright dappled shade through the day would be good. I've seen them growing in more sun, so maybe there's something else going on in terms of dry soil or saggy soil or something else. But check

for those things to be sure. Okay, all right, well, thank you. I appreciate that call. Sharon. You are when you have a really wonderful plant that I love those plants. It's it's kind of an old fashioned plant. It kind of went out a fashion for a while and then it kind of came back and it's really really popular. You might have you might consider I was thinking about places you get these. I'm pretty sure they

would have those up in Kingwood at Kingwood Garden and Warren's Garden. I know it's a bit of a drive for you, but as a drive well worth it. Kingwood Garden Center and warren Southern Garden Center are really really cool places. They have the plants you need, They the products you need. Yeah, I was bragging on tree hugger sprinkle while ago. They got those up there. I've always been bragging on the Cajun hibiscus. I just think that's

one of the prettiest hibiscus there is. And in fact, over let's see, it's at Kingwood Garden Center. The Kingwood Center, they have the one gallon Cajun hibiscus on sale. It's only today and tomorrow, well actually started winds bit as far as you're listening now today from two to five pm or tomorrow Sunday from two to five pm, while supplies last. You can get one of the Cajun hibiscus. And when you go see them, you'll know

what I'm talking about. They are gorgeous that it's called their Hibiscus Happy Hour. Only at the Kingwood Garden Center. They also have Mandevilla's there. In fact, you can get Mandevilla's both Kingwood and Southern Warren. Southern Gardens they've got Caliandra's, the pink powder puff, Oh my gosh, beautiful little wispy blooms, very very unique. Maybe you have a shady area and you need something beautiful for that. How about a Kirkuma ginger. They do really well

in a bright shade. Super super plants just excellent at Kingwood and at Warren's Garden Center by the way, coming up, write this down. It's two weeks from now, August nineteenth, from nine to ten am, Warren Southern Gardens is going to have their cultivate a harvest of abundance. They are going to be talking about fall garden prep from nine to ten am. It's free

Warren's Garden Center August nineteen. You need to go ahead and register because space is limited, and so you want to make sure and get in there for it. That will be the one thing you learn that is the most helpful thing in all of your gardening endeavors is getting that fall garden prep ready to go. Really really important. I just can't sing praises about that enough. Well, we're about to take a little break here. Heard up. You

will be first up when we come back. If you would like to be on garden line and ask questions talk about gardening seven one three, two one two fifty eight seventy four. Just give Josh a call and he will get you on the board. All right, We're giving away a free bag of fire ants and nutgrass. Where anybody who can tell me who about that song? That's the mystery question of the day. You're listening to garden Line.

I'm your host, Skip Richter our phone number seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one two five eight seven four. If you have heard me talk about Dellweb, then you know exactly the kind of quality program or quality community that they put together wherever they build, and they've been doing this for seventy years. They design their programs, they design their communities around active living adults age fifty five and better, folks that are

out there and enjoying the best time of their life. And part of the best time of your life is enjoying a garden. And they have a community garden in the new facility. The new community going in near fulsher On FM three fifty nine. It's about two miles from downtown fullsher On three fifty nine.

Give them a call at two eight one four five nine zero six zero nine to find out more information, or go to dellweb dot com for word slash Houston and find out about that Dell web difference that I've been talking about for yourself. We're gonna head out now to spring Break or spring Break Spring Branch and talk to Herda. Hello, Herda, Oh, good morning, Skip. Thank you for being there for us. My questions about Rosemary. I want to bring a plant in the house. How much sun would it

need like on windowsill? And is there such a thing as a dwarf Rosemary whether I don't know of any true dwarf Rosemary? And I tell you you might if you've got one heck of a sunny windowsill, you could probably keep one going. But Rosemary needs a lot of sun and moday my just you know, being the bearer of bad news, I don't think you're gonna be happy with Rosemary and a windowsill. Just the perform right, all right, you will. This doesn't face east or west, so yeah, there would

be more shade than I probably would need. Yeah, well, thank you very much. All right, you have a good day. All right, Well, thank you for the call. You take care out there in Spring Branch. Well, let's see we've been we've been talking about things getting ready for fall this summer, and now's the time I realize, you know, we listen to the weather and it's discouraging to hear the temperatures and stuff like

that, But hey, you do it now. If you wait until it's cool enough outside where you want to go out and just play around all day in the garden, it's too late for doing a lot of the things we need to do now. Getting the sore ready is important to get that done now. Taking care of your lawn, getting it ready, you got to get that lawn as dense as you can because come October, the hen bit and chickweed and carpetweed also call cleavers the what am I forgetting annual bluegrass?

All kinds of winter weeds are going to be coming up in October that will sit there all through the winter and then give you headaches in the spring when they take off like our blue bonnets do and bloom and set seed. And so if you have a dense lawn going into October, it greatly reduces the number of weed problems you have. So making sure you take care of your lawn. One way we do that is with product by Nitrofoss called Superturf.

Nitrofoss is nineteen four ten. Silver bag. It's easy to remember Silver bag superturf is gradually releasing. It's going to release over a period of several months as a matter of fact, so it's gradual. So the issues with like brown patch are the large patch circles that we get in the cool season are going to get reduced. The issues with these late season chinch bug problems that

we have are going to be reduced. The grass is going to read root deeper because when it gets too much nitrogen at one time, you end up with top growth at the expensive root growth. Nitro file Super Turf has that covered. That's a nineteen four ten. And where do you get nitro files everywhere? Garden centers all over the place that we talked about have nitrofiles. Ace hardware stores what are They're thirty nine of them all over the Greater Houston

area they have nit nitro fis products. And our wonderful feed stores that we brag on all over the Greater Houston area are also going to carry that product for you as well. Let's head out now to north Shore and we're gonna talk to Donnie. Hello, Donnie, Hello, that skipper, what's up? I had email you about a week ago at your request of take some pictures of my yard some brown spots up close a little far away, and also some recommendation on some planting of some flowers, but look color for this

time a year and I hadn't heard back from ye. All right, I'm sitting here flipping through my emails. I must have missed yours. There it is. I found it good, all right, we got it here. So you got a sprinkler system and you're watering either after nine pm or seven am, and you what you're basically looking for? What some advice on what's going on with that lawn right right? Well, parts of it looked like

drought, but parts of it looked like chinch bugs to me. I don't know if you're familiar with chinch bugs, but they typically start next to a curb or a walk sidewalk or a driveway, and then they work their way out in the lawn. It looks like the lawn needs watering, and they eat, They suck all the juices out of the lawn and what they lay behind, and I can see this in one of your pictures. That's that's some fall aster. By the way, they leave behind certain kinds of weeds

that they don't like at all. So you got these big blue green weeds right in the middle of your dying lawn. But that really looks like chinch bugs if it's not, or if it's something in addition to that, it could also be take all root rot. So you got your hands full there. I would probably grab some bugout Max from nitrofoss and I would just go ahead and treat that area and try to shut them down because they've already done a considerable amount of damage. And let's go ahead and and shut them down

now. But the bugout Max is a bifethern product that can be drenched down into the soil. And because the chinch bugs, they just flat kill kill grass as you can seem. Okay, okay, okay. So now if it would you recommend for plant any colorful flowers at this time of year, you know, when we get to towards up your yards a little bit. Yeah, when we get towards the end of summer, I start thinking about some of the warm seasons that do what warm season flowers that do well in

early fall, Angelonia would do real well. Right now, let's see the little compact types as any as little budding plant types, as any as will do well, now, I will often plant marigolds, the big old pom pom type, not the little flowers the size of a quarter. But I'm talking about the things that are size of a tennis ball. Uh. Those orange and yellow beautiful. When it goes into fall, the spider might populations go down and they just glow. They look really good. They'll carry you

all the way up to the first frost. They cannot take frost, but they'll take you to there. That would do good. Petunias would be a good one for the summer. You just need to get uh oh, you know about shrubs too. Azalia is not so much in the fall, but getting those planted this fall for coming out and having a beautiful spring bloom, that would be. That would be a good choice for that. Now, if you just want if you're thinking more in a shrub type terms, you

know, bougun vs look good this time of year. The hibiscos I've been you know, I was bragging on the the Cajun hibiscus that they have up at Kingwood Garden Center or war in Southern Gardens. And let's see where are you calling. I'm you're up in North Shore. Okay, sure, yeah, So you're not too far away. Uh, those will all be good options. There's just a lot of good things out there. I don't know if you have a preference for a certain size of plant or color of flower

or whatever, there's a lot of options. Yeah, if you see my flower bed, I've kind of cut out in that email. Okay, oh yeah, that's that's the kind of format that I want to kind of put something in there. Yeah, go to the contour of that, I would. I would go with something a little smaller stature. Then that's an awful lot of sun and which is good. You can get good blooms in the sun. There's some good salvias. I think the Angelonia would be one you're

gonna really like. I would. It's also called summer snap dragon. It's not a snap dragon, but that would be one you might want to consider too. Yeah, because the sun rives in the last Yeah. Yeah, if you got a favorite gardens or you like to go to, they're gonna have They're gonna have a beautiful, beautiful color options right now. Okay them chink bugs you thank god? Me. I think it's chinch bugs mostly, you know, And I'm looking at a picture, but just the fact that

it's often starting next to your your masonry. Uh, I think that's what it is there. There could be some takeall root right in there as well, but I would first make sure and get that chinch bug thing under control. And again the bugout Max had probably probably would be a good quick quick choice for that from nitrophile. That's a Is that a granular law? Yes,

yes, it's a granule. Follow the label. You're gonna put it down, You're gonna water it in and it'll do the trick, all right, all right, thank you, yes, sir, you take care appreciate that call. Uh you know the the um whenever it does rain, and it will it does rain or run here mosquite has become such a problem,

especially with standing water. It doesn't take them long. What do they say, like a thumbleful or a bottle capful of water is enough for mosquitoes to lay an egg and grow some larva and to hatch out and become adult mosquitoes. Again, that's why we need to dump out all those little water things underneath the underneath the catch basins on the pot. If you've got a sagging gutter, oh, that's mosquito heaven organic matter decomposing in water that isn't moving.

That is what mosquito heaven is. Well. Mosquito dunks can be thrown into any body of water and they will float along and for about a month they will kill mosquitoes naturally. Now it's not a poison that's gonna hurt birds or wildlife or your family pet if they drink out of it, or maybe it's a coypon you got fishing. It's not gonna hurt that, but it will work well against mosquitoes. Each dunk covers about one hundred square feet of

water unless, as I said, about a month. So anytime you have standing water and you can't fix it or you don't want to fix it, then mosquito dunks would be the way to go. Mosquito dunks as simple product, and they're everywhere ever lace you hear me talk about, from garden center, stays, hardware storees to feed stores, you're going to find mosquito dunks. We're gonna head over to Deer Park and talk to Stephen. Hello, Stephen, Hey, good morning, Skip. How you doing any morning?

I'm doing well. I've got a Schumart reddo and it's probably about three years old, maybe four years old. It's a pretty good sized tree, been a super great tree. It grows real dip leaves. But my front yard right now looks like late August. I mean it started shedding leaves, and uh my thought is that it's because I haven't probably watered it enough and this

heat is making it shuts oars or something and it's grown off leaves. Yeah, that's probably I'd feel better if you told me that probably all it is. Yeah, yeah, if it's if it's just dropping some leaves, and especially if you're noticing like the tips and margins of the leaves or brown, but the rest of the leaf is green for a while before it turns brown. That sounds like water. Tell me, I'm about out a time.

But how long has it been in the ground, So it's probably been in the ground a good four years alto sometimes you use about four or five years. Yeah. I talk about the tree huggers a lot, but it's because I believe in them. Because you put that around the base of your tree, you turn it on, you can water the whole area beneath and beyond the branch bread and give it a good soaking. You may take two or three waterings during a day. To get that soil soaked well, you need

at least an inch of water for it to do good. And I'm gonna have to run. But that kind of water, whether you use a tree hugger or not, that kind of watering is what it's going to take to get that tree back. Okay, all right, thanks, yes, sir, you take care. All right, Here we go our phone number seven one three two one two five eight seven four. We're gonna quit talking plants and we're gonna go to news with Nikki. I get it one piece of the time, and it wouldn't cost me a time. You lords me when

I got through your town, I'm gonna ride around in style. I'm gonna drive everybody wild. Boz will have the only one larious round. So the very next day when I punched in was my big lunch box. Let's helping my friend. I left that day Johnny cash one piece at a time.

I didn't cost me a dime. Our phone number seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one two k t r H. Give Josh a call, who gets you on the board and we will talk about whatever you are interested in you know, I have I have folks often ask me about, you know, what is the best way to create a garden? You know, what do I plow it up to put on

compost first? Whatever. There's a lot of waste skin account and when it comes to creating a garden, there's a lot of ways to do that too. But I don't know a better way than to just do an above ground raised bed, you know, because really the plant doesn't care what it's growing in. I mean, it doesn't care if you've got you remodeled your house and you've got an old toilet out at the street now you're waiting for somebody. Halloway, that's a planner. Okay, I'm serious. Plant doesn't care.

As long as it has enough soil. That's number one. It's got to have enough soil because when it's one hundred degrees and that plant is pumping just as much water as it can to stay alive, if it doesn't have a huge soil volume, it's not going to do well. And so I like, my favorite type of garden would be to put a bed box on

the ground so that the roots can go down in the ground. But you've got a quality mid up mix up in the bed box, and that is exactly what a Vego garden is. Now you can go online to vegogarden dot com, v egogarden dot com and you can find out what I'm talking about. There are metal beds that have been treated with a material to prevent corrosion and rusting, and then on top of that they put a USDA approved quality paint. By the way, that corrosion treatment is one that was certified or

tested at Texas A and M University. And now the paints are beautiful. I mean, the colors are beautiful. Vego is modular. So do you want an oval? Do you want a C shaped bed? You know? Do you how big do you want it? How why do you want it? You put it together like you want and it is excellent. There. It's a Houston company. Is this is our own hometown company. It's one of the I think it's the oldest metal bed company here in the US.

And boy are there ever some fakes out there on the market. There's a lot of pretenders, but nothing the quality of a Vego Garden bed. And also a nice local company that does well. If you're an organic gardener, you don't want to use treated lumber, you don't want to use your aerotize, Well, here's your bed, Vego garden. But even if you're not an organic gardener, I cannot think of a better product to go in to be instantly into a garden. You take a Vego bed and you put a

quality mix into it, and you're gardening tomorrow. And they're not many ways you can you can go about creating a garden where you're gardening the day after you decide to do it, and that is Vego Garden. I can't brag about those things enough. We're gonna go out to Rochera now and we're gonna talk to Brenda. How's Brenda today? I'm awesome, good. How are you? I'm well, thank you. I can tell I can tell. Listen. I've got some trees that we had one of those tree farms come

out and plant. We bought about nine of them, and two of them have what I think is a fungus. It was lea leaking sap. They're nettles, nettle oaks. They're leaking sap. Had butterflies and everything attracted to it, and so the tree farm told us to spread it with knee moil and that didn't seem to be working right, So um, I read doctor Google. Doctor Google said that there's nothing that can be done. You need

to dig him up. What do you say, Yeah, well, doctor Google, he goes outside and he asks his neighbor, and some of his neighbors don't know what they're talking about. Okay, so let me just tell you about that. So yeah, there's the best and the worst answers in the world on on Google. What that is is it's called slime flux or bacterial wet wood and the trees they get maybe a stress crack in them.

It can come from like a physical injury. It can come from just the bending and a cracking, you know, cold freeze, cracks, A lot of things can cause it. But the sap is full of sugars, carbohydrates that the leaves are making. And when you get any kind of sugary water and you introduce microbes, you end up with alcohol you and up. You know. That's how we That's how we make beer, that's how we make wine, whiskey. I mean, it's all a fermented you need to tap

it. It's basically, I'm just a little sign. You know. It can be Brenda's beer joint right there and all free. All the wasps and the butterflies of the neighborhood will come over there. But there's no that's it. It's a speakeasy. No, there's no there's no fix in it. There's no spray in it. You just want your tree to get vigor so that it can create the callous and close that area over. That's that is the long term fix. And so water, proper watering, adequate fertilizing,

get the grass away so it's not competing with the lawn and everything. Let it, let it get on its feet. That's the solution to back trial wet way and slime flux both okay, okay. Fertilizer any particular. Should I check the website you guys have for the tree? You know, I'll tell you this. There are some really good tree fertilizers out there. I know nitro Foss has one that is excellent for trees. I know Nelson's has

some that are excellent for trees. I mean they're they're they're good fertilizers. In my house, I often because I buy bags for the lawn, I often will just use that on the trees too, and there's nothing wrong with that. So if you go no, I wouldn't do that. I'd do look for one with a three one two ratio of nutrients. So you know, like microlife has a six two four. I just talked about the nitrophos is nineteen four tien. I believe it was, uh, you know Nelson's

has there's a um slow and easy. It's a twenty two two ten. I'm throwing up. I'm messing up on those last numbers a little bit. But anyway, it doesn't it nitrogen. That's the vigor. That's the vigor nutrient, and so that's the main one you need. Yeah, it's not for lack of phosphorus or really even a lack of potassium that the trees are not growing more. But the main reason right now is it's so blazing hot that it's just hard for any plants to do anything other than survive. And

that's when we summertime is when we see this problem most. But it'll be okay. Just just take care of the trees, get them growing, keep them healthy, and they will close that off and be fine. Thank you so much, Thank you so much for your tips. Six to Yep, you got it all. Right, Brenda, thank you for them. I appreciate that very much. Yeah, the little Butterfly bear joints that we have several calls this year on those, so I guess that's that's popping up a

lot out there. If you live in the north central part of Houston, your hometown feed stores Quality Feed and Garden Supply. Now, Kenn and Chris have been operating Quality Feed for I guess thirty two years now. I mean Quality Feed goes back to nineteen twenty eight. How many businesses do you know that are Houston traditions since nineteen twenty eight. Quality Feed it's well named because they do have quality feeds. In fact, if you have like backyard chickens,

this is your place. They not only carry a wide variety of options for your chickens, they even make their own Grandy's laying mix for example. They're at Quality Feed now. They also get chickens in about every two weeks. So if you thought about this backyard chicken thing, Quality Feed is the place you need to go. I don't care where you live. You can

go online to Quality feed coo dot com. Quality feedco dot com. They are on Luzon Street, which is near the intersection of equipment and alesion right down there, and let's just say north central Houston if you think about it that way. Monday through Friday nine to six, today, nine to four pm, and Tomorrow eleven thirty to four pm. If we recommend a fertilizer, they have it at Quality Feed. If you need a pasticide, herb aside, fungicide, you know, bags of soil and compost, they've got

it all there at Quality Feed on Lozon Street in North central Houston. Quality feedco dot com. Hey, let's take a break. It's time for one. Our phone number seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. The scene somewhere my love stands on. Nobody called in to tell me who's sang? Or who wrote that thing? You do? Who can tell me who's sang that? Beyond the sea you're listening to garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Ricter our phone number seven one three two one two five eight

seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Well, we got a lot of a lot of topics we've been covered today. Keep trying to come back to the fact that even though it's hot outside, now's the time to get ready for fall. If you for example, if I mentioned earlier, but if you want to grow broccoli in your fall garden, now's the time you would start seeds and little cell packs to get going. So you have a transplant to put out come September, maybe even October gives

you plenty of time to get that done. There's just a lot of things. Time to get your lawn dench you're lawn healthy. If you start to see chinch bug damage. If you start to see your lawn dying in areas and you're watering it and it's not perking up, that's probably chinch bugs could be a little take all root rot as well, but jump on it early. Do not delay. Don't wait until the weather cools off it's too light, and take all in chinch bugs both kill grass. Now we have things

that don't kill grass. Gray leaf spot looks horrible. That doesn't kill the grass. The large patch we used to call it brown patch. Large patch makes a big brown circles in the cool season, looks horrible, doesn't kill the grass. Chinch Bugs and take all root rot. Now there you're losing lawn, and so you don't delay. You get on it right away, find out what it is, get on it right away, and take care of it. Even though it's hot outside, Get out there and get that

done, because just the cost of delay is significant. Let's head out to Katie and we're gonna talk to John this morning. Hello, John, see this journ I'm on schedule to be fertilized in my yard in August. Okay, and it's what the capri as hot as they are. I was wondering if I should go ahead and fertilize or wait. You can go ahead and fertilize if you follow the instructions and don't overapply it. Can I ask why you are fertilizing in August just specifically? Is it just got a little bit

lighter start than normal? Okay, all right, so that's why I would be in August. Yeah, I you know, take a look at your lawn, see what it looks like. The reason I ask is we've got the fall fertilization coming up, you know, down not too far from now, So if you're going to do in August, I would go a little bit light on it, don't you know. Normally we put a pound of nitrogen per thousand square feet, so whatever is there a particular fertilizer you'd like

to use. I've got the super curve supertur Okay, okay, well, now that's a that is a nineteen percent, So five pounds of that per thousand square feet is a pound of nitrogen. I might go a little bit lighter than that. And I know it's gonna be hard to put down less than five pounds per thousand because that that's already not a lot. But I might go a little bit lighter than that because you're gonna want to put on

your your winterizers, your fall fertilizers coming up here. You may also want to consider just going with, you know, not a slow release in some time here in August, in a very light application, not much, just a light application, uh, just to kind of keep it going because when the fall comes, that's when we want to get that that product down, uh, you know, for going into wintertime, getting our grass ready to strengthen itself before we go into winter so it comes out better in the spring.

Okay, all right, sounds good. Yeah, if you got the If you got the silver bag around, go ahead and use it. If not, Nitrofus has a red bag that's also pretty good, Yeah, excellent, Okay, super, thank you, all right, thank you. I appreciate that call very much. If you live up in the let's say Lake Conro area or the Montgomery area, your hometown garden center is A and A Plants. Now, if you haven't been to Ana Plants, you gotta get

by there. It's on the east side of Montgomery. And you know, it's probably been at least ten years that I've been going to Ana Plants off and on through the time, and it's it's watching it grow and change and develop and expand it's just been really cool. You know, they got three acres. I mean, it's what kind of plant do you need? Do you want a citrust? Do you want a shade tree? Do you want flowers? You want vegetables? You on, herbs, on or on.

They've got it all. Do you need stuff to kind of, really, I don't know, add a little bling to the landscape. Maybe it's some outdoor furniture. Maybe it's a kind of a gazebo like cover or an archway, or maybe a chiminea from the for the patio. They've got all of that and lots lots more concrete statuary for example. So everyone out in Walden Bentwater Lake Conro De Lago in Montgomery, in conro that whole region. A and A plants on Highway one oh five. That is the place you need

to go. Check them out. They got some really good color right now. So I'm going to Colin earlier. What are some color plants we can plant? Well, A and A plant. Drive up, take a look at it. See what you're talking See what I'm talking about. There. You need some nice hanging baskets. They've got some excellent, beautiful ones.

And that's the way. Maybe you've got a garden party, your friends coming over, you know, in the next day or two, grab some hanging baskets, hang them up, and I mean instantly, the place just looks better. It's just really cool. And A plants. I'm gonna head out now, I think to Spring and we're gonna talk to Garrett. Hello, Garrett. Yes, hey, thank you very much for taking my call. How can we help? All right? So my issue is we just finished the house about a month ago. Um, this is a acre lot.

I currently don't have any grass um and I'm coming up um to a point where I want to but we have mandatory water restrictions, So I don't think it's probably wise to do, you know, just given the amount of water that we have to put on new grass. And I'm contemplating either sotting it with Saint Augustine or hydro sating, and I don't know if you know you've had experience with either or Definitely there's pros and cons of each, but yeah,

definitely do the side. It's just gonna be easier. There's chance of success is just gonna be better. Uh. And you get it down and you you don't need a lot of water on it. When you put on side, you just need a little bit of water because it doesn't have a

root system. I mean, the root system is a half inch long when it comes in the side, and so you just need like a little bit of a quarter inch or so, just a little bit each day, and then you move it to every other day, and by the time you get about three weeks into it, you're only water in a couple times a week. So I would use the side. It's not a quantity thing, but it is frequent. And normally we're weaning our lawn to where we give it

a good soaking once a week and that's it. But in the absence of rain. But for the early on for the side, just remember a little small amounts, not much water the soil. Water the soil before you put down the side too, okay, And that way, when the roots go down, there's already moist soil down there. Garrett, I appreciate your call and fortune. I might have to run, but hopefully get it off to a good star. Okay, thank you very much. People often call me

and say, you know, where can I get this? Or where can I get that? Or we're gonna find that fertilizer you're talking about. Well, the inch every question that I just said is Southwest Fertilizer. Southwest Fertilizer is the place to go. You can find them at Southwest Fertilizer dot com. They're down there on the corner of Bissonette and Renwick in southwest Houston. Do you need a herbicide, in secticide, fertilizer, tools, everything. Bob and his team down there they have got it all. You got a

question, take them a sample, take them a picture. They will solve it and they will point you to a product that works. Also, if you need to do small testing, they have a loner soil probe. You give give them something to you know as a deposit, so you bring it back and they've got those and that wonderful kneeling bench. Should I keep bragging on. They've got that as well too. If you are past forty, you can't live in garden without a kneeling bench. I'll brag on that a

little bit when we come back from break. You are listening to garden Line. Our phone number is seven one three two one two five eight seven four. We've got one hour left today and after that I'm going to be heading over to Obapalooza, which is an organic fair going on over at the United Way on Law Drive. I'll be given a talk at the end of the deal today. They got talks going on right now. I've been going this morning. Lots more to come. If you happen to have a chance to

get out and about today, you might want to check that out. But don't delay. You're missing You're missing some of it, so don't take any more any more time to lay in than you need to. I'll be talking about some cool things regarding how do we help avoid plant problems today KTRH garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to KTRH Guarden Line with skip rictor so please just watching a anything

clubs Well. Good Saturday morning, on a beautiful morning out there. This is a good day to get out, get a little work done in the morning, and maybe do a little bit of shopping in the afternoon. Because there are a lot of great nurseries in our area. I'm telling you, if you know, if you've lived here a long time, maybe you just don't maybe take it for granted, just how many great nurseries you have.

I was talking to somebody the other day about it, somebody that travels all over the state looking at a lot of the big cities and and you know, selling products in different cities and things. And they were just saying, how I won't even name the towns, but they don't have any kind of garden centers like we do in Houston. Well, that is true, they don't. This place is unique. I mean north southeast West Central there is

an outstanding garden center worth traveling from outside the area. And do you know people from Austin drive over here for garden centers? Do you know people from college station. Drive down here for garden centers. I mean people come sometimes even greater links. Talk somebody the other day from Tier that was down here shopping at a garden center in the Houston area. An example of that kind of garden center is Enchanted Forest. Chanted Forest is down there toward a Richmond

Richmond Rosenberg. So if you're at Richmond and you head up toward sugar Land to the right, to the south of fifty nine is Enchanted Forest nursery and enchanted Forest has an incredible supply of things. One of the plants that they have gotten in that is just outstanding it. Now, I would say if I were to pick like five plants that are just amazing, like check every box just about you can check one of them to be Thriallis. Thriallis has

beautiful yellow flowers. Every terminal, every shoot ends at a cluster of yellow flowers. So every time you shear Thryallis, it just gets denser and more floriferous. There's your word for the day. Thriallis is tough. Deer do not like to eat Thriallis. Now, I wouldn't say anything as deerproof. Deer will eat a filing cabinet. And in fact, one time they came into my office and they rummage through the filing cabinet and found my dear proof

list and they ate that. But they don't eat Thryallis. Thriallis is a wonderful plant. And that's what they have there. You know, I add an enchanted for us. They got beautiful trees, So shopping on a day like today, no problem, you're walking through the shade. It's just wonderful. Their old garden shed has been turned into a fairy house. What is a fairy house. Well, if you've never seen a fairy garden, if you think you don't have room for garden, if you've got room for what

a washtub on the ground, you've got room for a fairy garden. And what is that Well, it's a little garden designed as a miniature scene and it's really cool and they got all the bling that you put with it. There. Just one of the cool things that they have out at Enchanted Forest. If you need pollinators plants that you're not going to do better than Enchanted Forest, incredible. If you want butterfly, larval, food sources or things

that attract adult butterflies. They've got it all there. They have an incredible succulent selection too. And by the way, is this ever weather for succulent plants? I mean blazing heat, they store their own water, they survive. You're not going to do better in succulents. And boy that they're one of those hot item plants right now. Again, Enchanted Forest has got that. Go to my inchanted dot com you can find out more. They're on

twenty seven fifty nine FM twenty seven fifty nine. As like I said, your head not a Richmond heading up toward Sugarland way, head out twenty seven fifty nine. You get right to Enchanted Forest and you'll get when you drive up, you just go, oh my gosh, this place is beautiful and it is fun to shop. All right. I got quit hagon on them. Let's see, let's go out to Roe, Sharon and talk to Steve. I can I mean just Steve. I can just brag on these garden

centers all day because every time I go to one, I'm amazed. But anyway, you didn't call to talk about that. How can we help today? Well, I may need to go to Enchanted Garden. There you go, Yeah, both in Chenny gardens and Enchended forest out there are good.

Yeah. I've had a two part question about a crape myrtle. Okay, well, my first question is I have two crape myrtles that are probably fifteen twenty feet apart, and at the base of one of the crape myrtles, I have a a bind that grows around the base and on the ground kind of like a crab grass, but it's but thorns on it, and it's a five leaf I had an old plant that comes off of it or whatever, and I'm trying to figure out what it is so that i can get

rid of it. It's only a round of one crape myrtle, and not around the second. It has five leaves on the vine, yes, sir, like in different spots, like excuse me, along the vine itself. You know, may have like twenty of these five leaves pods. Okay, but it's it's got it's kind of a reddish in color, and it's got like sticker like you know, like almost like a mini rose bush thorn that sounds like a it sounds like a cat claw mimosa in a sensitive bra When

you touch the leaves, do they fold up. Have you ever tried that? Touch? Just touch the leaves and do they fold up when you touch them? I never tried it. I'm wasn't sure what it was. Okay, let's or what Yeah, let's do this, Steve. I want to get you an accurate answer, not just my best guess. I'm gonna put you on hold. Will you talk to um Josh and he'll tell you how to send me a picture and get up real close, take a picture in good sharp focus, and I can tell you what it is, and then

I'll reply with the answer what to do about it? How about that? Okay? It sounds great? And then can I ask you a second question about them too? Sure? Go ahead. So I saw a video where we can take clippings of the crape hurdle and put them in some soil and basically start rerooting them. Okay to transplant. My question is what soil? Would you put that in? Just a regular potting soil or you can you can use the potting soil. I just want to make sure it drains really

well. You want to have it in bright light but not direct sun. So I usually put a plastic cover over a clip cover so it can get some light in there, but no sun shining on it. Crape's not the easiest thing in the world. So you're gonna need some rooting hormone and you can get that at your local garden centers as well. Okay, okay, all right, great, thank you. I appreciate the answer. All right,

I appreciate that call. Well let's see here, uh, you know we I was talking earlier about the nitro file superturf, the nineteen four ten. It is just one of those fertilizers. The chemistry of it, the design of it is a gradual release, and that is what you want. You do not want flushes of growth on your Saint Augustine lawn. You want it to gradually be fed, and you're not gonna you're not going to have

the problem with a quick release with nitrofile superturf. That's a silver bag, by the way, and so by cutting down on that, you're gonna cut down on issues like the chinch bug issues. Some of the brown patch are large patch in the fall issues. Those are really aggravated by extra moisture, excuse me, extra moisture, extra nitrogen at one time. And so by gradually feeding with a silver bag nitrofisle superturf. You can avoid that and you

can get nitrofiss all over the place. All the ace hardwares have it are our home, mom and pop, garden centers, our feed stores. They're all going to carry the nitrofiles. We're gonna take a break right now, Bill and k you will be first up. Our phone number if you'd like to get on the board is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. My Pabby said, son, you're gonna driving me to drinking if

you don't stop driving out hot rod Lincoln. Have you heard the stories the hot rod race was the Fords and the Lencas was set in the face. Set story is true. I'm here to say I was driving out in my legs. All righty, you're listening to garden Line. Our phone number is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four, and we're gonna head right out to pair Land and talk to Bill. Hello, Bill, Hello.

My question is on fertilization. I have you know, it's so hot right now, and I try to keep things, you know, going, I do a lot of hand water. And what my question is is I would think that this kind of hate and stress. Something I've heard. Iron helps this time of year, if you know what I'm saying, if you're just putting it maybe around the plant water, and it is good and am I anywhere close to you know, correct there as far as you know,

Well, that's a that's a that's a good question, Bill. Actually, iron is not especially needed at this time of year, but iron is needed every day of the year. I mean, the plant roots take up iron at the tip of the root, and so they constantly need a supply of iron to be healthful. So if your iron levels are low in the soil, it's always a good time to add iron. If that wouldn't be able

to take YEA, yeah, yeah, if not, I would. If you're looking at your grass and if you pick a grass blade and hold it up to the light and it's green and yellow striped up and down the length of the blade, that's an iron deficiency. That would be your que to add iron. If not, I wouldn't worry about it. Just just do the regular like my granulated slow release that I have for my plant material. Just keep up with that. In other words, the iron just kind of

don't worry about it. I don't don't worry about it if you're not seeing a symptom right now. Now, there are olderalizers that have iron in them. Also, you know the NPK got some micros like iron. But uh yeah, yes, yes, okay, thank you, yes, sir, thank you for the call. I appreciate that. Now we're gonna we're just gonna hang out in Parallen for a while. We're gonna go talk to k now. Hello, okay, good morning. Thank you for taking my call.

Bet. I have a question on this monster ivy that I've had for years and years and it's starting. It's been going down the past few months, and I know it needs to be repotted. It's in a smaller pot and it's huge. And what I want to do is just to cut off the good parts and put them in water, let them root and then repot them. Um, you can I put roots stimulator in the water. Maybe I've got two pots. They're probably through four gallon pots to put put the

stems in. But I put like a tablespoon of no stimulator. Don't You don't need to do that. In fact, I wouldn't do that. Okay, So you got a couple of options. You can cut things off and put them in water and root them. The kinds of roots that form and water are a little different than the roots that they need in soil. You may have noticed this before, but in the soil you got these fat, fleshy roots, white roots, and you get them in water and they kind

of get long and stringy. It's a different kind of root. It's it's still okay, it's just you know, if it were mine, if there was any way if that like you could take a vine down and dip it into a pot and then back out of the pot. So in other words, like the vine goes into the soil and comes back out of the soil. And when I say a pot, it could be a little four inch pot. Oh kind of self rooting, and it would just root. If it's a node on the mind, I think you said monstero was what you

had. If it's a nod, oh, it's a pothos Oh okay, well then that just you just say the word root and root starts popping out of those things. So yeah, wherever you got a node though, where the leaf attaches to the vine, that's a node. And you may have some little bumps there that are the starter roots. Oh, I've got a bunch now. And I've also Pathos is so easy. I've even taken and cutting it up into about twenty little pieces, you know, like one pathos

vine, and just stick them all in the pot. And maybe they don't all root, but so many of them do. Used to have a beautiful plant. Okay, Well, I've had this for years and years, and it's it's in a big a. I live in a senior subdivision and they have this huge jetted bathtub, which I don't use. I thought I could drown in that thing and nobody would even know, you know, so I put I let the thing grow in there, and I mean it just filled that bathtub. It was huge. But it starts. I know. It's

because it's not in a good pot. It's not big enough. It needs nutrition and it needs a new home. Oh my god. So that's what I want to do. Okay. I've heard about people pampering their plants, but I've never heard of anybody getting them a jacuzzi for their plant. So you better be careful. They're gonna start asking you to bring them peanut color. I might be in trouble. Okay, Well, thank you so much.

Skip enjoy your show so much. Thank you appreciate that call. You know, it's blazing hot outside and I was out of my yard the other day looking at my feeders, taking care of my bird feeders and stuff. I bought a new little bird water. I got it at Wilbirds Unlimited. Uh, and it's a It's just a tray that hangs underneath the eaves of our little patio area that we have. I've also got a bird bath, just just got one to those the other day as well. But because it

is so blazing hot, birds have got to have water. I mean, they really do need water. And it doesn't matter what kind of bird it is, they got to have something to drink and mine. During the heat of the day they come around, but not as much, but boy, early and late in the day they are there getting their baths and getting watered. Wah Birds has all that. Wilbirds has anything you need for a bird.

I mean it. Every time I go in there, I get in trouble because I can't go in there and come without coming out with something. I've got. Their squirrelproof feeder is really really first class thing. If you've never heard squirrels cuss out loud. You need to get a wild birds birdproof feeder and hang out because they will give it their best. It makes them mad, which makes me happy. They also have the nesting super Blend,

which is important for summer feeding. Our birds are molting right now. They're shedding feathers, getting the new fresh feather plumage and stuff. They need to be in top condition, so all the way through August, that nesting super Blend is very important. Go to WBU dot com forward slash Houston. Why well, you can find every wild bird store. There's seven of me here. There's one in Katie Kingwood, Cypress, bear Land, bel Air, West Houston went out the spring to one in clear Lake as well. WBU

dot Com Forward slash Houston. Find out what I'm talking about. Maybe you know it's hummingbird season and now I was an important time to be getting your hummingbird feeders out because they are arriving in our area. Wahbirds can get you fixed up on that Wilbirds Unlimited. If you love birds like I do, Wilbirds is exactly what you need. Really love going out there and just love.

I don't know, I'm kind of a I'm a bird junkie. I guess Speaking of hummingbirds, Buchanans Native Plants in the Heights has got an excellent set of information on their website and they sent this out in their newsletter too on hummingbirds. What are the plants that are track hummingbirds? Do you know that there's a lot of plants that you can grow here. Sure you want to put out a hummingbird feeder, but what about the plants in your yard?

Some of the red tubular flowers, the lantanas and the lobelia is lots of plants that are track hummingbirds. One of my favorite is a salvia. There as a Salvia garanitica that just absolutely great. Well, Buchanans has that, but you know, Buchanans has a lot of other stuff. One of the cool things they've gotten in is is some of the insectivorous plants carnivorous plants, plants that eat insects. That would be like a picture plant or a

sundew or a venus flytrap and some others. They have these plants that you grow inside. They have some that are hardy that actually grow outside that are insectivorus and that is cool. Hey, if you got a kiddo. Can you imagine a little venus fly trap plant? And they can get a housefly and turn it loosen there and watch what goes on. Buchanans Plants dot Com. They're at eleventh Street in the Height and they have all kinds of good things. I mean, you know, shade plants, houseplant They got some

really cool houseplants. By the way, I saw that they had, oh the aeroid, the gosh, I can't even say the name of it. A morphophallus, morphophallus microphallus. They have some of those blooming. They're amazing. If you're a collector of plants and you need something unusual that you don't have yet, get you a pickup in a trailer, because Buchanons has enough plants to fill them both up that fit just that. Bill Love Love going

by there. You're listening to Garden Line. Our phone number is seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. I mentioned that birds need water. Our lawns need water two by the way, of course, but most people miss water their lawn. In my new lawn care schedule that I'm about to put up online. It's just almost done. I'm waiting on a little website work being done. But once that's up, it's going to tell you how to water properly,

because people don't water properly. If you want to know when does your lawn need water, I'm going to give you a simple freeway to know, and that is my wall. Excuse me, water my yard dot org. Water my yard one dot org. You can find the app on the Apple App Store and Google Play, or you can just go to that website, water my yard dot org. You put in your dress, you sign up.

It's free, cost nothing. A local weather station will take the data from your community, the sunlight, the humidity, the wind speeds, you know all of that stuff, the temperature, of course, and it'll tell you how much to use. I do water my yard myself. It's free. Last week I heard I need point four eight inches of water in my lawn because that's how much according to weather data, my lawn is used. How can you get easier than water my yard dot org makes it really really simple,

absolutely simple, super easy. Well, we're going to head out to Pasadena now and talk to Mary. Mary. I've got about a minute left can we get it done? I believe we can circod morning, saycho crete myrtle tree cut down supposedly the roots grind year and a half ago. I'm fanned in. We have a terrible problem with great myrtles coming up. Just were around, all right. I can give you that goes out there and tries to shop, but forget it. I know that's no fun. Here's

what you need. Got a pen or pencil, handy I do t r I c l O p y R. T R I c l O p y r. You'll find it and stuff called poison ivy killer, poison ivy killer, poison oak killer. All you need to do is just mix it up strong the strongest rate, and dab it onto the stems of those suckers coming up. Put a little bit of vegetable oil from your kitchen in it. That makes it stick. That makes it stick to the stems, and

it soaks right in and it'll kill them. And if it was a big tree and you got a lot of energy and suckers coming out, you have to do it more than once, but it'll work. And you yeah, okay, can you spell that one more time? Huh? Tr I is in tricycle tr I C l O P y R tril. That's what you made and that'll fix it. And just be careful, don't get it on other things. But when you dab it on like that, there is no simpler, faster, easier way to do it. Hey, thank you so

much. I appreciate that call very much. We're gonna take time for news. The Nicky News Network is next. That's four ends, riding along my automo, be my baby beside me at the I stole a kiss at the turn of mind, my curiosity running, why bruising and playing the radio with no particular place to go. Well, we got a particular place to go today, and that is to the radio to listen to Garden Line. I

was that for a transition, Oh my gosh. Oh seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Speaking of particular places to go, Arbourgate in Tomball, you know it's it's one of those garden centers that people drive from all over the place to get to Houston to go to. And I'm telling you I know what I'm talking about. I've talked to customers out there before they came a great

long distance. That's not an unusual thing for our garden centers here, but for any other place. I mean, for crying out loud, who drives halfway across the state to get to a garden center, Well, welcome to Houston. We got him here. And Arburgate is just that kind of place. You can go online to Arbourgate dot com and find out what I'm talking about. They're out there just west of Tomball on twenty nine twenty just about

a mile and a half west of two forty nine. When you're out there, you're going to see all their plants, You're going to see the beautiful gift shops. You're gonna see all of the yard things that you could be beautiful, really attractive things to put out in the yard just to beautify the place. But I want you to also take time to check out their one two three completely easy system. Arbigate has a three point system, a food, a soil, and a compost. Now, the food is an organic

food. It's a four four three plus temper sent calcium organic food that will feed anything that has roots. I mean, if you are going to put in some vegetables and flowers and trees and shrubs, just the whole nine yards. It is exactly the kind of gradual release with the kinds of nutrients and materials that you need for success with your plants. The next step is the

soil, the organic soil complete. Now this soil has compost, expanded shale, and a very large particle sand all mixed together into it, and that makes for a very quality mix. You make roots happy, You're going to make the plants happy, and the plants are going to make you happy. That's how that works. Third part is the organic compost complete. Two different

kinds of composts blended together. Lots of microbial diversity in this super super good and it's got the macro and the micronutrients that are balanced in it as well. And then it has expanded shale, as did that organic soil complete. Expanded shale keeps our heavy clay soils apart. It keeps them open and you need a lot of it. You can't just put a line a few sprinklings of shale here and there. You need to put a quantity of it out

down. But when you use something like arbergates compost organic compost complete, that is going to provide over time more and more and more of the organic matter and also the shale that will make that soil easy to grow things in. And that's what we're trying to do. You create the spot and then you put the plants in, and then you have success. That's the order. Not plants. Then oh my gosh, they're dyeing. How do I fix

it? First? Soil this one two three, organic food or goa soil or gonna compost and then when you put the plants in, it makes it look like you have a green thumb because you do. You're listening to garden Line and we're going to head out to the phones now and go to North Shore and talk to Janet. Hello, Janet, Hi, good morning, Good morning. My question is I have azalias that should bloom three or four times a year. They're on the west side of my house, but I

have not seen blooms in over six months. So I want to know what type of fertilize or soil should I be using. Yeah, accumulate the blooms. There's lots of good things out there to help your azalias. Certainly they need to soil with a lot of composts in it, A lot of you know, you can use pemas, you can use compost, whatever kind of the organic matter. Make sure the drainage is good. You're you're essentially planning them in a little bit of a raised area, so the excess drains away

a good ascidifying soil. You know, a lot of our good local fertilizer manufact lectures have an acidic version of what they're doing. I don't know if there's a particular brand you normally go with or not, but it's it. You know, each one has its own soil for acid loving plants, and those are going to do really well. You know. For example, uh, you know we were talking about the Microlife product earlier. They have an acid loving plant version. I believe it's in a pink or red bag.

I can't remember which of the colors it is. Anyway, I'll look for it something like that. But let me tell you the reblooming azelias, they aren't quite what we want them to be down here. They will do some reblooming, but it's not like you just have like normally in spring when Azelia's are just beautiful and blooming up a storm that it just keeps doing that. They for us, they don't quite perform that way, so a little bit of hey, it isn't doing so good, is not surprising that they should

come back in the spring and look good again for you. Okay, I'll try that. Thank you, Janet. I appreciate your call very much. Thank you. We're going to head out now to Pasadena and talk to Mary. Hello, Mary, good morning again. Really quickly. I don't think I have an issue, but I want to prevent the little white moths. When we were mowing recently and when I was walking through the front yard, I saw a couple and I just I don't think I have an issue yet.

Maybe I do and don't know it, but I'm just wondering if there's something that I could go on and do to possibly prevent pack. Yeah, yeah, there probably is. So it takes a lot of them to be a real problem, you know. Oh, yes, I agree. There are so many moths out in nature that when someone says, mas, I

don't know that you're talking about sideweb worms, you may be. But if you walk through the yard and it's just like as you walk, they're just flying up and they go a little bit land back down in the grass, that sounds like a sideweb worm. Well, these are very very tiny and they're white, and I do know what I do know the difference. I believe because we did have them one time many years ago. So okay, we didn't have them really really bad, but we were able to prevent it,

and I can't remember what we did. You have a lot of options. You have a lot of options. There is there's a product from Nitrofis called bug Mac bug Out Max, and it will control them. If you wanted to go in an organic direction. Products that contain spinosid, SPI, n O, sad spine no said will control them. BT products will control them, but they don't laugh. Thet doesn't last but a day or two, so you have to do it and then maybe later in the week do

it again, and then there or four days again do it again. But also because these moths are dropping eggs and maybe you treat today, but the eggs don't hatch out until tomorrow, so you know, you got to be

ready. But if you want to be okay, if you want to be real, sure, get a tablespoon of dish soap like pomel it, you know, whatever dish, and especially if it's a lemon scented one actually, but put it in a gallon of water and a watering can and just drench it over an area of the lawn where you think they may be and watch, and that irritates bugs and they come crawling right up out of there onto the grass blades where you can see them. And in this case you're looking

for caterpillars, a little bit of caterpillars. They'll be green, greenish colored because they've been eating grass, and that tells you, okay, they're there. I need to treat right now. So okay, if you want to time in a little bit better, you can use a little soapy water trick. Okay, what about the bug out you said, Max? Is that the granular it's a granular bifenther and high. You put it down, you watered in right, I got it? Okay, thank you so much.

All right, thank you. I appreciate your call. Hey, we're gonna take a break. Terry your first up when we come back, if you'd like to get on the board. Seven one, three, two and two fifty eight seventy four. Well, good morning on a beautiful saturday, and as always a good day for gardening. You're listening to garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter and our number seven one, three, two and

two fifty eight seventy four. Hey, if you are thinking about retiring and you would like to find a nice, beautiful home in a wonderful setting for folks that are interested in maintaining an active lifestyle. You know, we're not talking about going into pasture here, We're talking about continuing to live out the most beautiful best years of your life. Well, that would be a Dell Web community. They know how to build homes, they know how to build

communities, they know how to design lifestyle programs around you. And out in Fulshure, about two miles out of downtown, Fulshure is a Dell Web community. That particular community happens to have a community garden going in that I'm working

with them on. You can go online dellweb dot com, forward slash Houston find out more information, or give him a call at two eight one four or five nine zero six zero nine and enjoy not only beautiful home, beautiful community, but also a wonderful community garden right there for you to enjoy as well. Let's head out to Lagrange and we're gonna talk to Terry well, hello, Terry, how are you today doing? Fancer? And yourself? I hope I'm just as well. Yes, sir, good I got a

little bit of a head scratcher here. We've got a bunch of old post oak trees and they get like a white powder on the bark, okay, and it kills them and then it turns black. I mean we have it here in the yard, didn't I also have some out in the woods that has killed a bunch of them also, Yes, sir, I just wondered what it is and the way is there any way to provent it or anything we can do about it. I tried to all the extension agent but they're

never around, so okay. Well, so you your post oak trees. It sounds from the description like you're talking about hypoxylon canker, and that's a disease terry that's out there already in oak trees all over the place. But when the tree gets weak, it's like their defense mechanism that holds back the hypoxylon is compromised and the hypoxilum moves in and it kills the tree. So we blame the hypoxilon for killing the tree, but really it was his tree

stress to kill the tree. And so when it's out in a pasture, there's just not much that you can do because you know, I mean, you can't run out there and water giant trees all over a pasture. But if you, if you go into drought like you guys are having and the temperatures you're having, you just have to occasionally give them a good soaking. If not, then it's outside of your control. And up all the way through the postal belt, you know, you go up from you up toward

College Station, it's the same kind of thing. They're postal trees. They're just dying a lot, and other than it being in the yard where you can do something, it's just part of that what happens in nature. And unfortunately we lose some good trees. But yes, sir, I understand, well the ones we have that I can get water two will start soaking them down a little bit. And uh so, so here's here's what you want to do, Terry though. You want to water the entire area beneath the

branch spread of the tree. So just imagine this big circle all around the tree that goes out as wide as the branches do. And you want to apply it at least an inch of water is your is your soil sandy out there or clay or what it's sandy? And then the goods to clay. But okay, it's sandy right on top. Yeah, well, an inch of water will do it. But you gotta get it all down on the

soil soap deep. But you only need to do that about once ever week or two and maybe even two weeks if you can give a good soaking. When you do, you're not trying to supply the tree what it needs every day. You're just trying to get it through this emergency with a couple of rescue waterings. I see, Okay, good deal. Well, I sure do appreciate it. Yeah, I'm sure the trees appreciate it too. Well.

Yeah, and just know that, you know, even though a tree may look okay right now, it could be at that advanced stage of stress where even if you water, you may not pull it out. But but you're doing at least you're doing what you can, all right, sir? Right, all right, Well, so thank you so very much, you bet, thank you for the call. I appreciate that very much. Hey, if you're planning on doing any transplanting, and I hope you are.

This is a good time still. We can still be planning beautiful salvias. We can be pulling perennial herbs, you know, false coming big planning season there. Go ahead and get you some hash to grow six twelve six six twelve six. That's a liquid. It comes in court, you mix it in water, and then you drench your plants with It's I mean, there's different ways to use it. You can use a fuller feed too, but hast grow six twelve six has that high phosphorus content which is important for roots.

It also has biological activity from microbes, and it's got humic acid in it, and it's got seaweed extracts in it. So that combo product has all the things that that plant root system needs to thrive to get going. Take up nutrients, stimulate fruiting, stimulate blooming. Whatever kind of plants you have, whether it's a vegetable garden or flower beds or even just planting.

You know, some rosebushes in when you water them in with that, follow five days later with another good soaking with it, and then five days after another good soaking, and if it's seven days that's fine. I mean the idea is at planting and twice more about a week apart, you want to give a good soaking with Hastra grow, that plant will be on its way to success. And that's the important thing. You know. You spend money,

you spend time, You have your hopes up putting plants in. You want them to not just survive, but to thrive and to give you the fruit, the produce, the vegetables, the flowers, whatever you planted it for. That's why we use the Haspergrow six twelve six and it's just a good combination lots of good stuff going on in one product. Well, you've been listening to garden Line all day today and we are about to wind up

a show getting towards the end of it. We'll be back tomorrow. By the way, from six am to ten am every Saturday, every Sunday, six am to ten am. Tell your friends and your neighbors about garden Line. Let them know. You can listen to pass shows by podcast. If you've got an iHeartRadio podcast app or whatever you use to listen to your podcasts, you can find garden Line on there. There's actually a couple of garden

lines in the USA. One of them as a lady somewhere else. It does a show call that you want the one here in Houston, and you can listen to pass shows to hear things we've talked about on that I would ask even if you've got family and friends that live in other areas, I have people that call from out of state that just love listening to plant information, and we try to give the best most entertaining show we can here for you on it tell them about Garden Line as well. In the meantime,

it's getting close to the end of our time. You be gonna head out, I hope today and go visit some of our garden centers and get some of the plants that we've been talking about, get some things go and get ready for fall. Get your soil purchased products, soil products purchased and ready to go as well. No matter where you drive, you're gonna drive past an A's Hardware and when you go into ace, you're gonna find our fertilizers.

You're going to find the soils we talk about. You're going to find one of the best selections on insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, both synthetic and organic that you're gonna find around town that thirty nine hardware stores. Just go to ACE Hardware dot com and find one near you. By the way, it's a good day for barbecue and good weekend for getting out and doing some

barbecue in ACE Hardwork and fix you up on that too. I mean they'll trick you out all the way up to the top of the line stuff you know, like Trager and Big Green egg and and on. Im. I'm personally a webber guy, but when I grow up, I want to have a Big Green Eggs. That's where I want to go with that. But they've got all of that. And then you want to beautify your outdoor area, ACE will fix you up on that too. Just kind of cool having

places so everywhere so nearby that you can get ready to go. You want to make sure and get those products purchased because fall is coming and we want to have a beautiful lawn and a beautiful landscape. If you've got some plants that aren't looking so good, go ahead and cut them back. Now is a good time to cut plants back, fertilize them, watered in real good and get them growing. So our rose show the next big rose show in

our land escapes. I'm not talking about the official bringing your flowers rose show in your landscape's gonna be in the fall. Late August is when I cut my roses back by about a third. I fertilize them. These are shrub roses. Fertilize them, watered in really well, get vigorous new growth. Every time a rose produces a new shoot, you can have a bloom on the end of that shoot. They bloom on the terminals. Same thing with

your salvias. Do you have salvia greggy I cherry sage called sometimes it's called greg sage. It's a subshrub, and it always has blooms on it, but it eventually just becomes kind of a witty nuts so pretty shrub. Cut it back, head it back in August and get it fresh, new growth coming out again. It will look great in the spring. I cut mine back three times a year at the end of winter. I cut it back in May for summer, and then I cut it back in August again.

Do you have cast iron plants that are looking horrible right now just the ravages of summer. End of August is a good time to cut all that growth back to the ground, and it comes back fresh with a good fresh watering, and it'll look beautiful again. I'll even prune my little rioty back sometimes at the end of summer because spider mites and leaf spots just get it looking ragged. Cut it back to the ground, give it some water, give it a little fertilizer, and it just comes back looking better. Hey,

thanks for listening to Guardline. We'll be back at six am tomorrow. I hope you'll be listening