Rooted In Nature

better for the patio. It's time for me to get out in the garden and get some things done. I've a gardener's kind of taken the vegetable garden's taken a back seat to a lot of other things, and I know you can relate to that. We get busy with one thing or another, and all of a sudden we realize, boy, we've let that go. I need to catch up. Fortunately, I've got plenty of multch out there, so I'm not

dealing with weeds. But it's just a reminder that all the cool season weeds germinate once the temperatures start to drop in the soil, which, of course, when temperatures begin to drop in the air around us, we start to slowly drop that soil temperature and the weed seeds start to germinate. According to whatever species they are, some germinate and very barely cool soil at all. It has to go down a little bit more for them to germinate.

In the lawn. We've been talking all fall about applying things to stop the weed seeds from germinating, and that would be barricade. Barricade, you know, as a night frost product that we talked about all the time. And you know there's also a product from Nelson. Nelson's has They have a number of really great products, but turf Star.

Turf Star is an excellent one that they do. And we've been talking about putting things like that out and the importance of making sure that we get those and get them watered in to get ahead of the weeds. Just a reminder, I'm not going to go into a lot of detail on it now, but weed seeds continue to germinate. What I said, turf Star I met, I met carbo loads specifically, turf Star is a group of different fertilizers by Nelson. But anyway, the fact is that

all the weeds do begin to germinate earlier. They can germinate any time. So like if you had a garden bed that was completely mulched and you pulled the mulch back, all of a sudden, you'd see weed seeds start to germinate and sprout and come on up because they are exposed to light, they're exposed to the ability to establish themselves, and so always keep that mulch on. I have a

bed that I pulled the mulch back on. I was going to get out and plan something, and then I didn't, And now I'm looking at it and it's all the little tiny weed seeds starting to look like a chia pet out there. Because the seeds are there anyway. Mults most much always keep the mulch on. It's important. It

does so many good things for our gardens. You know, there are a couple of products and they're not like commercial, well they can be commercial, but there's a couple of things items that we can put in our gardens that are just miracle workers. And one of them is compost. When you add organic matter to the soil, it does all kinds of things. I'll talk about that a little bit later. I'll come come back to that one. But maltz is the other one. You know, malts is there

are so many types of mulch out there. You can get molts that are processed by our great companies here in the Greater Houston area that do that, and those processed malts. Multches come in many forms, many types, you know, from pine barks to shredded hardwoods to on and on down the line. But they're just organic materials from nature that are being put on top of the soil to

stop weeds from germinating. To moderate soil temperature so that if it's too hot or too cold, the root system is sort of it sort of has an insulating blanket to protect it, to prevent crusting of the soil. When it rains on specially silty types of soil, you get a crust that forms when that surface dries, and it's hard for seeds to push through. They also stop erosion. You get too much rain, it just washes, you know, little mini gullies all over your garden beds, and that's

not good either. So that's one product that does all that. And it's the same thing you see in nature. Nature mulches. It drops in the forest, they drop tree leaves on the ground on the surface, and here we are nature's molt in meadows. You know, as grass blades dye and fall to the surface or lay over onto the surface, you get a protective surface covering. Isn't that neat? Nature does it and we can too. But that's molting. That's

very important. Keep your soil moltz. If you didn't maltz and you got weed seeds coming up just when they're real small, I can just use a little rake kind of tool, whether it's a handheld tool or a long stand up rake and just scratch the surface around and it'll destroy those seedlings they had. Little tiny roots are not able to withstand just a little bit of soil disturbance like that. That works fine, Or just throw mult

on top of them. You know, if a weed seed is an inch or so high and you throw some good multch on it, it smothers it from light. Smother not from air, but from light. It cannot get light and it'll dime. So that'll save you from having to mulch.

One other tip on maulting, by the way, you know, it would be a good idea occasionally if I tell you what our phone number is, since this is a call in show, well, I may be suffering from too much turkey here myself, but the phone number is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two and two five eight seven foere if you like to call with a question. Let's see where I lost my train of thought there when I took

off on that. Anyway, uh oh, a tip for mulching. Now, not many people take the physical newspaper compared to what used to be. Right, It used to be everybody got the paper thrown in the front yard. Now I've kind of gotten away from that. But if you have access to newspapers or any kind of a paper like that craft paper in a rolls oh rolls of paper or something that is an awesome underlayment for the mulch that

you put down. So, for example, uh, for a long time I have in garden beds when either after I planted or before laid down four to six sheets a newspaper and wet it. Have a garden hose there with a little spray hand spray nozzle on the end and wet it with that and then let it let it. That helps hold it down, and then put the mulch

on top of it. Now I'm gonna take a little break here, but when I come back, I want to finish with telling you that really easy way to get an extended use out of your mulch in just a moment. In the meantime, if you'd like to give us a call seven one three, two one two five eight seven.

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spray it. That holds it in place. If not, the slightest breeze picks the newspaper up and it flies across to your neighbor's yard. So just spray it with just barely wet it with the spray. Lay some more newspaper. I overlapped the edges about two inches on all sides, and then pretty quick after that just go ahead and put some mulch on top of it, and that mult

if you dried grass clippings from your yard. If you haven't used a post emergent weed control product in the yard, it could be you know, you may be access to spent hay or some other kind of a mault. I usually use shredded leaves from the neighborhood in my vegetable garden because you know, wood chunks and things of your traditional landscape mulches. Getting that on your soil and then you're trying to plant tiny seeds, it's a little more

difficult to deal with. But anyway, whatever you use for a maltz, throw it on top of the newspaper and it doesn't take much. Four to six sheets of newspaper is blocking a lot of the light out, almost all the light out, and then throw a little mulch on top of it and it'll stay like that and it will last for a long time, like several months, two or three months at least that it'll give you in weed protection just because that newspaper will decompose. It's organic.

Any kind of paper you know it decomposes away. Works really good for this. And I'm telling you this because the ways you can use it are pretty cool. For example, you can you can go in before your plant and you know you've wrote a till the soil. Now weed seeds are getting light that are up near the surface. You put the newspaper over it. And then when you want to put transplants in, if the newspaper is wet,

just spread it and wet it. You can just take your trowel, stick it down through the newspaper into the soil, pull back on it to create like a V shape opening, put your transplant in, press the soil in around it, and now you right up to that plant is it's still mulched with newspaper. If I'm going to plant like a row of seeds, I say I'm going to do some rows of radishes or lettuce or something across the bed.

When I lay the newspaper, I'll just leave a little gap, the one inch gap between the sheets of paper, and that's where my row of seeds goes. And I'm telling you this is really easy. Then you throw something attractive on top, and just remember that newspaper is going to go away. You're not gonna have to look at it and tie. It's just going to ride away. So that works well. The other thing you can do with it

is use it to recapture lost ground. So let's say you had a garden bed and I've got some pictures when I did this several times that I've done it, and the bed just looks like a chip out of weeds. There is just solid green. The weeds are coming up everywhere, but they're still small. And if they're small enough to where when you take your spray wand and water it,

they kind of lay over a little bit. Just do that and then lay the newspaper on top of them and wet the newspaper, put the mulch on it, and all those weeds that were little, tender growing weeds now become decomposing, releasing nutrients back to your soil plant food, and I guess molt in and of themselves as they die. They're dead organic matter on the surface. And I have

recaptured lost ground like that. I had a bed one time that got so far away from me that it had some kind of almost wiry stemmed weeds that were sticking up about six inches high of course, you can't lay newspaper on that, so we just broke them over, you know, just grab the weed and bend it and break it down flat to the surface, lay the newspaper on it, covered up, and we never weeded that bed.

And it would have taken a couple hours to weed that bed, but we just wet it, put the newspaper on top, and none put You got to put mult on top of the newspaper and it really works. So if you know about anybody that takes the paper, if you have some of those advertising things that you know, come that newspaper based advertisements come in the mail, whatever you do, it is a tip that works pretty well

for you. Now, speaking of tips that work pretty well for you, asmite is a product that provides those micro nutrients the things that we need in small amounts and without going nerdy into plant soil, nutrition, science, chemical all that stuff, there are three kinds of basic groups of nutrients that we have in our soil for our plants. One are the macro nutrients that would be nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, that's the three numbers on fertilizer bags. That's the three

nutrients that plants need the most. Of Then there's secondary nutrients that would be calcium, things like sulfur and magnesium. There's secondary nutrients. We need a lot of them, but not as much as the big three. And then there's trace minerals, and we need a lot of trace minerals. You know, there's over a dozen different trace minerals that we put down for our plants, say over a dozen depending on the plant and the plant grows, stage and

stuff as to what it needs. Those are the trace minerals. And that's what azemite is for, is to put on trace minerals. It's a mind product. You can go to azamite Texas dot com and find out more about it, or you can just go to the store where you shop. Feed stores, garden centers, ace hardware stores, Southwest Fertilizer and Southwest US all these places carry asmite. It can be done anytime of year. Again, it's not associated with the

growth season. It's restocking the soil bank account or building up the soil bank account of nutrients. And I like that analogy of a bank account because it really describes, well, what's going on. We're creating a bank account of nutrients. So when that plant, whether that plan is your lawn, or that planet is a broccoli plant in your garden. When it needs a little bit of a trace mineral, it just goes to the bank account and makes its

withdrawal because it's there. I like our bank accounts. If I don't stock them first, there's not gon't be no money there when I need it later. So that's that's what we're talking about with asamite works pretty well here our phone number seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. If you got some gardening questions you would like to ask, well, give me a call. We'll

visit about whatever you're interested in. For those of you up in the Tombol area, you have D and D Feed just three miles west of Highway to forty nine on FM twenty nine twenty. So if you're in Tombo and you say you know what I need to make a BUCkies run, you're going to head across the country to it, Well, you will go right past D and D Feed. The Dover family opened that up in nineteen eighty nine. They have continued to grow the place expand

the place. You're gonna find plants there, You're gonna find the fertilizers I talk about from nitro foss from Microlife, from Nelson Turf Star line, other Nelson fertilizers, from Medina products. You're gonna find soils from Airloom soils and other soils, and mulches and Landscaper's Pride products are there as well. It is just a great place to go visit. And you're going to also find super high quality dog foods, you know, high end lines like Origin, Diamond, Victor Starpro.

They carry all that stuff as well as of course your livestock feeds and feed for their pets. And if you got something you need to control from those rats that are loving to come out in the winter and you know, crawl around looking for a place to live in our place. Well, they have pests and rodent supplies as well, d and de feed. Three miles that's the tumble On Highway to forty nine. Well, let's take a trip down to the galleria and we're going to talk

to Harry. Good morning, Harry, welcome to Guardenline.

what else is the chives? And all pretty much all the other herbs For the most part. We're talking about perennials if you are coal tender, but not many, and those are best planted in the fall. And we'll when I say in the fall, I mean anywhere from fall all the way through the winter season. But the sooner you get implanted, the better established they'll be when summer heat comes next year. And so you can plant herbs anytime of the year. If you've got herbs, you can

leave them out. If you have herbs and you want to continue harvesting them through the cool season, you know, let's say you're going to get to I don't know, January and you want to go out and pick some oregano or something like that, well, you can always bring them in. Where you live has a good hard freeze. They can take moderate freezes, okay, but if you want to, you know, keep them lush, then if they're in a container,

just put them into a protected spot. When we're going to truly get way down, you know, below freezing for sure, to maintain freshness and healthy and harvestable growth. But as far as I'm surviving, they're very tough. Now. One last point to make about this, and this holds true not just for herbs but for all plants, is when you have a plant and a container, it's more susceptible to

the cold because of the root system. If you were to take a plant that's say that is quite hardy for the area where you live, and you move it from the soil and instead you plant water, you have one in the soil and one in a container. On the patio, well, the one in the soil. The soil temperature is not going to drop much below about fifty degrees. I mean it may be up near the surface you'll

get colder a little bit. But even when it gets cold cold, the soil is an is a source of some residual warmth and as a result, those roots are protected. Now you put that in a container and all around the container, on all sides, in the top. Now, cold air is making that container get cold, and that container can freeze free solid on a good hard freeze night. And if you have one full of moisture and you can see that in the morning you reach in there, it's like a rock. So those would need to be

protected a little bit more. But if it's in a container. I'll talk a little bit later this morning about protecting container plants from cold, so stay tuned for that. But it as far as herbs are concerned, boy, now is a great time. And herbs are so easy to grow. You know that, it's just you plant them and it's almost a plant and forget. I mean, yeah, it's good

to fertilize them. Yes, of course, you gotta water them in the summer when it's hot, but they they just are good, tough plants, and they don't have to go in an herb garden. If you want to make a beautiful, you know, one of these symmetrical herb gardens like you see, you know in fancy estates and things, you can do that. That's good, go for it. But if you just want to use herbs, why not use a regino as a groundcover or time is a groundcover underneath other plants, as

long as they can get sunlight. They need a little bit of sunlight of course.

don't shame callers on garden line. We know you know we don't. I don't know fuss at you if you quote do something wrong, that's it's your garden. Hey, you call me, I help you. I used to say this all the time. I should say it more. But uh, there are no stupid questions, only stupid answers.

that's okay. We'll go with those questions to whatever you're interested. I want everybody to be a gardener. I want everybody to have success, and I want everybody to have fun. And the way I put it, is I'm here to make your garden more beautiful, more bountiful, and more fun. That's what I want to do. So let's let's go for that, all right. In the meantime, Microlife has a number of products and you hear me talk about them from time to time. I use the bio Matrix a

lot for my indoor plants. That's an orange label, an orange label. It is a seven to one to three fertilizers nitrogen, one percent phosphors, three percent potassium, and it's a good that's a good balance for pushing foliage growth and good health of the plant in general. And so I use it on houseplants a lot. But it's not an indoor plant fertilizer. It's a plant fertilizer. So if you're want to go outside and water something with it,

that's good. It works for that. A lot of folks love to use fisher mulsion and seaweed blends, and Microlife has their Ocean Harvest, which is a four to two three fish based fertilizer, and then the Microlife Super Seaweed, which contains a lot you know, seaweed has a lot of plant growth hormone type ingredients in it. As well

as others for the plant. And that combo of super seaweed and ocean harvest is something that organic gardeners have used for years as a combo way of instead of using like a soluble one of those dissolving water blue or green, you know kind of product things. Well, organic garners have always done the super seaweed, the ocean harvest or the equivalents and seaweed and fish and motion fertilizers.

They also have the liquid AF micro Girl. Liquid AF is an excellent product to use for any kinds of plants, including our indoor plants. You know indoor plants too. They need microbial content and the soil to do well unless you're just gonna provide every single thing they possibly could want through your fertilizing, which is difficult to do. So I would have these on the shelf. You can buy them in a gallon, earn a quart and just mix them up. And that's what I do when it's time

for me to fertilize. I've got these products, buy liquid, and I can do however I wish with them, and I'm starting off something new. A lot of times I'll put in the Microlife liquid humates plus and water with that, especially in larger containers outdoors. I find that to be

very helpful. Anyway, all these products are from Microlife. You can go to Microlife Fertilizer dot com and learn more about their products, or you can just go to pretty much anywhere shop for gardening and you're going to find micro Life products here throughout and beyond our Greater Houston area. We were talking this morning about using newspaper for malts or other papers for maltz products and the importance of that, and I mentioned that I would be talking about protecting

plants that are containers from frosts and freeze damage. I'm sorry,

my brain is trying to do two things at once here. Anyway, if you have a bunch of container plants and a hard freeze is coming, if those plants are at all cold, tender, or again, because the root system will get way colder than it will in the soil, you can take your containers and you can group them together and you put them in a protected location, so like if you have a south side of the high house or someplace where the cold north wind isn't just going to blast them,

actually just grouping them together in a interior corner of the home. I don't mean inside the home, I mean not a corner pointing out, but a corner pointing in where you can put them all together, group them close together, and then throw any kind of a covering over them to kind of block the wind. I've known people to throw a bunch of leaves over the whole thing and

just sort of create that little area. Whatever you do that grouping too tightly together and throwing something over them in that protected location to further protect them will help get them through even some pretty significant cold weather that we occasionally have in our listening area here. But that little tip makes it easy. Now as far as how

do you get them there. You know you may have large containers, and goodness sakes, don't bend over and pick those up unless you want to put your chiropractor's kids through college. Just get a dolly or a hand truck,

whichever term you use for it. Slide the lip of it underneath the container, put a strap from one side of the dolly around the container, attach it to the other side that keeps a container from falling off the dolly, and just with one hand and almost no effort, you can tilt it back and roll it wherever you want. And I moved large I mean, you know, half whiskey barrel sized containers that way. You just have to make sure you strap it to the dolly, and it works

really well. I've got a dolly just a little rope that I use on it, and it just sits there. And when I need to move a container, I just use that rope and tie it on there or any kind of strap. You can move a lot of big containers that way. Maybe you have a citrus growing in a really large container and or you would like to Yes, you can do that. And I don't care if it is a lime or a lemon, you know, something's a

little more cold tender. You can move it right into the garage that way and get it through the worst of the cold and then move it back out, you know, out in front of my garage on the driveway off to the side, I have some container. I got a beautiful hibiscus that I love. I don't have a greenhouse space for it, and so it just goes into the garage on the coldest nights, and so it may have spent a few days in there and then come back out again, just a little tip for you on that.

Let's see here we Oh, I did want to I didn't want to mention or talk about something else that I think is important. I mentioned earlier that I had been in my garden and doing, you know, doing I need to do a little bit of weeding where some weeds had just started to come back up. Uh. My walkways are leaves in the garden. Uh. And so if you have just if your garden is just like a

single bed or something, well this doesn't work. But if you have a traditional garden area also where it's like a bed or walkway, a bed or walkway, I will put in the walkways all the leaves that I get from my property and from a neighbor's properties. You know, they're so nice they put those leaves out for you at the curb because they know you're a gardener. And I'm telling you, one gardener can take care of several streets of a neighborhood's full of leaves over the course

of a season. If you have a shredder to shred them up, that's fine. I just I layman down in the garden floor and then just run over the lawnmower that chops them up. I also have on the little string trim or grinder grinders that works pretty good. Medium good. But put them in the walkways and pile them deep in there. I mean, you know, I may go pile them a foot deep and just walk on them, and and and as they get wet and walked on, they

compress down and they decompose. And after several months of warmer weather, you can pull the dry surface leaves that still look like they did when you put them down. Rake those back, and underneath you're gonna have a lot of what we call leaf mold. It's a it's a black chocolate or not black chocolate, brown crumbly leaf material. Let's say it's halfway to compost. Okay, it's decomposing, it's

falling apart, but it's not truly completely composted. But you have that, and that can be used whenever you're redoing your soil. Maybe you're going to rework the soil, add some organic matter to it. I will get that and harvest it, and I'll run it through a little screen and put it in to add to my putting mixes if they need something like that in them. So when I say a screen. I'm talking about a half inch hardware cloth that I have a two by four frame

that sits on top of the wheelbarrow. It's the size that would be the inside of the wheelbarrow size, and I just throw the leaves in it, rake them around and all that small stuff falls through, and then anything larger you just throw back in the walkway or do whatever you want to do. Use it as a mault. It also makes a very good mault as well. So just another little tip full of tips today on gardening.

If you'd like to give us a call our phone number seven to one three two one two kt r H seven one three two one two k t r H. We're going to go to a little break here and want to come back. I'm going to continue with some tips for the garden, some ideas that will help you have more success with your garden and hopefully more fun in the process. All right, folks, let me see here. Yep, it is time for me to quit talking this morning.

Oh one last thought before before we go, uh, we've got I'll talk about some of our garden centers and things going on right now. But I'm telling you this is a great time to be making purchases for both gifts for the garden and also to take advantage of some really good sales that are going on out there on certain kinds of plant, especially trees and shrubs, and things ten to be a good deal at this time of the year. So talk to you in just a minute.

All right, welcome back to Garden Line. We are going to continue with some tips and ideas for this gardening season. I do want to remind you that we do have some great garden centers that are having a lot of real cool stuff going on. You need to get out there. I'm gonna talk about a few of them as we go through the show this morning, but just kind of

putting that bug in your ear. I know, it is the holiday shopping season, and if you got a gardener on your list, I mean, anyone with any interesting gardening there are a lot of cool tools and you know, for example, there are things that I wouldn't buy myself because I just I'm just not interested in doing that, but there are other people that would. And what does that even mean. Well, I mean there's all kinds of

different things. Regarding some people, they you know, they'll spend a million dollars on a nice little lamp that sits on a desk. I shouldn't say a million. That is all designed for the right wavelengths for plants. To put a little plant under, you know, as a gift item. Well, that's cool stuff. I've got my own places where I have my light arrangements set up where I take care of my plants and things in But for some people that is as far as they want to get into gardening.

It's taking care of a really nice houseplant with a very attractive light feature on that plant. See what I'm saying, little self contained. One of my daughters has a self contained hydroponic in it and it's a little thing that sits on the counter. It has a nutrient water in it that recirculates, and then it has a little top on it that has lights that provide those plants side. So you can grow your herbs in a kitchen on a counter where there's not near enough light for herbs.

You can do that. Now, I don't garden in that way. I've got herbs outside. I put a cover over them and things. That's what I mean when I say I may not be interested in it, but people are. And I tend to not always have the most esthetic arrangement of things as some of these real nice products will provide you. So just be thinking about that. Any gardener in your list will be happy to get a quality tool. I mean a tool that makes their work easier and

is effective. You know, a pair of hand pruners that will last forever, a quality brand, and there's some good quality brands out there that comes in a little leather sheet that goes on your belt. For some gardeners that is a home run, yet an excellent one to do. Almost anybody will appreciate gift certificates to places where they like to shop. You know, if you're if you're a gardener and you like to go get things, that's a nice thing. And then I keep telling you about plants.

Plants are a great way to provide a super super gift for things. Now for example, you know Ace hardware stores. I talk about them a lot, but it's just a great place to shop for all kinds of things guardening. They have gifts, they have stocking stuffers. If you got a guy or a gal either way that loves to barbecue, they have grills that would boy put a big bread bow on that and you got something quality tools for any kind of do it yourselfing from indoors to outdoors.

They have Legos. My granddaughter is playing with legos. She's at our house right now and she's playing with legos. So when I walked through the living room this morning on my way out, stepping on legos with the bare feet as you're going across the floor, that's an experience. But anyway, you can get those kind of legos at your Ace Hardware store. They have also they got a toy called They're called Brooder Toys, but they're one sixteenth

scale realistic detail hailed toy vehicles. These are really cool. I've been in Ace Hardware store has had a lot of the old retro toys that you probably played with growing up, and they still are available at an Ace hardward. See what I'm talking about. Their Black Friday sales are good through Tuesday December second, say that again. Black Friday sales good through Tuesday, December second. You can go to Acehardware dot com and find the Ace Hardware store near you.

They have a store locator stores and places like the League City store out by Hobby. The Gateway Store is an excellent one over in Galena Park. There's a good Ace Hardware store there. Kigole Lumber is another Ace hardware story. See what I mean. Uh, there's a newly opened one down in the Bay Cliff Store just south of Seabrook and their remodeled Uvaldi location is another great one. I don't mean u LD Texas, I mean Cee Valdy East Hardware in Houston area. All right, just some other ideas

for great places for gifts. If you love garden centers, and you know I keep talking about how great our garden centers are Narth, North, South, East and West. Well, Buchanan's Native Plants is in the Heights and that is an outstanding place. Now I know you can go in there right now. You can get you some awesome Christmas trees. A lot of people do their Christmas tree shopping after Thanksgiving. Newsflash, it's after Thanksgiving. Go get you a Christmas tree from Buchanans. There,

Buchanans Plants, they always have cool stuff going on. There is actually and this is way ahead of time. I'm just going to tell you about it. There's a holiday centerpiece workshop. Now this is not just a little you know, ten minute. Oh that was interesting This is like a

workshop taught by Ponderosa Blooms. Ticket sure, eighty five dollars, but you are going to get an outstanding training of how to do stunning holiday centerpieces, lots of techniques for incorporating greenery and natural elements, different types of floor styles. At the end of the workshop, you will leave with your own handcrafted piece ready to brighten your home during this winter season. That is December twenty second, So Sunday, December twenty second, from twelve to one. I'll tell you

about it when we get to that day too. At Buchanans Plants and the Heights, that is going to be a really cool event, and they always have cool events there, So Buchanans Plants eleven Street in the Heights, go to

their website Buchanansplants dot com. And then as you know, as family and friends come in, always remember a great garden center like Buchanans is a great place to get out, you know, stretch your legs, get outside, get a little fresh air, and let them see something really cool that we have here in the Houston area that I'm telling you you're not going to find the kinds of garden centers and the number of garden centers that we have here in Houston and other locations. That's just the fact

I've been around. I do garden center tourism. When I go to other cities, always want to go see, show me the best garden center. She got, See how those are? But I like that, Oh gosh, what were we? What was that tiring?

because you just create an all weather pathway. When I was in Conroe in Montgomery County as a horticulturist at the extension office there many many years ago, we created a garden and did an all weather pathway and we put I'm not exaggerating this, three hundred bags of leaves in a thirty five by thirty five garden over the course of a season. Now, every walkway we would put like a foot of leaves and walk on them and

they would they shrink down. Any of you who made composts know that you can have a pile of leaves as high as your shoulders, and when you get through, you got about two inches of compost at the bottom of the deal right, Actually a little more than that, but that's how that works. So we'd fill up the walkways between the beds and walk on them, and as they sunk down, we put more leaves on it and

walk on until they sunk down. And when we got through we would have because these are real high beds, we'd have about ten inches of just beautiful dark chocolate brown leaf moulls slash compost that when we work rework the beds, we just rake the leaves off the top of the walkway which aren't decomposed, took that, put it

in the beds, worked it into the soil. I would put it in wheelbarrows too, because then maybe you got a bed out front by the where the I don't know your mailbox is or something out front, and you would just take the compost there to rework the soil. So I was using my walkways in the garden to create all kinds of good soil materials for all over the place. That that's a good tip, I'm telling you, that really really works. And it's handy, So think that way.

Take advantage of things. You know, nature, you how to recycle things long before before we showed up. Uh, think advantage of those good things. Yeah, a good gardener can take care of a neighborhood full of leaves, and we need to take advantage of that. If you have pine trees, don't be afraid of using pine straw. The pine needles they break down faster if you chop them up a little bit, but you can just use them as a

mulch and they make a really good monk. I have put them a little bit thicker to block the light. That sure works. All right, more tips when we come back. Here's the number if you want to call in seven one three two one two kt r H.

am to ten am to answer your gardening questions. If you missed the show or want to go back and hear previous shows, you can do that by going to the website, OK website and finding garden Line and listening to the past shows there. If I think one of the best ways to listen to garden Line is to use your phone and get the iHeart Media app. It's a red Heart if you're looking for it on whatever store you use for your Android or your Apple phone

and iHeartMedia app. You can follow garden Line on there, and that way you would also have access to pass shows and you could listen live. That is one of the interesting things that I think technology has a lot of cool stuff. But I listened to I listened to

different things throughout the day live on my phone. And so let's say you're out in the garden and you're working, and if you just take your phone with you, turn the speaker on and get out there and do your stuff, listen to guard Line and if you run across something you can take a picture of send it to me and say, hey, what is this? And I can't I can't do text and emails and stuff during the show, but you can call in, send the text to or excuse me, send an email with a photo to us,

and then call me and we'll talk about it. If you call the producer here at the number I keep giving out throughout the show, he will provide you with an email that you can send the picture in whip and then follow up with a call. That way you get on the spot. It's kind of like having me hanging out there. I'm on the porch while you're working in the garden. What do you think about that? What about that setup? I'm on the porch and you're out working in the garden and you go, hey, Scot, what

is this? What do I do here? What's wrong? Well, there's your chance right there by listening to Guardline on your iHeartMedia app. All right. Interestingly enough, I've talked about a number of different things this morning. One thing I want to remind you of is that if you go to my website, there's a lot of stuff on there that will help help you in your gardening efforts. They it just makes it much much easier for your for

your gardening efforts. For example, I put a publication on that I did with an A and M horticulture specialist a few years ago, and it is about protecting your landscapes and gardens from frosts and freeze damage. It's it's got a number of pages, lots of color pictures. It goes into the nerdy details of frosts and freezes, and if you don't want to read all that, just skip past it. You can go right to the point. There's a little paragraph on protecting containers like I was talking

about while ago. There's there's information on you know, should I sprinkle my plants with water? I see that my neighbors do that. You know, they spread with water and there's ice all over them and ice is an insulator. Well, uh, there is truth in that, but mostly that's not true because the way people do it makes it not true. But if you want to do it, I tell you how to do it in a way that works. And then the same thing for what about putting lights and

heat underneath the covers to protect plant. All of that information is in there and I think it's really helpful and you should just go ahead and book market and have it ready to go because you're going to need to get out and cover some plants at some point coming up here, and that information is there. Also there my gardening or my lawn care schedules, the one about things we do to help the lawn grow, mow, water, fertilized kind of things, add some mineral supplements like the

azmite do the aeration very important for our lawns. And then the other schedule is the pest Disease and weed management schedule. And that is just as the name implies, what's going wrong in your yard? I got weeds? How do I control them? When do I control them? What do I use? I've got chinch budge? Or when do you inchbugs occur? I just moved down here from somewhere else and I hear you got chinchbugs or side web worms or some of It's all there on the schedule

January through December. Makes it really really easy for you. And it's free. It's free. You can give it as a Christmas gift if you're a tightwad. It's free. So get download those schedules and find that information. I'm putting

more stuff up all the time. I just did something a while back on nuts Edge, A number of things on controlling nuts Edge did a thing on nematodes recently, and I'll be putting up We're working on redoing the website and revamping it and just adding a ton of stuff, and so there's always something new coming up on there, so I encourage you to bookmark that and go check it out. As far as the you know, the frost and the freezes are concerned, I am putting an orchard in on the side of my house.

to be a satsuma. Satsuma is a type of citrus that is very cold hearty, you know, citrus ranges, and cold heartiness from the minor freeze causes damage to pretty hardy and probably the hardiest of the citrus, or close to it is the cumquat. The kumquat is the little thumb sized orange citrus. It's not an orange, it's a kumquat. Actually, the skin is probably better tasting than the interior of it. They're used for marmalade and other things. Real cool, but boy,

those things can take temperatures down. It's twenty degrees if they're if they're properly hardened off, and sometimes I hear even a little colder than that. But they're very hearty citrus. Satsumas are probably second on the list. They can take it. If it's an established tree, they can take temperatures down I would say probably mid maybe a little below mid twenties.

But if they're hardened off in an established tree, if you've got a brand new satsuma you planted this year, no no, no. When it gets into the upper twenties, for sure you better cover that thing up. And but again I'll be putting a satsum in. I'll talk a little bit more about that when we come back. I need to take a little break here, and if you would like to call and get on the board, we can visit with you about your questions. Just call us at seven one three two one two five eight seven

four Guarden Line. We are glad to have you with us, looking forward to your call if you'd like to ask a question this morning. You know, a lot of times i'll Garden Line, we kind of have a backup and yet the way hold and I don't like for that to happen, so we try to clear those out as fast as we can. Uh. But when we're looking at

these holiday seasons, it slows down a lot. And if it's a good time, if you'd like to call and never called before, or just you know, only got a minute, got to get it done, well, this is a good time to do that. Seven one three two one two kt r H seven one three two one two kt r H. If you haven't been out to the Anti Crosing Porium, you need to go. I've told you this before, but it is a wonderful destination for gardeners and families. It's been around since nineteen eighty three and it is

just a it's just a cool place. It's like you've gone back. The word antique is a great, a great way to start the title of the place, because I mean they focus on antique roses, but they go beyond, way beyond that. I mean they have roses of all types. They have so so much more than just roses too. If you're looking for herbs, we were talking about those earlier. They are loaded up on herbs, so they have plenty of that. If you like native plants, they do have

native plants. If you wanted to plant a fig tree, for example, the Anti Rose Imperium has fig tree. Yeah, they have fig trees that you can get it in the ground now before spring arrives. It's easy to do. And when you go out there, you're going to find some really fun events too. They have an event actually on December first, which is tomorrow, that is part of the very Merry Savings weekend event. And say that again, Very Merry Savings Weekend event started on Friday, but it'll

go today and tomorrow. All roses are rolled back to twenty You're not going to find a better deal than that. And they have a nice, well grown rose. They do an excellent job of growing a very strong, healthy plant there. In their materials that they have, they have extra savings on other plant materials up to fifty percent off just in time. Now here for the holidays. I would recommend that you follow them on social media, that you join

their email list, and just do this. Go to the website Antique Roseemporium dot com, Antique Roseemporium dot com look at the upcoming events. They will have extended hours at the Rose Imporium till seven pm for an event called Lights in the Garden and that is on these dates September sixth, thirteenth, and fourteenth, and they'll be Santa there. Kids can get pictures with Santa. They're also hosting a charity day Christmas Classic car show with the Chili Cookoff.

Well that's an interesting combo on December fourteenth, but you got to go to the web page you find out about it, get the tickets and stuff like that for it. And anytime you're dropping out there this month and well this month today is the last day and next December, tell them I sent you and they'll give you ten percent off of your purchase. Come on, man, am I giving you? Can you do you need more reasons to

run out to the antiq rosing forium. You got you got family hanging out in the house and you need to get them outside and do something different for a little bit, take a little trip out there. You have a great, great idea. And again this is going on the deal with telling them I sent you goes all the way through the end of December. Tell them I sent you. You get ten percent off. Now you can also order plants from Anti CROs online. You can order

the ship online, makes it really easy. I personally would love to go out there myself, but if you want to just order them in you can do that. Just use the coupon code skip twenty twenty four Skip twenty twenty four and you get that same ten percent discount. So it's just telling them, look, we heard about you guys on guardline and they like to know that Anti Crows importum. They're out in Independence, Texas, just north of Brunham.

It's not a long drive at all to get out there, very very fun and easy and beautiful drive country too. I love going out there every time I go. It's like going back in time to a really really cool place. You're listening to garden Line. The number here if you'd like to call us A seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven to one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Uh you know, it is so important that we prepare this soil before we

plant the plants. I'm a broken record on saying every show, pretty much many times the show sometimes brown stuff before green stuff. I try to keep things simple, right, brown stuff before green stuff? What does that mean? Okay, everything below the ground is brown stuff. That's soil, that is compost, that is fertilizers, nutrients. That's the brown stuff. The green stuff stuff grows on top. That's what we're wanting to look at. But if you want something to look at,

you better take care of the soil first. That is the secrets of success, the secret sauce, as they say, and it's very important. I was talking earlier about, you know, making composted leaves or decomposing leaves to add into the soil, and the importance of those things when you're doing a significant amount of soil work, whether you are creating a raised bed or creating a whole new garden, or even

just looking for things for containers. Ciena Moltz has got you covered there south of Houston near Highway six and two eighty eight. The road there on is FM five twenty one, FM five twenty one. You need to just write down the website Siennamultch dot com, CNA maltch dot com. It is a one stop shop for homeowners all of you through that region. Meridian First Colony, Sweetwater, Iowa Colony, Pomona, Sun Creek to stay all of that region down there.

This is in your backyard. They are known for their premium hardwood molts. You can get it in bulk. They have native hardwood. They got double ground. They've got a two inch screen product. Beautiful dark chocolate color, not dyed, beautiful dark color. It smells so good, smells so good. Also you can get in bulk Louisanner Louisiana. Excuse me, Landscaper's Pride black velvet that is again not a dieed mol It's a great mast. They got roasts soal. They

got again it compost molts. Compost if you want sand, gravel, decomposed stuff, the stone on pallets that deliver within twenty miles for a feet and while you're there, part of the brown stuff. Microlife fertilizers, Azamite turf Star Line from Nelson's and other Nelson fertilizers, heirloom soil products. They're landscapers Pride products they're nitrophost fertilizers, their medina products are there. It is all. It's your one stop shop up for

setting the foundation for success with your plants. It is very important. And this season not a lot going on out in the gardens and landscapes. This would be a perfect time to get your soil built, to get the head start on fall planting, winter planting, and definitely spring gardening. There at Siena Moltz, I'm want to run out now to Sharpstown and we're going to talk to Mike this morning. Hey Mike, welcome to garden Line.

out and not only see colors, but smell. I have smelled so many flowers that have hardly any scent to them at all, much less you know, you know you

can smell when you first walk out the back door. Now, the other question that I have is that, in the addition that I live in in Sharpstown, I have noticed over the years, and I've lived in this house for sixty years, is that the level of the yards are sloping quite badly, and that hardly any of them have you know, what I would call built up soil foundations enough to you know, when you edge your yard you could not see the dirt underneath the grass. But unfortunately

I'm seeing more dirt than I am grass nowadays. Do I need to just start building up the soil and then plant monthy grass around the edges to keep the soil.

spongy runner. Yeah, is that what you're talking about? Or are you talking about just there's no grass and you see soil right through it.

can I can comment on it or whatever. That probably be the best thing as far as scents smells, there are many plants that are wonderfully fragrant, and the examples of these, and now I'm gonna give you some that are just like intoxicating, lots of fragrance in them. You know. The kind of poster plant for natives in Texas is called Texas Mountain Laurel, and it just has a great bubblegum smell if you remember great super bubble bubble gum.

the fragrance of a rose. There's a lot of old time garden flowers, like old time petunias that have a nice fragrance that.

at kreach dot com. Our next update is at eight. I'm Jared Lewis on Houston's news, weather and traffic station News Radio seven forty KJIRH.

know what, probably forty years ago something like that. Leake City Feed is on It's on Highway three. So if you're in League City, just a few blocks south of Highway ninety six on Highway three, it's on the east side is League City Feed and so it serves that

whole area. So when I say hometown feeds here, I mean if you're in Baycliffe, Lamarx, San Leone, Dickinson, Santa Fe, League City, Webster Clare, Lake City, I'll come in to real all those regions down there, this is your hometown feed store, and they it's it is the old time feed store. You know. If you I remember as a kid growing up, and you know, we would go into feed stores to buy feed for the cattle or whatever,

and I just love the smell, you know. I was sitting on a sack of feed there while my dad did what he was doing in the store and taking care of things and just enjoying that. That the smell of a feature. I love it. And at Leake City Feed you've got that old time service too. They carry the sacks out for you. It's it's just a fun place to shop. You're going to find premium pet food there.

You're going to find fertilizers you hear me talk about like nitrofoss and microlife for example, and Nelson plant food for example. They carry asmite there as well. They carry heirloom soil products there as well. It just is that kind of place where you go in and whatever you need for your lawn and garden and landscape, they're going to have it. That includes any kind of things to control pests or to manage weeds, or to deal with

diseases in your plants. Even if you have backyard chickens and you need feed or feeders or watering or bedding or things like that. Everything but the chickens, isaaha, I would put it. They've got that for you at League City Feed. They're open Monday through Saturday nine to six. They're closed on Sunday, and the phone number two eight one three three two sixteen twelve one three three two one six one two at League City Fee. I like going in there. Uh, there's now League City is now

in the third generation of Thunderberg's running that store. The grandfather built it forty years ago.

that around you're listening to garden Line. The phone number is seven one three two one two ktr H seven one three two one two k t r H. I in the front yard, I have this big patch of Saint Augustine. It's cobalt Saint Augustine from the Texas and M breeding program. It's one of the newest Saint Augustine's that they have out of the Texas and M breeding program. In fact, now southern turf grasses across the South.

in my ear. All right, good, all right. Well, the last time I was down visiting with Danny at an enchented forest done in Richmond Rosenberg, they had just gotten a shipment of some plants. They had vegetables at herbs and things, and they it's just always going on down there. If you need like fall color, there's no reason for your landscape in the winter to look bad. Just go grab pansies, go grab violas. The cycloman is a beautiful

fall color plant. It looks good. Someone was talking about ken What about planting herbs now, Oh my gosh, you're not gonna find a better selection of herbs than an enchanted forest. It is the time to make sure you get all your woody ornamentals established. The sooner you do it between now and spring, the better off you'll be. And if you're looking for a spring blooming tree like a red bud or my favorite, the Chinese friend, they have those there. If you're looking for a shade tree

like a red maple, they've got those there. If you're looking for holly's, many varieties of holly's, or they're at enchanted forest. And as far as holidays are concerned, their gift shop is loaded with wonderful gifts and beautiful things for decorating your home for the holidays and Enchanted Forest Now. They are located on FM twenty seven fifty nine. If you're heading from Richmond to sugar Land, they're off to the right twenty seven fifty nine. Go to the website.

I hope you got a penhandy. Enchanted Forest Richmond, TX dot com. Enchanted Forest, Richmond, TX dot com. All right, I'm having a little trouble in my headphones here here am I needing to take a break. Okay, I'm gonna take a little break right here. Thank you very much. Come back to garden Line. Glad to have you with

us this morning on guarden Line. Hey, if you would like to ask a question, how about this seven one three two one two kt r H. That's how you reach me seven one three two one two k t r H. We'll talk about the things that you are interested in. It in well, it has to be about plants. It has to be about plants. I can't help you if you have been oh, I don't know, let's say, around family for a little too long, and it's kind of time to move on. I can't help you with that.

I can't help if the dishes are piling up in the sink and nobody's helping with that. You know, you work and slave and do all the cooking and everything, and nobody is helping you with you get the idea. Anyway, we we like to have some fun here on guarden line if you would like talk gardening or maybe some gardening planning. You know, a lot of times of gardening people wait until I don't know it, it's too late to start to do things, and there's no need for that.

You know. For example, if you want to plant plants, don't wait until spring when it warms up and everybody there's flowers everywhere, and you want a plant to start, start now. Prepare your soil now, get the soil right now. That is really really important. If you are looking for starting your own seeds that first of all, I think that is one of the most fun things to do, is to start your own seeds for let's say next your's tomatoes or something, peppers, something you want to grow, Well,

now's the time to order seeds. Start ordering seeds. Get those things in because you can find varieties you're not find anywhere when you mail order a seed in, then go get you your supplies, get the trays, the seed starting mixes and things like that. Our garden setters have all that kind of stuff, So do you know Ace Hardware stores, office fertilizers, got things like that. Get those all set up and you're going to find that. Then when it's time to do it, you're ready to go.

That seed you want isn't out of stock because everybody else bought them all up, or anything along those lines. If you want to start seed, now's the time to be getting your your light fixtures set up and ready to go. Because I'm telling you this pretty much at the end of December, I'm starting to put seeds in the ground for all kinds of things for spring. You be planting transplants of broccoli and things like that now, because that can be planted out sometime in January or February.

You know we're just about to that time. So don't delay, get it done and take advantage of that opportunity. Speaking of opportunities, oh my goodness, Wall Bird's Unlimited is stocked up on perfect gifts for Christmas. And this is such an easy this is a no brain I got my mother in law a beautiful little humming bird feeder that it just just very very attractive and effective at bringing

in the low birds. Maybe someone in your house or in your Christmas list household would like a particular type of bird house or bird feeder, maybe a suet feeder for the winter season, maybe a thistle feeder for certain kinds of bird. You know, not all birds eat thistles, not all birds eat other kinds of seed. Each kind of bird you want to attract is going to be attracted to different things in seeds, and they have blends for that. For example, right now, I would recommend the

wild Birds Unlimited Winter Super Blend. It's packed with fat and protein. And my feeders have been quiet for the late summer and fall season. They kind of quiet because birds have had plenty to peck around on out there in the neighborhood. But they're about to come back, and they're coming back like big time knocking on the door. Hey we're hungry. You got to be ready for it. Go to Wildbirds. But while you're there, I'm telling you you're going to find a number of awesome, awesome gifts.

Go to WBU dot com forward slash Houston to find the six wildbird stores in our area. I have to take a break coming up here in a little bit, but let's see you do. I have time to get out to a call right quick. Let's go to Jim in Montgomery. Hey, Jim, welcome to garden Line.

Since it's not a common blooming plant for us here. It doesn't it hasn't made my list of things I know that you can eat the blooms of, you know, like you can eat colendulas, and you can eatn astertium ballooms and squashed and so on.

a micro garden or whatever you call it. I got some of that grass, that wheat grass and some other things that I got a packet, And so I'm gonna see if I needed to plant the wild violets now or wait till the spring, or what if I.

related to horticulture. If you've got you got teams that won't help you in the garden, I can't help with that. If you've got a spouse that has different opinions about where things that ought to be planted, I can't help. But I can't help you with gardening questions. That's what we do when we come right back.

the Woodlands talk to Ron. Hello, Ron, welcome to Garlandski.

to be at moving it. The bigger it gets, the more shock there is to the system because the amount of root loss has increased percentage wise, Move it to the new spot, put it in water, it in really good settle in the soil. Don't put fertilizer in the planting hole. Now, as far as things that were growing in a container, when you put them out of the container, lay it over, slide them out of the container. You may have to bump the bottomer sides to get loose

to slide out. Any circling roots, go ahead and cut those. If they're small, you can cut them with a utility blade or otherwise just use handpooters. But cut circling roots in three or four places around the plant. Those cut roots will re sprout quickly and within a few weeks you'll have new root growth coming out on them. So make sure and cut them and then plant them at the same level they were growing in the container. Okay, very good. I have one more question for you if you have time.

have green needles, you can bring that plant back around. Now, there's not a spray systemically to go up in there and kill the pine bark beetles. External sprays only prevent new beetles from tunneling in, and so the problem with external sprays is you need to reach if you can, eighty percent of the height of the tree. All sides all bark into the crevices with a spray, and what ends up happening then is you're standing down low, squirting

way up too much vertically. You know what I'm saying, That the mist is drifting down and it's very dangerous to do that. So hiring a professional to come in is an option. But my only hesitation on saying iago get somebody to spray it is that it may be a little late to save them. So if you see fifty percent of the needles are still green, well they may be okay, But just know this, the spraying will not kill what's in the tree. It'll only prevent additional attack.

so it's better to get it done sooner. And like I said, if there's no green needles, there is no regrowth on the pine, so it's a done.

back in nineteen seventy three, not much past that. But seriously, they are truly lawn and garden experts. And if you are a green thumb and you take pride in your garden, you need to visit Plants for All Seasons. If you have a brown thumb and you think you're hopelessly lost as a gardener, don't worry about it. Go in there, take them samples, take them pictures. They'll turn the thumb

green for you and you to worry about that. You can give them a call at two eight, one, three, seven six, sixteen forty six, or go to the website Plants for All Seasons dot com. They are loaded up with color right now, like cyclemans and biolas and pansies. They've got plenty of cool season vegetables. If you're interested in doing some vegetables, including different kinds of onions, you know, the red, white, and yellow onions are all available there.

And then the bulbs a nice source of bulbs. You know, if you're on the plant, some things that come up and give you a real traditional quick bulb show, like hyacinth and tulips. They've got plenty of bulbs for those, as well as well as everything else you would expect from a quality garden center, including all the things you need to make the brown stuff good, so mixes and fertilizers, any different types and plants for all seasons. I had moved some bulbs. Speaking of bulbs, I had moved some

bulbs myself from another location. Sometimes, you know, someone will offer to give me bulbs that they have at the garden and dig them up. I've been in situations where you know something's about to be done to a property and these bulbs are there, and either you dig them and get them out of there now, or they're gonna be a concrete slab over them later on. And so I end up with bulbs a lot of different ways, and I typically abuse the heck out of my bulbs.

You know, these are things that are the re appearing bulbs, the kind that bloom year after year that established that can grow in our landscape as a true perennial. And you know, maybe things like paper white. Some of the paper whites, a few of the daffodils are that way. There's just a lot of different kinds of bulbs that

do really well. But anyway, bottom line is I'm always moving around and they're just a pleasure because every year you get this surprise they pop out of the ground, they bloom, and that I call that a dividend on your investment. Time for me to take a break. I'll be back with your calls at seven one three two one two ktrh. Welcome back to Garden Line, folks. We are ready to go here for another segment here this morning, we're going to talk about some things related to activities

outside right now, things we need to be doing. If you'd like to give me a call. Seven one three two one two ktr h seven one three two one two kt r h. Soil, soil, so, it's all about the soil. So it is so important and nature's way resources is basically a wonderland of soil products. A good way to put it. I think so much of soil and if you listen to garden line. You know that. But I love it so much. I could just run out of Nature's way, jump into a pile of compost and make compost angels.

composting materials. They have a number of bed mixes. They have all kinds of mulches and things to put on surface of the soil, various products. If you're looking for blends for acid loving plants, for fruit trees, for vegetables and herbs and things, they can get you fixed up. John Ferguson long ago became a student of the soil, and it just it was like a snow all going downhill, picking up steam and size as it went. You know it.

His knowledge, the amount of professional journals and things and books he reads and studies have made Nature's way what it is, and I and his son there to continue in that tradition, just putting out quality products that work, that will help you have if you want to, if you want people to think you have a green thumb. And by the way you do, thumbs don't really turn green or brown. We say that, but they don't. What happens is your thumb gets informed and when it informs,

that makes it greener. If you know what I'm saying, and I'm informing you, the quality soil products make it make your thumb green, make it look like you have a green thumb, because you do because you know how to do it. Go by Nature's way. By the way, on Fungal Fridays, that's ever Friday, twenty percent off their fungal composts. It's a great deal. You just swing by on a Friday to do that. You can go out there with your trailer truck, pick it up. You can

buy by the bagging, buy it by the boat. You can call them up and say deliver it. You can go to local garden centers and other outlets of gardening supplies here in the Houston area. And many of those will carry Nature's Way products. That makes it really simple if you'd like to give them a call. Nine three six two seven three twelve hundred nine three six two seven three twelve hundred. The only thing you need to not do is put it off and delay. Go ahead

and get it done. They have the products you need. Getting the soil built now enables you to plant whenever you want a plant. I've talked to gardeners before. In fact, the truth be known, I've done this myself. I put it off and put it off, and it was time to get those tomatoes into the vegetable garden, let's say. And all of a sudden it starts raining, and I just said, rainy days, rainy days. This soil is too wet to work. I wish I'd prepared it before. Prepare

it now. Ninety year old fellow I knew in Conroad, Texas, at the Friendship Garden, a community garden on the north north side up by the airport. He used to say, you can always add water, but you can't take it away. And what he meant by that was when the soil is dry and you can work with it, that's great. You can always add water later, but when it rains too much, now you got a soggy mess that you don't want to mix up and mess with. His point was,

make soil while the sunshining. I like to say, make hay while the sunshine. Makes soil while the sunshining. That's a tip for the wise. I know it's a holiday season, you're busy, you got all kinds of things going on. But you get a little time here and there, get that done. You will be so much better off if you get that done. And Nature's Way Resources will help

you help you do just that. By the way, if you are interested, you can go by there and pick it up, or you can go to the website, you know, Nature's Way Resources dot com. Nature's Way Resources dot com. You're listening to garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richtor and the phone number here is seven to one three two one two kt R h seven one three two

one two kt r h Uh. If you are like many people, including myself, whenever company's gonna come over, you have to kind of spruce up the place a little bit. You know, maybe the leaves need raking, the lawn needs mowing, get those weeds out of the flower bed or al mulch on top. I don't know how far you go with that. I know indoors we go to we often go to great links getting that house in a very unusually pristine position, position or condition before people show up.

And if you would give them a call now, I know it's holidays now and you're not going to have them come out now, well that's that's okay. Just give them a call and get this scheduled and let's get the process going.

irrigation season hits big time again next year. They do irrigation repairs and things, and so there's you know, get them on the schedule to come out take a look, fix the things that need fixing. Would you love to have that beautiful patio that has a special ambience of lighting in it, landscape lighting. They can do that kind of thing. You can get them on the schedule to do quarterly maintenance where they come out and they do the weeding, they do the mulching, they do the fertilizing,

any kind of trimming that might be done. Make sure the irrigation's working on that too. They can do that. Would you like to create some hard scape pathways or patios, They can do that. Pierscapes pierscapes dot com. That the numbers two eight, one, three, seven oh fifty sixty. But just go to piercescapes dot com. You can find the phone number there and you can also find photos and examples of the kind of work that they can do. I'm going to head out now to Guarden Oaks and talk to Frank.

Is now that you know a good time of the year to do that, And how do I go about that? Do I cut back maybe six inches from the trunk or what? You know? What's your advice on gotcha?

to the trunk. And this is a case where you cut them off flesh against the trunk, or leave maybe a couple of inches at the most, at the most an inch or two of color on the base of the pine tree. Other trees we leave a little bit more of a collar, depending on the size of the branch. But with a pine I would just pretty much cut them back to the to where they joined the trunk, and then there's a little slowly close over that wound in time. Yes, now's a good time. Winter's a good time.

You can even do it in early spring if you want.

the guarden Line. I'm your host, stip Rictor. We're here to help you have a bountiful garden, certainly a beautiful landscape and more fun in the process. I'm gonna go straight back out to the phones here and talk to Scott. Hello, Scott, Welcome to garden Line.

kind of isn't necessary. It's such a loose soil. What I would do to save you some work is dig a hole just a little bigger than the container so you can slide that down in it. Try to make sure and dig it only as deep as the container. Okay, okay, And the reason the reason for that is soil settles.

this tree. For what you're doing right now, once it starts to grow in the spring, then begin to fertilize it, and especially nitrogen. Nitrogen is the most important thing to get that tree growing. But a good I'll tell you there are tree and shrub fertilizers out there, but you can also use a lawn a turf fertilizer. If you got some to your lawn, you got some extra, just use it to fertilize your trees and shrubs because it's good for that and water.

different soil tests they can do. You want the urban soil test, Yeah, and all it means is that it's for yards and homes and residential rather than pasture. Okay, so do the urban soil test. Tell them it's a tree and and they'll give you the results and they come in. You have questions about you can email me and send me a copy of it and I'll look at it for you. Or very cool since you got

that county Extension office. And I'm saying this because there's listeners from all over Everett County in this whole region of Texas has its own county Extension office. And you got an agent in there, and you can contact that person and you can get help with soil testing results and what to do because they know the soils, they know their county.

it gets cold, they kind of freeze and die. And they've been they've been in buckets for so long that they're just kind of suffering, you know what I mean.

It's a very mild lime flavor they make. They make awesome pies, but they're just and I planted them from seed from one that I had down in Cyprus area, and I've got half a dozen of them now, and then I've also got just regular limes and and and you know, grapefruit, and I just want to scatter them across the property.

You put around a tree. You can go dry by fill it up with water and then it slowly leaks out. Or you can create a worm of soil around it a doughnut and fill that berm full of water and it sinks down in But they need pretty regular watering that first year to get that good root system developed so they have some resilience to them.

yard or a houseplant is my clientele. Meaning anybody with a yard would call I would because of all the issues with the yards. But you could go down into the entered the skyscraper region of Houston, go to the nineteenth floor of some building and some little person's just sitting there in their little tiny apartment with a house plant, and they could call me and ask for a question. That's how it is on garden Line here too. So everybody has at least plant curiosities, if not questions, and

that's why we're here. I'm going to head out now to Galveston and we're going to talk to you. Key. Hello, Kevin, Hello, how you doing, buddy. Welcome to Guarden Line.

you wouldn't mind sharing a picture of that. I don't know what is it? Yeah, I guess it's because I talk about Okra all.

percent off all their trees right now. They have twenty percent off all their shrubs right now. Cajun Hibiscus, my favorite series of hibiscus, fifty percent off of those. You just goin' to protect them during the winter, but my gosh, what a deal, and they'll come out strong in the spring. And ten dollars off of or ten dollars select roses. My gosh, that's crazy. RCW nurseries is the kind of place you go. You get expert advice, you get quality plants.

They always have something interesting. They have beautiful, beautiful, bright red married Hollis right now. You can go see they grow their own trees and shrubs up there in Plannersville. So you know you're getting a species that wants to grow here and a quality, quality plant that wants to grow here. Rcwnurseries dot Com is the website. I did want to mention I talked earlier. I talked a little bit about ACE Hardware stores, and ACE Hardware is loaded

for the Christmas season. I want to take I'm going to go to the break here for the top of the hour, but when I come back, I want to tell you about some of the things about ACE that you probably are not aware of that are really really cool, So stick around for that. I'll also be giving you some more tips on having success with your vegetable garden and your flower bins during this cool season. And Gary and Katie, you will be our first collar up to come back after the top of the hour. I appreciate

you guys being listeners to garden Line. I love visiting with gardeners. I just do and said, how can you talk for so long? First, I've never run out of things that I'm excited about to talk about around We'll have a few more of those.

and highs in the mid to upper sixties. That's really good. Then about Wednesday, the rain hits and the highs go up a little bit. We'll be in the lower to mid seventies all the way up until next weekend, with quite a bit of rain chances in the last few days or so of that week going through the weekend. So time to get what is the reason for me give the weather. It's time to get things done. You need to get your work done by next Tuesday if you got outdoor things to get done in the garden.

So that's your public service announcement for the morning. We're going to go out to Katie Now on Guardline. We're going to talk to Gary. Hello, Gary, welcome to guard Line. Good morning.

size at a different size. And finally is what's out of your control, and that's the sunlight. They need lots of sun and as the sun amount decreases, the blooming potential decreases. So do you think that could be contributing to this. No, it's got plenty of sun. Now.

thank you so much. All right, be patient with them. They're pretty darn resilient, all right, they may find a way. Thanks Garry. You take care. I was talking earlier. I just now mentioned the ACE out there at Sinko. You know, Ace hardware stores are all over the place. They are literally all over the place, stores all over the Greater Houston area. And I've had some questions, you know, from people that live down maybe South and West, and boy,

you've got a lot of Aces down there. If you if you're on forty five going you know, toward Galveston direction, you've got League City Ace Hardware. It's just just not far off League forty five right there on League City Leake City Parkway, that is, if you head over to the east of there some of you. I've had a question kind of out that direction to Bay Cliff, Texas. There's Ace Hardware there in Bay Cliff. You've got the one that is Kilgore's clear Lake clear Lake excuse me

Hardware also there in League City. So those are those are all easy to get to run. Space Center Houston, MND. Clear Lake is out in that direction. And then up on Beamer Road, which is just off of the Beltway eight also southwest. That's another one down by the Hobby Airport. You've got Gateway Hardware and rental. It's on telephone right right behind Hobby Airport there. So there, Yeah, you got plenty of the the course of the Paarland, Elvin Deer

Park all out that direction, Galena Park. You got a lot of Ace Hardware stores down in your region. Makes it really easy to take care of the things you need. For example, their Black Friday sales are still good through Tuesday, December second, so you what is it Tuesday? Yeah, on Tuesday, December second, I believe is when those wind up. If you're decorating, they have sort an assortment of Christmas lights. It's just unbelievable. They have a really cool thing called

lights by the foot at ACE Hardware. And I'm not talking about just these aces that I mentioned, but all around the greater uscenario lights by the foot. So basically, you go in, you go, I need, you know, fifteen feet of lights or I need seventeen or twelve feet of lights. You literally pick the custom length of holiday lighting and you can purchase them that way as well. And then of course the indoor decor is outstanding. While you're in there, check out their cool old time toys,

you know, things like Legos. And I consider and name all these old time toys that I've been seeing in ACE Hardware's the brewder toys one sixteenth scale realistic detailed toy vehicles a really cool thing, you know. And of course you know Ace, You're gonna get great grills, great tools, great stocking stocker stuffers at ACEH Hardware. So when you're thinking about holiday shopping, think about ACE Hardware. I'm gonna

have to take a little break. I will be back with your calls at seven one three, two one two KTRH. Welcome back, Welcome back to Guardenline. Good to have you with us. As always, I'm your host, Skip Richter, and we're here to answer gardening questions. The way I like to put it is, I want to help you have a beautiful, beautiful landscape, a bountiful guard of whatever kinds of things, vegetables and herds and flowers. And I want you to have more fun in the process, because gardening

should be fun. That it's just as simple as that gardening should be fun. I was talking about some of the Ace hardware stores down south and east of Houston area. A lot of options down there. Don't just know you've got plenty of options. Well, you also have a wonderful garden center, Moss Nursery. They're on Toddville Road in Seabrook, and I always like going to Moss to stroll through. And by the way, it's going to be perfect weather to get down to Moss, even gonna go this weekend.

You want to go all the way at least through the mid part of the week and then things start to rain and stuff. So get out there and enjoy a stroll through Moss. I can't describe for you adequately what Moss Nursery is like. I can tell you it's eight acres. I can tell you that it is a long time family operated garden center. I can tell you that. I can tell you that every time you turn a corner,

you don't know what you're going to see. It could be some carved wooden totem, it could be it could be some unusual concrete statuary that is just something like you've never seen before, an African mask, a mineral specimen, a taxidermy. I mean there, it's crazy. It's fun. It's absolute fun right right down there now. I mean their point set a selection is outstanding. They got plenty of vegetables in stock for those of you who are wanting to do a little vegetable guarding this winter. The house

plant greenhouse is always a good place to go. Beautiful water features and fountains, anything blooming, you know, holiday plants, things like forest amros, bulbs and holiday cactus, Thanksgiving Christmas cactus and all that kind of thing. They got plenty of those down there. Remember that the Moss Nurseryes Open House and Market is going to be Saturday, December seventh, that's a week from today, from ten am at three pm. They're gonna have local vendors. They're gonna be arts and

crafts and food. It's just a lot of fun. Tina's Brought Worst is going to be out there. Man, I'm getting hungry talking about that. Tina's Brought Worst is going to be out there providing food as well. Uh it just go. It's Toddville Road in Seabrook. If you want more information, go to their website Moss Nursery dot com Maas Nursery dot com. Allow some time to wander through, enjoy yourself out there. I'm telling you, Moss Nursery is

a fun adventure to go visit. I know people that just go just for the what do you call it, the ambiance, the mental, psychological whatever benefits of just wandering through a beautiful nature place that is stock full of plants that you're going to want to have. I can't go there without bringing something home from the Greenhouse, one of their houseplots, because oh my gosh, the selection is incredible, incredible,

including landscape points like cactie too. They've got really nice specimens like you just don't see everywhere, I mean, really special place. Let's go to Houston and talk to Cliff. Hey, Cliff, welcome to garden Line.

That if you walk into Buchanans or someplace and just say I need I need broad leaf weeds and I don't kill grass, I won't kill broadly weeds, and I'll want post emergent, they can put you in the right ballpark of the things. You mix them up. You spraym according to the label on the weeds. Be careful. Broad leafs kill broad leaf plants. So if you have let's say some pansies and you spray it on those, it'll

kill those because they're broadly plants. But you know it makes up a strong, strong pressure because that creates mist that drifts. So just just a little bit of pressure on the spray and spread directly on those weeds. Now's a good time for that because the temperatures are so cool that you're not going to hurt your Saint Augustine with those products, but you will hurt the weeds and you're not going to get rid of them all at one time. You may have to do it again. Start

in an early spring. Just remember summer's your enemy.

good job. Now's there's a thousand different weeds out there, and not everything responds to every product, but that that should get you in the ballpark.

You don't want to be on a treadmill where every year, three times a year, you're having to kill something. Right, you do everything you can. Now, there are weeds that despite your cultural control, there are going to be a problem, and that's just the way it is. But the main thing you're wanting to do is culturally to avoid the problems you can to take the best options that you can to avoid things and avoid the need to spray. And then when you have to spray or treat to

put a granule out, you do that. But in most cases we can avoid the majority of our problems with cultural practices. You know. The the importance of fertilizing can't be overstated. The more you supplement with the right blends and products, the better off you're going to do. And Medina, for example, the folks at Medina have something called has to grow six twelve six. I would definitely have that on hand all the time because any time you're going

to plant a plant. Six twelve six has to grow is an outstanding products out Medina soil activator in it to stimulate biological activity. It's got the six twelve six which is a high phosphorus fertilizer that's important for good root development. It's got hum humic acid in it, which improves soil structure. It's just excellent for transplanting. You can use it for things other than transplanting, but it's outstanding for transplanting. It's one of the many products by Medina

that is just effective. I've used these, I know them. They're good, they work, and that's why I recommend them. Medina Plus is another example. It's a good for folier feeding. It's got the Medina soil activator in it. Also, it's got forty different trace elements side of kinon, which is

a natural growth hormone from seaweed extracts. I could just list the ingredients on and it's a mile long of good things to help your plants survive, thrive and produce the things you want like fruit or foliage or beautiful blooms. Medina Plus and Medina has to Grow six to off six plat food by the folks at Medina, and you're going to find them all over the place. They are widely available and as I said, they work. Time for

me to take a little break here. We'll be back with your calls in a moment if you'd like to dial in seven one three two one two KTRH. All right, we are back, folks. We got a less than a half hour left to guard line today. If you'd like to give me a call and now it would be a good time to do it or talk to you next weekend. Seven one three two one two k t r H. Seven one three two one two ktr H. I am doing a number of things to get ready

for the seed starting season. And if you have not ever tried growing your own transplants, you should try that. And there are a number of reasons to do that. First of all, it allows you to grow things that you cannot buy. Maybe there's a brand new tomato variety just came out and you want to try it out, or some obscure one that just doesn't get carried. Because you know you can't carry every variety of everything. You can grow it yourself and you can have it that way.

Number two, it's just fun. It's absolutely fun to grow your own seedlings. And there are a few tips for doing that. And I'm going to post something to the website this week on success with growing your own seedlings, so be watching Gardening with Skip dot Com. I'll post it there Gardening with Skip dot Com on how to do that. It's very important to get the lighting right. That's probably the single most important thing. And where people

go wrong is lighting. Spindley, scrawny transplants trying to reach light are not going to do well out in the garden. They're going to break over. They're just not going to perform well for you. But you can avoid that with good lighting. But get you some good supplies and materials to do that. I'll put some information on that. In fact, I may put two different things up, one on lighting and one on success with just general seed starting tips.

But I think you should give that a try. That would be a good gift too, by the way, for someone on your list, somebody who would love to get maybe seed trays, plants, starting supplies, you know, all of that kind of thing. Once you see my article on the website, then you can even have a little bit better idea on how to go about shopping for that and lighting. You know you can get by with cheap lighting.

For years I used a fluorescent four foot shop light with a cool white tube and a warm white tube in it to provide a wider spectrum. And if you're just growing a little transplant and you keep that light down on the plant, I do mean, I mean like an inch away from the plant. You can grow a decent transplant that way. Of course, now everything's led, so now we're starting to look again at spectrum carefully. You can spend a significant amount of money or a modern

amount of money on a quality plant growth light. So you can do that, but be real careful when you're out there shopping because there's a lot of Bologney information. And I'll go into this in a lighting article that I'm going to put up, But just remember what it says on packages that the light is designed for our eyes is different than what you need to know for a light designed for plants. Okay, lumens are for humans. So if a light bulb so many lumens, that's basically

for lighting a room. It doesn't tell you about light quality. And plants have an opinion about the wavelengths and things. But lumens are for human par actually par photosynthetically active radiation. Okay, there's your nerd alert for the day. That's for plants, lumens for humans, pars are for plants. And I'll put that article up. I try to weed through all the information. I might make it real simple, fast, easy and interesting

to do. But why not give something like that to the gardener in your list, or give a really big hint to those people who don't listen to garden Line that you would like something like that. Let's set out to Cyprus, Texas. We're going to talk to Jim. Hey, Jim, welcome to garden Line.

doing that. So I would, I would at this point, I would just and this is your call, Uh do I want these things or don't want to put something else in here? And this would be a time to make a good decision on that if you want to keep them. We're going to have to figure out what's wrong in the soil, and it's probably a root rot. Now there are root rots that are brought on by soggy soil. There are actually some fungi that have tails like tadpoles that the spores swim through the soil to

attack plants. And it's weird. That means quit watering so much. That means put underground drainage in. That means, you know, whatever it takes to avoid soggy will help with those kind of root rots. There are fungicide drenches you can put on roots, and then there's some root roights you

can't treat for oak root rot called urmilaria. Now you and I can't know which one it is if it's a root rot, but if you were to dig down around a plant and kind of scrape the roots with a pocket knife on the side where the dying is occurring, if you can do that and you see like water soaked brown gray looks like an old stained cigarette filter kind of look that, that's typically typical of a root rot having affected that plant.

the roots. You can cut the top back that's not so important, put it in a box and ship it to a college station, or drive it up there to the plant clinic, and they will analyze it and culture it out in a petri dish and tell you exactly what the root right is, if there's one, and what to do about it, if you can do anything about it. So, if you want to keep those legustrums and not replace them, save the whole row, I would do the plant clinic thing. And I'm sorry you'd have to be brief here, but

I'm going to have to run. Good luck with that. In Cyprus. Are not that far of a drive. You're about an hour and fifteen minutes from the Plank clinic. All right, folks, we're going to take a little break. I'll be right back. Well, well, welcome back. We are in our last segment. Well the day. We'll be back tomorrow. By the way, we got any questions, By the way, if you have, folks, staying with you during this holiday weekend. Tell them about garden Line. I don't care where they live,

they are welcome to listen in. We'd love to have them. Guardline reaches all the way across the Louisiana border a little bit, and I know past Huntsville definitely up there. In fact, we have folks from up Gosh all the way up in Leon County the Call and then over toward New Bromfels direction and down to Corpus Christie. We've got pretty wide area that's covered there. So you certainly can tell your friends and family to listen to garden Line. We'd love to have them. I wanted to say something

about a Southwest Fertilizer. I brag on them all the time, and I say, you know, if they don't have it, you don't need it. And it's really true. You know. Southwest Fertilizer has been around since nineteen fifty five, and they have over the years established themselves as the go to place for anything you're looking for. I don't care what the product. It may be some obscure thing to control pests or weeds or diseases. It may be. Certainly, all the fertilizers I talk about on garden Line all

the product recommendations. I go, ah, you need to go. I tell someone them earlier, you need to go get some bown eyed beat her old to a fertile loan weed free zone. Yeah, Bob's got those and much much, much more. It's got a ninety foot wall of tools. So if you are looking for a quality tool for a family member as a gift, you should tell them

to go buy there. That kneeling bench that I keep bragging on, it's a it's a you sit on it or you flip it over and you kneel on it and the legs become handles to help you get back up again. It's cool. It is very cool. If you want to make my homemade weed wiper that's on my website Gardening with Skip dot com. Bob's got the suction cup based grabber tool that we use in all the free diagrams on my website for how to build your own. It's not expensive at all and it really really works.

It doesn't matter what you need. If you got a plant problem, you on taking a picture a sample, let them put their eyes on it.

Abyssinet and Runwick in Houston. We're going to go now to Spring Branch, Spring Branch, I believe and talk to Bill.

don't know if he has another azoxystrobin. There are others out there, but the one that used to be used a lot is called Heritage, and it's kind of difficult to find now. I think they're pulling back on their retail supplies or something. I don't something like that.

that would be an example of the symptoms. Yeah yeah, all right, well yeah, go by Sea Bob. They'll be able to fix you up. But down with my schedule from the website because it tells you exactly what and when. Okay, all right, thank you sir, Yes, sir, thank you for the call. I appreciate that. In Chinned Gardens out there on the Katie Fullsher side of Richmond is a place that it's a you got to take people to see it. There's always something cool going on out in Chanty Gardens.

They always have stock of some of the best plants and best things that you just don't see all the time. Maybe something really new that's cool that you need for your gardens. Just head out there southwest southwest of Houston, Chended Gardens, Richmond. It's on FM three fifty nine between Richmond and Katie full Shirt direction. All right, you can find that when you get out there. Their holiday selections

is unrivaled. It is absolutely amazing. Place is just gorgeous and they have things that you would want for this time of year, cool season, color of course, stuff like that. If you Christmas trees and holiday trees like that, they've got those. They had strawberry plants while back. I don't know if there's still someone stock or not, but you can still plant strawberries down here to get a headstart

on the spring. If you're looking for herbs or any kind of a chrisp skift, you should see their gift shops. They are outstanding right now, loaded with some cool stuff. Enchanted Gardens Richmond dot com is the website. If you've got color beds in your landscape like pansies, petunias, a lissome ornamental cabbaging, kale dianthus, you need to have color Star on hand. Color Stars are product by Nelson. It comes in a little plastic jar screw top lid nineteen

thirteen six. That's the numbers, nineteen thirteen six. It's one of their most universal blends for anything that has flowers. Pretty much, I mean that's the way to think about it. Do it about every three to four months and keep those plants growing. So it's got five sources of nitrogen in it, and it has organic bow meal and blood

meal also to feed the soil. They designed this over forty years ago, and I'm telling you professional landscapers use it and home gardeners all over Texas and they shep a lot of it out of Steak because people discovered over there and they want it because it works. Color Star by Nelson Plant Food, So check it out. I think you'll find good success. By the way, the secret to having good blooms all through the winner is to keep pushing them along with regular applications of small amounts

of fertilizer. That's how you do it. If your pansies last year just kind of wimped out and put blooming so well you didn't have color Star, put some color Star on them every three months and they're going to do really good. The music, it's one of my sad songs because it means the show's over. Shutting down to the day. I'll be back in the morning, bright eyed and dish retailing pat people six am. In the meantime, check out my website Gardening with Skip dot Com.