Same Names, New Looks

Katie r H Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to Katie r H Garden Line with Skip rictor it's crazy Trim. Just watch him as we may give it. Please the Supertzy gas Club again, not a sign sun. Hey, good morning, Welcome to Garden Line. It's great to have you with us today. Congratulations. If you are listening to this, you made it up. Maybe got a cup of coffee or tea or whatever it is. It helps you open

your eyes and we're gonna have a good d day day today. We actually have a pretty some weekend here. I got a little rain forecast maybe, but tomorrow today's gonna be a great day. Look forward to getting outside today and getting some gardening work done, making sure that we make I don't know, let's just say, the right adjustments to our landscape. That would include from fertilizing and the right rate, the right types of products. Right timing

always important. Putting in plants. This is a really important time to get things planted for summer. We are still in mild temperatures. It is not bad yet and those of you been here for a year know that it can get a little interesting when we get into the brunt of summer. But by planting now, you can make sure your plants are well established. You know, we have things that can take summer heat just fine. Venka, for

example. I prefer to call it Madagascar periwinkle because there is another plant called vinca. But I guess there's another plant called periwinkle too, So there we are. That's the deal with common names. But anyway, what most people refer to as vinca super heat tolerant, and so many types of it now they're just breeders have really done a great job of coming up with some nice twists on really an old plant. I remember growing up we had that in

flower beds in front of our house. I lived south a little further in south central Texas, and we had it in the front flower bed and it would recede, and some of the plants would just survive year to year because it didn't always get cold enough in that protected area. But it's a great plant, does super well. Angelonia super superflower for heat. Lots of types of Angelonia, different heights. Got a nice little range of colors. We can do the typical, the pink, the red, the white. There

is some purple, purple, lavender colors and whatnot. It's just a good plant. It's an excellent, outstanding plant. Really person lane Porto Laca and Slain both very closely related. They can take the heat and they can also take the drought and do really well. We could go on and on. I mean there's shrubs, there's vines, there's all kinds of things. Get

them in now so that they have time to establish roots. And once they've established roots and the heat comes, these are plants that are tough and they can take it. But don't delay. Go ahead and get them in. Get some size on them. You know, you buy the little plants they're pretty in the garden center, but you want them to get bigger. You want them to get to whatever size they're going to be so they look their best. So whether you have sun or shade, there are plants that will

do wonderfully for you. Here in the KTRH listening area, we have a lot of great options. Makes it kind of nice. I'm go'na quit talking for just a minute. By the way, I should give you a phone number seven one three two one two KTRH. We're going to go to Des Moines, Iowa and talk to Dan. Hello, Dan, are you there all right? I'll tell you what. I'm gonna put Dan on on hold and we'll see if we can get him back. That was interesting all the

way from Des Moines, Iowa. First thing in the morning. So I was talking about cool, cool, heat tolerant plants, plants that can take the heat. One thing to always remember is even the toughest of plants need a root system to be able to be tough in heat and drought. And a root system requires good soil. And we talk all the time about brown

stuff before green stuff, and so that is that is one principle. But it's also true if you're putting them in containers, you need to sew a volume that is as much as pretty much as much as you can really we oftentimes, you know, plant and a little bit smaller containers, and that container volume of soil is the entire area that that plant can get water and nutrients from. If we if we can look at a larger area, a larger pot, then we're able to draw from that larger area and the plants

are just better able to survive. And I'll talk about that more in a minute, We're gonna go back to the boy and talk to Dan. Hello, Dan, we got you? Uh did you? Is that for for Dan? Yes? Dan, You're it. You're on you Okay, No, no, no, I don't. I'm actually over in the Beaumont area now, okay, And when I was in the one the boy, I'll tell you what. You could pull some crops up there that are just crazy. But over here, I'm having a problem with some pill bugs. Okay,

how do I get rid of them? Well, let me ask you this first. What are they doing? What is uh what? They're eating my basil and uh some other uh some stuff like cucumbers, but not as much as the basil. Okay, well, yeah, typically they're not uh they're not one of our big pests that we have to deal with. They feed on decaying organic matter. I've got a strawberry patch and the underside of every strawberry that touches the ground. It's going to ben about pill bugs.

But there are baits that you can put out there that are for pill bugs, and they're close relative called sow bugs, right and and other kinds of critters. And I would just go to You've got you know, a couple of great A hardware stores out there in your area. I would just probably go over them and say, you know, I need a bait for snails and pill bugs and slugs and things like that, and they can get you. They can get you fixed up with one. I have done some research

and I've seen that there was a product called slug O Pro. Yeah, and I can't find it anywhere. I don't know Slugo Pro. There's a Slugo Plus. I think could that be a that what what you saw? That? Possibly? Yeah, slug Slugo plus gosh, if memory serves me right, Slugo is basically an iron based bait. It gives uh, it gives a toxic amount of iron to the pests that eats it. Uh. Slugo Plus I'm pretty sure also has spinosa in it, which is an insecticide

that also works. And so it just it just spreads out the number of things Slugo will work on. But if you if you head over to you got an M and D there on College Street in Beaumont, I would I would try them talk to them they. I've been to Ace hardware stores many times that had the Slugo Plus, So I don't know if you've tried that

one or not. But but but I would, but I would just go, you know, just read the label on anything like that, any kind of a bait that they would have, and just make sure that it's sow bugs or pill bugs are on the level, right, Yeah, okay, you know they are crustaceans like crawfish, so you're in crawfish country. That's right. This is just a crustacean. I don't think you want to eat these, but who knows the same taste? All right, Dad, thanks

a lot, appreciate your call. Yeah. Yeah, pillbugs you turn over organic matter, and they are just everywhere. I got mulches in my garden, and whenever I pull the mulch back, it's like good night, there's herds of pill bugs into there. I generally don't worry about them, but yep, they can do some feeding on some things here and there. Just so it wasn't want check too that when you see an insect and then you see damage, make sure that what you're the pest you're seeing is truly a

pest doing the damage. It's something else and sneaking in there. Uh, and it gets blamed on on something else. Let's take a little break. Our phone number is seven one three two two fifty eight seventy four. Welcome back to the garden Line. Good to have you with us today. Hey, if you ever thought about having bees in the backyard to make your own honey, to pollinate your own crops, if you will, you have fruit trees, you've got vegetables perhaps, or you just enjoy being a support to

the pollinators that we have, because you know how important that is. Well, you can put bees in your backyard and the bee Supply can help you do that. They specialize in things like that. They have classes for you. You want to go in and learn all about it if you find out it's for you, which I think you will when you get the hands on part. Their classes are excellent. By the way, they also have a b rental program. Maybe you've got a piece of property five to twenty acres.

If you have five to twenty acres and you're within fifty miles of Dayton, Texas, just to the north end east of US and fifty miles of that, they will come out. They do all the work, They set up the bees, they tend to the bees. It's a really good deal. You can go to their website. Go to the website it's thebesupply dot com and find out about the bee rental program. They also have something that's really cool and that is a leaf cutter bee a little home for them.

It's little tubes that they live in. Leaf cutter bees are excellent pollinators and you can bring those home to your garden as well, and the Bee Supply can get you fixed up on that. It's just a great place to go and if you ever want to get out there and do a little tour, take some friends out. They've got an observation hive that is so cool to look at. You. If you have kids or grandkids, they really need to see this because is that it is that fascinating at thebesupply dot com.

If you want to go the website one more time, thebsupply dot Com. I'm going to head to Sugarland now and we're going to talk to Mike. Hello Mike, Well, good morning, Skip Marni. I got a question about the pH of my soil. How do I test it? And then if it's high what do I use? And then if it's a low pH what do I have? All Right, Why Mike, is your soil a clay soil, a sandy soil, or something in between. It's primarily clay.

Okay, so I've done several popsoil applications. My problem is, like some green some of the grass blades are light lime green as opposed to a dark green, right, Okay, yeah, yeah, that could be a little bit of an ron deficiency, but it also could be just well, there's a variation depending on the number of nutrients in the soil, including nitrogen

being the main one that helps drive that green color. So as far as how do you do that, I don't know if you've been to my website Gardening with Skip dot com and looked at my lawn care schedule that's on there. But if you go there to Gardening with Skip dot com, there's a free lawn care schedule. You can look at it on your computer or print it out. There's also a lawn pest, disease and weed management schedule again takes you from January way through December, tells you the problems you run into,

what to use for that, and how to time it. But the reason I bring it up is because on there is a live link to the soil test lab at an M and that is where you would find out your pH. You just send a sample up to them. There's a link right to the form that you need on there if you have a pen and want to write it down. It's soil testing dot T A m U, dot ed U and they can tell your pH. I can tell you this. Chances are it's a little bit high. And if it's a clay, chances

are you're not going to move it much. It's difficult to make a high pH clay more acidic. But what you can do for beds, garden beds, vegetable beds, flower beds, you can bring in a quality mix that has a good pH and put it on top of the ground, mix it in a little bit with your soil and just grow in that. That's the best and easiest way to deal with it. Far as your lawn. You're not gonna make your lawn a raised bad so, but but grass is pretty

tolerant of pH. You may have to use a little keylated iron or something like that. But i'd start with finding out what the pH is and at the same time you're going to find out your nutrient content, and that's important. Okay, what about some some have said, well, put some sulfur down. Is that well, that's that is how you bring pH down. But in a in a in a clay soil, the term is buffered. The clay is so buffered that you just add sulfur and add sulfur and add

sulfur, and it's hard to get the pH to come down. Uh, and so it's very difficult. If not, I'll just say it's impractical to try to bring a clay high pH clay down much in pH. And then the final question is I'm considering going to a professional long service. Do you recommend them? I've done two applications. You know already they share so pretty using or is there one we would recommend down there? Yeah, in the

area, or well, what do you think of them in general? Their prices are pretty high, so the ones you've been looking at, Yeah, okay, Well, I generally don't get into just the kind of the mow and care for lun care services we do. Well, you do have BnB turf Pros down there and they'll do the compost top dressing, which, by the way, will be another way to help your loan because it's getting the compost down in the soil and the roots find it and they have access to

the nutrients. Maybe the high pH tends to lock up. But BnB turf Pros down there, you'd have to talk to them about any other services and whatnot that they that they might provide. I know that the website is Bbturfpros dot com and sugar lens is one of the areas that they service down down where you are. So you're you're saying, you know, if you can't do it on your own, then maybe search out these professionals. I'm talking to me. I'm not the mowing and the trimming. I'm talking fertilizing and

doing so past. Uh so, Yeah, I've never talked to them about whether they do sell tests, but it's so easy for you to do that yourself, just to send the sample in. But BB tur Pros would be the one I would call. They do the compost, top dressing, they do deep time erration. Now those those activities top dressing and neration are not inexpensive, but you're making a significant difference in the lawn. It's not just

like throwing fertilizer out there. It's it's going beyond that. But you might I would call them and just see because I think a lot of them. In the way they do business. They really focus They only use products that are quality. Then they focus on the customer and making sure you're happy. It's more of a relationship with them. It's not just like send me a check and we'll show up ever so often. It's I like the way they do this. I would give m a call and talk to them about it,

and they could probably as you visit with them. I think between the two you work out, you know, some sort of a plan. And so do you have a preference as to whether you should use granular or liquid fertilizers? They both work, They both work well granular. With granular you can get some nice slow releases that will release over three or four months that you're not going to be able to get that slow over release and a liquid and I like that gradual feed over the course of the summer. So I

would aim toward granular. But if you want to get out there and get a nice green up, there's some excellent products, including a new and I'll be talking about in a little bit here from Medina that that's good. You just put it on the end of a hose and you can get it done real quick. All right, so if I have a low pH, well did you is there a certain thing you want to put on your yard?

Well, then yes, I think there's a ninety nine point nine percent chance you don't have too low of a pH that would need to be raised. But lime lime is what is used for that. Oh okay, that'd start with this old test. It's going to tell your phosphorus, your magnesium, your nitrogen, your potassium. It's going to give you all the levels and you'll be able to fertilize more accurately. All right, I'm gonna have to thank you. I'm gonna have to run. Thank you very much. Good

luck to that lawn in good shape. Appreciate that. Yeah, you're talking about slow release fertilizers. Nitrophos has got their superturf and that's the nineteen four to ten, nineteen four ten. It's a silver bag. Makes it easy. Just remember silver nitrophs nineteen four ten. Half the nitrogen is in a slow release form. So it's going to feed your lawn for several months.

Here, it's going to give you a nice gradual and also Mike's talking about you know a little bit of a sharp trouse color of green well, it's going to give you more of a boost because it has the four percent iron in it as well, and that gives the nice green color on lawns that are struggling because the pH is high and the iron is tied up. Nitrofoss nineteen four to ten Super Turf's available a lot of different places. You're gonna

find it at Gym's Hardware up in Montgomery. You're gonna find it at Lake Hardware Inclute. You can find it in a lot of places. Ace hard Ride and Sinco Ranch also carries the Nitroposs Super Turf. We're going to head now to let's see, we're heading to Greg and Hempstead. Hello Greg, Hey, good morning, Skip. You've got a couple I've got a couple of questions for you. The first one is core aerating my yard. I received the and doing a compost top dressing. I received a price for it.

I'm not saying the price is wrong, but the price is more than I can more than I can bite off at this time. Okay. My question to you is if I do a plug aeriation and instead of using doing the compost top dressing, could would there be any benefits to doing something you know, putting down something like Microlife's hummates instead of the top dressing. Well, yeah, it's beneficial. The humates are very beneficial. I don't It's

kind of a different thing than putting down the screen compost. You know, they both have their benefits and advantages and things. But the humates would be fine. You know, you can buy the compost for top dressing, a screened leaf leaf composts. You can bite it by the bag, or you can just have somebody dump it off there and spread at your But are you talking about using a like a little step on it push it down in the

yard aer rator? Are you talking about renting one? No? I was, Yeah, I was going to either rent one or even even buy the plug aerator to hook onto the back. I've got a small lawn tractor to hook onto the back of it. And it wasn't going to be one of

the core Yeah, you know, one of the plug ones. But my problem is I've got twenty I've got twenty two to twenty three thousand square feet a yard, and it's just a little to put down the compost top dressings a little bit more than this fifty something year older is able to do. By himself at the twenty and again, I'm not saying the price I got to do it is wrong or it's more than at an expense, very expensive equipment and hauling a lot of stuff. Well, you know, I maybe

I would just have my wife go do it be easier. I don't you know the old Germans they used to get all their work done by this weather, their friw. So I don't know if that. Yeah, I know, I grew up with the old Germans. So hey, I'm up against a heardbreak, Mike. Good luck with that. I gotta run, Thank you very much, Yeah, thank you, bye bye. All right, it's time for Nicky in the news our phone number seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. All right, no more, no more old

German jokes spouses. Oh gosh uh. I was talking about B and B turf pros a minute ago, and I just I don't know if you guys have heard me mentioned them before, but this is an outstanding outstanding organization. They they they spend time with their clientele, and it matters to them to know you, to serve you, and to make sure you're happy with what

they do. They really go above and beyond to make that personal connection and to ensure the satisfaction they do high quality work, their products or excellent. In fact, they only use products and companies that I trust. Here on garden Line with a website. If you are looking to have top Dressing Corporation done, and you are down in the south and east part, let's say on the east end from Pearland on the west end to sugar Land and from

Missouri City down to Fresno or Coola, Iowa colony, Manvil. This is your company. It's Bbturfpros dot com. And the phone number if you'd like to write this one down seven one three two three four fifty five ninety eight. I'm going to head out now to northwest Houston. We're going to talk to Paula. Hello, Paula, Hi, good morning, good morning. Okay, my Tameya. Problems keep happening. Now. I've got tomatoes with green tomatoes with black bottom. I've sent you a picture yesterday, Okay,

that is called blossom end rot and well that's rot. I remember that. Yeah, it's boss better. And so what happens is it's usually due to a moisture fluctuation. The disease is caused by a lack of calcium to the growing the tip of the tomato. When the cells there start, when they don't get calcium, they start to collapse and die, and then the rot sets in behind them. So we see it more often early in the season than late because later in the season the tomatoes root systems a little more extensive.

It's taking up nutrients. Well, chances are you've got enough calcium in the soil, but a soil test would help confirm that. But if you can keep the moisture even it really helps make that blossom indrot go away. I have a feeling it's going to get better on its own. Are these containers or the ground I don't Yeah, yeah, these are in the grow boxes, so it's hard to keep the moisture. I've held off on watering because they seem to be pretty wet, so I haven't been filling those reservoir

Yeah. Uh, well, so there's nothing. There's no way I can add calcium, or well you could, but even if the calcium is there, with the moisture fluctuation, you're going to get blossomed. Okay, blossom man. So, but I think grow boxes have the reservoir underneath them, right right, Yeah, well, yeah, you keep that full and it ought to be. Okay, you can put in, uh, some nutrients

in the soil if it truly is missing. You can even make a kind of a solution of some nutrients in that water in the bottom from the take it up something that does you know, that's all the nutrients in it, or mix in the like liquid micro life. There are some liquid micros. I'd have to check the label to see if they have calcium in the particular one you're you would be Oh, I'll look in the bottle and see. Okay, check that regular Microlife's gonna have some calcium in it, So you

could just use that too. Well, it's got microlife in there. It's got mic life in this. Guy, leave my old composts. I don't understand. Well, oh well, I don't know, but I still think it's a matter of maybe the box water level. Yeah okay, yeah, okay, so water thing. You have a minute to recap what you told me about that limp to made up when I saw you at r c W

last Saturday. Oh okay, okay, Look it looks it's real limp and it looks like it was dying, and you told me to look at the roots to see if it if there was any light, little nodules on it or something. And I looked at the roots and the roots look fine. But recap again, what what you told me to look for? A right, we were looking for nots on the roots, which is nematodes, which affects water getting okay, makes it will huh. The other thing would be

a root rot. If the top of a plant is declining and you basically pull it up and look at the root system and the root system is further declined, it's like it's rotting away. The problem started in the roots as a root rot. If the roots look fairly normal and healthy and you're just getting wilting, then it's it's gonna be a lack of moisture in the soil. Okay, Okay, I'm writing all this down this time, okay. And then you told me that if it does, to go ahead and cut

open that stem. Okay, yes, the last thing we look for. The last thing is you slice the stem vertically, and this is this is this is the you're performing the autopsy at this state, you slice it ethically, and instead of healthy green with a little creamy white inside the tomato stem. You see streaks of brown like it was an old stained cinaret filter, but but streaks of it through there. That is another covering disease that came

from the soil, so that we fight with resistant varieties. Hey, Paul, I got another guy on the line here. I'm gonna all right, you take care, appreciate that. We'll go to Jonathan and clearly Hello Jonathan. Hey, good morning, sir. I have a question. I hope it's an interesting question for you. I have a Saint Augustine lawn full Sun,

and I've been follow following the schedule for twenty years. About six years ago, we had a very large oak tree that was in the middle of this that we had removed and we brought in the special the correct soil, and we did sod and it's been doing great. Right where the tree was. I'm realizing I'm having to water a lot more than in other parts. And we've done the top dressing. We did that a couple of years ago,

but we've never air rated. So this year I tried to air rate and I'm noticing, of course now that I'm finding bits of root and things about four inches under the ground right where we're having to water a lot. All right here, let me just cut to the chase on this one, John, I think I know what you got. Whenever you do have a tree and you take it out and stuff, you've got a lot of wood in the soil. And that wood does a number of things. Number one,

initially ties up a little nitrogen as it decomposes. But you just it's just going to be. It's just going to take time for it to settle down and to decay away, and having to water a lot is maybe part of that process, and there's no fix to it. Keep making sure that it's kept moist, that you give good fertilization to the grass is what's in your power. But other than that, you know what is is and that's wood in the all over in the soil compared to the soil that you're lawn

in other areas is growing in. That's great. And then my question beyond that was I had a bag of rose soil and I just kind of sprinkled it over top, thinking maybe I could elevate the soil above those roots. Is that bad idea? No, that's fine, that's fine. It may be a little greener spot. But I think that's what's within your all right, man, thank you, thank you a lot. I appreciate that. I appreciate that. If you're thinking about putting a tree in, by the

way, you need to get you a three sixty tree stabilizer. If you put one in in the last few months. Three sixty tree stabilizer holds that tree, but it doesn't hold it tight. It holds it in a slightly allows the slight amount of movement, and that allows it to establish well. And when the tree moves, it's going to strengthen the tissues in the trunk and in the braceroots right there at the bottom, it's going to strengthen those.

Now you can get a three sixty tree stabilizer at Buchanans and arbor Gate Plants for all seasons carries them. RCW has them down and Alvin Jorge Hidden Gardens has them in Southwest Fertilizer where I'm going to be today, by the way, I'm going to be there. I'll tell you about that in just a bit. They have those as well. But three sixty trees say there's a quality product. It hooks right to a t post or any kind of post you put in and it works well and it lasts well. I guess

we got to take another break here. Here we go. I'll be right back seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Welcome back to Guardenline. Good to have you with us today. If you have not been to RCW Nursery recently, you need to go. I was out there a couple saturdas ago, I guess, and just always amazing the color they have, it's just outstanding. The book and villias are gorgeous. The roses, by the way, they got it. They have a cell going on on

the roses. Ten percent off all trees and roses. You got that right, all trees and roses both. Now's a great time to get them established. You know, with RCW they grow their own trees, and so they grow things that belong here, that grow here, that'll do well here. You can purchase a tree, or you can have them come planet, which I'd recommend the latter because they'll do a good job. Make sure it gets

established very very well for you, and that is really important. They also have in celebration of Arbor Day, they've got all their beautiful arbors and all the metal artwork for sale twenty percent off. RCW Nurseries haven't been there before. It's two forty nine, which is Tomball Parkway where it comes into belt Way eight. If they don't have something, I bet they can get it.

That's why we like to call them the get it, Got It Nursery because they are excellent at hunting something down and getting it in for you, and the selection is just outstanding. Check them out over at RCW yesterday I was I was going around, stopped in at Spring Creek Feed Sprint Creek Feed is the feed starts up there on FM twenty nine seventy eights and Magnolia, so kind of north and east to tom Ball, not very far all away

from ground Parkway Highway to forty nine. Their selection is just still excellent. In fact, he keeps getting better. They had plants outside. They had all kinds of garden de core and stuff outside, but inside to find the fertilizers, I recommend on garden line, you're going to find all kinds of pest. I was surprised at the amount of different types of pest disease and weed management products that they have. It is excellent and of course it's a

feed store. You're gonna get quality feed there. The store itself is cool. I mean it's just beautiful, from a little home to core and bling to everything you can imagine that you might need for animals or in this case, for your landscape and garden. At Spring Creek Feed. You should get by there and check them out. Not this coming week, but after that. I've got to get out in my yard and get some more potting done.

I've got a number of plants that are just waiting on me to show up and move them from the containers that they came in to the pots that I have. I got some beautiful pots out there. We were talking about the other day some my wife and I some things that we might move and plant and where to put them and whatnot. And you need a quality soil when you do that. First of all, you need a container that's large because you need to hold a lot of soil so you can hold moisture and

nutrients in our brutal summers. Don't stick them in a little tiny pot unless you want to water them three times a day trying to keep them alive. So we need a large pot that has drain holes. And then a quality soil like jungle land. Jungle Land is the one you've heard me talk about distributed by Nitrofoss. There's the outdoor flour and vegetable planting soil, and there's

the indoor water saving potting soil. That outdoor flour and vegetable that's the one you use for all those plants out on the patio or wherever you've got your containers sitting. You're going to find it in a lot of places, easy, easy to find. Shades of Texas. Down in South Houston on Genoa Red Bluff, some of you probably know that one. Well, Kingwood Ace Hardware has got it. In the Arbrogate up and Tumble, They've all got

the Nitrofoss products. That's a good you know, that whole line of products is easy, easy to find, and it's widely, widely available, easy to go. I love to go visit garden centers. That is one of my favorite things in the world to do, to get out and to check things out and you know, just kind of get a feel for what's new and what's going on out there. And I Enchanted Gardens down in the Richmond Rosenberg area is one of those destination places you just you just love to go.

And it's because they have everything everything you can imagine. And I was just looking at some things that they had available, and one of the cool things they do is container plantings. You can get all you can get your containers there. You can get all the plants you need, you can get the soils you need. And by the way, they also have all the

fertilizers I recommend here on garden Line. But some of the combos they've put together are just gorgeous and it just you stare at them and there's things spilling over the sides, there's things filling in, there's things coming out of the top. And when you use a larger container and make a multiplant, different types of planting, different species of plants all combined in a planting, it

is just really cool. And they of course they have that there at Enchanted Gardens as long as well as can't talk right now, as well as everything else that you might need for your plants. A cool new venka called tattoo that you got to see that boy, that is a deep deep, deep pink VCA really beautiful. Hey. Enchanted Gardens, by the way, is on FM three point fifty nine. It's north of Richmond. So if you're heading up Kiati direction full show direction, that is the way you go.

Enchanted Gardens Richmond dot com. Today'd be a good day to get out there and to check them out. So anyway they say the cobblers' kids go barefoot, and sometime at my house that is the case, especially when I'm traveling and off doing different kinds of things. And I'm ready looking forward to getting back and getting some things in order. I've got a front flower bed that we it's just plants have struggled there and it is a nasty, sticky clay.

It's just a mess. There's clays that are good clays and there's clays that are just I don't know. They're not very conducive to plant growth, for sure. And that's what I got, and I need to put some some amendment in there to fix it up. And what do you do? Well, Expanded shale is important. That works very well on helping a clay stay open. Takes about three inches of shale on the top mixed in to significantly do a good job, but any little amount is going to help a

little bit. Also, organic matter, you know, I think about places like Nature's Way. Nature's Way is on I forty five north. They're right where fourteen eighty eight comes in to Interstate forty five, just south of Conra. You turn right across the tracks and you're there. And Nature's Way, for a long time, has led in the creation of new quality product blends.

For example, the rose soil that started at Nature's Way, the leaf more compost that we talk about top dressing our lawns, but that started in Nature's Way. Remember it. Nature's Way. Every Friday is Fungal Friday. Fungal based composts are ten percent off in the bags and twenty percent off in the bulk, and you can give them a call. By the way, I always listen to the guard line with a pen and paper. Here's a phone number. Write it down. Nine three six three two one sixty nine

nine three six three two one six nine nine zero. Nature's Way excellent source of quality products to fix things like that flower bed I got in front. Before us stick my plants in it, I'm going to actually take my own advice and take care of the brown stuff before I start putting in the green stuff. We're going to head out to Paarland and visit with k now. Hello, Okay, good morning, Skip, Thank you for taking my call.

I have a question. I was just inquiring about a fragrant plans, particularly a climber if possible other than jasmine, that would bloom at a different time so it can have the fragrance more frequently. Uh, something that would

bloom on through the There is gosh a vine you want to vine? Well, well, it could be of our flower of Okay, well among our fravorite fragrant plants in shade, a very bright shade white butterfly ginger is going to be a late summer and fall bloomer that has a beautiful gardena like fragrance. The almond verbinam saying that right, Alma verbina aloisia. It's a it's

a shrub slash. It's not a tree, but it's a very lanky, big shrub that has an unbelievable vanilla fragrance that just wafts through the air. It's one of the more fragrant. There's night blooming plants that have that kind of fragrance as well. Let's see what else A vine ladybanks, the white lady banks in the spring. It's a once Bloomer, that's going to have a nice fragrance for you. Confederate Jasmine. Uh, that that is a good one. It just its fragrance is outstanding. That'd be another one.

So those are a few that come to mind. Oh that sounds that's great, great choice. I appreciate it, all right. And then finally, don't forget don't forget angels trump at or brug Mancia. Uh that late in the day it releases its fragrance. So it gets one and put it in a big giant container on your patio so you can enjoy. Angels trumpet is kind of poisonous. Though you're thinking of Datura. I'm talking about one the flowers hang down like trumpets hanging from heaven. That's where it gets to.

Yeah, that's the one I was thinking of too, that i'd heard from other people. Yes, I hear their music. You gotta go. Thank you so much for taking my blessed day. Thank you, bye bye. Appreciate your call. Hey, guess where I'm gonna be today and where I hope you will show up. Southwest Fertilizer. Southwest Fertilizer in the corner of Byssinet and Runwick I'm going to be giving listening to this. I'm gonna give away skip Bucks. So you come out there, you stop at my table

and ask a question. I'll give you skip Bucks, which is a very valuable uh dollar value. You can go and purchase stuff with Medina product. We're gonna have Toro blower and a Toro string tremor. Listen, you don't want to miss this. Kat r H Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to kt r H Garden Line with Skip Rictor. It's so crazy, Trim just watch him as world. Give a tea the supt Tasy not a side. Hey, welcome

back to Guarden Line. Good day have you with us today? Got some light outside, I see clouds. But listen, this is gonna be a good day. It's gonna be a good day to get out and get things done. These clouds are just let's just say that, a're making it a little cooler for you to get outside and work. We'll look at the upside of that. We're not looking to get a lot of rain out of them

today. So I hope you're making plans to get out and do some shopping, get out and do some yard work, whatever you need to get done around your place. What have you never grown before? What have you never tried to grow before? Have you have you never tried to grow vegetables? Have you never tried to grow a plumeria? Have you ever created a terraria? Remember those those are really popular back years and years ago. They still are. What what have you never tried to do before? Something just off

off the top, hanging baskets, beautiful hanging basket areas. Do you have some areas of your law in landscape that needs some work and need some renovation. Maybe a shade that is so deep that it just you just don't even notice it. It's like you've sort of lost that area from an esthetic standpoint on your property. There are things that will grow there. Why to tackle

one of those things this year? If you've never tried it before, if you have kids around the house, I really hope you will try vegetable gardening because when we grow it, we're more likely to eat it, and when we eat it, we're more likely to have good, long, healthy lives. You know, our number one health problem is what goes into our mouth

and the fact that we like to sit on the couch. Those kinds of things are big deals, and we can set kids off to a different kind of lifestyle than that by getting out with us in the garden, by enjoying growing things, whether it's flowers or vegetables. You know, have them grow some cut flowers, and they can take them and give them to to give them to teachers at school, give them to friends, give them to family, grandma, who who ever. It just gets them involved in nature,

and nature has a positive effect on us. There's research a mile high on the effects on us mentally, the effects things like ADHD with kids, the things with performance on tests, for example, exposure to nature, exposure to plants has an effect on that. It does. I just believe that we were made to be engaged with the living world around us, and here we are. We're gardeners. We've got the easy way in. I hope you'll

try something new this year, tackle something. If you got a question, a problem you've been dealing with, give me a call seven one three, two, one two fifty eight seventy four one of those problem areas. Maybe we can kind of help resolve that. You know, the best time to plant a tree was what forty years ago. Second best time is today today. The folks at Verdant Tree Farm pack and the team there. They grow

quality trees and they grow trees of all sizes. I mean you can get trees up to seven hundred gallon size, so I mean that's almost like it ought to come with a hammock, right, I mean, if it's going to be that size, that is awesome. They grow palm trees. Their selection of palms is excellent. And here's the deal. They plant them and then when they plant them, they will give you a one year warranty with that installation because they know how to do it right. They've been doing this

a while. Patrick's been doing it a while. If they really serve the community, you know, if you were a first responder or a military farmer military current military, ten percent discount for those as well, and I appreciate them doing that. They'll do free office consultation. You come in, bring them a picture, say hey, I'm looking for and you fill in the blank. Talk to them. They'll get you set up. It's easy to find one because there's three Verdant Tree Farms. There's one on Barker, Cypress

and West Houston. There's one down Broadway Street in Parland, and there's one in the Heights where I ten and Yelle Street come together. Verdant Treefarm dot com. By the way, they also have very large shrubs, like certain kinds of hollies that you might want to use for a screen. They can get you fixed up on that as well. Someone was making a comment to me the other day about how much they liked the smell of sweet Green fertilizer.

Not normally the people walk up, you know, it's like, Hey, I love the smell of fertilizer, but I understand what they're talking about. It's a molasses based fertilizer from nitrophoss and my crobes work on the molasses base and through magic, they turn it into an eleven percent nitrogen fertilizer that you can put out there on your lawn. It dissolves away and a sugar based carbohydrate and molasses that substance is just rocket fuel for beneficial bacteria in the

soil. It's just a it's just a quality blend. It really works super well and it will green up your lawn and you see a nice benefit from it. And it is widely available, you know, You're going to find it all kinds of places. Sweet Green, kingwoob Ace Hardware, for example, they're going to have that product. You can go down to Angleton to Lake Hardware down there they're going to have it, or over in Baytown Fisher's Hardware they're going to carry it as well. Over there. It's easy to

easy to find nitropost products that are very widely available. You ought to try this Sweet Green. I think that you'll be very impressed. Eleven percent is one of the highest analyzes for an organic plant food that you're going to find. Not every day someone walks up and says, hey, I like the

smell of fertilizer. This fertilizer. I was at the Arbigate a while back, and in fact, I posted something to Facebook, to our Facebook, our garden Line Facebook page, which you should follow if you don't already, about the parking lot in the back. You know, I keep talking about it and I want you to see it. It's this all weather parking lot where it's got a grid, like a plastic honeycomb looking grid with rock that's inside of it, and so when rain hits it, it goes right through

it. It just absorbs water. So there's never muddy out there. I mean, you drive in any kind of weather and you have this all weather surface. You have to turn down Trishel Road, which goes around behind Arburgate. So if you pass Arburgate and you haven't seen Trischel, keep going, but look better because you're going to see the other end of Trish'll come back in. Just drive around behind Arbrogate and you get right in there. And

you know Arburgate always has quality products. There're one two three completely easy system is just an outstanding, an outstanding combination for making your plants happy. I always say on Guardline, brown stuff before green stuff. The one two three easy system is brownst You know, it's got a food for anything that has roots with calcium added too, by the way. Uh, it's got a compost that has expanded shale in it. And it also has a soil,

a soil blend that has expanded shale in it. So it's one two three easy. You take those three bags home with your plant. Your plant's going to be happy, the roots are going to be happy, it's going to thrive. That's why Beverly and the you know Arbrogate, that's why they have that system. Because they want you to take their beautiful plants home and have success with them. And they know that by getting those products in your hand,

you're going to have success. Arbrogate's on twenty nine to twenty just west of tom Ball. It's easy to find. Check them out on social media too. They got some excellent posts all the time going on up there. We're gonna take a little quick break here. Our phone number is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Welcome back to Guarden Line. Good to have you with us today. What are we going to talk about? Well, you have to tell me. Well, and if I don't

hear from you, I'll tell you. I'll tell you what I want to talk about. Seven one three two one two k t r H. Seven one three two one two k t r H. You may have heard Nicky during the news earlier talk about the fact that there is a holiday or tax holiday when it this weekend. When it comes to things that are emergency, you know, emergency type items, and I can't go through the whole list of what's available. You can go to the Texas Controller website and see But

if you've been looking to purchase some of these items. ACE Hardware Store is a great place to do it. And while you're at ACE, here here is a huge deal going on at ACE. At two day, thirty two participating ACE Hardware stores, thirty two different stores will honor a sale on Still equipment Still power equipment. It's called the ACE Big Still Sale. Still is

a quality brand of power equipment. They're going to give you fifteen percent off, and even if the item was on sale, it's still a fifteen percent off. I mean, you cannot beat that if you've looked to get any quality equipment for doing all of the different things around. You know, we got weed eaters and everything else that still provides chainsaws and whatnot. Now's the time to do it, because you're not going to do better than a fifteen

percent off sale. You can go to your local ACE Hardware store. If you don't know where ACE Hardware store is, well, go to ACE Hardware dot com and find the store locator and it'll tell you. In fact, when I sign into Acehardware dot Com, it always says can I use your location? And I say yes, and I get this big map of red dots all over the Greater Houston area. Forty different stores in the extended Greater Houston area. Thirty two stores though around here are doing that still sale today.

The ACE big still sale take advantage of that, and while you're in there, ask them about what qualifies for emergency supplies. They're like, whether I can go into it. But there's a bunch of different things that qualify, and you can say you won't have to pay tax on those items as well. I got two birds with one stone. Let's go to Cypress. We're going to talk to Eric. Hello. Eric, Hey, Skip,

I got a question for you about a really terrible looking lawn. I've been skimpy on chemicals in the backyard for a few years, I guess because the pets, grandkids, and guess what landed in my yard this year And I didn't really realize it until it was too late. Burweed is everywhere, and you can't walk on a yard with burweed. Yeah it hurts. I'll start digging it up. But then I've looked at some of the possible chemicals like atrazine. I don't know how toxic that is in the back how long it

takes to get it away, and if it harms the tree. Because I had an arborist out of a while back, and he said, don't use around up on the yard, the kind that's for lawns, and don't use a lot of things because it kills the microbes that the trees need. So I'm a little bit of a quandary as to what to put down for the grass, and then now what to do with the with this spur weed. I've considered residing, and I know that would cost it a small fortune and

be a backbreaker. So I just calling for your thoughts. Let's drill down on this. I just want to make sure that I've got the right weed with you. It's not grass burr. You're talking about a little frilly leafed broad leaf plant that has the burrs on it. Is that correct? Yeah? Kind of. It's low, it stays low, so it doesn't hardly

cut very easily. You got to dig that out. And boy, they right, and they're everywhere because I saw that where they like sparse grass, and mine is sparse, so it's moved in anytime sunlight hits The sell nature plants of weeds. So the density of your lawn is like the bodyguard that either does or does not let weeds into your lawn. And that's kind of what you described at the beginning of the call. So your number one goal is to go to my website, Gardening with Skip dot com and get my

free download lawn care guide. It ties you how to mow, water and fertilize properly and the timing on those things. And the more you build the lawn over time, the less weed problems you're going to have. Like burweed, for example, there are a few weeds that can coexist in a dense Saint Augustine lawn. Most of them can't. And so I would say I kind of hear from you you'd rather not use chemicals if possible, but whatever.

So that mowwater, fertilized fact sheet or chart calendar is very very important. Do that all summer long. Now, as far as what to do about the burweed, now you would have to use a post emergent broad leaf weed killer, but you're not going to put it down at a rate that would inch through the soil or harm a tree or something like that. You're going to apply it just enough to dampen the leaves of the weeds, and once you do that, it's going to kill the weeds back. And then

as the grass begins to grow. It's not like your long stays toxic for months, you know, or anything. It's not going to be an issue there. Just just follow the label carefully. These products that work best when it gets in the upper eighties, they begin to be stressful to Saint Augustine. So we're right now in temperatures that are hitting the upper eighties. But if you do it in the morning and let them dry up before the temperatures

get up there, you're okay. Still. If you wait another month or so, then we're looking at the nineties and it's already hot first thing in the morning, and so I would get it done now rather than later. If you're going to do those sprays, yeah, and so yeah, go ahead. So I don't have a whole of Saint Augustine to worry about in the back. You could do in the front. I haven't seen the birweed in the front yet. But what is the chemical that you would recommend putting

down on that? And I'm guessing I need to kill it and then dig it up still because those birds don't disappear. I mean the plant might die, but yeah, but well, if you're going to dig it up anyway, then I wouldn't spray it. I just dig it up. But that is one heck of a job digging up burweed all over a lawn. If you're up to that, then go for it, but don't don't spray it

and then dig it up. You just got to determine that you are going to get the densest Saint Augustine anyone's ever seen by the end of summer, and you can do that with with that mollwater fertilized with quality products, and I would that's what I would aim for. There are pre emergent herbicides that you would put out in this early like February for the burweed. But let's just work on getting the lawn dnse and seeing how far we can it there.

And getting the burweed out is helpful because it is a competition for your grass. Now that it's found this little niche in the spots in the lawn where sunlight hit the soil. You decide the way you want to go about it, you know, from hand pulling to spraying to whatnot. But the simplest, least spray way I can tell you to do it is maybe hit them now with the spray to kill the ones that are there. But then just really focus on that mowater fertilized and what's fertilizer called again? Say it

again? What the name of your fertilizer that you're talking about. Oh, there's a number of them on my schedule. You hear me talk about them on garden Line. You know, there's products from Microlife, there's products from Nelson's, there's products from nitrofoss and from Medina and they all work. They're all good products. They work. They're different, you know, some are

immediate release, some are slow release. But when you look at my schedule at Gardening with Skip, it lists all of the products there and it talks about when to apply them. And so that that's why I'm trying to send you there. Because it's free. You just download it, print it up if you want. And when when a yard is bad enough, I mean, do you at some point you got to say there's nothing there to redeem.

I mean talk about residing a little bit. I know that's okay, I'm gonna have to I'll do this in a real quick way because I have to run on. But if you have grass that's alive, that's in decent health within a foot space apart. It will cover back over by by summery, you know, through the sometime in the summer with good care. If if it's more sparse than that and you got larger areas, either you're having to plug in strips here and there to try to speed the fill in,

or you just go to the total resaid and it is money. But sometimes biting the bullet and just starting off that way maybe easier. Unless you have the time to it out and kind of mess with your lawn each week, a couple of days a week doing some things, it may be easier to just go to the reside. But that you have any recommendations for reside companies are places to buy it. There's a number of places around town. I

don't have a specific one that I would recommend. I would do a little research on what kind of grass you want, and what variety of grass you want, what cultivar. Saint Augustine it is the most shade tolerant that we have. There are zoisias that are moderate close in shade tolerance, but not as good as Saint Augustine. And then I wouldn't even do Bermuda. It has its own issues. It's just a version of St. Augustine. There's a couple of different breeds of it or whatever. There's a lot of them,

and some of them are hard to hard to find. I tell you what. Let me let me do this. If you go to the Aggie turf website, I'm concerned. I'm on time here. If you go Aggie Turf website, it's it's Aggie turf dot TAMU t A m U dot e d U go to text turf grasses being the lower left corner says it has turf grass, weeds and turf grass's by the way, you should look at the weed part two. Uh and and it'll list like you click on Saint

Augustine or click on Zoisia and it'll tell you cultivars and stuff. Now that's not the most up to date list, you know, websites have to get updated periodically, but that's a good start. Uh And And I I would I would try that. Depending on how much shade you have, and depending on uh some other factors, one variety or another would be better suited to your lawn. Okay, okay, I appreciate you, all right, you bet, Eric, thank you very much for that call. You know we're

talking about fertilizing and things. Microlife. Micro Life products are excellent. You know, Eric was kind of interested maybe and stand away from some things that are synthetic. Well that that's God's fine. That's that's your prerogative. By the way, my schedules, both of them online, have organic and synthetic options, so you choose what you want. They're there. We help you have success based on the way you want to go about it. And Microlife

is an organic product. The green bag the six two four that is the standard lawn fertilized standard organic lawn fertilizer, and I use it for things way beyond the lawn. I mean, it's an excellent product. The Microlife humts plus C zero four helps with your soil structure. Humate is concentrated compost.

If you take composts to its final stage, that's called humus, and humates plus is a high quality soil amendment that you can put on the surface in your lawn and in time, as you do that and the lawn grows, you just create an environment where grass can thrive. And that's that's what we're looking for. If you go to Microlifefertilizer DOT com Microlife Fertilizer dot com. You can find out where to get it, and it's widely, widely available.

I mean you hear me talking about feed stores and ace hardware stores of Southwest Fertilizer, and you know all these places are going to carry micro Life. It's easy, easy to find. Well, we just ran through another break Nikki. This morning is going two dead gum fasts. It is really I don't have time to talk about all the things I want to talk about. And humus is that like hummus but different. It's like hummus for the soil. Oh No, humus is like okay, so you start with the

leaves and grass clippings, that's organic matter. It decomposes into composts. That's the good stuff to put in your soil. And when composts decomposes all the way as far as it can, that's humus. Wow, I don't love the education. Maybe we need to mix it up and put it in a little one pint tens and I don't know, maybe keep you regular or something like that idea. Sure, I'm just saying I never heard about anybody eating hummus, but humus all right, I'm past sorry. Hey, welcome back

to the garden Line. Good to have you with us today. You hear me all the time brag about our independent garden centers here in the Houston area. I'm just telling you, if you live in any other city here in Texas and a lot of I've been to a lot of cities around the country, nobody has got this selection of garden centers that we do, the top notch independent mom and pop whatever you want to call them garden centers. And Warren Southern Gardens out in Kingwood is an example of that. You know that

you've got Warren Southern Gardens and you got Kingwood Garden Center out there. It is just one of those places where you go and you just want to hang out, You want to wander around because they have so many cool things. By the way, they've got a deal right now that whether you buy a bag of Nelson's Turf Star Slow and Easy or Nitrofoss Super Turf, either one, they'll give you a free tempon bag of a barricade for the pre murder week control. That is a deal they got going on out there also.

And they have a selection of plants, outstanding hibiscus, outstanding color anything you're looking for, you're going to find it out there. But there is a plant that I hadn't seen in a long time, and it's blue butterfly clarodendron. And you've got to see this plant. It's a shrub, but it has a little clusters of little blue flowers that look like butterflies. The petals look like butterfly wings, and the anthers and filaments, the pollen and everything.

The reproductive part of the flower coming up look like the antenna of a butterfly. Blue butterfly clarodendum. Just go out there and see it. It is an excellent plant. I like to put it in a kind of a semi sun area where it gets a little sun, a little bit of shade. It does super super well there, Blue butterfly Clara dendum. But that's just typical of woring Southern gardens. Of course you're going to have new things. Of course you're going to have cool things going on, and they always

have some great deals going on too. You can go to the website it's Warrens Southern Gardens Warrens Southern Gardens. So you know, I've I've been there a number of times. By the way, they're open seven days a week too. That's another thing. I mean, it's always a good day to go out there to Warren Southern Guards and a Kingwood Garden Center. While you're at it, well, guess what Mother's Day is coming up? I hope you know that. Guys, this is your official You've been told, you've

been minded, you've been remembered. Mother's Day is coming up, and so what do you do for mom on Mother's Day? Well, there's a lot of things. Of course, people think of flowers or box of chocolates or whatnot. I'll tell you what mom would really like. Mom would like something from Wabirds Unlimited. Because at Wabirds everything you can imagine that associates with birds. They're gonna have it. They're gonna have feeders, they're gonna have the

bird houses. You know. They've got the little hyper hummingbird feeder, which in my opinion, is the best hummingbird there is. I've got one myself, high perch hummingbird feeder. They got the Eco Tough Classic feeder. It's the typical if you kind of picture a bird feeder in your mind, it's probably what you're picturing, but it's made out of recycled plastic milk jugs. Really cool. My favorite feeder the squirrel proof. It's called the Eliminator squirrel

Proof feeder. That is a Cadillac and it works. I'm telling you the squirrels at my house. You should hear the language they use around the yard because they can't get into the darn thing. They're very frustrated. There's books, there's just all kinds of things at Wildbirds Unlimited, including even like jewelry and decorations for the home, and bird baths, bird bath, bird water

feature for birds. Right, they've got it. Wilbird's unlimited and super super quality feed where when you buy a pound of wild Bird feed, you're getting a pound of stuff that's going to go into the stomach of a bird, not kicked off on the ground. Super high quality. That's what they do wild Bird's Unlimited. So get by there, now, get mom something. I guarantee you can find something from Mom there. We're going to head now out to Mike in Surfside. Hey, Mike, Hey, Skip, thanks

for taking my call. I got a quick question for him trying to store some vegetable seeds and I was wondering if by refrigerating them and just a normal refrigerator. Would that extend the life of the seed or are they just better off at room temperature? No, significantly better when you cool them down.

You know, when people are want to store seed forever, they put them in the freezer, right, But a refrigerator for our home garden purposes or refrigerators just find you just need them to be dry, make sure they're dropping. That's why you know, whenever I buy something you get those little desecon packets in it. I always save those because I throw those in with my

seed and that's pulling moisture out of the air. In cold storage, you need something that seals tightly, not as I but like a Mason jar with a lid, or one of those click down food storage jars that has a rubber seal. Yeah, yeah, plan on using the Mason jar ceiling deal. I'll figured the refrigeration would probably help extend the life of the seed. That wasn't quite sure it does significantly. All right, I appreciate you helping me. All right, take care, Thanks, Mike, appreciate your call.

That is for sure. I've told you about the silver bag. You know what the silver bag is that's Nitrophoss's superturf. Superturf, it's nineteen four ten. It's got a lot of nitrogen in it. But don't worry about that. You're not. We don't want to overdo nitrogen, but you don't when you put on superturf. And here's why. Half of that nitrogen is in a slow release form that's going to release over the next two or three or four months. I mean, it just depends on conditions, weather conditions,

but it gradually feeds the grass like grass takes up nutrients gradually. It's kind of like we eat. Do you eat six months of food at one time? Well, I've attempted it on several occasions, but no, we don't do that. We eat gradually each day, and grass takes up nudrinks gradually each day. So that slow release is the way you spread out the growth get a stronger, deeper, more resilient root system. It also has

four percent iron, which is important for good color. A lot of times in our clay soils and our highph soils, we end up with a little bit of an iron deficiency, especially early in the season, but it can occur through the year and the nitroposs superturf the silver bag. That's how we avoid that. So where do you get nitrofas superturf, Well, pretty much everywhere, that's a fast answer. You get it plants for all seasons, yep, that's on Tomball Parkway, you know that one. You can get

into asposees up in the woodlands. They carry nitrofoss products up there as well. Or go out to Brenham to plants and things and you're going to find superturf as well as other nitrofoss products. Makes it easy, you know, I just realized I am not giving the phone number out often today, and I always have to do that because people tune in and they don't know where to call. Well, our phone number is seven to one three two one two kt r H seven to one three two one two kt r H.

That makes it easy to get ahold of us. What do you want to talk about? What kind of questions do you have that we can assist you with. I earlier was talking about getting out and doing some container repotting that I need to get done. That is important. I've got a bunch of orchids. You know how it is, You go and you maybe you, I don't know. You get an orchid, someone gives it to you, you buy it yourself, and you bring it home. The moth orchid,

that is the one that is just ubiquitous. It's the one you see everywhere from grocery stores to garden centers. The moth orchid is the easiest orchid to grow indoors. It's the full, almost fool proof orchid. If you've got a bathroom with a real bright window, that's a perfect environment because you know, every now and then you shower and you get some humidity in the air

and whatnot, and they're just happy there in that bright light. They don't want to be in direct sun, but they want to be a nice bright light to do their best. And I've got a bunch that are sitting there. They most of them bloomed for me this year. A lot of them are about a year past when I should have been repotting them. But I'll go in there and pull them out. I cut away all the dead roots and the base of the stem that now is no longer functioning, and they're

always sending new aerial roots down from the stem up above. You probably see those coming out, maybe sprawling outside the outside of the pot. Orchids are not a terrestrial well, moth orchids are not a terrestrial plant. They live in trees. They attached to the bark of trees, and that's their natural habitat. So that's why we put them in a bark mix and occasionally if you will clean them up like I'm describing, repot them in a container with

some fresh bark chunks. You can buy orchid blends at our garden centers that are designed for that. They may even have a little bit of charcoal in them or stuff. Just to avoid soggy conditions. Orchids do not want to sit in water. They just need to get a good soaking every now and then and then drain really well. Do not let them sit in water. But if you do that and then begin to fertilize them very lightly, super

super low rate. When you water, you can get invigorating new growth along with good sunlight, and that orchid will cycle back into bloom for you later on. And I need to do that to mine. I just got this pile of orchids that have been neglected, and so the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Orchids is probably on their way to my house right now. But I'm gonna fix that. And I just a tip for you as well. Hey, we're going to take a break seven one three two one two

ktr h. I'll be right back. Welcome back to garden Line. Good to have you. We are. We are hopefully walking on sunshine. We got a little bit of clouds out there in the sky, but listen to day is it's safe, It's safe to go out. The weatherman keeps telling us, yeah, it's cloudy, but chances of a rain are very scattered and not that high in any given location. So let's get out there and

get some stuff done in our yards. I was talking about wild birds being a good gift for Mother's Day, and it just reminded me I bought my mother outlaw. I'm sorry, mother in law. I get those confused sometimes, but you know, I'm gonna leave that as it is. I bought her one of those little hangars that you put a bird feeder on. You

know, it's kind of like a shepherd's crook that comes up. I got one at Wildbird's Unlimited recently, and I'm gonna get her all set up with a bird feeder right outside the window where she likes to sit, and we'll get her all fixed up to you. So don't forget your mother outlaw. I'm sorry your mother in law when you're purchasing your mother's day gifts at wild Birds Unlimited. If you're listening to this, have you been to Nelson's Water Garden out in Katie A lot of you have. No, It's a popular

place. They've been around a long time. You know Nelson's water Garden. They are national leaders in the water garden industry. They have been building water gardens for a very long time. So everything from the fish, to the plants, to the structures themselves. They can get you fixed up. They will come and build like a waterfall in your property if you like that, a pond whatever kinds of little When I say a pond, I mean you know, a little small pond for your koi or whatever kind of fish you're

doing. They've been doing this. They can do it turnkey. But if you want to do some do it yourself. They can guide you on that as well. Yes, they also help with that. Now, Nelson's Nursery and water Garden is also a nursery. Don't forget that. I mean, they got some sod in the other day people were in purchasing the sod. They've got all kinds of plants restocked on zenias, really cool, really cool

shrubs, the kaleidoscope, babelia, which is a beautiful little abilia. They've got those, and I don't know, guardinas, adrajas, you name it. Definitely got the hibiscus, of course, but they really the feature of that place is the water gardens and it's the way they transform a landscape.

And I just have to please do this. Just go out the plan an outing, get some friends, get your neighbors, family, whatever, go out there and check them out and look, and you will be inspired you walk through there, and I did the first time I walked in there. Everywhere I went it was just like, oh my gosh, I have to have that for my backyard. Oh my gosh, I have to have that for my backyard. When you see it set up like that, it is

so inspirational. And they really are an inspiring place. A destination garden center Nelson's Watergardens dot Com. Think of it as your West Houston garden center. It is out on Katie Fortvenroe snort of Katie Freeway out there in Katie. I promise you, if you go, you will be impressed, and you will suddenly you will realize that how did I ever get by without a disappearing fountain coming out of a beautiful container or a little waterfall. I love love

that kind of inspiration in places like that. At the house, we are transitioning our vegetable garden. It's coming out pretty quick here. I've got some cool seasoned peas. I had some sugar snaps that are now on their way out. They have finished up, and boy, they were productive. It was with a very productive planting. For sure. I need to get my tomato trellis vine. I need to get my tomato vines attached to the trellis.

They're kind of flopping around. And I like to use cattle panels just those are those livestock panels, the galvanized very heavy duty wire with big oldes ones with like four inch by six inch openings, and the and the thing

you can put a couple of teeposts in attach them to a teeposts. I slap mine just a little bit and then the tomatoes kind of grow on that and whenever one flops the wrong way, I just push it back through the trellis and ends up with a wall of tomato foliage and the tomatoes, because they're slanted, they hang down a little bit below the treillers where they don't get as much sunburn. And it works really well. But I occasionally have to go back and kind of wind them through it. But a lot of

things to be done in the vegetable garden this week. Have you been to A and A Plants and Produce recently up in the Montgomery area, All of you who live up there in the Lake Conroy area, this is your hometown garden center. I mean it's just right there on the back door. They have a landscape crew that can come out to your place and they can do work for you out there. They absolutely are excellent at tending to things like that. If you are needing any of the fertilizers that I talk about here

on guarden Line, they have them. They always are getting restocked. They restocked mulches, they restock the fertilizer, they restock the compost. So you know, you hear me brag about airloom soils and Nature's way, you hear me brag about Nelson's fertilizers, micro life, fertilizers, nitrophos fertilizer. It's all there, and really cool garden bling too, from signs to little metal

arbor structures. It's just I love going through there. If you have any imagination at all, you walk in there and you can kind of see how that place can really turn your beautiful, beautiful landscape even into a more beautiful,

enchanting one. Lots of activities for kids too. When you go by there, ask them about the things that they do, the programs that they do with the kiddos, because they always have something like that going on at Ana Plants and Produce in Montgomery. By the way, they're on the east side of Montgomery on one oh five, So if you are heading up in that direction, you're going to drive by. In fact, anybody going up and down one oh five all the way from Nevinesota to Conrod, Texas,

you just drive by Ana all the time. That's right there. I have my lawn. I finally mowed the first time my lawn. I always tried to lay a little bit, but I got that new grass put in that I was talking about earlier, and it's starting to grow and finally hit a point where I needed to get it mode. So I got that knocked out because I'm going to be out this week in a way, and got it down to a good level. Just remember when you're mowing, a sharp mower

is important. Number one is less strained on your lawn more. But number two, and this is something I bet you haven't thought about. When you look at your lawn, it's like looking at a pixelated picture, but you're so far away that you don't see the pixels. Right. But each grass tip is going to have a brown edge where it was cut off. And if your mower is sharp, that's going to be a real thin brown edge because it made a nice clean cut, like you just took scissors and snipped

it off. If your mower is dull, it's going to be a split, ragged, larger ten brown end of the grass blade because that blade just essentially just just hammered off the end of that grass blade as it flew by and didn't make a clean cut. Now you take that difference between like a little one eighth of an inch brown and maybe one half of an inch brown in some cases, and you multiply that times ten billion grass blades out there, and the green suddenly looks less green, and so a sharp more blade

to a degree makes your lawn greener. I know that's just think about it. I think it'll make sense the way I described it if you just think about it. You want to fertilize, you want to get it mode, but you want to mow regularly. Every time you mow is like you're hedging your lawn. And the more you hedge a plant, the dentre it gets. And so the turf specialists first time one of them told me this,

I thought you got to be kidding, but it's true. Of all the things we do our lawns, the single most important thing to have a dense, beautiful lawn is regular mowing. Yes. They need water, yes, and we need fertilizer. Butt the single most important thing is mowing frequently with a very sharp mower, and that'll give you success. I hope that helps out. Hope that's something to think about when it comes to fertilizing. Nelson

plant Food has got a couple of products that are outstanding. One of them is I always thought of it as a fast release, but actually it also has some slow release nitrogen in it as well. It's called Bruce's Brew. Bruce's Brew is primarily one that releases fast, but it does have some slower release products in it. We use it in spring for a quick green up.

You can do it anytime the year you want to do it. You can do a regular standard rate of you can kind of cut it in half and do a lower rate and then later do another lower rate and that sort of spreads out the release even more or just gets slow and easy. Slow and easy is Nelson's slow release. And when I say slow, I mean this is going to feed your lawn for three months, four months. I mean it really goes out there pretty darn far. And when you return your

clippings, in addition to that, they're decomposing. And so your lawn is just getting the nicest, slowest feed all through the summer months, just like you would want it to be in nature. And slow and easy by Nelson plant Food is an outstanding blend with the right kinds of nitrogen to provide that kind of gradual feed over time. Pretty important, pretty important to do.

Nelson plant Food products are widely available. They have everything from the jars of color Star products to these these turf fertilizers part of the turf Star line of products work. I know because I've used it to work very well. Where you're listening to the Garden Line, and I want to remind you that today after the show at eleven am eleven am, I'll be at Southwest Fertilizer corner of Bissing at and run with Now, Bob's going to be given away a

Toro blower and a Touro string tremor. That's a valuable gift to be given to two valuable gifts. We'll be giving away some Medina stuff. They'll be something called skip Bucks. When you stop by my table and maybe you bring a plant sample or a picture, just a question in and I'm helping you with it, I'll give you skip Bucks and you can use those to get things at the store there. For example, Medina has got something called super

Grow plus sixteen O to hose end applicating. I'm going to tell you more about that in a little bit, but you could use your skip Bucks to get some of that. KTRH Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised on this program. To Katie r. H. Garden Line with skin Rict it's so trim. Just watch him as so many superasys. They're not a sign. Welcome back to Garden Line. Good to have you with us, looking forward to talking. We got a lot of things

to talk about this hour. If you have been by Plants for All Seasons lately, you know what I'm talking about. When I say the place looks gorgeous. It is stocked up. There's plenty of everything there. One of the things I enjoy there is the fact that they're gonna carry things that do well here, that that's just what they do. They this place Plants for all seasons, the Flowery Family. They've been doing this since nineteen seventy three.

For those of you who haven't been there, it's on Highway to forty nine North. That's Tomball Parkway when you get if you're heading north, when you get to Luetta, you exit Luetta and go over Luetta and it's right there on the side of Tomball Parkway, just past Luetta. Easy, easy, easy to get to. Now they are green thumb experts, So if you have a brown thumb, you walk in there, they're going to give you a plant, and they're going to give you advice, and they're going

to give you the products you need to turn the brown green. That's what we always say. There's no such thing as a brown thumb, there's uninformed thumbs. Well, when you take quality plants, quality products, and quality advice, everything looks like you have a green thumb because you're doing it right. And Plants for All Seasons helps you do that. The website Plants for All Seasons dot com. The phone number you want to write this down two

eight, one, three, seven six, sixteen forty six. Go in, talk to Sherry, talk to Kelly, talk the whole crew there. Everybody that's there is an expert in helping you have success. You can take them a sample, you can a picture in there. Their goal is to make sure that you have beauty and bounty just like you're dreaming of when you walk into the place, and they'll work with you to help you achieve just that at Plants for All Seasons. I'm going to head up to Cypress now

and talk to Sandy. Hello, Sandy, good morning, Thank you for taking my call. I have a question, like a general question on my vegetable plant. I know indeterminate tonight You're not you're supposed to prune, but like my black beauty eggplant they finally produced, and my okras and my bell peppers. If the lead at the bottom are touching the oil, should I

pick them off? But pip them off? I generally do. I mean, you know, there's always a potential, especially an unmulched soil, to splash dirt up on them and maybe get a little more disease issues that could get in there a little leisier. It's not night and day. It's not like, you know, it's the end of the world if you don't prone them off. But number one, just keep the soul mult and then you don't really even have to worry about it, Sandy, I find containers.

Okay, yeah, no, I wouldn't. I just wouldn't worry about it. A lot. You'll find that the older leaves start to get aged, and they may get more leaf spots, or they may turn a little bit yellow and stuff. So sometimes you're cleaning them up just for aesthetics, sort of get disease issues reduced a little bit in the in the plant. Thank you, bet good luck. Now you know, Sandy that if we give advice, it's free. But all I ask for is half the eggplant you

grow, drop it off at the studio. I got to make my baba ganoosh and so I'm dependent on your baba. You take care, you take care. If if you are looking to improve your lawn and you're looking for a natural product that has a high concentration of nitrogen in it, Sweet Green by Nitrofoss has just that. It's eleven percent nitrogen product. It's based on a molasses with the microbial content involved to create this sweet Green product that absolutely

stimulates microbial growth in your soil. You know, organic gardeners have been using molasses on their soil for a long time and they understand the value that to stimulating beneficial bacteria and other microbes. And Sweet Green will do that now. Sweet Grain, being a Knight Fosh product, is easy to find. You don't have to hunt everywhere for it. You're going to find it an enchanted

forest out there in the Richmond Rosenberg area. A growers outlet up in willis Or RCW Nursery where Interstate Interstate where FM two forty nine Tambo Parkway comes into Beltway eight. All places you can get You're Sweet Green from Nitroposs. We're gonna head out now to Jersey Village, and talk to Teddy. Hello, Teddy, how are you doing? Skip? I'm well, how are you? I'm doing fantastic. I got a quick question for you. I drove around the neighborhood and as a matter of fact, in my front yard,

I've noticed that I'm patches. I only got a few patches of lime green color. And I'm I'm over here, like am I'm the only one? So hey, you know what. I drove around, you know, and a few homes and all that, and they even had it too. I mean, it's what's the problem there. It could be a couple of things. Uh. Iron deficiency will cause a lack of iron, I'm a lack of art, a lack of deep green, the emerald green color you're probably

looking for. Uh. If you grab a grass blade that lacks the color and you hold it up to the light and let the light kind of come through it, and you see green and yellow stripes going up and down the blade, that is an iron deficiency. And so now the next question is why is there an iron deficiency. It could be because of a lack of iron, but more likely it's because of a lack of available iron. And so putting down a product that is going to give you iron. You can

do an iron keylate. A keylate is a way they protect the iron molecules so the soil doesn't tie it up as fast. You could do that. You could do fertilizers that contain iron. You know, this silver bag nitrophuss superturf contains four percent. You know, I put that the nineteen fourten. That yeah, I called in that last week. I put that in last week, okay, and that will be that will be providing some iron for them. The other thing that can cause iron deficiency is loss of roots.

The disease take all root rot often shows up as yellowish types of areas on their way down to dead. And if the yellow keeps going and you end up with dead spots, that would probably take a root rot. But I don't want to jump to conclusions. I'm just telling you you're seeing an iron deficiency and it's due to one of those things. And I think you did the right thing starting with the silver bag super turf. Let's see if it carry up from that. If not, you may want to treat those spots

with a little iron key late as well. Okay. Is that a concern I need to worry about? Right now, or I just just I would wait if it were mine, I would wait and watch a lot of times iron deficiency gets better as the weather warms up a little bit too. All right, okay, okay, all right, skip, Thank you buddy, all right, you bet, thank you nobody. I wanted to tell you guys about Jorges Hidden Gardens. You probably have have heard me talk about them

before. They're down in Alvin and Hoores Hidden Gardens. Is it's easy, easy to get to. I mean they here's there. They're hours, by the way. They're open for weekend Friday from eight am to four pm Saturday from a am to four pm. Sunday from eight am to four pm, so it's easy to remember, right eight am to four pm Saturday through Sunday. They have a lot of plants, a lot of selection plants. You

can get fruit trees, you can get bedding plants. You can get your vegetables and herbs and blueberries and I mean just all kinds of things at Jorges Hidden Gardens. They also carry this three sixty tree stabilizer three sixty tree stabilizer a brago. They've got it down there. You can get it, so if you're in Alvin, Santa Fe, Dickinson Hillcrest, Alcoa, Arcadia, Alta Loma, all those communities. You got a hometown garden center right in

your backyard. Jorges Hidden Gardens. They are easy to get to. Again, they're in Alvin, Texas, so no problem finding Jorges Hidden Gardens. By the way, they're on Elizabeth Street. If you're looking, I'm gonna go away, take a break. I'll be right back. Seven one three, two point two fifty eight seventy four. Hey, welcome back to garden Line. Good to have you with us today. It's going to be a good day. By the way, I know you see clouds, but that's

just to keep a cooler for us. We're not going to get a lot of rain today. In fact, you probably will not see rain where you are at all, even in a little tiny sprinkle. So it's a good day to get out, get some work done, get some plants and products and things, so you set yourself up for success. Remember that spring, we are still officially in. Spring is the time when we set ourself up

for success. So when the brutal summer months come, we've got healthy plants with good, deep, strong root systems because we've prepared the soil, and we purchased plants that belonged, and we got them planted and established before the brutal weather of summer I hit them. So it's now's the chance. You have been warned, you have been advised, or whatever. Now's the time

to get all this done so you can have that kind of success. Speaking of getting out and about ACE Hardware has got a deal that I got to tell you about. This is the Big still Sail Steel. Steel is in the string tremors, as in the chainsaws, as in the power equipment that you love it, quality equipment. Right now, thirty two participating ACE stores will honor this sale today. There's a couple of them that may. Some of them are doing it yesterday, some of them will do it tomorrow.

But today, all of them, all of them today, Big Ace, the ACE Big Steel Sale. And it is now fifteen percent off. Even if something's on sale, you still get fifteen more percent off. I don't know how you beat that. So that's on all the steel serial numbered tools, all the attachments, the batteries, and the chargers. Now it doesn't include industrial tools and accessories, but all still serial number tools, attachments,

batteries and chargers at thirty two different ACE Hardware stores. You're not going to beat that. And by the way, while you're there, don't forget this is the emergency weekend break where things that we would purchase, such as batteries, such as an escape ladder out of the second story, and all the kinds of things you might purchase during it for emergencies at your house you can get tax free, and ACE carries those kinds of things, So talk to

them about that when you're in there too. I want to head now to Richmond and we're going to talk to Steve. Hello, Steve, Hey, good morning Skip. I got a quick question for you. We've got some live oaks in our front yard, three of them. They've been here, oh, probably five years. They've been getting about twelve thirteen fourteen feet tall now and I need to find somebody that can come and excuse me and the trim the tops of them. They're getting kind of bushy. All right,

Well, the person I would suggest you get is Martin spoon More. Martin Spoon Moore's companies called Afordable Tree Service. You want to hear them advertised on your shows or the channel there a lot. So yeah, Mark's been doing this long time if they're over thirty years experience, and I've seen the work he does, visited with the hem and Joe. Uh. There, that's that old time kind of company service where the owners answer the phone and the

the they make sure you're happy with the work. So uh here that was right. Okay, here's the phone number. Do you got a penhandy? There? I do. I'm ready seven one three six nine nine twenty six sixty three seven one okay, six nine nine twenty six sixty three. If you want to go to the website websites aff Tree Service dot com. Aff Tree Service dot com. Okay, I got one more quick question if you

have time absolutely work. My wife, our neighbor has an evergreen rosebush out front and it's just beautiful and we're having a hard time finding those, uh and nurseries around. Do you have any idea? Those are the ones I had, like the five white petals that look more like a flower than a rose. Well, I'm not you don't have to have a variety name for it, yeah, rosesance. Oh, I'll tell you what I would.

I would call RCW Nursery and see if they have access to that they've got like, oh gosh, four pages single space of roses that they have access to to be able to get some stuff. RCW prib be your best bet. RCW Nursery. You know, sense a builder put these in five years ago, you think they'd be clinical because they don't really put the most expensive things into yeah, you know, landscape. But yeah, well that's a hard time for some reason. Well, and I don't know that. I've

never grown that rose. I don't know that rose. So that's why I'm going to refer you just to give them, give them a call or go buy. The website is RCW Nurseries dot com. Uh, they're they're there at We're talking about park Land belt Way eight. Come together. Okay, we'll give me show. Thank you for appreciate you you bet appreciate the call away audios. Yeah, that's interesting. I don't have to look that up.

I'm not familiar. Haven't grown that one before. We talk about lawn fertilizing, and you know the purpose of fertilizer is to provide the nutrient bank account in the soil that plants need. I know, we think of it like you know, you fertilize and it makes your plants grow. And well, yes, to a degree, the nitrogen is doing that, but you have all these other nutrients that don't make the plant grow. They support the growth the plant is trying to do. And asamite would be an example.

As mite provides trace minerals. Trace minerals are needed in tiny amounts. It doesn't, you know, azamite goes a long way. I mean, you know, one one bag of azamite, what a forty four pound bag will cover six to twelve thousand square feet. But you got to have those nutrients because remember how I was kind of joking earlier that I don't eat six months worth of food in one day. I eat a little bit every day. And plants are taking up nutrients a little bit every day. So you can't

fertilize every day for them. You shouldn't. What you do is you build that bank account and then when the roots need it, it's there. And as mite does just that. It's easy to find as m It's widely available, no problem at all getting hold azmite. It's one of the more easy to find products that we talk about here on Garden Line. But it does

provide that kind of a boost. You're listening to garden Line, and I'm your host, Skip Richter, and here is the phone number seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one two five eight seven four. We're going to go now to let's see spring and talk to rich Hello, rich good morning. Skip. Question regarding nuts edge, I had a little patch in my yard, so I used Prosedge hell soap puron methyl product. Okay, My neighbor next door add a bunch of nuts edge

along with some Virginia button weed, so I used blind side. The blind side on his lawn knocked the heck out of the nuts edge as well as the Virginia button weed. But my lawn using the pro sedge, it has impacted it, but at two weeks down the road, it's still not even dead any ideas the pro sedge tell me again, it knocked backge. It didn't. It knocked it back, but nowhere near killing it. Like the nuts edge on my neighbors that in four days it's totally brown. Okay,

well, okay. First of all, just in general about herbicides, how fast it works doesn't necessarily mean it works better or worse. You know, some things take their time and do an awesome job. So I'll just set the speed aside. But the blind Side is a product that's generally not available over the counter. It's it's going to have two different ingredients in it, and so you're probably coming at it from both sides. It is. It

does do good on on purple and yellow nuts sedge. The pro sedgs the halo you said, halo sulfur on, right, was the ingredient, and yes, yeah, yes, sir, Yeah, the halo sulfur on is also I believe that's the one that's in manage. Let me see if I can find that particular thing or saige excuse me, just an I'm gonna find out sedgehammer that's the one. Yeah, it's the same. Yeah, it's the same. I've checked it. Yeah, and it works good. It's

a very effective product on the nuts edge. So uh, just get be a little patient with it, I guess, and see if you feel like it's not going to do the job, which I'm not sure why I wouldn't, because it does work. It's a very popular product. Uh, then maybe talk to your neighbor and get a little bit of a little bit of what he bought, because he probably bought way more than he needs. If you know I bought it, I've got bottles of Blindside and Celsius. I'm

the guy that takes care of my neighbors launched. Okay, so you're the you're the local controller around the place there. Well, I wouldn't just immediately jump on that and apply that to the product. I would I would stick with waiting to see how what yours is going to do. Give it another couple of weeks to see if you see results before you well do Joe. Thanks collusions all right, Rich, thank you for the call. Thanks appreciate

that very much. When it comes to brown stuff and having success, Ciena Mulch is a place where you're going to get everything you need. Every fertilizer I talk about on guardline, is there, the heirloom soils, rose soil, the leaf mole compost, it's there. They deliver within twenty miles and twenty miles Ciena malt where twenty miles of what Well, it's due south of

Houston. So if you are out in neighborhoods like Iowa Colony or Coola Lake, Olympia, Pomona Riverstone Manbill Roach, Sharon, Meridian, first colony. We can just go on and on that. Cena Maultch is your hometown local supplier. They are near Highway six and two eighty eight just north of Roch Sharon on FM five twenty one. Cienamultch dot com is the website Sienna mulch dot com. You can get all the stuff to make the brown stuff perfect

for when you plant the green stuff in it. That's how that works. Soils, fertilizers, quality products, mulches, that's it's all CNA malts. They deliver within about twenty miles of their location. All right, it's time for a break here. Well, I've got some folks online, those of you that are out there, I will come to you first when we come back. We just want to make sure we have plenty of time to be able to address your call. And now it's time to turn it over to

Nikky for news. Right, I got it. Is that what we're gonna do. That's what we're going to do. All right, Well, thanks for listening to Garden And by the way, don't forget I'm going to be at Southwest Fertilizer today starting at eleven a m. We're going to be giving away all kinds of things, including some really cool stuff like a Toro blower and a Toro string trimmer. And we got some cool products from Adina as well. All right, well, here's Nicky Welcome back to garden Line.

Little music from looking Glass. Also music for Guardians from Guardians to the Galaxy for those of you who know the song from that. We're gonna go to Northwest Houston and talk to Bob Hello, Bob, Hey, Skip. I've got a dilemma. I mault my yard every every year, and I've done it, you know, for twenty five years with bulk hardwood mult Last year I put the mulch down and immediately my my tender plant started drying, dying

young ones, certain varieties. Something was in that malt. So this year I changed where I got it. Okay, put it down last weekend. We got that heavy rain Saturday night and everything's dying Sunday morning, my tomatoes, my young plants. I read that the malt can leach an acid if it hasn't been wet and dried prior to putting it down. What's going on? Oh boy? This would take a while to drill down through all the issues that might be going on on it. But mulch can be a problem,

but generally is not. If someone knows what they're doing making mulch, creating a multch product, you shouldn't have that problem with it. This wasn't a dyed mulch by any chance, was it. No, no, no, no, no. This is just regular hardwood. And like I said, I had got mulch in prior years at the same place for twenty years. Yeah, this year I changed and it's irreputable. It's ground up, the ground up and good looking mulch. Put it down and boom it kills

it. My thought was they it doesn't have time to sit in the yard to deteriorate, and it's still got it's still green, and it's high nitrogen as it as it decomposes, and it's burning the plants. Well that is yeah, the mult will not behind nitrogen to be on the other end of the spectrum. But people put undecomposed mulches down all the time, dried leaves for example, you know pine pine bark chips, right, it's not not the fact that it's not decomposed. Only there are things that can happen in

the process that create an issue. But what you're describing it, something's not quite right. How fast did you say you solve the problem overnight? Overnight? Yeah, we had that heavy rain and the next morning my my begonias were dying. I had my tomatoes are turning brown. A pepper plant, a bell pepper plant. I mean just generally the younger, the more tender plants are dying. Helly, it killed Basle overnight. Well, you got me somebody to be able to answer this. Yeah, this, And I've

done nothing different than I've done in prior years. Prior, I mean, I do it. I even put it on a little thinner this year. Normally I put about ten inches down, and I probably put four or five thinking, you know, may yes, mothered them four or five inches deep? Yes, holy cow, well ten I've never heard of that. But four or five is even a pretty good thick. Well, I mean it's composed down it, you know, it compacts. Okay, And well, I'll tell you what, Bob, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna have an

answer just immediately. I'm going to try to check with some of our the mulch makers that I know what they're doing. Maybe one of them would like to call in and discuss it. I just think it's interesting that it happened two years in a row with two different suppliers. That is very strange, and so I'm kind of at a loss as to where to go from here. It shouldn't be the case, though. I mean, I will say

this, A friend of mine got part of this load. My last load then finished up the yard with bag mault, and the bag malts came from one of the biggest supplier here in town. And the bag malts didn't seem to have the effect that the bulk mulch. Okay, well let me look into it. If I figure out anything, we'll say it on the air today. But you got you got me on that one, okay, Well, everybody the same thing I've said, Yeah, okay, thank you,

thank you. I appreciate it. Bye bye. Speaking of multch products, you know that it is important to get a quality product when you do that, and uh yeah, folks at landscaper Spride they absolutely know how to create quality products. They've got a bunch twenty something different products twenty seven to be exact. Landscaperspride dot Com is the website you can learn about it there at Landscapers Pride, you are going to find quality products. They're going to have

the black velvet mulch, which is not dyed. It is not dyed, it is naturally that color and it just beautiful, velvety and dense. It's just it's an excellent They have a hardwood mulch, a hardwood based mult ground up. It's not you know people that grind up palettes or repurposed wood. No, this is truly hardwood malts. Good for walkways, you know, all where the pathway melting the surface in your flower beds and recreation areas.

Pine bark maults they have that locally sourced pine. It's got a very slow decomposition rate which people like just kind of lasts a little bit longer out there in the garden. And then their Garden Magic Soil. It's a pine based blend that contains humus and screened pine and composted rice holes as well as chicken

pellet furbilizer that will give you feeding for up to three months. That's the Garden Magic Soil from Landscaper's Pride. If you want to find out more about them, Landscaperspride dot com find out about this twenty seven products and their store locator as well. While you're out about doing that, let's go to Dayton now and we're going to talk to Marshall. Hello, Marshall, Hey,

Skip, how you doing. I'm well, thank you. Hey. I got a question on I've got a couple of silver maples still in the pots. Without getting into a long story, I was babying them and you got them up to growing pretty good, but then I got busy I didn't mess with it. And then now they've been in there a year and a half

and I want to transplant them. How should I go about that? Well, you need to pull them out of the pot, and you're going to see roots going in a circle, and you need to either unwind those, which is not going to probably be practical, or slice through them in three or four places vertically through that cylinder of roots. I know that sounds drastic, don't worry about. Just go ahead and do it. Plant them in the ground, get them established, and within a couple of weeks are going

to have fresh new roots coming out from where you cut the ends. That's your best chance of getting them established. Now, if the roots have grown through the pots, can trim those roots or is that a no no? Or what no? You got to cut those off. You got to cut them off. So the ball root is probably still obviously inside the pot, right the what root please? The ball root? The root ball itself?

Yeah, thes I like to call it a root cylinder. It's called root balls because people used to ball and burlap trees, and you had a tree with a little ball on the bottom of roots and soil. But it's kind of a root cylinder since you've grown them in a pot and it's inside there. It's got all the roots of the tree, unless some have come out the holes into the ground. But just cut them all off, cut those off that are coming out of the holes of the pot, and then slice

vertically through the others. It's drastic, but it's you know, it's the only way to not end up with a problem on those trees that you've grown in the pot for a little extra time there and on cutting them. Is there a certain way I should cut them like at a forty five or just chomp it or clip it? Or how should I I that? You know, on some plants with the roots aren't big. I take a box cutter

knife and just vertically slice through it about an inch a date. If you need to get pruners, just going with pruners and snip off the ones going in a circle, and do it in about three or four places around there, because everywhere you cut, it's going to branch and it'll establish better. All right, sounds great, Thank you you, Bet Marshall. Thanks a lot. I appreciate that. Hey, we got to take a little break here. If listen, Linda, you'll be first when we come back.

If you'd like to give us a call seven to one three two one two kat r h. All right. If you put it and tap in, you you better check your pulse, that is for sure. If you're looking for a quality mix to put in a container for your indoor plants, that would be jungle Land water saving potting soil. It's got crystals in it that swell up with water. After the mix itself begins to dry out a little too far, you know, you forgot to water well. Those crystals are

still holding onto moisture and the roots can get access. So let's just say it makes the soil a little more forgiving, if you will of a bad watering schedule. Well, jungle Land indoor water saving crystals, indoor potting salt with water saving crystals. You're going to get it in enchanted forest. You're going to get it at Growers Outlet up in Willis RCW Nursery carries the night Fist products as well. We're going to head out now to Linda in Tomball.

Hello, Linda, I skip doing a great job. Thank you. Man. I need some help with my all my plants basically, but I have some night blooming jazmine bushes. I have four around my back and for some reason, I've had them for ten twelve years and at night they are fantastic. But something is eating my leaves for the first time. Okay, they're chewing them like this little red and then some of them have like insl sized holes in them. I sprayed it twice with memol and that's not doing

it. Really, that's surprising. Uh. You kind of have to once you get a bunch of holes, you kind of have to study where they are so when you look again you can tell if they're new holes or if it's still the same old holes. I was, well, go ahead pinching off of the pinchin the old ones, the ones that are damaged off though

I couldn't and they're there every night, all right. I would switch over and get a product called spin no said s p I n O s a D spin nose sad and spray that on it, and I think that will take care of it for you. I just want to get good coverage on it. But just realize too, that night blooming jasmine, it can lose

a lot of leaves and it's still okay. I may not look good, but it's not like you know, you get a few leaves with holes in them and the plants in trouble, it still will perform well for you, all right. Yeah, they have made it through the phrases and the monsoons and everything, and they love that plant. I absolutely love it. Hey, Linda, thank you for the call and good luck with it. I think the spinosa is going to do what you need to. I'm going to

give it. Thank you. You've had you take care. Hey, have you been to the antique rosen Porium. I'm telling you that place is crawling with roses. You know, they grow them in two gallons. Every rose they have it's once that price twenty nine to ninety five each. The two gallon containers. That's a good sized container to grow a nice robust rose. So it does well for you. Now an antique Rose, you got to go just to see the nursery and display gardens because they are roses, but

they are so much more. Lots of different kinds of quality plants out there, houseplants, flowers, fruit trees, lots of natives, tons of natives. Every Friday and Saturday at one pm is their Tinker Garden Workshops. That's for kids, by the way, age two through eight. It's a ticketed event. It'll go through mid May, so you can bring the kiddos out

there again Friday or Saturday at one pm for the Tinker Garden Workshops. Go to the website Antique Roseemporium dot com and just check out the upcoming events tab. That's where you find that kind of stuff out. Still looks beautiful at Antique Rows. Always looks beautiful at Antiquerose. If you want to give them a call, it's ninety seven nine eight three six fifty five forty eight eight three six five five four eight. We're going to go out to Angleton.

Now we're going to talk to Steve. Hello, Steve, how are you doing this twenty. I'm well, sir, how can we help. Well, we bought a house a few years ago and it had what I would call, I guess, an ornamental cedar tree in the front yard. It was a couple of them. They weren't real tall. They had been there about twenty twenty one years and they were starting to die. I'd cut them

off. I dug up the stumps and got that out. But now for the past almost three years, I haven't been able to get grass to grow in that area, and just wondering if the soil may be toxic or from the app or what. Sometimes we see that around cedars. I think it's I don't think it's toxic, but I think it should get improved. I would do a little errating on it, get some composts down in there.

Even you know, it's not too big of an area if it was around a plant like that, So you could even take a spading for it and push it, wiggle it straight down in the soil and just kind of pull back a little to crack it open, and then move over and do that again, and then put a fine quality, very small particle compost like a screened leaf mole compost over it watered in really good, and then do your fertilizing and I think you're going to be able to bring it back. Just

that shouldn't last long what you're seeing. Okay, well, I appreciate it all right, good luck, Thanks a lot, appreciate your call very much. You know, you can use a product like Microlife on there, the sixty four that's a green bag. Put that on after you make the holes in the ground and in the situation like I was just discussing with him, and you can absolutely get that nutrient done in the ground and it'll do very

well. Humants plus would be another good example that is concentrated compost in a bag. I would sprinkle Humage plus over that area after doing the aeration in this specific situation. For the rest of you, you just sprinkle it out, spread it out with your spreader on the ground, do the Humane plus, turn right around, do the Microlife green bag six two four and those over time, just get the soil better and better and better, and you're going to see. This is the organic system, you know, it's not

just this quick fix thing. We build the soil with quality products and things get better and better. The grasskets denser. We do all least less weed problems. As a result of that, the soil is better, the aeration, the and everything. The root systems are happy all because you get on that system and stay on it. Microlife Fertilizer dot com is where you can find out where to get microlife as well as learn more about their products. I'm going to head out now to Audrey and Tom Ball. Hello, Audrey,

Hi didn't learning Hi? March sixteenth, got planted at Guardina and it's just sitting there with the balloons. It's been sitting there with the balloons and they're not opening. Okay. I can see the flowers and they're just not blooming. Okay. It's called a gardenia August beauty. So far it hasn't been too beautiful without any blooming. Well, that's a that's a beautiful old garden. You've been around for a while now, your did you do any

show work before you planted it? Yes, it said to Nick, sand and soil a foot wide and a foot deep, And I did that. Okay. And how long did you plant? How long ago did you say you planted it on March sixteenth? I tell you Guardina's love acidic soil that has a lot of organic matter in it, and I, you know,

I'm kind of sitting here trying to decide which way would I go. I think if it were mine, I might lift it up and slide it onto a tart, move it out of the way, and then get a good quality mix like a rose soil or which which is good for plants, especially those that like it a little on the cidic side. Mix that in also with what you've already done, and then reset that plant watered in really well

and begin using a plant food for acidic plants in it. If you don't want to go to that trouble, let's just get some good multa over the top and begin using that acidic plant plant food. I think that it will do well. It's just gardenias need really good rainage, and to just dig a hole and put sand in it is not necessarily gonna improve the internal drainage down through the soil it. You know, a whole, a clay soil whole holds water like a bathtub. And so I'm just kind of trying to

lift it up a little bit higher. I don't think that's why that's sitting there in the blooms aren't opening yet, but I'm just thinking about Guardina's and what they love and want to make sure long term you're setting it up for success, So that would be the option I would consider. Okay, so rose soil, yeah absolutely, yeah, up, yeah, you're gonna roast soil is easy to find. Uh you know, it's widely available. I know you go out there to uh D and de Feed on the west side

from Tomball. They carry the heirloom soils products. You might call them first make sure they got the roast soil in stock that someone hadn't come cleaned them out. But you can buy bags of it from them. There are a lot of other places that you're going to get a quality roast sox perfect. I'm by plants for all seasons. Should they have that, they may have that as well, but if not, they may have a different plant soil for acidic plants. If you're close to them, then just swing over there

and see what Cherry and them had over there. Wonderful. I'm so thankful for your help, all right, and uh I appreciate it. That mean a picture when it starts blooming. Thanks a lot, Audrey. Okay, you did all right, bye bye, okay, bye bye. Yeah. Nature's Way Resources, that's another good one. You know, Nature's way. They created rose soil. That's where rose soil was born, if you will. And the finely screened leaf compost that we talk about top dressing with,

that's where it came from. That's where it came from. Nature's Way Resources. They are on I forty five up toward Conroe on the right hand side, and they have all kinds of things. Don't forget fungo Friday's Fungo Friday's ten percent off bag, twenty percent off book. Write this number down nine three six three two one sixty nine to ninety. Nature's will get you set up with quality products. Remember it all starts with the soil. All right,

We're gonna put this hour in the books. Just a reminder. I am making a bee line for Southwest Fertilizer. I'll get there at eleven o'clock today. I hope you'll come out and see me, bring me samples, bring me your photos, just stop by to say hi. I always love to meet people that listen to Garden Line. We're gonna be giving away a toro blower, you heard that right, and a Toro, String Tremor.

I'm gonna be giving them away skip Bucks. You stop by the table and ask me a question and I will give you skip Bucks where you can go use them to buy products that are there. And you know Southwest Fertilizer they got every product that you can imagine. We'll have some the Dina giveaways as well. It's gonna be fun. Come on out and see us. Eleven am KTRH Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised

on this program. Welcome to Katie r H Garden Line with Skip Rictor. It's so we just watching as many. Welcome back to the guard Line. Good to have you with us today. Good to have you with us today. I'm glad, glad to talk to you about the things that are of interest to you. You know, I am a broken record when it comes to making sure your plants have success, that you get beauty and you get bounty. And the way you do that is what what is the mantra here

on guard Line Brown stuff before green stuff. That's the simple way I put together to say, if you get the soil right, your plants are going to thrive and heirloom Soils has designed a wide variety of products to do just that. For example, the veggie and herb mix. The veggie and herb mix is excellent for growing anything edible out there in the garden, but especially the veggies and the herbs. They've got a fruit berry and citrus mix.

You're going to be able to get a quality screened leaf more compost to do your top dressing. You're going to be able to get a rose soil that is top notch. By the way, it's they got some really attractive brand new bags of it, so if you used to looking at the old bag, they got a really cool pretty much same old quality rose soil in it. But that is just how they do things at nature at the Airlom Soils folks. Now, if you want bulk, you can drive out there to

porter. You can get a bulk. You can have them deliver it. You can have them put it in a supersack, a one cubic yard container. They sit it on your driveway. It's real neat and easy. Or you can drive out and haven't put it on the trailer you got, put them behind your truck if you want to go about that route. However you want to go about it, or if maybe you just want to go to

some garden centers. Heirlom soils is widely available. If you're listening to Garden Line from way out beyond the Houston area, heirloom soils is probably available in your community because they just keep expanding the reach, so a lot of people have access to these quality soils. Uh, I'm gonna see. We're gonna go to the phone. Oh, speaking of Uh, go to the phone right now. We're going to talk to Louise and Houston. Hey's Louise surprised? Hey, Skip, I have I have Mark Powen with Bego Garden on

the line. He was the mastermind behind most of the recipes form. He has the answered to the question you have good Hey Bob, Bob in northwest Houston. You had that question about the molds. You put it out and the next day you said plants were struggling. So here comes the experts with your answer. Mark. Good to have you man. Hey, good morning, Skip. I'm so great to be joining you and Louise. Of course,

so I've run into this in the past. There's like a potential like perfect storm when it comes to mult and here it is so the maltz production process. Typically MULT is sold as a finished product as a double ground mult. So it's you know, you have like large trees and branches and all that are ground once into some big large shreds like five to nine inches long,

and then it's aged up and then down the road. Then they grind it into smaller shreds, usually anywhere from half an inch to like three inches. That's what we call the second grind or the double grind. And so

long story short, a second grind. If that malt is piled up in a big pile what we call static pile, there is a potential perfect storm window of like three to fifteen days later where that mult is sold three to fifteen days later, that's the time period when that moult goes into the thermophilic heating. Heat process can go anywhere from one hundred and fifty to you know, two hundred degrees hot. Right, you can cook it in a multipile. I hear, Oh, Louis's cooked steak and a whole meal in a

I'm not going to be eating at his house anytime soon. I hope you wrap those up, Louis. Oh, you never know when you go to Louise's house. So it's for sure, and just you could get the savici right because then at least you know that doesn't gone too the composing process. All right, I digress. So back to the So three to fifteen days is really hot, and if it's a really big pile with all that heat

and all that mass, sometimes they'll go anaerobic. And during that thirteen day period sometimes you walk up and dig into the pile and it'll smell like vinegar. And what's going on is that perfect storm when it's really hot, a really big pile and it goes anaerobic where it doesn't have enough oxygen. Then you'll have a pH which skip probably will sound shocking anywhere from like one and a half to three. And that's like an indicator. And if it smells

like vinegar, yes, it's producing acidic acid. And we all know what vinegars use for in the horticulture industry these days for people that you don't want a natural way to combat weak it kills plants. Good. Yeah, And so you have this little perfect storm and then so the good news is and then what will happen is say that gets sold, you know, goes in the dump truck, somebody delivers it, and and and of course the mult

will be physically hot. Plus you have the acidic acid. And so then if it sits in a driveway, and then it starts trying to cool off. But then when people start digging into the pile, well, when it's piled, when it goes dumps out it, say it takes a couple of days or whatever it is, you know, immediately starts to try to reheat again. But and so what will happen is often people if they take it

at that perfect storm stage, put it on the landscape. The physical heat can be an issue for plants like that are more sensitive, like some of the ferns and begonias, And and then on top of it you've got the acidic acid, and so it can be a real issue. Now larger shrubs because this fellow and this fellow had malted pretty deep too in the past, like up to ten inches and this time maybe about five. So that just adds to the potential for the heat that you're describing, I think, right.

And then larger shrubs and trees will usually withstand it. But you'll see you know, on their the marges edges of their leaves what looks like symptoms like if something had a chemical you know, burn, you know, or something where somebody's putting you know, something's gotten dumped into the soil or whatever. So that's the So that's the bad news that can happen in that cycle. The good news is most plants will withstand it. They may go into

a little bit of shock. One of the best cures is just the water

more. If you spread it out real thick the potentially you know, maybe send it out a little bit and then it down to two or three inches, water it more and then if and then the other thing I would say if people want to be pretty safe is just you know, if you if you ever have a chance to smell of it there, if it evere's like vinegar, it may be in that stage and then you either want to pass on it or come back and revisit the issue in the positive of buying it

later. But so the two things to do is one, if you have it the pile, it is like, wow, this is like really hot. Ideally before you put in the landscape it should be have dropped under one hundred and twenty degrees. So that's one thing you could take a thermometer and see if it's dropped under. And then the second thing, if it smells

like the vinegar. The thing you want to do, which is kind of the cure both ways, would be to cure it off longer if you can't, and then it could be as little as two weeks for curing it and up to but just to let it come down on the temperature and let that pH kind of come back up citic acid to kind of work its way out, and if you errate it a little bit more too, that that helps kind of mitigate the effects of that acidic acid. Man, Mark, I

appreciate that, And Louise, I'm up against another break. But thank you guys so much. Louise from Heirloom Soils and Mark you're you're my Vego friend now over there at Vego Gardens too, right. That's great we can so they're lucky to heank you guys. Thanks so much. Man, appreciate it all. Right, there you go, folks that you just got the answer. Uh, glad we could provide that. And Bob, I sure hope you were listening. We're gonna take a little quick break here and I'll be

right back. Bill, you'll be the first up. Welcome back to Guardenline. Good to have you with us today. Hey, if you're looking for a fertilizer that you put down now and you have fertilized your lawn with a gradual release all through the coming two or three four months, that would be Nightcross Silver Bag nineteen four to ten. It's called superturf. And the reason

is it releases half that nutrient over the coming weeks and months. Literally, I mean it carries on and on, depending on weather conditions and different things. That release me a little slower, a little faster. But you basically have got your summer fertilizing done with Nitrofoss superturf and you put it down right now. It's got this supplemental iron. And we've had two collars, say we talk about iron deficiency in the turf, well four percent additional iron promoting

that uniform, nice green color in your lawn. You're going to find Nitrofoss superturf a lot of places because nitrofoss is basically a ubiquitously available product. You can find it, for example, the shades of Texas in the woodlands. You're going to find it in enchanted gardens down in Richmond. You're going to find it at Fisher's Hardware, both the one in South Houston on Sophomore and the one in Laporte on Broadway Street. All places where you're going to get

nitrofass superturf product. Go to Bill in Cypress Now, Hello Bill, A good morning. Skip A simple question out here in Bridge Lines there's not enough tree for hawks to live in and anyway, we've got a problem with rabbits eating my foliage. Okay, any suggestions, Uh, you know, for rabbits you're kind of basically fencing them out with a real low fence. That

is one option around gardens and things. You just see people put the chicken wira up, get it down to the ground where maybe a little below the ground, even where they're not going to just dig right under it, and uh that I don't know to see Zara. There is a rabbit repellent out there, and I can't remember what it's based on, probably a predator urine or something like that, but there is a rabbit repellent. I've never tried using it before. What about molasses? I don't know that that would keep

them away? Have you heard that it says. They said it keeps barmans away, like you possums and stuff. Huh. I wonder why that is. I don't know that that would be new to me. But I used to use it on the nut grass too. Uh huh. Did it work well for you? Yeah? It just takes a while. Yeah, yeah, all right, yeah you you uh, other than what I told you that, That's about all I would know to suggest. But hey, Bill, you you can eat rabbits, you know that, right, They're not

that big. I've got people. I can hear screams from all over Houston. People are how dare you? Okay? All right, I'm just starting it up a little bit. I have a good day. Oh gosh, I shouldn't go there, but I did. I did. Hey have you been out to the Enchanted Forest? And Jenner Forest is in Richmond. It's the garden center that if you're Richmond, you're heading towards sugar Land. It's

off to the right hand side, off to the right hand side. So what you do is you just head out FM twenty seven fifty nine, twenty seven fifty nine. Let me give you the website for I forget it. Enchanted Forest, Richmond, TX. Dot com. Enchanted Forest, Richmond, TX dot com. Unbelievable website, excellent, excellent website. You want to

get on there, find out what's going on. It is a place you go if you need anything in the way of herbs, vegetables, flowers, trees, shrubs, if you like butterfly gardens, man, can they fix you up. They've got the flowers for the adults. And they have a lot of good larval food sources, you know, things like milkweed to supply monarchs, or passion vine to supply go fritillaries, or pipeline for the pipeline swallowtail caterpillars. They've got all of that and then some. And they always

have things going on all the time. There's something happening on Saturdays, especially in the springtime, out at the Arborgate Nursery Arbor Gate. What am I saying? And I'm halfway across the county at Enchanted Forest Garden Center down on FM twenty seven fifty nine. You know, you I go on auto pilots sometimes and that is never a good thing to do. Let's head out now to Austin County and talk to Doris. Hello, Doris, Hi, are

you I'm well, thank you. I have a problem in my yard along the curve and the walkways of the dry grass, like it didn't get enough water. Maybe okay, so dry. If I pull that out and put some topsoil down on those edges, will the grass be able to spread out? It will, it'll close back in, But you got to get you got to just make sure it has moisture. That's important. Sometimes I bought silker hosts. Oh okay, well you could go that rude too. Then

you're then you're making sure that you've got it covered. Yeah, yeah, that ought to do. What kind of grass do you have, Doris? Okay, yeah, it'll crawl back in there pretty quick if you I'd give it a little extra fertilizer too, not extra, but make sure you do fertilize it as well, and that will the water. Uh let's see. Do you like organic? Do you like synthetic or do you care? I used the silver bag when I'm fertilize. Okay, Well that's it. That

is that is super turf. It's going to gradually feed it. Uh. Have you already fertilized that this year? You're saying, yeah, okay, well you ought to be good. You ought to be good to go. You ought to be good to go, all right, Doris? All right, thank you so much, you bet thanks a lot. I I appreciate that a lot, that is for sure. Uh. The uh folks at Southwest Fertilizer, I'm talking about Bob, they bye just make sure that he

has everything you could possibly need. I mean everything, really, eighty foot wall of tools. If there is a pesticide to control insects, diseases, or weeds, he's got it. If there's a fertilizer, liquid, granular, organic, synthetic, fast, really slowerly, he has it all. He has it all there. And I'm going to be there today, by the way, from eleven o'clock to one o'clock, so you got a two hour window to stop buy, and I hope you will. I always love

to meet the folks that listen to Garden Line. We're gonna be given away the I can't even see the name, and now my brain just went blank here for just a second. Hang on something, sorry, Toro. I've said it three times today, the Toro blower and the Toro string trimmer. Can you believe that that's a huge giveaway thing. We're give away some Medina samples and products and things. And by the way, Bob just got a shipment of this new Medina product called super Grow Plus. Supergirl Plus. It's

a sixteen zero two. Sixteen zero two is a wonderful blend. It of course has zero on the phosphorus and phosphorus. If you fertilize your lawn for years, you have enough phosphorus. It tends to build up over time. This is a hose end application. It's got iron edta. Remember how I talked about iron keylate earlier. That's what iron edta is. It's a type of keylated iron. It's got seaweed extract in it. It is going to be primarily an immediate release, but about one fifth of the nitrogen is going

to be slow release in that has to grow Supergirl Plus. Hook it up to your garden hose. One quart covers four thousand square feet and Bob's got it in stock. And you need to try this one. This is a new thing, and if you haven't tried it before, you need to try it. So swing by today. I'll you stop at the table and I'll give you super skip Bucks Super skip Buck skip Bucks and you can take that and get a huge discount off the price of anything you want to purchase in

there, including the has to grow super Grow Plus. You're not going to find a better deal than this. Absolutely. And Southwest Fertilizer where is it. It's on the corner of Businett and Runwick in Southwest Houston. Here's the website Southwest Fertilizer dot com. Southwest Fertilizer dot com. Come see me today again. I'll be there. I'll arrive by eleven and I'll stay there until

one o'clock. I used to stick a little longer around. When I do that, I always love to get to visit with Bob and his team there, Aaron and all the folks. They know what they're talking about by the way you carry them a sample in there, You car them a picture of something and whatever. They can point you in the right direction. They understand how their products work, so they can guide you in that. That is

important. You know, you go someplace and you buy a product from someone that doesn't have a clue what they're talking about, and that's just wasted money and who knows, you may end up doing damage with it. That's why I like to go to Bob in Southwest Fertilizer because they do know what they're talking about. And I'm going to be there today. Come by and see

me. Let me get a skip some skip Bucks in your hand so you can go and get a great deal on the many many products that they carry there at Southwest Fertilizer, including this great new product has to Grow Super Grow plus the hose inch prayer with a sixteen zero two fertilizer in it. I'm going to head out to Magnolia now and talk to Ted. Hello, Ted, good morning. Wow, my backyard, Saint Agustine I lost from last

year. I don't know if it was take all ry rock, chinch bugs, or heat or combination of all, but I did my best to treat all three, but it's gone. I just air rated my entire yard and I'm going to fertilize today and then I was going to put kalman ere a day and then put side on top of that, uh and then treat for the take all the root rock because I'm seeing signs of that again. Okay, I wouldn't do the calmandar. I wouldn't do the calendar. It's a

it's a pretty high pH naturally high pH product. And like take all loves high pH and we we don't want to encourage it by raising pH anymore than it already is. Uh. But uh, you know, a good quality fertilizer applied at the right time. What what did you say you were fertilizing with. I'm sorry, other than the calmndar, did you have something? It's it's a slow release, uh, fertilizer. Okay, Like is it the Nelson Slow and Easy It's uh. Now it's some that I had from

my it's less go I think. Okay, all right, Well, I mean if you got a fertilizer on hand, you can you can, you know, go ahead and use it. But I would recommend you get you some Slow and Easy by Nelson. That one will fertilized for the next three months, and it's got several different types of nitrogen so that they get released very slowly over time out there. Uh. It's easy slow and then with apostrophe in and then easy slow in easy. Uh. And it's Nelson plant

food, so that'll get you set up. I'm up against a hard break here, but I think the proper fertilizing with adequate watering and regular mowing, and you're going to grow yourself out of this ted, but not worry about putting any thing down before I put the side down. No, no, I would just get the side and then I would begin to do the fertilizing. Yeah, water it twice a day the first week, once a day the next week, and then back off eventually to once a week. All

right, thanks a lot man, appreciate it. All right. Our phone number if you'd like to give us a call seven one three two one two kt r H. And here's Nicky. Yeah, all right, we're back here on garden. I'm about to enter our last half hour of the morning. I just wanted to let's just start by going straight to the phone here. We're going to go to Matthew in Conro. Hello, Matthew. How you doing today, sir? I'm good, I'm good. What's up?

Yes, sir, I've got a celebration Bermuda celebration in my yard and i'd like to try to get this torpedo grass out of my yard. Oh boy, what a combo, I know, And you know how taken over more and more I know, I know, and it's a booger. It's a bogger to get rid of you can. I'm going to suggest a surgical way to get it out of there, and the alternative to that is not good, and that's just get rid of everything, kill everything and let the bermuda

come back in. But that I'm going to think you're gonna let's try first the surgical. Uh. You know how the torpedo grass comes up above the bermuda, right, it's a it's a mult upright figorous. If you can create a wiper applicator and I'll tell you how in a minute, and put a product on it to kill grass, I would probably use Glyphoss eight because it's very thorough in it. You could also use a grass only killer. There are products that don't kill broad lace but kill grass. A couple of

those on the market, easy to find. But if you buy one of those little gadgets, you get a jar off a shelf with it's got a little pistol grip on one end and the other end maybe two section cups or something like that, and you grab the jar, take the suction cups off and get a plate, one of those little metal plates at a lumber type store that has holes in it. You know, it's used for joining two tuba fours. Do you know the kind I'm talking about. It's like a

whole bunch of little holes in a thin metal plate. It's about the size of a deck of plane cards roughly, Yesta, put that on there, and then put a sponge, a kitchen sponge. Just take a standard size sponge and cut it in half and put on there. Put a boat with a washer to hold the sponge on. So what you got is you got the same gadget, but you've replaced let's say the section cup with a plate and a sponge. The plate just to hold the sponge so it doesn't just

bend backwards. And you squirt those sponges with the galiposate product, and you go through your yard and you don't even have to stoop because those things are about three feet long, and you can just reach down and grab the torpedo grass and pull up, and then grab the next one and pull up, and you're just wiping it on individually to the torpedogress. You're I can get

it all the first time. Just plan on spending the next few Saturday mornings with a cup of coffee in one hand and your little applicator in the other, and just every time you get a chance, just stay on it, get all of it you can, and you can work your way back out of it that way without having to kill everything in renovate. Because there's not a selective product. To kill torpedo grass, it won't kill your celebration Bermuda,

Yes, sir, did that make sense? Yes, sir, I was just wondering, during the dormant stage during our winter months, was it possible I could put something down during that time, because of course, you know, my celebration goes dormant, but then you don't see the torpedo grass. Yeah, the torpedo grass is dormant, right, Well, you don't see it, and you know, with the celebration being dormant, I guess the torpedo grass you know, does too. But yeah, I was wondering

if at that time would it be good to do something. Now they both have that same growth schedule of not being happy with winter weather, winter cold and stuff, and so if it were a broad leaf weed that was a cool season weed, you could spray it in the winter and not kill your celebration because you're right, celebration is dormant. But I think the wiper's probably the best way and if it's already gotten so far ahead of you, you know, at some point you just bite the bullet and you go, I

just have to kill everything and start over. Yeah, in the military, I cut everybody else's grass. Now I'm trying to take care of my own grass. I know, I know I can tell you we're in the military, Matthew, because I've never been told yes, sir so many times in my whole life. And thank you for that. A lot of it is my mom hitting the back of my head when I don't do it all right. Well, you know, family, family's family. So anyway, good luck with that torpedo grass man. Thank you very much, sir, and

you have a nice day, sir, you too, Bye bye. All right, Hey, have you been to Buchanan's Native Plants in the Heights. That's right Eleventh Street in the Heights. This this place has been around a long time, but everybody knows about him because it's just cool. It's fun to go there. I think of it as almost like a hideaway. You driving down Eleventh Street and all of a sudden, boom, you're there,

and it's this nestled in to the Heights. They specialize in native plants that if you're looking for natives, even down to I want a plant that was native here in the Harris County, well they can point you to those. They have those separate out like that Native Texas plants in general. But Buchanans Plants always always has a good supply of all kinds of things you need for

your lawn and garden. They're going to have the fertilizers that I talk about, they are going to have absolutely have the soil type products to improve and create that beautiful, wonderful soil. But are you looking for color like begonias and silotia. By the way, I didn't talk about solosia earlier when I was mentioning heat tolerant plants. Soilosia is great. It's got those plumes on top that are colorful. And some types have beautiful burgundy leaves. I love

it. In College station we call that maroon where I come from. But beautiful burgundy maroon leaves. They have that trees native trees. You know, we're talking about Earth Day. This stimmy year for Earth Day, and they have thirty percent off their Native Texas trees. How can you how much better than that? Can you do? They also have their life below all purpose soil thirty percent off of that as well. So here's your excuse. There's

a time to get it done. Any kind of plants for decorating, for creating beauty, herbs and vegetables and everything else are at Buchanan's Native Plants. Very knowledgeable staff absolutely steer you in the right direction for success. And let's just put it this way. It's just a fun place to go and to explore it just is. I love going into there and you will too. You probably already do you probably know about that. Let's see where are we going to go? Now? I'm going to head out to Tyler and talk

to Nancy. Is that right Tyler, Texas? Yes, yes it is. Well, actually I live on Lake Palaestine. That's a little ways out of there. But and I said pictures just now, I just found the address, but I'm sure if you hard to get to. I have a plum tree that is two years old and it's got maybe a little bit bigger than a quarter size plums on it, but it doesn't seem to be growing any bigger. Also, I have a lemon tree that looks like it needs a really bad haircut. I've had one lemon in four years. I have

something that's eating a few of the leaves. I'm just wondering what am I doing wrong? We don't have micro life out here, are ace hardwares or any other place? Okay, what is a can I go online? What would be a good for I'll purpose for all my plants ventrum the deck, Yeah, in my guarden. Well, if you can't get the micro life up there, you probably have nitrophospertilizers available up there, and that would be a fine one. If you're looking for organic, then you would need to

look for something that's got the Medina products in it. That would be a good choice. There. I'm looking at your pictures. I did get them. The plum has got some little things that are sucking juices out of the bottom of the leaves, and so I would get an insecticidal soap product and spray upward, upward from underneath the leaves to knock those things out. It could be spider mites, it could be something else, but it's pretty severely

affected by that. The holes in the leaves I wouldn't worry about that's not significant. But you do need to get that plum out of the container and into either bigger container or out in the garden soil hand because the containers are a little on the small side and it's gonna stunt it like plums. But that's last on my back deck. Yeah, my garden so very good. So on the on the lemon tree, do you see the one branch that's just yea out there? I do, I would, I would trim those

back. I'm sorry, but I have got to run, Nancy, I'm I'm up. I've already passed a break I didn't catch. Okay, thank you. Trim that wild branch back a little bit, balance it out, all right, We'll be right back. Well, welcome back to the garden line. Good to have you with us today. Well we are ending the show here in just a little bit. And I see we got some folks on the board, so we are going to jump right out there and head to beat Eyes, Texas and talk to Dane. Hello, Dane, Hey,

how's it going? But doing well? Doing well? How can I help today? Man? I've got a couple of tomato plants of my raised garden, and uh, some of the leaves on the tomato only two of them, one more so than any of them all the leaves are curling upwards. And I've been reading on it and they say the wind can do that. Is that true? Well, a lot of times we see it, uh, when it gets a little warmer than it's been. But varieties differ

a lot in that. And now when you say, oh you do me, not just the new growth at the top, you're talking about the older leaves too, right, That is correct? Yes, yeah, I think that's a natural physiological thing that is not going to affect production. And I wouldn't I wouldn't worry about it, Yeah, because the virus would just affect the new growth, gotcha. Yeah, Yeah, And it was. It was weird because it was it's more so one plant two plants, than the

other two. And they are two different of the four, they're two different varieties. Yeah, yeah, and that that's kind of normal. But don't don't worry about it. It's it's an okay deal. Uh, just uh get ready to enjoy your tomatoes. Hopefully they're in good sunlight. You're gonna get good production. They are and they're already growing good. So I appreciate your man. Keep up good work. Thank you, Dane. Say aha

to my friends over there at the feed store over by Carlos. You're just a rock throw away from them, right, I was there this morning. Good good, good folks, good folks. Thanks, thanks son, bye bye. If you are looking for a quality potting soil for your containers out on the patio, how about jungle Land. Jungle Land flour and vegetable. Jungle and flour and vegetable potting soil. It does two things that a soil needs to do. It drains well when there's access. It drains the access

away, but it holds onto moisture. So you gotta have good air air in the soil and you have good moisture in the soil. Both that is important and jungle Land can do just that for your soils. Now, where do you find jungle l and soil? Well, Katie Ace Hardware has got it. Ace Hardware City and Memorial you can find jungle Land there as well. Or Stanton Shoppings done in Alvin. You can find your jungle and products there. Let's now head out to Friendswood and talk to Beverly. Hello,

Beverly, Hello, good morning. I have a pine apple pear that has never given me any fruit till this year, and it is loaded, and I covered it with a netting. My question is, how do I know when they're ripe? Pineapple is a fairly firm pair. It's not like a Kiefer or anything like that. But you'll notice a little bit of a color change in the scheme, that's one thing. And you'll notice it gets a little bit softer too, Okay, so you kind of can feel with your

hands a little bit. If you're thinking, you know, this is looking pretty ripe. You could try sampling one, right, I thought I would, But I just wondered about the color because the different pairs have different colors than I was, Yeah, wondering does it turn yellow? Yeah, well, Pineapple, I'm surprised you haven't had any production before because Pineapple asked the crows got it, so I got and covered it with a knitting so they can't get to it or the squirrel. So yeah, yeah, I'm hoping.

All right. Well, uh, it's a good one. It's one of the older ones that we have. It does the green does kind of blush out to a chartruse. Sometimes you'll see a little bit of color on the sunny side of the pair too, a little bit of a blush on that, but it's a it's a good old fashioned pair. It's tough, kind of hard to kill. But they are pretty hard. It's don't think in terms of like a boss or d'ango lit in the grocery store. This is gonna be a harder pair. Okay, all right, thank you so

much. Enjoying your program. All right, thank you man, I appreciate that. Good luck with that. Let's go now out to Pasadena and talk to Frida. Hello, Freda, Hi, how are you this morning? I'm well, I'm well, what's up? How about Peggy Martin? Rose? And I'm putting it in a place there was an ano there that didn't do well because it's been full sun. And I want to know what I need to do for the soil and what kind of fertilizer to put on it. I would get a good roast soil mix. You'll find those. They

are widely available. You probably get them done in Pasadena direction. Local ase hardware stores there are going to have them. But if it you know, if it's from airloom or from nature's way, and it says rose soil, then that is what I would use. I would build a good sized bed with it, you know, don't just put roast soil in a planting hole, but mix it in with your soil, and then even add a little

more rose soil so you have really good drainage. That's important. And then plant, plant your Peggy Martin. And she's not hard to be she's not hard to make happy. She's pretty pretty good tough ROAs. Just fertilize it periodically and then get ready because it's going to take off, run and so have something for Peggy to grow on. Okay, all right, thank you. I'm having all my pintilance. I have a chance to grow on. Oh that's wonderful. That's wonderful. Well, it's it is a beautiful,

beautiful rose. That's why it's so popular. Okay, thank you so much. Thanks a lot, Fred, You take care, appreciate it. I appreciate your call. Wow, that was it. That kind of went fast. I want to remind you guys that I'm going to be at Southwest Fertilizer to day to day from eleven o'clock to one. So after the show, I'm going to head over there, say hey to Bob and the team, and get busy answering your gardening questions. At eleven will start off at the

table. If you come by the table, I will give you some skip Bucks. You have to come by and ask a question to visit me at the table and I'll give you skip Bucks and you can use those to purchase products out there in the store. You know, I told you earlier. Bob has gotten in this brand new product, a brand new product from Medina, the super Grow. It is the has to grow Supergrow for lunch. It's a sixteen zero two. It's on a hose in hose end sprayer,

so you hook the hose up to it. It takes about ten minutes to go through your yard and do it, and most of the nitrogen is going to be immediate release. You're going to get a nice quick green up. Those of you just put a lawn in and want to get that growing. Once it's established and rooted in, it'd be good for that. If you've got an existing lin it'd be good for that too. But you hook it up like that and then about a fifth of the nitrogen this kind of slow

release. And it's even got some keylated iron in it. I mean, it's just all around. This is good now, by the way, that product is good for gardens and other things too, you know how it is. I sometimes something is sold for the lawn, but it's good for other things as well. Bob's got it, He's got a great supply of it. He's ready to go. So come on in, let's get some in your hands. Stop by, get a skip buck and head over there.

And you need a really good discount on this cool new product or anything you want to buy. There at Southwest Fertilizer would be given away samples of Medina products. They're going to have cold drinks and popcorn there. Uh, they're going to be given away. Get this, this alone is worth the price is showing up a Toro battery powered blower and a Toro battery powered string tremor. That's good. Tour is a great brand and battery is a way to

go these days. All at Southwest Fertilizer, bring me your samples in a ziplock bag, Bring me photos of things that you want to identify it or diagnosed, or maybe it's a section of the yard you would just like to get, you know, some advice on like hey, how can I bring some color in here? Or what do you think? What would you do if you had this section to kind of make it a little more impressive or a little more effective. Well, we'll talk about any of those things you

want to you want to talk about. Don't forget too My schedules are online. If you go to Gardening with Skip that's me gardening with skip dot com. There's a lawn care schedule January through December. What are the art danic fertilizers, what are the synthetic fertilizers? And when do you apply them? And they're all listed there. It makes it easy trace. Mineral supplements are on there. Aerration cor aeration, proper mowing. You think I know how

to mow my lawn, now listen to me. There's information on there that will be very helpful for you. And watering, I'll tell you month by month, what is the historic average number of inches of water that a Houston lawn needs per week in the absence of rainfall. Forget about the rain. I mean that is what it is. But I can tell you, like right now, we are in April. April is a month where three quarters of an inch per week is how much water your lawn is using. And

then there's my lawn pest disease and weed management. Schedule, same thing for insects, diseases and weeds.