Soil Structure Importance

Katie 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 Escape Rictor. It's just watch him as so many crazy well good Sunday morning. Welcome to Garden Line. We're glad to have you with us today. Absolutely, what are we going to talk about? Let's talk about something related to

plants. How about that. That's what we're here for. We want to help you have a beautiful garden and a bountiful garden as well as a beautiful, gorgeous landscape, one that you enjoy. So how do we do that? Well, we give you advice, we give you tips to have success. We point you in the right direction of any kind of products that can help with that, but especially focusing on practices that are important to have success. You know, it's really not rocket science. It's just a matter of

doing the right kinds of things at the right time. And I know that sounds like, well, how do you know? Well that you learn over time and anytime you want, you can call us here, send me a picture via an email. We can diagnose something and figure out what's going on. By the way, we had a great time out at RCW Nursery yesterday. Thanks the folks out there for David and Kathleen hosting us out there, and just you guys wore me out. I kind of hit the bed last

night and I was about brain dead. I think I'd answered enough questions for the day to last for the week, bring in samples of weeds and things and pictures of things. It was good. I love doing that. That's what it's all about. Gives us a chance to rub shoulders, look eye to eye and resolve some of the issues that you have. Also gave away a lot of good stuff out there too. RCWS. You know they've got a credible sale on right now. I mean when I was out there,

I couldn't believe a pull a video on Facebook. Just the color the place just looked awesome. I mean, if you didn't see yoga, look at it. But it is just tons of roses still. I mean, they still have a lot of roses available. They specialize in trying to have about as wide a variety as anybody could possibly have when it comes to roses. When it comes to trees and things, of course, they grow their own

up in Plantersville area. And the tree farm, and so they've got the kind of trees that grow here, the kind that you would want to plant. By the way, it's still okay to get a tree planted if you hurry up and get that done. Just give it as much time as you can for summer. So go ahead and get it done. Now's a good time if you're thinking about it and going, well, I may do it

next year. Well, every year you wait is a year behind that you are on getting that thing up where you can hang a hammock in it, or where it's big enough to bloom. If it's a blooming tree, they have beautiful boom and Billie is too some standards that kind of like they have a single trunk or a braided trunk and and just beautiful billows of blooms up on top. I was, I was super super impressed. I mean, the place looks good. You know that that's just normal for them, but

uh, it was. It was a showplace for sure. Absolutely. If you'd like to give us a call this morning, my phone number here on the garden line is seven one three two one two k t r H seven one three two one two kt r H. By the way, RCW for those who don't know, is the nursery that is where Beltway eight and Tomball Parkway Highway to forty nine come together right there. Easy to get to get in and out of UH. And again, like I said, the stock

is great. I picked up some Lantannas myself while I was there. We're redoing a front flower bed and I just needed a row of those. I got some of the semi dwarf types. There's a number of new series of Lantana's, by the way, that are just outstanding, several different series by different breeders. But you know, the old Lantanna's got about waist high or bigger, and those are fine. Those are good. There's a native lantanas here in Texas, there's some, and then there's also lots of different bread

Lantanna's, but now they keep working with them. And there's some that only get like a foot high. They're very small, very compact for lantana. There's others that get you know, maybe two feet high eighteen inches two feet high or two or three feet high, and you kind of get to pick what you want. The colors are outstanding, they're just beautiful. Lantanna's a great plant for the heat that we have to deal with here. I love them, I just love them. Anyway. That's what's going on in my

house next this week, getting out there and get those things planted. Also working on redoing an herb bed, and that has not the process hasn't started yet, just the planning part of it. But I let some child dives go to seed. I love chi flowers that are great for beneficials and stuff, but I'll let them go to seed. And I know better than this. And my herb bed became a chichia pet. It looked like wheat grass, you know, just everywhere everywhere, little sprouts of chives coming up.

It was like grass through the whole bit. And so we tried sifting through that and getting all the little bulbs out, and you know, that's an ongoing process. But we're going to redo the soil in there, screen it a little finer, and then replant with some new herbs that we're wanting to try out to If you haven't grown herbs before, you ought to. Herbs

are wonderful. You can grow herbs for whatever purposes you want. I mean, there are medicinal herbs which I know essentially nothing about I try to stay out of that kind of field. But when it comes to culinaries, and then just the beauty the herbs we use for cooking, and the herbs that I think are just they deserve a place because they're beautiful. When Mexican met marigold blooms in the late summer and fall, those yellow blossoms are beautiful.

When pineapple saved, which is a type of salvia, puts those red tubular flowers out, the hummingbirds lineup. They love it. Plus you get the wonderful pineapple scented foliage on the plant. And there's just a lot of great ways you can use herbs. Oregano awesome groundcover, marjoram, same thing. The time spilling over the side of a container looks really nice. Time is another great one. Rosemary is one of the most drought tolerant plants you can

plant. Years ago, we had a drought. Oh, I guess this would have been probably over ten years ago now, and the master gardeners up in north central Texas, I can't remember if Denton County or which county, they went around town looking at what was living and what was not, and they were just taking Italia plants, and rosemary is one of the top plants for surviving during that excessive drought that they had up there. It's a good

one. The only way the only problem with rosemary is you bring it down here to Houston and put it in a black clay soil in a low spot where it sits in a swamp. It will not be happy with that. But just give a good drainage and it's an excellent plant, excellent plant to have. Well, it's time to be getting our lawns in order for summer. And nitrofoss is superturf the silver bag nineteen four ten Superturf by nitrofos.

Fifty percent of that nineteen percent nitrogen is slow released to gradually feed over time. It's got iron about four percent iron in it, by the way, which helps with green up. When you see yellow areas in your lawn for one reason or another, they're usually connected to iron deficiency, and so superturf helps fix that too, gradually feeding over time, which is how we want to fertilize when it comes to the summer. You're going to find nitro fross

products in a lot of different places. I pretty much find them everywhere I go, but a Fisher's Hardware down in a Baytown area has got them Lake Hardware, and Angleton has got nitrofoss products. You go up to Tombold D and D feed store day carry nitrofoss as well. Let's take a little break here and I will be back of a number if you'd like to give me a call. Seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Welcome back to garden Line. We are glad you're with us today. We're going

to talk about some things related to gardening. Excuse me, that always happens to me first thing in the morning. I don't know why, but when when I see a microphone, I start dealing with that first thing. We are glad you're here today, and I want to talk a little bit about as we get going here. First thing, vegetables. We don't talk about them a lot here on Garden Line, not as much as perhaps i'd like to. Your vegetable garden is an opportunity to not only enjoy growing things,

but to produce healthy food for your family. You know, I always like to say that when you grow stuff in your garden, it's fifteen hundred miles fresher. That's pretty true. A lot of the time. What do you like to eat? What do you like to grow? Tomatoes are the queen the garden. I mean, that is the number one vegetable. Everybody loves it. Behind tomatoes. I think probably we're looking at cucumbers. Maybe peppers

would be back in there too as in terms of popularity. But there's a lot of different kinds of vegetables you can grow, and just by following some of the guidelines on when to plant and what to plant and how to have good soil, you can do that. If you don't have a garden, you can get one. You can put a box on the ground. You can buy a box like you know lego. I've talked about vego beds in

the past to put together and put things in them. A lot of people, i mean people even stack up their cinder blocks to make a box for gardening. It doesn't the plants don't care what they're in. Whatever holes the volume of soil they need makes that makes them happy. They're going to be okay with that. It's for us that we want attractive or easy to get two beds or beds that don't take up much space. Cinder blocks. Each

block takes up eight inches. With so two blocks, one on each side of the bed, there's sixteen inches of whatever space you had that's gone just for the sides of the bed. That's kind of the negative on one of the negatives on those, but whatever you want to do. Also, containers, You can garden in containers. It is not difficult at all. Just make sure your containers hold as much soil as possible. So if you're going to grow a tomato, can you grow a tomato in a five gallon bucket?

Yes, the holes in the bottom. You can grow tomato, but be ready to water it twice a day to make sure it never lacks for moisture, doesn't go into moisture stress. I prefer to put tomatoes in at least ten gallons of soil and a good quality soil mix. When you have a good quality soil mix, it's going to hold water, but it's going to drain well, and that is important if you want success. Here's the

thing. People grow tomatoes in containers that are too small, and they look out, oh it's wilting, and they water and it bounces back and they go, no harm, no foul. Well, actually, yes, there is, because what would have set may then abort, but maybe one will set the next day or two or three and so on. But you don't know it. But you're losing productivity, or you're losing the development of the fruit into a good sized, tasty fruit, or you're getting blossom and drot

because of that intermittent too wet, too dry kind of condition. And so you just want a good sized container. So there's a large volume of soil because ever drop of water in every molecule of nutrient has to come out of that one container, and a plant grown in the garden would have had much more root zone area to draw from. So if you do that a container that's a good size, it drains well with a quality mix, and you fertilize it, you're going to have success. It's not hard. Sun o

add sunlight six hours of sunlight or more. Now. Jungle Land is a niche frost product that is designed for outdoor gardening, and they also have a version for indoor gardening too with the water saving crystals. The outdoor one is called jungle l in flour and vegetable planting soil, and it does the magic trick of draining away excess water very well, but also holding onto water for

the plants to be able to use. So you want moist soil, you want soil has plenty of water, but you do not want water logged. That's why we have drainage holes in a quality mix like jungle In. You can buy jungle In in a lot of places. You know, nitropos products, they're widely, widely available. If you go down to Clute Lake Jackson

Lake Hardware and Clute Well, they've got it there. If you go to Gym's Hardware up in Montgomery for those of you listening in Montgomery or maybe over a task Asida, the task as to Ace Hardware store also has nitroposs products like the jungle In. But if you get a good container, get a

good quality soill like that, you can have success. I've got two pepper plants to uh jalapanias that are in it looks like little whiskey barrels, but they're plastic and they're probably hold about a fourth as much as a whiskey barrel holes a half whiskey barrel holes, and they're growing in there. And a couple of times I've let it get away from me I'm busy, I'm doing other things. I'm out of town, and I come back and they're kind

of wilting. I know better. I know that should have been a little bigger container, but it's what I had on hand at the time, so we went with it. I just need to watch. Another thing you can do when you are struggling to keep a plant adequately hydrated is if you put that plant where the hottest part of the day it gets a little bit of shade. You know, you're still getting plenty of hours of sun, but it's not like eight or ten hours. Yeah, I mean, it's not

just like all day that thing is getting hammered with sun. That helps a little bit on you keeping up with the soul moisture, and a lot of plants appreciate that. By the way, is the weather heats up, you want to move your some of the plants that are a little bit wimpy when it comes to hot summer sun into that partial shade. I have some geraniums. I love geraniums, some beautiful, beautiful new geraniums on the market, and in the springtime they're great. Just put them out there in the sun,

full sun and everything. They're happy. When it gets hot, mine move over to where they get some afternoon shade. I give them as much sun as I can in the morning and then afternoon shade, and that helps them get through the hot summer. We're just a little on the hot side for them to be real happy down here year round. But that's an easy plant to grow if you don't overwater it. There's another good example. I was visiting with the folks at the Bee Supply the other day and they were

telling me about a couple of cool things that are going on. First of all, they have a b rental program. Do you know you could rent a bee, Well, not ab but a bunch of bees. So if you live within fifty miles of Dayton, Texas, which is where the Bee Supply is, and you've got five to twenty acres, you can contact them. Go to their website, thebsupply dot Com. Go there. That's where

you order your bees. By the way, we're drawn near to the toward the end of the time, where you get all your orders in and get your bees in. So if you want to order bees, get that done. But you go there the website and check out the bee rental program. If you need an AG exemption on your property. Bees are a legit way that that can be achieved. And what the rental program is is that they come out, they set them up, and they do the work for you

on tending the hive. And so that's a good deal. You just need to read more about it on the website and talk to the folks at the Bee Supply. Another thing, and I talked about this for the first time yesterday, is there are a lot of different kinds of bees other than honey bees. We have many native bees and one type is a leaf cutter bee. And you may have seen the little bee homes where it's like a box and it has all these looks like straws in it, all stacked up like

a pile of pencil or apollo straws. Rather well, the leaf cutter bee is an excellent pollinator bee. They're super aggressive or anything like that. They mostly work during the daytime and they get their nest set up, they raise their young in those little straws. And you can actually purchase leaf cutter bees at thebe Supply. I think that is so cool. It's another pollinator that

you can use in your gardens and it is a very good one. It's one of the one of the native bee pollinators that we have around the area. They can tell you how to do it again thebesupply dot Com. You want to add to your pollination in the garden, have more success, more productivity, and so on. Why not contact the bee supline get some of those leaf cutter bee boxes. Plus, it's a cool conversation piece, you know, walk around and show people what's going on. It's a whole different

kind of bee than the regular honeybee that you may be familiar with. Our phone number if you would like to give us a call seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one two five eight seven four. How do your beds look out in the garden or do you have good color in them? This is a season to get the color planted in your beds. And when you're doing a bed change, you want to fertilize

the soil, mix it into the bed and then plant your plants. Every time I do a bed change, in addition to pulling any little weeds that have popped up in there, work in a good supply of nutrients for the next Think of it as a crop a crop of flowers that you're about to grow and watered in real good after planting, and you're back off hitting the ground running again, ready to go for summer. It's time to plant heat

loving plants. I know it's not hot hot out there, certainly not today, but we're about to get warm and so some of the things that are a little wimpier that aren't going to make it past spring, you still plant them, but you're the amount of months or weeks that you're going to get a beauty out of them is more limited at this point in the season. But things that can take heat. I mentioned Lantana before. Salvias another great plant for taking a lot of heat. If you're looking for annual em bedding

plants, Colius. It never gets too hot for Colius. They are Colius now for the sun and for the shade. Angelonia is one of my favorite summer color plants because it's just dependable. They call it summer snap dragon. Not real crazy about that name, but it's sort of is like a snap dragon, and that it has a spike of flowers on it comes in beautiful colors as well. That's an excellent one. I mean, I could go on and on and on. All the heat loving plants, personalane, and

many many others. But get those beds done, get the soul worked up. Add some composts to it. Always a good idea to add an entrer to a compost every time you rework a bed, and that just gets it better and better. Now you don't do all that work yourself. Call Piercecapes,

you know. Piers Capes is the company I've talked about for years now that is just absolutely unbelievable work when it comes to designing a landscape, designing a bed, creating an outdoor area, hardescapes, drainage problems, irrigation all that. They also to a quarterly maintenance of beds. You can harre them come out every quarter. They trim, they weed, they fertilize, they

check the irrigation. They do seasonal color changes in the bed. You know, hey, it's time for trading out the pansies for something they can take the summer heat. They do that sort of thing, and they mulch over the beds really really well. And I think it's nice having the peace of mind knowing that they're keeping your beds looking really really good. It's like you're not coming home one day going, oh my gosh, that thing's gotten weedy. I got to get around to taking care of it. Let them do

it for you, pierscapes dot com. Here's the phone number two eight one three seven oh fifty sixty two eight one three seven oh five zero six zero. Go to that pierscapes dot com and look at the other kinds of work they can do. You will see some really inspiring things there. As a result, they do excellent, excellent work. Do you know that you could rent bees? I was just talking about renting bees. No, I did

not want the bee supply. Well, if you have five to twenty acres and or within fifty miles a dayton up here, they'll come out to your property, put bees on it, and they come and take care of the bees for you. It's like you're this big bee farmer and they're coming in and doing the work and they turn me hives and you get to watch and you know, be part of that. These so critical to plants, to food to us. It is. I think Honey's involved in this deal too.

That's the most important part. Oh cool, I think that's cool. All right, we're gonna turn it over Nikki here's the phone number if you won't get me a call, seven one three two one two k t RH. Welcome back to the garden Line. Good to have you with us today.

Hey, what do you want to talk about? Gardening wise? If you have a question or just could use some advice, I will even allow you to bragger in your garden a little bit, but not for long, but we'll all a little bit of that if you'd like to give us call

seven to one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. You know, gardeners are proud of the things they grow and do in the garden, and because it's an accomplishment, you know, it's kind of cool to think about the fact that you can go out there in the dirt, and I know, don't lecture me about difference between dirt and soil. You can go out there in the dirt and you can put something in the ground and you can

end up getting flowers and vegetables and herbs out of it. You can go out there in the dirt, you can plant some grass and mow it right and fertilize the water right, and you can end up with a beautiful outdoor carpet that affects the actually affects the temperatures around your house because that reflective heat. You know, people that think of rock landscape, what you see out

in Arizona, Phoenix or someplace. You see these rock landscapes, Well, yeah, you don't have the water them, but oh my gosh, the reflective heat, the effect of that, we don't need that lawn is like an air conditioning unit. Literally, they can tell you how many BTUs of cooling turf grass and plants in general, but turf grasp me in a plant

provide. That's true with trees as well. It's not just the shade that you get from a tree which helps cut down on the temperatures down lower, but when plants are transpiring water, then that moisture that they're sending out that actually has a cooling and effect that that's what happens when moisture essentially evaporates away from a surface. I see what we're going to do. Let's head out to Parland and we're gonna talk to Don. Hello, Don good, I'm

good, sir, how are you today? I'm doing good. I want to ask you about my lilyes that I have and they don't but it already the flyers and they'll fall off the stem. Well, they re all bud again this year? And also if they're not, should I go ahead and cut the stem back where they butt it at? You know, I would wait and see. There's different kinds of lilies. There's different variations of little the you know, the what we call lily. There's even things that aren't

lili's that we call lily. So I would just wait and see on these, give them a little more time. You may get in some more either side sprouting or shoots that come up and do blooming, depending on which kind you have. But are they are they still blooming some or are they completely done? No, they're still bloomy some. Okay, Yeah, I would give them. I would give them a little more time. You may get they get some more out of it. I wouldn't give up just quite yet.

Okay, Yeah, not cut the stems that the flowers is on dead, not just yet. Let's wait and see. Let's see how they do. How long have you had these lilies done? Oh? Maybe two three weeks? Oh okay, pretty short time. Yeah. Another thing you could do is send me a picture of the flowers so I could see specifically the lily you're dealing with, and I could comment on that if you would like to go that route. I have the type of and actually pronounced its a

is a t I c oh asiatic lily. Okay, yeah, what color is it? It kind of an orange color or pink pinkish, well, the pink and some of pink, well actually some of white, and then the other plant is kind of reddish red. Okay. Asiatic lilies in general are not going to rebloom. You shouldn't see more blooms coming on those.

Uh there. Yeah, I would say some people can get them to rebloom with, you know, providing them with some care and just depending on the climate you're growing in and the and the health and condition of that plant. But yeah, as far as generally, I find that they're kind of a one shot and the future blooming is not that great on most of the asiatic lilies. Now, there are exceptions to it. And again, like I

said, there's there's so many different kinds of lilies. There's the easter lily, there's the foremost in lily, there's a tiger lily, and those are all different kinds of lilies that have different like the formotion lily doesn't rebloom. Okay, I know better than to pick them next time. Well, but but just wait and see maybe that maybe they'll they'll turn around and do good for you. Okay, well and brown now, so yeah, it was

some of those some of those kind of factors in there. It's it's just you know, some people will tell I've talked to people that said they cut the blooms off real carefully when they're done, and keep the foliage intact and fertilize them and stuff like that. They can try to get them to re sprout and do a little bit. But I again, it's going to come down to specifically the one that the specific one that you have. All Right, appreciate it all, thank you, thank you very much, John,

I appreciate that. Yeah, it's oh gosh, lilies are so beautiful, tiger lilies and some of the others. If they are stunning when they bloom. I mean, even if they bloom once, it's it's worth it because they're so beautiful, absolutely beautiful. Hey, if you haven't fertilized your lawn, sweet green from nitroposs is a great option for a natural fertilizer to put

out there. It's a molasses based microbes get a hold of the molasses in the process the production of it and to create the Sweet Green on eleven percent nitrogen, which is high for an organic fertilizer. When you put it on the soil, microbes, especially bacteria beneficial bacteria love molasses type product on the

soil, that carbohydrate and they do really well. It smells wonderful first of all, and when you put it out you're going to get a release as the microbs go back to work on it and release that nitrogen out of the fertilizer and you will see good results in your lawn green up really nicely. Sweet Green is available in a lot of different places. Being a nitrovoss product. You can find it at the Arbigate Arbrogate in Tombaal It carries nitrofoss products.

Kingwood Ash Hardware is another nitrofoss product retailer where you can find many of their things. And those are just two good examples of places. Shades of Texas, by the way, another one out on Genoa, Red Bluff. They carry nitrofoss products out there as well. Let's go to San Leone right now and talk to Ted. They ted Ou there, we've got a viney weed growing through the Saint Augustine. The only picture I found is maybe close enough, kind of look like a spotted spurge. Okay, in the yard

behind this, they didn't mow and it would grow vertical. But then when they mowed, this thing grows horizontal and it's a it's a very viiny looking and uh ted. To give you a specific idea, I'll have to see it, and we can do that with this. You're sending me a picture. I can take it well. And this picture I showed they finally referred to it as a broad leaf. So I'm wondering if the weed beater ultra might handle it. The weed beaters will would all handle that pretty well,

they should would. I would use the spray so you can get it on the foliage and use it so it holds onto the foliage. Okay, you put it, you said, you said, yeah, at a fact, and to make sure it sticks to the foliage. Okay, Well that's pretty sticky as it is, isn't it the night it is? It is? But they are made to do that. But depending on the weed, some weeds are just very resistant to to waters that it balls up. I canna leaves, you know, you spread and they're not they don't look slick so

much. But boy there so it just so. So if you don't want to do a photo, I can tell you if you go out and break the stem of the weed, if it's a spurge, milk, white milk will come. Read that. Okay, I'm doubting that's what you have though. Okay, yeah, it kind of looks like it though. But a funny thing. I was going to call you yesterday to see if it was too hot to use the wheed. Well, it's a lot cooler today,

It's yeah, it's not. And for I don't know how long it's going to stay the temperate, not today's temperature, like the temperature it was yesterday. But on days like that, do it early in the morning so that by the time it really heats up, it's dried. And you know, I wouldn't worry about that. There are other weed beaters. There's weed better complete. There's a weed beater for southern lawns and and but the ultra is more effective, but it's also one that can do more damage if you Yeah,

well I use it. I just spot treat with a pump up sprayer because I use it. Okay, okay, I wish, I wish I could tell you what weed it was, but it several weeds. Figure out a description. When you said it can come up high, but it can also go sideways when you mow it. That sounds like the fall aster that that happens like what it sounds like what fall aster? Or it's also called black land aster or slender aster. Okay, okay, all right, good luck, ted, hike you my bye. Appreciate it. Take care our

phone number seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. I'll be right back. Welcome back to garden Line. We're talking gardening today. What are the things that are of interest to you? I know one thing that is of interest to you is having quality plants. Because when you get a quality plant, that means that it belongs here, meaning it wants to grow here. It's not a blue spruce from Colorado you're trying to kill it in

Galveston tech. It is a plant that wants to grow here. Another thing is a plant that was grown well, intended too well. I was in a place, I'll say the other day, I wasn't there for plants. I was there for hardware type things and it was one of the big, old, giant, big box stores, I'll leave it at that. And I was out in the area that they had their plants in and it wasn't being taken care of. There a whole racks of plants that were just shriveled.

I mean they were basically dead or they soon would be when you got them home. And that's not what you need to take home, right You need plants that are healthy, plants that look good. And that's why we like to promote our independent garden centers. We call them the mom and pops, if you will. And Plants for All Seasons is that kind of place.

It's been around a long time since what nineteen seventy three. Plants for All Seasons has existed and thrived because they offer quality products and they have knowledgeable staff that know how to help you have success. And if you go in there and you bring them a baggie full of some little bug or weed or plant or whatever, a picture or something, they're gonna be able to identify it. They're gonna be able to point you in the right direction if it's

something you need to control, if it's something you need to fertilize. They're gonna they're gonna put the exact products you need in your hand. That's what they specialize in and people know that. That's why they go back there.

They get good results. They are true lawn and garden experts. His family owned operation by the Flowerties has been going strong for a good long time and that is one of the reasons why if you want to turn your brown thumgreen, that that's a good way to do it because they have the knowledge to

do just that. Plants for All Seasons dot com. That's the website, Plants for All Seasons dot com or give them a call two eight one three seven six sixteen forty six two eight one three seven six one six four six and they are stocked up on color right now. Saw some beautiful color in there the other day, really really nice. Another one of the secrets to success is Ciena Mulch. If you live down south of Houston, you need to first do what what is the first step on garden line to success with

plants. Take care of the brown stuff, get the soil right, brown stuff before green stuff. Cienamol specializes in everything to make that plant happy by making its roots happy. That would be composts, that would be bed mixes, things like vegetable herb type mixes. You know, things for your rose mixes, things like a what's a leaf mold compost? A fine greened leaf

mold compost, things like every fertilizer I talk about on garden line. When you go to Sienna and bring that home and put it in your ground, make your beds, create that nutrient content that is so important in the bank account of the soil. Then when you go buy a plant and bring it home, it is so much much more likely to have success. And that is step one. And Cienamult is step one for all of you that live down way south of the Houston area. They deliver within about twenty miles.

So if you are in Siena Plantation or Cola, Iowa Colony, Pomona Lake, Olympia, Meridian First Colony, roadcher and Manville Riverstone, do I need to go on? I will pair Land sun Creek Estates near the brasis Men State Park, Sweetwater, Quail Valley. All right, I'll stop there. Oh at one more Riverstone. All those communities are in the backyard of Ciena Maltz. That's your local multch place. Also Multchz. Do you need native hardwood molts, double ground malts, two inch screen malts? Do you need

rocks? Are you creating a river bed a dry river bed, which is a real great way to improve your drainage, just channel it away like that? Or are you creating a pati and you need some flagstone, some flat stone. They've got it all at Ciena Mulch Again, just go to the website Ciena Multch dot com, Sienna Maltz dot com. They'll get you set up. They're closed on Sunday today, but they'll be back open again Monday

through Saturday. I love going down there too. It's just always I'm always surprised at some of the blends and just the quality of a lot of the products that they carry. That's nice. If you haven't fertilized your lawn yet this spring, a great option would be some of the turf Star products from Nelson's. You know Nelson has a long line of turf Star products that do very well for your turf too. I want to kind of focus on today. One is Bruce's Brew. Bruce's Brew is we think of it like as

a fast release fertilizer, and it is. It provides most of it's nitrogen in a form that's going to release pretty quickly, so you get an immediate result. You get that boost, that quick boost from it. But it also has some of the fertilizer in forms that are slower available, so it's not just a fast release. It's a fast release with a little bit of gradual release going forward from there. Now the slow and easy from Nelson's that

is the completely slow release fertilizer, or almost all of it. It's got a you'll get a little bit of release initially, but for a very long time, for three or four months, you're going to get slow and easy release of nitrogen into your soil. Grass needs to be fed gradually. When you overdo the nitrogen at any one point in time, you get a lot of top growth at the expinded root growth. And what does that mean when

you have drought? Well, that's not good, right. What does that mean when you have grubs chew and a few of the roots that are there. Not good? So we want to gradually feed it over time to develop a good deep root system. It makes the plant more drought tolerant, just physically just makes sense to do that. You're not going to burn your plants with it. With that slow, gradual release, it's going to feed microbes in the soil, and the slow and easy even the components of it helped

acidify the soil. This is not a you know, you're going to turn a pH of eight into a pH of five overnight, but graduate over time as you use it. It's it's pushing downward, which is helpful. Diseases like take all root rot, for example, love a high pH environment around the runners of your Saint Augustine grass and other other species that attacks slow and

easy by Nelson's is a great choice for that. I'm kind of amazed at all the technologies now that we have to create products that you can just kind of custom design them to do what you want. And the microbes get in there, they get involved, they break some of that stuff down, They some things, you know, certain kinds of compound. I'm kind of wandering here, but I find this of interest. Maybe you will. Certain kinds of nitrogen forms when they hit water, they become available. Water releases them

out of the granules. Other kind water if it's says really wet, it actually stops release of the nutrient to a large degree. There's others that my microbes get in. The microbes break it down over time. There's a lot of different ways that those fertilizer particles can work, and a well designed fertilizer can utilize that to provide the exact kind of release that you're looking for. And I think that's that's pretty pretty interesting stuff. You're listening to garden Line.

We're gonn take a little break here in a bit our phone number seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. If you'd like to call Josh and get on the board when we come back from the top of the hour break, you can be the first up. Those of you downe in Richmond, you know about Enchanted Gardens and Jenny Gardens has you know, it's been there for a long time, but it's a place that people know about.

And I don't mean en Richmond, I mean around the state. People drive from a long distance to go to in Chenny Gardens because other towns don't have the garden centers we have. They just don't. And I've said this before, North, south, east West, wherever you live in Houston, you've got some awesome independent garden centers and Chenni Gardens. Richmond is that kind of showplace. It's the kind of place people drive from because they don't have

one in their town. And I mean driving from Austin. I've lived in Austin area. Some good garden centers over there, but nothing like over here in the Houston area. And people drive to Chenne Gardens just for the plants and for the experience of going out there. They have a whole lot of little gadget tree for your faery garden. Have you ever seen a ferry garden

before. It's like think of a miniature garden, but it's outside. It's not like it can be in a pot or a container, but you can even do it around the base of a tree, little figurines and you put in some moss and stuff and it just looks like, you know, a little faerry family has moved in around the base of the tree or in a large container. In Chened Gardens can get you set up and some really fun cool ferry guarding. In fact, I think that's something that you got to

get the kids involved with. They're gonna have some fun with factor. Hey, by the way, in chended Gardens Richmond dot com in Chennigardens Richmond dot com. Go check them out. They're open today. Why you're there, you can pick up those products that I've been talking about. You hear me talk about fertilizers. They got them, they got it. Well, here we go. We're about to put an hour in the books. Hey, just a reminder, and I'll mention this again. I'm going to be at

Southwest Fertilizer next Saturday at eleven am, eleven not eleven thirty. Eleven am to one pm, Southwest Fertilizer, and I'm going to be giving away what they call skip bucks. What is that, Well, it's money, paper money that you can use to buy product when you're there. So it's like giving here some money, go buy you some stuff. And you know they

have everything at Southwest Fertilizers. They're going to give away a Toro blower, a touro string tremor, We're going to give away some and other products. It's gonna be a good time. I'll tell you more about that later. 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 Rict. It's so crazy gas. Just watch him as many good things

to set czy in gas. Not a sound good morning on what's gonna be a great day, by the way, I mean a very great day. It is cloudy out there now, and it's gonna be cloudy for a little while, but those clouds are going to push away and we are going to get some sunshine peeking through, and it just gonna get better and better. And the temperature is so good. Be a great afternoon to be out in about, pick up some supplies and plants, or get out there in the

garden, do a little work if it's not too soggy wet. You know, it's always best to work soil when it is moderately moist. You know, when a clay soil is dry, dry, dry, it is like concrete. You need a jackhammer to get through it. When it is soggy wet, it is like a stick of warm butter. You try to, you know, stick a shovel or a spade and fork or a rototiler in it, and it's just goo. It's just a mess, and it destroys the structure of a clay. To work it. When it's wet, let

me talk about structure in just a minute here. But when it's moist that's when it's friable. That's when it breaks apart very easily. And even if you have a really difficult clay, if you can catch it at that right moisture level, that's a great time to do the amendments to improve it.

Things like expanded shale. If you can put about I know this is a lot, but if you can put about three inches of expanded shale down into a heavy clay, you can dramatically improve its internal drainage and oxygen levels and

everything for many, many, many years. Expanded shale is a type of a clay that or well, it's shale, but it's been expanded by putting it into a super hot oven and causing it to swell up and get all these little poreholes in little pits and pockets and things kind of like lava rock, sort of on a microscopic level, and it really improves the clay.

It's a good time when a clay is moist wet, not dry, to put in organic matter like compost or bed mixes, to mix them with it and take advantage of those moments when you can get in there and do that, because you're always going to be wanting to have a quality soil. And if you get it ready when you can, then whenever you want a plant, you just go at it and you can get it done. Makes it

really really easible easy. I talked about structure and stuff. I'm gonna mention I'm going to talk a little bit about texture and structure of soil little bit later. It's a little bit nerdy, but I think it will help to understand it a little bit better. Well, speaking of soil in a container, a quality potting mix like jungle Land will do what your roots need to provide everything they need in terms of nutrients and water. And here's how it

works. A quality product like jungle Land is going to hold on to nutrients pretty well. It's going to hold onto moisture well also so that you're not water in it three times a day trying to keep it going. But it will drain away the excess when there's too much water. Gravity just takes it right down through the jungle land and out the whole, and you don't have to worry about soggy, wet conditions. It CAUs root rots. Jungle Land

is available in a number of places. Like a nitroposs product, It's going to be pretty widely available through the region. Ktieace Hardware is going to have it. You can go out to Memorial Drive and Ace Hardware City. You're going to find it there. You can go down to Stanton's Shopping Center which is down in Alvin and they're going to have it. Also, the the land product. One one other quick quick thing. Well let me come back

to let me come back to that in just a minute. Let's go out to League City and we're gonna talk to Jeff if I can figure out how to push the right button. There we go. Hey Jeff, Hey, what's going on. How are you doing this morning? I'm doing good. It's a great day. Yeah, man, hey, yeah, So I had this company to come out and cut my grass. I don't know, several maybe a year ago even uh and and and the weeds have I guess there are a law more must have brought in Bermuda. I've had Saint Augustine

and then uh just weeds and I mean it's just oh man. Then I had chinch bugs hit. I'm trying to let that grass kind of grow in there and put some weed and feet on about two months ago. But I still have a real serious weed problem. I was reading something about atrazine. They wouldn't harm, but I need something to tackle these weeds with. Yeah, don't do the exerzine now. So you've got a couple of options, and it part of it depends on what weeds you have. Things like bermuda.

You're not going to kill them in your Saint Augustine. They just coexist. That's a problem with that particular week. If if these were weeds that were more annual weeds, not really perennials, I would say you have two options. One is you can spray them and kill them. Or number two, you could just work on fertilizing, mowing, and watering properly and build

density through this whole growing season in your lawn. And then next year, with a denser lawn, you're gonna have fewer weed problems and you just keep focusing on good lawn care and grow yourself out of it. So there's the options spray now or take time and just grow yourself out of the problem by building a denser lawn. There are a few weeds that can coexist in a dense lawn, but the majority of them ant and so so spray. You said, spray, now, what what do you mean, like a contact

spray? Well, no, but you're you're spraying a broad leaf post emergent weed killer like Furtilan has one called weed free zone, bon Eye has weed beater. There are several forms of weed beater like the Ultra. Uh. With cool temperatures like this, this will be a great day to get out and do the spray. And because some of the better products for killing weeds when the temperatures get up in the upper eighties and above can damage your Saint Augustine. So do it now. In fact, this afternoon be a good

time to do it. Uh and uh Okay, so emerge like bone Eye weed beater, Ultra or there are other weed beaters from Bonnite or Fertilan weed free zone or two that will kill broad leaf weed. Now, Jeff, if you haven't been online to gardening with Skip, go on there and I've got my two schedules, the lawn care schedule and then secondly I've got the lawn pest disease and weed management schedule. If you go to the second one and you go down to weeds. There's weeds prevention and weeds kill existing.

You want to kill existing. And if you follow the bottom of the chart on all the things on my charts, there's the organic and synthetic options, but you'll find you'll find these products listed down there. Just remember, when we get into the upper eighties, it's you still can do it, but you need to do it early in the day when the temperature is probably in the in the upper seventies maybe or lower mid seventies early on, and they

won't damage the turf. Okay, sounds like a plan. I appreciate it, all right, You have a good one, sir, all right, you as well. Weeds are an issue, I know that. And people vary in their tolerance to weeds. They just and that's understandable. You know. Some people it has to be perfect and so anyweed has to die. Other people it's like, hey, weed, your green grass is green. I'll mow it all and take my glasses off and it'll look just as pretty

as it ever did. I don't know where you are on that spectrum, but it's okay. Wherever you are, go for it. But I want to take a little break here and when we come back, Marty, you will be the first up if you'd like to have a skull seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Welcome back to Gardenline. Good have

you with us this morning? Hey? If you I was yesterday, I was out at an RCW nursery and talking to Mike Fodge, who is I rep from azemite that serves the whole Texas area really maybe more uh, And we were just discussing the product and people were asking questions about using it. They donated a few bags it gave away for them yesterday. Congratulations. I'd by the one that if you haven't put micro nutrient supp clement onto the lawn,

you might want to consider asimite. It is an excellent product that's mined up in Utah and it provides those trace minerals. What does trace mean? Well, the three numbers in a fertilizer bag are the elephant in the room, Nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. Urfan needs lots of those. Then there's things that are more secondary, like calcium for example, or magnesium that are essential and it needs a lot of that, but not as much.

And then there are things that are trace like manganese or zinc or iron or all the little trace minerals. Well, the trace minerals are also essential, but they're needed in tiny amounts. A forty four pound bag of asimite will cover about six ten thousand square feet seth going a long long way, But you don't need a lot of it, and so you can do a soil test to see what kind of nutrient youee you made. Just need to put

it on occasionally and do the replenishing. People that return their clippings typically are recycling things like that. People that bag their clippings are hauling away some of the nutrient that is important for grass to survive, so supplementation is even more important in those situations. You can go to azimite Texas dot com and learn more about it. Don't put azimite in the same hopper as your fertilizer at

the same time because the particle size is different. But you can do them both on the same day by fertilizing and then putting out asimite, or you can wait put out azimite at a different time when you aren't fertilizing. It doesn't matter. Timing is not important on the asamite. It's just important that your soil bank account has everything that the grass needs to grow and to thrive. I want to head out to Marty now in Fairfield. Hello Marty,

good morning, Skip. I have a question. I have two different roses, and I got to identify my problem as thrips and then on the other one it has a little bit of thrip, but more importantly it has a bungle on the on the leaves see and I've had manko zeb and I wondered will that take care of both of those things? Not thrips? But it is a good fungicide. Okay, now what would yeah for the throups if you don't overuse it. Spinosaid is pretty good for throups. It's an organic

product that will kill throups. The problem with spinosid is people like it because it's effective and it's organic, so they just overuse it every time they turn around their spring and spinosid spinosa spinosid, and then we start to see resistant thrips that to this organic product spinosa. So using it occasionally that is fine, but I would alternate spinosid with other kinds of products just to avoid losing a good product mean losing it, meaning it doesn't work anymore. It's not

the products heavy. Yeah, have you ever heard to Captain Jack's. Yeah, Captain are you talking about the dead bug Brew? I don't know. One of my guardians buddies recommended Captain Jacks and right, I don't. I never really, I've never even seen it. Well, Captain Jack, there's a dead bug brew that has spinocid. That's the Captain Jack's Dead Bug Brew. So yes, that would be one. Uh. There's also a Captain Jacks that has soap in it with the spinocid. So you know, it

just depends. They're bon eyed products. Bone Eyde makes Jacks line. But yeah, the Captain Jack's Dead Bug Brew is a spinocid product, and you know that would go ahead and that would help the thrips kill him. Yes, huh. It is effective against thropes. But like I said, just just don't don't only use that all year. Switch out to a different kind of and say decide occasionally, you know. And so as far as the diseases are concerned, you know, there are a lot of products out there.

There's fungenil, which is a pretty good leaf spot type of fungicide. That's how I think of it, so you can use it on your roses for black rot and things like that, fungenail. There's copper based sprays that work pretty well for both powdery mildew and black spot on your roses. So you got a lot of good options. Just the mancaz ebb would be a good one. Again, don't just for the next two years spray nothing but

manca'z ebb. Well, I don't use it very often, but I have it, and I didn't want to go out and spend more money on news products, so well I understand. Okay, yeah, that makes sense. Okay, Well, thank you very much, have a good one. All right, Barty, good luck, thank you, thank you. Bye. You live up Montgomery and you haven't been to A and A Plants and Produce. I do not know how you have avoided that, because I mean it's right there on the east side town. Every time you drive by you see

it. Just wonderful to wander through there. They've had a wonderful selection of plants, of course at the garden center, and they have great supply of products. And when you go to A and A you hear me talk about a fertilizer soil. It's there. For example, they got Nature's Way leap Mo compost, They've got airloom soils, they have fertilizers like Microlife, like Nelson's plant Food, including all of the turf store line that I've been talking

about. They've got nitrofoss products as well, so it's easy to go in there and get what you need. They do work up in the Lake Conroe area if you need to hire their landscape crew to come out and do some work. Talk to the folks at A and A about that as well. Very active in the community, always doing stuff with kids there at ANA. If you've got kiddos, contact them and find out when's the next activity coming up, what's going on because they do a lot of fun stuff with kids

and supporting schools and things. Just a great part of the greater Montgomery area community. So all of you up in there in the Lake Conroe area, this is your hometown garden center and you really need to check it out. O pig what Let's go out to Humble, Texas and talk to SHAWNA. Hello, shawna Arnist, you thank you so much for tanking my call. It's got to get any advice on the type of soil that I can use for a plotted ut, for for a what please, a pot? Oh

oh yeah? Uh. You know, there's a lot of good mixes out there. A sega is going to be around a while, so it's not like your plant and pansies in a flower pot. So I would probably go with something that's a little more on the chunky side. There are some good blends. I know people that use rose mix and and all kinds of applications.

Not just a rose bed that would be a good option. Any any kind of a good bed type mix would be fine to use because you're going to need a good sized hot for that, saygo yes, yeah, excellent. And any storage recommends to the Humble area. In the Humble area, I would go probably, Well, you've got Kingwood Garden Center. You've got Warren Southern Gardens up in Kingwood. If you get down into the Humble area and you're you know, looking for like let's say an ace an ace store,

you can head out over toward a task Asita direction. Just down the street on timber Forest Drive there is an task Asda ace hardware. Those usually carry a good blend of of the products as well, so you might you know, call first just to be sure. But task Asia Ace Hardware would be another good one close by. Excellent, Thank you so much, all right, you take care, all righty well, let's see here. Yesterday also when I was out at RCW Nursery, we were visiting with the three

sixty tree stabilizer creator Kurt Kurt has created really just an ingenious product. Three sixty Tree Stabilizer is a plastic bar, super reinforced, very strong. It's got rubber straps on each end. You can get it fitted with a T post attachment if you want, or you can buy the one that's just for putting around a regular round post. It grabs a post and it grabs a

tree and it holds them very very well. Now, forget the wires, buying wire steaks in the ground to trip over, you know, cutting pieces of garden hose to go around the tree, you know, cut into the limbs. Don't mess with that. Just put one tea post in the ground, Put one tree stabilizer on the T post attached to the tree loosely so the tree can move a little bit. That's important. You don't want to

make it perfectly stationary. Just a slight amount of movement and it works well if you got a little more of a windy area and you want to use two stabilizers one or south, one east west, so no matter where the wind row goes, it's got that tree stable. You can do that too, tree stabilizers or widely. But of course RCW has them. Buchanans Plants has them, arbor Gate Plants for all seasons, Southwest Fertilizer where I'm going

to be next Saturday as tree stabilizers. Jorges Hidden Gardens down in alvin carries the tree stabilizer as well. Makes it really easy, really easy to do that. By the way, have you if you're down in the Alvian area anywhere around that area and you haven't been to Hoges Hidden Gardens, you need it. You need to go. Or has a wide variety of things. You know you're gonna seasonally, you're gonna find things like vegetables there and whatnot.

They they're always carrying, you know, citrus trees. They've got roses in stock. Typically last few times I've checked, they had blueberries and thornless blackberries on hand. If you need some color in your beds. I was bragging on lantana while ago they got those. They got Mexican heather, which is another great plant. By the way. By the way, Mexican heather too should be mentioned more on bee lists. Honey bees love Mexican and heather. Hoe carries a lot of fruit trees and so on. Of course he

has that tree stabilizer. They're on Elizabeth Street in Alvin, just south of Highway six, so seventeen seven twenty one Elizabeth Street and alban It's called Jorges Hidden Gardens. They are open on weekends, so today from eight am to four pm. Back on Fridays eight am to four, Saturdays eight to four and Sundays eight to four Friday, Saturday Sunday. Jorges Hiddingguards had a bunch of beautiful Peggy Martin roses that they brought through this year that were really really

attractive. I love I love those things. Let's see, We're gonna go now to Cypress and talk to Sandy. Hello Sandy, good morning Skip. I have a question do you birds like blueberries? Because I have so many flowers and blueberries, and then the next day I go and they're vne they do they do like blueberries? Yeah, you got to put a bird netting over it probably if you're gonna if you're having that problem. And then strawberries as well. Oh yeah, yeah, they will also eat strawberries. You

know, it's weird. I have a strawberry patchie here and I haven't had any bird damage, but usually I do. So I don't know what's going on right now. Maybe they just haven't discovered them. And then my black beauty eggplants keep giving me flowers, but then the flowers fall off in that Yeah, flowers don't produce anything. I need it because it didn't pollinate. Well, yes, but I need to look into that more as to why that is. We have that question come up seasonally, and I've never worried

about eggplant pollinating, but I do know that happens. I don't know if it's a lack of bees or something, or if it is a temperature related thing, but that does happen. There's nothing I know of that you can do to fix it other than just wait. And they tend to settle in and start setting a little bit better. Sandy, I'm ten seconds away from a break. If you want to hold, we can keep talking her. If we're done, I'm going to go ahead and put your on hold either

way. Okay, okay, oh all right, very good. We'll be right back phone number seven one three two one two kat r h. Wellcome back to guarden line. Good have you with us today? We are visiting with Sandy and Cyprus. Sandy, Where do we go from here? I have one more question my slicer tomatoes. They're getting big, but they're still green. Can I pick them and put them on my counter and let them

turn right? Or how does that work? Yes? Uh, it's hard to fully describe the difference as a tomato matures, but here's what happens. You start off with the tomato that has very quirky material inside. It's not it's not like jelly. Uh. And when you slice through a tomato like that, if you did, you would cut right through the seas too,

with a sharp knife. Then as it hits a mature stage, the cells inside those open spaces where the seeds are become more jelly like, and if you slice through, the seeds are harder and they just sort of push to the side. That's the line between it'll ripen inside and it won't. So it size is definitely a factor, But you can have small tomatoes that just aren't going to get any bigger that mature. So you can't just go by

size. But if you pick one that's hit the mature stage but it's still green, you pick it and put it inside or wherever you put it, it's going to ripen and just fine and actually turn out to be pretty good. Oh okay, all right, well, thank you so much. Skip had a great day, all right, Sandy, thank you for call for the call. I appreciate that very much. Have you guys been to the rosen for him? I'm telling you this is one another one of our awesome

destinations. But this is a great little trip. And by the way, it's not that far. It's up there in Independence, Texas, north of Brenham. You get there about an hour to where in the area you're listening living in. You know, it's bluebonnet season still up there, so it's a beautiful drive. It's just a wonderful outing. When you go to the antique rosing Porium, it's like you enter another place in time. I mean, it's like a botanical garden set back in the historical Texas past. Maybe

that's a good way to put it. I just love going out there. Fun fun to go walk around see things. They've got the demonstration gardens they call them the display gardens. Out there the nursery is loaded with all kinds of things. I mean, if you want to go out and look at all the things they carry. You know they are roses, but they are so much more than roses. They've got native trees, they have fruit trees, they got house plants and herbs and perennials. Lots of beautiful plants out

there. If you are part of a garden club, maybe a master gardener group, a junior master gardener, group of kiddos, Native Plants Society, Herbs Society, or just a bunch of friends hanging out looking for a place something to do, don't go out there alone. Take your friends with you. In fact, if you will get a hold of them, you can email them at events at we Areroses dot com, events at Wearroses dot com and say, hey, I've got a group I want to come out and

do a tour. I'd like to do a lunch and learn with you guys. I'd like to do a gardencraft for workshop or something during the week or on Sunday during the spring season. They can set that up and do it with you. You can give them a call at ninety seven nine eight, three, six fifty five forty eight, or go to the website and boy, you're going to love the website. It is inspirational. Antique Roseemporium dot com. They grow their roses and two gallon container. It's a nice robust

amount of soil there for a good strong rose. Ever roses that price twenty nine to ninety five at Antigrosenporium and listen. They are nationally known for growing wonderful quality, wide variety of antique roses. I hope you make a plan on going out there. That's a great outing. We call that what do you call it, horticultural tourism. There's a word for it, horticultural tourism.

It's a great place for that. I love doing every time I go to a big city somewhere in the country, I find a good garden center or a pick your own patch or something and just go out and see and learn. Botanical garden there's another good place to do. I hope you do some of that. It's pretty fun. The folks at Landscaper's Pride they have a wide variety. In fact, twenty seven different products are available in bags. Of course, they'll sell you bulk too. By the way, they

are always local, top quality resources. When you're talking about landscapers Pride, they've been in business. That's two thousand and two, so now what over twenty two years of experienced going on there. Landscaper's Pride has the kind of products to have plants success. Remember, the brown stuff is what makes success. With the green stuff. They have a rose mix marketed as rose Soil. It has in fact is good for woody ornamentals or any especially plants that

like a little bit less hyghe. It's a little more acidic direction. It's got fresh and composted pine bark and sphagnum and slow release fertilizer. Their gardener Magic Soil contains humus. It contains the pine and composted rice halls. Isn't that interesting? Little chicken pellet fertilizer too, takes it up to three months of nutrient release in there for it. The pot Dirt is their organic certified soil for those color beds where you really want things to pop and take off

growing. It's got worm castings and sand and vermiculi and other things that's just an example of the twenty seven different products at Landscaper's Pride. Go to the website Landscaperspride dot com. That's how you find out where to get it. It's widely, widely available, a very high quality product for a very reasonable price with Landscaper's Pride. When when you're taking care of your lawns and your gardens, you always want to make sure the nutrient content is up there.

Think of fertilizing not as feeding the lawn that day, like as if you were taking a spoon and feeding your plants each day. Think of fertilizing as a bank account. And in that bank account are all the nutrients that a plant needs. And so if the plant today the roots out there and it goes, man, I've got to have some zinc and there's no zinc. It's up a creek. It's in trouble. But if it has adequate of

all the nutrients, in adequate supply and in the right ratio too. By the way, we need some nutrients more than others, then your plant's going to thrive. And that's how Microlife fertilizer is designed. It's an organic fertilizer, so it came from a plant, right, So if it was once a living thing, it has all the nutrients, including the micros and things like that that required to grow that plant, and now they're in an organic

fertilizer form. Microbes get a hold of micro life and they break it down and they release the nutrients to your plants. So, whether you're using the green bag to fertilizer lawn the six two four, whether you using I was a Rcwstree we're talking about with one of the folks that stopped in the acidifying the pink bag of microlife fertilizer. They were going to grow some things that needed more acidic soil, and I said, this is the one you need

to get. The purple bag is humans plus, it's concentrated compost in a bag. This and many many other microlife products. You can find out more by going to Microlifefertilizer dot com Microlife Fertilizer dot com. There you can find out where to buy it and all the different products and learn a lot more about it. Let's head out now, let's see here. I'll tell you what, Jim, I'm going to have to hang on. I am hitting a hard break and I always hate to have to cut somebody off for they

even get through asking the question. So, Jim, I'm going to put you first up right when we come back. That would be helpful. If you haven't been at the Arburgate in a while, you need to go. Arborgate is a show place. It always is, it always has been. Any kind of time of the year, you're going to find fruit, trees and flowers and plants and shrubs and trees and or the gift shops are unbelievable out there, the gardens to wander through or outstanding. And the best and

newest thing out there is the Trishel Road access parking lot. You just turned on Trisher Road, go around behind Arburgate. You got an all weather parking lot. Almost I'm gonna post a picture our video of that then I did. I'll get it out on Facebook here. You need to see that, and you need to go. You need to go to Arburgate because no matter what you want, you're gonna find it, and you're going to have staff that knows what they're talking on telling these people know what they're talking about,

they won't steer you wrong. And that is so important when you're buying plants and products to get stuff that works, that works for the plant or against the past or whatever you're dealing with. You need to be pointed in the right direction. And Arbigate always does that. Knowledgeable with quality products. You're not going to be better than that. All right, we're gonna take a little break here our phone number seven one three two one two ktr GIM you'll

be first up. Welcome back to Guardline. Good have you with us today? Listen? If you have trees, you need to take care of them for a number of reasons. Number one, they shade your house, They shade your patio, They provide you a break from the sun. They add a lot hundreds, if not thousands of dollars to the value of your house.

They make the house more sellable. You know, if you picture a house, you're going to buy a house, and you drive up there and there's not a tree in site, versus you drive up and there's a big, beautiful tree there, right, aren't you going to be more attracted to that house? Those houses move up to move quickly on the market. In order to have a successful tree, you need to plant a variety a species

that wants to be here in the site you have. You know, maybe you got a soggy, wet soil and you need a species that can take that kind of condition. Do you want flowers, do you just want shade? Do you need it to be evergreen or do you prefer deciduous and so on. All of that's important, But very important is somebody that knows what they're talking about take care of the tree. And that's why I like to talk about Martin spoon Moore an affordable tree service. Martin's been doing this for

a long time. He's he is very skilled at he's very knowledgeable at it. He knows how to take care of a tree. And you got a lot of people that I call him the two jerks on a chainsaw tree service. They own a chainsaw, they own a pickup, and therefore they're a tree person. Know they are not absolutely not. You need somebody that knows how to pruit tree properly. If deep root feeding or something like deepruit watering during a rescue drought, for example, we're doing that last year. If

that's needed. You need somebody knows what they're doing. If you're going to do anything around an established tree, like put in a driveway or a sidewalk or dig a trench for a utility or something. Call Martin first, have him come out. Martin charges one hundred and fifty bucks to come out for a consultation. Now, I will tell you what's needed or not needed,

to be honest with you about it. But if you decide to go ahead and okay, I'm going to hire you to do that, whether it's pruning or feeding or whatever, that one fifty goes on to the price of the service you're hiring him for, so you don't lose it. So it's worth having him come out, and you know he's not going to drive all over town for everybody. It's just got a question and they're curious. Can't afford to do that. So the one fifty is, hey, are you serious?

But I'm telling you you're you're hiring knowledge that pays off many times over in terms of the value in the success you're going to have with those plants. That's about as simple as I can put it. A f F Tree service dot com, A f F Tree service dot Com. Martin Spoon Moore seven one three six nine nine twenty six sixty three seven one three sixty nine nine twenty six sixty three. Hey, this is a business. Martin and

his wife Joe or the owners. They answer their own phones. If you don't talk to Martin or Joe when you call, hang up, you've called the wrong place. Affordable Tree aff Tree Service dot Com seven one three six nine nine twenty six sixty three. Let's go now out to Bracewood Place. We're going to talk to Jim. Hello, Jim, Hey skip, thanks for taking my call. Yes, sir, I've got a problem with some

trees. Three years ago, I had a professional landscape put in a couple of Eagleston Hollies for privacy screen and the one the first one, so one of the two died. It got an insect problem and I wasn't able to catch it quick enough and it didn't make it. The other one is still okay. The other one made it though. Once I found out what the insect was, I got the proper spray at Southwest Fertilizer. Anyway, put in another one and it lasted. It grew for a while and it died

and it had actually gotten the same insect infestation. Do you know what insect? That was? No idea, but it was one where you it would make spots on the leaves and you could rub the spots off. That's all I know, okay, And that's the guy told me that that was insect It wasn't fung asign Okay, it wasn't fungus. And anyway, so I put another one in, and that one that that actually got the infestation. I treated it and it survived and then it went for a while and grew,

and then it just suddenly died. So uh and there one didn't seem me much roots left when I pulled out. Anyway, I stuck another one and I and so I did this myself. So what ends up being the bottom line? Then on this I hear your plantinum and they're dying. So, yes, where do we go from? What do I need to do? What do I do? What do I need to do with this soil? I've got an old yopon, I've got an old, mature yopon. Holly. I could transplant over there, and I know that they're really hearty,

But is there something wrong with this certain location? Remember six feet over there's another one that's doing just great. Yeah, yeah, Well, okay, Holly's love to be in a forest soil, which means there's lots of organic matter, a very rich foresty type of soil. They like a raised area if at drainage is at all a question, because they do not want to sit on a swamp when it rains too much. At the same time, the first three years of a holly's life you need to pretty much handwater

it because it's important to keep it moist. They are not resilient when they're new. After they get established, after about three years of growing, it's not so touch and go. But with a holly, we lose a lot of hollies early on because they can't wilt and show you they need water. They just are stressed and they look okay, and then all of a sudden, the leaves are turning brown, and because it's heading downhill, it's hard to stop it. So quality soil mix, a good bed mix, something

like a rose soil blend would be an excellent one. Creating a raised for drainage, and then the handwatering. If you've got an automatic system, that can be okay. But what I find is things can block those sprinklers from getting good even coverage all over that root zone, and that is what's very important. That's why I say hand watering the first three years can be more specific skip about watering and like is it every day every other day? It's

totally dependent the accurate answer. And this seems oversimplified, but it's just the truth. Moist soil. You got to keep the soil moist. So if it's one hundred degrees outside in full sun, you're going to water a lot more. If you've got a sandy soil the water runs right through, you're going to water more often. If you've got a clay soil that holds the water pretty well, you're not going to water as often, but getting the whole zone equally wet. Not a dry spot over there, but a nice

soaking. Just you know what I do when I'm not sure is I'll take a trial dig down about four five inches and feel the and you can tell is it sop and wet? Is it a little too? Drives it nice and moist? You want to maintain that moisture. And just remember that that holly plant, which is quite large when you buy it, it has a very small, confined cylinder of roots that came out of the pod, so early on it's got to have water there because there aren't roots out in the

soil to pick it up, and so you gradually wean it out. But there's not a schedule. If I told you once a day, if I told you twice a week, if I told you, you know it. And for how long you water. It's just water enough and often enough to keep the soul moist. Okay, So do you think I need to like treat the bottom of this hole with because I intend to do another one. I need to do it. I need this priv syscuat. Yeah, do you need to do I need to treat the bottom of this hole with bleach

or something? No, no, no, no, no, no, nothing, nothing like that. You make a good bed mix and you dig a hole and your plant and put the soil back in that you dug out. That's very important, all right. And if I raise it, say say, if I raise it with like wood sides, you know, trigger wood sides, if I do twelve inches up, would that even help? Yeah? That's very helpful for drainage? Sure is? Okay, Hey, Jim, I got to run, but good luck with that. I hope

this someone turns out. Just watch for those insects so you can jump in early if you see them again. All right, they're nasty. Thank you all right, thank you very much. I appreciate that. If you're looking at fertilizing your lawn a turf Star by Nelson's. There's two versions of Turfstar, two types of Turfstar fertilizer that Nelson makes several of them. Bruces Brew. That's a faster release, but it has some slow release. Not all

the nutrient gets released all at once. Bruces Brew is a quick way to get in there, get those nutrients out and get a boost to the plants. Slow and Easy is the name tells it. Slow and easy gradually over three or four months, is releasing the fertilizer. In fact, if you do slow and Easy now, you may not fertilize again until you're your fall fertilization. I mean, it really really goes out there a long long way, especially if you're returning your clippings to the lawn. Both of them work

very well with that nice. I like the slow and Easy's nice gradual because it just creates a stronger, more resilient plan. In general, Kaye A. Nelson products, You're all quality. I always have good reports on those people. I tell you what we're gonna take a little break. It's time for the news, right Bob in Walker County. We're going to come to you very first when we come back. Thanks for hanging on with us, don't forget to Let's see on Saturday the twenty seventh. Next Saturday, I'll

be at Southwest Fertilizer at eleven am, not eleven thirty. Eleven am to one pm. I'm going to be given away, Bob at Southwest gonna be given away a Toro blower, a Toro string tremor. I'll draw for those. I'll be giving away some Medinos products and other products. And I'll be giving away skip bucks. What's a skip buck? I hand you a piece of paper, you go buy stuff, and it's like giving you money to go buy stuff. Well, pretty cool stuff. Southwest Fertilizer, bess Utt

and Runwick Next Saturday. Kat RH Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to Katie r H Garden Line with Scamp Richard. It's so crazy, Trim just watch him as Welcome back to guarden Line. Good to have you with us on a Sunday that is going to turn out to be a beautiful day. It is cloudy outside, Do not fear. We will have those clouds moving out, sunlight coming

in, nice fresh temperatures come in kind of nice outside today. Love it good day to be out and about. And I hope you'll plan this afternoon some activity with your gardener, maybe going out and doing a little bit of shopping for some of the things that you just can't live without, whether it's vegetables or flowers or herbs or that all important getting the soil ready. I want to run real quick out to Galveston and talk to Bill. Hello.

Bill, Hi, got a question for you. I've got an avocado tree that has a lot of green leaves on it, but keeps losing leaves. And I don't know if it's like my magnolia that's always lucious leaves, or whether that's all I need to be worried about. Probably not. Avocado doesn't drop all the time, but some leaf drop is not a big concern on them, especially if it's the older leaves further down. The branch of the new growth should still have leaves on it, though, Okay, and that's

all I need to know. Thank you, all right, You're good. Take care appreciate that very much. Let's head out to Walker County down and talk to Bob. Hey, Bob, Hey, good morning, appreciate your show. Thank you. Hey. I have a whole bed full of knockout roses and they used to be really great, but the last couple of years they've been sort of yeah so so, and I am I treat them, treat them with uh systemic insecticides. As matter of fact, I fertilized with

a combo nitroposs for fertilizer systemic. But I got to looking at them this year when I was trimming them, and a number of leaves don't look bad, but the maintains the stalks are just covered with sort of a number of spots. I'm wondering if it's black spot or something. It sure looks like a fungus. And my question is what's the best thing to treat that with. That's very strange, Bob. Knockout is about his disease resistant of a rose as you're gonna get. So I am very uninclined to jump toward a

fungal spray. You know that I've got a good looking picture of it that I can send you. That would be that that would be best if you could send me even more than one picture, maybe the bushes as a whole, and then a couple up close and good sharp focus. I will put you on hold and Josh will pick up and give you an email and if you'll send it to me, if I can get a good look at it for the end of the show, I'll say it on the air. You know, I'll diagnose it on the air, but if not, we'll find

a way to get you an answer on that. But yeah, a fungus on knockout. I definitely need to see this one. Yeah, okay, all right, thank you you bet. I appreciate that a lot. One of the most effective things you can do for a long to bring it back, to make it look good is to do a deep aerration, a core

aeration with a compost top dressing. What does a core aeration mean. It means that instead of just squeezing a hole into the soil by pushing something into the soil, a core errator goes in and it pops a plug out of the soil. It takes attle a little round plug out of the soil and drops it on the surface. I like to say, when you've core aerated you walk around, it looks like someone had a very small dog convention on

your yard because there's always a little well. You figure it out anyway, The core aerator opens that soil up and gets oxygen down in the root system, which on a heavy clay, especially when it's compacted, is very important. Then the compost top dressing goes on the top and it finds its way down in the holes, as does fertilizer, as does water, as does

oxygen, and it just stimulates the root system. And especially when you've got a long that was hammered like last year's lawns were hammered with the drought and the heat. If you've got issues with compaction, if you've got issues with you know, bear soil and weeds and just problems, getting that back in shape is really important. And BnB turf Pros is our go to provider of cororating and compost top dressing down south of the Houston area. So if you

live let's let me just give you some cities. If you live over in Missouri City or sugar Land, that's southwest. If you live down in Siena Arcola, Fresno, an Iowa colony, for example, or Manville down south or if you even as far east. I believe they go as far east as pear Land as well. Now, when I was talking to the folks at BnB turf Pros as we're bringing them on, I always want to know

about service and their attitudes and how they look at things. And I'm telling you this company, BMB turf Pros, their number one goal is customer satisfaction. Their number one aim is to achieve high quality work, quality products.

That is what they do. They don't put stuff down that I don't recommend and trust on garden line on your So they're going to go to a place like Sanamulch and they're going to get a top quality leave more compost top dressing to put down on your lawn because that is top quality stuff at Ciena Malt they will you know, they'll they'll schedule you out, they'll come to the

yard. They can't go too far, like I said, because you know, you're carrying a big, heavy machinery that really does a job better than anything you can rent locally. Uh, And they do it right. Bbturfpros dot com. This is a website Bbturfpros dot com, not BnB, but BB turf pros dot com seven to one three two three four fifty five ninety eight seven one three two three four fifty five ninety eight. You go check

them out. They're very highly rated online because they go above they make a personal connection with the clients and their goal is for you to be satisfied, and that's what they achieve because that's how they go about it. And so I love to recommend places that provide that kind of of customer service. Bnbturf pros dot com for all of you down south and little of the southwest of the Houston area, that's your go to for aeration and compost, top dressing

both. Our phone number is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. When was the last time you went over to Buchannons. You know Buchanans and the Height. They're on Eleventh Street in the Heights. I hope you've been there. If you haven't, well, it's time to crawl out from under a rock and go see it. This is a wonderful little hideaway there. You're driving down eleven Street and all of a sudden you look over there, whoa there it

is. They specialize in native plants. I mean, you're not going to find a better selection of natives. They absolutely are always well stocked in that. They'll even tell you a native. If you say I want something that was native right here in the Houston area, they can do that as well. They had a nice little gift shop, good books available in the gift shop, good quality gift items available. You know, Mother's Day's coming up. You don't want to forget that, right, Very very easy to shop

for mom at Buchanan's Plants. I like to go online and look at all their educational material online too. That alone is worth the price of admission, as is signing up for their newsletter. Their newsletter is outstanding. Just sign up for it and check it out. You see what I'm talking about. Buchanans Plants dot Com on Eleventh Street in the Heights. Go check them out. If you haven't been there in a while, go back. There's always

something going on there. Houseplant selection is stunning, just absolutely stunning. Hey, I've talked myself into another break. Time flies when you're having fun. Well, here we are seven to one three two one two k t RH I'll be right back. Welcome back to guardenline. Hey, good to have you with us. Would you like to ask a question today? Well, here's how you do it. You dolls seven one three two one two k t r H seven one three two one two k t RH and we'll discuss

whatever is of interest to you. That is for sure. Our goal is to help you have a bountiful garden and a beautiful landscape, and so how can we do that starts with simple principles. I was talking earlier about the structure of the soil, I said, I had mentioned that a little bit later. Structure is the way the particles group together. Texture the size of the particles. So when I say texture, I'm talking about sand, silt, and clay. Clay's the tiniest particle size. Silt is just a little

bit bigger than that, and sand can be well. Essentially, sand is big, old, chunky particle sizes of soil. But structure is the way it groups together. So you could have a clay that is just like modeling clay. You ever played with that before? You know? You make a little bowl with your thumbs and fingers and you put water in it and just sits there all day. Right, it holds water because it has no structure into the clay particles. It is just a massive solid mass of clay that

doesn't allow water through, it doesn't allow oxygen down through. That's just ideas when you take a clay and you add organic matter or other things that help humus is a good example that help create a structure now instead of being a mass. It's imagine if you look that under a micro scope, seeing a bowl of popped popcorn. So you have all these clumps of soil particles clumped together with airspace in between them. That is structure in the clay. So

we gripe about our black clay soils and poor drainage and whatnot. But you can build structure to your clay with organic matter by not working the soil when it's wet, working it when it's wet. Just to continue my popcorn analogy, imagine now spraying that bowl of popcorn with water and just smashing down with your hands. I mean you turn it back into just a flattened goo. Right, you've destroyed the structure. You haven't changed a texture, you destroyed

the structure of it. And so clay soil is not bad. You know, sand is not bad or good. I mean they each have their pros and cons, but the most important thing is that we build structure and plant roots do that. When you go into a forest, that soil is nice and friable because the roots of plants, the organic matter from the plants dropped on the soil surface, earthworms moving through it, and on and on build

structure. When you go to a meadow, the grassroots that live and die within a year typically are constantly loosening up that soil, opening it up and adding structure as they decompose into the soil. You can do that. You can cheat and take a shortcut by buying a quality bed mix like a roast soil, like a vegetable and herb soil. You know, whatever you're going after, you can buy a bed mix of that and you instantly get that. Or you can take the soil you have and just keep adding compost to

it. If you got garden beds, don't walk on them. Never walk on your garden beds if you can possibly avoid it. What does walking do? It smashes down the structure and it reduces the amount of oxygen and air and water infiltration. Now that's a lot of information on it, but just understanding that principle kind of helps you understand. Okay, I got a heavy clay, what can I do? Well, you know now what to do.

I've got to loosen it up, doing a little bit of loosening of the soil, whether you use a spading fork or whatever, Putting some organic matter in it, Putting some expanded shale in it, which holds its structure for a long time, keeping that clay more open. All of those things help with the And if you have the other extreme. We don't have as many sandy soils in this area, but we do have many quite a few. Just mix organic matter in it instead of water just running right through and

nutrients just washing right through. With a lot accomposite organic matter, that sandy soil becomes richer, it holds moisture longer, it holds nutrients longer. So just a few tips there on soil, but that I think that's really an important thing to keep in mind. I was talking earlier about finding the kinds of products you need and making sure you get stuff that's going to do the job you want it to do. And ACE hardware, that's what they specialize

in. ACE is the place, is their motto, And it's a place for whatever. I mean. You know, it's a hardware store. It's a place for plumbing, it's a place for electrical it's a place for small appliance for in the kitchens, and I mean just a thousand different products. But ACE is a place for your yard. It's a place for your soil mixes that I talk about. It's a place forever fertilizer I talk about on garden line. It's a place to get fire in control. The bait.

Start with the bait, and then two weeks after you've baited, if you got some mounds, then you can hit them with an individual mound treatment. Those are two kinds of products. A bait is a food that's scattered far and wide in a very low rate that the fire ants take, they bring back, they eat, they feed to the queen. Everybody dies. Who ray. We love that. The individual mound treatment you drench over the mound, into the mound, and it just physically kills the fire It poisons and

kills the fire ant right there. But don't do the mound treatments. Only that's played whackam all. You'll never catch up with the start with the bait. That's the way, and ACE Hardware has that. Do you have mosquito problems? Well, you know, dump out all the water that you got

sitting around the house. And I mean I mean the outdoor of the house, the saggy gutters, the little uh dog bowls it's sitting water for too long, or the bird bath that sits in water for too long, or uh just wherever you have water standing you gotta dump that out, or maybe you want to put some mosquito dunks in it. Well. ACE carries that they carry that they carry foggers for the mosquitos and other things. ACE is the place. What do you want? I was in an ACE just the

other day. I was walking through looking at those little luck I call them beer lights, little strings of lights. You hang outdoors for the early evening ambiance. You know, summer's coming. You know. I can almost sit out in the middle of the sunny day from the outside. But boy, in the evening when the sun goes down, you get a little break from the sun, having those lights and enjoying your patio area. Maybe you got

your barbecue pitted Ace. Boy, do they ever have quality brands? Trigger Big Egg Weber all of that and lots of accessories to go with it. ACE is a place, So where's Ace. Well, go to ACE Hardware dot com and you're gonna find If you put in a store locator for the greater Houston area, you're gonna find forty ACE hardware stores. Easy, easy to find. Let's see. I think we're going to go back to the phones now. I'm going to go to who's been waiting long? Stephen and

Cyprus. Hello, Stephen, body Skip. Hey, I just got a question about the stickers that are in the backyard. The dogs keep running around out there. I'm concerned about them. You know. Well, first of all, too fall, they not heard themselves, and plus they bring him in the house. What's pet friendly besides pulling it out of the ground. Is this a grass or a broad leaf weed? That's the sticker, because we have stickers of different kinds of weeds. It's the broad leave okay,

uh. That would be a post emergent broadleaf we control product, and there are a number of them in the market. If you go to my schedule on Garden with Skip dot com, I list by name some of the products that you can use, both organic and synthetic on weed control. If the stickers are already on the plants, you probably don't want to hear this, but to get out there and pull those plants up, get some gloves on

your hand, pull them up, gets all the stickers out. If you spray them and kill them, you still have dried stickers and dogs are still bringing them in. So that's that's why I say pulling. But next spring, putting out a pre emergent to prevent them from coming up would be a good step. And that is also on my schedule at gardening with Skip dot com. It tells you what products do you use in window apply them?

Okay, we I'll definitely do that. I appreciate you. I just I was just concerned because they chew on the grass a lot, and I was worried about anything I've sprayed down on there. But like those work. Yeah, yeah, And well you've got grassy stickers and you've got broad leaf stickers, and so you may have a little both in there, Dannie, almost like you do. You're an overachiever, Stephen. I appreciate right, take care of Thank you, bye bye. Appreciate that. Hey, Spring Creek

Feed Center is your hometown. Feed center. We love our feed centers here on Garden Line. You can go to Spring Creek Feed if you're up in the Magnolia area. It's just right in your backyard FM twenty nine seventy eight, just minutes away from Grand Parkway Highway to forty nine. The fertilizers I talk about are there. The products to control pests and weeds and diseases are there. And best of all, I think friendly, courteous staff to help

you. They've expended their garden area. By the way, I got some plants outside they've been bringing in and all kinds of these. It's always a good time to go to Spring Creek Feed. If you are FFA or four h or military or senior citizen. Their discounts available for you. Would you like something special ordered, they specialize in that at Spring Creek Feed. They

can absolutely do that and they even have a delivery service. So whether you're looking for garden supplies or quality brands of pet food, Spring Creek Feed on FM twenty nine seventy eight up in Magnolia has got you covered, that's for sure. Let's go to Dayton and talk to Kevin. Hello, Kevin, good morning. They tak him a call, Sir, got a couple of questions. I'll go about two and a half acre lawn, and it's mixed between Zoija, Saint Augustine, Bermuda, just kind of getting into the lawnchair

and during the winter time, I really hate the brown lawn. I was thinking about seeding with rye grass, but I also want to kind of follow your schedule and get out some pre emergent weed and feed stuff like that. And I was kind of kind of wondering how the rye grass will affect the lawn long term. I mean, is that an option or Okay, am I just kind of throwing money away. Yeah, So you're going to do the rye grass seeding probably October. So it isn't a good combo with the

Whedon feed because the Whedon feed keeps a rye grass from coming up. It's a seed and that's what the pre emergent products, whether they're weed and feed pre emergence or whether you're just putting them down like barricade pre emergent, you gotta you got to have a stand of rye grass before you put that product down. Uh. And and so it's not a good trying to combine those two, I would forego the weed pre emergent weed control if you're going to

try to overseed with the rye grass. That the positive of righte grass is you mow the lawn. You got a green lawn on winter. The negative is it's a weed. You are literally planting weeds in your lawn. So they compete for water, they compete for nutrients, and they compete for sunlight. And in the spring, rye grass is happy as a clam. It is growing like crazy and going, going, going, and you're Saint Augustine's trying to wake up, trying to get some sunlight, and so it can

stress. And that's true Bermuda grass too. A lot of times bermuda sports areas and things are overseeded with rye grass, and it's a stress to the bermuda too, because it's a competitor. Of course, when the sun heats up, the rye grass will melt away and you're back to your warm, seasoned turf grass. So if I did choose to do that and plant the rye grass, you know, obviously plant you know late September, first part October. I guess if I wanted to go ahead and treat with three emergent

later probably January February. Ish, I guess will be okay because that's yes, and go to gardening of skip dot com get my schedule. It'll tell you exactly when to apply and what to apply, and it's going to be February for your area that you're going to want to get the pre emergent down. But if you already have rye grass growing, you can put the pre emergent on it and it'll be okay, just not before you seed the rye grass. Hey, I am up against a five seconds away from break.

So thank you so much Kevin for the call. When we get back, Ronnie, you will be our first up. Now it's time for Nicky in the news. Welcome back to garden Line. We'll get back garden Line. Looking forward to your calls our phone number seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Uh. If you're looking for a quality mix of soil, I'm talking about something where you know when you put those plants in, they're going to be laughing

and singing and happy because the roots have everything they want. Soil is a secret to success. Soil is a secret to success. Heirloom soils makes quality soil. Do you need a veggie and herb mix? You can buy it and buy the bag all over the place. Airloom soils are widely available. You can go get it bulk up in the porter location. You can have

them deliver it. You can have them bring and dump it on your side on your driveway, or you can basically have them deliver what's called a supersac, a big, old, giant, one cubic yard sack of soil to your place. They've got the berry and fruit, the fruit berry and citrus type mix they have that. They have the roast, They've got the leaf mold compost. What do you need Heirloom soil has it? Do you need

something for cacti and succulents, something gritty that drains super super well. They've got that heirloom Soilsoftexas dot Com. I was telling somebody just yesterday out RCW Nursery talking to people about things. I said, go to Airlom Sols of Texas and look at the website for the mulch calculator, the soil calculator. Do you want to put leaf moll compost over your yard a third of an inch deep, over two thousand and five hundred square feet or whatever. It'll

tell you exactly how many QB cards you need to do that. That's the kind of deal it is. It makes it really really easy. At Airloomsource of Texas dot Com, I'm want to go out to Laporte. Now we're going to talk to Ronnie. Hello, Ronnie, Hello, quick question. Thank you for taking my call. But I was curious. I've got two palm trees or queen palms, and they're a little bit over a year old. In this past winter when we had the freeze, I actually covered them

with some bags that we had got from off Amazon. But when I took the bags off, which was right after the next day, once the temperature came back up, I took them off, and the the limb started turning, you know, brown, and so I've left him on there and they there looks like there's some green coming out at the you know, the top

of it right there where they're actors. They're not really that tall, They're only about six and a half seven foot tall, and but I was just curious, should I cut the ones that are brown more or less dead off. Yes, if there's a little if there's a little green on them, I would leave them because that is photosynthesizing, making carbohydrates for the plants strength. It looks ugly because it's half dead, but if it's got green on

it, leave it for now. Just give as much time as you can, because when you take all the green off a palm tree, it's like scalping your grass all the way to the ground. I mean, it's a real shocker for it to try to come back out. But whatever's brown is brown, is not doing your plan any good. So you can cut that off. The fronds can die. The key is you want that bud at the top of the trunk to be alive. If it dies, If it dies, that queen palm's dead. But if the bud's alive putting out new

growth, you're good, it'll be fine. Right, Okay, Well that's that's what I'll do then, and I'll just let you see what happens. Yeah, yeah, sounds good. Well, good luck with that. Those are beautiful palm trees. Yes, okay, appreciate it, all right, Ronnie, thank you, thank you very much. I appreciate that I was talking this it was yesterday I went by one of the Wildbirds stores done with

Rich idiot or in the Memorial store. And you know, by the way, you know, Wilbirds has six stores in the Greater Houston area, So it doesn't matter where you live, there's gonna be a wild Bird's near you. There's one in Cyprus, there's one in Memorial, there's one in bel Air, there's one in pair Landing in Kingwood. There's one in clear Lake also. So anyway, I was talking to him and he was describing how

this works with this cofront coming in. We have a lot of birds that are going they're in their migratory pattern, they're heading north, and this would be things like a Baltimore oriole for example. He named several different birds that fit into this category, some type of a warbler. I can't remember the name. I'm not a bird experts. I'm now proving live on the air.

But anyway, there are several different kinds of birds that are flying like that, and when a colfrint hits like this, they just sort of stop and go, Okay, we're not going to fight this one, and they drop down and come down to our landscapes here. And if you'll put out. If you'll take like an orange and you'll cut it in half, you know, like you just set it up with a stem end up and you slice the horizontally through it cut in half like that. So there's all these

open sections that the birds can get to. And you put those out there, yeah, I mean, you can poke them onto a nail or something to stick them on the side or something or whatever. Baltimore orioles love those and they'll come to them. And normally you wouldn't see a Baltimore oriole here right now. They're heading north. They're not messing around with Houston right now. But when they drop down from that coal front, you may have some show up in your area. And if you do, I'd like to hear

about that. I mean, it'd be really cool to hear. Let me know if that works out. Other birds that we don't normally see. And I mentioned to warbler, a certain type of warbler. You're going to get to see those from the coal front. So keep your eyes open when you're out there. By the way, when you get a chance, go buy a wall birds. They are stocked up for Mother's Day. And I'm telling you, I know mothers and mother in laws can be difficult to buy for

you because what do you get them? They got everything, and then they say things like it's okay, son, I'm just fine, I don't need any Well, you know that's not the case. You got to get them something nice. Mother's Day gifts wildbirds a high perch hummingbird feeder. I've got one awesome, awesome feeders. They are a really cool book, The Joy

of Bird Feeding. It's actually written by the guy who founded the president and founder of Wildbirds Unlimited across America, and it is a beautiful book with lots of color pictures of how to bring in birds to the backyard by feeding. What do you feed them? What do they look like? All that? Do you want one of their Eco Tough Classic feeders. That is a feeder made out of recycled plastic milk jugs and it is beautiful. When you look at it, you say, well, that looks like smida wood. Nope,

it is a recycled material feeder that is quality. I've got the Eliminator squirrel proof feeder. I think it's the best thing since sliced bread. The little birds hop on it, they're fine. A squirrel gets on it and they wait too much, and it is hard to thwart a squirrel. This one has thwarted them successfully at my house. The eliminator. It's the Cadillac in my opinion, there's the flying bistro cylinder. You see what I'm saying. There. They even have jewelry, you know, for things like birds,

birds, seed and feeders and houses. And on Mother's Day. Don't go through Mother's Day or mother in law's Day. We're gonna go ahead and throw them in here too. By the way, I bought myself my mother in law a little pole to hang a feeder outside her window where she's stand and it is. It's really cool. She look out the window and their birds right there. So I got her little pole. So, yes,

I am a good son in law. I know she's not listening to this, but if you see her, tell her she has a good son and we'll give her that for Mother's Day as well well. Anyway, you get the idea why Birds is a great place. It's fun, it's educational. You go in there and you ask them anything you want and they will explain exactly to you exactly what you need to know to have success with that. What a great hobby. All right, enough about me jammering about birds.

We're gonna go to Gardend oak Oaks and we're gonna talk to Frank. Frank, I got about forty five seconds here. We'll see if we can get into it and hold you until after break if we need to. Okay, Skiff, I've got a crape myrtle that the last couple of years has had some moss like growth on it, just little clumps, not you know, not not real big sick hanging Spanish moss, but just small clumps, you know, on the on the limbs. And yes, so I just just want to know. Is that bad for the No, No, it's a

sign. It's a sign that crape isn't real vigorous. It's a The material is called lichens l I c h e N. It's what raindery. By the way, fun fact, lichen grows on plants as they get then the canopy thins out the sunlight's coming through, we tend to see more lichens on them. But you'll see lichens on rocks, on fence posts. Uh. Lichens are not parasites, so they're just along for the ride. They're more a sign that that crape isn't as vigorous as we would like it to be.

So I would focus on the fertilizing and watering and whatnot. Maybe a little rejuvenated pruning here and there to get the crape into a little bit better vigor but overall, don't worry about what you're seeing on there. Okay, what kind of fertilizer would you recommend? You know, there are fertilizers for trees and shrubs. Nitroposs makes one for trees and shrubs. You can do

that at my house. I just use lawn fertilizer on them. You buy you a go quality lawn fertilizer, and then go up to that trunk on the plant, and for every inch of trunk diameter across the tree, if you have like three trunks, then total them up, give it one or two cups of lawn fertilizer. If it's an organic fertilizer, double or triple that, but one or two cups of fertilizer for every inch of trunk diameter. All right, okay, great, yes, sir, thank you very

much. All Right, we're going to go to a break here, Teresa, you will be first right when we come back. Welcome back, to guard Line. Good to have you with us today. Hey, if you live down in the Sugarland area or the Richmond Rosenberg area in Jani Forest, write that down enchanted Forest Infection. I'll just give you the website. How about we just go straight to that. We can do that as well. By the way, Chinted Forest is an enchanting garden center. You will find

everything you're looking for there. Their selection is unbelievable. I was out there not too long ago. Always impressed, very knowledgeable staff. Hey, if you're looking for plants for butterflies, they not only have the plants, you get to take home a caterpillar. Yep, that's right, they got caterpillars. You can bring it home. You got your what's that the equivalent of a sourdough starter for a butterfly garden. You're just ready to go right there

with Enchanted Forest. It's Enchanted Forest Richmond dot com. Here's one thing when you're out there, I want you to ask to see that yesterday, today and tomorrow is that's the name of a shrub. It's not an abbot and costello skit yesterday, today, and tomorrow At the same time, these blooms change as a color show. You're gonna have a purple bloom on there, You're gonna have a white bloom, You're gonna have a violet bloom all at the same time. A three to six shrub. You put it in a

little bright, bright, shady area. That's where it's happiest. It is awesome. It's an old time plant. People used to have them all the time. Now it's kind of not as top of the line terms of everybody's got it on the billboard. But it is a great plant, and they've got them an enchanted forest out there in Richmond FM twenty seven fifty nine. FM twenty seven fifty nine, just north of Richmond toward Sugarland direction. Let's go talk to Teresa out here in the woodlands. Hey Teresa, Hey,

Skip, how are you? I'm good? Thank you? Okay, so real quick, too quick questions. My yard's been recovering the last two years. I talked to you last year about it. I had to resaw it it. Blah blah blah. I always used micro life, okay, and this year I got convinced to use Bruce's brew. The yard's looking much better, all that kind of thing. But should I did it a month ago, the Bruces Brew. Do I need to do anything else up until June or just kind of leave it set. If you did it a month ago,

I'd give it a little bit more time. Let's see. Probably let's say go sometime into May, and you could do the Bruces Brew again. But just remember that it is a fast release, but it also has a slow release component, so it's going to spread itself out a little bit. You could even wait until June to do it again, and it would be fine. Okay. Yeah, In fact, I'm going to change my mind on the May. I would wait and do it in June, especially if

you're going to return those clippings. Okay, yeah, I do that because I was told do Bruce's Brew this year and then go back to micro Life just to kind of give it that recharge from the last two years. You know, all that. That's fine, but they're both quality fertilizers and so it's not like you need to switch back and forth and stuff like that. Do it however you want. There's no problem switching. But they're both quality fertilizers, so you don't have to switch on stuff like that. Okay.

The other thing is real quick. You've mentioned about fire out control and you talk about combine the I guess the andro was extinguished. And I tried to look for extinguished yesterday at a couple of aces and I couldn't find it. Okay, well, that's fine. So I think if I was talking about combining, I was talking about a leaf a concoction for leaf cutter ant control. You do not need to combine them. For fireance. You can use

extinguish, you can use the organic one called come and get it. You can use amdro and then there's some more that aren't jumping them ahead at this very moment. But there's a lot of quality baits out there for fire ants. So don't worry if you can't find extinguished. Okay, all right, well listen, I appreciate it, and have a great weekend. All right, you too, Thank you very much. I appreciate that very much.

You're talking about all these different fertilizers. You know, Nitrofoss has got their silver bag that is called super Turf because it gives you a super turf. It's got half the nitrogen and a slow release forms. Let's compeede for three or four months going out there. It's got iron to promote that good green and it does gradually feed over time. And it's easy to find super turfs everywhere. You know, night Foss products are easy to find because they're essentially

ubiquitous. You go to Ace Hardware store, you're going to find them. You go out to garden centers, the speed stores we talk about here, and you're gonna find them at Southwest Fertilizer too, which, by the way, I'm going to be at Southwest Fertilizer this coming Saturday from eleven am to one pm. I will be there and I will be giving away a number

of different kinds of products at Southwest. You know, Southwest is a place that I like to say, if you don't if they don't have it, you don't need it because they have everything, absolutely everything you could possibly want. They're on the corner of bus Nutt and Runwick. I hope you'll come out next Saturday, so really easy to get to bus Nutt and Renwick right out there. Come by. I'm going to be given away a number of

different things. Bob's putting up a toro blower and touro string tremor. We're going to be giving you skip Bucks, which means here's a piece of paper that I'm calling money, and Bob calls it money, and so you go get the products you need that day, and you can use those bucks toward buying those products. I'll also be given away. I just got through talking to the folks at Medina. So it has to grow super grow plus.

That is a new hose end sprayer lawn fertilizer sixteen zero two sixteen zero two lolo phosphorus, which is good because most lawns do not need much of any phosphorus at all. Now you spray this on your lawn. It's got a keylated form of iron in it, it's got seaweed extract in it. It's just all around. It's good. About a fifth of the nitrogen in it is slow release form, so it's just a win when you spray it on your gardens. I've seen people use it on vegetables. Saw some pictures of

people using it on vegetables and the results they got. Primarily, we put it out there for the lawnch hook it up to the hose in one quart is going to cover about four thousand square feet and it will be giving samples of that away or actually product of that away. That's Southwest Fertilizer because Bob carries that out there. It's a new product by Medina, an excellent product,

and it's it is just you're gonna have success. You're gonna see the results because not only do you get a quick green up, but you also get that a little bit of slow release in it to extend that out a little bit further for you. So once you hook it up to the hose, if you run out of yard, just hit the flower beds, hit the shrubs, hit whatever you want with it. It's gonna make it. It's gonna make it grow. That's one thing that I like about Medina products

is they are affected, they do work, and they're just handy. It's just handy to use. You know, it can't get much easier. And hooking it up to your garden hose and going at it with that, that is for sure. If you've been out to Nelson Water Garden and Nursery, that's out there in Katie, Texas. If you go to Katie, you turn north on Katie Fort Ben Road and it's just a hop skipping or jump up the road on the right, just real close by there. Now they

are specializing unbelievable. They can make fountains, they come to your house, they can teach you how to do it. They can do it for you. I mean, do you want a big disappearing fountain. They invented those. They know how to do that. But they're also an excellent nursery. A wide variety of plants there. Now when you go, take people with you, because this is another destination garden center. You're going to go there, and if you've never thought about having a backyard pond, I'm just warning

you. You're going to walk through and go, oh my gosh, I have got to have one of these in the backyard, or at least one of those fountains that disappears, so very very cool. Nelson Watergarden Gardens with an s dot com Nelsonwatergardens dot com. But go check out the plants too. I mean you'll be surprised. A wide variety of fruit trees right now, citrus, peaches, pears, pumps, all kinds of things at Nelson Watergardens dot com. But you gotta go see the water features, the koi,

the shabunkan fish, the aquatic plants and things. It is a destination an inspirational one. All right, there, we're putting that hour in the books. I'll talking about all these places and stuff. I just want to jump up from the microphone, get my car and go back out and see them. I love visiting these places. I'm telling you. Hear me say this all the time. But Houston has so many awesome destination garden centers. North south east West? What do you what are you into? Are you

into water gardens? Are you into tropicals? Are you into fruit? Are you into herbs? Are you into we just have we are? We are rich with garden centers, I said, north south east West. I'm up through centraland I can't forget about Buchanans down the lights too. I mean it, it's just great. It's a great place to live. This afternoon would be a great time to get out too. That sun's going to come out. Hope to get out and enjoy it. We'll be right back to put

our last hour on the air. Katie r h. Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to kat r H Garden Line with Skip Rictor It's crazy gas a trim just watch him as well. As so many paties. Septaser not a sunda. Thank you, welcome back to guarden Line. Good to have you with us today. Glad you're listening in. If you've not done your lawn fertilizing yet, why not consider an application of microlife fertilizer. The green bag, the six

two four and microlife he makes PLA plus that is the purple bag. It's a zero zero four. You're not putting the hum mats plus on just for nutrients. You're putting the hum mates on because it's concentrated compost in a bag. Humans plus. That's the final decomposition stage of organic matter as it goes from let's say a pot of leaves and grass clippings to compost to humus. That's how it moves the humans plus. The purple bag is going to help

with your soil. When you put humus material, when you've been any kind of a compost, but especially a fully decomposed like humus, you're going to improve the soil structure itself. And you're also adding some potassium, which is very important for drought tolerance in the grass. That is very helpful for that as well. And then the green bag, of course is a standard lown fertilizer by Microlife. When you buy a microlife fertilizer, you're not just getting

the three numbers on the bag. You're getting everything that was in the living materials that you were used to make the microlife. So, for example, the trace minerals and secondary minerals and things the numbers of which never appear on the bag, You're going to have those in your macrolife fertilizer. Microbes get a hold of it. Micro Life is a good name because if they are living forms in the soil that essentially make plants thrive, That's how nature works,

That's how microlife fertilizer works. You can go to microlifefertilizer dot com and learn more about it and the many products they have, and also where you can find it here in the Greater Houston area. I want to head out now to Brian, Texas and talk to Barbara. Hello, Barbara, Hi, good morning. I want to pull up my poppies. They were really pretty, the tinkling with the blue centers, yes, but the pods are still kind of green and I want to save the seeds. How long do

I have to leave them for it? And pull them up what kind of poppy did you have? Was it like the bread poppy? No, they are pink. They're a large pink with a light blue center. Ooh, that sounds beautiful. I will go ahead. No, I got them. Oh, I can't remember a garden center that had them, and they didn't have the seed, and they asked me to send them an envelope, and then they sent me the seeds later on, so I don't know the name

of them. Okay, Well, on the poppy pod at the top, it's going to pull back a little bit where the seeds can fall out when it turns over, So look at it, and if it's not sealed up, if it's pulling back, you can go ahead and cut those pods off and then just sprinkle the seeds out, you know, where they can air dry a little bit longer, just in case, especially because you guys had a whole bunch of rain last night and whatnot. So go ahead and let

them dry well and then you can harvest them. I suspect if they're still green pods, it's not quite time to pick them yet. I doubt they've pulled back, so okay, if you can't afford to leave them that's better. You say they pulled back, they open. Yeah, the pod sort of opens up, you know, because the podg is like a capsule. Depending on the specific kind of poppy, they're different shapes. But they they actually as they dry, they shrink back, and that's how the seeds came

out of the poppy. It's not like a bean type plant where the suture pops open and it casts the seeds out. This is that's how the poppy podgs work. Okay. My other question was Manda videos. I don't know if I'm pronounced right good enough? Can they do? They? Can they do? Okay? Bloom and everything? Okay? In the shade or do they need more sun? They need more sun. If you can give them about six hours, it would be best. As you move them into more

and more shade, you get less and less balloons. Okay, they are beautiful. They are absolutely beautiful. Oh okay, thank you very much. Thank you for the call, Barbara. Good to talk to you. Bye bye bye. All right. Yeah, absolutely, poppies are really cool. Hey, those of you in the Kingwood area, you know you've got Warren Southern Gardens. You know you got Kingwood Garden Center out there and those places are always there's always something going on, there's always new products coming in.

I know, I've been a while since I've been. I need to get back out there. It's been a while since I Actually I love to go out by the way, because when you go out it's inspirational. You go out and you see things that you hadn't seen before. Maybe it's a new plant they got in. They just have some outstanding hibiscus in there. They have got incredible selection of tropicals too, by the way, Plumeria, the Hawaiian lay flower. Do you like those? They've got those out there.

Someone had called earlier about some lilies. They have lilies out there, for sure. Whenever you go out to Warren's in Kingwoock Garden Center, you're going to find color. You're going to find knowledgeable staff that can guide you and the right way, and you're even going to find some really cool combos that are already put together, where you have a container that's mixed, planted and

absolutely gorgeous. You can do this for the summer. You can do them for the shade, you can do for the sun, all kinds of thing. Good selection of Angelonia's so many colors Angelonia will take you through the heat like very few things can. While you're out there, ask them to show you the Salza dancer hibiscus. That is the most colorful foliage plan I've ever

seen in my life. It is gorgeous. I'm challenged. I know there is such a thing as white, pink, and red and orange, and when you start combining those, I run out of the right word to describe it. But I'm just going to say these are very pink with burgundy and a little bit of yellow and green on them too. They're gorgeous. They bloom, But even if they didn't bloom, it is a showstopper. It's actually gonna pink flamingo out there in your yard. You can't not see it.

Salsa dancer hibiscus that weren't garden center. I hope you enjoy it. Those of you who are out there, you're fortunate to have it. Take advantage of it. Stephnoon and go by and see them. I'm going to go now to Ben in Conrad. Hello, Ben, Hey, good morning, Skip, good morning. I've got a forty thousand square foot property. Thirty thousand is Saint Augustine and a good portion of weeds. Okay, that's a lot of square footage. That's three quarters of an acre of Saint Augustine.

Yes, there's quite a bit. So if I do if I go with the supertture, that's four bags two hundred bucks, and if I go with the four that's fifteen bags and seven hundred and fifty dollars. What are my options? How do I decide? You know, back when sixty four was twenty bucks a bag, it was a no brainer. You know. You know with fertilizers, you can you can choose the options you want. You can choose it organic, you can choose a synthetic. You can go

about the way you want to go about it. I would say number one. And you're looking at a lot of lawn and a lot of fertilizing. Definitely want to return those grass clippings. That is your first fertilizing option on that. If you mow all season and return the clippings, no matter which fertilizer you choose, you will put out more nutrients with your lawn mower than your fertilizer spreader by returning. Yeah, and then you know, choose do

as you choose on it? I have there are things that I like about each of the fertilizers. There's benefits of each of the fertilizers. I mean, we could, you know, nail down and go through or what is it not nail down, drill down and talk about this or that or the other. They're high quality. I like using the slow releases because you get

a gradual feed and they're organic is naturally slow release. But the synthetics also can be even more slow release because of the way they're designed out there in the landscape or in the garden, the lawn. So is there what's the difference between the super turf and some of the other similar formulations. Is there anything specific about the marcro life that's different from well some generic right, microlife

is an organic material. It is a fertilizer that is organic, and so microbes break that down and release the nitrogen and the phosphorus and the potassium and all the trace minerals that are in microlife because it is an organic in the super turf. In the super turf, Yeah, hey, you know what, Ben, I can see. We're going to talk about this a little bit and I'm going to run to a break. Let me put you on hold and I'll come right back to you and we'll be able to have a

little more time for this. All right, okay, sure, thank you, we'll be right back. Welcome to Gardenline. Good have you with us. We're going to go back to Ben in Conroe. Ben, we're discussing fertilizers. You're kind of drilling down into the slow release and some of that. Just let me, let me summarize it. Let me summarize it a little bit, and then if you have a follow up, we'll go with

that. Uh. The organic fertilizers, like a microlife for example, is a compound that's got everything that was in the plant or whatever the organ it came from, that is in that fertilizer, which means all the trace mentals and everything else. Now it is going to decompose microbial lease. So as the weather warms up it moves a little bit faster, it is going to have a form of nitrogen that will release out into the soil environment for the

roots to pick up. When you go to a slow release, we're talking about things like the nitrofoss silver bag that is Superturf nineteen four ten or Nelson's Slow and Easy. Those are two slow release fertilizers. Now, the way they're designed is with different forms of nitrogen that are not all night water soluble, so you get a rain to wash them in, and normally a salt based fertilizer, for example, would dissolve and go right into the ground.

Well, this is going to hold on and not solubilized, and it'll be released over time based on either temperature some are not temperature affected much, or microbial activity or other things, and some of these can extend out is like four or five months from now, there's still releasing nutrients out there because the chemistry of the molecules that are in them are designed to do that, so

you get a much longer gradual release. So while we use the term slow release, we can mean a lot of different things with it when we say that term. They're not all slow releases are the same mechanism and the same rate of release. So I don't want to complicate it. I'm just saying you're not going to go wrong with any of these fertilizers on your lawn. You're going to get the performance. They all have a good ratio of nutrients like grass needs, and you're going to have success with them. Okay,

let me ask you about compost leaf mold versus the fungal. What's better for the yard or is there a lot of difference between the two. Well, for the yard, you know, compost is decomposed organic matter, and whether it comes from leaves or manure or ground up tree trunks, I mean it ultimately ends up in a composted state. Eight. The key with the lawn is you want a very finely screened compost, so the particle size is small. You don't want pieces of wood the lawnmowar's knocking all over the place,

for example. You want it to fall down in the aeration holes or move down between the grass leaves, around the runners themselves, at the plant, at the soil surface. So leaf mold is the top quality for doing that kind of thing. But you can use other screen types of compost if you need to. And that's compost is gonna be good for soil and for plants period. Well, it's just trying to weigh the fungal friday versus well the fine Yeah, I think it gets done about sixty some sixty bucks a yard.

Yeah. Yeah, Nature's way is kind of long been a leader and all of that and I would call out there and talk to John Ferguson and ask him about particle size on the fungal products that they have. The fungal compost just basically means, you know, but forest systems are typically fungally dominated, Meadow systems are typically bacterially dominated. So when you get a lot of things like wood product or leaf tree leaf products, those things are forest materials.

Fungi are going to be the primary decomposers for those. But ask him about the particle size, because that's going to be the key. Yes, it's a great fungal Friday at Nature's Way Resources. As a super temper, they're probably going to lean towards the more expensive one. You know well that they're honest. John, I'll be honest with you or I if you talk to him and just say, look, I'm going to do some top dressing. Here is the particle size on your fungal product the bag or the book.

Is it small enough to work well for that purpose? And they'll tell you if it is or not. I mean, you can have a conversation. They're not you know that, they're not the kind of people there. It's in Augustine and I'm mowing about three three and a half inches, typically keeping it a little bit higher. So yeah, the particle size wouldn't really matter that to me. Every now and then i'll hit a piece. But but you also you also wanted to break down pretty quickly. You wanted to

get down there and get good coverage over the soil surface and whatnot. And uh, I would I would talk to John and ask him these questions and say, so, tell me about what what is the You know he's going to understand because he made it. He may just signed it. And you know, he understands soil. He understands decomposition of organic matter better best as well as anybody I know. Uh, here are his numbers, Yeah, his numbers. Let me write this as nine three six three two one sixty

nine ninety nine three six three two one six nine nine zero. And when you do that, you can grill him and he'll be happy to talk to you. He loves talking about that kind of thing. And so he'll know him about some of this before next time I see him. I'm gonna ask him your question too, because I don't know on that fungal product, just how fine the ground products they have on the fungal Friday. So that'll be good to know. Thanks, be right, thank you, all right.

Good luck with that big lawn. You need to rent it out for parties and stuff. Uh, it makes you look a little better, all right, we'll work with that. We'll work on that. Thanks. That's funny, all right, man. You're listening to garden Line our phone number seven one three two one two k t r H seven one three two one two k t r H. You know there's forty Ace Hardware stores. I bet you didn't know that. If you listen to guarden Line more than five minutes,

you knew that because I talk about them all the time. Forty Ace Hardware stores in the Greater Houston area. Go to a play at the Beaumont, there's an ACE near you. You go to Ace Hardware dot com and you look for the store locator. It may say like, hey, can we use your location? Just say yes, and then the map will show you. I mean you can do. You could do the store locator if you've got a cousin in Austin or Dallas and say, hey, where's the

Ace ardors over here, they'll tell you. But our Houston group, the local group that's the one where I was talking about forty stores here in the area. They carry whatever you need. They've got all of the firet control products you need. If it's a bait, get it first. The baits are best. And if you miss something. Two weeks after you've baited, if there's still some mounds that are left, then do a mound treatment on those. You just drench those over summer dusks you put on top of the

mound. Some are granules that then drenching on. I mean, there's a lot of ways they go about it. But Ace Harder's got all that stuff. They've got all the fertilizers that they talk about here. I mean we've been talking about, you know, all these different fertilizers just a minute ago in the air. They've got all those. They've also got sweet green, which is another nitroposs product. Sweet green is eleven percent nitrogen. It is

a natural product. It's based on molasses that microbes have essentially gone to work on and turned it into a fertilizer. When you put sweet green on your lawn, it is stimulating to especially the beneficial bacteria, but microbe microbial activity in general is going to be stimulated by this smells wonderful, and yes, you get it at ACE Hardware store. So if you're looking for any kind of a fertilizer I talk about on Guardline, it's gonna be at Ace Hardware.

Also, while you're in there, go ahead and get ready for mosquito season. Mosquito dunks to throw into water areas so that that microbe is released that kills mosquitos, doesn't hurt birds, doesn't hurt people, doesn't hurt dogs and cats. It's specifically for that. If you need a fogger, if you need any kind of mosquito control, they've got it at ACE Hardware stores. Again, Ace Hardware dot Com and find the store locator and you're in business. We are going to go now to pair Land and talk to Kay.

Hello. Okay, Hi, good morning, Skip, Thanks for taking my call. I have a couple of questions. I have one. I've spoken with you before about this monster ivy that I have, Okay, and I'm getting ready to repot it because the stems, the runners, whatever branches are dying off. They're bear There's so many of them that are bare. Will any of those come back if I put them in water? Make you know, just cut sections and put them in water. Will they regrow at

all? Yeah, if they're alive, they will root. You can root them in water, but you can also root them by just putting covering them up with just a little bit of soil and keeping it moist, and they will form roots along those nodes in the stem the runner. Okay, well, I was going to cut off those lives, you know, the leafing portions, and re pot them into three or four big pots and try to save some of them because it was so gorgeous anyway. And I also would

like to ask you on booin Villa and mandavilla. They do so well climbing or in hanging pots, would they do on a flat bed as well? Boom and Villa is going to be more of a mouth did plant. It has kind of a shrubby growth habit and so it's not a vine that just lays flat. To some degree. It does, but not not like your ivys for examples, not crawl and not really. It wants to make more

of a mound. You see those in tropical even go down to Mexico and see the booga and belleos and they're just big, old, giant mounded bushes. Down there. The mendavilla is a vine. I've never seen it grown along the ground that I don't see why it wouldn't do that. As long as there's nothing for it to grab onto and go up. I guess it

could do that. Well, I could encourage it to, you know, kind of just watch the runners and just you could you just want to watch, you know, being down there on the ground and so splashing up on it and things. I just having not seen it done, I'm kind of wondering if that's fully okay. But I do know that it's a it's a vine, and it's gonna it's gonna sprawl outward, So you probably could get

it to work like that. Most people like to okay it, see because I love both of them, and I just think they're just so beautiful. But I don't have that much of you know, hanging trees that I can you know, hang pots on, or I guess I could maybe devise a trelliss some sort. Yeah, you should let them crawl. Well, if if you got nothing to do this afternoon, or even if you do, I got a better idea, go to Moss Nursery over there in Seabrook.

Oh yeah, they are loaded with those things out there. Yes, okay, great, I thank you so very much, and have a beautiful day. All right, thank you you as well. We're going to take a little break here. It is time for Nikki and the news, so I'm going to take a little quick break Thomas and a Testcasita. I want to give you plenty of time with your questions, so I'm going to hold you

until after we come back from break. I just want to remind you guys, I'm going to be a Southwest Fertilizer this next Saturday at eleven am till one pm on corner Bisnett and Renwick. We're going to be answering gardening questions. We'll be given away a lot of stuff, and I hope you will go right now. Just put that on your calendar and come out and see me. If you've not been to Southwest, here's your excuse to come. You can see what I'm talking about, all right. I hope I'm not

crazy. Hope that doesn't make me crazy. You're listening to the guard Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter and our phone number. You want to write this down. We actually have some room on the boards if you'd like to give us a call seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. You know Verdant Tree

Farm. It makes tree buying easy because first of all, there are three locations on the southwest side on Barker Cypress in central North Houston, which is I will say the heights, probably not that north, but you know where I ten and Yale Street come together, and then down in Pairland, down in Pairland on Broadway Street. Easy. Easy to find a Verdant tree farm

near you. Verdant is an expert at matching you with the tree you need, so you can call them up, you can send them a picture, You can go into the place and sit down, do a free in office design consultation. They are a turnkey operation. You go there, you find out what plant you need. You show them what you look for. They tell you what they got and they've got good stuff. Do you need a hearty palm tree, They've got that. Do you need a particular deciduous shade

tree. Do you want a beautiful evergreen shrub a large shrub to block a view? Then you go out and you pick the plants. Say I want that one. I want that one over there too, and that one, well, you pick them out, they tag them, they bring them, they plant them. If they plant it, they give you one year warranty and they tell you how to take care of it. They've got some unique

ways. That Patrick was just showing something on video. They have a real active social media presence on how they determined that a tree is not saying too wet. You just have to go find out from them how they go about that, and then they guarantee it for a year after the installation. Is a result. If you happen to be a military, if you happen to be a first responder, ten percent discount for you. You're not gonna go wrong with Vernon. Here's the website v er da nt Tree Farm Vernant treefarm

dot com. Go there and check it out. They have a wonderful little website where you can click on a particular kind of species of tree and they'll tell you all about it and you can learn a lot and make that good decision, because remember, when you buy a tree, that is a that is a long term purchase decision, and so you want to get it right. Don't just buy something that happens to be for sale somewhere. Figure out what tree you want and then go find it, and Vernon's probably going to

have what you're looking for. Let's go now out to a task Asida and we're going to talk to Thomas. Hello, Thomas, good morning, great show today, Thank you sir. We're going to talk plant nutrition for a second. I'm a big proponent of organic. For my I use sweet green and the acid might and have been really happy with it. Okay, good. I have friends that use triple thirteen. It drives me nuts. One

of the negatives on that. Okay, here's the negative. To use triple thirteen once or twice or three times, it's not going to be the end of the world. But when you use it over and over again through the years. It used to be triple thirteen and ten twenty ten were the fertilizers, and both of those have more phosphorous percentage wise than plants take up. If you take most plant materials out there, you're going to find they're going to have a lot of nitrogen, a low amount of phosphorus, and a

medium amount of potassium. The third number, and that's why we say for fertilizers and lawns especially, we do the three one two ratio. So when you triple thirteen it and triple thirteen it, two things are happening. One,

you're putting out more phosphorus percentage wise in a ratio way. Then the plant is using if you see what I'm saying now, if you happen to have a phosphorus soil, well that may actually be helpful, but a lot of people for lawns, especially where you're returning clippings and you're fertilizing it year after year, that phosphorus builds up. That's the second thing. If you put the let's just say you put triple thirteen on the surface of the ground

and you water it in, the nitrogen washes right through. It's very soluble. It just goes everywhere. It volatilizes off as a gas. Nitrogen is always going somewhere. Potassium moves down pretty well too, not as much as nitrogen, but pretty well, and then phosphorus ties up to the surface. It's as if your soil was made of magnets and the phosphorus is iron filings. You drop that on a pile of magnets and the filings don't go down

to the bottom. They tie up right at the surface. That's what phosphorus does. So year after year after year, not only are you putting on more than you need, but you're building it up. And so now you're seeing iron chlorosis because phosphorus can make iron unavailable, and so it starts to create other problems by doing that. And that's why I'm taking some time to explain this, but because this is not understood by folks, and it needs

to be. There's a reason I say eight three one two four one two ratio for your lawn, because we're trying to put the fertilizer out there and the ratio that's going to end up in the plant tissue as best we can. Okay, excellent. One more. I've got a neighbor. His yat is ninety percent weeks. I've been fighting it for years, but last summer when it was hot, it really got bad. And I've been pulling weeds like crazy this year, and I've got so many beer spots, okay,

and you know weeds go to beer spots. I'm having trouble and I need to get that grass to grow without putting a ton of salt in there. Okay, how can I do that, I need to go quickly. Actually, is this Saint Augustine. It's set Augustine, and it's healthy. The yat is healthy. Nitrogen is your friend, So en make Saint Augustine grow faster and be greener. That's important. So I would do. You could

do a slow release, and that's going to feed over time. I might even do some small applications of a faster release, something like Bruce's Brew, for example, is going to get you a quicker response than the slow releases might. And I would do that in small amounts over time and just push it along. Another good option would be to get some of the Medina product. And I was talking about it just a minute ago. It's the hose end applicator. I don't know if you were listening when I was talking about

that thing. I was. I'd actually used that the Well, this is brand new. Now, this is not the super Grow for lawns. This is Supergrow plus. It's a sixteen zero two so it has no phosphorus. It's got sixteen percent nitrogen. You hook it up to a hose end. About a fifth of that sixteen percent is in a slow release form, but the rest is immediate release, and it's got seaweed extracts, and it's got

a keylated form of iron to keep it greener and healthy. And I might do that particular product by Medina, which is then a hose in sprayer. Okay, thank you so much. I love your show. Yeah you got the bottle itself is a hose in sprayer. I should say, Okay, okay, thanks Thomas, You've got thanks a lot. I appreciate that. Let's see here, we got about a minute. We're going to go out to Donna and Seabrook. Donna, can we do this in a minute? If not, I'll hold you over past break. Yes we can. I

had a new deck built you shaped around a crate myrtle. Well, the contractor leveled the ground and of course they cut the roots. I went online to look at a sucker stopper that you mentioned a few weeks ago. Yes, Boneye does one, but all the reviews say the spray clogs after it's used. What if I spend fifty dollars on a bottle of this stuff and the spray clogs. What if I flush it with a detergent after I've used it once? Will that clear out the sprayer. It might. I don't

know why that sprayer is clogging. I don't know what is in it now. And again I'm not here to tell you by this or that brand of a sucker stopper, but I know Monterey also has a sucker stopper that's in a ready to use paint bottle. And you don't need much of this. You know, this is a hormone, so you're barely putting it on. That's the rate you need, so you're not drenching or anything like that. It's a it's an ingredient called NAA, which is one of the plant growth

regulating hormones that occurs in nature. But sucker stopper, you just spray it on, whether it's a sprout coming out at bottom of your crape, myrtles or whatever you're trying to stop a sucker on. It will do that by just telling the plant with plant type compounds, hey, don't grow, don't stop stop elongating and growing here. Well, that also work on the gazillion eight, so that I have sprouting in my yards opposed to using round up

on them. Oh well, I you know you can't use it round up in the yard because it kills the yard unless you'd wipe it on something growing up above. Uh. Oh boy, that's uh. I don't I don't know. I think that would not be That stuff's not cheap, and I don't think that would be a good sure. No, hang on, just man, let me go to Bright and we'll continue this when we come back. Our phone number is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.

Welcome back to Guardline. Good to have you with us today. Looking forward to talking about what you want. This is our last segment of the day, so here we go. Well, last call warning, uh, if you'd like to give us a call seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. We're going to go to Donna in Seabrook again and we're talking about sucker stopper Donna, and we're just saying that that stuff's expensive, so go and sprain it on every little laker and coming up in the yard

and probably not be very practical. I think a wiper type of applicator and putting something that will kill a woody plant, a brush or shrub or plant like that. I think that's probably the best. The only thing you need to watch for is if those are truly acorns, that's fine. If they happen to be suckers off the roots coming up, then whatever you put on to kill them is going to go down into the tree system itself. Probably not kill the whole tree just from treating a few of those, but it

wouldn't do it any good, that's for sure. Do we have donna there? Yes? From here? Oh? Okay, well I have. My backyard is not Saint Augustine. It's a wildscape. Okay. So I have a gazillion acorns that have fallen, then, I mean I'm just really tired of pulling them up. Yeah, yeah, okay. Well, in that case, I would get a product that contains trichlope here tri clo p y r. And when you fry it, it may be called brush be gone or it may be called poison ivy killer or something like that. But trichlop

heres the ingredient and it kills brushy woody stuff. Now, you don't want to spray it Saint Augustine lawn, even though it's not brushy root. It's very damaging to Augustine too. But I don't drench these things with it. Just put a little spreader sticker in it so that it sticks to the leaves because live oak leaves are lost, glossy, and you want your water droplets. You're just putting out a little bit of droplets to barely wet the leaves.

You're not drenching them. You can cause other issues with that. But just just lightly sprayed on the leaves with a spread er sticker and it'll go down and it'll kill that, it'll kill hackberry. So we don't know what to do about this clogging spray. Yeah, I don't. I don't know what's doing that. I would probably take the top out of it and you know, heat up some water pretty warm, not boiling hot, and just soak spray top in it. See if it'll loosen up a little bit.

If you can get it working again, that might work. I don't know, yeah, because it amazed me the number of people. I mean, I read the reviews and there were many many complaints about the sprayer clogging up after it was used. And for that much money, you don't want to clog sprayer. No, no you don't. But I thank you very much for your information and enjoy your program, all right, thank you very much.

I appreciate the cost Ae bye you take care don Yeah. Interesting, that's interesting if I had not run across that complaint about that particular brand a particular product before. But anyway, doesn't surprise me. Things happen, that's for sure. Do you live in Seabrook? Do you live south east of Houston? Do you live anywhere where you can hear my voice and want to go see a place that's cool? Moss Nursery in Seabrook. That is a

place you need to go by there. I can describe it all day to the cow come Home, but when you go by, you'll see what I'm talking about. Imagine wandering through eight acres where at every turn there are plants that are just everywhere. They get so many trucks in at Moss unloading all the time. I mean it's on the ground, it's on shelves, it's hanging from the trees, and their hou'se. That greenhouse is just amazing. Succulents, cacti, other kinds of houseplants and things. They are loaded up

with it. Do you want color Colius? To the cows come home? Pentus? Have you ever grown pentus before? Egyptian starflower? Oh my gosh, the butterflies will line up down the block to get to your pentas. Beautiful typically in pink, lavender, white, red shades. That's kind of that range is pentus. Lots and lots of salvias are loaded up with that. They've got everything you can imagine. Lots of beautiful angelonias and they're cacti

blooming. It's amazing every kind. I promise you this. You go to Seabrook and you go look at Moss Nursery and if you're into succulents, half the things they have you not even know what they are. They're just amazing, beautiful, beautiful elephant ears, tropical plants like that, just stunning. Do you like bananas? Five to six different brides been as you can grow at home. How about a shady area where you need a good greenery in

there? Ligularia. That ligularia is like a lily pad, growing out of the soil, comes up with a big round leaf like a lily pad. Beautiful, does well in super shape gingers and philodendrons. Listen. Moss is not just another garden center. Moss has been in the family. Seventy years is how long that nursery has been around. It's family operated eight acres. You wander, you enjoy. Who knows you turn a corner, you're going to see some ethnic mask that Jim brought in from who knows where. I

mean, he's always bringing all kinds of crazy stuff in. You know. Beautiful obviously racks a better name for rock than rocks geology. I can't even say it. All kinds of like big beautiful giant rocks that have come in and brought in water features and containers and a little waterfall coming out of the wall, and think just you just wander. I mean, I can sit here and talk all day about it, but they have got all kinds of things. Allow some time and also leave room in your car because you're going

to see things you just can't live without when you go there. The people that help you, they're gardeners. That's who they hire there. They hire gardeners. I've been there before, talk to a couple of different master gardeners that work there. Other people that they love gardening. They knowledgeable, they've been gardening. They didn't read it in the book, they absolutely do it every day of their life. And now they go to Moss and they work

and you've got some friendly folks that know what they're talking about. That is one of what did I give you about ten twelve of the many reasons you want to go to Moss Nursery down there in Seabrook. Hey, the website Moss Nursery dot com, m Aas Nursery dot com. Go check it out. In fact, that'd be a great thing to do today. You know, the sun is going to come out and we're gonna have a really good day here. Good day to go to Moss Nursery. You're listening to Gardenline.

If let's see, we've got just a couple of minutes left, I believe, Josh, is that right? Just about to put this one in the books here, I want to talk about a couple of oop got a little phone call coming in, so I'm gonna go ahead and take that one. We're gonna head straight out to David and Alvin. David, how are we today and how can we help? I'm driving, I'm in Alvin, Texas, but live in Conroe. Actually have a very shaded front yard.

The trees shaded in the morning, the two story house shades it in the afternoon. Okay, I'm looking at solutions and one of the solutions is artificial turf. It's very realistic looking these days. And I've spend so much money on water, fertilized pesticides. The guys that come in trim and mow. All right, the economics is really pretty good, okay, from what I can say. I just wondered if you'd ever had a call like this, and well, you're, first of all, you're breaking my horticultural heart.

But I'll go ahead and talk to you about it. I'll talk to you about it. I know people that have used it and like it. Got a friend here who does that with his yard. I give him a hard time about it whenever I can. But yes, it will accomplish that as turf is gone. The artificial turf has gone through the years, they keep improving on it in different ways. You need somebody who knows what they're talking about, how to get the drain to try before they put it down.

I am not at all an expert on that because I'm into living plants and things and living turf. But for an area, yes, you can do that. You just need to get your blower out because you're going to be blowing leaves off of it all the time. Too, since you're not much over it. So yes, it's uh. I'll pay to have it well in every two weeks, and I keep a car in the front under the Port of Cichet and it's covered with dust every two weeks, dust everywhere the

seal. Hey David, it'll solve it'll solve several problems. Yeah, thanks for the call. I appreciate that very much. I just want to remind you, guys, if you're interested in Bonesye the BONESI folks, The International Boneseie Society Bonesye on the Bayou is going to be at the Marriotte Houston West Chase Hotel on bra Park Drive February twenty six and twenty sevens here's a phone number eight three two four eight three sixty thirty six. Eight three two four

eight three sixty thirty six. Talk to King Casino. He can tell you more about it. Next Saturday, I'm going to be at Southwest Fertilizer. Come out and see me. We're going to be giving stuff away and answering your gardening question starting at eleven am.