Spring Cleaning? Or Spring Planting?

in my garden. I made a joke that it's an old saying it's the cobblers. Kids go barefoot. In other words, a guy who makes shoes his kids don't have me shoes on. And that's true of a horticulturist garden at times as well. I've got to get out there and do some basic cleanup. I use my walkways as compost

producing sites. What am I talking about? Well, in my garden, I have beds, beds of course, the walkways in between the beds, and in those walkways I put leaves you know, my neighbors put their leaves out at the curb for me. They don't know they're doing it for me, but that's what they're doing. And by the way, you pretty good driving down the street looking at bags on the side, and you can tell one that's full of sticks. You can tell one that they throw a little trash in

or something. And then you can tell those nice leaf bags. You can just you learn how to do it. After you grab a few bags you wish you hadn't picked up. But anyway, I bring those home, put them in the garden, and I put a lot in the garden. I mean just a lot. Several when I was in Conroe at the Montgomery County Extension Office, we had a little garden that was about a thirty about thirty garden, and we put in one season, I'm not making this up, three

hundred bags of leaves. Not at one time it'd have been ten feet deep. But you put them down the walkways and you walk on them, and what may have been I don't know. Eighteen inches of leaves sinks down to just a few inches. You add more leaves sinks down. Add more leaves thinks down. By the time you get through. You have about a foot deep compacted solid leaf material in those walkways. Every time it rains, it gets wet. When they get wet, they start to decay. My crubs

are out there in nature. I mean, you don't have to add them to your leaves. But you can't. I mean, you can throw some composts on it if you want to beat it up a little bit, but that's not necessary. And those walkways sit there and then about It depends on just you know what the life schedule is doing at the moment. But I could do it. Probably harvests those walkways a couple of times a year. I generally do it about once a year, just because I don't get to it. I've had times where I went in

a year and a half. I mean, there's no hurry, But those leaves break down at the top of the walkway always looks like a bunch of dead, dried leaves, not like compost. But the same is true of the forest floor. You walk in the forest and you see leaves everywhere. You're walking on these leaves, but underneath that, if you dig down, as you go down a few inches,

you start to get into those chocoldly brown leaves. The English garden writers called that leaf mold, well whatever, not like bread mold, but basically what it means it's a leaf that is so crumbly if you touch it, it'll fall apart. But it looks sort of like a leaf, but it's chocolavy brown. That's kind of a leaf mold type stage. And then they just continue from there into where it just looks like coffee grounds, very very nicely

decomposed compost. So pull the top leaves back and then provide a little bit of well, I have a little tiny rototailer, little Mannus type tiller that I'll run through there occasionally, just to mix things up. If you want to speed up your compost making in the walkways, you can throw a little fertilizer on the top, especially nitrogen. That's primarily what you needing to add, and then you know, rototill it in and then keep it moist and it

will decompose. You know, when organic matter touches the soil and microbes get a shot at it. With some moisture, it will decompose. And so at the you know, at the end of this process, I'll pull those leaves at the top back and because they're dry, they just they're just they look like molts, not like composts. And underneath there, oh my god, it's good stuff. And you can just harvest it and put it right up in your beds, and you can make a lot of compost and walkways

in a compost pile. Let's say had a four x four compost pile. Fill it up, and by the time you get through, you probably get about four to six cent mail maybe not even six, maybe four inches a compost down to the bottom. Well, that's good stop, but then you got to haul it off to the garden and start making it again. Every walkway I have in my garden's always a compost pile. And it can rain.

We can get eight inches of rain, and I can walk in my garden because I'm walking on a compressed pile of about a foot deep of leaves unless I just put the pile together or just started adding leaves again, and I'll harvest a walkway and then another, and you know what a nothing you can do if you don't bring your wheelbarrow in there or a bucket, you can harvest some and take it to mix into some of your container beds. If you want a nice mixed compost.

I've got a little screen that I created to go on top of the wheelbar So imagine a two by four box that sits on top of the wheelbarrow. I made mine so it looks so A couple of the sides are longer, so that holds it on top of the wheelbarrow. It doesn't sit down in there, and I just shovel compost on it, shake it and the fine stuff falls through the rest of it. Just throw it back in the walkway and I can make some fun

composts that way, and it really works. It's easy. You don't turn it, you don't stick out thermometer in it. You don't have to worry about browns and greens and everything. I mean, you know you can if you want to, But if you just want who worries about browns and greens in the forest. It takes longer to make composts that way, But who's in a hurry? I mean cuts some me walkways. I don't know what to do with

all the composts. Feel that wheelbarrow up. Take it out of the flower bed in front of the house where the hoa does not want you to do. What I'm describing in front out a bank sea driving by. But I make that compost now it's available for other areas. So this is the easiest way I know to compost. I'll put all kinds of things in the walkways. And one time when I was in Montgomery County at the

extension office, I what do we do. I went and got some shredded newspaper, not newspaper, but bank papers, you know where They shred them up so you can't see what they are. And we put those in the walkways out at the extension office there, and you mix them in. You want to mix those in with a lot of leaves, because otherwise the wet paper turns into like oatmeal. It's kind of a mess. But if it's organic, it'll ride again dust Thou art to dust returneth I think that's

how Shakespeare put it. Well, I'm gonna take a little break here. The number if you'd like to ask me a question seven one three two one two k t r H seven one three two one two k t RH will be right back. I'm gonna finish up this little discussion about walkway composting, and then we'll get on to your calls. Angelo Kingwood you're the first up. Hey, welcome back. Good to have you back on the garden line. Let's go on out to the phones here this morning.

First thing, we're going to go to Angelo in Kingwood.

much as you can. So I would do small doses of nitrogen primarily and get it growing because garlic and onions both are basically you're eating leaves. The base of the leaf is the is the onion ring. The base of the leaf is the garlic bulb itself. And so the more you get that thing to grow and make a big plant, the better clothes you're going to have on your garlic. And of course there's types of garlic that have giant clothes and types that have smaller cloths

and so on. But the key thing now, especially because you're kind of getting a late start, generally we plant it in the fall. Late fall is our mid fall. You can. You just want to get it growing fast to get as much out of it as you can.

of a fertilizer, you know you got three numbers. The first number is the one you mont the most of. I'll tell you what. I use lawn fertilizer on my leafy greens and onion in garlic, those called those alliums. I use that a lot because you know, you take a lawn fertilizer and it may have a three one two ratio like well, for example, microlife has a six two four uh. And then you know when you look at my lawn care schedule, we've got stuff from Nelson's,

We've got stuff from Medina on the oil. What's the nitrophile couldn't even say nitrophis, so you get their red bag of the nitrophiles is a fifteen five ten. Those are both three one two ratios and they're mostly nitrogen, and so those would be fine. I mean, there's not a garlic fertilizer. You may see somebody. I've never seen them sold, but no.

into that container? Will that affect the garlic? The spreading of the ant killer.

one is labeled for you some vegetable garden. So if you're worried about you know, getting something down that's going to get in your vegetables and stuff, that would be the safe way to go. And also the labeled way to go is get some come and get it, and it's a bait, so you don't have to put it just in that pot. You can sprinkle a little around the pot. They're going to find it and bring it back and it will work. Another option would be to, you know, just try to run them out, and I've

done that in different ways. How big are these pots?

I'm going to wait until you see what I said.

a few deals. Now that they've hauled it off and I've got that, is there anything I need or can do to spray any of the remainder trees that would help in case some of those wanted to get off get onto the other trees, or just now that I've removed that, do I need to do anything else?

and you need to cover. For pine most pinebert beetles, you're gonna need to go about eighty percent of the height of the tree to get make sure you got really good coverage on it. And that's just not practical. You might want to give Martin spoon Moore a call an affordable tree talk to him and ask him what he has and what he does for that if he's able to do that, or he feels like he's got some product that that's going to be effective in that Uh,

that's the approach I think that I would take. In general. You know, just spraying all the time in case pine bark beetle shows up is not real practical. But in your case, where you've you know, you kind of got an active infestation nearby, I think that that might have might be worth at least looking into.

Gardening with Skip dot Com. All right, folks, we'll be right back. Hey, welcome back to guarden Line. Good to have you with us. How many of you remember Abba?

let's talk gardening. Hey. I was talking about taking your walkways in a garden, and this is a traditional garden, you know, where you got beds and rows and walkways between the rows and using that as your area to compost leaves and certain other kinds of organic material like grass clippings. As long as you have not sprayed the grass with a herbicide or something like that, or applied to herbicide to it, you can do that in the walkways.

I would not put food scraps and things like that or otherwise the barmuts will thank you and you will not be happy with that. But anyway you can do that. The thing I want to talk about about all this is the fact that microbes are the part of the process that makes everything happen. The way I like to put its, microbes rule the world, and we are just scratching the surface of knowing some of the things that microbes do. I subscribe to certain research publications and things

that always give me notification. Every day in my email box, I get some new research fact that talks about and just microbes interacting with plants, like a certain microbe makes a tomato plant more resistant to a certain disease, for example, a research on that I'm literally every day that's coming in, and that's just this tiny sliver of the microbe world and what they do. Microbes turn organic matter back into soil.

We're not walking around with a mile deep stack of tree trunks everywhere from all the trees that have ever grown on that particular site over the ages, because microbes took care of that. From fungi to bacteria into my seats, you know, just all kinds of microbes and that's what happens in there. And all you're doing is enlisting them. And we enlist microbes for a lot of things in life. Do you know that you wouldn't have steak if it wasn't for microbes. I think about that. Here's why we

can't digest grass. You cannot eat grass and digest it. Neither can a cow. There are complex cellulose type and well other kinds of compounds in a grass that the cow just can't digest well, but microbes can. So in a cow's series of stomachs, there's all these microbes, and the grass that goes in the front end ends up turning into cow food in the process, and so we get milk and steak and leather and all those kind

of things. Thank a microbe. Beer wine would not happen if it weren't for yeasts, which are a type of microbe that is actually making that process happen. And I could go on and on and on and on and on. But even just with the plants, you have microbes working on the roots provide beneficial services that are amazing. Microbes will fungi soi microbiologies. Fungi connect roots to roots from other plants, so plants can communicate with each other. There's microbes.

In fact, there's a product that contains a type of Basillis you know, you know b T. That's what we spray on leaves so that when a caterpillar eats the leaves, it kills them b T Basillis thuringiensis. Well, there is a bacillus And I'm not sneezing, I'm actually saying a word. Bacillis amala lico fecions. That's the name of it. Yep, you can be the nerd at the next garden party

with that word. Bacillis amelia lico fecians connects with the root and tells the plant to do things up on top that make it more resistant to certain disease problems. That's cool. There's a lot of micro there's microbes that live in the leaves too. But anyway, my point is just it's a wonderful, amazing world out there, and the more we can enlist it, the better off we are

and having success with our plants. And as research goes forward, I see our horticultural practices more and more turning toward enlisting and enhancing microbes. Just like we discovered BT, now we know what to do about caterpillars, right, that is organic. We're going to find more and more of that and less and less of here's a problem, how do I kill it? Kind of approach, the spray and kill approach. That is the direction that a lot of things are

going in. And also the sprays become safer and more in some cases more effective when we use microbes. A BT is an example of that. There there is a Bacillus subtlest that is a fungle protectant that we can use out there. It's a type of bacillus that stops diseases on plants, some of the disease issues that happen on plants, and we're going to see more of that as time goes on. Well, we don't have to wait until time goes on to you know, take the benefits

of microbes and put them to work for us. The folks that microlife have put together a wide range of price a wide range that basically they add microbes to the soil and they enhance microbial activity in the soil. And for example, one of the products that the folks that microlife have put together is called micro grow bioinoculant

or bioinoculant. It is a granular that you put down and it has a buzzillion different kinds of microbes, just lots of different strain, sixty three different strains and bazillions of individual microbes. And they do things like that. You know, I mentioned that, Well, I didn't mention Trichoderma, that is an amazing one. I mentioned Bacillus amelo lico fashions as being a beneficial one. There's four strains of that, Bacillus

amla licofasions in micro grow bioinoculant, four different strains. I'm mentioned Bysillus subtless there's ten strains of that, but I'm talking about sixty three different microbe strains in microgrow bianoculant. And you can put it in your soil. Well, it's granular, put in your soil, you mix it in, you use it in containers, anything where you want to enhance some microbial growth. That is the beneficial way to go about

and doing that. And they also have micro grow liquid AF and liquid AF has eight different strains of beneficial microbes and you can spray it on the foliage. You can drench it in the soil too. You spray it on the foliage. And now you've got all these good guys on the leaves that when a bad spore lands, it's a very hostile environment and you help defend. It's not a fungicite, but it defends against fungaled attack by putting natural antagonistic organisms on the leaf. Is that cool stuff? Well,

microlife is cool stuff. There's lots of different types of microlife. You can go to microlifefertilizer dot com for a full list of all the places where you can get it, as well as the products that they have. Time for me to take a break and when we get back, if you'd like to give me a call. In fact, you can call now and be ready to go. Seven one three two one two KTRH. Welcome back to guarden Line. Hey, we're having fun today talking about all kinds of things.

Composting in your garden beds. Easiest way to compost that there is pim marked beetles. Talking about that and microbes are my favorite topic. By the way, what I didn't mention when I was talking about microbes, I usually this is one of the first things I say. Yeah, microbes live in us too. We have like it or not. You have a lot of microbes that are living in you.

And do you know that the feel good chemical serotonin, the things that hits our brain and we feel good about that, Well, serotonin, most serotonin produced in your body is not done by you. It's done by the microbes in your intestinal tract. Yeah, that's right, So you can thank microbes when you're happy. That makes me happy to think about that. All right, enough of them, I'll stop the microbe thing. I just I can really nerd out about some of this stuff because it is amazing and cool.

It is absolutely stunning. I'm saying about fungi. Well, on one little tag on, I'm taking about fungal strands that connect two plants together so that they can communicate. They've done studies where let's say you have two tomato I'm just gonna I don't know this study specifically, it is about tomatoes. Let's have two tomato plants, and you separate them so air can't move from one to the other. They're completely separated, but underground microhizel fungi can connect the

two roots of the two plants. Okay, there's your telegraph line that goes from one to the other. If you want telephone line uh and insect choose on the leaf of one plant. That plant is a response to the In some cases, the saliva in like a caterpillar caterpillar's mouth, if you will, the equivalent of saliva that signals a plant to hay start making some changes to make it where caterpillars can't eat you so easily. Okay, that make it more difficult for them, or maybe maybe it's produced

a toxin to the caterpillar or maybe something else. Well, in that study, the plant on the other side that had no air communicating, no other way of communicating with that plant started making the same kinds of leaf changes. So the telegraph cable between the roots, which is a fungal strand a microaizal fungal strand sent the message from one plant to another who knew before recently that that kind of thing was going on. And we just keep

learning more and more. All right now, I will officially stop for now, if you'd like to give me a call and talk about something else. Seven to one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two ktrh. I we're talking about garlic. Earlier, I planted some garlic In fact, I've kind of got a little allien patch in the garden. You know, I always grow onions every year. That's that's one of my

favorite things to grow. I have some some multipliers like chives and shalots and things like that that will actually multiply into clumps. You plant one clove and at the end you got a bunch of green onions that you can go with. And I also put in some garlic, a couple kinds of garlic that I'm trying out to see how they do. I just love we use a lot of that in cooking, and so got a lot of it going in the garden. And every year I

try to grow. And you know how I said yesterday I was talking if those of you who are listening yesterday, I talk a lot about talked a lot about what are you going to do new this year? What do you do you've never done before? Not that we always have to change things, but gardening is way bigger than what either of us, you or me are doing. There are types of gardening I've never done before. There are I have, I guess a long time ago I did a terrarium, but it's been ages since I made a terrarium.

But that's a really cool kind of gardening, fun kind of indoor gardening. So even a shut in can have a nice little terrarium. And so there's types you've never done before. And I was asking, what are you gonna do different this year? What are you gonna try that's different this year? And every year I do that, and also every year I try something that maybe I try a variety that I haven't tried before. So when it comes to tomatoes, Celebrity is my old dependable variety of

tomatoess been around long time. It's one of the smaller group of very few tomatoes are nematode resistant. Celebrity is and it's just an old gold standby Contender. Green bean is the green bean that I've done for years. I was talking with Joey out at a shanty gardens this past year and he was telling me about how good that Valentino green bean is. So this next spring it's going in my garden. I'm gonna try Valentino because you know, if he says it, I'm sure the case, and I'm

gonna find out and see how it does. But I'll have Contender there, but also grow some Valentinos. In this case, the same thing. I'll grow celebrity, but oh my gosh, there's nine hundred different tomatoes. I could also grow what am I going to grow with the celebrities, And by doing that, I always find things that I like a little bit better. Over time, There'll be some I grow and it's like, yeah, okay, well that's fine, but nothing to write home about. And then there'll be others it's like, Okay,

that's cool. Maybe the look of the plant or of the fruit right now, tomatoes that are striped and weird colors and all of that, or the rave, So maybe that's it. Maybe it is the disease resistance that's good. Maybe it is, well, there's other categories of it. Right now, I'm in search of a good paste tomato. I've grown roma forever, I've grown San Marzano. I've grown a lot of different paste tomatoes. I love those because they're good for making paste and making tomato sauces, and also I

like them for drying. I dry use those for drying and seasoning tomatoes, which are delicious anyway. Paste tomatoes buy and large take a long time to reach. Harvest that you can't find just like a fifty day to harvest paste tomato very easily, and so I'm always looking for faster paste tomatoes. So every year the garden gets some experimenting, and I would suggest you do that too. You probably have your favorites of different kinds of things. I'll give

you one more example. Squash. There's crook neck and straight neck, and a lot of places they'll just sell you they tell you what it is. It just says this is straight next squash, this is crook neck squash, and that's

all you know about it. But then they're squash varieties, and there are constant improvements being made to squash varieties, maybe diseases, maybe productivity, and really excellent options there when it comes to what are the best varieties, And I've discovered some really new well over the years, I've discovered as they became a new option, squash varieties that were just absolutely beyond anything that I had tried growing before. Same thing with broccoli and other things. And the same

thing would be true with flowers. You know, there's new species coming along, there's improvements on species. Maybe you know zenias. Zenias get all waist high and we'd use them as cut flowers. Right then they began breeding zenias and now they're a little mounded bedding plants. So it looked like a little meatballs covered with zenia flowers out there all in the garden. We have a lot of options on these things, and continue to try, continue to experiment, try

something new. If you like some suggestions on things, oh, we can talk about some of that, but anyway, try something new. I think you find something that you really love. I really want to encourage you to do that. It doesn't just have to be vegetables. It doesn't have to be vegetables flowers. How about herbs. Have you ever thought about growing some herbs that you don't currently grow? All right, well,

I'll tell you this. Chives are super super easy. Just don't let them go to seed or your whole garden bed will turned into a chia pet. Chives are easy, easy to grow. Rosemary very drought tolerant. Rosemary is easy to grow as long as you don't put in a spot that is soggy wet black clay soil. Soggy wet, wet rosemary didn't like that, but it's very very easy to grow. That'd be another example. A regano for a groundcot. Why not try that, Hi, folks, I'll be right about.

to give me a call with some gardening questions. Seven one three two one two k t r H seven one three two one two k t r H. You know, spring fever hits like a load of bricks when it comes to us gardeners. All of a sudden, as you know, the weather begins to break a little bit, we just start getting the itch to go outside and do something cool.

drive through town a lot of times. I will actually take a root where I just go downside streets just because I like to see people's yards and houses and things and what they do. You run into some pretty interesting stuff that way. And landscapes are buying large a little on the bleak side right now. You know, it's winter. The grass is not that great looking. Some people don't even rake the leaves off yet, and it's just kind of bleak. And I think about what could be done,

you know, what would it look like. And when you think about things like a well manicured lawn that is beautiful, when you think about beautiful shrubs, think about landscapes that bloom throughout the year. You know, you've got your spring bloomers like azalea's primarily, or spring bloomers or some ever repeat blooming types now, and then you got your fall bloomers, things that bloom just in the fall. And then there's things that bloom just in summer and you're designing those

landscapes and you're creating that beauty. And then there's the hard scapes. And hard scapes is one of the things that I think are underutilized in our landscapes. I love grass, I love walking through the grass and every other type of plant out there in the landscape. But boy, when you create a gorgeous patio that it takes Basically what it does is it extends your home outdoors. You just now you have a new room that's outside in the fresh air, in the sunshine, where you can smell fragrances

of plants and all kinds of things like that. Go out and sit in the evenings and maybe have a fire table something along those lines. Well, I tell you Purece Scapes is they are the best I know at doing that. It is outstanding. And I would ask you this. I can sit here and describe stuff to you, but that just doesn't cut it. Go to their website. It's Peerscapes dot com. Puerscapes dot com and when you go there,

you are going to see amazing things. And one of the amazing things that most landscapes don't have is quality landscape lighting. It may be shining up on your home. It may be shining up on a pergola. It may be along steps so people can see as they walk, or you know that you don't stumble and things do that. Water features like a little waterfall or a fountain of some type, and a landscape. Peerscapes can do all of that and really they basically just do it all. Do

you need it done? Yeah, they probably do that. You know, they do quarterly maintenance if you want them to come in and just ever quarter, come in. Spruce up your flowerbeds, get them looking good, put new flowers in every quarter if you want them that often. Uh, you know, pull any weeds, molts, make sure everything's in good shape. Checks the irrigation. They do irrigation work. They do landscape drainage.

I've got an area that is poorly drained and that's one of the next projects coming up is to get that taken care of. Pirescapes dot com is a website. Go there, look at the pictures, check out what they can do. Give them a call, let them come out and do a bid for you. Bring them some pictures in, sit down, talk to the designers. You can do anything from a small job to a complete revamp of the whole place and make it look like the taj Mahal.

Although I don't know what the landscape looks like around the taj Mahll, you just always see the building. Anyway, they can make your place look good. Prescapes dot Com go check it out just for fun. Check that out. You are listening to Gardenline. I'm your host, Skip Richter, and we're here to answer your gardening questions. And the way I like to put it is, we are here. We are here to help you have a more bountiful garden, a more beautiful landscape, and more fun in the process.

That's what we want to happen. If we can give you some tips, if you can help you diagnose, we can help you identify something. We love to do, all of those kinds of things. I have been in gardening and horticulture my whole life. When I was a kid, we had a garden and worked in the garden mode, the yard, all that kind of thing. And then I entered a m in the horticulture department back in nineteen

seventy eight and got my degree. Actually the horticulture started in nineteen eighty three, got my degree and began to work for Agrolife Extension. I worked in Missouri for three years prior to coming back to Texas and working Extension for thirty five more years. And anyway, I love this stuff and it is fun. I loved learning, and gardening

gives you a chance to learn every single day. You know, after hearing I don't know how many questions I feelded over thirty five years now in horticalulture, a bazillion, and it never fails. I get new questions. I've never heard that one before. And that's just how broad and wonderful. The world of gardening is never a dull moment. At least there generally isn't. I've talked to you before about

ACE Hardware Stores, and you know ACE is everywhere. There's dozens of stores here in the Greater Houston area, and ACE is a place where you get whatever you need. Right now, we just got through putting up our Christmas stuff, getting it all stored. Do you need boxes for things like that, organize it, make it a little neater and whatnot. When you get ready to do this again next year or in twenty twenty five at the end of the year, they've got that do you want to get your garage

in order. Maybe you need shelving units. I've been that is a project I've been working on for a long time. Shelving is ACE has got that for you as well. Do you need perhaps a fire pit from Brio or solo stove, They've got those. Do you need some fire you know I'm gonna have some cool weather coming up. We got a little break here, but it's coming back. Get your firewood, get stocked up. Maybe you need your propane tank refilled. We almost went outside and grilled last night,

thought real seriously about it. Well, they've got exchangeable propane canisters as well. If you'd like to do that. You want to sign up for the ACE Rewards program. That is a great way to receive discounts. I'll tell you about special offers. I've been an ACE Rewards member for a long time and the only ACE Rewards customers receiving these email directly to you. And you got to do that. You get more bang for your buck that way. Stocking up on all kinds of things from light bulbs to

batteries to whatever you need. ACE has got it now. There's a lot of ACE stores around. You got into Rockport, Texas. By the way, anybody listening downe in Rockport, welcome to garden Line, Wharton Feed and Ace Wharton Feed and Ace Base City Ace Hardware. And then we got a couple of K and m Ace hardwares won in Kingwood, winning a Tesca seen it. Those are just examples are the many, many Ace hardware stores in the Greater Houston area. Time for me to take a break and we will be

right back with your calls. All right, welcome back, Welcome back to Guardline. Hey, if you'd like to give me a call, we got open lines. Happy to visit with you about the things that you're interested in. Seven one three two one two kt r H seven one three two one two k t RH. I want to talk a little bit about fruit, trees, vines and bushes. Fruit trees, vines and bushes. There are a lot of different kinds of fruit that you can grow down here in the

Greater Houston area. You know, wherever you live in the country, there are types of fruits you can grow and types you can't grow. And we're fortunate here to have a wide range of types of fruit. We can grow. The deciduous fruit like apples, and pears and peaches and plums for example, that we can grow those here. We can grow things like upon gran It's actually they're a little bit of a challenge in the rainy seasoned fruit. Rots can be a little bit of a challenge, but that

you know, we can grow them here. We can grow for summons here. That's another deciduous fruit, beautiful ornamental fruit that you can grow. And then there's the tropicals, the things like well, let's just do the citrus. For example, among the most hardy citrus that we have are satsuma oranges, which is a mandarin type orange or baggy loose skin.

And the cumquats and cumquats have extreme ability to withstand cold weather, I mean down into the upper teens and established kumquat can that those we're eating primmorphous skin, you know, marmalade and whatnot. But they also have wonderful fragrance, as do mini citrus when they bloom. It is heavenly just to smell the fragrance of the blooms. Then we have many other kinds of citrus, you know, there's oranges of course, and lemons and limes and whatnot, and we can grow

those here. Some require a little bit of protection. Some are more cold tender than others. But we can grow all of that kind of thing here. There's things like blueberries. Blueberries like acidic soil and high quality water. They do not put up with water with a lot of sodium in it. So those of you in areas you know, like Brian colors station high sodium levels in the soil in the water, it's hard to It's hard to grow blueberries. In fact, if not almost impossible to grow blueberries unless

you use rain water. There but a lot of East Texas, Southeast Texas, parts of Southeast Texas are naturally acidic and have good quality water, and you can grow blueberries. There's rabbit eye blueberries and Southern high bush blueberries. The Southern high bush is a little bit bigger berry. The rabbit eye starts off kind of a pink color, like a albino rabbit's eye. That's where it gets its name and then turns to blue. Both of those are good quality

berries that you can grow in our area. There are things like blackberries and strawberries that do well here. Raspberries not so much. There's some that you can get by with get a few berries off of, but not in the level of production that you might if you're further north. In general with the raspberries, but people are always trying to grow things that are hard to grow here. I know people that grow dragon fruit and that that is

a cool tropical fruit. I know somebody that grows mangoes and yet to go to Great Links because they will not tolerate a good hard freeze, and so you've got to be ready to protect those. But anyway, avocados there's another one, and we have some pretty hardy avocados. Actually, for those of you, especially in the southern part of

the listening area, avocados are a viable option. You just tolerate the fact that occasionally we're gonna have one of those freezes that knock some way back and they'll regrow. But that's just part of the deal. I think that we ought to grow more grapes, and you know we have. We have different kinds of grapes here in southeast in fact, most of the south east Stern portion of Texas. I don't mean just Southeast Texas. I mean, you know, all the way over to San Antonio and in southeast from there,

we have a disease called East and southeast. From there, we have a disease called Pierce's disease that flat kills grapes. It kills them outright, and so you have to choose certain grapes that are resistant to Pierce's disease. So there is a white grape called Blanc du bois the L A N C du and then bois is boi s yep, Welcome to caden Land. Blanc dubois is a white grape that makes a nice little wine. It's a small grape,

not a fresh eating grape, particularly CD. Then we have one called Southern Sensation and another one called Victoria Red. Victoria Red is a nice long cluster grape got its name from Victoria Tech. It didn't originate there, but I believe it's an Arkansas breeding line. But it's a good one, a good one. But a Southern Sensation seedless is seedless, and it is probably If someone says I want one table grape, I would probably point them at Southern Sensation

seedless or Victoria Red. Either those or good options. Amazing grapes. Can you imagine putting an arbor out in the yard, maybe over a patio, and having grapes overhead that hang down that you can harvest from. Now, keep in mind that anytime you have a fruiting, deciduous and deciduous plant, you're gonna have a mess. The leaves are gonna fall on the patio, of course, and you're gonna have to

With grapes, you do need to spray them. The disease pressures here are significant, and so you can try to use some organic options, but not quite adequate to really give you full protection and protect the crop. But I think that's a really cool thing to do. There's old time grapes. There's one called Champannel. There's one called black Spanish also called then. Why it looks like it's spelled lean or l E n R E, I believe is how they spell it. Anyway, those are old time grapes.

They're tough, they survive despite the issues I've been talking about, but they're not the highest quality. And then there's muscadines, and muscadines are super cool. Muscadine is a Southern grape. It's a I guess I would say it's not a true grape, but it is a grape. But it's different than the vanifera grapes. The kind that every grape you buy in the supermarket, just about every grape juice you buy,

every wine you buy. Those are typically the vanifera grapes or hybrids, but the muscadine is a little different structurally. It's a little different too, make small clusters of very big berries and they may not ripen the whole cluster at a time. But there are some new ones. Well, there's a new program that a new research project going on Texas and am Agrolife is involved in it. As is the University of Arkansas, the University of Georgia, and

several other institutions. And here is the goal of it, improving the muscadine grape. You know, muscadines are one of thirteen species of grapes that are native to Texas. Did you know that Texas has more native grapes than any place, the more species of native different species of native grapes in any place, thirteen to be specific, and excuse me. Muscadines. The native muscadine has been improved through breeding and selection.

And you know, over one hundred years of breeding, they now have even developed a seedless muscadine, which is amazing. They have a very tough, leathery skin. But the flavor is unique, but it's great. It's different than the typical grape flavor. They throw in hot, humid areas. Welcome to Houston muscadine. And they also are pretty tolerant of a lot of disease and pest issues, so as well as

some decent drought tolerance too. Now they grow rampantly and they require some pretty judicious and regular attention to the pruning, but they are really amazing. Now this project is developing varieties of muscadines for both the fresh market eating that's seedless muscadine, and the wine market as well. There's gonna be like thirty different viticulturists, which is grape specialists. There's gonna be great breeders and even food scientists that are

involved in this project. And the goal is to support grape growers in propagating new seedless muscadine selections for trials all the way across the southeastern US. They'll seek to cross breed muscadines with Vitis vinifera, the common grape. When you say grapes and you picture grapes, unless you grew up East Texas, you know eating grapes off the trees,

the travines on the trees grapes is Vias benifita. They're going to cross these two and come up with additional options, and future generations are going to really enjoy the benefits of this program. I mean, high quality, climate resilient cultivars for fresh market and wine production. And that's all part of the Muscadine improvement projects funded by USDA, and I'm excited about it. These things take time, you know, it'd be a while before we see the benefits of it.

But what a great idea, you know, as we look for more resilient plants, plants that can survive, plants that do well with less sprays and so on, that's a great kind of project that we need to do well. I've talked to you before about Medina products, and Medina's been around for a very long time. In fact, when Garden Line wasn't even garden Mine, back in the Dewey Compton days, Medina was a sponsor of the show and has been ever since. And gardeners have long learned about

Medina and love Medina products and use Medina products. Medina excuse me, Medina soil activator is one of the originals and it is a very popular product. Well, the folks at Medina while back, they took Medina sool activator. They took their humic and fulvic acids. Those are natural acids from the final stage of a compost decomposition that are

incredibly beneficial in the soil. And they also took seaweed and combined it with a fertilizer that is six twelve six six percent nitrogen, twelve percent phosphorus, six percent potassium. So you got all that combined in one product to stimulate biological activity in the soil and to promote blooming and fruiting in the plant. And so with Medina has to grow plant six twelve six, there's other has to grows has to grow plant six twelve six. You are going to get the ability to use it as a

folier feed. It will not burn you and I get salt built up, chemical build up, It'll add to the biological activity and the soil. Increase the biological activity in the soil, and you can use this as a drench for new transplants. It's got that higher percent phosphorus the middle number which is important for root development. So you use has to grow six twelve six. Anytime you're going to plan a plant and you're going to see better success,

what you do is you I do it. Sometimes I'll just take a container of it, you know, make a gallon more, set the plants in the container and let the root ball soak it up, and then plan them. Sometimes I'll just plan them and before I fully fill the hole with soil, I'll just drench. I'm really good with it. You can do that a couple more times after planning, about a week apart, just to give it the best chance it can to get started. With medinas, it's a has to grow six twelve six. Medina has

to grow six twelve six. I was talking about fruit. It is important when you're going to grow fruit to learn about that fruit and get the information you need. And if you go to the Aggie Horticulture website, it's Aggie dash Horticulture dot TAMU dot edu. I know you wrote that down. I know you didn't, So just go to Aggie Horticulture search for that on there. There's a

fruit and not section on the front page. Click on that and you will get publications on everything from avocados to you name it that's there, and it tells you do you need two varieties for cross pollination? Some fruit do some fruit don't. Does it need acidic soil? How do you prune it? How do you plant it? What are some varieties to grow in my part of Texas?

It's all there and it's free. So before you plant any fruit, grab some of those free publications and just peruse them and get up to speed on it, and you'll be glad you did that. Way, you won't call me in three years going why is my fruit not fruiting because I needed a pollinator? All right, we're going to take a break. I'll be right back. Hey, welcome back to garden Line. Glad to have you with us this morning. Let's talk gardening. Of questions you have, give

me a call. Seven one three two one two k t r H seven one three two one two k t RH Southwest Fertilizer is a place that I talk about all the time because I love to go there. Number One, when you walk in, they treat you right the everybody you know, they greet you, they ask how they can help, and when you ask a question, they know the answer to it. I mean, they take you right to the product. They explain it toay how to

do it. You could walk in and just you know, say hey, I've got here's a bug in a jar. You know what is this and how do I get rid of it? Or maybe you've got a weed that you're bringing in and you want know what to do about that, or or print out my schedules, both of them, the law care schedule, print out the pest disease and weed management schedule, and walk in there and say I need this thing, and they're going to have it. There is nothing I talk about on the garden line that

Bob doesn't carry, and he carries a lot more. In addition to all of that, they kind of pride themselves in having everything that you need for your garden and your lawn and your landscape and your house plants for that matter. You find tools there. You're going to find fertilizers there, things to control weeds, things to control pests and diseases, anything you need. If you're looking at enhancing the growth of a plant, they are going to have

a wide range of products. If you're looking organic, they've got it. They've got the best selection of organic products, the widest selection of any place in town. That's just what they do. The way I like to put it is if Southwest doesn't have it, you don't need it. And that's true, it really is. That's why I like going in there because every time I go in, you know, see Bob, hey, what's up, what's new? You know what

we got here? And just seeing all the things on the market because there's always new stuff coming out and we talk about them. You can take samples in, you can have them put a pair of eyes on it, as they like to say, see what it is and see how they can help you. That is the reason that it is such a helpful place. The one stop shop in Southwest Houston, corner of Bisnett and Renwick. Southwest Fertilizer dot com. That's the website, Southwest Fertilizer dot com.

Corner of Byssinet and Renwick. I don't care where you live in this whole region, it's worth the drive in when you're looking for a place where you can get anything that you need and everything that you need. You are listening to Garden Line and our phone number here if you'd like to give us call a seven to one three two one two k t R H seven one three two one two K T R. H. I was talking about fruit trees and the importance of getting

good information before you plan. Remember this that with the exception I guess of Mayhaw's, which is a native apple like fruit that grows out in the woods in East Texas. With the exception of that, fruit trees want really good drainage. Mayhaws can put up with some swampy stuff, but in general, you want good drainage. Probably the most important thing when it comes to fruit tree success is sunlight. And it's

because why do you grow fruit? Because you get you want to eat the fruit right, and the fruit is sweet. And what is sweet? That's a carbohydrate. Sugar is a carbohydrate. And how do you get carbohydrates Sunshine on the leaves. So if you grow a peach tree in half the sun that it really would like to have, you're going to have much less production. And the production you have is going to be let's use a big word, insipid.

You put it in your mouth, not that great to eat. Well, why not put it in the sun and have success. That's why you're growing fruit. So find the sunniest spots you have for your fruit trees. Fruit trees, vines, and bushes. SAME's true with grapes, same is true blueberries, SAME's true with strawberries, and you can have success and so good sunlight and good drainage are like. That's first. Good soil quality is especially important as we get into things like blueberries.

That have a very good opinion about that. So do blackberries. By the way, you take blackberries and put them in a high pH sticky black clay soil, well like we have predominantly in this region, and they are not going to perform well. They're going to get chlorotic, which means the new growth is kind of yellowy white instead of nice green as it comes out. If you have to, and I've done this before, you can make a raised bedbox. You can put some good sandy loam soils in it.

You add compost into the soil and whatnot, and plant your strawberries and plant your blackberries in that. If you've got crimy soil that's boggy and whatever, black clay, gouey, do that before you plant blackberries and strawberries. For sure. Figs can put up with that. Figs can. We used to have a huge fig industry here on the Gulf

coast years ago. They can put up with these rice paddy soils that we have in some parts, but for the rest of them, take care of those, I mean, and then look and see if you need another variety for cross pollination. That's very important. And you know what, just go to a good quality nursery. I talk about our independent garden centers all the time and how fortunate we are have so many good ones here in the

Houston area. If you live north, south, east, west, or central, there is a good garden center near you, and go to those. Because a lot of places that sell hammers and plants, lumber and plants, jewelry and plants, you know what I mean, the jewelry counter at Walmart or someplace like that. The folks in the garden center, they just likely don't know. It would be an exception to find

somebody that knows what they're doing there. And typically the things that are shipped in are done kind of on a national basis or regional basis, and they may not be the best things to grow here. Drives me nuts. I'm not going to say that specific name of the place, but you can kind of figure out based on what I've already said. Was in one of those kind of stores, and they had black cap raspberries, and they had concord grapes, the kind that they make Welch's Grape juice out of

and Mogan David wine out of. Well, they won't grow here, they shouldn't be sold here. But you go to an independent garden center and not only are they going to carry the things that should be sold, but when you go up and go, well, does this plumb tree need a pollinator? Or they would just told you in the first place, and here's a good one, but you're going to need this one over here to pollinate it, for example, or no, you don't need a pollinator for that one.

Get that good information that is worth something. And then when you have any issues or questions from the time you plan it, like how do I do this to something's going wrong or I have a question about this, you can go back in there and they'll help you. I'm telling you that is worth it. It is well worth it to restrict your shopping to places that know what they're talking about. All right, that's a soapbox complaining about it, But you know what I'm talking about. A

time for me to take another little break here. When we come back, if you would like to give us a call, be first up on the board seven one three two one two kat R eight seven one three two into kt R H. All right, welcome back to the garden line. We are today is a day where I'm getting an opportunity to talk a lot about some specific things, you know, kind of go more in depth. And when the when the spring flood hits, I got to move fast, but I have a little more time.

I actually enjoy this, so good to visit. I hope you're enjoying it, by the way, hopefully you are.

Don't stop it. Don't do that. You give me a call. You go to the website, check out the I put up there to help you have success. You go to places like the Aggy Horticulture website and learn and learn and learn, become part of a garden club, or go through a master gardening program. You know, we have master gardening programs all through the Greater Houston area. They have them in Harris County, They're in Montgomery County. There's some up in Brass County con College Station Bryan there down

in Fort Ben County. There's one in Brazoria County. There's one named Galveston County. There's one out in Orange too. I believe I think they still have one going on out there, and I'm probably forgetting one. Who am I forgetting? You know, you start making a list, you forget somebody. There's a lot of master gardening programs. Let me just tell you about that for just a little bit. Master Gardening is an intense gardening course. It is not for the faint of heart. In other words, if you're just

kind of curious about seeing pretty pictures and whatnot. Not only that, Master Gardening is a volunteer training program done by Agra Life Extension Service out of Texa and im University. Agerlife Extension is put together the Master Guarding program in order to train volunteers to help the folks, and I used to. I've run master gardening programs in Conrod, Montgomery County, in Travis County, in Austin, Harris County, and in Brass

County over the course of my career. And I can tell you this, master gardner's some of the finest people you'll ever meet. They just love what they're doing and it's a good group, a good group to be a part of. But it is for volunteer service, and so you don't go just to learn. You go to learn and then to put your learning into action to help other people. And it's one of the ways that Extension takes the public investment in agrolife extension and it multiplies

it many times over. When I was running Master Gardening, I'll use myself because I've got that firsthand knowledge, but it's true of all these programs, I was one agent in the office that was handling gardening questions and commercial horticulture questions and everything all the other duties that the agent has, and with volunteers, it was not unusual to have ten thousand volunteer hours in the course of a year. That's a lot. That's what we call full time equivalents.

There's a lot of full time equivalents that are to be had when you build a volunteer program. So with the investment of one horticulture agent, or in many counties it's an agriculture agent that's doing it, there's not a hoard agent, then you get all this additional benefit. Talks for groups, other kinds of educational activities, and master gardening is a fun thing, but just know that you're doing

it not just to learn and go home. You're doing it to learn and go home and then come back and in whatever way is most appropriate for you to take what you've learned and apply it. Our master gardeners would help with our trials, our plant trials that we were doing. We had master gardeners that work just with youth programs that would create programs for kiddos and learning about gardening and helping with school gardening programs and things,

and it's a really good organization. I've kind of gone off what I was originally talking about to talk about master gardening, but that is just another way that you can grow in your horticultural knowledge, and I think that is important. They say when you're cutting trees in the forest, you got to stop every now and then and sharpen the saw. If you've ever tried to cut a tree with a dull saw, you know what I'm talking about. It's time to stop and sharpen the saw as well

worth it. The same is true with gardening. If you never sharpen the saw, if you never grow as a gardener, learn and expand what you know, you're gonna become obsolete. And things that you think are true are you find out later are not true. I don't know who it was. It probably I don't know, Mark Twain or Will Rogers or something like that. I made a statement. They said, it's not what I let's see, it's not what I don't know that concerns me. It's what I know that

ain't so. And that is true. A lot of times we think we know something when in fact that's not true. And times change and research brings new information to light and whatnot, and you got to keep improving on it. Plus it's fun. That's part of the thing about gardening that makes it so rejuvenating is that you you it's it's it is a renewing thing to constantly be learning new things, interesting new things. It's it's a hobby that

just keeps growing. I've mentioned this before. You know, you start off as the typical bottom line of gardening is you get on the phone, call somebody and say, come mo and take care of my yard. Know that you have the garden, you have the landscape, but somebody's taking care of it. But you got You're out there, you're enjoying it, and you may say, hey, I'd like this plant put in it or something. You take it up to where you're more of a do it yourselfer uh

and it and then you you begin to learn. Maybe you decide I want to grow herbs, I want to grow vegetables, I want to grow flowers. I want to grow fruit of some fruit trees in the yart or a fruit tree in the art. And you expand in that way, and then you begin indoor things. Like I mentioned earlier, I hadn't done a terrarium in ages. Well, terrariums are cool. Why not do one of those? How about house plants? And then you grow some more and you decide, you know what, I'm going to save my

own seed and improve my plants. So each year I look at all these plants I planted that are open pollinated, and I'm going to pick the ones that are doing the best, and I'm going to save seed from those. And you do that year after year after year, and you improve the strain of what you're growing. Maybe you then become someone who starts your own seed, grows transplants,

and you get into that. Boy, is that ever fund some one of my favorite parts of gardening, because I do a lot of gardening in the winter by taking care of my plants that I have inside under lights. Maybe you want to learn how to propagate plants, root cuttings, how to do air layering. I talked about that yesterday. Gardening just keeps expanding as much as you want it to,

and there are many other things. How about a cut flower garden if you've ever done that, have you ever looked at your landscape and ask questions like what does my landscape smell like? And how could it be better? What are some fragrant plants that would be wonderful to enjoy the fragrance of? And I'm going to tell you what if I can remember this next segment next hour, I'm going to talk about that fragrant plant Have you ever looked at your landscape and see and ask, what

does this look like? Spring, summer, fall, and winter? Or their flowers or their color? Maybe it's foliage that's all twelve months of the year. Where are the evergreens that give you extra foundational plants through the dormant season? And looked at it that way? Have you ever looked at your landscape and said, what am I able to? I'm going to use the word eat, but it could be every thing from eat to season your food, to create all kinds of different herbal tinctures and things. And you

looked at it from that standpoint? Have you ever looked at your landscape and said, what attracts butterflies? What at track's hummingbirds? What attracts birds? How can I add to the movement? Butterflies are basically flying flowers? How can I add flying flowers to my landscape by planting? Do you see what I'm saying? There's always some new fun things to do. And you go visit a place, you go to a botanical garden, you go visit family and friends.

You do like I do, and drive up and down the street when you're going places and just notice what you like take a picture of you, go find out what it is, and get you one for your house. That's kind of how that works. So it's a constant process that allows us to just grow and grow and have so much fun in the process. And I don't you know, I don't look at this show like it's all mechanics. You know, it's like, Okay, you gotta furlize

your lawn with this at this time and that time. Yeah, we talked about all that, but how can you have more fun? How can this be more enjoyable for you? That's what we want you to do. Juer yard, your landscape, do what you want with it. It's gene you in the in the first of the front yard especially, it's gene you and the hoa. But have fun. Get out there and enjoy it. If you want to talk rules of gardening, I can talk that, But at your gardener

are no rules. The rule is you got out there and do what you want and have fun a bunch of whole garden to be a Zenian fall doesn't go fall yours? All right, folks, here's a number you can give us a call and be first up when we come back. Seven one three two one two kt R h.

to Katie Freeway eastbound at the sixth hid West. It was on the left shoulder, then was on a right forty five Goal Freeway northbound at Monroe Harry Mack the Generator Supercenter dot Com Traffic Center.

Starting this week, President elect Donald Trump's cabinet nominees are set to begin their confirmation hearings.

Radcliffe will appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Other closely watched noees, like Tulci Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence, have not had their hearings scheduled yet.

his investigation is expected soon as. His resignation comes as no surprise, since Trump has indicated Smith would be fired once he takes office. Smith was employed as special counsel by the US Justice Department Texas firefighters heading to Los Angeles. A group of Houston firefighters included in that trip to LA Governor Greg Abbott says the state is assist in

California and their wildfire response. Firefighting resources have been deployed, including fire engines and equipment following a request from cal Fire. Sixteen people are dead now and nearly forty thousand acres of land burned due to the LA wildfires.

Twenty two was the latest count that we have seen from officials have been arrested in the area out there looting.

death of his wife. The Harris Kind Of Sheriff's Office says the man was banking his car out of their driveway and ran her over. The car then hit a tree at the home along Spring Cypress near Grant. Another man is in the hospital following a high speed chase and crash in Cyprus. Investigators say a man was speeding on Barker Cypress Road when he lost control of his

car and crashed at around eleven pm last night. The Texans pulling away from the Chargers in the wild card round Saturday, Houston defending home Turf, winning thirty two to twelve and moving on to the divisional round. News on demand at KTERH dot com. Our next update is at eight thirty. Back to Garden Line with Skip Richter. I'm Jerret Lewis News Radio seven forty k TRH.

put quite a bit out. Or you could gradually add it over time, small amounts to bring it up. But either way you go about it. If you can get that lawn in good growing shape, it'll cover over quickly once we get the warm weather. Then then go online to my website gardening with Skip dot com and there is a free lawn care schedule and it tells you when to fertilize and what do you use the options that you have.

again because they've sunk them back. So you need some kind of a you need some kind of a sand or sandy loam kind of material in there to fill those areas. So all right, that's that's what I would.

can roll around in the grass. If you've ever experienced siggers before, you come inside and it's like you're itching all over because there's a little tiny things are chewing on you. Bermudas sugars really well, so that's kind of one of the negatives of it. One final thing about bermuda is the more often you know it, the better it looks. So if you can't mow often, Saint Augustine is a better choice because it's more forgiving of an irregular mowing schedule than bermuda.

going to continue our conversation with Rick out in League City. So, Rick, we're talking about turning that yard around and getting more out of it. And I think you've done pruning on your trees and still not quite seeing the results. Is that? Am I right? Is that what you said?

where there's the free publication. It's just a very short one telling you about soil sampling, how to do it and where to send it and all of that. But on that lun care schedule it tells you exactly when to apply it and then it gives you a list of options organic and synthetic that you can put down and if you'll follow that. Also on the schedule it talks about mowing. Believe it or not, mowing is one of the single most important things you do to have

a nice dense lawn. Mowing on a regular schedule creates good density. Mowing on an irregular schedule stresses the grass and it works against good density. And then watering is on there too, mow, water, fertilize. Those are the three air rating. If you go out in the in the soil and it's very dense clay that when it's dry it's very very hard. You know, if you had a spading for it, you pushed it down, it wouldn't eyveone go in the ground. Then air rating is going to

be very important to have that done. But some people will do compost top dressing also, and when they're trying to rejuvenate a yard. You can hire this done if you got the time and the inclination. You can do it as you do it yourself, or it's a lot of messy work, but you can do it, or you can just hire somebody to come out and do it.

But air rating opens up that tight so oil and it gets oxygen down in the roots and composts then falls down in there as you top dress with compost, and by top dressing I just mean spreading it very thin and raking it around evenly.

area that is not practical to do. There are if you do rent an errator, get one that is called a core. So there's two kinds of aer rators. One just think of it as a rolling spike cylinder that pushes holes into the ground, just like you took a spading fork and pushed it in the ground. It squeezes the hole open and compacts the sides of the hole in the process. A core aerator is a hollow tube that goes down and pops a plug out of the

ground and leaves it on the surface. So when you get through core aerrating, it looks like they had a small dog convention on your yard, if you know what I'm talking about, All these little droppings everywhere, right, that's the better way to aerrate as a core aerator, and getting your lawn soil not soggy, wet, but moist is important in order to have a better effect of core aerating. Also,

if you have an automatic system. Make sure and get those little wire flags and turn it on the system and flag every sprinkler head or else you'll get to play a sprinkler repair after you air rate by damaging those heads.

mowing regularly helps. Fertilizing on a regular basis to get the nutrient content like you want it with the right kinds of fertilizer. That's important. Air Rating would be another factor in a compacted soil, And if you had a big sandy soil out there, air rating isn't gonna help much. But if you if you've got some compaction and tight

clay type things. Air Rating is very helpful, and then compost top dressing is the last one, and that just puts composted organic matter around the runners of the plant, because you're only putting about a about a half inch of compost out maybe a third of an in, I mean, not much at all, and then it falls down in those aerration holes. You won't do that after you airrate, and that again you're you're creating a root system that thrives, and therefore your lawn thrives.

A couple of times. You can fertilize a little earlier for green up, but as far as just you know, really taking getting the most out of your fertilizer, by the time you've mowed the lawn twice so done in League City, you know that's probably going to be early April that you're fertilizing, maybe even late March, you're putting the first fertilizer down, and then once we get into some time in April, the lawn is growing enough where you can do the core aeration. We try not to

air rate while the lawn is dormant. It can be done, but it's a little better if you let the lawn get growing because air rating can be somewhat damaging to turf. You know, those times are going to hit turf runners and things. There's going to be some amount of damage that occurs, which during a good growing period time is not a factor to worry about. So that we try to let the grass get growing good before we start the aer rating.

That's important. So thanks for the call man. Good luck down there in League City getting that long back in shape. All right, you're listening to Garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter, and the phone number here seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one two five eight seven four. Uh Nelson's has

several fertilizer lines that are really excellent for plants. They've got their Color Star line, which is probably their most famous of all, been around forty years, the Color Star for anything with color. I mean, that makes it real easy. They've got their Turf Star line, and we're going to start talking about that a lot as we get into turf fertilizing season here. But they have a number of different products in Turf Star. Then they have a nutri

Star line. That's not the only lines they have, but that's the next one. Nutristar has a number of different products, typically designed for specific plants, you know, like for hibiscus or for plumeria or something like that. But there's one I want to tell it and that's Nutristar Genesis, and it's a transplant mix. Now it's got six percent nitrogen, one percent phosphate, and three percent potassium in it. But it also has in it a lot of other good things.

It's got two different categories of microhizal fungi that associate with the roots and make the plants better. It's got bacteria that are beneficial. It's got other fungi that help benefit that soul microbiome. It has humates in it. It's designed to be mixed into the soil and a lot of fertilizer. You should throw them on the top, water them in, or scratch them in with a rake or whatever.

This one. When you're gonna transplant something, you dig a hole, you put the plant in it, and as you refill it, mix some of the nutristar genesis into the soil that goes in around that plant. If you're gonna bump up plants, maybe you're growing a little six pack of tomatoes. You're gonna bump them up to a four inch pots each one. That soil you use the potting mix, you use mix nutristar genesis in that. Think of it as a transplant mix, because that's what is designed for. And you will see

amazing early growth and response to that. After you do the transplanting. After you do the planting out in the yard whatever. You're gonna see fast growth as a result. That's just how it works. Then afterwards you can use other fertilizers, you know, like their color Star, their nature Star, their nutri Star. You can use those on the surface later, just like you do all the time when you fertilize. But get hold. Some of that comes in low cans, really easy to use and it works really really well.

That's Nutristar Genesis transplant Mix from the folks at Nelson. Okay, I talking about there was something I was going to tell you. Oh, I know what it was. I said that I would talk about plants that are fragrant. There are a lot of plants that are wonderfully fragrant, and why not make that the thing you do this year that's new or that's different. Maybe you got one fragrant plant and you want to have more. How about that. The nose knows what a good landscape smells like, and

a good landscape would have things. And here's a few almond verbina. Oh my gosh, that makes a big old bush. It's got white, spiky blooms that are pretty pretty, but nothing to write home about. I mean, they're cool, but oh my gosh, the fragrance. The vanilla fragrance is like, you know, you stuck a bottle of vanilla extract under your nose and it just has that wonderful fragrance. Texas

Mountain barrel grape clusters. Grape cluster looking bloom clusters that are they smell like grape bubblegum, the strong grape smell. Chinese fringe one of my favorite small to medium sized trees. Chinese fringe has a pleasant little fragrance. It's a spring bloomer confederate jasmine. Oh gosh, that vine is intoxicating. Here's another one, white butterfly ginger. It's but probably one of the most easy gingers to grow, easiest gingers to grow,

big old tall stalks. It puts up with more sun than a lot of gingers do, and it blooms typically at the end of the year. Remember were going to spread these things out ballooms of the India. It's a wonderful one. You want fragrant foliage, Mexican marigolds smells like black jelly beans, copper canyon daisies, citrus and pine smelling, and then all kinds of different herbs rosemary smells good. Okay, there's a start. Go out there and have fun. Plant some of those. I'll be right back.

this year? What are you going to try that you've never tried? And looking at gardening is way more than just the standard picture people get when they picture a landscape or they picture a garden or a lawn. Try some new things, Try some things you haven't grown, and anyway, I hope you will do that. Hopefully you will, because it is a lot of fun. You're missing out on a lot when you don't try a few new things. Who knows, maybe it'll become your favorite thing. I can

kind of get boring when it comes to food. You know, I basically if I'm going to go out to eat, it's like, uh, inchiladas, what else? Chicken? Enchiladas? It's I'm kind of a one trick pony when it comes to gunna dat. But you got to try new things. And my kids they come back and give me all these strange things. In fact, my wife made a thing It's a Greek called Greek bowls, and I don't know what all was in it. It was good, it was good.

It had keen wah, which I used to not know how to say and what it was, and now I do. It was actually pretty good Greek balls, real healthy stuff like that. See, I would never discover that on myself. It would just be like, what do you want to eat chiladas? I need a shirt that says something like that. Maybe we'll try that. One of the main food groups

is enchiladas. All right, Well, if you like to give us a call and talk gardening seven one three two one two kt r H seven one three two into kt r AH, we'll talk about the things that you are interested in. If you have not had your soil testing. We were just visiting with Rick and Michael talking about getting your lawn in good shape, and you know, having success with those kinds of things. It is important if you're going to do that, to make sure that you

know what your soil nutrients are before you're fertilized. Now Here on guard Line, I talk all the time about use this fertilizer, use that fertilizer, and those are good general blends. For most people, that's going to be just fine. But if you really want to drill down, really get into it and go to the bottom of all this. Having a soil test tells you what you need to fertilize with. So for example, there's your yard in your neighbor's yard, and we're both we're gonna put the same

fertilizer on both yards. But what if your neighbor had a phosphorus content that was through the roof. Therefore they're getting a lot of iron, iron, chleurosis, and some other issues caused by too much phosphorus. What if your yard had almost no potassium in it in your soil, well, would you use the same fertilizer. Well, no, A soil test would tell you, yeah, I get your standard fertilizer, but you need to supplement with this or you see what I'm saying. In other words, you would guide your

fertilizing based on your soil test. Now that doesn't mean in every place you garden every year you're doing a soil test, not at all, even on the lawn. Once every three years or so is probably enough. I haven't sold tested my garden in a good while because I just keep adding composted organic matter, and every time I test it, all the levels are good. They're all high because I just add a little bit of nitrogen, especially

for things like corn that need extra nitrogen. But soil testing is the simplest way to find out where you are. It's like the starting point. At least do a soil test once to find out where you are, and if you're way off, then plan on making the amendments you need and coming back in a year or two and checking it again and seeing where you are, if you've fixed it, if you've improved it, or if you need

to do some more additions. If you go to my website gardeningoskip dot com, there is a bar across it that says all publications. The new publications are on the front page, but there's a lot more publication. If you go to all publications, you'll see one called Soil Testing made Simple, and it just gives you the basics of how to take a soil test and where to send

it and stuff. And you want your soil test, this is important to be representative of the soil in the area where you're growing that particular kind of plant, whether it's a lawn or a tomato patch. And so that doesn't mean you got in your lawn and you just scoop some soil off the surface, throw it in a bag and send it to the lab. The lab will tell you what's in the soil you put in that bag. But the soil in that bag is not accurately representing

the soil in your yard. You know, if the neighbors stop buy and let their dog go to the bathroom in your yard in that spot last fall, I suspect the nutrient levels will be a little different there than they are in general through your yard. So by taking a variety of samples and putting them in a bucket and mixing them up, then you can take a composite out of there and now you've got on average, this

is what my lawn is like. And then you fertilize accordingly. Secondly, it's important when you do a soil test in an area that's not rototilled, it's not mixed up or spaded a lot to do a core that's vertical of soil in your sample. Phosphorus. When you put phosphorus on the ground, you're putting your fertilizer spruder and going back and forth over your lawn every time you put some phosphorus out typically and when you do, basically goes down to the

surface and doesn't go very deep at all. An inch maybe two is about how far phosphorus is going to naturally move down. It ties up. So if you scooped the top inch or two out of your lawn and that was your sample, the phosphorus would be higher than it really is in the plant's root zone. If you dug a hole and took soil out of the bottom of the hole, the phosphorus would be lower. It would

not be representative. You want a vertical core of soil from top to bottom and just follow those simple guidelines. Go to Soil Testing dot tmu U and it'll tell you exactly what you need to do. Send your soil in and get it tested. And then you know exactly how to fertilize. Well, I'm pressing up against a break here. We'll come back with more tips and your calls, and John and Katie, you will be our first up when we come back. For the rest of you. If you'd

like to get on board, be ready to go. Seven to one three two one two. K t r H seven one three two went to KTRH that it's been a while since you heard this one. All right, both, we're back with guard line and your calls. We're gonna start this segment by heading straight out to Katie to talk to John. Hello, John, what kind of guard line?

the base. So if we go back into one of those seven degree cold cold spells or something like that, you're going to be able to at least protect it down to that and it'll re sprout and grow real fast. As far as varieties, there's a lot of good ones. There is one called Joey. There's one called Brazos Bell. There's one called Mexicola. There's also a Mexicola Grande. There's one called Laila l I l A. There's one I've not grown it called Fantastic that other people have told

me it does well. Then Don Juan I mentioned Don Juan. That's another good one. Yeah, Poncho is another good one. Oo La la. Those are all ones that are grown here. The standard type of avocado that you grow that you get in the supermarket the dark, dark skin with bumps. That's a different kind of avocado than we grow in our yards here we grow a smooth skin type of avocado because those are much more cold hearty. So when you see has in the grocery store, you don't grow

hass here. Oh, I mean if you do, you won't have success. Uh that's what I'm That's what I'm talking about. But you go to a good quality garden center and you're going to find the kind of avocados that want to grow here, you know, and from you, you know down there in the Kati area. I mean you I don't know where you normally like shop, but they're they're

probably going to have a good quality avocado. If it's a mom and pop home and independent garden center, youn go down from you and go direct south down to let's see, Antenna Gardens is probably the closest one to where you are.

But if you have it in a place, especially early in its life, where you can try to do some kind of covering of it, whether it's you know, giant PVC structure or something, just to get it going and get it better established. I would do that if possible.

a huge pot. Is a huge pot. You might be able to manage it in a way where you get some meals out of it.

with those. By the way, go to the Haggi horticulture website that I was talking about before, uh, and there is a publication just on avocados. Now it's going to have a limited number of variety that it lists, but it'll tell you about growing an avocado successfully. And it's free. You just look at it online or download and print it out if you want. It's multicolor.

Of course, you can listen to seven forty am live on the radio. We go all the way up to Huntsville area, all the way to Louisiana, and I have listened to KTRH on the other side of New Bronfuls, on the other side of thirty five. It doesn't quite go into San Antonio. They have their own station there, but it goes a wide area apup. But a lot of people listen on the computer or even yet better yet,

on the app. If you haven't downloaded the iHeart Media app, that one allows you to listen to the show live. There's other ways, other apps you can listen to pass shows as a podcast. But if you do iHeartMedia, you can listen to KTRH live no matter where you are. You know, cousin Millie up in timbuck To, Canada can listen to Garden line on the iHeart Media app live or listen to pass shows. A lot of gardeners I've

talked to like to put on their phone. Just put on the phone and turn it on, and you know it's daylight outside. Now you can be outside getting some stuff done, listening in the garden and who knows, maybe you find a little bit and you will know what it is. Take a picture of it with the phone you got in your hand, give my producer a call. He'll tell you how to send it to me and we can do a live answer to what's going on. Just another way to listen to guardenline. I think that's

pretty cool. I spend a lot of time listening to podcasts because I'm in the road. I'm staring at a windshield, and podcasts are a great way to do that. So you can go back and listen to past shows as well if you'd like to. Earlier, I gave a whole bunch of different fragrant plants, and I bet you couldn't write those down that fast. You want to go back,

listen to the Today Show. It'll be posted online and you can get that list of fragrant plants or the comments that I made about soil testing or all the other things we've talked about today. Well, it is the top of the hour and the music which means I need to quit talking. We will be back for our last hour of the weekend here in just a little bit. If you'd like to get on the board to be first up when we come back. Seven to one three two one two k t R.

a verbal description of them. You know, sometimes we get lucky we can get that done, but in general it's better if you can just send me a photo. Let's take a look at those and we'll get to the bottom of it. Try to help you with what you're doing. We are on the doorstep of spring, and so things are about to really break out here and not too long for those of you down south, you know spring begins and definitely in February. We're already in the big

middle of spring. And you want to be ready for that, and you get ready for it by getting your soil ready. My mantra on here is brown stuff before green stuff with it, which is just a simple way I say it to say, hey, get the soil right before you put the plants in. That's what that means. Brown stuff before green stuff. And if you will take care of your soil, if you will get it right, you will find that you have much better chances of success. Soil

as a foundation. I think about this. This is kind of a corny analogy. But are you going to build a house, you know, on sand where you don't have a good solid foundation, or are you going to take the tu bat fours that are the base frame of your walls and things. Are you just going to set them on the dirt, or are you going to put a concrete foundation underneath them, or pure and beam or

something to hold them up. Foundation is everything, and when it comes to soil and plants success, foundation is also everything. And so getting that soil right and right is not the same for all plants. You know, it's pretty much the case that and I even tend to do this is every time someone's going to plant a plant, I go, oh, we'll mix some composts in the soil, and that, by

and large it's a good idea. But there are plants like cactus that grow out in soils that are rocky and clayey and don't have any compost in them at all, and it's a dry, aired environment and so so obviously they don't need that to grow right. But then most plants are going to benefit from that. And if you buy plants in the store, if you buy cactus in store, it doesn't come in a container full of gravel, comes

with some organic materials in it. You can do that, but just know this that whether you're planting blueberries and azaleas, which love acid, acidic high organic matter soils and sands, or if you're going to put in something like a fig tree that can tolerate a very heavy clay. There's a range there, and so getting the soil right, however you do that is important. And just knowing that soil structure and texture and all of that plays a part in the success that you have with your plants. I

have become a big fan of backyard birding. I am not the guy who puts on the safari hat and the cargo shorts and runs around with binoculars stomping through the wood saying that sounds like a black, black striped orange warbly whatever bird to me. Obviously, I don't know what I'm talking about. And people love that, and that's fine. That's a great hobby, awesome hobby, a bird watching. But I'm the backyard bird guy. I want them to come to see me. I will feed them, I will provide

them water and will have success. And by the way, do you know that birds need water even in the winter, if there's no water around, birds drink every day, just like you do every day, even though it's winter, even that it's cold, you drink less, but you drink. You need that and birds need water too, So always have fresh water available to them. And when we have a

freezing night, that water's gonna be frozen over. Go out there and break it loose, put some warm water in it or something to thaw that ice, and give the bird something that they are able to get to and drink. That's important. Bird needs shelter too. And by the way, Wibirds Unlimited has awesome selection of bird nest boxes. Now's the time to get your nest boxes ready because it won't be long. Very soon the birds will start many

types of birds will start nesting. And while Birds has got bluebird boxes that's a specific kind of box, a certain size hole. They have boxes for Carolina wrens and chickadees, a big old owl boxes, giant holes and big boxes. Bat boxes are not a bird, but they fly. And Purple Martins and Purple Martin houses are amazing. And they got the big giant gord types, but it's a plastic gord that's easier to clean. It's just designed better than

just hanging up a gourd. And they also have the ones that look like little condos that are on a pole that you know you can bring it up the whole house down, so they dissemble in a way that allows you to get in there and clean them really well. They're all designed for the best results, and they're at Wildbirds and now's the time to get started. Don't wait.

You want when the Purple Mountain Martin Scouts come looking for a place, you want them to see your house and you want to go tell us about, Hey, come on, we're going to live here. This's a great place. They've got houses that are designed right. They have proper ventilation that's very important, especially in our Texas heat. They have proper drainage so that it rains that the house strains was not mucky and soggy and roddy and everything in there.

They've got the entrance hole size that's right for the kind of birds you want. That's very important. And they can help you protect your boxes from predator. Do you know that a snake can climb a pole and get into a birdhouse. There's stories about that getting up into a birdhouse, up on a pole and there's a snake

inside for crying out loud. Well, wild birds can put baffles and other things on poles to keep any kind of predator, whether it's a snake or something else, crawling up there to try to get to the eggs and things. They can take care of that. It's all at Wildbirds, and while you're there, check out their new product. It's called Cardinal Confetti Blend. They also have a cardinal tube feeder and a Good Evening Cardinal feeder, two new cardinal

feeders that go with that Cardinal Confetti Blend. And the Cardinal Confetti Blend is really cool. It's got just this makes me hungry. Most of it safflowers, black all sunflowers, sunflower chips, nutrius, safflower bark, butter bits, peanut halves, and here we go. Not so much on dried meal worms, although that may be good. I may try them sometimes. And striped sunflower all in there in that blend. It

is really cool. You just put in loose feeder. You can get their cardinal tube feeder, you can get the Good Evening Cardinal feeder. That are really cool cool, but this blend is it's just awesome far bringing cardinals and by the way, a lot of other birds will like it too. It's brand new from Wildbird's gonna have it all year. It's not just gonna be a spring thing. They're gonna have it all year. Go to WBU dot com forward slash Houston and find the Wildbird's store nearest

to you. They're six of them in the Greater Houston area. Time for a break, I'll be right back with your calls. All right, we're hopping. Let's do it. We got another segment coming up here with your calls seven one three two one two KT Right, what do you want to ask about? How can we help you have a more bountiful garden, a more beautiful landscape, and more fun in the process. That's what we'd like to do. I uh was excuse me. I was out in the yard the

other day. We have a couple of a couple. We have about three cypress trees in our yard which were here before I got here. And uh, I have always thought it was a beautiful tree. And now I have a love hate relationship with cypress trees because mine producing knees. There are types that don't have knees. If you're going to plant a cypress, get one that doesn't produce knees. A good tree grower, we'll be able to tell you what that is.

We have two of them and they come in and they bring in about nine hundred thousand cypress needles to drop on our floors, and we clean them up. And I go outside and I try to get all the needles up. I have to do that about ten times during the fall, rather than rake once or twice like most people, because of those dark, darn cypress needles being out everywhere. So anyway, I was out there taking a look at all the needles are officially off the tree.

Now some cold weather and some good rain and some wind has taken them out, so at last I can do a final cleanup and be good to go. I still like those trees a lot. They have so many good attributes. They can grow in areas where the drainage is poor. They can also grow in areas you know that aren't boggy at all. Just need to give them a little bit of water in late summer if they get a little bit dry, but other than that they're really good tree. But I go out and do some

cleanup on those as well. And now my dogs can run out and do what they want to do without me having to go through the clean up stage as they come through the door. So anyway that is happening out there, I pretty much moved everything into the garden walkways, all the organic materials, and I haven't been out gathering neighbors leaves, but I usually do that. Try to beat the bulk garbage trucks on that day, swing up, pick

up some good ones and their high quality. Got a little grinder to grind it up, so that speeds the decomposition. But the main reason I like the grinder is because it makes it a better mulch leaves. I know the forest is mulched with unground leaves, of course, but I want it to be attractive and I want it to

not blow away. And so you get a big old leaf like a red oak leaf or a sycamore leaf, and you get a little breeze and pew takes off to the neighbor's house, so you gotta run them through the Some people use a lawn more And if you want to recycle your leaves, you can do that. You kind of make a window of leaves and mow over it and add more leaves and over it, and then rake that up and you got a ground up leaf.

You can use a bagging attachment on your mower after you've run over them a couple of times and bag them up and then just take them right to wherever you want a mulch and put them in the garden beds. Someone called me one time and they said, can you use oak leaves as mulch? And I said, well, God, does that means? Really? Think about it? An oak forest? What does it get molched with oak leaves? A mixed hardwood forest mulched with oak and a lot of other

kinds of leaves. Yes, you can use any kind of leaves for malt. It's okay. Somewhere along the line, way back when we decided we had to do things different than nature does, used to be that you had to bag your lawn. I gotta bag those clippings, bag those clippings, and then someone named doctor Bill Canoop from Texas A and M Turf Department created something called Don't Bag It,

the Don't Bag It program, which talked about recycling the leaves. Actually, actually I wrote the Don't Bag it leaf management section. It was don't Bag it for lawn clippings, and the dope bag it leaf management and don't bag it compost. I did the don't bag it leaf management anyway, Yes, you can return. Do you know that? And this is I know it's not mowing season, but while I'm talking about it, do you know that your lawnmower puts out more nutrients than your fertilizer spreader. If you get my

schedule and you fertilize every time. I say to fertilize, I mean every time, even the spring green up time, which is optional. If you do all of that, and you look at how many pounds of nitrogen phosphors tasking you put out, and then you take grass clippings and you count all the mowings you do through the season, you send those some clippings to the lab and say what's the nutrient content? Your lawn mower puts out more

nutrients and your fertilizer spreader. So what's the take on If you bag your clippings and throw them away, you're renting fertilizer. You're not buying it. You buy it, put it on the ground, grow grass clippings with it, and haul away the nutrients. That's called renting fertilizer. You just have it for a little while. I'm gonna let that sink in for a second, because for a lot of folks that's kind of like, whooh, never thought about it that way, Well you should. It's a good way to

think about because it's the truth. That's how nature works. But anyway, putting those leaves and stuff into the gardens, running over them, using them as maults, letting them decompose naturally, they moderate soil temperature. And you need mults in the winter, summer, all through the year. There's not a month of the year you don't need maltch. And the spring warm season weeds are germinating early spring, late winter, and you got to have malts to prevent them from getting started. In

the fall cool season weed you're germinating. That's when we're talking about October, November, and even some in December. You got to have multch down to prevent those from getting established When the weather is hot and dry. Moultch helps reduce water loss from the soil when the weather is cold. Malt protects soil temperature, moderates salt temperature so that a semi tender perennial you might lose in a hard phrase is protected and you don't lose it. So leaves, leave

the leaves, leave the leaves, let them be. I know you want to make it look pretty. That's okay, that's good, of course, but just know that it's not a mistake. It's a design that leaves drop off the trees, drop off the grass plants and become part of building the soil. That was your public service announcement for today. See I wanted to spend a little bit of time today talking

about color and color changes in the spring. We are still in the winter season and we have a number of plants that do good for sprucing up our landscapes and creating a bedding plant color That means a flower bed, an annual plant that you put in, or a perennial plant. The number one color plants in the cool season are pansies and violas. That's number one lots of those that we use. They are the hardiest flowering plants of the winter time for our area. Then we have plants that

are hardy but not quite as hardy. That would be things like, for example, a Lissum is a really nice plant. Snap dragons are really nice plants. Dianthus that's probably maybe number two. I don't know. I'd have to line them all up that decide if that's number two. Dianthus is a beautiful kind of a mini carnation looking little plant

that is really attractive. There are compact types that make little, small amounts of color flowers, and then there's tall, upright types like the Amazon series that just have neon colors instead of you know, standard red. They just have this neon I don't know what it is, some version of a beautiful, beautiful red colors that are just kind of well, they're neon. They're beautiful, and they're more upright taller stem that can be used for cut flowers too, by the way.

And then we have other things. Colondula is a good cool season plant that you can grow and have flowers here. Nasturtiums pretty much as another good one that will bloom some in the cooler times of the year, lots of good options out there. Then we have cool season foliage is probably the main one is Dusty Miller. It's a silvery gray looking foliage. It looks really good with flowers that are kind of in the blue range of colors.

It makes a good combo to have blue and silver, kind of silver foliage along with the blue flowers that looks really good. We have other plants that we can plant in the cool season for color. We get into the spring season and the freezes and frosts are behind us. That's when the petunias are just outstanding, and you really need to have petunias somewhere. We have so many new types now that have been bred to be more floriferous.

They bloom and bloom and bloom. You get a petunia like oh one that came out a few years ago, bubblegum yellow, I mean, excuse me, pink flowers like pink bubble gum. And there's so many blooms on that plant you can't see the foliage. I don't know how the plant survives catching sunlight, but I mean it is all blooms over the top of it. And there are many other kinds of attractive petunias. Now they have some called supertunias that are a little smaller blooms, but they bloom blue,

bloom and just cover up with blossoms. That's a good one. Zenias. I mentioned those earlier. That's a good warm season plant for color. So if you want to start some plants yourself for color later, you can begin to plant some of the things you're going to plant later on. A lot of people like Maragoles, put those out in the spring. They cannot take any frost or anything close to frost. Just wait, start a little transplant, plant them out when it's time to go, or go to the garden center

and buy you some. Those are good ones. I sunflowers like the warm weather as well. There's many other great plants we can put out there. Caliber coas another good one. I mean I can said they're just naming flowers all the time. Your garden centers have the ones you need. But in that transition, you want to improve your bed for planting. And that's where I would get pull all

the old flowers out. When you're going to make that transition from cool season to warm season, and it's coming up not too far from now, pull the old ones out, work about an inch of compost into the soil. That would be good, and then you're ready to go and

plant your new plants. If there's going to be a little break between the two, make sure and put a mulch over the soil because otherwise every weed on earth will pop up in there, and so you want to make sure and keep that all covered with that, you can pull the malts back when you want to go and do your flowering. Then number one, well, number one, one of the main mistakes people make when it comes to color in their beds is they don't fertilize enough.

If you fertilize on a regular basis, you can produce good color. You produce vigor. Vigor is important to make carbohydrates, which make bloom buds, which make blooms, which makes beauty. And so you always want to make sure and on a regular basis provide small amounts of color or use a product that is a slow release that's going to give you a release over time in order to have

success with that. So when you're getting ready for the transition, or if you're putting in a new flower bed this year, make sure either buy a quality bed mix from one of our local purveyors we talk about here on garden Line and create a bed that is outstanding soil. Or if you've got an existing bed, you can use the same bed mix to spruce it up a little bit. Or you can just mix in some composts as well

to get things right. Set yourself up for success, because I'm telling you there is nothing like a gorgeous color bed around your home. If you want to follow all the rules of color, you can do that. You know, you got to go to the opposite sides of the color wheel and whatnot and all that stuff. Or you can just plant what you like. Just remember all things in the back short of things in the front, so one beautiful plant doesn't hide another.

by the way, that would be good. Just kind of do it around the plants as you're mixing up the soil and planting the transplants in there, give them a good dose of it, and then get you some of their color Star from Nelson and sprinkle that in to provide the ongoing not sprinkle it into the soil, but add it later as a top dressing and scratch it in, water it in to continue about every three months. You want to add some color story in to provide that

extra boost that's going on. Those are just two great products again from the folks at Nelson. Plant food and that extra nutrients extra nutrients. That is the key to success with flowering plants. You know a lot of times you look at fertilizers and a flowering furtlizer is going to have higher phosphorus the middle number in it. And that's true, that phosphorus. Each we oversimplify. We say, well,

like nitrogen makes more growth. Well, yes it does, but nitrogen also does things inside the plants, the stems and the roots that help with nutrient and water uptake as well. So nutrients do a lot of things. And phosphorus, yes, it does help root development, it does help bloom development. But if you want a flowering plant to keep going, it's got to keep growing. You've got to have new growth. And those petunias I was talking about, they will flower

themselves into almost a stunted stage of growth. They will overdo it. I'll take my petunias as getting way ahead of the season, but just an FYI, I'll take my petunias and after they've done their good bloom and they're kind of waning a little bit, I will sheare mine back and then I'll fertilize them and water it in and get a new boost of growth. Because that boost of new growth is going to have a whole bunch of new growth on it, a new bloom's on it.

Same thing with Salvia greggy I. That's a perennial for summertime. Wonderful salvia, wonderful native of the Southwest salvia. Your Salvia gregye will become a sparse, woody subshrub if you never fertilize it. If you will print it back by a bout. I'd cut it back by about two thirds, maybe half, at the end of winter. Put some fertilizer down, watered in. You're going to get fresh new growth. By the time we get to May, it's going to be still blooming.

It never quits blooming. It's always blooming. Gouind and shear it again, this time only by about a third. Fertilize it in water and watch what happens. The roses are that way. You know, they have a big spring bloom. April is beautiful and they kind of wane. Cheer them back a little bit, fertilize them water and get some new growth again. We do the same thing in August for our roses. At the end of August, and also for some of the other plants like Salvia grege you

can do it again. Just cheer it back, fertilize it. You need growth to have good bloom production. And a lot of times our plants bloom great at first, everything's pretty in the spring, and then it's like, yeah, they're not doing so good for a lot of plants. That is a strategy to help solve that. We're going to go now out to talk to k in Pearland. Hello, Kay, welcome to garden Line.

Now you're growing up, did you have there?

But they're like a little miniature apples. If you look at one growing looks like a little tiny apple.

on like one foot stalk sticking up. It's like you mowed it and within no time, here's these seedheads coming back up. And that that's kind of not such a conducive to a pretty lawn. But it is a very tough, easy to grow grass, not a problem at all to grow. You just don't see it from sod farms and things.

or into the soil later. If you're looking for, you know, something that's kind of small and and uh, you can manage, uh, whether it's you know, a little pat on the pot on the patio or something. Basil is an excellent little one that comes in a lot of different types, shoot and grow like a lemon basil. You can grow a tie basil. It's called thie basil does really well if you want to put a plant in the garden to

attract bees and pollinators. There's one called African blue basil that that's usually rooted from cuttings, but the basil would be an option for that. If you're looking for flowers that you can plant outside, starting some zenias inside would be really good. They grow fast and pretty easy to grow. As it warms up a little bit, you could start

a cucumber or a squash to plant it outside. If you only just grow something underneath that, then maybe a houseplant that's going to be a little more compact would be a way to go. But I don't I don't know what kind of plants she's interested in.

close to the plants that you can't grow something really tall. Now, if yours is different than that, you have to let me know, like how how far is it from the light to where your plants would be on that kit?

the challenging things. Yeah, you don't want to probably dive into that first, and that that was the nature of your call anyway, So I would I would go with the you know, zenias are easy, but you're not going to grow the whole zenny out underneath that light. It would be as starting it as a transplant for things. Yeah, regano maybe time a regano would be pretty easy to

grow as an herb. If you had some chives and you wanted to grow those, you could take scissors and harvest them to put into like scrambled eggs as a seasoning. Chop chives up in little quarter inch strips and or sections and put them into scrambled eggs. So then you get to kind of eat the thing that you're growing. So those would be a few ideas well.

use in uh an indoor garden. Of course it's outdoor gardening as well also, but they're gonna have a wide range of fertilizer and products like that do well. We were talking about gardening in this I think it's probably not a hydroponic system that David was talking about. But if it's not, Ace Hardware is going to have the putting mixes and things of the seed starting mixes that you would want to have. Now you know when you go to ACE, you're going to find everything you need.

This time of the year, we're looking at getting our garages in order spring cleaning. You need shelving, you need containers and storage, toats and things like that. They've got all of that as well. Little tools for are you in your gardening outdoor tools for things in the gardening. Ace has got it anywhere you go. You can go to acehardware dot Com, find the store locator. When you find the store locator, you're going to be able to find the stores more than one that are near you.

Acehardware dot Com stores near you. For example, Aspa ACE up in the Woodlands, Lake Conroe, ACE up there, Montgomery, Katie Ace Hardware is just another example of many dozens of Ace Heart of stores in our region. Well that's the skiptop. Stop talking music, and that means we are done with the show for today. Thanks for listening, appreciate it. I hope you've enjoyed it. I talked about a lot of things today. Hopefully that was something along the lines

that was of interest to you. Thanks for being listener. Remember our shows are available in this podcast at the ktr H website if you go to my website Gardening with Skip dot com. Right when you go to the website, on that bar across below my picture is listen to garden line. Listen line and listen to passion. Have a fun week out there in the garden. We'll see you next Saturday.