Tis The Season to Be Planting

Kat r H Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to kat r H Garden Line with Skip Rictor. It's crazy, can you trim? Just watch him? As were so many pots, Sea Bot, Bazys, the club back Chicken. It's not a sign credits gas sun beamon of Well, good morning. It's gonna be a great Sunday for gardening. I can tell you that right now. Look

outside, it's dark, can't see a thing. If your neighbor's lights aren't on, go bang on the door, wake them up, tell them they are missing guarden Line and they'll rise up and call you. Bless it at least someday maybe when they appreciate it. Hey, you're listening to Guardline. I'm your host, Skip Richter, and we have a phone number if you would like to call to discuss anything of interest to you regarding gardening. That would be seven to one three two one two k t R eight seven to

one three two one two kat r H. Give us a call. Let's find out what you want to talk about. I got some things I'm going to go through today as we as we go through our show this morning, but I suspect you may have a question or two. And you know, the thing I found interesting is when you have a question, somebody else is going to have the same question. That's just how it works. There are a lot of people out there thinking the same thing, and people are often

shy. I don't want to ask because you know, nobody else thinks that has that question or whatever. Yeah, they do, they do. Let's start off by going up to Tom Ball and we're gonna go right to the phones. We're going to talk to Mel this morning. Hello Mel, Hey, good morning, Skip morning. Uh. I missed your show yesterday. I tuned in late on the road. You mentioned a product that sounds like a combination of weed killer and fertilizer. You said it's stuck to the leaves.

Leaves, huh, yeah, that product that would have been Yeah, that's weed DNA tour by Nelson Nelson. Weed DNA tour is a slow, slow release fertilizer. And you know people talk about weed and feed. This would be like weed now and feed later kind of approach. Because it releases gradually. You'll be getting release over it for two or more months going forward. And so that's how that works. And yes, you do. You

have to have wet weed leaves, just damp leaves. You don't have to wet the soil, just dampen the leaves and that granule sticks to them. Then when you put it out, well, I got a combination of in my in my yard of weeds, and Saint Augustine had bear spots, so okay, imagine, okay, that would work all right? Then, yeah, that would work fine as far as the bear spots are concerned. Night Fuss makes a product called barricade, and that that just prevents the weed seeds

from sprouting and establishing successfully. So you can do both. Uh huh. Anytime you're using different products, people often ask can I do as mic the same day affertilize? Can I fertilize the same day I do barricade, or you know, and so on. You can just use it make a different path through the yard, a pass through the yard, because particle size is different and you want to make sure and get good distribution of each product.

Good barricade the first time I'm gonna use these social garlic kind of work, won't it? Society garlic on barricade? What are you a wild garlic? Now? The garlic. I mean it could come from a seed, but it's coming from an underground bulb, and so you're going to need a product that probably contains a two four D type ingredient in that out in order to Yeah, now I don't know if the weed Nator would work. My concern

is getting it to stick to that little skinny upright garlic leaf. Do you know what I'm saying that that may be one you want to just get you a post emergent broadly, if we control that got two four D in it and just spray it on, just spot treat it. You don't have the nuclear yard. Just just spot treat those garlic and you'll see them start to get all twisty and malformed, and that that shows that it's working. Okay, Yeah, because those wrestlers have a lot of weeds growing up in the

can only reach them and quick to hear the trimming baby box? Who was We got some baby gym box who was that we kind of about two years ago and I wanted to grow to three feet and I trimmed him back last year and I'm wondering, did did I mess up there? Growth? And others? Other can I expect them to still get to those three feet. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, they'll come back. Yeah, no problem,

absolutely very good. All right, thanks sir, you take care A and A plants up in Montgomery. I was there, oh gosh, a couple of weekends ago and or a weekend ago and they had an You know, that place is always fun to visit because there's always something changing and going on, new shipments coming in. And for those of you up in the Lake Connor area, this is your backyard garden center. By the way, thanks to everybody that came out that day. That was fun. You guys

warm me flat out with questions. But they've got this interest in now up there. They got a new shipment of it just the other day. They also have a really nice selection of geraniums, the big old jumble geraniums. They look really good. Geraniums are a cool flower. I mean they I grow mine and containers at this time of year. Put your geranium containers out

in goods sun, lots of sun, and they'll be fine. As it really starts to get hot, though, I'll move mine to where they get morning sun an afternoon shade and you don't have to water them too much. They don't like soggy, wet conditions. But on the other hand, they're not a succulent where you just can ignore them and they'll somehow hang on, keep the soul moist and they'll do well. But geraniums are just the colors

really outstanding on them. And there's so many kinds now, I know out at Ana they've got the red, the cherry rose, they've got bright white, they've got salmon colored geraniums. Just a lot of new things out there, and they always have something new. Now. They're the garden center that if you are on one oh five in Montgomery heading toward Lake Conroe. They're right on the edge of town. And if you drive either you've seen it one hundred times, you need to go by. They're open seven days a

week, nine to five. So to day this afternoon be a great time to get out there and pick you up some plants, because I'll tell you one thing. They get these shipments in, but people show up and they take your plants. They buy your plants right out from underneath you. So don't mess around. Go ahead and get yours while the supply is best, and A and A plants and produce can get you all set up on that. We appreciate you listening to garden Line. By the way, I always

enjoy getting to visit with folks that are listening to the show. You know. I wanted to also talk about fertilizing, and I know a lot of callers will talk about it as we go through today. But Nitrofoss has a product that's our Early Spring green Up. If you go on my schedule at gardeningwiskip dot com. The early Green spring Up. Early Spring Greenup is what we do now. And the fifteen five ten red bag it's Nitrofoss Imperial. The easy way to remember, it's Nitrofoss's Red Bag. It's time to put

it down. It it gets in the soil, the plants take it up, they turn green the grass plants, and when growth begins, you've got the nutrient in there. We'll be doing other fertilizing for the long term as we go a little further into the season. Right now, it's green up time and Foss's Imperial is the product to do that. Now. Where do

you get it? Well, I get it at Bearings Hardware and Bissonette and on West Timer, I get it at Plantation Ace Hardware out there in Richmond, Rosenberg, just lots of places you can get night Foss, Imperial. Hey, I'll be right back, take a little break and we'll be back for your calls. Welcome back to garden Line. Good morning. We want to want to cover a lot of things today, so we're gonna we're gonna jump on it. In fact, I'm going to go straight out to the

phones here and let's see where were going to go first. Well, who was first in line? We're going to go to Girardo out in meadow Space Meadows place. How you doing, Girardo? Pretty good? Skip, How you doing this morning? I'm well, thank you. How can we help today? I've been looking I have an apple tree, sun, some flowers. I'm trying to do some research and I can't find anything on how to

spray for I guess possible insects and pests and stuff like that. I I have a schedule for peach trees and stuff like I can't find anything on an apple tree. I was wondering. I sprayed dormance free before the on it before I guess the ballooms came and everything. But you know, I had some nice flowers on and everything, and I don't know what to do well once it starts forming apples, I'm I can't find anything. And how to a schedule too? How a spray you're lessie? Are you in Fort Bend

County? Yes? Okay, yeah. Fort ben County Extension Office is down there in Rosenberg, just south of fifty nine sixty nine. I would call Boon Holiday there at the office, and I'm pretty sure he has a spray schedule that would cover apples or get you to one. That would be one thing. First of all, you don't want to spray anything during bloom because of the bees. You got to have the bee apples are a cross pollinated The only things I'm trying to think of, we don't have a lot of

big insect issues on apples. They can get scale and there are some other insect pests that can affect them. But the primary thing with apples is the diseases and our rainy climate over here, and that would be a funge aside to protect against those. And there are a number of ones if you you know, I'm sending you north southeast and west here. But Cuthwar's fertilizers just up the street from your Businett and Renwick and they've got the best supply of

products for controlling issues that anybody has. Go in and tell them, look, I got an apple tree and I need a funge aside for it. What are your options and let them take a look, and those are going to be the thing. You can follow the label. I can just tell you when you you know, watch your apples and see how they do,

especially when there's fruit on the tree. Controlling leaf spots is helpful. But when you get a fruit rot, game over for that apple, and so you need to after we have a rain period for the whole apple, no that that apple's gone, you know, so you can't that's a there's not a You can tolerate a few leaf spots, that's not a problem, but when you lose apples then that's a problem unless you just like like the tree

for its blooms. So yeah, I would talk to Bob over there at Southwest Fertilizer and they can get you all set up on the product that is labeled for use on apples. That's a big challenge is we've got to find something that actually is labeled for them. Okay, okay, And by the way, that if you want to just give them a call to make first. It's seven one three six six six one seven four four Southwest Fertilizer dot Com. You bet, thank you, Okay, thank you. Good to

visit with you, Good to visit with you. Let's see here I wanted to. I always talk about soil and the importance of soil, and the way I like to put it is brown stuff before green stuff. And what that is. What I'm trying to do is to have you think about the fact before you put a plant in the ground, ask yourself the question is the soil ready? Is that soil going to make this plant productive and healthy? And because a lot of people go out and they buy plants, I

get it. The flowers at the garden centers. I get excited too. Let's get one to bring it home. Let's do that, but before you do, bring home also something that will help your soil. That includes fertilizer, that includes composts, that includes bed mixes. And the folks at Airlom Soils they've got it all. They've got potting soils like the works potting soil

for your containers that do very very well. They have the rose soil, they have leaf mold compost, which is one of the hottest items these days. Leaf mold compost such a high quality compost. You can go to Airloomsoils off Texas dot com that tells you where you can find them, but I'm telling you you can find them in a lot, a lot, a lot of places. The heirloom soils products. Now, if you are preparing your soil like that, and you're getting the bed ready and the right way,

you're just going to have success. And I urge you spend a dollar on the brown stuff before you when you spent spend a dollar on the green stuff, because brown stuff comes first. That's very very important. Let's go out to Katie. Now we're going to talk to Ralph. Hello, Ralph, good morning, Skip Hey. Question. Recently adopted some pets and so now

we're rethinking putting the organic stuff instead of synthetic. What would you recommend for the post emergent on weeds post or pre Well, before we adopted the pets, I put the barricade down two weeks ago and I didn't do the post emergent, so I'm trying to be safe for the pets. Yeah, it depends on the weed that you have. Uh, there is a product called Agerlon, a crabgrass killer that works well on a lot of weeds, but not every weed. It's a cinnamon based product. Uh. There is a

product called Captain Jack's Lawn Weed Brew and what it is. It's a keylated form of iron that again works well on a lot of weeds, but not every weed, but it'll turn them just black quickly. It's amazing how that works. But basically some weeds are just sensitive to that kind of iron. And are you're Saint Augustine lawn isn't? And so I would And where do you get this, Captain Jack Sprew, Well, you're you're out there in Katie. I would go to the Ace hardware. You got right out there

in Katy. It's that's probably the easiest close which direction from Katie? Are you uh South Fry Kingslinn, I'm near the ace hardware. Oh yeah, okay, yeah, okay, Well there you go. I would just go to the ace out there they are going to have If anybody's got it out there, they're gonna have it. Uh. And again yeah, let me let me get you to do this right down my website, it's gardening with

Skip. That's me gardening with Skip dot com. When you go there, you'll see my lawn care schedule for fertilizing and for weed control, and on the weed control one on the bottom right corner is the post emergent organic options and these are spelled out right there for you. Okay, okay, I just remember that not and this is true whether it's synthetic or organic, not

every product kills every weed. So just be aware of that. If you got you know the history of weeds all over the lawn, then you're probably gonna miss a few, but at least it'llt you going in the right paw. One last question, Bob weeds say, if you do use synthetic, how long before you have the pets come down after you water it? Uh?

Well, you're gonna have you already fertilized. Yes, okay, So you're going to be doing a spray of a synthetic post emergent weed control and you just need it needs to have you know, a couple of days to soak into the tissues and then you can water, just water the lawn and kind of wash off whatever might be there and you'll be okay, okay, so I know they have to be out every day to go to the bathroom. But you know, it's just the trade off trying to to coordinate traffic

going across the lawn. There, gotcha, all right, thank you, all right, sir, thank you. I appreciate, appreciate your call very much. I want to remind you that this is the season to finish up getting all that pruning work done. Now. You can prune any month of the year if you need to, but we like to get it done this time of year because the fastest time of tree healing is now the spring.

That is when the trees feel the fastest. So it's not you don't have to do printing now, but I can't think of a better time to go ahead and get it finished up. And I can't think of a better place either than affordable tree service. I've I've talked to you before about Martin Spoonmore and the fact that he has been around for a long time in this area

taking care of trees. And when it comes to trees, I would say there's no aspect of your landscape care and stuff where you need a true professional more than you do with trees, because these things are worth hundreds and hundreds of dollars to your landscape. And I've seen the work of people that are in a chainsaw, a pickup and have business cards. It is a mess and it ruins them for life. Martin will come out for one hundred and

fifty bucks. We'll give you a consultation what he sees going on, advising on what you should do and so on. If you choose to say, okay, let's go ahead and have you do the work, that one fifty is applied to the cost of doing the job. So you know, a guy can't run around all over town with people that are just kind of curious about this or that. But if you're serious about it, have him come

out and do that. If you're going to do any kind of construction, digging a trench, putting us a driveway down or something, you absolutely have to have somebody come out because that does or it can do significant damage to trees. And there's a lot he can advise you on to help with that. Now. Affordable Tree Service here's the website. Aff Tree Service dot com a ff tree service dot com. Here's the phone number. Any of the

martin ER's wife Joe will answer the phone. Yep. The owners answer the phone seven to one three six, twenty six sixty three seven one three six nine nine two six six three makes it easy. It's got to magnolia now, and we're going to talk to Michael. Hey, Michael, goom, mor skip. I'm playing on here in the next month or so, laying down some good u top soil, because I live in Montgomery County, and you know, it's nothing but saying out here and then throwing laying down some

sod. And once I get that watered in good and well, how soon do I have to wait before I can fertilize it. You know it's going to be growing pretty well by the time you get that down, and I would probably give it a couple of weeks or one way I like to put it, because weather it can kind of be cooler or warmer, which affects the rooting and the growth rate. When you've had to mow that lawn, go ahead and fertilize it. Then it's not going to be in trouble if

you don't fertilize it real soon. I mean, it's gonna be okay. It's just getting some roots down in the ground. There is some nutrient there. But when you start to see the growth or when you reach out and you grab one of those side pieces and kind of tug on it and it doesn't lift up, you can see that it's pegging roots down. That's a good time to fertilize. Okay, very good, Thank you very much, sir. You have a great weekend. Yes, sir, enjoy your lawn.

Appreciate that very much. Well, you're listening to garden Line. Is that the name of the show. This would be gard Line. It was yesterday at least, and we're going to turn it over to Nikki for the news here in just a minute. But if you'd like to give us a call seven to one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one two five eight seven four, we'll be right back to take your questions. So let's see what you want to talk about next. Welcome back

to guard Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter. And what are we here for it? We're here to turn brown thumb's green because, as I say, there's no such thing as a brown thumb. There's an uninformed thumb. So we know how to make that a green thumb. We do. I'll tell you who else knows how to do that? And that is Plants for all seasons. Plants for all Seasons has been in the business turning brown thumbs green for a long long time since back oh gosh, nineteen seventy three.

I believe they opened up there on two forty nine, which is Tomball Parkway, right just north of Louetta. So just get off Tomball Parkway, go across Luetta and they're right there. And I was out there the other day and I saw something that reminded me. I haven't talked about this on guard Line before, but I remember the day when terrariums were all the rage.

I mean, people loved having terrariums. And they have a whole section of little small plants, a little small plants that you could put together. Maybe you want to use an old aquarium to make a terrarium. Maybe you want to use one of those big old fishbowls, or the fishbowl on a pedestal. Those are great for terrariums because the idea is to create this little humid environment where they could be happy. And they also have a lot of

the carnivorous plants. Now, nothing as big as a little shop of horrors, but if you're a fly, it's the same thing. They have venus fly trap, and they've got the little sundews. Now, venus fly trap, you know, has a little fingerlike things across that in case that like little bars that close the prison around the fly. Sundews have sticky stuff and a bug lands on that, a gnat or something, and they get stuck. It's like flypaper, and sundews are cool. They have picture plants that

actually the little insect falls down into the plant. There are track did to it and they fall down inside and then I hope you have up your not eating breakfast right now. The digestive juices are released by the plant to digest the insect. In that cool. Your kids need to know about this stuff. They need to play with it. You need to get by there and get them. Some of those kind of plants, whether it's a terrarium in the room or are especially cool is the ones that eat things. And the

venus fly trap, of course, is the poster plant for that. And they've got them there plants for all seasons. They also have lots of tomatoes and peppers. I was very impressed with the selection that they had. They've got them all grouped where it's easy to find what you're getting. And you know, peppers are all the rage, and they've got everything from mild peppers down to the ones that you have to water every day to keep the mulch from catching on fire. That's a joke, by the way, but they've

got it all at Plants for All Seasons. Hey, just go to the website Plants for All Seasons dot com or give them a call to eight one three seven six sixteen forty six. Where are we going next? Let's go out to Kady if I can find my mouse here, and we're going to talk to Michael. Hello, Michael hight there, Good morning, Thank you, Good morning. I got a quick question about my front yard. I got some I'm kind of new to your to your schedule there and keeping my

yard keeping it maintained. I've watched it kind of deteriorate over the years. I've been a homeowner since sixteen. The last couple of summers have been awful. So anyways, I got some weeds, a've patch of weeds in the front yard kind of where the yard went balled right by my house. And then I've got you know, and I want to lay down the pre emergent and the fifteen five ten fertilizer separately. Of course I've been using weed and seas. I want to do this right, and I just wanted to know

about like the order things. Should I you? Should I do this all one weekend? Should I space this out? What's the help me get started here? Sure you're putting down a pre emergent and a fertilizer. Is that the two things? Yeah, on the schedule of that that you guys have. So you put the barricade down and then you put the fertilizer down, and it could be done in either order. It doesn't matter if you're doing

fertilizer and barricade separately. But don't put them in the same hopper. Just make two applications one of one, one of them day, same hour if you want it doesn't there's no problem. The only no no is to put

them in the same hopper because they're different particle size. And if you've ever had a box of things of different sizes and you shake it, all the big stuff kind of comes to the top and the little stuff settles to the bottom, And if you did that in a fertilizer hopper, you get all the barricade out first and then you get the fertilizer out, and you would not have an even distribution of either one. So first, whichever you want to use first, it doesn't matter the order. Put them both down and

then turn them the sprinklers and put one half inch of water down. That moves the barricade down into the soil, and it'll also wet those granules and get them moving down too. Okay, Well, and as far as I kill the weeds, just do that, give done first, and then do this or yeah, you mean your existing weeds. Yeah, yeah, Well, I mean there's different approaches to that. We've you know, we've got options where there's a fertilizer and that kind of weed control, or you could

just buy a spray and spray the weeds. It kind of depends on what's convenient for you. But if we start doing the fertilizer combo with that, well then that changes what I just said, because then I would just do what you're saying, do the barricade, do the the Imperial red bag fifteen five ten I think you meant you said fifteen five to ten, right, yes, and then go with that, and if you've got existing weeds, look at them closely and see if they are flowering and setting seed already.

And if see where are you you're calm from Katie, you probably still could get the post the post emergence down and be just fine. But in a pinch, you also definitely are going to want to the first couple of mowings, put a bagger on that mower and try to capture as many weed seeds as possible. Even if you've sprayed them, the seeds may could already be viable. Understood, Okay, thank you so much. All right, Michael,

thank you. I appreciate, appreciate your call a lot. I was looking at some of the work that Piercecapes does on landscapes, and I know a lot of you listening or do it yourself first. And I also know a lot of you listening or have somebody come do it. And there is definitely a time where that is for sure the best thing, especially when you're

looking at a really big landscape job. And Peerscapes can do that. I mean they can do everything from hey, come out, my irrigation system needs some you know, check up and repair to I've got a drainage problem in the back that could be a big job. It could be a small job, not too big of a job. Do you want landscape lighting? Do you want you know, hard scapes? And somebody install a beautiful fountain right there off the patio. They can do all that kind of stuff. Peerscapes

has been doing this a long time. They know what doing. But let me tell you, they stay busy. That's true. Our sponsors in general, they do a good job, so they stay busy. That's how you treat your customers right, and you stay busy. That's how things work. So they're getting work still, scheduling work on out. So don't delay, even if you don't want it done right now, go ahead and call them.

Make sure that you get that done soon so that when you can get on the schedule, then later they'll be out there and they'll get you set up just with whatever it is you need. They got all their certifications and licenses. They can do any kind of work like that. Pierce Caapes dot Com is a website. I would start there, or you can just give them a call at two eight one, three, seven oh five oh six. Oh. That makes it easy as well. We're going to go now

out to Paula in northwest Houston. Hello, Paula, good morning. Last fall, you suggested diansis too Oh, I think I lost Paula there for just a minute. Enjoy them. My first question is how much longer will they last? And then what is a good nectar replacement for them for warmer weather? Okay, Dianthus is going to go into the early part of summer and then gradually, like our other cool seasoned flowers, it just starts to lose its bigger, lose its blooming and whatnot. But it's lock and tail.

Yeah, it can warm up quite a bit. You've got some. You got plenty of time left with these for now, okay, and then when you get into summer. It kind of depends on what you like to look at the little well. I want something with lots of nectar for the butterflies and bees, okay, and you want something that's really short like dianthus. Yeah, yes, okay. There are some zenias that do really well. Any kind of a little disk like flower, daisy like flower would do

really well for you. The compact zenias I'm talking about, not the big long cut flower types, the lobularia. There's one called white stream. It may be hard to find at this stage, but if you can find it, it is another popular one that will carry you on into some warmer weather. And then once we get into the heat of summer, you've got things like angelonia. You've got just there's just a lot of great flowers and plants. What I would do if I were you. You're up in northwest Houston.

You know a lot of great garden centers up there. You know you've got RCW, You've got plantro arborgate. Go talk to them and see what they have, because sometimes they surprise me and they get something I didn't even know it was on the market, and so I would do that for sure. Hey, I got a run for another commercial break, I got one more question. You can hold hang on. Welcome back to Garden Line. Yesterday I was out at the in Conroe at the Home and Garden show up

there. Thanks to everybody that came out. Had a good time, lots of questions and things. When I was at the event, I had a couple of questions that I just want to mention the morning because they're significant in terms of what things we're doing now out in the yard and garden. One person asked me about sweet green. They said okay, this is organic, right, and I said, yes, it's organic, and then they started asking me questions about how it works, is it a slow release or whatever?

Sweet green there from nitrofoss is a fertilizer that's made from a molasses base, and microbial activity is part of what turns it into a fertilizer, but it also stimulates my chrobial activity and soul because it is a sugar based type product, a molasses based type product. That's why it smells so wonderful. It really smells good. It's eleven percent nitrogen, so that's a good boost

for an organic fertilizer of that much nitrogen. But when you put it down, you water it in and it is going to be released pretty quickly. It's not a slow release. It's going to be released quickly and it's going to give you feed over a number of weeks. And so could you use it for a green up. Yes, it's a little slower than the Imperial the red bag fifteen five ten, but if you want to organic fertilizer early on, this would be a good one to use. It works just well.

And again the other question is you know where do you get it? And The answer is, well, where do you want to get it, because it's pretty much everywhere like nitrofoss. You got enchanted forest out there in Richmond Rosenberg. That's the place you can get it. You can go to Growers Outlet and Willis, you can go to RCW Nursery up on Tombai Parkway.

You can get at all those places. But just remember you want to water it in because it's going to dissolve away and it's going to do its work and the microbes will say thanks a lot because they love the part of organic gardening we use. We use molasses type products all the time, and sweet green is a similar connected product that The other thing people kept asking me is about as mite. When do I put on azmite? When do I put on an ase mate? When do you want to put on azmite?

It's a trace mineral, and you need trace minerals. So if you've had a soul test that shows a need for trace, then you absolutely need to do it, and you may do it more than once. If you just are looking at an ongoing maintenance, then the as and mite label is a very light application. It really is. A forty four point bag will cover six to twelve thousand square feet. That's a lot. That's way less application

than your normal fertilizer applications are. But asimite adds those important trace minerals. Put it in your vegetable gardens too, because it just helps with the complete nutrition of the produce you're going to be eating. And by the way, if you want more information, just go to azimite Texas dot com asimite Texas dot com and you can find out about those lots of good questions we were dealing with yesterday. We're going to go back now. We're talking to Paula

in Northwest Houston. Hey, Paula, Okay, there's two schools of thought I have read about whether or not you should pinch out suckers on tomato plants. What are your thoughts? Okay, there's no single answer right way to do it, But here here's the principle that you're operating on. If you're going to steak tomatoes or have a single vine like and you see in these greenhouses we have one vine going straight up. Then you produce, you pinch

out every sucker and just leave that one vine. It will give you earlier ripening on the first tomatoes. And it will give you well because all the competition from all the suckers is removed and all the focus goes into those tomatoes. It'll also give you a little bit larger tomato for the slicers. Now, if you don't remove them, you still want to remove a few. You don't want to let every sucker grow, or you just end up with

this massive tomatoes that has a lot more fruit. You get more fruit that way by having by not removing it any of the or only removing a few suckers, but the fruit will be slightly later because again it's you know,

it's got a lot of babies that it's raisen. That plant does. And so what I do is I remove the first you know, one or two, and then maybe allowed where you're eventually getting three vines growing because I've allowed a couple extra suckers to come on, but then continue to do some sucker removal if it's in a cage. Otherwise the cage is such a wad of blooms that air can't get in there, and diseases increased and so on. So some sucker removal is important. But just think of each sucker as more

that that vine is trying to support. Okay, well that helps. And also I've read that you shouldn't any branches on the bottom that hit the dirt, you should cut off. Is that a true statement, Yeah, it is. I mean I always must so that my leaves aren't getting splashed with soil and the fruit isn't getting splashed with soil, and then it's not as important. But yeah, I try to clean it up. You want good air circulation. That's an important part of disease fighting. You don't have to

spray for spray for everything. All right, Hey, good god, I appreciate it. Thank you, you bet you take care. I'm going to head now out to where we're going. We're going to Marty in Fairfield. Hello, Marty, good morning. Skip. I picked up some Bonye weed beater. But when I started to put it on, and I look back at your schedule and it said ultra and all I picked up was Southern lawns.

I read the label. It doesn't say anything about whether I can put it down now, whether I wait, It doesn't give anything about temperature wise, you can do it now, you can do it now, okay, So but if you're doing it now, either one is fine the Ultra. There's several versions of weed beater. Southern Lawns is one that's a good one to used to. Weed beater Ultra has a little extra kick in it for certain kinds of weed problems. But you're you're putting either product on to kill

the weeds that are growing. Now, that's a chick weed, tenbat clover all those things. If you see a weed, now it's a cool and weed. Yeah. Yeah, it's a post emergent. But I already put down the pre emergent barricade, and then I have my ag crab grass that I'm going to put out. What was the second thing you're gonna put out? A would h? A g crab grass control? Oh okay, all right, Well if you put a pre emerging out, if you did you use barricade or what did you do? Yes, then you don't need a

crabgrass control. The barricade will do that. They're already up. Oh the crab grass is already up. Oh boy, I say that it's the big clumps of real skinny. I'll look it up. Yeah, I think it's something else. I think it's about you, say you. I'll put you on hold here in a bit you can give Josh your email or he'll give you my email. Okay, just send me some pictures up close in good sharp focus. I don't ok And thanks for theo tomato advice. I just

learned something about my tomatoes, so thanks. Well, when I walked in the studio, I didn't see any tomatoes that dropped off here, so I'm sorry. I do expect that when I give good advice on tomatoes to have something. Absolutely. I have about fifteen plants, so I will bring you some. I'm kidding. I'm kidding that. Thank you. I appreciate it. Marty. Good luck with those. I hope you have a good crop.

Thank you, bybye, all right, bye bye. Yeah, it's a joke here on guard Line. You know, if we give you advice, you just had to bring us part of the produce. Oh my. The folks that Landscaper's Pride have a wide variety of products to help you do what I always say, and that's brown stuff before green stuff. They specialize in the brown stuff. For example, they're pot dirt. It's an omni certified that's organic certified, organic soil, and it's really proven for the short

term high potency growth of the flowering plants. Got It's packed with nutrients, got worm castings and sand and vermeculi and more so you got annual bed seasonal color changes. You want to really pop with color. Pot dirt will work. Landscapers Mixed It is excellent for drainage because of the way it's got the fresh pine bark in it, with the rice holes in, pearlite and other things. Eve has a slow release fertilizer in it, and then the rose

soil, the rose mix. They call it very effective for woody ornamentals, any kind of an acidic pH loving garden especially works well for that. Now you're going to find all these products all over the place. But if you're looking for hey, where do I buy landscapers Pride products? Go to Landscaperspride dot com and there you go. When you go there, you will see all the places to get these products and many many more, including their punting

soil, which is very versatile and very helpful. I am running against our first big break for the hour here, Steve. When we come back, you will be our first up. Couldn't quite make it to you this hour, but we will be first when we come back. If you'd like to call Josh and get on the boards. Seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. I was visiting with and H. Dester from agg the other day. And

Andy this weekend is out at the Southern Nurseries and Silsby. So all of you listening way out there in the you know, toward Beaumont direction in Sillsby Southern Nursery. She's going to be there today from the opening to close. And that's eight am to five thirty and noon to four thirty. It's it's got both of them. Oh, eight am five thirty is yesterday today, noon to four thirty, I believe, so I hope you will enjoy that. That is a good opportunity. Andy is always a wealth of information.

She can tell you all about the Medina products, of course, but she's just a good wealth of information. She and I go way back to the days when we both lived in Austin, Texas. We'll be right back. KATRH Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to KATRH Garden Line with Skip Richt. It's so just watch him as, Hey, welcome back to guard Line. What are we gonna talk about today? Can you tell me a little bit of glow outside

some cloudy's weather? Cloudy skies today. But you know what, it's going to be a nice mild day and it's not gonna rain on us. The weather managed promised me it's going to rain on us. So it's gonna be a good day to get out and do some things in the garden. One of the things that you need to do, and I need this is like a we need that little sound of an emergency broadcast. You know, this is something you need to know. Our weeds eeds are germinating. That's the

news. That's the news flash. Broad leaf, grassy, warm seasoned weeds are starting to germinate in parts of this listening area. And in order to prevent them, you have to have some that will prevent them from getting up and growing, like a barricade product. And that's prime product that we talk about here on guarden Line for stopping both broad leaf and grassy weeds. But here's the deal. It's like the analogy I like to use is the baseball

analogy. If the catcher is holding the ball, the batter has waited too long to swing. Does that makes sense? That's what we're talking about when those weeds are up and growing and you know, taken off and everything. Well, pre emergent means before it emerges, and that is what barricade is. It's a pre emergent. So if you've got thin lawn areas, you've got areas where the sunlighter sitting in the soil, nature will plant weeds there.

And barricade is what we put down watered in with one half inch of water, just a half inch, all you're doing is just wetting the granules. And why well, a dry barricade granules sitting on the ground is not going to prevent all the weed seeds all around it. When you water it, that liquid takes it into the surface where it ties up. Now when a weeds he tries to come up, there is a barricade over the soil.

And that's why we use the term incorporating. Back in the day with farmers, they would maybe disc it in really lightly a product, or they would water it. Watering it in is how you do it in your lawn. Barricade is what you use in your lawn. That's how that works. Now all the different kinds of weeds, crabgrass and what's the other one to everybody? Oh grassper that people just can't stand. Well, that is why we do it. Now, where do you get barricade? Alsposees in the

woodlands has barricade, plants for all seasons. Two forty nine has barricade. Brenham. I'll go up to Brenham Plants and things in Brenham on Highway three sixty five. They've got barricade and other nitrofoss products as well. I want to run now to Lake Jackson and Steve. Thank you for being patient holding How can we help today? Yes, good morning, Skip. I enjoy your show a lot. Thank you. And so this is a follow up to call it from a about two weeks ago. I'm fighting this brown patch

in my front yard. And so what I did was I put down a some liquid funge aside. I waited about ten days. I put down the nitrofoss eagle to the side, and so it's, uh, the grass is coming back. Well. I raked some of the brown and I bagged that, went over and bagged it, and so, uh, the green is coming back. It's about fifty green fifty brown and so uh so from a you know, going forward, Uh, is it okay for me to fertilize

at this point and maybe water a little bit? Yes, it's it's if you're going to do a spring green up, now is when you do it. Now. Spring greenup is an optional application. It's not like, Okay, this is part of what you have to do every year, right. Uh, it's an optional one. But if you want to get the grass of greener earlier, that's what we do. That's why we call it spring green up. We'll begin our i'll say our main warm season fertilization schedules.

Those begin in April. They go through May, June, July, and then we come back in October for a fall application. But those will begin pretty soon. If you wanted it for whatever reason, Uh, you wanted to wait and just start with the summer schedule, that's fine. It's all on my gardening schedule. I don't know if you've seen a copy of it or not, but it's online at gardening with Skip dot com and it lists all the products and everything. So yeah, if you're going to do an

early greenup, you can do that now. So I've printed that schedule out it's just wonderful. I really appreciate that. And so how does this brown patch propagate? You know? How is you know? And once it sets up, is it likely to return you know next year, next summerfall. Yeah, Like a lot of fungi, it's we would say it's ubiquitous. It's everwhere, the spores are, everwhere. When we create conditions that brown

patch likes, then it can it will infect and be worse. So those conditions mean extra nitrogen during the season when it affects, it attacks, extra moisture during the season when it attacks, so you get lush growth in the fall. And that's why when we move to fall, we switch over our fertilizer a little bit and the application timing in the falls a little different,

and so as a result we try to avoid it. But if you overfertilize with nitrogen during that season, brown patch only attacks in cool, mild weather conditions, So it's not a summer disease, it's a fall disease. It can be a spring disease too with those cool mild conditions. So that's the main thing. Take take care of your lawn properly and you don't predispose it to things like brown patch. Okay, thanks for helping bring my yard back, all right, steep, thank care, I appreciate you, ll thank

you. Yeah, that is That is a principle of plant pathology, folks. Is we predispose our plants to problems or we don't. It all depends on our cultural practice. So for example, let me use this as an analogy. You go around to the shady side of your house. Let's say you got brick face brick on the exterior of your home, and there's no algae on that brick. But turn on a little mister and have it run all day for about a week, and what you're going to see is the

appearance of algae. Where did that algae come from, Well, it was spores, it was around, It may have even been sitting on the brick. But it's not growing. But when you created those moist cool, shady conditions, especially the moisture, you suddenly allergy allergy algae appeared. And it's

because you created the conditions and you can do that. We're about to get into summer, and if you look on my schedule, you will see that we start talking about gray leaf spot in April and May and June and even July. And what happens is if it's very shady and you keep it extra moist and you just put down a fertilizer and you overdo the nitrogen and a

quick release over overdone application, you're going to see gray leaf spot. I always tell you, if you don't know what gray leaf spot looks like, go through a piece of plywood on your lawn in April, late April and May and leave it there for a week and pick it up, and you will see gray leaf spot. Where did it come from? It was always there? But was the grass going to get sick before you did the plywood? Nope, You created the conditions that predisposed it and created the problem.

So that is part of the cultural thing. And I talk about some of those things in my lawn care schedule. You know the importance of doing things properly. Well, those are those just a little extra things to think about. We're going to take a little break. Here, it's time for another break and I will be right back. Our phone number is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Well for back to the guardline. I hope you're having a good time. I sure am. Today it is

spring. I'm a gardener, what could be better? This is, as Robin Williams said, spring is nature's way of saying, let's party. And that is the fact. By the way, they're having a party out at Moss Nursery, Done and Seabrook. I love going to that place. I mean like acres and acres that you're just wandering through and seeing all the cool stuff they have. They have got there, for example, their house planting greenhouse, which is one of the first places I go when I get there,

just because I love the selection of succulents. It's like none other. The selection of tropicals, again, like none other. They're hanging from the rafters in there, They're on the tables and floors, I mean the shelves that just everything is loaded up. Moss is a place where you're going to find eight hundred bazillion kinds of containers as well for whatever you want to grow in a container. They are loaded up on those things. Of course,

They've got tomatoes and peppers and herbs and vegetables. They have beautiful hanging baskets, just gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous hanging baskets out there at Moss Nursery. They the shipments have come in on color and it's just outstanding. But I really would suggest you consider it maybe one of their hanging baskets this year. That is a great versatile way to just light up an area. It's instant color. You bring it in and they can get you fixed up on that.

You know, when you go to Moss, you know you're going to get good service. You know you're going to get knowledgeable people helping you. I mean the higher gardeners, people that know how to garden. A couple of last time I was out there, a couple of my master gardeners came by. They that I trained when I was in Harris County. Moss Nursery is a place to go and it is a destination and you do need to go

see it. If you haven't. If you have, you know what I'm talking about, and you need to get back out there because they are loaded up right now. They're in Seabrook on Toddville Road and the phone number write this down two eight one four seven four twenty four eighty eight two eight one four to seven four twenty four eighty eight. Moss Nursery always fun to go. It's like wandering through a jungle of coolness when you head out to Masner.

Every time you turn around the corner, who knows what's going to be around the corner, a beautiful fountain, some cute cool artifact or whatever. I love going out there. I love going out there. It is seasoned to be planting. You got vegetable transplants. Time to get your tomatoes in, get it done. Go ahead. You can go ahead and go with your peppers as well. If you want, you want to wait a little bit, that's fine too, but definitely get those tomatoes in right away.

I'm planting peppers and tomatoes this week out of the house. My plants are big, they're too big to be into the light, and I got more plants that need to come under the light, so they're about to go out. The old plants are about to go out to the garden. Peppers already have blooms on them, starting to set small fruit. The tomatoes are just about to start there blooming as well. Time to get them in and when

I put them in. Here's what I do, and I recommend this if you're planting vegetables, herbs, flowers, if you're putting in a rose bush, hash to grow sick twelve to six from Medina has to Grow six twelve six. What is that? Well, it's a six percent nitrogen, twelve percent phosphorus, six percent potassium fertilizer that's good for watering in a new plant to encourage new root growth and fast establishment. It's got Medina soil activator in

it to stimulate the biological activity. It's got humic acid in it as well, and it has seaweed extracts in it as well. So it's a really nice cocktail of good things to help that plant hit the ground running. You're not going to burn your plants with it. You can use as a folier spray if you want, and that's not a bad idea really as they begin to grow, but initially on planning you at least got to have some mix it up in a watering can. That's what I do, and then just

drench the plant and watered in really well. And Medina Has to Grow is widely available, Lots of different places carry it, and anytime I'm going to put a plant in, I mean, you can use just water to water in a plant, but why not use something that gives those roots and that plant itself the things it needs to have that early boost, because that is the first step to success with those I was out of Southwest Fertilizer visiting with

Bob the other day and looking at the three sixty tree stabilizers which he has in out there by the way. Three sixty tree stabilizer is a device that's used You attach one end of the post, you attach the other end of the tree, and it holds that tree securely so that it doesn't blow over

when you put a new tree in. But the straps are soft and allow movement, a rubbery strap, and it allows that tree to move, and movement is important for strengthening it. There's a principle of nature that when things are stressed and moved, they get stronger. You go to the gym and you work out, and you wear your muscles out, and then you go rest awhile and they build back and you do that again and again, and what happens You get stronger. Well, when a tree is held without movement

by three guys number one, you're going to trip over the wires. It's a mass. Uh. The wires are going to cut into the tree. These three sixty tree stabilizer won't do that and that tree without movement, the strength of the stem is hampered by that. When a tree moves and bends and stretches, just like our bodies, it gets stronger. The lignin, the tissues in the trunk that make that tree stem stronger start to form, and the movement is important. And three sixty tree stabilizers designed for that.

You can put them around a regular round fence post type post. You can put them around a t post one the metal te posts. They hold well. If you've got something that needs a lot of support. I would put one at another at right angles, two of them. That's all you need is just one let's say nor south, the other east west, or whichever you want to put them, but a right angle, and that holds very very well. Also, they're good for crape myrtles that have multi stems.

You can just grab one or two of those branches and you're your set. And it isn't investment. Listen, those trees aren't cheap and you want to have success with them, and this is one of the things that'll do that, and just hang it up in the garage. He things you're going to last forever. The three sixty tree stabilizers. Our phone number is seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty

eight seventy four. When I was at the Home and Garden show up in Conroe yesterday, I mentioned earlier that we had a lot of questions and a lot of different things. And one of the things that people ask me about, both in the session but also when I was at the table outside afterwards, is what is this turf star weed and eight or what like? How do you use it? How does it work? What you know, when do you put it on, and whatnot. Here here's what you need to

know it is. Think of it. Don't think of the term weed and feed. Think of the term weed now feed later. That's a better way to put it, because here's how it works. You what the lead of the weed. You just turn on the sprinkler. We're not talking about watering the soil. We're talking about just wetting the foliage. Then immediately you run your fertilizer spreader through and you put out the weedonator at the proper rate,

follow the label. At the proper rate. It sticks to the wet leaves, the granules, and then you give it a day or two for it to thoroughly soak in to those tissues, and then you water the lawn to move the fertilizer granules that are stuck, some of them stuck to the weeds up there on down into the soil and it begins this long release process for the fertilizer that's in weedinator. It's going to release over two, maybe even

three months. It's a gradual release that it does. It's got a really cool chemistry of the nitrogen forms so that it doesn't just wash away, but it releases little bits over time. That's what a solil release does. And we'll talk about those more as we get into summer. But I was trying to help people understand how that works works out, and why how that whedonator

works and why it works. It's got a lot of nitrogen at twenty percent, but you're going to get that released over months, so don't worry about that high number. That's exactly what you want and it's a good combination of everything you need in the turf Star the Weedenator, and that's a Nelson plant food product, one of their many good products that they produce there. Our phone number is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one

three two one two five eight seven four. All right, I uh in my own garden this week. Yes, I actually get time to get to my own garden occasionally. I'm going to be planting my peppers and tomatoes. As I said, my cool season peas, the sugar snap peas, not that variety, but that type of pee They are coming on. They've their tenders are grabbing and climbing, and they're about to produce themselves. Really well. I love those things. They're sweet. I mean you eat them raw.

In fact, I used to just plant a little bit of them and it ended up being gardener food because I never make it back to the kitchen with enough to cook. I would just be like I'd eat them while I was out working in the garden. So this year, my daughter and I we planted a lot of them, and I mean we got I don't know what we're gonna do, probably open a sugar snap peace stand out at the street, or because we have we probably have too many of those things planted.

But you know, gardening is fun and it's always a new year. I like to say gardening is like an etch of sketch. For those of you who remember those, you had a little two knobs. You draw up and down with one knob, and left and right with the other knob, and you try to create a circle with an etch of sketch. Good luck, because your brain messes up and you think you're going right and you go left, and now you've messed up your picture. What do you do?

I can hear you all answer the question. You turn it upside down and you shake it and it all goes away and you get to start drawing again. That's gardening. The equivalent of that's just sketching. Gardening is called a rototiller or a spading fort or a hoe to chop out this stuff. You get to start over. It's always a new thing, and that is fun. I love being able to go out and try something new. You don't

fail at gardening. Listen to this. You don't fail at gardening. You just regroup and do it again, and one year your tomatoes will be just awesome. And the next year it's like, wait, I know how to grow tomatoes. Why am I having some trouble with this variety this year? That's the vicissitudes of nature. That's gardening. That's okay. You know, the nice thing about nature is it's not all about straight lines of perfection. It's about enjoying yourself and the natural world. It varies, but it's fun

and there's always new plants, there's always new things to do. It is rejuvenating for the mind, it's rejuvenating for the body, and it's rejuvenating for the soul. And if you've been listening to the show and you're not, you're not out there getting those things done this year. Try it. Let me talk you into try a container, a big container, and grow something in it. Maybe a pepper, maybe an egg plant. Maybe you can grow carrots in a big container. And what do you want to grow?

Grow something in a big container. If you've got a little spot where you've started gardening and not had success, let's get you to success. Call the show. Let's talk through the things that you are finding challenging and we'll fix out. And for those of you live out in Kingwood, you've got two garden centers out there that will do the same thing for it. They will help you, they will hold you by the hand and guide you. They'll

get you the right plants, they will get you the right advice. They will get you the right products that you need, and that would be Warren's Southern Gardens and Kingwood Garden Center right now. They, by the way, today got public service announcement the last day of the leap You're special last day is today. What is that You can get rose soil at a greatly discounted

rate. In fact, if you buy two or three even more discounted and you need two or three, you can get azamite at a discounted right you can get Nelson plant food and Microlife plant food in the little jars by the way, Warns Garden Center in Kingwin Though, they have the little refill stations.

So when you buy one of those jars of Microlife or Nelson's, you just when it's empty, take it back and for a discounted price, you actually can refill it right there, just like when you're buying peanuts at the grocery store and you pull the little lever and fill up the bag to take home. Well, that's what we're talking about. That's what they have out

there. They also have the Chinese fringe trees right now they're just about to pop. And I'm telling you that is one of my favorite, let's say Top five trees for modern landscapes because it only gets about fifteen twenty feet tall twenty twenty five feet wide, so it fits in our modern landscapes. And the blooms in the spring at a billow of shaggy, little pleasantly scented blooms Chinese French tree. You need to take a look look at them, and

they got them out there at Warren's Garden Center. We're going to turn it over to Nikki now for the news. Give us a call seven one three two one two KTRH. Welcome back to the garden Line. Glad to have you listening in today. Boy, what a what a spring we're having. This is great, it is really, it is wonderful. Finally to be past all the things we've been waiting on. You know, gardeners, we're not not always so patient, although we should be being through year after year

of dealing with nature and things, but we're not. And that's okay. Time to get outside and enjoy things, Time to get outside and plant, time to get outside and just make your garden magical. Remember a garden. Now, I've told you this before, but when you say a garden, people are a landscape. People picture the visual, and of course you do. You think of flowers and vegetables or whatever your picture of a garden is. But there's also the garden. That's the sound. That's our birds.

You know, we have birds that come in and sing for us, and we have the sound of wind going through the trees. I've yellow clump of clumping bamboo. Not the running kind that your neighbors will not rise up and call you bless it if you put running bamboo near the fence line, but the regular clumping kind. When the wind blows through, there's a sound of like light rainfalling. It's a little papery leaves of bamboo rubbing against each other.

It's kind of cool. I like that. There's a sense of fragrant plants out in the garden. There's a lot of features of the garden. One of the things is popular now is pollinators. Taking care of our pollinators. Had a call today about that. What can I plant and in general plants that have small disk daisy like flowers, so things like fall aster things like the zenias, for example, things like the blackfoot daisy that's one for native to central Texas. If you give a good drainage. It does well

even here. Those little kinds of flowers they do well. Okay, Now, Chemomeal is an herb that has that kind of flowers, and then plant

flowers that are herb flowers. Most herb flowers from chives to rosemary and on down the line time they all attract little, tiny beneficial insects are very popular with small beneficial There's other kinds of flowers we can group and generalize and whatnot, but they support our pollinators and bees especially, and bees are an important part of the backyard environment, native bees and the honey bees that are here, and you know honey bees when they pollinate. When any bee pollinates your

flowers, you get better production. You get more seeds set and therefore better produce. You will have larger size blueberries because more seeds get pollinated and the berry gets bigger. You will have a normally shaped apple, for example, you have an apple that didn't properly pollinated and slop sided. And then the squashes, the cucumbers, the melons, the watermelons, and cantelopes. All of those curbits need pollination. So have you ever thought about having bees for

your own backyard? You know you can keep bees. It's allowed, there's guidelines on it. But you can keep bees in the city and bees will pollinate your blooms and you get honey. What a deal you get honey. The folks at the Bee Supply can get you set up. They've got all the stuff you need to get set up with bees. But even better than that. Right now they're ordering bees by the way. Yes, you buy bees like buying a herd of cattle that you put in a box. But

they're ordering those in. But they're having their classes. The beginning beekeeper classes are underway. They've been going on since February twenty fourth. The next class is March ninth, The class after that is March twenty third, and then April thirteenth. Go to thebsupply dot com. The class will walk you through it, they'll feed you lunch. It's a nine thirty in the morning to three thirty in the afternoon, and you will learn all about bees. You'll

even get to go out suit up and learn about handling bees. And I'm telling you it is fascinating and wonderful. And if you just want to learn about bees, if you've got kids, you must take them out there to see the observation hive. This is out in Dayton, and you can do what they call the honey Tour, where they will give you samples of like six different kinds of honey. They will give a presentation of all about bees

that will blow your mind. And plus you get to even go outside and see them take a frame out of a hive if weather permits to do that as well. Vbsupply dot com. That's where it all starts. And hey, why not add that hobby to your backyard gardening. I think it's kind of cool. Take a nice Christmas gift. You know, you raise your own creature on honey. I say, your own bees are doing all the work, but you know, bottle it up. Think about that kind of

fun. I think I used to keep bees myself when I lived up in Willis, Texas. Yes, I used to live up there and we had a strawberry patch and I had a pea torchure and we had bees and that was fun messing with the bees. An old bee keeper taught me how to do that. And God rest his soul, that was a that was a wonderful, wonderful thing, and I learned more from it. I still am amazed every time I think about what bees can do. We're going to go out to Ralph in Lake Jackson. Now, hey, Ralph, how are

you today? Wondrously? All right, totally totally off topic. I was at breakfast and some friends yesterday and the topic of freeze protection for plants, not so much wrapping them, but when you know a freeze is coming, do you want to water them or not water them? Okay, the answer is if the soil is already wet, you don't need to water. If the soil is at all dry, you want to water enough to moisten it. Because moisture holes heat better than air, and so well moistened soil does

two things. Number One, you have that heat sink, and at night, on a cold night, when you've cover plant, the warmth of the soil rises up underneath that cover and makes a huge difference. Secondly, a plant that's water stressed is not That's not a good way to go into a freeze, and so making sure your plants are adequately watered. But this thing about spray and water on to make ice on the branches, if you want to know more about that, if you go to my website, gardening with

skip dot Com. I have a whole publication, nine page publication on the science of freezing and how to protect plants and all that kind of stuff, and you can take that with you the next time you visit with the folks and it will answer a lot of questions. What brought it up is a lot of rural areas where there's fencing for cattle, okay, and a lot of trees that have grown up through those fences. We've seen it in Brossoria

County, in Paris County, and in Fort ben County. A lot of those trees have died and they're falling over, and we were wondering if they were stressed from not enough water during the drought and then the freeze comes along and kills them. Probably not the freeze. It depends on what species you're seeing dying, but probably the drought is the bigger thing there. Yeah, but you know it could be certain species that are a little bit on the

edge of hardiness. You stress them and weaken them and you can get more freeze damage. Thank you, mich all right, Ralph, take care appreciate that call. We love feed stores here on Garden Line and League City feed that is the one you need to know about if you live down in San Leone, Lamark Bay, Cliffe, League City, of course, Calcamino Reale. They're on Highway three, a few blocks south of ninety six. Now the Thunderbergs have been doing this store since for forty years now. Monday through

Saturday nine to six. Are closed today, close on Sunday, but every day they're open till six, so you can catch them on the way home from work if you want two eight one three two sixteen twelve to it. One three, three two sixteen twelve. They're going to have everything you need for backyard chickens. They're gonna have every fertilizer I talk about. They've got

the pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and premium types of pet food. You need to go by there at League City feet again, they are on Highway three, just a few blocks south of ninety six. People live in that area. They already know about it, and you need to find out about it. It's a fun place. We'll be right back. We're gonna take a little quick break and when we come back, we'll go straight to your calls. Oh man, can we just take this segment and just listen to

music. That wouldn't be a bad way to go. Welcome back to garden line. Hey, if you would like to call a garden line for some reason in the perfect storm, we got some open lines here to just jump right in. So if you've if you've hesitated to call because you think, well there's too many people, call it, well, now's a good time because it's kind of quiet on the Western front. As they say, you

know, the the call thing is always interesting. You can have some call where you're trying to get to everybody and you hate people sit there, wait online on a lot, and suddenly you just go into a no call. So that's part of the deal. Hey. I like the note calls too though, because it gives me a chance to talk about things that I think are important. Hummingbirds are here. Do you know that they're arriving? They are now here in the area arriving. Excuse me, mine about to sneeze

here. So anyway, that was not a good time. So while Bird's unlimited, of course, is your place for all kinds of things. When it comes to birds. Now they've got the feed, that's the quality feed. In fact, I don't post something to Facebook, I saw a picture the other day, No I saw a bag. I took a picture of a bag of cheap bird seed. Now, cheap and inexpensive aren't always the same thing, right, Cheap bird seed full of the full of the little

red bebes. Birds kick it out. You think you're getting a deal, but when you actually weigh the part the birds are going to eat, you are not getting a deal. You're wasting money. Wabirds has feed that if they're seed in a bag, the birds are gonna eat it. That's how they do it. They even have one like if you like sunflowers, which birds love sunflowers, black oiles sunflowers, for example, they have one the talllest, so you don't even have the sunflowers that the birds have broken apart,

dropped onto the ground. The shells wilbirds that get you fixed up on all that. Now is hummingbird season. You need to get your feeders out, and they have gorgeous ones at Wildbirds Unlimited. Wibirds Unlimited has six locations around town, and you can find the one near you by going to wb you dot com forward slash Houston WBU dot com forward slash Houston Wabirds Unlimited that's the time to have your bluebird boxes out. Bluebirds are setting up shop.

It's the time to get the purple Martin houses out. And boy, they've got some really cool purple Martin houses, very easy to clean, care for. And the birds will lineup on the block. Because some of the wildbirds was showing me the inside of the little birds the purple Martin houses and all the different features and stuff and why it's easy clean and why the birds like it. And it's like dot Com, I'd move into that place. That's pretty cool. They've got it all there, WBU, dot Com Forward Slash

Houston. Bring the feathered friends in their beauty, their color, their songs, their antics. It just is part of gardening. So you got to go into a wildbird's just check them out. You'll see what I'm talking about. You know. Another way that we take care of our hummingbird is by planting things that attract them. For example, the kral honeysuckle, the long tubular red blooms of coral honeysuckle. Many of the salvias. I like the

Salvia gary nittica. It is a typically blue to purplish colored blooms on about a four foot bush. Hummingbirds love that one too, but there are a lot of other plants that hummingbirds like. Typically a red tubular or red long bloom is a good cue that they're going to like it. But you know, Garyitica is not a red bloom and they love it, so plant those kind of plants. The Buchanans Nursery specializes in that they've got all the native

plants that you can imagine Buchanans native plants. That's their name, Buchanan's Native plants, and they have those like the coral honeysucle they've got those right now. You can go pick one up today. But all the plants that you would want, they're going to have, and a plant that attract hummingbirds is something they're gonna have. They also, oh my gosh, I was looking at their list, their list of tomatoes and peppers and things. I don't

know. I don't know that I've seen this long of a list of tomatoes in a very long time. But how about this Amish past Arkansas Traveler, beef Steak, beef Steak, beef Master, better Boy, better Bush, big Boy, black crim I sound like a lawyer. Commercial Brandywine Camaros celebrity champion Cherokee purple chocolate sprinkles. Yes, dark Star, Yes, that's a tomato, Early Girl. Jrummer Johnson Homestead j D's Early Black. That's from

Conra Greenhouses up there in Conro, Texas. JD's Early Black. Excellent tomato. That was half the list that I just read. Yeah, all the rest of them are out there too. Lots and lots of tomatoes. They have the trailing, the vining type. If you've never If you like cherry tomatoes, super sweet one hundred and sun gold or two, you gotta have. They are excellent, excellent tomatoes. They've got those there, along with a bazillion others. And if I started reading the peppers, it would take

me just as long a mile long. Have you ever heard of a megatronjlopeno? Have you ever heard of a ghost chili? Ghost peppers are so hot they make the maltz catch on fire. You have to water it to keep it. Okay, I'm joking. I have to say I'm joking because some people. Have you ever heard of a pepper called Bulgarian carrot? We'll go find out what it's like. In Buchanan's plums, they're on the Height. They're in the heights on eleven Street right there. It's it's a great place.

They absolutely are going to have every kind of plant you can imagine, people that know what they're talking about. The fertilizers you talk about here on garden Line, they're going to have them at Buchanans Plants as well as the soils brown stuff before green stuff. Grab a bag of soil or more and grab your bags of fertilizer when you grab your plants. They're at Buchanan's Plants. Makes it really easy. We're going to head out to Winchester now and

talk to Craig. Hello, Craig, Hey, Skiff, how's going. I'm good? How are you today? So fine? Hey? I want I have forty acres out here and winches are just north of Lagrange and I want to get watermelon on the growing but I haven't had much luck. If you have any tips, is your soil sandy clay or what? It's a layer of sand on top and clay underneath. How deep do you go to hit the clay? About six inches sometimes deeper? Okay, well you might

get you may have some success with them out there. You want to get all the weeds out of the way. That's the biggest challenge because once you have all the watermelon vines, you can't get in there and hoe and whatever you're going to do as well. Are you talking about just a garden sized patch or we talk about commercial garden sized pad? Okay, Well, choose good varieties. There's a lot of great ones out there that do well depending

on what you're looking for. And they need consistent soil moisture, they need to not dry out. Bees are very important. A bee has to visit a watermelon bloom. I don't know what the number is, just like thirty times to get full full pollination, which gives you the full sized watermelon that you're trying to grow with that whatever variety and modern amount of nitrogen and other fertilizers, So a modern amount and that's pretty much. Yet it's getting close

to time to plant those. I'd wait a little bit longer, but then when it's time, go ahead and get those things out either by transplant or by direct seeded, which is the more common way. So how do they grow with the watermelons? And like gluling, when are they watering those things regularly or are they Yeah, they're they're irrigating. They have big, bigger irrigation in watermelon fields because you can't depend on the weather if if we go

into a drought period. The commercial folks they can't they can't risk that. But that's it. Yeah, let me give you one other thing, and I'm gonna have to run here, Craig. If you go to the Aggie Horticulture website, Aggie Horticulture, just do a search for it. There's a vegetable section and there's a whole publication on home growing of watermelons that is outstanding and it covers everything from soil to fertilizer, to watering, to varieties and

everything. Okay, okay, all right, good luck with that. I appreciate that a lot. When you're looking for supplies and you're going, hey, where do I buy stuff? Where can I get fertilizer? Where can I get pest control? ACE Hardware is the easiest answer to give you because there's forty ACE hardware stores. They're everywhere. You're going to find ACE no matter where you go. They're going to have furtilizers like Microlife, by the way, you need if you get the Microlife you need, get their hu

mats plus right now. That's the first one to put down this year over time, HU mats plus over and over again, you just get an absolute improvement and sold drainage and everything else. I've told you about that before. I'll tell you but more about it as we go through the data. You're listening to Gardenline. I'm your host Skip Rictor. If you would like to give us a call, our number is seven one three two one two fifty

eight to seventy four. We're gonna take a little break for the top of the hour news here Bert, you will be the first up when we come back. Thanks for that call. I want to remind everybody my garden schedules are online at gardening with Skip dot com. We are slowly but surely putting more and more things on that website and everything up there is something educational to help you have a more beautiful, bountiful garden and landscape at Gardeningwithskip dot com.

But for right now, the lawn care schedule and the lawn pest disease and we management of schedule. Pren them out, take them with you when you go to buy products. It'll help you find the right thing. We'll be right back. Kat R H. Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to kt r H Garden Line with Skip Rictor. It's crazy Trim just watch him as many things, the super crazy gas back again, not sorry, Welcome back to garden

Line. Boy. This is going to be a day for gardening folks. I hope you are making plans this afternoon to get out there and get some good stuff done. Let's turn your place into a more beautiful place. Turn your garden into a bountiful garden. That's what we're here for. That is what we are trying to achieve, because this is the greatest hobby in the world. And it's good for you. It really is. It really is good for you. It's good for your health. It's good for your physical,

it's good for your mental, it's good for your psychological. It's just good for you. That's how that works. We're going to go straight to the phones and talk to Bert in Conroe. Hello Bert, Well, I'll tell you what it would help if I turned to you on there. Okay, Hi Bert, how are you doing today? Hi, good morning, Thanks for taking the call. I've just picked up an Eastern redbud. Is

it more of a tree or shrub question? And the next one, I'm concerned, how far away from the foundation, house, foundation or driveway should it be planted? All right, good, it's a tree, a small tree. It's a very small tree, and time they can get larger. They do best if they're in an understory kind of location where get a little bit of a break from the full brunt of the hot afternoon sun. You will see red buds in the full sun. They just seem to do a

little better if they have a little bit of a break from it. Don't put them in deep shade, but just a little bit of a break they probably I would say, I wouldn't want to get much closer than about well, there's two issues when it comes to planning them near the house. Number one is, of course the roots, but it's more the top the branch is growing out and rubbing on the eaves or the shingles or the house itself or whatever. So I'd probably make sure and get them at least twelve feet

away from the house, fifteen feet away from the house. That way, it's manageable. When it comes to a driveway or sidewalk. Again, if you can get them about ten feet out. They're gonna be okay. They don't have a lot of huge surface roots. All right, well, thank you, all right, there you go. I'll have fun. And by the way, when you're out shopping, look around a little bit, because there's a standard type of Eastern red bud with those beauty full blooms in the

spring. There are types that have a burgundy to the leaves. As they are in a lot of sun, they get more burgundy. There's even a type called Sunrise that has kind of a golden orange yellow chartrouse color as the leaves progress. So you get to pick whatever every kind you want. So do a little shopping, all right, you bet? Thank you? What? Yeah? And the folks up at A and A plants and produce,

I bet you they can get you fixed up. And you're just down the street from them up in Montgomery. They carry a wide variety of different kinds of plants. Give them a call first, make sure they have them, and if they don't have them, I'll bet you they can get them for you. That for sure is something you're going to want to do. I've told you about jungle Land before. Jena Land is a product by Nelson plant Food and I'm sorry Nelson Nitrofuss. You know, we need to get names

that begin with different letters. I think because my brain goes on autopilot. Nitrofross is a distributor of the jungle land product, and jungle land is it's two different products. Actually, it's the outdoor jungle land and the indoor jungle land. Outdoor is called flower and Vegetable planting soil, and we use it for containers. So if you want to grow a tomato in a container, a pepper, if you want to grow herbs too, by the way,

it's good for that. If you want to grow flowers, that's the outdoor. The indoor has the water saving crystals in it, and it's called jungle land water saving potting soil. What are crystals, Well, it's a polymer that when it gets wet, it swells up and holds a lot of water. And then when your soil gets a little dry, the plant roots have gone up against that polymer and they can draw from that moisture reserve. It's kind of having it like having a little bank account of extra moisture in the

soil for when the plants need it. Now, jungle land is widely available. You can find it, like all these nitrofoss products that are out there. You're going to find it at places like plants are all seasons on TOMBOI Parkway. You're going to find it at all spas, ace up in the woodlands. You're going to find it plants for all things, and plants and thing. Excuse me, and Brennam they've got that like they do other nitroposs products. Makes it easy when you got one, stop shopping like that.

Set out to Katie and talk to Judy. Hello, Judy, good morning, Skip, good morning. I have what I think is mold on the trunk of my kreik myrtle tree. Can you tell me how I would get rid of that? Please describe it to me a little bit. It's just black. The trunk's just black where it hasn't been before. Okay. What that is is city mold, and it's growing on sugary substances. So it's

not a disease of the tree. It's just insight It's just insightly. So you can use like a soapy spray in a spray wind on it, and then you can use a soft brush and scribe it to get rid of it like that. But it's not real easy to just get rid of. It's there because you have crpe myrtle bark scale on your crate murder and that's the cause. And so the real long term solution is to deal with the scale. But short term a I wouldn't worry about it other than the visual aesthetics.

It's not hurting your it's not hurting your plant, so it won't hurt the tree itself. It just looks bad, right, Yeah, it won't hurt the tree, but the scale takes energy from the tree, but the scale doesn't kill the tree either, so uh huh yeah, all right, Okay, good to know you bet, you bet, John Bye, I enjoy that crpe myrtle. Have you been out to Nelson Water Gardens and Katie? If you haven't, you need to go. And I'm telling you why you need to go. Number one, it's a garden center too. They've

got all kinds of flowers and vegetables and herbs and things. It's a garden center, but their main focus is water gardens and they have what do you want to create a water garden? They can actually come out and do it for you. Do you need koy. Do you need shabunk and fish or something else to go on it? Do you need water garden plants like lily pads for example, beautiful, beautiful plants. They have all of that.

They also have the disappearing fountains. They invented that. Now what that is is think of a big, beautiful vase that in and of itself would be worth putting in the garden. It's so beautiful. But now you've got water coming on the top of it and running down the sides and going into gravel where it recirculates. And so it's just this self contained fountain out there wherever you want to put it on a patio or out in the yard or whatever. They can get that set up for you as well. And Nelson Water

Gardens they're in Katie. If your head out to Katie on Iten, you just turn north. They're well, I don't know, stones throw off of Ien as you go north on Katie Fort Ben Road, so it's easy to get by the way. They have herbs out there right now. I bought some herbs from a while back. They have every kind of herb you can imagine. I mean, things like rue and lovage and lemon balm. The

probably weren't even knowing you needed. Well, they've got them lots of different kinds of mint and time at a regano, and number of different kinds of basil. So yeah, it's a garden center also, but mainly you got to go just see the displays. They have it set up where it is a pleasure to walk through. And I'll call it a destination garden center because you need to take your friends, you need to get a group and go out there and see it. It in and of itself is just worth a

visit it really, I mean it, just seeing it is inspiring. Like you may think, well, what am I going to do with a fountain? You go out there and you'll see exactly what you do with the fountain, and you'll have to have one to believe me. I was sitting there going, I think I need to buy more properties on post some of this stuff up out there. We're going to take a break for a little bit here. Our phone number is seven to one to three two two KTRH.

Will be right back. Oh little rodeo music there, that's right. Larry Gatlin and the Gatlin Brothers used to come to the Rodeo all the time. I'm going to be heading out there after the show today. I'm superintendent of the horticulture contests and the kiddos are bringing all their different kinds of things from floral arranging to containers. This week we did we did some of the outdoor designs the large landscape type planting containers last week and we'll be doing stuff again

next Sunday afternoon at the at the Houston Life Stuck Show on Rodeo. Makes it real, real fun to get out there, all kinds of things going on. I hope you take advantage of it and get out today see some of the things that are happening out at the stock show. While ago, I was talking about microlife and the hummates plus. That is the purple bag. It is concentrated compost in a bag. What does that mean? Well, think of it this way. You got this giant pola leaves in your

yard, you compost them. Now you've got a small kind of medium sized pile of compost, and you you take that further down and now you have a bag of microlife. Humtes plus humts is a final decomposition stage of organic matter and when you put it in the soil. It improves the soil. When you put it on your lawn, it finds its way down into the soil where it opens the soil. It helps with the heavy clay soils.

It provides a home for many kinds of microbes. Plus. Microlife Humates plus has a lot of kinds of microbes in it, and it's just a way of doing what nature does over a long period of time in a shorter period of time in your yard. I recommend using it annually. You can use it at the same time you're doing fertilizer, just apply them separately, or you can do it now and do your fertilization later. It's up to you how you want to go about it. Microlife products are easy to find.

You just go to Microlife Fertilizer dot com. You're going to find them everywhere. They are widely widely available, top selling organic fertilizers here in the Greater Houston area. For sure. Life Humus plus is one that I would suggest is a good one for right now out there in your landscape, in your guard, in your lawn specifically, nothing wrong with putting it in a garden. To you, by the way, I should I should add that we're going to go to Parland now and talk to Loretta. Hello Loretta, Hello

Skip, thank you for your show. I have an unusual question with potatoes. This time of year, they start sprouting these swimming things, and I know I've heard that you know you can keep the potato and plant those and make potato plants. That's right. My question. My question is is it safe to eat those sprouts? Do you have to wash them off with potato before you use it, or are they If you have a potato you bought in the store and it's sprouting, I would break those off. They break

off real easily. Potatoes are a stem tissue themselves, and so if they're in the sunlight, if they're in light, they turn green and that is a corphyll response and there's a compound called solanine and potatoes that's not good for you. So if you have a potato that's got green skin because it got some light on it, you want to just peel that off. And then when it comes to the sprouts, you don't want to eat them, Okay, And the second question. In the past, I have bought tomatoes that

they call ripping on the vine tomatoes. They come in a cluster okay, with the vine connected, Yes, and setting on my counter. I have had several tomatoes with the thieves inside the tomatoes sprout. Did they poke through the skin? Yeah? Isn't that weird looking? That is a yeah? Okay, here's your five dollars horticulture word for the day. That is called the vippery. Vippery is when a seed sprouts and it's still in the fruit, for example, and that happens, they can have the pecans and other

things on the tree. You just got to toss it. You know, it's kind of messed up. I guess if you want to get in there and pick out all the sprout sections and stuff, you could slete the tomato. But basically it's kind of going to be a mess inside at some point. Okay, So both sprouts are not good to eat, no, ma'am, No, you don't want to do that. You don't want to do okay. I have also looked for bean sprouts in the stores slightly, and

must stores don't carry them anymore. Okay, we'll find out. But if you go to a specialty top store you'll find them are Why don't you just grow them yourself? You can buy the seeds. You buy them online. Some stores will, some garden centers will carry the sprouting seed and you just put them a little tray. There's even a little device crews on the top of the mason jar that you it's kind of like a screen and you put the seeds in there, you them and turn it upside down and you can

grow your own sprouts. And that way you can grow them when you want them, the kind you want, as much as you want. And so that's just another thing Loretta to think about. I'm going to have to run to another call. But if you want to try sprouting, I think it's well, it's a fun thing to do. It's fast, and it's easy and it's not that expensive. Well, thank you for the HILP. All right, thank you very much. Man, appreciate that call. The other

day, I think it's yesterday. Maybe someone was looking for expanded shale and we're trying to figure out where to get them, where to get some and I finally thought, oh, go to Ciena Maultch and they just sent me an email. Yep, we went to Siena. They had it. We're all squared away, and you know, why should that not surprise any of us. Ciena Maltz has everything that you need. Remember brown stuff first, Well, when I say brown stuff, it doesn't have to be brown,

expanded jale is gray. But it deals with the soil. Right, brown stuff means the soil, so it means compost, it means bed mixes, it means fertilizers, it means expanded for heavy clay soils. Ciena Multch has all of that. They have a wide variety of fertilizure. I mean, if I talk about it, they've got it there. And it's a one stop shop for getting your soil ready. And when you get your soil ready,

you're going to have success. That It's as simple as that, and Ciena Maltch will definitely be a place to provide you quality, quality ingredients in that way. Now they the website is Cenamultch dot com, siennamult dot com. They're down south near Highway six and two eighty eight on FM five twenty one, just northor Row Sharon, so that whole region down there. They deliver within about twenty miles of the of the place, so if you need

a bulk delivery, they can take care of that too. Always a good day to go out to Cienamultch. They are open, by the way, I should. I should tell you this Monday through Friday seven thirty to five and on Saturday seven thirty to two. They're closed today, but they'll be back up open again tomorrow. We're going to head out now to sugar Land and talk to James. Hello, James, Hey, good morning, scar My Saint Augustine here, sugar Land is starting to turn. I guess,

but it's already starting to yellow. We killed ten or fifteen twenty June boats on the patio last night. Could we be having grubs this early? No? No, Why is my grass yellow on already? Different things can cause that. Diseases can cause that. It could be did you use any kind of products on it to kill weeds or anything? No fiction, to put out fertilizer and pre emerging today that's going to be night for falls. Yeah, okay, follow the label carefully when you do that. The yellowing could

be different things. If the yellowing is older leaves, that's one thing. If it's the new growth that's yellow and you pick a blade and hold it up to the light and it's yellow and green streaked, it looks yellow from a distance, but when you get up close you see it's got the little green streaks in it. That's an iron deficiency, and that will go away in most cases on its own. But you can also add an iron supplement to it to help cure that a little quicker that's typical in cool, moist

conditions in the spring, and it tends to grow out of it. Well, now we sprayed propoconaisol. I think I pronounced that right last fall. Okay, is it? Do we need to do that again? Just in case. You know, if you're dealing with something like a brown patch, large patches, but that'd be circles, it wouldn't be just generally yellowing. I think if you want to send a picture of it to me, I can put you on hold you and you can send me one an email.

But I'm about ninety percent sure of what I just told you is going to be what I would say after looking at a picture too. One more quick question. I usually buy eight or ten bags of sixty four to put out on my trees at around the trees at the ranch. Okay, but I noticed Nitrofoss also has a sixteen to four A tree and shrub fertilizer. Yes, it is one better than the other. They both will work. One is organic, one is synthetic. The synthetic significantly cheaper. So well,

then there's it's a great fertilizer. Night foster and shrub will work just fine. It's a it's a fast release, so don't overdo it. I would What I would do is go up to the tree trunk and look at how many inches across, not around, but in diameter, how many inches across is it? And give it a cup or two per inch of trunk diameter, And that way a big tree gets more than a little tree. A couper two per inch of trunk diameter of the nitrofoss product. The tree and

shrub you talked about. It's an excellent product that will work very well. Okay, great, thank you, all right, you take care. Thanks for the call. Appreciate that Anti grozen Porium is a place that if you haven't been, you need to go. If you have been, you know

what I'm talking about. It's destination. It is the whole. It's like you've gone back in time and that they have the outbuildings that are just rustic and cool, and of course that fits well with antique roses that you know that that feel they are loaded up on roses, but they also have more than that. There are more than just roses. They have perennials, all kinds of great perennials, lex Alvia's and other wonderful things, Purple cone flower,

you know, lentanas and whatnot. Coming up March ninth and tenth. What would that be next Saturday? I believe it is on my calendar. March ninth and tenth is a spring celebration and they're going to have speakers, including myself. I will be out there giving a talk. I'm gonna talk on beneficial insects. So if you'd like to learn more about attracting beneficials next

Saturday, you got it. Antigros and Porum Now they have an artistan market and food trucks and of course all the plants and tools and fertilizers and everything you need. Antique Roseemporium dot com. That's a website, Antique Rosanmporium dot com. You want to go there and learn more about it because it's always

a good time to go to Anti grosm Porium. Spring is just visually unbelievable out there and if you want to call them ninety seven nine eight three six fifty five forty eight nine seven nine eight three six fifty five forty eight, you can do that. I encourage if you're going to go, load the car up, get your friends, get your family, you know, go out and see it because this is a destination and you want to be there. And I hope you show up next Saturday, March ninth. It's March

ninth and tenth the events. I'll be there on Saturday. Look forward to seeing you. We're going to take a little break here. It is time for Nikki in the news. I will be right back our number seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Welcome back to Garden Line during the Houston Livestock Show in Rodeo. Have you been to a rodeo this year? You need to go. They got the lineup there is awesome, always fun. Plus there's something

to do out there at the Houston Life Section and Rodeo. I'm gonna be out today. We're having a horticulture contest going on again this weekend and next weekend as well. I'll be working with them out there on that. If you live up in Tomball, here's your hometown feed store. If you're anywhere near Tomball, here's your hometown feed store. D and D Feed and Supply.

They're west of Tomball on twenty nine to twenty. You just head out that way and they are always getting shipments of chicks in out at D and D Feed. They it's a regular supply coming through. You can go and give them a call first. Just give them a call at two eight one three five one seventy one forty four two eight one three five one seven one four four and say hey, what you got now and when are you getting the next ones? And they can tell you they've got all the feed you

need, of course, livestock feed, great quality pet feed. By the way, do you need soils like I was talking about the works potting soil from airloom soils. They carry airloom soils out at D and D Feed. Do you need fertilizers? They have a wide variety of fertilizers. They've got nitrophoss fertilizers. They got the super green that we were talking about a little bit before. Do you need your barricade for the weed control they've got that. In other words, they've got a lot of things at D and D

Feed that you need for your home and for your garden. Again the phone number two eight one three five one seventy one forty four. Check them out at D and DE Feed. It's a great place, great supplies. And oh, by the way out front, they got a lot of plants. They do a good job of bringing in a lot of different kinds of plants that are going to be timely, that's for the season, and they're going to be all kinds of things you want, things like strawberries. I saw

some of those out there the other day. So D and defeed get you all set up. We're going to head out now to East Houston and talk to Tom. Hello. Tom, Hello, how are you to day? Skip? Okay, sir, how can we help? I wanted to share some no what that man that called yesterday concerning about what he called mestita hawk. All right, I need you, I need you to give a fast version of that. Can you do that for me? Those are called crane flies. They are forty four They do not have mouths, they do not

have stingers. They are primarily on this earth to feed the birds. If you look outside, you start seeing birds in your yard. So it's a beneficial insect. It actually is. They don't do any significant damage to anything. And you're right about the mouths. But the larvae basically chewing up organic matter done in the soil, moist organic matter, so they're even part of that cycle as well. Tom, I appreciate that information. Good to good

to hear from you, and thanks for passing that along. You're welcome, all right, sir, You take you take care. Now's the time to get your wheden weeding done in the lawn. That means a product like barricade to prevent the weeds that are coming up and they are sprouting. Now it's time to get that done. But also how about your early spring green up. Nitrofoss Imperial that is the red bag. It makes it so simple when they have colors Nitrofos Imperial red bag. It's a fifteen to five to ten.

That three to one to two ratio is what any turf specialist from Texas to Florida to really across the country will tell you is three one two ratio fertilizers. That's what grass takes up. That's what you need and that is why Nitrofoss Imperial is in a fifteen five ten combination. It's a three one two ratio. That's what it needs. Where do you get nitrofos, Well, throw a rock and you probably hit a place that sells nitrofoss. That's

the fast answer. If you are in the Memorial area, Memorial Drive, Ace Hardware City has got nitrofoss products. If you're in Stanton Shopping Center, don in Alvin, Yep, you're going to find them there. Go out to Katie Ace Hardware on Pinoak Out in Katie. They've got night FoST products as well, easy to find them. Now's the time. If you're going to do primerge, now's the time to do the barricade. If you're gonna

do spring greenup, now's the time to put that Imperial down. Don't delay because we got an other fertilizing we'll be doing later on, but now's the time for that spring greenuple. Let's quit and head out to Kingwood now and talk to Jeremy. Hello, Jeremy, Hey, skip has a great segue. I wanted to ask you, so the weeds in my yard have emerged. Yah, So I want to make sure that I can put down the I already have the nitroposs weed and feed. I haven't put it down yet,

but I want to. It's okay to put it down now and then wait how many how long until I could put it down the Imperial Now, I haven't been on any any fertilizing schedule or anything for a while, so I'm just trying to get going now, and I want to make sure I don't mess it up from this point on. Okay, So you what if you put down already? Nothing? Oh? Nothing? Okay? So which which nitrophoss weed and feed do you have? What color is the bad blue

blue bag? Okay, that's a that's going to be a post emergent TRIMEC combination product, and so it's going to do the early greenups. So you want to go ahead and do it a S A P. Because here's the deal. You need the weeds to be wet and you need the granules to stick to the weeds. So give a quick little sprinkling just enough to what the weeds put it out. It sticks to the weeds and it moves down.

As weeds get further and further along blooming and setting seed, they're harder to kill, and at some point they've already made seeds, so you kind of miss missed your boat. So don't delay. Get that down. Now's the time for green up. Now's the time to go ahead and kill those. Those are all winter weeds. Anyone listening, any weed you're seeing now is a sticking up in the garden or the yard weed, that's a winter

weed. And now's the time to get them done, because as we move forward, they become less and less susceptible or already have set seeds to sentence you to more weeding next year, in the year after and the year after that. So let me follow up real quick. Once I put this down, I will get it down today. How long should I wait until I do the next step? And as the next step, the imperial or the blue bag is in place of the imperial. You've made the decision to choose

not just fertilizer, which is imperial, but fertilizer plus pust emergent. Broadly, if we control that's the blue bag. So the next step will be when you do your fertilization as we get into spring. So at this point, let's say you are in Kingwood. At this point I would say, probably about mid April would be the next time that you're going to fertilize, and that would mid to late April. Even that would be when you put

your your long slower release product out. You're using the nitrofoss products, so that would be the super turf, the silver bag, but that's not coming until we get much further out into April. Okay, perfect, all right, thank you very much, sim I have a gret day. Yeah, and for people listening, just just for clarity, so we don't so I don't confuse you. I say that because he is putting out the greenup. Now, if you don't use the greenup, that's the green Up's the optional

application. If you don't use the Greenup, then you can start, you know, earlier in April, h putting out your longer term slow release things like in the case Jeremy's using the nitrofos products, that would be the silver bag, the Imperial in April. It's always hard to say these things on the radio because people selectively listen or selectively here however you want to go about it, and someone will say, well, I heard I was supposed to put Imperial out now. No no, no, no, no, no,

no, I'm sorry. Yes, yes, yes on Imperial No no, no, on the silver bag. Not yet, not yet. It's coming. It's a great product and it'll feed and feed and feed on through the weeks and months early into the late spring and summer season. All right, Well, our phone number if you'd like to give us a call and talk about things that are of interest to you is seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.

Welcome back to Guarden Line. Good to have you with us today. I'm your host, Skip Richter, and we are here to answer gardening questions. That is what we do. Listen, if you were down in the Richmond Rosenberg area, you need to get by Chanted Forest. They have loaded up on color on shrubs, trees, vegetables, herbs, everything you can imagine. I was looking out they had some beautiful angelonias. That's what we call it, summer snap dragon. You plant that thing now and it's going

to carry all the way through summer. It just grows and blooms and blooms and blooms and blooms. It's a wonderful bedding plant. Beautiful color combinations, tall spiky blooms. It's just beautiful. It's part of any summer landscape bed color. And they got them right now, so don't wait for summer for them, go ahead and get them out. They have all kinds of other things. All the petunias and all the other plants that we would think about

planting now are going to be there. They also have Texas Mountain Laurel. Now, if you never smelled one of those, you got to go buy and smell one. They are a purple bloom that looks like a cluster of grapes and smells like grape kool aid or a great bubblegum rather that strong grape bubblegums. Oh, it's wonderfully fragrant, grows, slow, takes its time, has to have good drainage, plant it on a mound, but they have them. They've got hanging baskets. They just have everything that you would

need. They are loaded up on it and as they always are out there and enchanted for us, it's a fun place to go hang out and wander and see. They just continue to have more and more cool stuff going on, and they always if you doan't to have a butterfly garden, you have to go there. They have the milkweeds, they have all the plants that attract butterflies. In fact, during peak season they got so many caterpillars. They'll even give you caterpillars to take home, so you can kind of like

a sour dough starter for butterfly gardens. Right, you bring a caterpillar home with you with the plant so you can get going on it. Enchanted Forest. Where is Enchended Forest. Well, if you're in Richmond heading toward Sugarland, it's off to the right on FM twenty seven fifty nine. The most important thing, really, the most important thing that you're going to need to know is the website Enchanted Forest, Richmond, TX dot com. Enchanted Forest,

Richmond, TX dot com. Let's go now out to We're gonna talk to Vicky in Willis. Hello, Hello Vicky from Willis, Good morning, Good morning. The caterpillars as a starter for or butterflies. That's your riot. That's great. That is the first time first time Clay Clay and Danny told me they were doing that out there is like, that's a great idea. Very good. I've been really good this year. I've done my pre margin on everything doing well or not totally weak free. But we live out

in the country and we just will deal with that. But I'm starting to see my Saint Augustine. I'm starting to see patches already. Summer's green and some is. I've got a couple of spots of yellow. We've got a couple of spots of just not doing anything. It's patchy. I have no

idea why what do I do well? The yellow is probably due to an iron deficiency, which happens in the spring quite often, especially when the temperature cool The Saint Augustine roots are not growing very fast and the plants aren't They're kind of waking up slow like Saint Augustine does, and you get a little early on some of that iron deficiency. You can put an iron supplement on it. I have found that is the weather warms up and organic matter decompositions

picks up faster that it sort of goes away on its own. But if you'd like to do an iron supplement, that this would be a good time to do that. Also, just be careful don't get iron on your sidewalks, your driveways because will it will leave a rust stain. Yeah, and I would say that's probably all there is to it. There could be some other things going on, but it's just too early to expect a lot out

of your Saint Augustine appearance wise. So if it still looks bad three weeks from now, let's talk again, okay, sor right, Well, we'll give it time to grow itself and see what happens. You Victa, take care. I used to have a peach orchard in Willis by the way. Oh, oh, that'd be great. Love that, Love it up there, love it up there. I was visiting with Ty Strickland and his wife from Fixed Nice Lab Foundation Repair the other day and I was just picking his

brain. And the guy he he knows foundations. I could not ask a question that he didn't know the answer to. He's been doing this for twenty three years. Really, I fixmyslab dot com. That's his website. So do you see a crack in your brick? Do you see a crack in your sheet rock? Maybe you know the doors are sticking a little bit in the house because the foundation moves. And as you get a house that gets

older and older, the chances of that just get larger and larger. And there's things that contribute to it, and he can help you understand the things that are in your power to do to help protect your foundation. That is important. Now tell him you're a guarden line listener. You get a free estimate if you tell them you're a garden line listener. The thing about ty and Fix my Slab is they're committed to be on time, to show up when they say they're going to show up, to do it at a fair

price, and to fix it right. That is important and doing it right is very critical to having good success. Now again, Fix my Slab dot Com is the website two eight one two fyy five forty ninety nine to eight one two five forty nine forty nine. Don't delay, it's not going to get better. Now's a great time to have foundation work started on your property because this is just a good time with the soil and the condition it's and

go ahead and do that. If your sidewalks and driveways are heaving and cracking, that's a whole different issue, and they can come in and they can fix that as well, including the thing where you kind of float it up and re level it. They have a way of doing that. So you're not buying a new driveway. What a great deal. Fix my slab foundation repair. David in Tomball is going to be our next call here. How how are you doing out there in Tomall? David, Good, Good morning,

sir. Hey, I got a little tomato myth or truth question. Okay. I got a flower bed that's about four feet by ten feet and on one side, I got my tomatoes planning way. On the other side, I was gonna put some peppers, and my neighbor, oh, no, you can't do that. And I researched it, and I never could get a definitive yes or no that I could or could not. Okay, what's your take on it? Do it? You can do it. It's fine. Okay. Here's where that comes from. Plants in the same family

tend to get the same diseases. And if it's a soil disease like Fizariam, reverse cilium, root rod or something, and you grow the same plant year after year after year, and happened to get that disease in there, then following up with peppers in that spot or eggplant in that spot, because those are all related, then you're just you're that's a problem. But having

a tomato in the same bed as a pepper. Absolutely no problem. Now, should you someday develop some root disease or something, plant something different there and put your tomatoes and peppers in other beds. Hey, if I can one more question, all right, I want to build a strawberry bed and build it in a box? What dimensions, how date and should it be and how wide? Kind of an ideal you need about a foot of soil

deep, and it gets you a lightweight soil. If you can even mix some sand in with a quality mix, you know, like a vegetable and herb from heirloom or something a mix, then that sand is good good drainage, and strawberries don't like a heavy clay, so give it a good mix about a foot deep. I plant mine on beds that are about three feet across because you can put three plants across the bed that way, and it's not too far to reach to get to the middle from either side. So

that would be my advice. Alrighty, thank you sir. All right, good luck with that. Have fun out there and tumble take care. You've got RCW Nurseries down on two forty nine where it hits belt Way eight. They are specialists when it comes to having every kind of rose under the sun, they grow them all. You know, if you remember the Rose Society, you want to find a place that's got all kinds of beautiful cutflower roses, shrub roses and anti They got it all right there at RCW Nursery.

They grow their own trees up in Plantersville, so they have quality grown trees varieties that belong here. That's very very important. Now we are entering the big spring season, so it's time to finish up your roses and tree planting if possible, just because things do better when you plan them early on rather than waiting until July to put those things in the ground. Now is the

time to get it done. They have all the supplies you need to put in to put with the plants as you're planting them to ensure good success. RCW Nurseries they better on a long time. They know what they're talking about, and they carry stuff that grows here and that is very very important to have that as well. I also want to talk to you about a little bit about Nature's Way resources. They're having their Spring Garden Festival and that is

March ninth, That would be next Saturday, from nine to two. They're gonna have education. They're gonna walk around and get you some sangree at a drink. They got stuff with the kids, all kinds of stuff happening. It's always fun and listen. Never go to Nature's Way without an empty car for bringing home native plants. They've got for bringing home the soil mixes and the blends. Call them, give them to get them to deliver toy Nature's

Way Resources dot Com. That's the website. I always like going out there Connedy and they they just the place just keeps getting better and it's just more fun to get out and do. You don't want to miss that event. It will be a lot of fun while you're listening to garden Line. Here we are putting another show hour in the books. We've got one more left today. I hope you stick around for us. Maybe those neighbors that have

their light to offer a wake. Now, if you want to go back and knock on the door again, tell them, hey, garden Line's still on. Don't miss it. I'll be right back in just a moment. Katie r. H. Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to Katie r. H. Garden Line with Skip Richter's Crazy trim. Just watch him as were so many brothies supprazy gas not a sim. Welcome back to, Welcome back to Guarden Line.

Glad to have you with us today. Hey, we are here to answer gardening questions. So if you got one seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four, if you are interested in a high concentration organic fertilizer for your lawn, Nitroposs Sweet Green is that product. It's eleven percent nitrogen, which is higher than most nitrogen sources that come from a natural source. And this is a molasses

based product. Through microbial activity, it is turned it basically into a quality fertilizer. Smells wonderful, smells like molasses because that's what it's made from, and that sugary substance really enhances back to your life in the So it's why we use in organic gardens, why we use molasses as a soil amendment. It is very very effective for that and this one will provide the nutrients and the green up that you're going to need for your lawn. Now. Nitrofoss

Sweet Green is available widely. You can find it in a lot of different places, like all the different nitroposs products that you would see, for example, ACE Hardware at single ranch out there in Katie, Yep, they are going to have this product. If you go to a task Asita, Ace out in a task Asda, they're going to have nitrofoss products as well, like our Sweet Green here and Lake Jackson down at Lake Hardbearing Clute specifically,

they're going to have the nitrofoss products as well. It's not hard to find them. They're widely available. And the Sweet Green I think you will be very pleased with both, from the fragrance of it all the way down to the way that it works. I want to go out now and we're going to start doing some more calls for this hour. We'll start with John in League City. Hello, John, Good morning to you morning. I have

a question. I put Shaw in my backyard, okay, about four years ago, and the dogs have trampolin and so in October I planted Rye rass win or right, and it's going in nice and thick and I really like it, but I know it's going to die off. Yes, so do they make a summer ride. Nope, they don't. They don't, Unfortunately they don't. You just want to as it, what's going to happen?

What kind of lawn do you have? Senegast? Okay, so the Saint Augustine's would try to wake up here as the weather warms up, and the rye grass is going to be wanted to grow like crazy. And so there's this transition where the rye grass is basically like a whole bunch of weeds in

your Saint Augustine competing for water and nutrients. So you're gonna want, as we get a little further into the season to mow that down pretty short and then let this Saint Augustine come on up and get sunlight, because a good, thick, healthy, standard rye grass is quite a competitor in the spring during that transition. All right, did I fertilize it? Now? You

can't. You can fertilize with the spring green up. I think. I think what I might do in your situation is I might hold off and then on April first, begin the slow release fertilizers that are on my schedule online. If you go to gardening with Skip dot com, online. You can see the schedule. It's free to print out. And I think I would skip the spring green up because you've got all that ryegress in there and I

don't want to encourage it any further. And then I would go ahead and do a good, a good mowing down low as we're coming, you know, a little further toward the end of March, and then do the Saint Augustine fertilization at that time. Okay, very cool, all right, you good luck with that, John. I hope that, hope that works all. Arburgate Nursery and tom Ball is the place that, of course everybody has heard of. They have been around, they've been around a while, and

I was surprised at the arbor gate. You know, I've been going there for ages. I always love to go out and visit with Beverly and really all of our staff out there. They have a group of very, very friendly and educated folks that know gardening, and you get answers from them, You're gonna absolutely know that you can depend on those answers because they know what they're talking about. And that's important. Listen, when you go out and

get gardening advice from people, you often don't know. And I hear people all the time that they'll call the show and say, well, so and so tell me such and such, and it's just not right. But it absolutely at Arburgate. You don't have to worry about that. You got people that know and they every time I go there, it's like shipments and shipments of plants coming in. It's always loaded up and beautiful, the best, coolest new thing. By the way, they celebrated their twenty eighth anniversary this

week, twenty eight years. Can you believe that? I can't, It seems like yesterday. But Arburgate Nursery is on twenty nine to twenty west to Tombul and there's a little road called Trishel Road that goes behind it, and the brand new beautiful parking lot is back there, and so you don't have to worry about parking on the road. On twenty nine to twenty. Take

Trischel and go behind it. It starts before Arburgate and it comes back into twenty nine to twenty after Arburgate. So if you miss it on the way through, just pass by Arburgate and look for Trischel. It'll come back in there and jump on it. And run out run behind Arburgate All Weather Parking. It is wonderful and Arburgate is loaded right now. I was out there about a week ago and it was just unbelievable the supply of everything they had.

I mean I could name every plant, but that would take the rest of this show in the next two because they have so many cool things. I was talking earlier about. You know how important the summer color is, and they can fix you up on that at Arburgate. Why are you there? Pick up their one two three easy system. It's the food organic food that's complete. It's the organic soil complete and the organic compost complete. The latter two both have expanded shale in the mix, which is especially nice.

Let's see, we're going to go now to Willis and to Jessica. Hello, Hello, hight Sorry, this is Gary. My wife's dialed in and she handed me the phone, so I'll ask I'll ask you the question.

All right. I love your show, listen to it a lot. We're new at the Gate at the gardening program, and we were hoping that we could get some guidance on where we might find a gardener for hire help us establish establish a nice vegetable and fruit and flower garden, and we could kind of work alongside of someone for a while and uh and and learn how to

do it. Would you have any suggestions. We've really tried a lot of different avenues and we just haven't been able to find anybody that's available to Well, that's that's a good that's a good question. Unfortunately, I don't I don't have a real specific answer for you, but I have two suggestions. Uh. Now, it's a little bit of a distance for you for Willis, but over in Montgomery at a and a landscape or a and a garden center, they have they hire out to go clean up yards and things in

the Lake Conroe area. I think you're going to be too far for them to go. No, that's where we are. We're very close to they come. Okay, well, you can hire their crew to come out and do spring cleanup and things like that. I would talk to them and see what kind of a service like that. Maybe they would visit, you know, several times during the year and you would meet them there and they would I don't know, you just have to talk to them at ana and see

what they're say. The other thing is cursh your over in Lake Conroe side on Airport Road outside of Conroe where the Lone Star Convention Center is. The Montgomery County Extension offices right across the street there, and they have a master gardener program. There may be somebody within that program who would be willing to do that. And normally master Gardener's a volunteer program. They don't hire out. That's not how that works. But I would call that office either,

talk to Michael Potter, the horticulture agent. There are some of the master gardeners and they should be able to help you. I am up against a hard break and so I'll put you on hold. If you want to hang on, we can. If not, I hope that is helpful for you. Thank you for that call. We'll be right back. Try not to move and wiggle your foot or tap your toes or anything during that song. And I defy you to try that. It is impossible. Yes, that's

true. Hey, you're listening to Guardline. I'm your host, Skip Richter. We are glad to be talking to you today. I want to tell you about jungle Land. It is a soil for containers by the folks at nightrofous now Jungle land has two versions. There's the Flower and Vegetable planning soil for putting outdoors, and it says flower and vegetable, but you can put it for herbs too. Anything in a container like that, it's going to do well with it. For color plants, you will absolutely ignite really solid

color and growth for all those plants. It knows how to hold water and knows how to drain excess water, and that's what you need in a good quality mix. Now there's a jungle land for indoor plants. It's called the water Saving Potting soil, and that has the crystals that hold onto water.

The roots go upside the crystal hold onto the crystal essentially, and when the things get dry well it can pull water out of those crystals because if they hold water very very well, that makes it more forgiving when you forget to water. Where do you get jungle land, Well, wherever you get any kind of nitropos product, which are widely widely available. You can go to Kingwood Ace Hardware down in Kingwood and they have it there. You can go

to the Arbor Gate up in Tombol. You can go to Shades of Texas on Genoa Bluff. Road down in South Houston all places where you can find nitrofoss products. I want to mention today by the way, that this is the time to get any kind of landscape work scheduled and get it. You know, whether you're doing landscape renovations or or compost top dress. Things are aerations and things. The folks at Greenpro are the ones that will do your

aeration up in the northern part of our Araine area. We're gonna say Magnolia and within a forty five mile range around Magnolia, so that'll go down about to central Houston area. I'll go over maybe about Interced forty five down to around it ten. That's roughly speaking. You have to give them a call. They will come out and they will do the compost top dressing with top

quality composts. They will do the core aeration where you pull a core out of the soil, pop it onto the surface and that helps get oxygen down in the roots. The compost falls down in those holes. It builds the soil and enhances it really stimulates, especially when you're dealing with the heavy clay soil. Grass can struggle in a compacted, heavy clay compost top dressing after

you have air rated will work very well. Now you can do the other order if you want, but you could just aeration, or you can do both. The the are just the compost top dressing, or you can do them both, and I would recommend both. By the way. Now that is green Pro and their number. Write this down seven excuse me two eight one three five to one forty seven thirty three two eight one three five one forty seven thirty three, or go to greenpro dot net talk to them about

it. They know what they're doing. They do an excellent, excellent job for that region that they surface up there, service up there. I think I'm running toward the end of the show, and my brain and my mouth connection is starting to falter a little bit as I try to say words. Microlife has a wide variety of fertilizers. You know, you can get their fertilizer for acidic plant. You can get the fertilizer that's designed for the citrus

and fruit kinds of plants like that. You can get the fertilizer that we think of as a lawn fertilizer. It's the green bag. It's really the everything fertilizer. I mean fertilized trees with it, a furtlized vegetable gardens with it. It's a good fertilizer. Right now, I want to talk to you about the hum mats plus that is concentrated compost in a bag and it

is Microlife's purple bag. Now, this is one that you're doing periodically over time to your lawn to improve the soil structure, to improve the effect of the microbes that are there, making things better for your root system. Well, hum mats plus is part of that cycle. And what you need is you need the purple bag. That's a zero zero four and I would put it on now. Don't think of it as a fertilizer. It does have four percent potassium. Think of it as a microbial provider and a soil enhancement

product, and that's what it does. Microlife humats plus purple bag. Let's do that now. You want to do that periodically and pretty soon we're going to be talking about the green bag and fertilizing your lawn. But for right now, Microlife humts plus very important part of a long term that's the wayne nature takes care of plants, that's the organic process, long term benefit to your soil. We're going to go now out to Beaumont and talk to Donna.

Hello, Donna, Hey, Skip. I got two questions. First of all, I have a yesterday to yesterday, today and tomorrow plants that I've had for a long time. They're in pretty large pots, all right, and they're starting to put new growth on, but they're real stimmy looking, and I was wondering is there a time I can pring those back a little bit? And also what kind of fertilizer is best for those? Okay, so you said it's a yesterday, Today, and tomorrow plant, right,

Yes, sir. It has the flowers that change colors from blue to white and whatnot. Okay, that violet and then it gets a little lighter. Yeah, okay, I want to make sure we're talking about the right one. You can print it back a little now if you like it's okay, you can leave it as it is, and then next winter print it back a little bit as we get toward the end of winter. If it's

got decent light, and if you're fertilizing it, it'll fill in. It'll look really nice, a beautiful plant, like the way the branches arch over and have those blooms and stuff. I would use a lawn fertilizer on it myself. I mean, there's a lot of good fertilizers out there that will work well on it. But when we're talking about our turf fertilizer, if you get my lawn care schedule at Gardening with Skip, yeah, just go down there. Whatever you're going to use on your lawn, use that on

that. Brune Felcia, which is the fancy name for yesterday. Okay. And the other quick question was I have one of those corn plants. I think it's what you call it. It's got a real long stem and some leaves coming out at the top indoor plant, right, and it looks just so yellow on the leaves. I'm thinking it either might need a bigger pot or maybe different fertilizer or something added to it. Yeah, you know you

could. I put you on hold here when we're done, and if you don't send me a picture of it, I'll give you an opinion about the bigger pot. But in general, yes, some nutrient fertilizers would help. But also watch the water is as you get as the plant gets big and it's too big for the pot, it turns dry. Really quick because you have very little soil to support that big plant, and so just watch that the soil doesn't dry out nor stay soggy wet. Both of those create issues

for those plants. Soggy wet starts root rots that cause yellowing two. Okay, all right, all right, all right, Well you're welcome, Bunches. Thank you for the call. I appreciate that. If you're looking for a quality tree, Verdant Tree Farm will get you set up. Listen. Verdant has three locations. It makes it really easy, really easy to find a Verdant tree here in Houston. You can go out to West Houston on Barker Cyprus. You can go to the Heights where Yell Street comes into Inner

State. Right there that area, there's a Verdant Tree Farm down in Pearland on Broadway Street, just a few blocks away from the Killing Steakhouse. There is a Verdant Tree Farm there. Now. They have a wide variety of trees. They have excellent selection of palm trees as well. By the way, but if you want a fast instant tree seven hundred gallons, they can sell you trees up to seven hundred gallons. You can go in take them

a picture. You can sit down with them and go, hey, what tree would go well right here in this location, and they can talk to you about that. You pick the tree, you tag it yourself, they bring it to your house, they plant it, and if they plan it, they guarantee it for one year. Now, you're not going to do better than that. This is called Verdant Tree Farm and that's the website Verdant

Treefarm dot com. Talk to them. I was out a while back looking at some of the trees and things they had coming in and just visiting with Patrick about some of the things they had. It's a great place with a lot of great product. We're going to head out now. Let's see. Next would be the Anthony in Spring, Texas. Hello Anthony, Okay, good morning, how are you. I'm well, sir, good. I

have a question. I need to build my lawn up with soil. I had a lot of erosion from gutters overflowing, not draining properly, and I'm not sure what to put down first. I mean, eventually we want to put a small garden back where all the dirt ran off, but we look like we need to probably add at least a couple of inches of soil along that foundation and then build it out along the front yard. It's just my

front lawn. What do I put down first? And do I have to till or air rate the existing soil first, or how do I go about this? And this is St. Augustine, You say, oh, yes, sir, I'm sorry, Well, there used to be grass there. I have a couple of trees in the front yard and I've been told that they're just sucking the life out of all my grass too. So because the grass is very sparse in the area. Okay, if you need to raise the level, I would do it gradually over time. You can go out

and spread about an inch. If you can do a top soil type lend, that's truly good there. Some folks will also take a compost material and mix it with a compost or a sandy mix together and spread that out. The organic materials like the compost are going to decompose away and so that in long term they're not going to raise the level. But the soil top soil

or sand will raise the level. But you're going to do it gradually, maybe a half inch, and let the grass grow through it and a little bit later in the season, add another half inch or third of an inch, and just keep gradually bringing it up over time. That is better for the grass, unless you just want to strip it off and reside. But it's also better for the trees. If you could drop three inches of soil

over a tree's entire root system, you severely stress that tree. And we won't to avoid that, We're going to take it a little bit slower than that. Okay, Yeah, because I've got roots popping up in the lawn as I'm trying to cut whatever grass is there. Yeah, I'm running over roots everywhere. Yeah, but I mean years ago, the grass was nice and green and thick, and then just I don't know if it's just the erosion killing the grass or if it's the trees killing the grass. Probably both.

Yeah. The trees shading the grass weakened the grass, and so it's ability to fuel growth and density goes down as the light intensity goes down. So trees they don't get along. Well, they don't like each other. That's what I've got. I've got full shade until about one or two o'clock and then my house faces west, so I get full sun the rest of the day. Okay, well, Anthony, that's the best shot. I'm gonna take a little break here for the news, but that's what I would

do. And I would also seriously consider maybe doing a groundcover or something else there, because once it gets too shady for grass, it's hard to have it. Just come back and be lushing. You be with it all, right, Hey, I appreciate your call. Thank you, sir. I appreciate that call very much. We're going to turn it over to Nicky and

the news. By the way, Nikki, the news is that weeds are sprouting all over town and the time to put the pre emergence out that I haven't all I've been listening to news all day and you haven't mentioned that, and that is a critical factor that needs to be more important than all the other news that could be possibly out there. Okay, if I have time, I'll squeeze it in here. I'm sure you will. Welcome back to

the guard Line. What are we going to talk about now? I'll tell you what we're going to talk about now, talk about the things you need to be doing in your garden and your landscape. If you'd like to give us a call seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two ktrh, So another way you can go about dialing it. Driving around town yesterday, I was looking at some beautiful, beautiful blooming plants that are their spring announcers. What do we say, the harbingers of

spring? Right? Uh? And one of them is a saucer magnolia. Have you ever seen saucers? They are gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous. The saucer magnolia is a shrub slash, let's say, big shrub. We'll leave it at that, big shrub. And saucer magnolias have beautiful pink everything almost from a wine to a pink to a white colors and the flower, depending on the cultivar, mostly pink. And they just pop out in the spring on

bare branches and they have these big, old saucer like attractive blooms. They're really cool, a lot of fun to be able to have that kind of color that early in the season, and it's important, it's important to be able to do that, and that's what they look like. I've seen in some still spring blooming around town. They are easy, easy in terms of giving them a you give them a acidic soil, you give them adequate soil moisture, you get them decent sunlight, and they're going to perform well for

you, and they do, they do super well. And other spring blooming plants are on the way. You know the I was bragging earlier about the Chinese fringe tree and how beautiful they are in the spring and the way they just absolutely light up the sky with shaggy white blooms that smell so good. Red buds another good one for the spring. Some of you are fortunate enough to live in an area where dogwoods will do well for you, and that's another one for spring. And then we have all the things we can do

in our landscapes, lots and lots of things from color plants. There are annuals to color plants that are perennials, to containers. And where do you get all of this wide variety of plants. Well, if you head over to Ingented Gardens and Richmond, you're going to find a lot of wonderful plants just like what I've been talking about. They know how to put the collections together. Are the things that do well here and that are just just outstanding

in terms of performance and beauty. And Chaney Gardens has always been good at that. You know, they've been a showplace since the family has been part of that community since nineteen ninety five. And in Channet Gardens, Richmond, by the way, that's that's the garden center that if you go north from Richmond, like you're going to Katie fullsher direction, Well it's on three fifty nine and it's up there, and you've probably been there before if you haven't

worth the drive there. They're open today from ten am to four pm. So if somebody would like to head out, maybe you lift some other direction and you just have ever been to this nursery, you want to go see it? I think you should, and I think you'll be very very impressed with it because it is it's the kind of place that you want to take friends and family when they come visit. It's that kind of a showplace. And in Channi Gardens, Richmond, easy easy to get to again FM three

fifty nine. What do you need? You need vegetables, herbs, flowers. They have beautiful, beautiful containers, beautiful containers full of flowers. They have succulents, they have pretty much everything you can dream up wanting to have there at in Chenni Gardens, and I love to go. I love to visit. I love to visit with the folks there because they absolutely know what they're talking about and it's just fun. It's just a fun place to go

see. You know. I always encourage you guys that are listening to Guardline, why don't you get out in the afternoon. This afternoon be a good time to go out and visit. We have so many good nurseries here North Southeast, West Central that you can just enjoy time out and get inspiration and yeah, bring home some stuff for the soil and stuff for the for the color and the plants. This is a good time to do it, all right. I'm going to go over to Orange County and I'm gonna talk to

Greg. Hello. Greg, Hello, thanks for taking my call. Yes, I have a question about I heard you talking about like turf store weed and later. I have a property in Jefferson County that I'm building a house own and my lawn is just covered with weeds. I mean, it's been neglected for years. But I can't find that brand in my area, at least I haven't yet. But I traveled to Houston to Pasadena on Wednesdays and

I heard you mentioned a place called Shades of Texas or nitrofos. What would you recommend because I want to get a good, uh you know, product to put on the lawn to try to get the weeds. And I was wondering what you recommend. You're you're where I could get it. You're an Orange, yes, sir, I am, but I don't. I've looked online and I can't see anyone that lists a nitrofos or this church store brand. Well, I would. I would talk to the folks at Child's Building

Supply in Orange. There an ACE Hardware Child Building Supply there on sixteenth Street nor sixteenth Street. They yes, Ace is really good about carrying nitrophos products. I would expect that they have it. You may have to drive a little further up to my There's an M and D supply up in Maurysville, and of course then over Inviter in Beaumont, and there's a number of aces

out in that area. If you go to the the ACE Hardware or ACE Hardware dot Com and do their store locator, you can see all the red dots of the aces. That's where I would start looking for nitrofoss out in your area. Okay, I really appreciate it. Thank you you've met Greg. Thanks a lot. Appreciate that call. Helpe get that lawn back into shape, that is for sure. Yeah. Ace Hardware, you know forty

of them here in the Greater Houston area. Forty Ace Hardware stores. So yes, all the way out there in Orange, Texas there are Ace Hardware stores Mauriceville, vider Beaumont, Lumberton's got them out that direction and of course all over the Greater Houston area. Just go to acehardward dot com, go to the store locator. If you want me to spell it out, it's Acehardware dot com slash store dash locator. I'd just like to say, go to Acehardware dot com. You can find it. And when you're there,

you're going to find ever fertilizer I talk about. You're going to find everything you need to control insects and to carol weeds and control diseases. There you're going to find the tools that you need, the water hoses and things, and then all the cool stuff for indoor and outdoor living. And if you haven't been in an as in a while, you need to go check them out. You are going to be very surprised. And when you go to an ACE you need to ask about the ACEH Rewards program because you're going to

be there shopping. You're going to be going back to get your stuff time and again. Well, you join that program, and you earn money on your produce, on your produce, on your purchases. So I belong. And every time I go into an ACE hardware store make a purchase, well it just goes on and first thing you know, Hey, you got some money to spend. So I would encourage you to do that when you're out shopping for ACE. Yeah, makes sense, good good place, good products,

good deals. What else do you want? ACE is a place, as they say, you're listening to garden Line and you're here to answer gardening questions. I'm gonna take a little break here and give a little break for the news. But in the meantime, why don't you give us a call? Call Josh at seven one three two one two kt r H and he will get you on the board. You will be first up when we come back. All right, folks, we're back for our last segment today on

Garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter, and uh, I don't know it's rodeo time. So let's just say I'm back in the saddle again. Here we go. Uh. I want to remind you that this that this coming. I'm sorry, Josh talking to meut here. This coming Saturday, I'll be at the Anti Rosing Porium because they will be having their Spring celebration that is March ninth, for those of you who like to look at the calendar, March ninth, Saturday, Saturday. After the show, I'm

gonna head that way. They're gonna have speakers, artisan markets, food trucks. They're gonna have of course, they got the plants. They got native plants to perennials. Yep, they're not just roses. Oh boy, are they ever roses. But they're not just roses. They have tools and fertilizers and gift items and everything. But I'm going to be there giving a talk on Saturday. But this is a two day deal of the Spring Celebration March ninth and March tenth. I hope you will come out to see me.

Listen, if you haven't been out there before, this is your permission to head a sent to the Antique rosen for him. You are gonna love that place. It is just fun and it's a cool drive out in the countryside. By the way. You might swing by blue Belt and pick up some ice cream. I don't know if they're open on Saturday or not, but if they are, that would be a good idea. Always good to get blue Belt, the national ice Cream of Texas. All right, we're going

to go to Champions and talk to Glenn. Hello, Glenn, Hey, s get. I know I'm late doing this, but I'm gonna put down the barricade today before it rains, okay, and then tomorrow or Tuesday I'll put down the Nightrifoss green up. Okay. My question is how safe is that for dog pets? After I put that down, It's fine. You're

gonna water it. Don You're gonna You're gonna put it down. You can put about a half inch of water on it to move it down into the soil, because it does no good sitting up on If any granules stick to the plants, that's not doing any good. If it just sits dry on the soil, that's not doing any good. You gotta wet it, incorporate it into the surface, and that that should take care of things as far

as your pats, okay, and that's for both of them. In other words, the Imperial yeah, I know water is a barricade in, but the Imperial water in as well. Yeah, you want to because you know it's a it's a salt based fertilizer granule sitting on the surface that dissolves quickly, and that's why it's our spring green up because it immediately releases those nutrients

into the soil. So yes, I would do if I we do both, you could do go through and do one and go reload your fertilizer hopper, change the setting, do the other one, and then add the half inch of water and you're done with the whole thing. Okay, that's fine. Now my last question is I plan on thirty days from now putting down the Nelson's whetenator that works. No, No, weedonator is for killing existing broad leaf weeds, and those things are already starting to bloom and go to

seed, and you want to get that down sooner rather than later. The weedonator is going to be you know, the hen bitt and chick weed and clover and all those cool season weeds. That's what you're putting the weedonator down. For but it also has fertilizer in it. So you can go one way, you can go the other, but don't don't do all the above together. Okay, So if I'm going to do the Wheatonator, don't do the Imperial. I'm my hesitation as I'm trying to think through you let me

put this weight you could. The Imperial is going to release, It's going to dissolve and release right now. The weed Nator is going to gradually feed over the next two or three months. So normally I would say don't put two fertilizers down at the same time. I think in this case you could get by with that and do it. Normally I would tell you we'll wait on the next fertilizer, but you got to it's important to stop the weeds

that are going to sprout with the barricade, so don't delay. It's important if you're going to kill existing weeds to go ahead and in that case put the the If you're using the weed inator, that's what that would be for now one alternative, and I know these are all good products, and you go the direction you want would be to shift over to the Nitrofoss's blue bag

instead of the Imperial red bag. That way, you would get the fertilizer that's immediately released now, and you would also get the broad leaf products sticking to the weeds that would work now. So you would do beat ad I'm saying, barricade plus the blue bag from Nitrophoss, and you can do all that now. You can come later and do the gradual release products, you know, like the weed Nator for example, like uh, you know, well, there's there's just a lot of different options out there, and then

Nelson Plant Food makes the weed Nator. They also make a slow release, slow and easy uh type product that's going to feed your your lawn over time. We would do that probably starting in sometimes mid to late April, if you've done the spring green up already. Okay, so so do the blue bag now with the barricade. With the barricade, yes, April, you could do the Weedonator then or at that point in time, sir, I would I would just shift over to a different product from Nelson's. Okay.

That's that's that's why I was saying the Okay, That's why I was saying it. The way idea Nelson's they have a number of different products. So the gosh. I just went blank on the name. It just went out of my head. Slow and easy, I said it a minute ago. Slow and easy. Yeah, I wouldn't. If you're going to wait and delay, I wouldn't do the weed and eat. I'd do the slow and easy. Okay. If you go online to my website, you can see all the options right there, and it's all laid out. It's gardening with

Skip dot com. Okay, yeah, very good. Well, thanks a lot, Skip. Appreciate it all right, you bet, thank you very much. I appreciate that. The folks there at Nelson by the way also have a product called Genesis. Have you heard me talk about that before. I I've used it myself. Here's what you do with Genesis. You mix it in to the soil you're transplanting into. So I was bumping up some tomatoes and peppers and I just took you know, I had my little plants.

I was gonna move them to bigger containers, and it takes some extra soil to do that. I mixed the Genesis into that soil mix. So as the roots go out they find the nutrients they find. It's got beneficial bacteria and endo and Ectomycoriza in it as well, so it's like root heaven. I mixed it in that watered it in, and my gosh, they took off. This is a transplanting mix. It's a six one three and

it's called nutros Star Genesis. You buy a little canisters, plastic canisters, and it works really really well, and it enhances the biology of the soil. And it's something you ought to consider. I mean, if you're doing any kind of transplanting, those of you putting in containers and bringing home flowers and vegetables and herbs that container soil, just mix some nutri Star Genesis in it. Follow the label and you will find that the response is very soon

and very impressive. When I did it myself, I was I was really surprised at just how well it worked. We're going to go out to Conro now and talk to Mary. Hello, Mary, Hello, how can we help? Answered my question? But I got a little bit confused too. Okay, I can't find that weed mate or anywhere. And I know you said it was Nelson's, Yes, plant food, but I'll look at I'll look up Nelson's plant Food, and I don't see it. Maybe I don't

know well, okay, here's what you need to do. If you just go out to Ana Plants on the on the on your side of Montgomery out there, they're going to have it there. Call them first, make sure that it hadn't sold out on them or something. But call them and you're going to find it. Uh that that will be probably one of the easier ways to just just find what you're looking for. There are some ACE hardware stores. We don't have any right there where you are located. You have

to come down in the Houston area to find it there. But I would just go out to an a that's not that far from you. Plus it's fun to go to Ana. Okay. The other thing is, can you can you tell me what root rot is? And I don't know that I have it, but I can plant dying and I'm I don't know how you

tail. Root rot is typically a fungus, can be a bacteria, and the soil that moves into the plant kills the roots and they just turn into mush and dye and then the plant can't get water our nutrients because they lost the roots. What kind of plant do you have? Oh? Well, I mean it's I've got about I've got about fifteen seconds for they start playing the endo show music. Okay, shrubs and Camellia. Okay, so yes

you can. You're old. You know they're old. Okay, well you probably don't have root rot, but just watch that you don't keep them soggy wet. When it's a soggy, soggy wet, that's when root right tends to move in. And so there are if you start to get it, there are some things you can drench into the soil to find it. But I don't want you going out buying and playing that stuff until we know you've got that problem. And it really comes down to good drainage. Okay,

all right, thank you. I don't think I have that problem. I bet you don't. I hope you don't. I bet you don't. Thank you, Mary. I appreciate the call. All right, Bubby, Just one more reminder. Where am I going to be next Saturday? Antique rosing for him. I'll be there for the big shindig they call it the Spring Celebration. I'm going to be there from twelve to two. So when I finished the show here, I am making a bee line. If you see

anybody flying by down two ninety. That's me on the way to antiqu rosing for him twelve to two. I'll be giving a talk on beneficial insects. Do you want to learn about what beneficials are? Do you want to learn how to attract them and keep them in your landscape? Come see me. It's gonna be fun. Plus, there's a lot more going on at antique rosing for him that day