Veggie and Herb Gardens

three two one two fifty eight seventy four. I've got a number of things I would like to talk about today. I'll start doing that. Uh. First of all, with all this rain we've had, we're seeing a number of things going on in the landscape and our gardens and whatnot. First of all, in the lawn it has just rained and rained and rained so much that the lawn grass is stayed wet. You know, I'm always telling you don't

overwater your lawn. Don't overwater your lawn. Most people water too little, too often, meaning they squirt the lawn every day with a little bit of water. It doesn't soak into the soil very well because it's not a volume, and then the next day they get squirkeed, it gets

squirted again and that builds up disease. Well, rain has done the little sporting today for these last weeks, but it really hadn't just been squirt It's been a deluge and the soil is very, very wet, and by it staying wet, we're seeing an increase in gray leaf spot on Saint Augustine, which is Saint Augustine being the primary long grass in our area. So gray leaf spot looks like if you're standing back just kind of looking at your lawn, you see leaves or grass blades that is

that are very yellow. They're all yellow, and as you get up closer and look, you see that there are spots on those leaves, fairly rounded, roundish type spots oval to a round that are black, and that is gray leaf spot. And what it does is that if you get enough spots on a leaf, it will cause the

entire leaf to die and turn yellow. We also are seeing a little bit of summer rhizoctonium, which, other than the fancy word rhizoctonia, basically it's like the disease that causes brown patch, which is now called large patch in the fall, those big round circles you're familiar with. There are several versions of that disease, strains of that fungus, and there's some that can occur in fairly warm weather.

Although we've had a nice break from the heat here, we're seeing some of that too, and it doesn't necessarily show up as circles. It could, but it just shows as kind of a melting away of the foliage of the grass plant. And so what do we do well, The best way to manage diseases is to treat before they appear, to prevent them. Once you have leaf spots, once you have rotted leaves that are shriveling up on the plant, you can spray, but all that is going

to do is prevent additional infection. So our goal would be to whenever we know we're having a lot of problems, we can do some preventative sprays. In general, I don't like to recommend preventative sprays because it just just spray, sprace bray all the time to prevent what might show up. But that's what you're seeing in your lawns. I can tell you this. If you just keep mowing and we get some sunshine and the rain stops, which apparently it is now we're going to have a nice sunny week,

then those diseases are gonna go away. Because diseases are very connected to environmental conditions, temperature and moisture being the two big ones. So my suggestion at this point would be just to hold off, and it's probably going to come right back and be fine. That's what I expect. There are some fungicides that you can use, and if you're dealing with an issue and you need a recommendation, you can give me a call. We'll talk about those.

But just to just to kind of summarize, you're probably seeing some of that you can spray to stop additional infection. I don't think we're going to get a lot of additional infection, so I myself probably would hold off being the best recommendation. All right, Well, let's see, we're gonna also talk this morning about some things that we're seeing

in the vegetable garden. I mean, I don't know how many of you vegetable garden the you know, we can grow a lot of wonderful, wonderful vegetables that are helping us to have a healthier life. That's the bottom line. Help them. First of all, getting out in the garden and growing things helps you have a healthier life. Just being in nature, having that relaxed enjoyment of seeing things grow, and just having success, which you can have. That is important.

But when you eat those fresh vegetables, then you definitely have a healthier life, and so do your kids. By the way, if you are a gunna garden, if you're thinking about gardening, if for no other reason, do it for your kids. When kids grow up growing vegetables, they're more likely to eat vegetables. And when they eat vegetables instead of a junk food that permeates our lives, they

have a much healthier life. Most of the big disease issues we deal with as human beings here in America are related to our diet in one way or another. That is a huge elephant in the room that we can fix very easily. So anyway, grow your own vegetables. They'll be fresh, they'll be what do we we used to say, fifteen hundred miles fresher. In other words, they didn't get shipped from California or Florida or wherever to here.

might want to grow and then some. So if you decided, well, I want to grow tomatoes or I want to grow squash or whatever, you can download or just stared at it at this green or printed out or whatever you want to do a free, multi page, full color publication that will help you do that. And I would highly recommend that that's a good place to start, and it's free. Can't get any better than that. But vegetable gardening is

not difficult if you follow a few simple principles. First of all, we want to make sure and provide vegetables lots of sunlight in order for a plant to grow, it needs energy in the form of carbohydrates, and carbohydrates come from the leaves when the sun shines on them. That's the leaves of the food factory of the plant. We talk about fertilizers is plant food Well I even say that term, but technically fertilizers are not plant food.

Carbohydrates or plant food. Fertilizers provide the building blocks for the leaves to create carbohydrates. So technical point there, but I think worth noting. So whenever our vegetable gardens get good sunlight, they are going to have plants that thrive better and produce better. Within all the vegetables you'd want to grow, you can sort of divide them up into fruit, roots, and leaves. That's a general division with a few exceptions.

So anything that produces fruit that would be tomato, a squash, a pepper, an eggplant, a green bean, those are all fruits. Or anything that produces roots like a carrot, a turnip, a radish, a beet, those are all roots. A sweet potato those need the most sunlight because it takes a lot of sugars, a lot of carbohydrates to produce those fruits. If it is just a leafy grain for example, lettuce, spinach, kale, and collars. Or how about in the summertime, leafy greens

would include malabar, they would include something called molokia. Uh, there's even an edible person lane that can be a leaver. Those can grow in less sunlight because it doesn't take as much carbohydrates to produce the parts we're eating the leaves. That doesn't mean they want to be in shade. It just means that they will grow in less sunlight than the roots and fruit vegetables will. All right, we're going to take a little break after those comments. If you'd

like to give us a call. Seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Welcome guard Line. Good to have you this morning. Glad you're listening. And hey, if you've got some gardening questions you would like to talk about. Maybe you've never gardened before and you would like to get going on something. We make some suggestions for that, and just give us a call. Seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. When we went to break, I was talking about lawns. I was

talking about vegetable gards. I want to go back to the lawns. And make a couple of comments about that. Regarding our lawns in the summertime is when we have our main lawn insects that we have to deal with, and that would be things light grubs and chinch bugs, and as we get later in the summer, especially the sod webworm that tends to come and go some years almost nothing, some years really really bad infestations. You just never know what's coming. But Night of Fuss makes a

product called Bugout Max and it is a granular. You put it out on your lawn, spread it like you would your fertilizer, and then watered in and the chemical on it goes into the thatch and soil region and anything in that region it's going to kill it. And that would be like ants fire ance crawling through it would be killed. Fleas. Did you know there are fleas in your lawn if you have pets. If you have pets with fleas, as your dog goes outside, the fleas

fall off. There's they lay eggs, they hatch out into larvae that make pupa and then become adults and then hop back on the next train coming by train being your pet. And so you can control them in that stage in the lawn. That's important. Part of controlling fleas and ticks is to deal with them outside as well as dealing with them inside or on your dog. But anyway, chinchbugs, we should be seeing chinchbugs pretty soon here, especially as it gets hot and dry, which it will at some point,

and then sideweb worms too. Night fussbugot Max does all that. It takes about forty eight hours and it's pretty much done. It's work, and then it sticks around through the summer season. It doesn't just go away fast, and so that's going to cover you. One application now will cover you through the rest of the summer season. So anyway, I think that is something you might be aware of. Night Fuss products,

by the way, are widely available. We can find those things at all kinds of sources throughout the Greater Houston area. Your feed stores, your ACE hardware stores, your Southwest Fertilizer examples, those very widely available, easy, easy to find products like the bug out Max. You know, we're always rows on the lookout for what's going on in our gardens and our landscapes. I think that there's a saying that the

best fertilizer is the footprints of the gardener. Now what does that mean, Well, it basically means is for your plants to grow and be successful. When you're out there working among the plants or just walking among the plants in the garden, you notice things, you can see things to take care of and to do, and that's what that means. I would say the best pest control is

the footprints of the gardener too. If you wait until pests have hit a major outbreak and there's fifty percent of the foliage has gone on some plant that they chewed up, it's a little late to get benefits. Even if you killed all the pests at that stage, you still have a plant with half the leaves. It needs to do what it's doing. So heading out and checking things and watching things. You know, if you see an area of your lawn that's looking like it needs water,

and you water it and it doesn't respond. Back, drop down on your knees there, look among the grass blades and the that's and the runners on the ground for little black and white bugs about maybe an eighth of an inch long. That would be chinchbugs, And that would be one of the examples. They typically start at a curb a driveway, a sidewalk, some other some type of a masonry like structure that's in the full sun too. That's typically where we see the first of the chinchbugs

when we're going to have an invasion. But anyway, get out, check your plants, your lawn, make sure that you are staying on top of things so you can catch it early. When you catch a problem early, that allows you to be able to use safer products, some of the organic products, some of the super low talks products work best when pests are in a younger stage. They have more effectiveness at that stage than when let's say a stink bug, for example, is already an adult stink bug. It has

wings and it's flying all over the place. It's harder to kill those, and so the earlier you catch things, the better off you're going to be. You probably have heard me talk about a product that I really love and that is Medina's has to Grow Supergrow plus. I know that's a lot of words. Medina makes a has to grow line regular has to grow. There's has to grow for lawns, which is an excellent product for use in fertilizing your lawn. The ratio is ideal for lawn fertilization.

And then there is also has to grow super Grow Plus that's a newer one. It's a sixteen zero two and the zero's okay. Most of our lawns have all the phosphorus that they need. That's why it's always recommended. It's a very low number on the bag. But this one is a bottle. It's a quart size. You hook it to a garden hose, you spray. It takes about ten minutes to cover the four thousand square feet a bottle of supergrow Plus will cover and it will give

you a really nice quick boost. It's got a little bit of slow release in it as well, but it has things like molasses and humic acid that stimulate microbial activity. It's got a keylated form of iron which helps the yellowing areas turn green. It's got seaweed extract in it as well. It's just a good concoction to provide your lawn a boost. And so if you got a lawn that's struggling in some areas, hook up a bottle of Supergrow Plus to your garden hose and go over that

area and see the results you get. I'd say go over the whole lawn. But it's a great way to get a good quick boost to your plants. And Medina has many products in the market. Of course, supergrow Plus, I would say, their newest one, to my knowledge, is formulated to promote and to enhance the plant growth there in your lawn. Our phone number if you like to give us a call and ask a question on guard Line is seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight

seventy four. By the way, if you're looking for supergrow Plus, it's it's widely available and a lot of kinds of places. You're going to find it at feed stores. You're going to find it at garden centers. You're going to find it at ace hardware stores. You're going to find it at places like Southwest Fertilizer. They have it there. Of course,

they always have everything there at Southwest Fertilizer. I don't know, if you've never been in the place, you need to go just to see, because you'll go, oh, I didn't know I could get that right here. I didn't know that was even on the market. Southwest Fertilizer carries every product that you could possibly need. If you hear me. If you hear any product name come out of my mouth on garden line, it's going to be at Southwest Fertilizer.

Because that is how Bob does things. He stays on top of things and when something new comes out, he gets it. We talk pretty often actually about new products and what was working, what we're seeing on the market, and he just stays up the date on it. So and also if you need tools, eighty foot wall of tools at Southwest Fertilizer. And I always am promoting this one because I talked about a long time ago about

these folding kneeling benches and they are cool. I mean that, first of all, they'd make a great garden gift for anybody who's a gardener in your list, and especially anybody north of forty which somewhere. Do you remember the first time you woke up in the morning sore and you didn't know why? Sorry, I started to laugh. I've been there, done that. Well, when you're gardening and you go down on your knees to do something, stand up, walk across you and go down on you, up and down and

up and down. You wake up the next morning in the pre natal position, not able to get out of bed. This folding kneeling bench is nice because you unfold it, it clicks into place. You sit on it and you can do work down lower real easily. And if you need to kneel down, you just turn it upside down and the legs become handles and you go down on your knees do your work, and when you get ready to get up, you just grab those handles, those legs handles, and you stand up so easily. And I'm telling you

it will change your gardening life. I love that product, and Bob's got it there at Southwest Fertilizer, by the way. They're on the corner of the Seet and Runwick in Southwest Houston. If you want their website, it's Southwest Fertilizer dot com. They're open today. If you need to get out there and get something too, like that kneeling bench.

Check it out. That is one of the tools that one went from I almost hadn't even heard of them to definitely and the top five tools I have of all my gardening tools, that that is in the top five because it just is that important, it helps that much. All right, Well, we're hitting another heard break here for the news. I will be right back if you'd like to call in. We got an open board and you could be the first up. Seven to one three two pine two kt rh. Good Sunday morning, So glad to

have you with us here on Garden Line. We are here to answer your gardening questions, to help you, as I like to put it, have a more bountiful garden and a more beautiful landscape. That's what it's all about. You know, a lot of people garden as their number one hobby, and then there are a lot of people who dabble in gardening here and there, and then there's folks that think I can't do that. I tried to

grow a plant once and I killed it. Well, don't worry about that, because I like to say, there is no such thing as a brown thumb. There is just an uninformed thumb, and we informed thumbs here on garden Line. And as you inform a thumb, it gets greener and greener and greener. That's how it works. Because listen, it's not rocket science. It's biology. It's plant life, okay. And if you follow some simple principles Number one, preparing the soil. Number two, putting a plant where it wants to grow,

the amount of sunlight it wants to grow. In making sure that's good drainage, choosing plants that want to do well there, and then providing general care, you will find that your thumb is getting greener and greener as you go along. The reason Grandma seemed to have a green thumb is Grandma just need to do the right things. That's the bottom line. There's no magic in this. There's no magic in this. And listen, there is also no failing. Stick with me here for just a minute. You don't fail,

you give up. That is how gardening goes south. You give up. Everybody loses plants. Everybody has seasons that don't do as well as others. Everybody learns things the hard way here and there. But as you continue to learn and to grow, it just gets better. So if you tried before, try again. Give us a call anytime. We are here to help, and we absolutely I tell you this can help you have success with what you want

to grow. So a famous horticulturist once said, to be a good horticulturist, she got to kill a lot of plants. And I have remembered that through the years of the decade since I heard that, and it is so true. It is absolutely true. Don't be afraid of losing things. Landscapes and gardens are like etches sketches. Remember the etch of sketch. You had two knobs and one went up and down to draw, and the other one went left and right to draw, and inevitably your brain would not

click right and you'd do the wrong thing. And now you've messed up your drawing. What did you do? You took the etch a sketch, you held it upside down over your head, and you shook it and when you put it back down, it was a blank slate. We have things called rototillers that help us get a blank slate when we need to fix something. Seriously, though, we can always go in and redo and improve and it

just gets better, it does. It just gets better. So anyway, our phone number seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four give us a call. We're going to go to the phones now and talk to James in Spring. Welcome to guarden Line. James.

Service dot com. Le me, okay, guarden line listener and get you up, you know, up in the line there towards the front of the line because he stays busy and so just make sure and let him know your guardline is he does put those up toward the front of the line.

but has these beautiful, typically pink blooms there. There's variations there, but we used to call it, or we do, called the barometer plant. That's one of the little slang words for it, because it tells you, you know, whenever we get rainfall and stuff like that, you see you see the plant burst out in blooms, and boy is it looking good around town? Is it's a beautiful pink color. I've grown those numerous times. It's a native plant. It

grows wild. You head out, you know, past San Antonio to Uvaldi and you're going to see it just as a wild brush out that way. But breeders had brought it in and made a nice plant out of it. And as long as you give it good drainage. It does not want to be in a swamp. But if it has good drainage, it will perform well. And I like the way that it just comes into bloom. Some people share it to make it boxy, which is what, for some reason we want to do to all these shrubs.

You shouldn't do that. You should do some just selective pruning to keep a kind of more natural mounded shape and it looks a lot better and it blooms a lot better by the way I saw it. Plants for All Seasons. Plants for All Seasons on High FM two forty nine Tomball Parkway. It's just north of Luetta. If you're going north for a Tomball you exit Luetta crossover Luetta. It's on the right hand side. But Plants for All Seasons has a bunch of those there, and they just

look really, really good. The nice thing, well, one of the nice things about Plants for All Seasons is they're always going to carry plants that will grow here, that will perform here. And they also are very knowledgeable, and so folks that have green thumbs you probably already know about Plants for All Seasons. It's a go to place. If you have a brown thumb and want to turn it green, well, all right, go to Plants for All Seasons and they'll help you do that. They'll provide advice,

they've got great products. They just are true lawn and garden experts at Plants for All Seasons. Here's a phone number two eight one three seven six sixteen forty six two eight one three seven six one six four six, or just go to the website Plants for All Seasons dot Com. Simple as that. But check out when you go by there, check out their Texas Sage. It's also called snizo ce n i z o. That's another name for it. Remember how remember the song from Gene Audry

Back in the Saddle Again. In fact, well let's play that for our next bumper song. Back in the Saddle Again. He sings about the sage in bloom smells light like perfume, deep in the heart of Texas. I love that, all right there, but I digress. Well, we're here to answer your gardening questions and help you have success. And we've been talking about a number of things today, like what's going on in the lawns, what you're expecting to see a disease and insect wise. Right now, now is the

time in the vegetable garden. Earlier trying to talk you into having a vegetable garden. Now is the time to be planting some of the warm season crops for fall. So if you want a fall tomato planting, you need to get it in in July. This is a time

to get it in. Sooner is better than later. You can plant pepper still, you can plant eggplant still, you can plant coming up here typically I'll do this more in August, but I'm planting things like cucumbers and summer squash for example, like zucchini and yellow squash, putting all those types of things in. As we get a little further into August, we're putting in potatoes for a fall crop. The regular potatoes you can plant for a fall crop

in those seasons. There's plenty of information. There's lots of good information online here locally in Houston for different groups that have their planting schedules for vegetables. So it makes it easy to stay up on things. If you have thought about ground vegetables, but you're thinking I don't own a rototiller and I don't have a back forty to till up. I've got a yard and I don't want to till it up. Then just there's other ways to

do it. And when we come back from this next break, I'm going to talk about some of the secrets of excess in growing vegetables in containers. I'll be right back. Welcome back to garden Line. We're back in the saddle again and ready to take your gardening questions. If you have a question, give us a call seven one three two one two k t r H seven one three two one two kt r H. We'll be happy to

address it. And I said before I went to break that I would when we come back, I would talk about gardening in containers, vegetable gardening specifically, But this applies to a lot of types of gardening in containers. So what are we going to suggest for that? Well, first of all, remember when you put a plant in a container, it's entire access to moisture to nutrients is from the soil that's in that container. In the ground outside. It can send roots far and wide and reach a huge

lume a soil to get moisture and nutrients from. So if it gets a little dry, it's not going to be as effected in a container. If you've got a pretty good sized plant and the containers a little on the small side, maybe by the end of the day it's already in drought stress on a hot, sunny summer day. So what we need to do is give the plants as big of a container as we can practically give them.

They do better in larger containers. Now their exceptions to that. Certainly, with the seasons changing, the container size won't be as big as it would need to be in summer to supply it. But you don't want to have to remember to water. And I've had containers that were small enough to where I was watering twice during the day just to keep the plants going well. So container size is important.

Quality container soil is also very important. You want a soil blend that is going to drain well but still hold moisture adequately to supply the plant. Good nutrition is important. Remember the only place that plant can get all the twenty plus nutrients it needs is out of the soil in that small, confined space of a container. So providing

quality fertilizer and gradual amounts over time. You can do that with small applications of fertilizer, or you can do that by providing a slow release fertilizer that releases gradually over time for you. But those are keys. The last thing is sunshine. Set your containers where it gets the right amount of sun. If your plants struggle in the blazing heat of summer, then give a morning sun with

some afternoon shade. If you can find a spot around the property like that, that is another tip that can help you have success. But you can grow almost any vegetable in a container that you can grow in the ground. There are very few exceptions, and with crazy sized containers you can even take care of those exceptions. But it's not that difficult to do. And I think it just really an enjoyable hobby to get out to garden to grow things you haven't grown before. And so there you go.

We're going to head out to the phones now and go to Spring and talk to Barbara. Hello, Barbara, welcome to garden Line.

is going to sink. Just the fact that they've loosened it up by grinding down into it. It's fluffing up the soil to do that. And that soil is going to sink anyway. And then if it also has wood in it, it's going to decompose away and sink even more. So leave it or mound it up a little bit like a picture's mound. Leave it mounded up a little so that when it does sink, it ends up more close to level.

even worse, a dark hardscape like asphalt. You know, it gets blazing hot. Well, soil is dark, it absorbs the radiation from the sun and it heats up too much, and plant roots anywhere in the top three inches are really struggling to even survive in that kind of temperature. When you put a Louisiana excuse me a Landscaper's pride, a black velvet melts down, beautiful naturally dark multch a

hardwood ultch down which is shredded hardwood. A pine bark mults down, which is a very resistant to decomposition malts. It sticks around for longest. Most popular one pine bark cedar mault cybers molts. All of those from Landscaper's Pride Landscaperspride dot com. Keep your soil most wherever sunlight hits the soil nature points a week and the summer sun gets the soil too hot for those roots up near their surface, especially for shallow rooted plants like our vegetables,

our flowers and our ears. All right, well, enough of that, we're gonna be talking about dirt for a while. We're gonna go to a break. Our phone number is seven one three two one two k t r H. I'd like to be the first ones up when we come back from break. That would be a good time to call and get on the boards. I also want to remind you that if you go online, my schedules are on my website, and that would be gardening with Skip

dot Com. Gardening with Skip dot Com. There you'll find the lawn care schedule and the lawn Coast Disease and read out and skip paper everything you need to know and they're free.

how you doing this morning? Good? Very good? Thank you.

But the one app that I find very helpful is Google Chrome, Google Lens, l E N S. And so if you have even on an iPhone, if you have the Google app there, when you go to it, there's a little square with the Google colors, you know, those primary colors, and if you click on it, you can either use your phone when you're looking at a plant to do the same thing, or you can go find a photo that's in your photos and it'll do that

and it'll get you. I found it to be pretty accurate, especially if you if the picture really shows the plant you're talking about. You know, I keep point it at the woods because there's a plant in there somewhere. You want. It's not going to know what you're looking for. You've got to take the picture of the plant.

guys have got to try these things out. Malcolm just mentioned the little eye at the bottom right of the screen if with an iPhone, but whether you have an Android or an Apple device, you can use Google lens also, and it's just just if you do a search for it, you see what the little emblem looks like. But all Google emblems have those primary Google colors in them. But it's a little square almost like a little TV set

kind of thing. Uh, And it works super well. And for those of you on Android that don't have the iPhone with the little eye lower case eye on the bottom, Google lens is definitely one you need to be using. It works very very well. All right, you're listening to garden Line. We are just enlightening and enlightening and enlightening this morning on things related to plants. Seven one three two one two KTRH. That's our number. If you'd like to give us a call, we look forward to talking

to you. If you've not fertilized your lawn this summer, I would recommend you consider the Nitrofoss Superturf product. Superturf is the silver bag from Nitrovas that makes it so easy. In fact, I can't think of another fertilizer product that I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot of them

that is in a silver bag like that. But I can tell you this round the Greater Houston area, if you see a silver bag that is Nitrofus Superturf and super Turf's designed to release the nitrogen slowly over time, and it's going to feed all the way up until it's time for your fall fertilization of the lawn by feeding gradually and reduces you're mowing up to twenty five percent.

And it also avoids promoting disease problems like we were talking earlier today gray leaf spot, or when cooler fall weather arrives, we'll be talking about large patch or brown patch. Those are promoted by flushes of nitrogen. Super turf gradual

release helps avoid that. And you can find super turf all kinds of places, a number of places, for example, ACE Hardware, a Memorial Drive, ACE Hardware City, it's called on Memorial Drive, the Kingwood, Ace Hardware, or perhaps there's an Oh, the one in Katie and the one in oh my gosh, I just want blank out there, Plantation, Ace, Adam Richmond Rosenberg. They all carry nitropostproduct. In fact, ACE Hardware in general is going to carry these nitroposs products

like superturf. They have an excellent supply. And while I'm talking about a ACE Hardware always has everything you need to provide a beautiful garden and a bountiful landscape if you want to enjoy the outdoors, and that includes the patio where you need one of the nice barbecue products that they have there at ays like Trager, like Big Green Egg, like Weber, they have that there, a string of lights to create that ambiance around an outdoor sitting area.

They have that there. But all the fertilizers, all the pest control, weed control, disease control products. Right now, we just had gully washers of rain coming through and when that happens, fire ants to escape the excessively saturated soil build their little mounds up. You see the little piles of dirt showing up in the air. I say they push them up. That's not really pushing, but you get the idea that's going to happen. I've already got two that popped up in my yard. I did not know

I had fire ants. I just I didn't know it. I hadn't seen them. And after the rains, I see where they are. Now, well, what am I going to do. I'm going to put a bait product out in. Ace Hardware carries those bait products. So go to Ace Hardware find the supplies you need. There's forty stores in the Greater Houston area. Just go to Acehardware dot Com find the store locator and it's as simple as that. Well,

it's time for us to take a break. If you'd like to get on the on the board seven one three two one two KTRH And when we come back, Elizabeth, you'll be our first stup doctor Guardline. Good to have you with us this morning. We are going to head straight out to the phones and talk to Elizabeth in Oak Forest. Weokome the garden line.

weed and all the stuff or Johnson grass. But how do you suggest we combat this stuff? Because I moved temporarily and took my pot plants with me, and by hockey, I accidentally transferred some cats claw to that yard, and I spent a lot of time trying to kill up there.

brush killer. Those typically have Triclo peer in them. If you take Triclos straight and get you a little foam brush from hardware store, you know that little the kind that have a little wooden handle that they use for painting, but it's a piece of fuel on the end, and dip it in the product straight and paint that on the green stems down near the ground. Do about a foot up and down on the green stems everywhere you see it. It will soak in if they're a little slick.

Sometimes it helps to put a little bit of oil mixed in with it. Some people will use he drops the diesel oil, but that's just to make it stick. The oil is not to kill the plant. But anyway, it works on almost every woody thing I've ever tried, even Chinese tallow, which is hard to kill with herbicides, but just painted on so we're not spraying things everywhere and killing other things you don't want to kill. But

I would do that and it'll translocate down. If this is an established plant, it probably has enough underground storage tubers to where one little application of that is not going to completely kill it. You don't have to do it again. Good hand hand digging and or painting that product onto the stems, up and down the stems. Those are the two things that I would recommend, and then just be in diligent because you're going to see it popping up, just like the seed probably came with that

pot you took. You're going to see it popping up. So you just have to watch for it and shut it down before it has a chance to get established.

it's about an eight zone eight a point. I'd have to check that to be sure, but I know here it survives, and then there's no getting rid of it unless you take these measures that I'm talking about.

There's something sort of like that. And so your neighbor having some up in a tree, if the wind's right, you're they're going to give it to you.

have other plants that have wonderful features. But you know, when you put it in a blender and mix it up and pour it out, the bottom line is, don't do it because all the bad stuff that these plants bring. Remember Chinese tallow, I say, remember remember when it came in. For some of you who have been around for a few decades, when Chinese sallow came in, it was initially beekeepers. When they love it because it makes some of the

best honey. It's an excellent plant for that. It has one of the few plants that has really good, dependable fall color. Another asset of Chinese tallow, But on a balance scale, it is incredibly negative and the negatives are just outweigh the good things. It doesn't live a long time, and the landscape it recedes and it takes over. Entire Southeast Texas has had a problem with the invasive woody weed called Chinese tallow for a very long time. But

just remember that check on plants before you get them. Now, you go to a reptable, reputable nursery like the ones we talk about on Guard nine. They are not going to sell you a Chinese teleplant. They're not. But there are people that will provide them, whether sharing them with friends or I've seen you know, a little I don't know, homemade garden centers. You know, they pop up and they just sell stuff they shouldn't sell. Anyway, Just a little

warning about some of the plants. They can be invasive or they can have other negative negative effects we don't want. Well, speaking of a beautiful landscape. Piercecapes pierceescapes dot com. That's their website, and that's where you need to go because I'm going to tell you about Peerscapes. But you got to see Peerscapes, okay, And the website shows you that when you go to the website, you are going to see all the things that they can do. They can

fix irrigation systems. You got a poorly drained area, you should know it if you do, because it's rained and rain So those spots where the water just stands, it doesn't want to drain. How many times have you read a description of a plant that said requires good drainage? About ninety five percent of the plants out there need good drainage. Well, Pierce Scapes can fix that area. Do you want hard scapes? Do you want landscape lighting? Do you just have some flower beds that you want taken

care of, You want them to be beautiful. Twelve months out of the year, Peer Scapes will come out. They'll do seasonal color changes in those beds. They'll mult them, the'll fertilize them, they'll eat them, they'll check the irrigation. They offer that quarterly maintenance service as well. So the

bottom line is purescapes dot com. If you prefer to give people a call rather than you know, go to websites and things, well, here's a number two eight one three seven oh fifty sixty two eight one three seven

oh fifty sixty. All right, you are listening to Guardline and if you would like to call in, our phone number is seven to one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four, give well a call, get you on the boards and we will answer your questions that you might have. I've I've talked about a number of different things today. One thing that I have not meant well. I talked about gardening and containers and vegetables and containers.

You can also grow flowers and herbs and containers. And if there are there's different ways to go about herbs. Some people go all out. They have a they develop a beautiful herb garden that is geometrically balanced. It has a very nice design. You know, there's one called a not knot design where you have these it's like there's a knot of lines that go through the garden and plants are planted in those areas and it's so aesthetic. It's so aesthetic. You don't have to grow a whole

herb garden to have herbs. And when I come back from break, which I'm about to take here. When I come back, I will talk about growing herbs and containers. So stay tuned. If you'd like to give us a call, you can be first up when we come back. Seven one three two one two KTRH. Welcome back to guard Line. Good to have you with us this morning. We were talking before break about, by the way, our phone number

seven one three two one two kt RH. We were talking before break about growing herbs, and I was saying, you don't have to have a beautiful herb garden to grow herbs in. If you don't do that, that's fine. They're very gorgeous. You see some beautiful designs and whatnot. You can grow herbs and containers, and you can grow herbs in flower beds. You can grow herbs and vegetable beds. So let's start with the vegetable beds. At the end of my vegetable rose, I will often plant some herb.

Maybe it's chives. When chives bloom, they attract tons of pollinators. The pollinators love their blooms, and that's one reason I do it. Maybe it is a groundcover type herb like a regano or a bush like rosemary, which also has flowers, by the way, especially the trailing types. But those are just an addition so when you're out there. I used to have a row I called my tomato sauce row. It was paste tomatoes, you know, the little globe or oblong oval tomatoes. And I had a regano on one end.

I had basil on the other end. And so basically you could just go down the row harvesting, bring it in, and you were ready to go on making your pizza, pizza paste or whatever you want to create. Anyway, you can also plant herbs again, like I said, for flowers in the vegetable garden to help support pollinators. That is important. One vegetable garden I had there wasn't room for things, and I was confined, and so I wanted to save all my space for growing stuff I could eat, because

that's why I had that garden. So I used large buckets and hung them on posts on the fence that went around the vegetable garden. And I had a little drip line that went down the row, and each bucket had a little drip emetter in it and it would come on automatically. It was on a garden hose timer. And so those buckets, which remember containers need watering more often they would get watered every day with a small amount of water and they would bloom. They would hang

down there. I had herbs that could pick there, but I also was bringing in pollinators. In fact, there wasn't just herbs in it. I used some trailing flowers that have that are very attractive to pollinators and are beautiful in a ornamental type bed like a flower bed for example, or lining a path. Herbs like chives make a good product to line a path. You could use it like you would use loriope. You know how they put loriope

around beds and things. Herbs that are trailing. I mentioned to regano time is another example, and there are others would be good as a ground cover in certain areas. Maybe you just want some groundcovers to go around the bottom of rose beds. You know, as long as they get decent amount of sunlight under there, something like a regino could grow in an area like that. So I guess what I'm trying to say is recognize that herbs are versatile. Rosemary is one of the most drought tolerant

plants that we have in our landscapes. So you need a little evergreen shrub and you have good drainage. Must have good drainage. Rosemary would be an option, and there you go. You just go out there and you can pick your herbs right from your landscape. Herbs also do welling containers and containers. You can grow any kind of herb that you want to grow, as long as a container is big enough. You can have something upright in the center, like lemongrass that grows upward and makes a

very tall plant. If it was a large container, you could plant something trailing around the sides of it. Another good example is pineapple sage. It's a type of salvia with beautiful tubular red blooms that attract hummingbirds, and the foliage smells like pineapples. It's really really nice. Now I could go on and on giving you examples, but I guess what I'm saying is, let's let the herbs get out of the vegetable garden or out of the herb garden and go wherever we want them. Maybe there's just

two herbs that you care about. Maybe it's basil and rosemary. Maybe that's all you care about. Grow those. Basil loves summer heat, it loves containers, It has blooms that do attract beats and pollinators. So wherever you want to put it, go for it. As long as it's sunny and warm and well drained, Basil's going to be happy, all right. Just a few tips there on herbs. If you'd like to give us a call here on guardline, all you

have to do is doll seven one three. That's seven one three two one two kt r h. Suppose that seven one three two one two kt r ah. Well, I'm gonna while we're while we're discussing different kinds of plants and different uses for different kind of plants, I want to talk a little bit about hanging baskets. Now, you are very familiar with beautiful floriferous hanging baskets. For example, when we get to summertime, boom and Villa is a wonderful plant for hanging baskets. It's blooms last and last

and last and last. You probably provided proper care and in a good sunny spot, and it will do very well for you. Another good hanging basket plant is Scavola. Scavola is also called fan flower fan flower. Now you can get variations on color in it, but primarily Scavola is a blue to purplish, a purplish blue flower, uh, and it is very heat tolerant. I was kidding with someone recently and said you could throw scavola on a barbecue pet when you put your burgers down, and when

you opened it up, the scavola would still be thriving. Well, that's an exaggeration, but my point is it never gets too hot for scabola. It can get too soggy for scabola. If you don't have good drainage, it will rot in a heartbeat. But if you give it good drainage, it performs well. Scavola another one per Slaine, and I'm going to make it two things in one per Slaine and moss rose, which is Portulaca. Perce Lane and Portulaca have blooms that each last a day, and they are beautiful

and they come in every color under the sun. In fact, you would want to view those up close, because when you get a whole bunch of colors on one plant, then in one basket. Rather, it's good to view it up close. But that can take as much heat as Houston summers can give it. It is tough. It needs good drainage. Of course, but it's a succulent, so if you forget to water it, it's gonna be okay. You may not get the bloom production you did. It would have if you'd given it some moisture. But it's very

tough and it can take that. And I could go on and on. Don't forget there's foliage plants that can grow in containers like Dichondra are silver pony foot. It's just like the name describes. It is very silver and it trails down and it is beautiful. We have some in one of our vego beds where we have a bunch of flowers and it just looks beautiful coming over the side. Well, there's a few tips to consider. We're

going to take a break here time for that. When we come back, Robert, you will be our first up for the rest of you. Seven one three two one two kt r H. How many of your Jim welcome back to guard Line. Glad you're listening today, and look forward to visiting with you about the questions that you might have. You know, we've had a lot of storms, a lot of storms that have come through and just devastated our trees. They've knocked out our power, and a

lot of people are interested in generators right now. In fact, later next hour, early next hour, We're going to have a fellow in here that I'm going to pick his brain on all kinds of aspects of how do you find it the generator you want, what do you look for, what do you make sure of, and just kind of the overall picture, because I know a lot of people are out shopping for generators right now, trying to find one so that when the next storm hits, they're ready.

Quality Home Products of Texas is a company that can provide you with a quality generaic generator. But it's not just the fact that they provide top of the line generators. It's their service, by the way, right now, for I forget five hundred dollars off in zero percent interest for eighteen months, or if you have an old one of those portable generators you drag around and fire up. If you want to turn one of those in, I don't

care what condition is in fifteen hundred dollars off for that. Now, this is a company there's that over fourteen thousand five star reviews, seventy seven thousand homeowners. We're actually more than that here in the Houston area are a customers of Quality Home Products of Texas. When you have them come, they do everything that most companies don't do. Most companies

sub out most things. They do it all thems. They take care of all the you know, you've got to get a permit from the city or the state has certain regulations you have to They take care of all of the things you have to do. You don't have to chase all that down qualityt X dot com or phone number seven one three Quality. We're going to go to the phones now and start with Robert up here in North Houston. Hello, Robert, you.

not burn. I guess I don't know if you spray them straight without even mixing them and water, if they would burn, but nobody would do that. If you come anywhere close to the right mixture, they are not going to burn your plant. Synthetic products are typically salt based. If they are too strong, they will burn. And when you're watering the base of a plant with the soluble synthetic liquid, that's one thing. When you're spraying that same thing on the foliage, it has to be much more diluted.

And the labels on those products, if they have a label for folier application, they will give you a much diluted rate for that. In that case, you won't burn. But you've got to really watch that. You want to spray anything early in the morning when it's cool, and that gives it more time to absorb and it helps cut down on the sun baking down and contributing to burn.

There's another reason we spray in the morning. Early in the morning, there's little openings on the bottom of the leaf called stomates that are open up, and when you spray, you want to spray upward from under the plant, not just on the top. A gravity will cause the spray to fall back down on the top, but make sure you coat the undersides of the leaves because you get more uptake through there. Some nutrients go into the leaves

very readily. Some nutrients do not go into the leaves very readily, and so it's a matter of the right concentration. Spray early in the morning, spray upward from underneath the plant. And primarily we're using those folio sprays for the micro nutrients that a plant needs. The plant was designed to take up nutrients through the roots. That's the best way

to fertilize a plant. But there are reasons to use a folier spray in addition to trying to get nutrients in Okay click, could you do both of them?

ole leaves and move it to new leaves. So iron to be an example of one that you might want to do a folier application for to get a quick fix on the plant, but you still want to do the soil fertilization, and that's important. Another reason I occasionally will folier is when I'm checking for a deficiency. See there's a certain pattern that magnesium deficiency makes in plants, and it's a kind of a green Christmas tree in

the middle of a not so green leaf. And so if I think it's magnesium, I'm mix up a little EPs and salts in water at the proper rate, spray it on the plant, and if I see a response of greening, then I know, yep, that was a magnesium deficiency because that's all magnesium self, that's all that's in epsen salt. So you can use it as a test saying, oh, I need to add more magnesium to my soil too. Now, okay, well, thank you for information. I hope that wasn't confusing.

the indoor plant nutri Star, there's the color Star. They all come in jars.

things or fillip bags. You do that and it's much more economical way to buy fertilizer. U Plus, it saves the issue with that plastic all brings. So just a little tip if you love those Nelson products, they are available a jar refill stations, and if you send us an email here guard Line just some information on different places that have it'd be glad to point you to one, because I think that's a great, just makes sense, good way to go. Well, we're I hear the music. That

means I've got to shut up here pretty quick. Marty and Fairfield. Sorry, we're able to get to you this hour. If you are able to hang on, we'll get to your next hour. If you need to hang up and call back, we'll get you put to the front of the line. I appreciate you calling it. I just want to remind you that it is the time of the year when we are planning our cool season actually warm season, butchells to fall and still warm season flowers for the

fall garden. So don't stop piming just because it's getting hot.

devastating and people without power, family members of mine. Both of the last two storms where they knocked out the power seemed like they were the last one to get back on and they went like over a week each time. What happens when you got a refrigerator full of food? What happens when you have a work from home job and you got to work. You need a generator. And that's what people are doing right now. It is unprecedented the number of people that are looking for Okay, that's

enough of this. I've got to get a generator to do this. And when I look out on the market, I see a lot of products out there and a lot of companies out there, and like any industry, I don't care what it is, carpentry, plumbing, gardening, anything like that, you got people that know what they're doing or doing a good job, and then you got people that are not.

And I would like to help you as you are considering getting a generator with just some basic things that you need to know, basic things that you may need to ask the person that you're going to purchase that from. And I've asked I'm looking for an expert here, and I've asked Joey Davis from Quality Home Products to come on the show for me and let's talk about having success with a quality generator for you. Joey, are you there?

has this ever been? Has this ever been? Some doozy storms that we've had? Right with the past storm and I can't remember what they called that storm, but it wasn't a hurricane, but then Hurricane Barrel that came through. I bet you guys have noticed a little bit of interest in generators.

that can handle that kind of thing. The biggest issue was it wasn't just our clients that were calling in. You know, the majority of clients coming in and some of them leading long voice fails. They were what's called generator orphans. In other words, after the winter storm of twenty one, there were three hundred and ninety two new generator companies that sprung up in Houston.

generator are factory training, factory trained technicians. If not, your warranty is null and void from from the get go.

that you can set up a stand by generator. Chris is going to come on automatically, but you can set it up to where it prioritizes certain things in your home that you wanted to prioritize, or you can set it up to just take care of everything. So would you talk just briefly about that?

just turns off the least important item. If you have multiple things managed, a generat will turn off all of the items and then start turning them back on in thirty minutes. But literally it's the way to go. I mean, full load transfer is certainly still available, but oftentimes on even a normal sized house, you're up into what's called a liquid cool generator to.

there's nothing scary about these management of transfer systems. On my house, the only thing that I'm managing is the AC and I'll never even know that it's managed other than I designed it. That way, and the reason for that is those other two rules outside of code that we use.

you'll handle that. And so it's like the homeowner, that's a that's a big relief to know that that is just all being taken care of. And I think I like that that load management because it allows you to get a generator does what you needed to do without buying a generator that is just humongous and expensive.

folks is I've posted the garden Line Facebook page. Go to the garden Line Facebook page, and I've posted there are a lot of questions to ask, but I posted nine questions in a helpful checklist, and just look at those, think through them, and as you're out shopping for a generator, those are some of the things you need to ask people. So we'll save the time by just sending Guardline Facebook page.

It's right up there. It's very very helpful, and I appreciate you know, the knowledge and stuff that you guys bring, because I had no idea how how much information is really helpful in order to make a good decision to not only get the most out of your dollar, but to understand what is and what's not included, because you guys include things that some companies may not tell you aren't included, and then later you find out, well, you

know that that's not included in what we're doing. That would be an extra charge that makes our generator looks cheaper, but in the bottom line, it really isn't.

or off, but that does nothing for us. We want to be able to have real time conversation with generators and the only way to do that is with this cell based constant monitoring. And that is monetize for other companies.

You guys can build a bigger pad so if someone's going by with a lawnmower, the pat sticks out so you don't bang your generator and do damage that way too, And there's a lot of little small things like that that I think are important.

you know. We'll form up with two by six's, you know, an oversized pad six inches larger than the generator all around, and then let that cure break the forms off and then you have a real sturdy piece of concrete that these generators are anchor bolted too.

to you for a day. I mean, there's a lot of more information, but go to my facebook page, Guardenline facebook page, look at the questions we had here. I've got a link to Quality Home on it. If you want to, you know, save that link. I know a lot of people are buying generators right now. It is crazy the number of people that have said that's enough

these last two storms. I need a generator. And depending on what you need, and the folks at Quality Home they'll tell you, I mean, if you don't need one of these standbys, if what you're wanting to do a portable will do, they'll tell you that. But the bottom line is get your infrom so that your dollars are well spent and then when the problem comes, you've got the equipment and the setup that's needed to do what you needed to do. Joey, I've run past my break here.

Thank you, so much for being on. Sorry to have to cut off so fast now, it's very very okay.

of generators being sold right now. And I just like anything any business, you get out there and you don't know what you need to ask, You don't maybe know the things that are available or not of available, or thing you know, it's the whole deal. I hope that was helpful for you, guys. I certainly do. Uh. We are back now, ready to take your calls. Seven one three two one two five eight seven, four, seven, one

three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Give us a call and we'll visit with you about the things that are of interest to you. One of the things that happens, you know, we talked about all the rain we've been getting, and when that happens to a clay soil, especially certain types of clays types we have here, they swell up, they actually get bigger, uh, and then when it gets dry, they shrink down, getting smaller. That's why

you see these cracks in the yard. If you have you ever been out in the backyard of a certain kinds of clay soils where when it's really hot and dry, their cracks big enough to lose a small child in. I mean, that's an exaggeration, but you know what I'm talking about. That's a shrunken soil. And what happens when it gets bigger, smaller, bigger, smaller. It cracks sidewalk, It

cracks foundations, it cracks driveways. Fix my slab. Foundation repair is an X. They are experts in properly assessing and repairing a foundation. Now. Ty Strickland has been doing this for twenty three years. It's a local, small, small business. They have the experience that you want. And the thing I like about Fix my Slab and Tie is that they make sure when they tell you they're going to be there, they're on time. Secondly, they price things fair.

They're going to make sure you get a reasonable fair price for the work that they're going to do. And then finally they fix it right. You know, Tie is a native Estonian, fifth generation Texan. He lives here, he knows this area, he knows our soils. If you tell him you're a guardline listener, they'll give you a free

estimate on what it would take. Let me just say this, if you see a crack in the brick, if you see a crack in the sheet rock inside, or if doors are suddenly sticking that didn't stay before something is moved, have them come out, do that estimate, take a look at it, see what's going on and what might be needed, and then you can make your decision. But don't put it off. It doesn't get better, it only gets worse, and the issues become worse, in many cases more expensive.

So go ahead and give them a call if you see those kinds of symptoms two eight one, two five five forty nine forty nine, two eight one two five five forty nine, forty nine, or go to the website fix myslab dot com Fix myslab dot com. We've talked about a number of things today, and I was mentioning earlier that slowly fertilizers are important for the summertime because

they gradually release the nitrogen over time. So when you apply them now, they're going to feed all the way up into your fall fertilization that three months, some even four months out there are going to do that. That's not the only way that you can fertilize, though. You can take an immediate release fertilizer and you can apply it in small doses over a period of time and achieve a similar result. And an example would be sweet green.

Sweet green is a nitroposs product. It's a molasses based product, and all organic gardeners know that using molasses stimulates by providing carbon stimulates beneficial bacteria and microbes in the soil, and that's important. So sweet grain is going to dissolve away by the way. The product smells wonderful. That's what it's called sweet green, and it dissolves a way into the soil. So what I would do is. I would take a bag of sweet Green, it's eleven percent nitrogen.

I would put about half of it on now, let's say five pounds right now, and then I would wait six to eight weeks and do that again. And by doing that, you take an immediate release fertilizer and you spread it out over time. I mean, if you wanted to,

you could put it in three applications out there. But sweet grain, if you're looking for a natural based product, if you're looking for something that is going to be stimulating to the soil microbes that are in the soil, that's a product that I think you need to take a good look at. And sweet green is you know, it's widely available at a lot of different places. I mean, you're going to find sweet Green at Ace Hardware stores,

for example, Ace Hardware all over the place. It's not hard finding one of the forty Ace Hardware stores here in the area. By the way, when you're in there, if you get your sweet Green, remember that this rain is also bringing on mosquitos, and when you go into Ace, you're going to find everything you need for mosquitos too. Mosquitos it just takes some a number of few days

and they can go. Some types especially, can go through their whole life cycle from an egg to a larva, to a pupa to an adult, and now they're flying around biting you when you're trying to sit outside and enjoy your patio in the evening. Well need mosquito dunks. Those are the things we put out in water to prevent the larvae from growing up. Do you need a mosquito repellent? Do you need a fogging machine? What do

you need for that? They've got it. While you're an ace, Make suring get fire ant bait because fire ants are also popping to the surface now as they build up their soil nests in order to escape soggy wet conditions down low, and you can see where they are with a bait. You don't have to treat mounds. In fact, you shouldn't just treat mounds. You treat all the area

and your properties. You can go a wide area around amound, but those workers are out there feeding, and with a bait, the workers will bring it back, feed at the colony, feeded the queen, and it shuts everything down. They work a little slower than an individual mound treatment, but they work longer than an individual mound treatment and always start with a bait and then go to the individual treatments

for any that might have escaped the bait application. ACE has got both both the both the bait, both the individual mound treatment. They have everything you need. ACE is the place for everything you need to have a beautiful, enjoyable garden, lawn patio area so that you can get outside and enjoy what you've created out in your landscape. Our phone number if you'd like to give us call seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four and we're going to go to the phones now and

talk to Marty. Marty, welcome to Garden Line, and thanks for being such a patient caller. I know we've kind of done the yo yo thing with you, like hang on, go away, hang on, go away.

some type of soil. If you could tell me what type to put in, like an all natural garden where you can grow some flowers to be cut for the house, just seeds and daffodils and things that are pretty and bulbs and just a lot of different plants with a little walkway down the middle. So I'm wondering if you could help me define number two, number one, how to kill the large area button weed, and number two what

type of bulk soil to bring in. If you need to put me on hold for a break, that's okay, okay.

got a couple of ways that you can go. You can contact, you know a place like let's say a Nature's Way up in the Conro area, and I think that's somewhat close to you. There probably the closest place I would I would send you to. They can deliver so a mixes and just tell them I need a top soil type mix to go in that area. If you want more of a bed mix, you can certainly do that. That's going to have a lot of organic matter in it, like a rose soil would just be

one example of a bad mix. But just know that those are going to sink down over time, just like potting soil in a flower pot each year gets lower and lower as it decomposes away. So you would need to come up a little extra high. But with a top soil it would tend to hold its you know, it would tend to not sink down as much. Either way would be fine to go, so top soil I probably would. How much how high do you want to come up there?

against the fence, which is not a good plan. But anyway, that'd be another option, not the only way to do it, for sure.

There's a whole bunch of brands of glyphas now. In fact, roundup has actually moved on past glyphasate and most of the round up you see in garden centers now is a different ingredient than glyphasate. Silk all round up, confusing is all get out. But yeah, you'd have to. That's why I say glifeasay because it you know, you would

find it somewhere else. There are other things. I mean, you could spray a broad leaf weed killer in there, and then you could spray a grass killer in there, but then you're putting two products instead of just one. But if you the Virginia button weed isn't going to come back from underground, So I don't know if you have somebody that you know come in there and scrape it all off, that's another option you could do. Saint

Augustine doesn't live underground either. You scrape off the top and it's gone.

We're helping you to identify plants. We're helping you diagnose disease and insect issues, whatever kind of whatever you need, We're happy to do that. Try to point you in the right direction because you know, gardening is the best hobby that there is.

of mushrooms. And we get into fall, get a little cold front in and cools off and get some rain with it. They'll be back. It's just fungi that are growing underground that when they when conditions are right, they send up their fruiting structures, and that's what we see. There's not a good spray for them anyway. Okay, aren't very good.

off all the plants. Look at this soil. You say, well, that's dart right that you don't see what's going on there, But what's going on there is a whole nother world of microbes. Do you know that? Okay? Fun fact nerd alert fun fact. If you take a pinch of quality garden soil, you know rich gardens, put a pinch of it, a kidney bean sized pinch in your hand, you have literally hundreds of millions of microbes right there. If you

put a little pile of soil in your palm. Sometimes you see these pictures and somebody's holding a big handful of soil. We'll put a pile half that size in your palm. You have more living things in your hand than there are people in the face of the earth. But that's soakin. For just a minute, soil is alive. There's bacteria. There's a type of bacteria that are that are beneficial to plants. There's bacteria types that fix nitrogen out of the air into a formed plants can use.

There's bacteria that produce antibiotics. There's bacteria that produce and by the way, we have those as products. By the way they're available. Have you ever used an antibiotic cream on your arm? You know the the neomycin, neomix, and polysporin, those those kinds of things. Those ingredients are actually produced by soil bacteria. Now in a pharmaceutical company, they're growing them in a big vat. They're creating them in a big vat. They're not raising a bunch of bugs to

make them. But soil bacteria produce those antibiotics, that kind of antibiotic. Soil bacteria produce insecticides. That's where BT comes from. It's a naturally occurring soil bacteria. That's where the BT for mosquitoes, the BT israeliensis form comes from. That's a soul type of bacteria. They're bacteria that do all kinds of things like that. There are fungi that are constantly going through breaking down stuff no other microbe can break down.

We're talking about bone, we're talking about fingernail, We're talking about growing up against a rock and producing an acid to dissolve the rock and release those minerals. They're fungi that can do that stuff. They're the heavy lifters in the soil. They're just all kinds of beneficial organisms. Anyway, it's alive, so well, it's alive, and it does a lot of things to make itself better and it helps us to decompose organic matter.

It's just it's just really really cool stuff. All right. Well, our phone number if you'd like to give us a call, we got some time here seven one three two one two kt RH seven to one three two one two kt r H and give us a call. Be happy to visit with you about the kinds of questions that you might have.

maintaining your trees. And right now, what that might include is doing the selective pruning to help the wind pass through the trees more efficiently, to take a little bit of the stress off the trees, to make them safer during heavy winds. And that's not just somebody runn up there with chainsaw on hacking stuff off. It's knowing what you're doing that is important. And a quality arborist knows what they're doing. I can't stress enough the importance of

proper tree care. Maybe you have broken limbs, maybe you have narrow branch angles. Those are the ones that typically split. You drive around town, you see a split tree and you look at the split, and almost always right up at the top is a black area where a narrow branch angle has pressed bark against bark, and you can't It doesn't join, It doesn't heal across there, or create

tissue across there. It just becomes a black area. As those branches get bigger, they push each other apart and it's just waiting for a little push from the wind to split open. Well, Martin can work on things like that. He can train trees. He knows how to train trees, He knows how to work around trees. Are you're going to put in a slab you're a tree? Are you going to put in a trench near a tree? You need to call Martin and have him come out for all those things. I know right now, you know, storm

trimming is the big topic of the day. But he can do it all seven one three, six nine nine twenty six sixty three seven one three six nine nine two six six three Or go to his website it's Afftree Service dot com. And I guarantee you he is very busy right now with all the things that have been going on. But tell him your guardline listener, get up higher in the list. There takes you up in the list and he treats his garden line listeners very well. And when when you do that, have him come out.

Have its scheduled and let's have him take a look. He charges to come out and take a look at your trees. I can't just run around looking at stuff, you know, just because people are curious. So it costs one hundred and fifty to have him come out, But if you hire him to do work, that one fifty goes right into the work, so you don't lose it. It's not us for coming out. Uh, it goes into the work that you have him do a FF tree service dot Com seven one three six nine nine twenty

six sixty three. You are listening to garden Line. Our phone number is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. I'll be right back. Welcome back, Welcome back to garden Line. Good to have you with us. Hey, if you got a question there we have here. We've got two more segments, three more segments left to go, uh before we shut things down for the weekend until

next weekend on guarden Line. So give us a call at seven one three two one two k t r H. Seven one three two one two k t r H. This is your chance. I uh. We talked about a lot of things today. We've covered everything from lawns to trees to UH. Certainly we'd spent that time talking about generators. And you know how to make a good choice, and you know anything you purchase I don't, I don't care

what it is. You need to do your homework ahead of time, and I highly recommend that whoever you end up purchasing something from, get the facts and it always helps. My way of doing it is always I'll talk to two or three people and I'll hear something from one. Then I'll ask them, well, what do you do about that? Or what do you think about that? And I'll hear their answer, and you know, just get the facts that is important. Caveat emptor anymy know what that means Latin words,

caveat emptor means let the buyer beware. That is a good point on anything from automobiles to you name it that you purchase. Well, I wanted to spend a little bit of time today talking about summer planting. When it gets hot, the enthusiasm for gardening tends to wane. We see it every year and I can see a number of calls that come into guard Line. It varies through the year, but the fact is that summer is a time when there is still plenty that we need to

be outdoing. There's watering specifics, there's fertilizing specifics, there's planting specifics. We have plants that grow in the heat of Southeast Texas, just fine plants that when it comes to gardening, for example, there are a number of greens that I like to grow in my garden that come from areas that are as sultry, hot and humid as Houston typically places like certain parts of Africa or certain parts of maybe India or that region of the world, and you get these

things like Malabar, for example. Our black eyed peas are from that area. They grow through the summer just fine. There are Molechhia is another green that does well in that there's edible perse langes. Anyway, there are plants that can take that. When it comes to flowers, Angelonia loves heat. It just blazes through the heat. I mentioned Scavola earlier

that does well. There are things like the Helianthus calls sun believable, like unbelievable, but was sun at the beginning sun sunbelievable over a thousand blooms during the course of a season on that plant. That just blooms and blooms and blooms and blooms and blooms of blooms and blooms. Got some in my garden. It's doing well. There's pirates pearl that is a white, small, white flower, but the little short, bushy like plant just covers up with those

unbelievable flowers. Excuse me. Pirates pearl flowers. I see all kinds of beneficial insects on these two as well. Zenias do good through the summer heat. Salvias are many Salvias just bloom all the way through summer heat. Salvia is my favorite genus plant of flowering plants. It is because there's so many. They're just so many. But just because it's hot outside and it's probably get a little hotter.

Now that we get this cloud and rain that's moving on opening up the sunshine, it's still time to plant. Have to do when you plant in the summer is remember to pretend that that plant is still in its pot underground. So imagine if you bought less about a gallon plant and you set it in a hole in the ground and covered it up with soil. All the roots would be in that pot still right, and they all they would stay that they couldn't go beyond that.

When you take it out of the pot and plant it the same way, pretend that that pot is still underground. That tells you where to water. You water right at the base in small amounts. Over time, as that thing begins to grow roots out into the soil around it, you're wetting larger areas you always want to wedd a little beyond where the roots are always. But you can keep a plant alive, just like if you set that pot on your patio and went on every day and water did a couple of times. I mean you could.

You can do that. You can still plant. And there are plants that will bloom well in late summer and fall, and you ought to get some of those in. Maybe I'll talk about some of those late summer and fall bloomers here in a little bit. Right now, I'm going to run over the and we're going to talk to Bill and Conroe. Hello, Bill, Welcome to garden Line.

expect in August. So is there a different variety from Saint Augustine and bermuda that is shorter that I can walk on without hurting it. I'm not thinking of putting green quality, but how about croquet quality.

you see, the bermuda is not all gone. It'll be sprigs that come back up, and then you'll have to spray them again, and then maybe even a third time, because it's just the nature of the beasts that usually one spraying doesn't kill everything because there's some that hadn't even maybe stuck its head up yet for you to spray.

spray it. It's gonna go down, and then you're gonna see it we sprout again and you're gonna spray it and go. So you need to stay with that particular thing to knock out as much of it as you can. But I'll let y'all know when when there's publications up there and you really need to read it. I'd be great anyway. What I would you know you could do as zoisa. There are some soisas. It can be mowed very short as a lawn grass, and they do well here.

There's some type that have a little wider leaf. It's only about a third as wide as Saint Augustine, but it's it's wider than the fine textured zoysias, which have a leaf. It's skinnier someone skinnier than bermuda grass. It's a very narrow little leaf. You can mow it low if you want to mow regularly, can keep it down at a lower rate, and it makes a beautiful lawn or and it would be a good croquetlawn even if

you moted at a higher rate. There are some other good groundcovers that you could use, like uh frog frog fruit would be one, but it's not foot traffic tolerant. So if you walk around a lot you're going to it's not going to do well. So I think you if you want to switch out, switch over to one of the Zoisias palisades. There is an example of one with wider leaves. There are other good ones. Those are a variety of so idier palisades. Zoysia has a wider leaf.

I has developed it in as well as some other southern uh you know, extension services here in the south. It's widely used about the south.

I'm o mind a little bit high. I'm starting to mow it back down lower now, just to experiment and learn. But I'm a little higher and it looks like kind of a little mini meadow out there. So that's kind of cool, is often but but normally though we would we would keep it and maintain it with the regular mowing. That's the way you get density. You start fluctuating and letting it big and cutting it back, you lose density.

of all of it before you put more in. You know, one option I didn't think about this to tell Bill, but one option would just be to go to the go to the bermuda grass, to go with the dwarf bermuda. One of the semi dwarfs, not the golf course green type, but something like for a football field or for a golf course fire away. There are those. You just have to permuted, be ready for it to crawl into your flower beds. All right, we're gonna take a little quick

break for the news. Brian in Cyprus. She will be first up when we come back. Well, Frome the garden line. Good to have you back. We got another half hour left today. Looking forward to talking to you about the things that are of interest to you. You know, I was recently in a Wilbird's Unlimited store and I'm always just surprised at how the products that they have and the quality of the products that they have. Now, I've told you before I buy my garden or my garden

my bird seed there from All Birds Unlimited. And I do this for this reason. You don't get a bunch of junk in the bag cheap bird seeds. Got a bunch of red bebes. The birds kick it out, they don't want to eat it. Now, you got a weed growing on the ground underneath it. Wabirds Unlimited, they have what they put in the bag the birds want to eat. Now, maybe if it's you know, sunflower holes are going to

crack that open to get the seed inside. And you can even buy hullless mixes from All Birds where you don't even have that coming out of the feeder. Nesting super Blend one of the best mixes you can buy. They have several different mixes. You go in, you tell them, look, here's the birds I most want to attract. What is the best blend. And what they're going to do is also consider the season that we're in, because the best blend depends partially on the season that we're in. They've

got wonderful feeders. My favorite feeder came from All Birds and it is the squirrel excluding feeder. It is very effective. I took a little video of a scuare. I need to post that to Facebook too, a little video of a squirrel climbing up and they got mad a long time ago because they figured out they couldn't get in it. But every now and then they still climb the pole and you know, give it a try, but it ain't gonna work. It's a great feeder. They have bird houses.

They have you know, like a bird bath. They have all kinds of quality books and the main thing is you walk in there and no matter what you want to ask them, they're going to give you good advice. There's six Wildbirds stores in the Greater Houston area. Go to WBU dot com, forward slash Houston, WBU dot com forward slash Houston, find the wild Birds near you and go visit. Today. Be a good day to do that. You know, Wilbird's unlimited. They just it's just the place

to go. It's where you can trust what you buy and trust what you hear when you walk in the door. Let's go now to the phones. We are going to go to see who's next. Here. We have Brian in Cyprus, Texas. Hello Brian, Hello skip hire you. I'm doing well. Thanks? What's up today? Very good?

careful with it. But the product is called Celsius, which is a good name because that's like celsius, like the temperature, and it works well. You buy it in small packages and you just use it as efficiently as you can. You got some neighbors that are willing to go in with you on it, that may be another option. But it's very effective even against some of the hard to control stuff like Virginia button weed and dollar weed and whatnot. It's effective against a wide range of things.

their mass produced. It's easy to do it when you get something that a company has spent millions upon millions of dollars trying to develop, even more than that, Well, when they finally get into the market and try to sell, they got to recoup that. And so those new specialty products that do things that the old products didn't do, they're going to be more expensive. It's just a nature of business doing that. But I'm telling you some of them have some features that we can't find in other products.

Let's go now to Charlie in Friends would Hello, Charlie, Welcome to garden Line.

but it's got black paper all underneath. There was too heavy to a lift. So how to what's your best.

up and get it all out of there. Y yeah, tiller is just going to be a mess. So there's really not a good solution at this point. Uh That doesn't involve a lot of work, you know, like excavating soil to get down where you can lift that fabric up, and there's roots tangled in it and everything else. So about all you can do is just go over the top of it, uh, you know with your planting.

Come along to pull it out. I mean, I don't know how to go about it. I don't know what to tell you. Spading forks, come along, whatever you can do to kind of loosen things. But you just can't put turf grass over it. If unless it is a really cheap product that tears are one that allows roots to readily go right through it. If you put three or four inches of soil on top and plant it,

you might get by with that. That may be okay, Well I tell you I don't like any of these other answers other than removing it in some way, shape or form. Figure not a way to do it.

If you have friends and neighbors that haven't listened to garden Line, tell them about it so they can tune in. You know, I like to listen to KTRH using my phone app, the iHeartMedia app, and you can just put in your pocket and care around while you're doing gardening work or wherever you're going. You can have it with you. If you're not near a radio, you can have it that way. It works really really well. And thank you for being a listener too. By the way, hey, I

wanted to talk a little bit about Nelson Watergarden. I've mentioned them many times in the past and talked about what an outstanding nursery. There are lots of plants, a great selection By the way, they got a really good sale on fruit trees and on citrus trees right now, So if you've been thinking about getting one, now's the time to get the best dear you're going to get. It's a really good sale that they have going on.

But you know, they specialize in water gardens. That is kind of their forte that's what they started with, and they're nationally known for. And when you go to Neilson Water Gardens and Nursery, you are going to find a unbelievable supply of everything related to water. If you will, for example, you want a disappearing fountain. I think those are one of the coolest things that ever was, and Nelson invented that. You see these beautiful pottery urns, glazed

pottery with water coming at the top. The sound of water. You need the sound of water in your backyard. We put a little multi tiered fountain in in our yard and I just like to sit. Is so relaxing. It is like therapy out there. To sit and enjoy the sound of water, especially on a hot summer day, brings in birds too, and beneficial insects a supply of water

as well. Many of them do do you want a water garden, you know with lily pads or other water plants with koi or goldfish or other fish like that, Nelson Water Garden and Nursery is the place to go. Here's the number two eight, one, three, nine to one forty seven sixty nine or goat to water Nelsonwatergardens dot com. Nelson Watergardens dot com. They're just north of I ten on Katie Fort Ben Road out in Katie. Think of it as your West Houston destination garden center. That's Nelson

Water Gardens. And while you're out there, by the way, they have a lot of good products too. They have a good selection. For example, Microlife. I know you have heard of Microlife unless you've been living under a rock. Microlife has all the granular fertilizers you know, for your lawn, for your soil, for your plants that we've talked about. I just want to tell you a little bit about some of their liquid fertilizers. One of the ones that

I use the most is Microlife Biomatrix. It's an orange label, liquid comes in a gallon, comes into quurt It's a seven to one three ratio fertilizer. I have good boost and nitrogen. I use it on houseplants because that foliage that's leafy, green growing, and you need a good nitrogen boost for that. It's excellent for that. I've had excellent results. You can put a in your garden. You can use it watering plants in. As a matter of fact, if you were going to water plants in, you might want

to try Microlife Maximum Blooms. That's a pink or reddish label that does very very well, Microlife Maximum Bloom. If you want to boost for plants. I bet you never heard of this product, Microlife Soil and Plant Energy. Microlife Soil and Plant Energy is a superb combination of humic acid and molasses. Molasses is like rocket fuel for beneficial soil microbes. You're going to boost the energy and the

supply by putting that carbon in the soil. With Microlife Soil and Plant Energy and also that humic acid benefiting your soil. You know, you make your soil better, you make your plants better. And Microlife Soil and Plant Energy is an outstanding liquid. You can mix it in water, you can spray it. It's not going to burn plant. You can spray it on the foliage, plant it's not going to burn them. It does very very well. I would recommend it, especially as something that you apply to

your soil around your plants from microlife. Well, let's see here, what are we looking at. We might have time for a real quick call if someone wants to call in. Got a few minutes left before we put this one in the books. I appreciate you listening to Guardland. We've talked about a lot of different things today, and I just want to really urge you to not let summer stop you from being a gardener. The early morning hours are cool, you can get out, you can get some

stuff done. It just it doesn't take a lot of work to keep things going out in the yard, not in the garden. And now with plant sales going on all over the place, this is a great time to put some plants in. I know we talk about spring planting and winter planting and fall, which is the best planning season of the year, But what about putting some color in for the next few months. You know, September

is a summer month, right. If you've been in Texas more than one summer, you know September is a summer month here. So if you put something in. Now, you got August, you got September, you got October, sometime into November before we really get some cooler weather arriving where we would start looking at cool season color. Why not establish some colorful foliage like colius, like copper plant, like

persian shield, beautiful silvery purple color. Oh, it's gorgeous, like some of the colorful cannas, the phasion or the tropicana. Why not do some color, or why not do some flowers like angelonia, like marigoles. You put maragoles in still, you know, I like to plant my fall maragoles in late summer, and the spider maight population starts to decline as we go into the fall season, and they just glow in the cooler fall temperatures that I have to

fight against the fire ants that are out there. Well my fire ants, Okay, spider mites is what I was trying to say.

three months of color. There's no sense in summer being a sea of green, and drive around town look at landscapes. It's a sea of green, green grass, green groundcovers, green shrubs, green trees, green vines. There's nothing wrong with green. Green isn't the only color. It's not the only color. All right, Well, I hear the music. I'm just gonna keep talking about it. Actually, I want to tell you about something else. Coming up is an event that you need to know about. It's

called OBA Palooza. I love that name. Oba O HbA. That's the organic horticulture if it's alliance. It's an organic group here in Houston, made up of commercial companies, made up of individuals interested in organic gardening, made up of educators. I love to go to OBA events. They are always always outstanding. I can promise you top notch speakers this event. I take too long to name all the speakers there. They're gonna have two headliners. They're gonna have three concurrent

sessions going on. You can to pick where you want to go Saturday August tenth. Saturday August tenth, that's coming up at the Greater at the United Wates Greater Houston, My Wildwide. You go from eight am. They put thirty three m Go to oba ohbaonline dot org to get your tickets