Why Winter Pruning Is Important

getting primarily the big three nutrients. Now with organics, you're getting some other things in there. But azamite is a trace mineral supplement, and trace minerals are required for growth, just because you don't need a lot of them. You just need a trace, a small amount, a micro amount. That's why they call them micro nutrients. You still need them. They're essential. And I talked about last week the concept for those of you horticulture nerds that you want to

be the cliff Claven of your garden club. Well here's one for you. There's something called Libig's barrel. A guy named Li Big years ago came up with an ingenious way of explaining the importance of nutrients. And he used a barrel. So imagine a big old whiskey barrel or wine barrel, okay, and it's got all those staves that go from the top to the bottom, and they're banded together, you know, with the metal straps going around it. What if you could go in and cut off all the

staves at different heights. You had one stave that was only halfway up the barrel and one that was ninety percent up the barrel, and all varying things. If you started to put water in the barrel, when how full could you fill that barrel? The answer is only as full as the shortest stave, because then it just runs out there. That's Lebig's barrel, that stave. Each stave is a mineral. One's nitrogen, one's phosphorus, one's potassium, one's manganese,

one's iron, one's zinc, when's silicon. I mean, they're all kinds of minerals, right, So whatever is most lacking, that's the extent of plants excess that you're going to get plant productivity, plant growth, plant health. So with azamite, we're putting it down for micro nutrients we're putting it down for the tiny, tiny amounts that are essential to plant growth.

So if you have every nutrient that plant could ever want, but only about half of something like an iron or boron let's say boron for example, that it needs, then that's as good as that plant can do. That's why when we do as MTE, it's not something you put on and it makes the plant take off growing like nitrogen does. It's something you put on and it's in

the bank account. And now as the plant needs that tiny little nutrient that's not needed much, but it's essential, it's there in your soil, azamite builds the soil bank account. It's as simple as that. All right, Well, I hope that helps. I hope that helps make it a little bit easier to understand, because a lot of times people

get confused on these minerals and things. Just because something's needed in small amounts does not mean it is not absolutely essential, because we got it depends on how you want account. They used to say sixteen nutrients that are essential. Now it's up to in the twenty twenty one, depending on the plant and the stage of plant growth and stuff. But the bottom line is they need those. They need those, and we need those, especially if it's a garden and

you're growing it to eat. All right, I'm going to take a little break and we will be right back with your question. Seven one three two one two ktrh May welcome back to guard Line. We're ready to we're ready to get going here, speaking of you, Speaking of which, we're going to head straight out to Richmond, Texas and talk to Julie this morning. Good morning, Julie, welcome to guard Line.

on the plant that mars its beauty. And so typically we say on a krpe myrtle, you shouldn't have to prune anything bigger than a pencil. But I realize in reality sometimes you have a branch that's bigger than that and you just go, okay, I didn't see this last year, but I need to take it off now, go ahead and do it. But just try to avoid having to prune too much on them, because they have their own beautiful structure and we can guide that as they grow.

But it kind of comes down to the esthetics that you like, what do you want it to look like? And so yeah, that's it. Just when you cut it off, don't leave us stuff. Cut it off close to where it joins the branch that it's attached to or the trunk that it's attached to. You if you note, I don't want to make this too complicated, but if you follow it. Let's say you have a branch that you go, I got to take that off, and you follow it down to where it joins the trunk or another branch.

Right as it gets to right to where it joins, it flares out, it gets bigger. Okay, you want to cut it off right there where it starts to flare out a little bit, so that way you don't have a stub. But you also don't cut it. We say flush cut, meaning right up against the trunk. And that makes a much bigger wound, because as it gets bigger, the wound gets bigger. So just come all the way down to where it attaches and right where it starts to flare out, make your cut right there.

and cut everything off there. It makes it fast easy, nobody has to be a pruning expert, and the krepe myrtle sprouts back out again, lots of shoots and stuff but all that new growth now is attached weekly you can get it's a weak attachment and branches can break off and it just it's unsightly. It takes the beautiful smooth form of crepe myrtle structure and it just destroys it. And so there's no reason to do that.

whole area up there. You're just really fortunate to have two great garden centers right there. Kingwa just redid their gift shop and oh it's just gorgeous inside. It's always been gorgeous inside, but they had a total revamp of content and everything over the past months. And looks good. Now, if you're looking for any of the products that I'm talking about garden line like Microfoss, nitrof Microlife, Nitrofoss, turf Star, airloom soils, Nelson plant foods, bone Eyed pest control, mosquito

dunks we talk about those, Well, they've got that. They even have the little filling stations for Microlife and Nelson plant food jugs. So if you buy the Microlife or the Nelson and those clear screw top jars plastic jars, you can go in there and refill them and save some money on it. Plus you don't throw more plastic out into the waste stream, so it really makes sense, a great, great idea. Those refilling stations. Now right now,

they are stocked up on color. They've got citrus, they got shrubs, they've got seeds, everything you need for spring. They're ready to go. It's just go get it and bring it home. This is the season to get going, and we are ready to go. And boy are they ever stocked up and ready to go out there at Kingwoo Garden Center and Warren's Southern Gardens. And also they do have the full landscaping services for the surrounding area.

So just talk to them about that if you'd like to get little bit of work done here and there. I just talk to them and see. They also design and make potted containers for their customers. So like you go out and you don't know how to do a mixed planter, but you want to buy a big old container from them and buy a bunch of plants from them and have them design and put it together. They can do that wonderful service too. Out we're in southern gardens, all right, We're going to go to the phones now

and head down to the galleria. Talk to Forest. Hey, Forrest, welcome to guard Line.

of them cannot. So if you wanted, you could lay some cardboard down in the bottom and then throw the mix, your bed mix on top of that, and that you would be fine, except for things like bermuda, and that you would have to spray it and kill it and even have a little kind of a no man's land around the beds because that stuff will crawl in, it'll go up through the bed and it's it's a mess. So that's that's kind of the main exception. To just throw dart on it and you'll be okay.

Just crack it open, kind of look at what you got. And if it's a clay, what I would do is I would put about three inches of your bed mix down and then I would use that spading fork and wiggle it down into the soil, you know if you step on it and then just lean back and just sort of crack it open. No stooping, no bending, no lifting,

just break it open. And that bedding mix is going to kind of fall in between those those clay chunks that you kind of have broken open, and that's creating a transition zone between the nice bed mix and the heavy clay below, and water moves down through that better. Okay, then finish fill in the bed or finish filling the area with the bed mix. So when you say raise beds, are you talking about something with metal sides or rock or just a mound of soil? What do you have in mind there?

all right, thank you. I appreciate your call very much. If speaking of clay soils, our clay soils move, they get wet, they swell, they get dry, they shrink, and that is why you see the heaving of sidewalks, the cracking of un heaving of driveways, as well as damage to foundation in your home. Now that's where it starts to get serious. You start messing with your house foundation, fix my slab foundation, repair, own and run since the beginning by a fellow named Ty Strickland. And Ty knows

what he's doing. Listen, he's been here, he's been doing this for twenty three years. He's a fifth generation Texan Navy Estonian. He knows our soils, he knows this area, and he knows how to fix things. He knows how to assess them too. You see a crack in your brick, you see a crack in your sheet rock inside the door starts to stick, that used to not stick. That means something's moving, and you got to have somebody look at it. Don't be an ostrich stick your head in

the sand. Have him look at it. It may be that it's a slight amount of movement. Nothing, you don't need major foundation work or it. Maybe here's a situation. He'll be honest with you. Listen. This is why I like to talk about ty and fix my slab. He shows up on time, he fixes it right, and he charges you a fair price. You're not going to do better than that. Fixmslab dot com. Fix myslab dot com two eight one two five five forty nine, forty nine.

Don't put it off, find out today. All right, I'm gonna take a little break and I'll be right back with your call. Seven one three two one two ktr h. Alrighty, we are back. Welcome back to garden Line. We are here to answer your gardening questions. We want you to have success. That's the bottom line. The way I like to put it is, we want you to have a more bountiful garden, a more beautiful landscape, and more fun in the process. All right, does that sound Does that

sound good? Gardening is supposed to be fun, supposed to be something that we thoroughly, thoroughly enjoy and you can. All you gotta do is give plants what they want. Give them what they want, and they're gonna do super super or well, well, I wanted to I want to mention something. I alluded to this earlier. But we're going we are in a warm spell right now. We've been having some eighty degree temperatures spell through a lot of

the listening area. And when plants are in a dormant state, they are chemically inhibited from growing, meaning there are actual chemicals in the plant that prevent that bud from pushing out and growing. That's why we have, for example, on peaches and other certain other kinds of fruit, we have chilling hours. Those chilling hours break down the inhibiting chemicals. So when we do have a few warm days, the plant takes off, It blooms, it sends out shoots, it

starts growing. But if we're in the middle of wintertime and these plants are starting to get these eighty degree days, they're going to say, you know what, it's spring, let's get going, and they start to come out of dormancy. And then if we end up with a good hard cold freeze coming up, they're in big trouble, and that's what happened to crate myrtles a few years ago. In December, they were still in there, they had not fully hardened off. They were in their somewhat active growing state, and we

had a December freeze. It went on in the teens and I mean it killed crapes all the way to the ground in some places. I opened College station, they had a severe amount of damage to that. As you came farther south, it wasn't quite as bad because it wasn't quite as cold. But I'm concerned about these eight degree temperatures.

think about crape myrtles, they're very cold, hardy. I mean you grow them throughout Texas and they're fine here. They can take our cold, but not when they're not ready. And these eighty degree temperatures are starting to cause plants to wake up and get thinking it's springtime. So let's just keep an extra eye out for that. Don't want to be alarmist. And I hope we don't have that kind of cold still, but we will find out. But

now you know, at least have been forewarned. Our phone number seven one three two one two k t r H. Seven one three two one two k t r H. Give me a call. We'll talk about the things that you are interested in so that you can have success with your gardening and your plants.

hole into the soil. This is a hollow time, a hollow core. It pushes down in the soil and it pops a plug of soil out and drops it on the surface. After you've done corroration, looks like you had a little miniature dog convention on your yard, if you know what I'm talking about. It's just it does that and it gets oxygen done in the root system. Then with the compost top dressing, that compost will wash it

or fall down into those holes. And so now what you're doing, it's like you're putting organic matter down deeper in the soil. You're getting oxygen deeper in the soil, you're improving the rate that the soil can take up water when it rains, and you're also adding the organic matter that stimulates biological activity. It's good for your lawn. It's one of the single best things you can do for a lawn is to do a correation and a

compost top dressing, especially when that soil is compacted. It's almost essential when your soil is compacted to do this. If you're going to have a good success with your lawn. Now it feeds that biology, it alleviates compaction, it does all these things I'm doing. If your lawn is recovering from chinchbugs and brown patch and take off patch, or just drought that we maybe went through in last summer, hot hot conditions, this is one of the stimulating things

that you can do. Also, if you have created a thatch layer by overfertilizing and overwatering, and you got all these runners that are crawling on top of each other, and you walk across the lawn and it's like spongy, spongy because of all those runners. Well, when you do cororation, you put that soil up on top of the ground and it kind of falls in among those runners which are slow to decompose, and it helps them speed up the decomposition. So correoration with compost top dressing also breaks

down the thatch layer in a lawn. Just a lot of benefits to it. Now, Green Pro serves an area about forty five miles from Magnolia, So we're talking about spring and cyprust the woodlands. Conroe willis over northwest Magnoia, Montgomery down to Katie kind of West Houston, And basically I like to put it this way, the the I forty five I ten quadrant that that's basically the Green Pro area about forty five miles from Magnolia north southeast west.

So greenpro Texas dot com, greenpro Texas dot com. That's the website, the phone number eight three to two three five to one zero zero three two eight three two three five one zero zero three true greenpro Texas dot com for compost, top dressing and core aeration up in the northwest quadrant at the Greater Houston area. These companies that do these kind of services, and we picked the ones out that we think are going to do the quality job, use the right quality ingredients that they're gonna

they're going to do the job right. They know what they're doing. They're you know, they're carrying some very specialized equipment. You can't rent the stuff, you know, you can't rent the kind of equipment they have. You can rent equipment, but it's not going to do the quality of corrooration that they have. And then these bulky composts and say

they can't drive all over creation. It's just not its cost prohibitive to try to serve a too big of a geographical area That's why I'll talk about different ones for different parts of the city. Greenpro up in the northwest quadrant. That is a that is a no brainer. Right there, you are listening to garden Line the phone number seven one three two one two k t r H. Seven one three two one two k t r H. I wanted to talk about it in Chenne Gardens just a little bit by the way. Today it in Chenni

Gardens down in Richmond, just north of Richmond, toward Katie Side. Uh. Gay Hammond Rose expert extraordinary. Gay is a great lady and boyd, she knows more about rosesn't about anybody I know. But she's going to be there at ten am talking about month by month Rose care for Gay Hammond. Now, guess what's going to happen next Saturday at in Jenni Gardens. I'll be there talking about tips for making gardening less work.

The way I like to put it is, I'm gonna be talking about how to get more for your garden from your garden with less sweat and less ibuprofen. My dog is gonna be from twelve to one point thirty. But I don't want to confuse you here, But today Gay's gonna be there at ten am. So the minute I quit talking on garden Line, Gay starts talking at Enchanted Gardens. You need to get out there. When you get there, you're gonna find the products I talk about on garden Line. And let me just say you that,

Just go look. It is an expanse of every kind of plant you can imagine with expert advice. What more can you ask for? All right, time for me to take a little break here and say hi to Gay when you're out there by the way at Enchanted Gardens today and again they're on the Richmond Rosenberg side of Katie if you want, if you want the specifics FM

three point fifty nine, I'll be right back. All right, we're gonna be walking on sunshine a little bit here, so dark outside by the way, look out the wendaw. If you're neighbors, lights aren't on, go bang on the door, Bang on the door. Tell them they're missing garden Line, and they'll they'll be so happy. They'll rise up and call you blessed, thank you for that. They may call you something else this morning, but eventually they will appreciate the favor that you did for them. Oh my what

have I started? Pierce Scapes. I talk about peer scapes all the time because I am so impressed with the work they do and you will be too. Do me a favorite. Just check this out. I'm gonna just check it out and see what I'm talking about. Piercescapes dot com. Piercescapes dot com one word, piercecapes dot com. Go look at what they do. I mean, it is amazing what they can do. They can turn your place into whatever you want it to be. Do you need landscape lighting,

do you need hardescape done? Or is your irrigation system needing some work? Almost every irrigation system needs work. That's just a fact. Typically they're not made right, they're not built right initially, and they have issues that arise. Pierce Capes can fix that if you want. If you have an area that doesn't drain well, you want it to drain well, See can plant more there so there's not standing water so it's not a mess when the dogs run through the area. Well, they can fix that too.

They've got highly qualified and trained and certified employees that know what they're doing. From the designers that create this magic down to the folks that install it. All the way through piercescapes dot com two eight one three seven oh fifty sixty two eight one three seven oh fifty sixty. There are preferred garden Line landscaper and have been for a good while now and for a good reason. You're

listening to guard Line. If you'd like to call and ask a gardening question, we would love to visit with you about that. Seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one two five eight seven four. That's how you reach me here. I had a couple of early calls, folks are I always know the early birds. They know what are doing, and it's because they know you call it early and they are not so many callers and it's easy to get

right through, so that is why they do that. Smart Smart Microlife products have been around the Houston area for a long time now, over thirty five years. And there's a reason that they're around for every thirty five years, and it's because they work and because people love them. They love the results that they see you When you use microlife, what you are using is a natural product that is loaded with microbes. They are their products are and you know the bag may say, you know, like

their lawn fertilizer. We'll be talking about this here as we get into spring. The six two four green bag of lawn fertilizer. That's six percent nitrogen, two percent phosphorus, four percent potassium. But what the label doesn't tell you is because it's made from organic materials. Organic materials have all the different ingredients. Remember earlier I was talking about the essentials, the trace minerals and stuff that's in organic stuff.

Because you know, if you've got if you pick a grass blade from your yard and you look at that blade, there's nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, There's also calcium, magnesium, and sulfur. There's also boron and zinc and iron in that grass blade because that's what it takes to grow plants. So when you take organic materials and create a product out of them, when you do that, you are in you are bringing all those nutrients with you. And that's Microlife.

Over one hundred different minerals, more minerals than any fertilizer I'm aware of in that Microlife product. Now, I first used it. I spent about ten years now ago, and I saw right then it works. It's going to give you some immediate release pretty quick, but a gradual release over time as those organic materials are broken down by microbes into the nutrients that your plants are gonna then

take up. You're going to find Microlife. It end up in a garden center, Speed stores, Ace Hardware stores, Southwest Fertilizer. Just go to Microlife Fertilizer dot com. They have a wide array of products, from dry granular products to liquid products. I'm working my way through the list. It's a long list, and every time I've used one, I've been impressed with how it works. Right now, I would suggest you consider the humans plus. That's the zero zero four. It is

a purple bag and it is composed of compost. In its final decomposition form, it is humus. Is wonderful for the soil. You start putting that out on a regular basis and you get it down in the soil, and you're going to see an improvement in soil structure, in microbial activity and nutrient holding content, and a lot of other benefits to your plants over time. When you do

it the way nature does, which is over time. That's how nature makes a meadow, a forest, or any other location better and better and better as the years go by. Microlife can do the same thing for your plants. We're going to head out now to sugar Land and talk to Mike. Hello, Mike, welcome to Guardenline.

By the way, bark butter, you Smear it on the bark. Smear it on whatever you want, anything that will holds still on in the art. Smear some bark butter on it. One hundred and fifty different species of birds have been documented coming to bark butter. This is like it's like bird crack. I don't know if it's a control substance or not. That it ought to be in the bird world. And it's at wild Birds Unlimited. They love this stuff. Wbu dot Com, Forward, slash Houston, find a Wallbird's near you.

They're all over the place. I love going into them and you will too, by the way, really cool stuff and knowledge. When I have a bird question, I call Wildbird's Unlimited, store, own, our manager, whatever, because they know all they do. All right, I guess I gotta go away. I'll be right back. Archie your first when we come back.

Get it done on all your deciduous plants now. If we're talking about you know, citrus, for example, then hold off. If it is a somewhat tropical, somewhat cold tender type plant, just hold off on pruning it. You don't have to print it right now. But on all the deciduous ornamental plants, all the deciduous fruit trees and things, now's the time to get that work done. Learn what you're doing before

you go out and do it. Just because you own pruners and you have a plant doesn't mean that what you're about to do to it is the right thing. So learn what you need to do. There's a lot of good information on there. If you want to learn how to prune a fruit tree, go to the Aggi Horticulture website. Aggie Horticulture is the name of the website. You can search for it. It's easy to find Aggie Horticulture, and there's a fruit section and there's a publication on

every kind of fruit tree you can imagine. I mean, there's an avocado publication. There's peaches, plums, you know, pairs per Simmons. The whole nine yards is there, including some nut producing plants like pecan too, and it tells you how to punt them in those publications and they're free. You don't have to buy them. They're multicolored PDF fologing, download them or look at them online. Learn what you're

doing before you head out to prune. That is a word to the why Let's head out to Pariland now and we're going to talk to Archie this morning.

What can I do, you know to keep them going, like soil activator medina or something like that, or should I put you know, azemite or what would be the best stuff to put on that to keep them going.

right rate on azimite. But that's a micronutrient situation, so it helps when you need the micro nutrients right now. The Angelonia, the big thing is, I've never cared in angelonia through the winter before. They are a summer, warm season annual typically. Now you've gotten yours to survive till now, there's a good chance they're gonna make it because you last too.

would burn them back, but it wouldn't kill them. They'll come on back. But it's time to prune them, and we can't can't worry about the weather too much on those two, so you can get that done. But anyway, if you want to wait a little bit and print them a little later, that you know, that's fine, but don't wait too long on them. But yeah, have angelonia. I just get ready to come if we get cold.

But otherwise, congratulations. You send me a picture of those when they when they bloom this year, I'd love to see them. See them now, the picture now, and that a picture is a.

Feed is up there, conveniently located right up there Magnoia on FM twenty nine seventy eight FM twenty nine seventy eight up in Magnolia. It's it's just a few minutes away from Graham park Way. I have a two forty nine. I love going into that place. It's a beautiful place. First of all, you walk in and you're going, wait a minute, am I in a feed store or what is this going? I mean, they have all kinds of

beautiful decorations from inside the home and whatnot. But yes, it's a feed store loaded with quality feeds and including feed for things like pets. Your pets. A Victor Purina brands like that. If you have backyard chickens and you are looking for some of the supplies that you need for those, they are they're stocked up, they're ready to go. And when it comes to gardening, full line of fertilizers, turf Star from Nelson, Microlife, nitrofoss, anything you need to

control weeds, insects, diseases. They got you covered. At Spring Creek Feed. It's again m Magnoli on FM twenty nine seventy eight. You can't miss it when you drive a big, old, beautiful decorative barn looking exterior. It's just really a cool place. Now you can get special orders. They will do some special ordering. They have a delivery service. And if you're senior citizen or military, or maybe you're a youth for

h FFA raising livestock, there's special discounts for that. Just ask them about it when you're there at Spring Creek Feed. Time for me to take a little quick break here and we're going to come back to your calls at seven one three two one two KTRH. All right, folks, let's do this. Let's talk gardening. Seven one three two one two KTRH seven one three two one two ktrh Hey plans for all seasons. This is a public servicenouncement, folks, plants for all seasons. Has got tomatoes? What do they

say out the wazoo. I don't know what that means, but I've heard it before, so I almost save you. They've got tomatoes out the was zu. All kinds of different varieties have come in and listen. Grab some now while the supplies are good. You want to be able to pick the varieties you want. So grab them now. If you want to be a little careful. Not put them right out in the ground, because what if we

have another freeze? Okay, bring them home, take care of them, Bump them up into the next sice, gitttle, putting soap, Bump them up to a bigger pot, put them outside and water them. Just take care of them, watch them. Bring them in. Just gonna get cold. They need to spend some evenings out where they're getting our cooler evening temperatures. That's good for them. And when you decide okay it's safe, I'm going to plant. And some people are gamblers, some

people are not. I get it. Then put them in, but don't wait to get them. Go get them now Plants all Seasons has got them. They've got a lot of things in stock. We're talking about herbs and flowers, and of course you know all the standard things shrubs and trees and whatnot. You're gonna find them there when you go into Plants for All Seasons. If you already got a green thumb, well you probably already go there

because green thumbs know about plants for all seasons. If you had a brown thumb, they're going to turn it green. And what turns of brown thumb green? Information good information and knowledge and understanding so you can have success. That's it. They're a full service garden retail or retail garden center. The family owned been around since nineteen seventy three, so they have staying power because they do things right. They

have great plants, outstanding service. Take a picture in there or something, they're going to be able to look at it and identify it or diagnose it and tell you what you need to do. It's easy. All you got to do is head up toward Tomball or if you're from Tomball, head down North Houston take the Luetta exit. They're just north of Luetta. As you're heading toward Tomball they're just past Luetta on the right hand side there and the website if you want that Plants for All

Seasons dot com. The phone number two eight one three seven six, sixteen forty six. We're going to go out to Cyprus now and talk to Ike. Hey, Ike, welcome the garden line.

screen down posts that you have. I've got a little thing that I built, a two by four square box that sits on top of my wheelbarrow. And when I say box, I just mean it's four two by four's making a kind of like a just a frame. And I hammered a half inch hardware cloth on the bottom that a little checkerboard half inch checker bird, and I just throw compost in it and shake it and anything chunky gets stuck in the hardware cloth and you can

just throw it off the side. It's still good for a multre continued composting, but you can come down with a finer texture that then you could use if you're compost top dressing or something along those lines. It's just work. You're you're exchanging paying for something with doing the work to try to create a product on your own, right.

year head start on improving your soils. It's already reached that stage that is the most beneficial.

They have about five to eight percent potassium. That's the third number on the bag. So depending on what the wood ashes were made from, like what you burned, it's about a zero one maybe I don't know, three to five ratio of nutrients that are out there in it. And so if your soil is already a fairly high pH, don't use wood ashes because it raises the pH even more. If you're a little on the acidic side, a moderate

amount of wood ashes can be helpful. You just want to be very light in the amount you put out because you can overdo it. So I would say no more than like a five gallon bucket over a thousand square feet at the most, and that's a dry five gallon bucket. You know, when we wet wood ashes, they shrink down just the fluffy loose wood ashes about a five gallon And you got to do it on a calm day because the wind blows and it's a mess.

But can you use it? Yes, and it will add some nutrients, but it also raises pH.

They've got things like rose soil for example, they have that. They have a wide variety, even down to things like lawn mix. It's a it's an inexpensive mix that is made with Mason sand and compost and a little bit of bed mix. Good for laying down before you put a lawn in, kind of mixing it in and getting ready to go in those areas and getting it ready to go. They also can deliver by the supersack. Now you can have them dump it on your driveway. You can go get it from the soil yard. They have

up their importer. It's called Warren's Rock and Mulch Importer. That's where the Airloom sols comes from. Or you can have them deliver a supersack. Now there's a three sack minimum for delivery because it's very expensive for any place to deliver a big old truckload to take a truck anywhere basically no matter what's on it, So three sack minimum. They set on your driveway. I've done this before myself. You set on your driveway, you shovel right out of

that sack. It is neat and clean, there's no mess, works really really well. Now all you got to do is give them a call if you want to find out about going to pick it up or having a delivery two eight one three five four nineteen fifty. If you just need some bags. Airloom Seals products are sold all over the Greater Houston area. I talked about the Veggie Nerb Mix and Honor. They have a potting Solfur indoor plan. It's an outdoor containers. Just just check out

where you purchase your landscape supplies. You know whether it's a garden center and ace hardware store, a feed store, a Southwest fertilizer and ask them if they carry airlomsaws and the answer is probably going to be yes, that they do. Let's see here, let's go now to Cleveland and we're going to talk to Ron. Hello, Ron, welcome to garden Line Warner Skit.

hot blast of summer season. That is the touch and go time when you're most likely to lose a tree is that first summer. It's also the time. Maybe your tree survives, but it just doesn't establish and grow much because of stresses from droughts. That tree has a very confined root system. You pulled it right out of the container like that. You know, you had this little cylinder of roots right there. That tree needs to have roots going way beyond the branch bread in all directions, the

height of the tree in all directions. Plus it's getting established. And in order to do that, you got to maintain moist soil. And when summertime comes and it gets hot, that's very hard to do. To do that tree hugger's designed to do that. There are three sizes. There's a seven inch, eleven inch, and fifteen inch. They go around the tree trunk. You hook them to a water hose and you turn it on and you can turn it

on just a little bit. Where let's say you had the seven inch size and you barely turn it on. It's just sort of trickling. It's watering a seven inch wide area, which is where your low root ball is there. You crank it up a little more, it gets bigger and bigger and bigger. I mean, you can take a tree that's been in the ground for years and you can rescue water the majority of its root system underneath the branch spread during excessive heat and drought conditions. Tree

huggers are very versatile. You can go to tree Hugger sprinkler dot com, find a retailer near you, or let me make it easy. You can get them at the arbor Gate. You can get them at Nelson Watergarden out in Katie, RCW. Nurseries up on two forty nine were on Southern Gardens and Kingwood Garden Center in Kingwood, go

down to Richmond Rosenberg. You got in Chenny Gardens and in Channy Forests that carry them up in Tomball D and D feed and the Spring Creek Center up toward Magnolia, League City Feed down in League City Southwest Fertilizer and then Ace Hardware is like Sinkle Ranch and Katie and K and m Ace hardware and a task Asita and fulshaar Race. These things are all over the place. Just go to TreeHugger Sprinkler dot com. You can find a retailer near you, but get you one help that tree going.

And when you go, well, what if my trees established?

has come out on the market in recent years. We're going to go now out to Deer Park and talk to Steve. Hello, Steve, Welcome to Garden Line.

bit further. Uh yeah, And while while we're doing that, I want to just mention that on Guardenline, I'm not able to answer all of the email questions that come in by email. I just I just can't. And a lot of questions are very involved, you know, they take a lot of time, they need some back and forth and whatnot. And so what I ask is, if you got some photos or something you want to send in, boy, that is really helpful for me to answer a question. Just email them to me and then call me up

and let's talk and we'll go into it. I had several this week that are probably going to call over the weekend that we're going to continue discussing them. It gives me a little bit of time to look into something, so I'm not having to try to study through it on the air. But it works really well, and so I encourage you to do that. You just have to call the show, talk to Jonathan, get an email address, and again I wish I could sit there and type answers to everyone. I'm just not able to just time.

Time does not allow it. So anyway, I was talking to you about earlier about some of the things we're doing this time of year. It is time to finish winter printing for those plants that are prinned in the winter, that would be particularly deciduous plants. That's the main thing we're doing in the winter pruning. You want to get that finished because the new growth is going to begin. And here's another reason. The fastest time of wound healing on a woody ornamental that's been pruned, like a tree

or shrub, is in the spring. And you've probably seen the time lapse photos like a cactus flower that you know it's closed and then it opens up real fast and it closes and like in ten seconds you get

to watch the whole thing. Well, if you were to do that on a tree wound, what you would see is, you know, let's say you cut it in January and it just sits there, and when spring comes it starts to close pretty rapidly, and then it kind of slows down to a crawl in the summer and then it speeds up a little bit for fall, not as much as spring, but it closes again faster in the fall,

and then it shuts down for winter. And so that's why we like to prune in the winter because the fastest time of one of the reasons, the fastest time of wound healing is in the spring. So let's go

ahead and get that done. There is also I need to point out the reason I say try to do it before the new growth shoots out, is because when new growth starts, the bark we say slips and instead of being stuck hard against the wood, so that when you make a pruning cut it doesn't tear strips of bark loose instead of being stuck hard against the wood, that bark it's like peeling a banana. You know how you break the top of banana, it just peels right off.

Bark does that in the spring. When the growth is occurring, the bark is we say slipping. So if you wait until them to prune, you got to be real careful because it's easy to tear a strip of bark because it's loose against it. It tears off from the bay from the trunk real easily. And if you do that, that is going to be a very slow to heal wound. And so pruning during dormant time helps avoid that. Now, can you prune when it's actively growing? Yes, tree care

companies prune all through the summertime. They do what they need to do when they need to do it. But the best time is in the winter when things are fully dormant.

so that is what we try to do. You're listening to garden Line if you'd like to give us a call seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one two five eight seven four. For those of you who live down in Seabrook, Texas, you are so fortunate you've got Moss Nursery down there. And Moss Nursery listen, this is not just another garden center.

I mean, it is a seventy year old family operated nursery that sprawls out on eight acres of everything you need for your landscape, your garden, even your indoor homescape. You got to see their indoor plant greenhouse that they have. It is unbelievable. I don't care if it's succulents or cactus or lush tropical types of things. It's all there. If you're into strings, string of pearls, string of tears, string of watermelon, I mean all those string things, they've

got those there. They just got in three shipments of small cactus. They just got in four shipments of succulents. They got a lot of hanging baskets, I mean lots of hanging baskets. And then when it comes to vegetables and herbs, if you pick, there's an incredible array they're stocking up. I think they've been getting like six to seven shipments a day coming into that place. So whatever you're looking for, they've got. You want a Japanese maple,

Oh my gosh, they have plenty of gorgeousness. You had a kind of area with a little summer, little morning sun and then a bright d apple shade all day. Japanese maple's gonna be really really happy there. Check out the t shirts, especially Gim's whimsical eyeball plant art T shirt. Yeah I said that right, Jim's whimsical eyeball plant art T shirt. He showed me those a long time ago. He draws these kind of crazy looking whimsical plants with eyeballs on him you can get a T shirt of that.

All kinds of cool gardening merchandise there, Lost Garden Center, Moss Nursery. All right, I'm gonna come back Steve by then hopefully we'll have your email and we'll be able to continue on. All right, there, we are not Saturday night, but it's coming. It is for sure coming. Hey, Nelson Plant Food. They have a product that I think you will find quite interesting. I did not seen one quite

like this. It's called turf star Weedonator. Turf star Weedonator is not just your typical weed and feed type product. Basically what it is, it's got a growth regulator in it. Now, it's got the nutrients. First of all, it is a fertilizer, but it has a growth regulator in it. And this growth regulator causes the grass to not grow vertically so fast, but to continue to spread horizontally, so mowing is reduced

by that effect. And it works. It works, It works quite well, and it's not going to hurt your grass. It also has a post emergent herbicide. So what you want to do is we the soil or what the weeds rather, turn the sprinklers on just enough to get some drops on the weed on the grass and weed leaves. Put that weed natter out, leave it for you know, a day or so, then wash it off at least a few hours and wash it off and into the soil.

And it's going to shut down things like chickweed and clover and dot and dandelions and dollar weed and grassburg parts. It does a really good job and then it'll release those nutrients into the lawn too. So uh, it's an excellent product. Turfstar weedat or buy the folks at Nelson. You're going to find it widespread in a lot of different areas. We're going to head now out to Magnolia and talk to Donna. Hello, Donna, welcome to garden Line.

But that basically what you're sending me pictures of or plants that are that are heat stressed and in some cases a little bit suns called it and some of the photos. Okay, now, it's not something that we really worry a lot about, and because I think last season it could have been several things. Number one, it could just be the heat in the sun wearing on the plants,

and leaves don't last forever. And you get toward the end of the season, if you have a little drought condition, if you you know, as we as the days start getting shorter and we move into the cooler season, the plants are going to start to abandon their older leaves. And that's what you're seeing. Your new growth looks good, it's fine, but it's the older leaves that are starting

to scorch and to look worse. And as you look at the array of plants that you sent me, diseases tend to be pretty plants specific and even in the case of also use powdery mildew. Powdery mildew, there's a powdery mildew that attacks krape myrtles, there's one that attacks roses, there's one that attacks turk's cap. But it's not the same strain of powdery mildew. So if you had roses with powdery mildew and you put them right next to something else that gets powdery mildew, it wouldn't attack it

because it's the wrong strain. And so when you see a whole big problem going across all these different plant species, it's going to be cultural or it's going to be environmental weather. That's what the case is. And I saw nothing to be alarmed about other than this year. Give them good deep soakings whenever we are hot and dry, and I would give them a little boost a fertilizer. I think that would be helped. Some of them look

like a little bit of nutrient maybe lacking. I can't remember it specifically which one now, specific plant, but in general, just a good balanced fertilizer with some micronutrients in it. I think that's going to be all you need to do.

And so for kurt myrtle bark scale, in the next few months, spring the trunks with a horticultural oil, not a dormant but a horticultural oil and getting good coverage. You want to do that in March, I would do it in March, maybe mid March, late Mar or late March, maybe even early April. Do it again and that will help the little crawler baby scales that are going out and ending up everywhere causing the problem.

that you can choose from. So if you want something, they'll powder coat cast iron, wrot iron, aluminum, patio furniture, you know, if it's metal, they can do it. And if it's got a little bit of you know, rust or some need some welding to kind of toach things back together. If you need to replace the old rusty hardware, they'll do that. They'll do it with stainless steel. By the way, so at lasts they'll replace the plastic feed and the end caps. And they can take your patio furniture.

They can take your outdoor art. If you've got a metal handrail, if you've got a metal lamppost out in the yard, anything a matter like that, they'll put a powder coating on it and it is unbelievably attractive and it lasts. And for those of you down on the coast, they have a special process they do for that salt spray you deal with down there to help stuff last even there. Now you can email photos of your furniture to sales at Houston Coders. No word powder in the

email Houstoncoders dot com. Sales at houstoncoders dot com. They'll give you a quick quote and in the greater Houston area they'll even do pick up and real quick turnaround. I went through the shop and saw all the work and oh my gosh, it is unbelievable the work that they can do. Turn your furniture new again at Houston Powder Coders Houston powder Cooders dot com, Houston powder Cooders dot com. Go check them out two eight one six seven six thirty eight eighty eight and follow them on

social media. They're posting all the time pictures of jobs and things they've done. You see what I'm talking about, really cool thing. Well, here we are, the music is playing, and I've got a couple of folks out there probably need to get back to I'm going to have to hold you guys until we come back from break. When we come back, we'll take your calls calling to Steve

and Mike both be sort of visiting with you. I want to remind you that I have a website out there where I put everything that we talk about that needs a publication here on garden Line. So for example, I walked out in my one of my beds, one of one that I fought nuts edge in last year, and I just about got it all. It's gonna get done this year. It's gonna be finished this year. I've taken it down to just a few plants that survived. I saw a sprout coming up. I've got a publication.

I'm to wind the blow and not to I know.

you know. I mean, if you don't like the look of it, you can take a little shovel and kind of pick it up and get rid of it. But it's not hurting anything. It is not a disease of plants.

concern at all. It is a tiny sliver of the pie on all of them that are our concern, you know. So we say, well, pottery mildew's of fungus, that's bad. Okay, yes, I got that. But there are bazillion different fungal organisms that are good or they are no significance, you know, to your gardening. And the same is true with insects. Because it has six legs does not mean mean it needs a death sentence. There are so many beneficials. And then there's things that don't matter, like a house fly

going through the garden and landing on a tomato. And then flying off. What was the significance there? Nothing? Houseflies don't eat tomatoes, right, and it just happened to be there and happened to have six legs. So what I'm saying is either it's a good guy, or it's of no significance at all to your garden, or it's a tiny sliver that would be a bad one. So just because you see insects, assume they're not bad. There may

be bad, but that's the exception. Just because there's a fungal organism or a bacteria doesn't mean it's bad the majority of them, or of no significance, or they're actually helpful. And there are many microbes and fungal organisms that are almost essential to plants in the services that they provide for them. So let's kind of back off, you know, lay the spray gun down, step back away from the spray. It's not necessary to kill everything that moves in the garden.

In fact, you shouldn't. It's a problem to do that. That's your public service announcement for this morning. All right, Well, here's another public service announcement. ACE Hardware. Last summer I replaced a problem sink or excuse me, faucet that we had in the kitchen above the sink, and you know did all that? How are your faucets? Are they working right? Are they do you like them? Do they do what you want to do? Did they spray in the bin

where they want them to spray? Maybe they don't have a spray and you want one that comes out and does that. Ace Hardware's got you covered twenty percent off all Moen faucets this month. Is that cool? And while you're in there, grab some air filters. You know we're supposed to be replacing those monthly on our houses. I have to put a little thing on my calendar to remember every month because I'll go three months and forget

to do it. Well, speaking of three months, you buy three air filters at ACE and you get one free, so you get an extra deal there. That's kind of a cool deal. Do you want to redo your deck or do you want to update some boards and maybe do some resealing. They have just about everything you need to get your deck job squared away. And they even have stained They have pain of course, they just have a president sale that they've announced on all kinds of

painting supplies, So be sure and stop buying. See it yourself now. ACE Hardware is the place when you go into ACE though. Please do this. I did it myself years ago, and I'm so glad I did sign up online or at the store just to get the information for ACE Rewards. ACE Rewards. You get discounts, you get special offers. There's things that are only for ACE Rewards customers that are emailed directly to you. It is a good deal. You need to do that. It doesn't cost

to sign up, So do it now. There's ACE Hardware is all over. Go to Acehardware dot com, find the store locator, find the one near you. If you're in the Woodlands, Aspas ACE is up there out at Lake Conroe, ACE in Montgomery, Single Ranch down the Cavy area, Single Ranch, ACE Hardware K and m ACE Hardware is another one down there. Are over in the Kingwood air essay down there. It's over in Kingwood, as is Kingwood ACE in a Tascasita. Just some examples of the many, many ACE Hardware stores.

We're going to go now to Surfside and talk to Mike. Hey, Mike, welcome to garden Line.

And so sometimes in the old days, people would pull the cauliflower leaves up over the head and put a put a clothesline clip on their clothespin to hold it and keep the sunlight out so the head stays whiter and doesn't turn kind of a tannish color. But it's just for aesthetics, it just for now. They breed cauliflower to have they call themself blanching varieties. The leaves naturally grow up over the head and do the same thing.

They even have a like what they call three and one trees that means they graft it was actually budded three different varieties onto the same plant, So you don't have room for three different apple trees or three different whatevers. They can get your plant that's already got all three in one plant. Is that cool or what?

Arctic frost bread by doctor Moy in San Antonio. Nice fella now passed away, but it's cold harty down to twelve degrees. Once it's established, not the first day you put in the ground, but about three or four years down the line, you're gonna have something. If the gradual cooling occurs you it'll take it down into the mid teen So that's amazing. Of course, when you're there, get the tools, get the soil, get the fertilizer you need

for your fruit trees. And when you're there, walk around because their selection of vegetables and herbs and flowers and everything is amazing. Go to an Chenned Gardens, go to in Chenned Forest. Those are both great places down there, Chanted Forest. Right now, with those fruit trees they've got going, you can create your own fruitful paradise. Yep, that's right, your own little garden of eating e A t I

N Garden of eaten. It's a good idea. I need to use that again down at Enchanted Forest and Richmond Rosenberg. How fortunate are you guys that live down there, to have both of those options available to you. All right, I'm gonna take a break. We'll be right back. All right, folks, we're back here we go or garden line seven one three two one two k t r H. If you'd like to be on, and if you're shy about being on,

I talk to people about this all the time. When to do these appearances and go out and meet with the folks that listen to the show, there's always be like, yeah, I'm afraid to call in. I don't want to call in. I'm afraid I'll look silly or whatever. You know, all that kind of stuff. I get it. Okay, I get it. I understand that. But listen, if you've listened to garden Line very long, now you know I will. I'm here for you. I got you. You don't have to worry

about that. We're not gonna We're not going to give you a hard time about anything like that. And what you think is a stupid question, somebody else has it too. Don't be afraid of that. The way I like to put it is, there's no stupid questions. There's just stupid answers. So the pressure's on me, not you. I'll try to avoid the stupid answers. Believe me, in my life I've given more than one of those, so I'll stay away from that. But just give me a call. You've got

a question. Somebody else will had the same question. I guarantee you I see them all the time. I've been doing this for over thirty five years now. First as an Agrolife Extension horticulture agent with Texas and m Agrolife Extension. Worked in Montgomery County for a while, I worked in Travis County, over in Austin, worked in Harris County, worked in Briseles County and then up in Braizis. I did some radio, but certainly doing radio now. Then in the

Greater Houston area again. And it's amazing how the same kinds of questions come around each year, but there's always something new. I always get a question this like, yeah, no one's ever asked me that before. You know, there's a first for everything, and that's okay, that's what makes it fun. All right, Well, I want to talk a little bit about the Southwest Fertilizer. Southwest Fertilizer Company. Southwest Fertilizer is an institution. It's been around since the nineteen fifties.

You know that a Southwest Fertilizer was advertising on Garden Line before it was called garden Line back in the Dewey Compton days. I'm the fifth host to talk about Southwest Fertilizer here on the radio. Is that amazing. They are now celebrating their seventieth year. So happy birthday, Happy birthday to Southwest Fertilizer. I'm really I'm enthusiastic about the place. I don't tell you why. When you walk in there, everything you need is there.

not a problem for your plant. So you just happen to capture him and when he was out in the garden, he's okay. They're not going to sell you something you don't need at Southwest Fertilizer. Now, if you need to prevent product right now, it's time to get the barricade out. It is time to get the barricade out, and they have it. And the reason I stress that is because we have a window where we put down a product like barricade. The pre emergent watered in and then here

come the warm season weeds. When the soil tip hits fifty five, crabgrass starts to germinate. Soil temperature fifty five, crabgrass starts to germinate, and so it's time to get it down. If you wait until a month and a half from now they're going to have all sprouted. I mean, though there's weeds sprouting every month of the year, but the bulk of it that you're trying to stop, you got to do it now. If you're going to do that,

And you can see that on a schedule online. Go to gardening with skip dot com find my lawn pest disease and weed management schedule. There's two schedules that are both free. Look at it and see when it tells you to put that down and it's now, we got to get it down now. Okay. Southwest has it herbicides, sponge sides, and sexticides. They have a better selection than anybody in the city. And if you're hearing me say all these things and you're going those are chemicals, and

I'm an organic gardener. They have the biggest organic gardening section of anybody in the city, the whole region. Really, it is amazing what they have. They have tools. It's printing season. Get you a quality tool that will last you forever, like a folk or a corona for example. Get you that garden kneeling seat that I always talk about on guardline. I think it's such a great one of my top five favorite. I'll call it a tool that I in the garden. It's all there, seed Starting.

Seed Starting supplies, big bins of seed. You just buy it by the scoop, very very economical packages of seed. Anything you need to start seeds, they've got it right there at Southwest Fertilizer corner of bus Net and Renwick. Southwest Fertilizer dot Com corner of bus Net and Renwick. They have friendly service there, quality products. I would say a great selection, but it's greater than great. It is

a complete everything selection Southwest Fertilizer. Now, if you rather drive around shopping all the time trying to find this, that and the other, well I guess that you can do that, but this is a one stop shop. Let's now go out and talk to Blake here on Guardline. Hey Blake, welcome to the show.

better nutrient uptake. It's got seaweed extracts. Basically, it's got everything you need. It's great for watering and transplants. That's how I mainly use it, but you can do it as a folier feed. It won't burn your plants. You can improve your fruiting and blooming and things by continuing to foli your feed with that or drench the soil. The way you go about it, it's going to build a biological activity in your soil. Medina has to grow six twelve six plant food. Let's head out to let's

see here. We're going to go to lakeside of States and Marine. I'm picking you up here with about a minute to go, but we'll see how far are we get. We'll come back to you after break.

and they're on that publication. But there's the that's the best product to control nuts edge. But you got to read the publication because how and when and how many leaves should it have before you spray it.

that's all they grow. They grow things that want to grow here, not stuff that's gonna die because you know, lose spruce from Colorado for crying out loud. No, they grow things that want to grow here. But someone asked me that they does RCW Nursery have roses, and I said, does a one legged ducks swim in a circle. Of course they have roses. They've got the best selection roses

you're gonna find anywhere. Hundreds hundreds of types of roses. Now, every day you wait, there's less and less because people come and buy them and they sell out and they don't reorder. It's a spring thing. Primarily they have roses you're around. But I'm just saying, if you want the best selection, go there now. RCW Nurseries corn of Beltway eight and Tomball Parkway r cwnurseries dot com. They are the get it god at nursery, meaning if they don't have it, they probably can get it for you. Just

go talk to them. Great family, Williams and fam just really quality products. And right now, I mean, what February Valentine's Day you think you might come up with a good gift from somebody on your list.

the grass. It just stops the root growth for a period of time until it all breaks down and then the roots can grow. But when we get into summer drought and things, you don't want a limited root system. So using the right amount according to the label is fine. Just I would not use both products. I would pick the wine and go for it. And I think you'll be fine either way.

aeration and the coppost top dressing. You can do it yourself. It's not complicated, but it is very cumbersome, and chances are you're not going to have the equipment to do a true core aeration to pop a good depth of plug out of the soil and drop it on the surface. So save yourself the hassle of renting and transporting and cleaning and returning the machines and all that kind of stuff. Big posit compost in your driveway. Just get year round

to come out. They use quality screened compos plant based is not compost. It stinks. This is quality product, so that and it's a fine screen so it settles down into your lawn. And so if you live inside the Beltway, if you are over maybe out in the Richmond Rosenberg area, that's another area that they will cover and just you even give them a call. There are a few other areas they'll reach out to. But year round Houston dot com.

Simple as that, easy to remember. Year round Houston dot com for all of you inside the Beltway and out there in the Richmond Rosenberg area. Eight three two eight eight four fifty three thirty five. I'll say that again. Eight three two eight eight four fifty three thirty five. Year round Houston dot com. If you want your lawn

to look good. There's nothing, no single thing you do to it that makes more of an impressive difference over time to improve that situation the soil and the lawn than year round Houston's top with compost and core aerration. Those practices are very important. We're going to go out to Conro now and talk to Marie. Hello, Marie, welcome to garden Line.

I mean, if you can get it to survive, it will continue on and you'll you'll have what you want out of the plant. So I would move it now. I would prune as needed in the move, get wider rather than deeper when you dig it up. In other words, you know, if you even got down four to six inches below the surface and just kind of horizontally shoved your flat shovel underneath the plant, slide it up onto

a tarp, drag it to its new spot. You never have to lift it up that way, and you know you won't have to go to the chiropractor with that kind of thing, and then slide it into its new spot, watered in really good, make sure and keep it adequately moist on a regular basis.

They have a number of lines. They've got the Turf Star line for lawns. They've got the Nutri Star line for specific time types of plants, and I'll come back to that in just a second. And then they have the Nature Star line, and they've got oh gosh, there's there's some more at Color Star. I can I forget that one. Most famous one they got probably well in the Nutri Star line. They have a tree and Shrub It's good for any woody ornamental that you have. Any

woody ornaments got five sources of nitrogen. Slow feeding promotes healthy growth. You play it about every three to four months. That way you'll spread it out. It's got micronutrients for especially healthy growth and vitality by giving that plant everything it needs. Now, I don't care what kind of tree or shrub you have. This stuff works nutristar, tree and shrub.

The other nutri star I want to tell you about, and there's only eight hundred of the month there citrus fruit and avocado essential nutrients again for these types of fruiting plants. Again about every three months. Give it a feeding. You can get it in a little canistir jar. There's even places in town where you can get refills on various kinds of Nelson plant food products. Now, this product works on all all of the fruit and nut trees.

It says citrus fruit and avocado. Fruit means fruit, peaches, plum, you got. Just go for it, whether they're in a container or whether they're in the landscape. Nutri Star citrus fruit and avocado give them a little boost as they grow. Good growth, good sunshine means good production and that's why you're growing the things. All right, We're going to run out here and talk to Doug in Katie. Hello, Doug, Welcome to Gardenline.

the other half. It is more important that you underdo it so that you don't run out and now you've overdone it on a So I actually I do remember the numbers that I've given you. I don't remember distinguishing between drop or the whirlybird spreaders. But on a on a regular walk behind spreader, if it's a fertilizer, you put it about a notch or two above halfway. So if there were twenty notches, you would go to eleven

or twelve. Okay, a notch or two above halfway. If there's only I'll be ridiculous, but five notches, it would be a three that you would go to. Okay, on the pre emergent herbicides. Those are fine granules. And basically you're going to do about a notch above one quarter. So using that example of twenty notches, that would be you know, five or six that you would set it on. Okay, that's stills that you're walking on. Yeah, yeah, but but that's a that's the best guess, the best shot that

we can do. But always go light. You can always come back over the area. But if you've overdone it and you're halfway through and you've used all your product, you've got a problem.

wanted to make sure it didn't die when the freeze came. Now, this trick only works if you if you're old school like me, and you have incandescent Christmas lights, because the ones I had taken off the house, I had three strings of them, so one of them I ramped around the base of the tree keep the roots warm, and the other two hung up the leaves and the and the branches. Covered it with a frost claw and worked

just great. My neighbors probably kind of wondered whether there was this glowing ghost in my heart with white cover and the little light shining through it. But after the frogt treeze was over, took it all off, the trees just doing what hell.

all right, We're gonna go now to Charles. Hello, Charles, Welcome to garden Line.

from Nelson Plant Food. They've got the weed and Nator that's a post emergent weed control product that you put down. You have to wet the yard so that the granules of weed donators stick to your weeds. Okay, okay, And when the granules stick to the weed, then yeah, just

follow the instructions. It's all in the bag. But weedinator would be an option, you know, in that's gonna be one of the one of the things you can There are other options out there, but you know that that's one I was just talking about, so I'll just mention it.

like a dwarf mulberry. Have you ever heard that all kinds of citrus like lemons and grapefruit and kalamanda and tangerines and satsumas and Tangelo's and oh my gosh, on and on and on kaffir lines. He has things like the fuuu per summons, which is great, by the way, Joey Avocado, Mexicola Grande avocado, thy purple guava, Primark Freedom BlackBerry that is a thornless BlackBerry. You need Primark Freedom

BlackBerry or has got it? Outed Orges Hidden Gardens on Elizabeth Street in Alvin, just south of the Highway six. Go check them out. All right, time for a break here, I'll be right back with more of garden Line.

The way I like to put it is, we want you to have a bountiful garden, a beautiful landscape, and more fun in the process. That's the goal.

That'd be a great idea. I wonder if the highway department would be willing to let me comeandeer a couple of those flashing signs when you're driving down the road and it says prevent weeds now, prevent weeds now, flashing on and off. Kill existing weeds now. I don't care how you go about it. If you want to handpull, I handpull a lot of my weeds because I don't

have that many of them. But there's always some wherever sunlight hits the soil, nature plants of weed all the cool season weeds are up now and growing, and that's what you see. Warm season weeds too tiny to see yet cool season weeds. They're up and you got to do something. Hand pull them or spray them with a post emergent weed control product. Either way you get rid of them before. That's an important all capsul b e f ore before they bloom and set seeds. Once they

become reproductive. Even the products that work well otherwise are not as effective. Number two. By the time you spray them like that, they probably already have set viable seed. So even if you did kill the weed, it's gonna die anyway on its own. But even if you did, it's already produced its seed, and so you have sentenced yourself to another year of problems when next winter comes around. So control them. If you're going to prevent them, you

gotta prevent them now. You gotta prevent them now because they are starting to sprout. The crabgrass starts to sprout at fifty five degrees soil temperature, So once it starts sprouting, then you're up a creek. You got to deal with that because then you're dealing with an existing weed in your lawn, and it's much better to prevent a weed than it is to control one that's already grown. All right, I think I beat that horse to death. But we're gonna go now out and talk to c R on

the phones. Hello to see R. Welcome to garden Line.

they'll sprout up green, you know, green branches. The foliage is green and not yellow, and you can't just like clip off, you like give it a haircut because it doesn't get rid of the green. That's so my question is, is the plant is yellow, but you know sprout up these green twigs. Do you have to chase that twig all the way like to the base of the base of the shrub? Is that and then going there and just clip that off? Is that how you keep all the green out. I need some help on that.

a shoot that has yellow on it. So if you if you follow the green back and it attaches, look at the shoot that it attaches to, and is that shoot producing yellow foliage out there? It is cut the grain off right up against the point of attachment.

the leaves off of the dawn thing. And what do you do about that?

they're featuring right now, Salvi el irata. It is a gorgeous little low blooming native ground cup not groundcovery, but it's a perennial comes out of the ground they've got a great selection of Clemitus too. If you've never grown clemitus, if you've got a spot with morning sun that you can molt the roots really good. And it's got some mid to late day shade. Columbitus will be very happy

in there, and it is quite a stunning plant. And of course they got all the fruit trees in nectarines, apricots, plums, pluots, all kinds of stone fruit, including peaches. They also have apples. I mean, just a wide variety of things. Pears, they've got them, and the kinds that you want to grow here, the kinds that will produce well in our area. So stop by there, grab you some tomato plants. It's time

for getting those two. It's all there. Buchanans plants. They're in the heights on eleventh Street, easy to find, easy to get to, and I promise you you'll be very impressed with the selection that they have. Time for me to take a break and I'll be right back, folks, thanks for listening, Welcome back to garden line. How many if you remember last year when twice storms took the power out, knock down trees, knockdown lines. Weeks people went

weeks without power. Generators suddenly became important to our buddy. And I mean there were a lot of people interested in getting a generator. And I'm telling you there's a lot of places you by generator in Houston, but nothing, nothing that I can recommend like Quality Home And here's why. Number One, they have generatic generat the automatic stand by

generators that are high quality equipment. High quality equipment. They absolutely are amazing that they power goes out, you don't have to run around, put gas in something, pull a string fired up or whatever. They come on automatically. When the power goes down, they come on. They get set up that way. Now, the reason I recommend Quality Home Products is because they stand out this organization when it comes to reliability, when it comes to integrity, when it

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seventy seven thousand homeowners with award winning customer service. That's what they've received from Quality Home Houston Chronicle twenty twenty three. They were the best of the best for home contractor family owned operations since nineteen eighty nine. Financing operations are operations. Financing options are available, so if you want to if you do that, they can work with you on that. QUALITYTX dot Com. Just write that down, think about it. Now's a good time to get it done. Anytime of

the year. We can have storms and issues for true dependability. You got a home business you're running, or you got something else, and you can't be down. You can't not have the internet QUALITYTX dot com or by phone seven to one three quality, seven to win three Quality Home Products of Texas. That's the one you need to know. We're going to go out to Galiston now and talk to Louise. Louise, welcome to garden Line.

If you have a shrub rose, the kind that's basically bushy leaves with flowers in it, it's prune like a shrub, then you can just prune them anytime you want. But that's one type of pruning. So maybe your rose got too tall and you want to cut it back byhalf and start to bring the size down a little bit. It'll regrow and it'll do just fine. But if you've got like a cut flower rose, like those hybrid teas that make the long straight stems with roses on the end,

that's a different kind of pruning. But it also can be done now or Valentine's Day if you want. It doesn't matter on that day. It's a different style. So depending on the rose you have, yeah, a different style, but timing is fine.

It's wonderful. Talk to Boone Holiday if you can. He's he's the horticulture agent there in Galveston County.

It needs room to grow. The more confined it is, you can grow them in smaller pots, but it they go into drought stress faster and easier because they don't have the root volume. You know what I'm saying. So keep them moist, get them in good sunlight. And it's not unusual when a plant is stressed for it to abort its blooms or its fruit, and that's what happens a lot in some types of citrus. So you just need to keep it happy and get that stress out by giving it more room to grow. Make sure it

never lacks for water, good nutrition and so on. Not too much nitrogen but moderate amount. And I think this will turn that around and you'll end up getting some limes.

but follow the label real carefully. Okay, thank you, Skip, Thank you, Lee, appreciate the call. You take care. Ciena Maltz speaking of soils, Ciena Molts. Oh my gosh. They are south of the Houston area, near where Highway six and two eighty eight come together. It's the road is FM five twenty one and here's the website. If you hear nothing else I'm about to say, write this down. Sienna Moltz dot Com tells you where they are, gives

you the phone number, tells you what they have. All of you folks down there in Quill Valley and Rose Sharing and first Colony in Parland and Sweetwater, Sandy Point, Iowa Colony, Siena Plantation. This is your hometown, soil place and everything you need for success. Remember brown stuff before green stuff. They've got the composts, They've got the bed mixes, They've got the mulches for top of the ground. They've got the fertilizers. Okay, you want Microlife, Azamite, turf Star.

Do you want products from heirloom soils. Do you want fertilizer from Nitroposs or Landscaper's Pride or Nils plant Food Medina. They have all of that, everything you need to set the founder for successes at Ciena Maltch. Wonderful folks. You will love going in there and interacting with them. They will, I promise you, they will treat you right. They deliver within about twenty miles of their location, or you can just go by there and pick it up. They're open

today till two pm. Don't delay close tomorrow, but open Monday through Saturday. So get out there and get you some stuff or get it ordered have it delivered. Secret to success is to start with the soil, and Ciena Maltch will get you covered on that. Let's see here we are. I'm looking at a heartbreak, so I can't grab the next phone call just yet, but I did want to mention to you that Ace Hardware stores are all over the place. You can go to acehardware dot

com find the store near you. Examples are k and m Ace up in a Tascasita, Bay City, Ace down in Bay City, Wharton Feed and Ace for those of you Done and Wharton. I was down there a while back. Hamilton Hardware off Highway six near Bear Creek. While you're there, they're having right now twenty percent off all their Mowen faucets. This is a great time to fix those spausets in the house that need fix and grab some air filters. Make sure that they had a president's sale on painting

supplies coming up. Just go to your local Ace Hardware store. There's good things happening right now. Time for me to take a break. When I come back, we'll be back with your calls a little true free league to get us going here on our nest segment of garden line Microlife products. You know they've they've been around for over thirty five years, loved by gardeners and landscape professionals. I think it's ten years ago that I first used a Microlife product and I've been sold on it ever since.

There are sixty four lawn fertilizers and number one selling organic fertilizer in Houston. Their products are not going to burn your lawns or your plants, are not salt based products. They're safety use on anything with it. It's turf, grass, as alias, flowers, vegetables, and they have products for every kind of thing. Certainly there's the bags of products that are loaded with microbes and to the nutrients that you have.

They've got their jugs that are plastic clear plastic screw top lid jugs that you can refill at several different kinds of places around town. There's jug refill stations that select retail outlets are really cool. You can go to microlfertilizer dot com find out all about the products, and it's a huge line and all the places you can get it. I want to talk about two real quick. Two of their liquid products. The first is Microlife Biomatrix.

That's an orange label. It's a high nitrogen liquid organic product with beneficial microbes. It's a seven to one three. That's the three numbers on it, seven to one three. I use it myself, very good. I use it for houseplants, but I mean my patio containers as well. You can put it on a rosebush in the ground. I mean, it's good stuff that really works. The second product is Ocean Harvest. That's a blue label. It's a six two three so orange label Biomatrix, Blue label, Ocean Harvest. It's

a four to two three fertilizer. It doesn't burn. You can use it to a folio spray. It's a fish based fertilizer. Use it outdoors, no fishy for the inside, but it's a gray product. Organic gardeners have long known the importance of things like fish and mulsion and seaweed. By the way, Microlife has both of those. It's easy

to find all over town and it works. Microlife products for those of you who are wanting to garden in line with nature a little bit more organically, well, this is definitely something you need to know about in the years. I'm gonna head out now to Katie and we're going to talk to Kevin Scott. Hey, Kevin, Welcome to Guardenline.

that's a good idea. The image goes into the soil and is taken up by certain kinds of weed roots. Okay, so that there you you you would be looking at prevent or killing existing weeds that are coming up.

to switch up. We're going to change jover on something because uh, resistance can happen and it's not the products. Well, it's just the fact that dimension. Okay, well that's just a they're they're really closely related in how they work. So if you're not getting results with those, then we would need to be talking about, uh you know, switching to something else. And there there are a number of good things out there. Uh some of the products I don't like to recommend because they if you don't use

them right, they can cause damage to things. And that that's the way it's. That's the case with a lot of different things that we have to deal with. Uh that is your is your grass, Saint Augustine.

the Poeana is very young, very young. It works pretty well. Once there it matures, those products don't work. But that would be your second line of defense on Poeanna and then you know, I mean we could we could talk poant all day here, but the bottom line is get you a good primerg and start with that. If you need to switch to another. If you want to send me, you know, an email and ask some questions on it, I can send you the link to a publication that goes into it in depth more than I can do

on the air. So I'm going to put you on hold, Kevin, and uh if you will give uh, if you want, give my producer Jonathan your email, He'll give you my email address and just send me that request and I'll send you something.

They're loaded up. And if you want to do some seeds starting, they've got plenty of really good seeds and seeds starting kits still getting deliveries of all kinds of things for landscape, color, for vegetables, for urge. Listen, spring is springing, and the trucks that arbigateor are going to line up, they have been lining up to bring you a good selection. They always have a good selection. Do you want a rose? Do you want a camellia? Do you want to fill in the blank, They've got it.

Remember to go around and back in park. Go on Trischel Road which goes behind Arburgate. The back parking lot is awesome, great accessibility. It's the safest, easiest way to get in there, and there's always space back there. Even as busy as that place gets. You're going to find

a place back there to get your parking done. And remember that when you're there, get their one two three completely easy system that's a soil for anything with roots, a fertilizer that's organic than for anything with the roots and a compost product. And by the way, the soil in the compost both had expanded shale mixed in them, which is a really nice added plus. And their soil

and composts can be delivered in bulk. So if you want that good arburgate product and you want it delivered to your house, call them up, talk to them, or when you're out there, ask them about a book delivery of it, and they can do that. I don't care where you live around here, they can do that. All right, Time for me to take a quick break. When I come back, we will be talking to Barry and David.

Nature's way is built around doing exactly that. The same way that nature does. That's why it's called Nature's Way because it does it Nature's way. Now you go out there, talk to Ian, talk to any of the folks out there at Nature's Way, and they can point you in the right direction with the soil blend that you need for what you want to grow. Maybe you just want some composts to improve a clay soil. Maybe you want to get a bed mix that's going to go well with.

Maybe you're putting in fruit trees and you're going to create a nice raised mound for better drainage on the surface with one of their fruit blends. Maybe it's a vegetable type soil blend, or for herbs or for flowers, they've got it. Do you want to grow a zelias and blueberries and peiras and oh my gosh, Virginia sweet inspire, all those things that like cool that like acidic soils, they've got that at Nature's Way Resources. It's really easy. Just go just go check them out. You can go

buy there and pick it up yourself. If you've got to pick up our trailer, you can call them and have them deliver it.

quality leaf mo compost or a fungal based compost. Both of those are finally screened and excellent for top dressing your lawn. You can get that as well as many other things that Nature's Way. And you know when you buy it there, it's going to be a product that's made well. It's not cheap compost. This is is stuff that's made well. It's been adequately composted, it's been properly screened, and it's gonna give you the results you're looking for. I'm going to head now to let's see where are

we going next. I believe we're heading to David and Spring Branch. Hey, David, welcome to garden Line.

the inner wood. Okay, okay, yes, get it done this week. There you go, Thank you, There you go, you bet, David, thanks a lot, appreciate your call. We're going to now go talk to Barry. Hello, Berry, welcome to guard Line.

But another option is to cut it off at the ground and when the new shoots come out of the base, pick maybe three of them to be your main trunks, and then as they come up you can top them and they'll form a couple of shoots that form the next category of branches. And you know, a crpe myrtle should come out of the ground as a single branch or a trunk. It should fork into two or three, and then fork into two or three, and as it

goes up it just makes this beautiful structure. When you do the stubbing off two foot high, you're going to have an ugly down there low. It's okay to do that. I don't think it's very pretty to do that, and so I might take it all the way to the ground and start over or kind of branch back to where a side branch comes out.

Then you just have to keep the dogs off that section.

step on it. It's a pole. You step on it and it goes down beside the weed, and then you just pull on the handle and it has a little fulcrum and it like the weed right out of the ground. Now that's for good for tap rooted weeds. It wouldn't be good for weeds that are running all through your grass, but that would be another is just do the hand pulling without you getting on your hands and knees. That way, it's it's easier cool, okay, Southwest Fertile Line. All right,

thank you. Oh they've got everything. Yeah, say hi to Bob. All right, you take care of it. Well, it always takes all and it's spring. Oh my gosh, it's going to get more fun as we go here. I'm looking forward to it. I hope you are too. Hey, garden Line is available as a podcast. You can go to the ktr H website go to garden Line. You can

listen to past shows. I think the best way to listen to garden Line, unless you just happen to have radio you like to sit by, which is fine and we still do that, is to get the iHeartMedia app. It's a little red app with a white heart in it. Download it to your phones. Fine garden Line, you know, put it on your list and you can listen to me live. Put that phone in your pocket and go out in the garden, pull weeds work, Take a picture of a bug, send it to me. We'll talk about

it during the show. Get an air in time. It's a good way to listen. And you also listened to past shows on the on the iHeartMedia app too, So tell your friends and neighbors about it. We try to answer questions and answer them from all over the place, so no matter where they live, we're happy to help them. Would like to get us Paul on garden See you tomorrow morning at six am. Get you some coffee, sat ride eyed and bushy tailed. I'll be there