Winterize Your Garden

about growing things and plants. We were made to grow things. That is just part of our DNA, I believe. And there's an accomplishment that comes when you plant a plant or plant a seed into the soil. Uh. It is just just a sense of I did that, I grew that, I made that, and that is a really cool and fun thing to do. You are listening to garden Line, We're here to answer your gardening questions phone number seven

one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. If you would like to give me a call seven one three two one two kt r H and we can talk about whatever gardening topics are most of interest to you. I spent this week getting some things done out and about around the landscape. You know, my garden has been kind of on hiatus since it was primarily an Okra garden. This summer I kind of went all in to doing a lot of different Okre breeding plots and things, and

so it Okra sort of took over the garden. Of course, Okra right now is not very happy at n't like these temperatures, and it's all coming out so that I can move on to other things. But I look at gardening as not only a way to grow food, but

also a way to become a better gardener. You know, when you can read about gardening all day and I don't care how good a book is, how knowledgeable the author is, there's nothing like it out there, and just doing it now when I'm not saying that, you know, it's not important to read and learn and well listen to the garden Line to learn. But it's just nothing like putting your hand to the plow, so to speak, and getting after it and doing it. And I learn

something every year in the garden. I learned more than something. I learned a lot of somethings every year in the garden. It is a very dynamic thing. Every year is different. You know, one year maybe late light blast or early blight blast your tomatoes and it just seems like, you know, where did all that come from? Well, each year is different. Some years, certain insects we have outbreaks of and some years what you find is where you didn't seem to

have nutrient problems, suddenly plants aren't doing really well. And who knows what the change could have been. Mad It could have been things you added, It could have been soggy, wet soil affects that, it could have been a lot of things that happened. But you learn every time you do it, and you just got to get out there and do it. That is, you know, it's it's like the quote, and I've made it a number of times

here on garden Line. You know, to be a good gardener to be a good gardener, you got to kill a lot of plants. Doctor J. C. Ralston, a famed horticulture has said, if you're not killing plants, you're not really stretching yourself as a gardener. And boy, is that ever true. That is true. So I have stretched myself a lot by trying things and killing plants and learning, learning what plants need, what they want. You know, That's the thing I always say, there's no brown thumbs in gardening.

There's only uninformed thumbs. And we're here to inform your thumb. But it is really true that a lot of the things that are that have made me the best gardener that I can possibly be a year after year getting better and better at it is. It's just trial and error. It's being experimental and not being afraid to fail. And I would encourage you to do that this year. You know, every year I grow tomatoes. Of course, it's almost required.

I think there's a Texas law that if you have a garden, you have to grow at least one tomato. But I always add, I've got Tier three that are my you know, dependables. I know they're going to be there. I like them. They they're going to perform, they're pretty good. But I always have Tier three that are some I've never grown before, just to try them out, just to learn. And you know what, some of my favorites entered the world of my favorites by being an experiment that I tried,

one that I tried out. How about growing things differently?

Have you ever grown potatoes in a bucket? That's too late for planting potatoes, But if you can make a hole in the bottom of a bucket or a basket, or you know whatever, however you go about it and set a potato piece in the bottom, set that container on the ground, by the way, and let the potatoes grow up into the bucket, and then just keep adding compost soil are more of a compost to the bucket as they grow, so they're having to grow up out

of the compost a little bit. And by the time they get to the top and that bucket is full of compost, all your potatoes will be in that bucket. It's true. You can do that, and then you just kind of lean it over, cut it loose from the ground because the roots are down in the ground. Regular potatoes like red potatoes and white potatoes are those are

the stem pieces. It's actually a stem. Sweet potatoes or roots, Irish potatoes, baking potatoes, new potatoes, all of those those are stems, so they come above the little seed piece, the chunk of potato that you plant in the ground. So all your potatoes are in the bucket. They you got a bucket full of compost and potatoes, you just dump it out. There's no easier potato digging than that. And they also it's also really nice. You just need to have plenty of drainage holes in the bottom of

the bucket. But that's something different. Have you ever planted a tomato upside down? You could do it same thing. You got a bucket, you stick the tomato. You kind of have to wrap the leaves up so you can push them down through a hole in the bottom of the bucket. But the hole shouldn't be so big that everything just falls through. Sometimes I'll wrap a little newspaper around the stem just to sort of plug that hole.

Fill the container full of a high quality and growing mix, you know, veggie and herb mix would be a good example, and just keep it watered and the tomato hangs down and they'll try to kind of bend up, but then they end up drooping down as they get tomatoes on them, and you hang it up somewhere and it gives a neighbor something to talk about. He's growing tomatoes out of the bottom of a bucket upside down. Mildred, Well, they're talking about you anyway, so don't worry about that. Just

have fun anyway, Try something new. I always trying to encourage you to grow something you haven't grown, try something new, do something in a way you haven't tried. And I think it just is part of the fun of gardening. It's certainly a conversation piece. All right, Well you get the idea. Uh seven one three two one two five

eight seven four. If you'd like to give us a call, We're going to go to a little break here and I'll be right back with I got a lot of things I want to talk about today, some really interesting and cool tips to talk to you in just a bit. Welcome back for garden Line. Hey, we are here to answer your gardening questions and just to help make you a better gardener. You know, they say, if you're cutting trees every night and then you got to quick cutting trees,

just to stop and sharpen the saw. Well, gardeners are the same way. If we don't stop every now and then or in the process, you know, sharpen us our saw. If you will make us better gardeners, it kind of gets boring, and sometimes misconceptions we have tend to live on. Have you ever noticed that in life in general, there's things you thought were right, but they turned out later you go, yeah, that wasn't right. Well, I think I

don't know. Is it probably Mark Twain or one of those kind of pontificators said something like, it's not what I don't know that concerns me, it's what I know that ain't. So other words, the thing I think I know that I'm wrong about whatever. Anyway, that is really true when it comes to gardening as well. I've talked to you in the past about quality home products, and you know that they are the purveyors of the outstanding stand by generator by Generac Generac automatic stand by generators

set outside your house. And I know right now the storms from this past year are the last thing on your minds. But let me just give you a tip if you are interested in getting a generator set up for next year. So when we do enter the storm seasons, and it's not just hurricane season. You know, the first storm we had this year wasn't even a hurricane season.

It wasn't related to a hurricane. If you're interested in that, now would be a good time to call them, because a low quieter on the on the front during this time here, because people are busy with other things. Give Quality Home a call. You can dial seven to one to three Quality, or you can go to their website Quality tx dot com and talk to them about the process of what it takes to get a Quality Home generator set up at your place now. If you happen to be we're getting the end of the year here.

Maybe you're an electrician or a plumber and you just aren't real happy where you're working right now. Maybe you know you would like to get a better opportunity, something with more maybe competitive pay, something with comprehensive medical, dental, vision coverage, retirement plans, holiday paid time off, career advancement. You want to work for a really established, reputable company. Well, Quality Home is all that, and you ought to get my call. You ought to go online to Quality TX

dot com, qualitytx dot com. The three you can make an application to become heart of the Quality team. And I'm tell you this. When I visited with the folks from Quality, one thing I noticed is they just love working there. They love their jobs. And boy, isn't that important those of us who have been in jobs we loved, in jobs we didn't love so much. Well, consider giving them a call again. License electricians and plumbing pros because

all their stuff like that is in house. They don't, you know, contract out to get electrician to come in and deal with their products when they're installing. They have their own and you can be one of those. So a lot of things that I'd like to visit about. One thing I want to start talking about today is there is a fellow I know. I've always really respected

his horticultural work. His name is Lee Reich up in New York area, and he writes from a standpoint and I really appreciate this of both research base information, am making stuff up or hearing what someone else said, research based information, and secondly, very much personal experience. He is a full gardener, I mean thirty years of his career, and he worked for Cornell for a long time, and he had written some things and I was just looking.

It was kind of a gardening guru's guide, some tips for gardeners, And as I read them, it was like, yes, yes, yes, yeah, every one of them. He is hitting the nail, just direct on. So I want to give you a few of those to think about. One of his tips is it basically has two words organic matter. Now have you ever heard me talk about the brown stuff and the green stuff. Yeah, it's important to some, it's important in gardening. And you can just sum it up to words organic matter.

Whether it's coming from these fallen leaves that are hitting the ground now, whether you make compost, buy composts, put kitchen scraps out there to decompose, if it was once alive, it's organic matter. And as it decomposes, it becomes the equivalent of compost and eventually humus. And when you put it in the soil, it encourages a healthy balance of beneficial microbes and microbes health plants, fight pests and disease. They also feeds. It releases its nutrients back into the soil.

Organic matter so important, so important. Do you know that your lawn more puts out more nutrients than your fertilizer spreader? Let that sink in just a minute. Your lawn mowre

puts out more nutrients and your fertilizer spreader. So that means that if you were to take all the grass clippings in a year of mowing and dry them down, send them to the lab, have them do an analysis on what's in them, there are more pounds of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and all the micronutrients because you have to have them to grow grass. All of those are in those clippings more than you've applied with your fertilizer. Now, if you bag your clippings to get rid of them, you just

have to fertilize even more. It doesn't mean if you return clippings you don't have to fertilize. It just means don't get rid of that valuable stuff that is happening when trees drop leaves. It's happening with grass clippings and all kinds of things organic matter. Second point, we're it's going to take a while to go over some of these, but over the course of this morning, I'd like to

do that. Don't panic over insects and diseases. That is something that isn't said I should talk about that more, there are some situations where if you don't deal with them early, they become a big problem. You know, brown patch in our yards. If you're going to treat for it, you got to catch it either before it starts or very very early in the process. But most things we

deal with. It's just a tolerable amount of damage. You know, to have a few aphens on a plant, to have a few spider mites on a planet, to have a few leaf spots on a disease. Something you and up some leaves here and there. Maybe it's a caterpillar or a grasshopper or a beetle. We can put up with that, Okay, A spray is our last resort. Now, that doesn't mean you wait until there's hardly anything left of the plant

to spray. It just means you don't have to control every problem in the garden by constantly spraying and treating for it. Organic or synthetic I'm talking about I don't care whether you're an organic or synthetic gardener. In this point. You don't have to spray for everything that happens. And it is really true, It is really important to remember that.

I remember years ago they did a study on green beans in the garden, you know, bush beans, and they took leaves, they cut leaves off the plant to see how many leaves does the plant have to lose in order to have a significant noticeable drop in production, and it was forty percent of the leaves. So if you've got a green bean and it's got a few holes and almost all the leaves, that still is not warranting a spray. You can spray and kill the bug, but you're not going to see more green beans as a

result of it. So that's just the point that I'm trying to make. Just think about it before you feel like you have to deal with something now. Again, my caveat on that is, yes, there are situations where you get an explosion if you don't shut it down early, but I'm telling you nature has a way of fixing things. When I first started as a county extension agent, I remember that our spray schedule for pecan orchards was every week or two. You're spraying with this and spraying with this,

and spraying with this all through the season. And basically you just sprayed the orchard all season, over and over and over again on a pretty frequent basis, so that fill in the blank didn't become a problem. It was disease and insects, sprays and stuff like that. Then part way into it, something called integrated pest management really took hold. And that's a process where we don't just spray because there might be a past, or there is a past, we decide whether we need to spray or not. And

so pecan orchardice would turn over a pecan. You know, pecans have compound leaves. It's not just one little leaflet, it's a whole set of leaves on a stem of petial. And they would turn over a leaf, count the number of aphids on it and do that to one hundred leaves in the orchard and come up with the exact

average number of aphids on it. And so maybe this week you had an average of four aphids per leief and next year seven afrits per leief, or next year, next week and the next week, you know, it got up to nine and then it went back down to five. What happened there? Ladybugs moved in, lace wings moved in, parasitizing wasps move in, and nature took care of it. And there's this little dotted line that says, yeah, more than number of aphids, then spray, And that concept applies

to our garden as well. No, we don't count aphids on plants. We don't need to, but that idea, that approach to it applies as well. And so point number two I'm making here with Lee's doctor Reisch's tips is don't panic over insects and diseases, learn about managing them. All right, Well, it is getting near another little break here. I'm going to come back with more of those tips

as we go through. And I've also got some interesting stuff on how plants react to light that I think you'll find very interesting, as well as a few other Oh, I'm gonna go I'm gonna talk about an missletoe today. We're gonna talk about mistletoe. It's a season for it, right, all right, stick stick around. We'll be right back here, and just a bit by the way, if you'd like to go ahead and give me a call, see can be first up when we come back. The number is seven to one three two one two K T R H.

some great books. By the way, if you want an excellent book for a Christmas gift, h he has a book. Oh guy, it's called Weedless Gardening. I believe he's the title of it, weedless Gardening, and he basically talks about how nature takes care of the soil by covering it with maltz and things like that. And I have used that system of weedless gardening myself and it it really works. When I saw his book, it's like, oh, somebody else

figured that out too. Of course, Nature figured that a long time before we did, which is another point that I'm going through. Some of the points that I think really valuable that he made, and that is have faith in Mother Nature. She's been at it a long time follower lead. So, for example, what does nature do with bear soil? Nature throws leaves on it to cover it up and prevent erosion and prevent wide string swings and temperature. Nature essentially protects that bear soil with leaves. It also

protects it with plants. We call those weeds, by the way, But when if you just strip away a section of your lawn and get rid of all the lawn, what's going to happen is all these weeds come up where they come from, seeds that we're waiting there. But your lawn was preventing it. And so nature doesn't like that, and it covers it up to protect the soil, and we can do the same thing. It really makes sense nature. Also, you'll notice that plants in areas where they want to grow.

Now that think about that a minute. So if you are looking for something to go in a wet spot, we'll pick one from nature that grows in wet spots or you know, whether it's a native plant here or from another area. A button bush is a native shrub and through it in parts of Texas and it it just will grow right on the side of a stream. I mean, it puts up with wet soil really really well.

Louisiana Iris puts up with wet soil really really well. Uh, and then there are plants that need dry soil and prefer dry soil, and so whatever it is that just learn from where plants grow, for the conditions, for how nature goes about things, and be patient with it. So I think it's a good point that he makes. Another one, well, I'll tell you what. Let me let me let me

just make a statement about that that nature thing. Microlife fertilizers have been designed to work with nature, and by doing that, they're doing things like using organic ingredients, natural organic matter, things from nature to form a fertilizer that you can put out that will release those nutrients somewhat slowly over time to help stimulate your plant. Because that's what that's how nature does it. It puts organic matter on the ground that releases nutrients over time as it

decomposes a way over places. Now there's microlife ingredients that microlife products that are filled with beneficial microbes as well, like, for example, one the micro micro grow bioinoculate. It is not a fertilizer, it is a bios biostimulating and bio providing product. What do I mean by that, I mean that you are inoculating soil with sixty three different types of beneficial microbe strains that are known to be beneficial to plants, and that is how micro grow bioinoculate works.

You can put it in any kind of soil. I put it in some of my container mixes indoors, because you know, this is kind of an artificial soil. That's what growing media is. Potting soil is an artificial soil. And I put it in that, I put it outside. You can spread it in your lawn. I mean, there's

a lot of ways you can use it. But microlife products are designed that way to work with nature, to take what nature has taught us, and to put it actually to practice for your law and for your garden, for whatever you're trying to grow, including like I said, house plants. You can find out more at Microlifefertilizer dot com Microlife Fertilizer dot com, and you find these products all over the Greater Houston area at the kinds of places we talk about feed stores and ace hardware stores

and Southwest Fertilizer and garden centers across town. Microlife products. But anyway, another point that I would like to make by the way, I should I get going on this talking, and I forget to give you our phone number in case you want to call someone's wanting to dial in seven one three two one two k t r H seven one three two one two k t rh Uh. And this one I think is probably neglected more than most of the points I'm going to be making here.

But and that's to keep written records and photos. Now I know some of you are going, oh, I don't want to go through that. That's nonsense. When you write down what you did and what happened as a result, you learn from it and you can refer back to it.

whatever I say. And then you just make a note, take a picture in your garden with your camera phone, take a picture of the bug, and write down with it include cut and paste from an email or I've even used publications online and you can download and put them with it, and you create like a it's like a gardening journal, but it also becomes a gardening book as you build it over time. But keep records when did you plant? What were the results? Because you just

won't remember. And trust me, I don't remember. I don't. I mean, I love The other day I was thinking, Okay, what peppers did I plant? Two years ago? I had a big pepper crop or a bunch of peppers? A trial I did? Which ones did I plant? And how did they perform? And my brain's going, I don't know. I went back and looked at my seed orders to find out, Oh, it was these. But keep records. You learn from your mistakes. There is no end to what you can learn about goard gardening unless you forget what

you did and what the results were. So help avoid that. Thomas Jefferson, a very good gardener, wrote, though an old man, I am a young gardener. He kept excellent, excellent records. All right, time for a break? The number seven one three two one two kt RH. Would you like to give me a call? We'll be right back. All right, we are just monkeying around here on garden line. Thanks

for listening. Appreciate having you with us today. If you'd like to give me a call seven one three two one two K t r H. I'm going to jump back into these tips by a fellow named Lee Reisch that I just found so helpful. Another tip he had is don't get boxed in by preconceptions. For example, the flowers have to be in a flower garden, no flowers can be in the vegetable garden. You know, flowers, A lot of types of flowers attract beneficial insects, and we

want those to be attracted to our vegetable gardens. There are number one it makes your vegetable garden pretty, or two. I always include there's certain kinds of flowers I know are very attractive to beneficials, certain beneficials, and so I

always include those when I'm planting around the garden. I had a garden one time where I had I like buckets, the galvanized buckets, you know, punch some holes in the bottom, hang them on a fence post, and you can grow flowers in those as long as you got some sort of drip irrigation or like to get out in water a lot, and I had beneficial flower plants, beneficial attracting flower plants all around the garden, hanging on an over post of the fence around the garden. It's kind of unusual,

looked kind of cool, and it did some good. You don't have to have an orchard to grow fruit. There's another one I lived over in conro text As many years ago. I had a peach tree that was part of our landscape. It was just sitting there like any other shrub or tree that you would put in the landscape. It wasn't in an orchard. But in the spring it bloomed. Then it was beautiful. It just made a nice that's called edible landscaping. There's a lot of ways to do

that same. It's true with herbs. You don't have to have an herb garden to grow herbs. In my vegetable gardens, I will often put something like a regano as a groundcover. I often will also put some of the flowering herbs for the reasons I mentioned before, at the end of the garden bed. One year I made a kind of apasta bed. It had tomatoes in it. At the ends of the rose. One end of the rose was a regano,

the other end was basil. Well, I just had all the you know, all the ingredients you would want for possibly. It was just kind of fun. But plus, gardening is supposed to be fun, right. The weating isn't fun is another preconception. Oh, I hate weeding. Actually wheating is not bad. You know, we by getting out there and doing a little bit of early hoeing. If you've got bear soil and you get some weeds in there, just slice them

up real good. Even hand weating, if it's not too much, is kind of enjoyable because you get to see the benefits. But when you get through eating, put mulch on the soil. Remember what nature does put mulch on top of the soil. Over thirty years ago, I think doctor Reich has not been tilling his soil. And for me, it's been probably fifteen years that I quit regularly tilling the soil. And you don't need to think about nature. Who tills the forest,

who tills the meadow. It doesn't get tilled. Roots grow, the plants die, the roots decompose. You have channels now into the soil where those roots were. Now there's rotting organic matter channels, and earthworms will follow those channels because they like to eat the organic matter take it in,

so you don't have to rototill the soil. There are a few times where I will rot hotel of certain situations, like if I were trying to incorporate some foster first down deeper at phosphorus doesn't move down in the soil very well, then that that might be a time where

I do it. Or if I'm getting started for the first time and I'm trying to improve a crumy soil, I would wrote a till things in like expanded shale and a clay or compost and a clay or a saying, but you don't have to you don't have to do that. Try new ways of doing things. We have a whole other talk on no till gardening. Sometimes here's a big one. Seek out reputable sources when you have a question. Oh boy,

oh boy. I get so frustrated when and this is worse on social media, but not only on social media, when I read stuff by people who do not know what they're talking about, but they're experts, because why because they say they're experts, and it just happens a lot. And I'm not going to pick on any specific names here, but often celebrity type people will do that, you know, because famous than you know, Like if Taylor Swift ever went in and did a gardening show, everybody watch it.

But does that mean she knows what she's talking about? I have no idea if she knows what she's talking about about gardening and she doesn't. I'm just using that as an example. But I read a lot of stuff and it just isn't necessary. It's kind of like some of these home improvement shows where you know you got someone. If you've got if you're a young, strappy guy with an Australian accent, you can be an expert on a

home gardening show. I mean a home improvement show. From what I see, young ladies with a tool built same thing. But anyway, find a reputable source. Here's how you do that. Number one, I would consider myself a reputable source because I've spent forty years now learning and just studying, research and talking to gardeners and teaching and things like that. We have many good nurseries, garden centers, independent garden centers where we have people that are reputable resources that you

can have when you're doing an online search. Now, this is worth this is worth listening to the whole show today just to get this one point. If you're going to do an online search, at the end of what you're searching for, type in site s I T E s I T E colon dot edu. What that tells Google or whoever you're using. And when you say cite colon, it says I want you to Let's say you're searching for nematode control, nematode control space site colon dot eedu.

What it says is Google, I want you to go find information on nematode control, but I only want you to return to me sites that end in dot edu in other words, a university or research and extension service, those kinds of things. Try it sometime, Try it sometimes, Try like lawn disease or Saint Augustine disease, for example, and then do it without site colon dot edu and do it with site colon dot ed You Now, does that mean that only universities know anything?

for your indoor and outdoor decorations. They've got gifts from their gifts that beautiful gift shops, toys, tools, everything you need for the holidays and forevery day. You know, we got Child's building supply out there in Orange for those of you listening out in that area. Hamilton Hardware off Highway six near Bear Creek, All Spas Ace in the Woodlands, just three of many, many A stores in the Greater Houston area. We will be right back after a break

at the top of the hour. I got a lot more stuff to talk about, and give me a call with your question. You know, I h one thing that I enjoy most about about gardening and things is trying something I haven't tried before. That is just fun. You know, there's a traditional way of doing everything, but then there's I talked about upside down tomatoes, you can do that. Upside Down peppers, by the way, didn't work as well.

That's a different story. But upside down tomatoes work pretty good when you're our greet tomatoes and an upside down bucket and in the top I plant at basil. So there you go. There's your pasta garden or whatever post testa garden.

really well. Another idea or a tip that he puts out that I totally agree with this is to grow a variety of plants, especially when it comes to edibles, because you never know, you know that it may be that one year, a particular disease wipes out your crop of fill in the blank, but you still have all these other crops that are coming through just fine. It's true of ornamentals as well. But the more you mix

things up, the more you heage your bet. And I do that with cultivars or varieties within a type of vegetable. For example, I don't just grow one type of tomato typically. Well, I'm always experimenting, so I may have six or seven different ones in a year, but at least I would recommend for you to grow at least two or three even better, because that way you sort of headge your bet, and I think that's a good idea. Another one is don't plant too much. Oh boy, here we go. Now.

You know how they say do as I say, not as I do. This is a perfect example of that. Don't plant too much. Don't let you know. You get a seed catalog, and boy have they been coming in the door. I've got a whole stack of them here already. You look through those catalogs, Oh my gosh, you see a picture of tomato is like, I have to have that one. It is perfect, yea, and the catalog is perfect, but it is a tough suggestion to follow. I fall prey to planting too much stuff all the time.

not just Newby gardeners. You get a packet of lettuce, and I don't know how many seeds are in a packet, but you plan about half of them, and so you have this like eight foot or five foot long bed of lettuce growing. Now, how much lettuce do you eat in a week? I mean, do you like if you're growing ahead lettuce, which I don't recommend you do here. I don't think that's the best kind of grow. But now, if you're growing ahead of lettuce, how long does the

head of lettuce last? That's one plant and you just planted dozens of them. What's going to happen to that? You see what I'm saying, think about plant a little bit. Just like lettuce. For example, I may plant five or six to ten plants at the most, and then two weeks later plant five or six to ten. That way, if the bugs get one or one dies or doesn't come up or whatever, I'm still good. But you can get a lot of good eating out of a small garden space if you don't plant too much of any

one thing. You mix it up a little bit. And finally, I'm just going to say that, and this is not coming out of what he wrote, but it's a get out in your gardens on a frequent basis. There's an old adage that would they say it, the best fertilizer is the footprints of the gardener. So you can think about what that means. It means you get out in your garden and your plants do better.

what do I do? Well, I can tell you what would have killed the bug if you had needed to spray it, But at that stage there's no need to spray because it's done. It's toast to pull it up and replant. So get out there in the garden. See what's going on, learn from it. Make notes, keep records that's important. Oh did I skip over that one? Keep written? Oh no, I didn't keep written records and photos. I talked about that. But let me go back to that one just for one second. Here. I wean't talk all

the way through this segment. When it comes to records. There's a lot of ways to doing it. You can use apps. There was an app called, oh gosh, I can't even remember the name that I used to use, but then it something changed about it and I didn't like it anymore. Now I use one Note. One Note is a Microsoft product. You can use that. There are a lot of different apps. There's a number of different apps that are excellent for they'll allow you to have

like files, you know where. Let me make you this my vegetable file. This is my flower file, this is my lawn file. And then within there you can have folders in that, and then you can you can add stuff. You can add pictures, you can add articles and stuff. I just printed up an article a little bit ago on something that popped up that was of interest to me, and that's going to go in and my digital file.

You don't have to. If you want paper to wrestle through, you can do that, but I like to just file it digitally in there, and your notebook becomes your learning page. That's very, very helpful. You always refer back to it. All right, we're gonna we're gonna leave Lee Reich there for a little bit and some of those tips. By the way, his book, he has more than one book out there, but his book Weedless Gardening is really a good one. It is a top down gardening method like

Nature does. Nature gardens from the top down. You can too. Let's go ahead and go out to the phones. We're going to head to Cleveland now and talk to Ron. Hey, Ron, welcome to garden Line.

you know, without warning. I'm sure you could freeze damage it, but not something we normally worry about.

is a full service landscape company. I mean they kind of do it all whatever you need, but they do holiday lighting and if you would love to see a professional job, go check out their website. It is Piercescapes dot com. Pierscapes dot Com. Follow them on social media. A lot of good ideas there too. You know, one thing about outdoor lighting, this isn't just holiday lighting, but outdoor lighting in general, is it is a security issue.

You know, you come into your house through a door, it's a dark area, there's a bunch of bushes planted up against a house where somebody can hide in there, and it just a well lit landscape is kind of a deterrent to somebody wanting to break in walk in. And they can create at outdoor lighting to enhance safety. Of course, also people walking around tripping over things and stuff. Pierce Caapes knows how to do all that, and they

also are excellent at regular maintenance. You know, if you need somebody to come in, maybe just quarterly, you want somebody to come into your beds, trim them, weed them, fertilize them, check the irrigation, make sure that the mulch is you know, an appropriate thickness, apply it is needed. And then of course make color changes so your bets always look good all four seasons of the year. Well

Piercecapes can do that. You can give a call to eight one, three, seven, oh fifty sixty two eight one three seven oh five zero six zero, or, as I always say, just go to the website. You'll see it all there Piercescapes dot com. We're going to go back now to Ron in Cleveland. Ron, I think you had a follow up question you were wanting to talk about. Yes, sir, thank you for coming back.

isn't just a visual you know. We when you think about I'm gonna landscape my house, you picture the visual of it, right. It's pretty, it's balanced, it's got all these you know, different colors and and uh and and the textures, different textures and things. Gardening is also fragrance. To walk outside and have a citrus tree blooming, and that wonderful citrus bloom, fragrance wafts up into your old

factory system. Oh my gosh, that's good. Alma being another of course example of that, and there are many other good examples of that as well. Another thing is, uh, the benefits into our ears when we when we enjoy the sounds of the garden, maybe the sounds of birds that are out in the garden singing. That's one of my favorite things right there. But even you know, here's

an example. One time I sat beneath a clump of bamboo, a talk clump of bamboo at the old Harris County Extension Office used to be on at off Highway six and it in there in the Attics reservoir, and I was sitting on the bamboo and the wind was blowing, and it sounded like there was a light rain falling as those those stiff, kind of papery bamboo leaves were

rubbing against each other as the wind blew. It was a unique sent Yet to hear that, to see what I'm talking about, or hear what I'm talking about, it's just really cool. And gardening has sounds, you know. Gardening also has movement. Gardening has moved and maybe the swaying of plants, the way grass sways in the breeze. It there's a lot of different the fluttering of butterfly going

by or things. There's a lot of aspects of gardening that add to that complete sense, not just visual, but the sense of smell, the sense of hearing, certainly, the sense of touch. Back to the smell. By the way, there are plants with very aromatic foldage tech Copper canyon daisy as an example of that kind of plant. Rosemary is one of my daughters. When she was little, we had one of these roseberry Christmas trees in the house. You know, it's a big container shape like a Christmas tree.

Is a rosemary a cushing plant. Those out afterwards, and she would go up and hug that thing. She would hug it. And she went through the house with rosemary coming off of her like I mean, I thought Mussolini had invaded or something and get out the pasta and the Italian food. At his time. It was the whole house smell like rosemary because she carried it with her as she went. But the scent of such a nice

aspect of gardening. I mentioned earlier about you know, nature and learning from nature, and that nature doesn't like bear soil. You can fix that real eazy in your landscape by using well landscaper. Spride has a couple of mulches I'd like to talk about. First of all, is a cedar mo really attractive? The holidays got that nice reddish smell, the fresh the fresh look of cedar malts, the fresh fresh aroma of cedar malts, you know as you're moulting

your beds walking through, it's beautiful. They also have their black velvet that's a standard hardwood mult It's kind of an immature compost what it amounts to, but it's been it's been dark and it's full of life. It's not it is not dyed. It is naturally dark, and it's screened to be bulky enough to protect the surface of the soil as most mulches do. Black velvet is widely available, you know, like other landscapers privately, they got two dozen

or plus different kinds of products. Here in the hoast scenario. You can go to garden centers, feed stores, ace hardware stores. You know, Southwest fertilized a lot of places. You can get south Landscapers Pride Quality Multus and then don't forget their top soil. To anybody who is trying to level out some holes in your yard, or maybe you are redoing your yard, you can just get their top so it's a sandy loam compost mix to help you repair

patchy areas, just smooth out even areas. It's also good for bedprep, you know, if you're gonna prepare a bed and you want to get a little more kind of a soil based material in there in addition to the organic matter. A sandy loam compost top dressing topswell from Landscaper's Pride. You can go to Landscaperspride Dot com. They've got all the information on their products there, including where you can find them, including where you can find them.

All Right, what was I What was I talking about here?

it's not. Each of the colors has different aspects that the plants utilize. And for example, if I can oversimplify it, blue and red are the two big ones. Those are the ones that do most of the stuff we want with plants. Blue is a something that really causes the leaves to grow thicker. It causes the stems to a long or to not elongate. It's a sign that there's a good, strong light there. And it also plays a part in photoperiodic flowering, which means when the days get longer,

when the days get shorter. The blue light is one of the regulators of that process.

of some seed germination. Certain seeds you don't want to bury, you put on the surface of the soil or barely cover them because they need that red light. It's part of the process of their germination. So blue and red. So that's why sometimes you see lights that look purple, and it's because they're primarily blue and red LEDs in there for that. Now, so if you're going to grow plant,

let's say you're going to grow tomatoes. For plant, blue is the most important one for producing good vegetative growth. You don't just have blue lights, but that's an important one. If you want those tomatoes as they get older to then start blooming and fruiting. Red is the most important aspect of that. And then the question is what about

green light? Green Light is a sign that you're growing in the shade, you're competing with other other plants, and as a result, you're going to find that though they stretch a little bit, plants in the shade do trying to get to light, and the photosynthesis down deeper in the leaf occurs a little bit more because the light is limited in that. I can talk about those a

little bit when we come back. We're about to have to take a little quick break here and I'll talk a little bit about some of the led grow lights. And why would I just said maybe important phone number if you'd like calder and break seven one three two one two fifty eight seven. All right, little culture club, Hey, welcome back to Guardenline. Good to have you with us. Try to pay some upbeat music every around. Then. I talked about a Nelson fertilizer for a long time now

because they have so many great products. But you know, as we enter into the cool season, we think about house plants more because house plants, you know, we're I don't want to make it like we're hole up indoors because it's a freezing blizzard outside. But we just spend a little more time indoors sometimes in the cool season, and your houseplants really twelve months out of the year need to have a quality food that is providing them the nutrients they need to do well. That is important.

You don't overfertilize any plant, but you do want to fertilize all the plants that we have into some degree in another. And a plant in a potting soil in a container has a confined root system. So let's say you've got a little i don't know if the leaf fig or you know, Chinese evergreen or something, that little plant in the container. If it was growing in its native habitat in the ground, it would have roots way

out in all directions. But you've got it wound up in a little tight container, and that container then has it's the only place roots can get nutrients and water. And so you've got to keep it adequately moist, but not too wet, because both drought and too much water are a problem. But it's think about the nutrients in that container. Nutri star for indoor plants is it has both slow and fast release nutrient sources to provide that

plant the vitality, the healthy development, the leaf growth. Primarily with houseplants, we're looking at leaf growth, foliage, and you can ply it once or twice during the winter time because it's a slower time for plants to grow. But as things, you know, as we get into longer day lengths. As you know, even though your house is kind of the same temperature most of the year, the day length changes and the light quality and chain, and that's when

we kick into fertilizing our indoor plants even more. Nutri Star for indoor plants by Nelson's an excellent product. Just buy it, have it on hand because you're going to use it all year. We are. Let's see, I'm gonna go to Patty and Spring. Hey, Patty, welcome to garden Line.

the rate it was back in October, for example. And so generally, if you look at my schedule, I don't really talk about fertilizing, you know, when we hit this point in the season. But if you had a situation where the soil was very poor you didn't get fertilizing done before, Yes you can, you can certainly do that add to it, but just realize that a lot of it will be lost over the wintertime as it gets washed away in rains and so on.

if you like that and whatnot. I think that's the best way to do it. Now. As far as you know, you can have a landscaping company come out and do planting for you know, puer Scapes goes out and does color or bed maintenance and does seasonal planting. You can have them do color changes through the year to keep those beds looking good. So those would be a couple of options for your question.

The blooms look like clusters of purple grapes and they have I don't know if you I know, I know that that gaudy is something we use to describe things we see, you know, like pink flamingos all in the front yard. That's bloody. But I think if Gotty had if fragrance could be gaudy, Texas Mountain Laurel would be gatty. It's that do you remember the grape super bubble bubble gum of the grape flavored that fragrant. That's what the

Texas Martin Laurel smells like. It is a sweet, syrupy grape that'll you won't you will not fail to remember it's there when it blooms only in spring, though. Am I going to the neighbors all right, George, No, that's their problem. No, they won't. They'll they'll love it. It'll be diluted by the time it gets over there. Take care of Josh. Appreciate appreciate your call. Uh where are we here? We're going to go to Carroll in Sugarland. Hey, Carol, welcome to garden morning.

Cut them off then, and that woundlehill roll quickly. The reason we're leaving them is they have foliage on them, and if you were to strip off every branch that's not permanent, you would be taking a lot of the energy leaf producing branch area out of the plant and you wouldn't get as rapid of a growth and development.

So what we're doing is we're saying we're not going to let you put too much energy into this branch because it's going to go, but we are going to keep leaves on it because they are fueling the root system and the growth of the plant itself. Does that make sense, Yes, that's interesting.

whole area to help it in its early growth. But after you amend it, then dig the hole in plant. Don't just throw a little fertilizer or compost in the pot in the hole. That's going to not be good. Don't do that.

This thing has been around for ages as a family mom and pop garden center. Eight acres, eight acres of gardener's paradise to wander through and you go in if it's a cool day, go into the greenhouse and they get warm. But you wouldn't believe the plant collection they have. I mean, whoever's visiting you is going to want to take a plan home when they go in there, because there's everything from succulents, you know, cacti and other succulents,

to gorgeous foldage plants. I mean, Moss just has it all. They whatever is seasonal, you know, right now, they got good seasonal color, all the different kinds of bulbs and holiday plants and things like that. Of course you can find all those there, but it's always a good time to plant trees and shrubs. Moss has got you covered on that too. The main thing is just to get out and enjoy it and check it out. You're not going to find a place with any better selection of pottery.

I mean, they have a huge pottery selection from all over the world and a lot of unusual things that you walk around the corner, you see I've never seen one of those before. Well that's because you're at Moss Nursery. Moss nurseryes on Toddville Road in Seabrook. The website is Moss Nurserymaas nursery dot Com. We're going to go now to talk to Ben in Baytown. Hey Ben, welcome to garden Line.

And if you waited until April to plant that same plant, you could do that, of course, but you'd be a little more touch and go on the watering of it than you would if you get it planted at this time.

that place since nineteen eighty nine. And when you go in there, if you hear me talk about products like I've talked about heirloom soils or Nelson plant food or Landscaper's Pride products, you know I'm talking about products from Nelson, like turf Star, products from Medina, from Microlife, from Nitrofoss. They're all there at D and D Feed, including a better selection. I was really surprised first time I went in there at their selection of things to control pests

and weeds and diseases too. D and D Feed and Supply. That's your hometown feed store on the west end of Tombul, just outside of town. We're going to go. Now, let's see where are we here. We're going to go to Cliff in Katie. Hello, Cliff, Welcome to garden Line.

and then and let it keep doing its magic. But before I thought, before I start stepping into doing something that I might regret, I just thought I'd give you a call.

keep it moderately moist but not soggy. When you sprinkle the microlife in there, if you can kind of scratch it into the surface a little bit, you know, when I say scratch it, I'm kind of picturing, you know, something that just kind of breaks not two inches deep, just under the surface and water that helps it get contact with the soil, and it does it does a little bit better that way in terms of breaking down

and releasing those nutrients. Okay, Now, if I were you, I would probably if I were I would probably instead of using the six two four. I mean, that's a good fertilizer, but I think I would use instead one of their liquids. And Microlife makes a number of really good liquid fertilizers. So I don't know if you've ever seen any of those.

most done. And uh, if you are interested in having somebody come out and do it right, you need to call Affordable Tree Martin spoon More. He knows what he's doing. He's done this a long time. He's a professional at it. And Martin and his wife Joe answer their own phones when you call them at seven one three six nine nine two six six three. It's the owners that answer

the phone. And if you don't talk to Martin or Joe, call up all the wrong number, not wrong place, uh seven one three, six nine nine two six six three. You can also go to his website aff tree Service dot com. Afftree service dot com. He does all things for trees, you know, if you need pruning done, deep root feeding, just checking the trees, overall health advice on things you're doing around the tree. Hey Martin, I'm going to put in a driveway over here. You know, what

is it is that okay? Or what can I do to prevent damage to the tree, all those kind of things that bring them in. Trees are the most valuable single plant in your landscape, and they are very valuable of the house. They're valuable for the shade in the summer. And if you haven't been in the Houston summer yet, well God bless you get ready. But it's good to have shade trees, and they're valuable and you don't want

to have somebody that doesn't know what they're doing. Mess with them, because when they do damage to a tree by bad pruning, it's for life. I mean just it is. And also if damage is done in construction or anything like that, it's it threatens the life of the tree, certainly the early growth, but maybe the life or the structural stability of it itself. Call Martin seven to one three six ninety nine two six six ' three. We are going to go now to uh talk to Cliff

and Katie. Hey, Cliff, what, Oh no, we already talked to Cliff.

micro Life products. But I like the liquid. You mix it a little bit of water every time you water. You put a little bit of that in and it it just does. Well, that's probably going to serve you better than the granules on your indoor play. Well, thanks so much, all right, thank you, thank you. Okay, yeah, you know the I uh, all right, here we go and go to now Rick and Spring Branch. Hey, Rick, welcome to.

heat underneath for that temperature. But thirty thirty nine is a little high to have a frost, but it could happen.

mix this red wigglers do. Yeah, go onlining and and just do a search for verma culture bin. I used to have something online. I don't know if I still do, but anyway, Uh yeah. You take a you know, one of those rubber made tubs, and you tear up tiny strips of newspaper about an inch wide, wet them, moisten them, and then throw in some some fruit food scraps and put yours in there. And they go to town and they turn the whole thing into worm castings in time.

So okay, But sounds like you're doing good. You got you got anything going all the province y'all for a long time. Y'all help me out there, all right, thank you sir? Well, good, well, good, sounds like you're doing a good job. You bet take care of that. Is that is the case. He's doing an excellent job based on all of that. Plants for all seasons is on two forty nine Tomball Parkway just north of Louetta. You exit Louetta and go one just north of Louetta heading

toward Tomball Way. There they are right on the right hand side. Been around said it's nineteen seventy three. That's a long time. And this family owned business is true lawn and garden experts from the family members, many several of them work there, to the employees they hire that are very knowledgeable and well trained. You can go in there with pictures and samples. They help diagnose them for you. Uh you know, like they say, get your green on

at Plants for All Seasons. That is so true. I don't care if you're a master gardener or if you're a first time gardener. Go to Plants for All Seasons and you will get the help you need. You'll get the quality plants you want. Plants for All Seasons dot com two eight, one three, seven, six one six for six. I'm gonna take a little break here and we'll be right back. I got some more stuff to talk about.

I'm gonna get back into the colors of light on plants a little bit, and then i gotta talk about missile to today Oh yeah, we feel good this morning because we're gardeners and it's always a good day for gardeners. Welcome back to garden Line. You want to give me a call seven one three two one two k t R H seven one three two one two k t R h U. If you uh, you know, you got family in for the holidays and stuff and h You

may notice a door is sticking. You know, you never go through that door much, but suddenly now it's kind of sticking. And you look, there's a crack in the sheet rock. You go outside, there's a crack in the brick. That means things are moving around, which we do not want our slab moving around, but it happens. We live in Houston high shrink swell potential soils, meaning they get dry, they shrink, they get wet, they swell, and that movement takes its toll. Is it a problem you need to

deal with? Well, you don't know, but you can find out by calling Ty Strickland. Tis an honest fella, been doing this for twenty three years. Fix myslab dot com, Fix my slab. That's his company. Fixmyslab dot com Free estimates for Gardenline listeners. Telling me you heard about him on garden Line. Give him a call. Two eight one two fiy five forty nine forty nine. Two eight one

two five five forty nine forty nine. Even in these expensive times, Tie is still committed to giving you a fair price, showing up on time, oh my gosh, and fixing it right. And he doesn't just tew foundations. They can fix driveways and sidewalks too, They can level them of those, they can replace him a new concrete. He does it all. Is a native Hewstonian, fifth generation Texan. Ty knows our soils, he knows what happens, and he knows when and how to fix things. Give him a

call find out about it. Ty Strickland fix my slab two eight one two five forty nine forty nine. Never never good news to know you need work done on anything from plumbing to electrical slabs to whatever you name.

that kind of work. I was talking about lights earlier and the fact that there's blue I guess to summarize some things I was talking about, is the blue wavelength is primary for vegetative growth. The red wavelength is primarily for blooming and fruiting. And certain seeds that we plant on the surface, they need red light as part of their germination process. Now there's green light, which is what you find in the interior. Let's say have a tree

or underneath the tree. You know, the red light and the blue light get absorbed, but the green light makes it down into the interior of the tree more. But for a plant getting green light and not the red blue, that's a sign that hey, I'm in the shade and I gotta stretch out and grow a little further. I got to have a little more photosynthesis going on in my leaves with a little bit of light that's coming in.

So they developed that. I don't know if you've ever grown a those moth orchids, the kind you just see everywhere, I mean even in a supermarket. Those moth orchids, they'revery easy to grow, but if you put them in not enough light, they actually get dark emerald green color because they are trying to pack as much chlorophyll in there to capture the few little photons coming through to the leaves and make the best of it. And that's just that's an example of that kind of response. But anyway,

I want to talk about plant growing. You plant a tomato ceiling, you want to get a transplant for the garden. The blue light is especially important now you really need it all. It doesn't hurt to havele just regular white light. You don't have to buy one of these lights like certain indoor grower producers used that just have blue and red colors in them. Just gets you a good light. But the blue is most important for vegetative growth, and then the red when we get into blooming and fruiting,

that is the most important too. Now we can get real nerdy about light. I mean, we can talk about all kinds of factors. Just know this, people and plants don't see and measure light the same way. When we measure light, we want to know how many lumens is that light bulb? How many lumens is it? That's what you see on a light bulb package. Plants want to know how much photosynthetically active light is coming through. They

call that photosynthetic. Photosynthetically active radiation is what it's called. Now, what is that par I'm just going to say par from now on about that. Lumens are for humans, par is for plants. Remember that. So when you go by a light made to light up your house, all you know is that it's either a warm white or a cool white or some version of those. That's fine. That that's what we need. We need to see. Plants need

light to function for photosynthesis. They are the ones that can take sunlight and turn it into plant food and turn it into people food too, by the way, And so when you're purchasing a plant light, if you're just going to grow a few seedlings, something that is in the cool spectrum and the warm spectrum cool as blue, warm as red. That that is, if you have a balance of those two, that's going to be a decent

light just to get your seedling up and growing. But if you really want to grow quality seedlings, or if you want to grow plants further than just seedlings, like maybe you're bringing some cold sensitive plants in for the winter and you need to supplement the light on those or provide light for them. You can get a quality led grow lamp designed for plants and you can learn more about that. And I'm going to post something to my web page. I meant to do it this past week.

I will this week get it posted to the web page on lighting so you can understand better. Maybe you're thinking about purchasing a plant light for yourself or for a Christmas gift for a gardener on your list. Buyer, beware, there's all lot of stuff out there that is just not helpful or not true. They say this is a plant light, but when you get into looking at it, it's only a plant light if you put it two inches from the plant and leave it on fourteen hours

sixteen hours a day. You know, in other words, it's not. So we can clarify that. My article will clarify that a little bit. But just remember, if you're going to start seedlings, if you've done it before and they're lanky and spinley and they break over, and you know they just are not good seedlings, it's because of the lighting. And that is the number one thing that goes wrong

when people try to grow plants is the lighting. Water is an issue, nutrients are an issue, temperature is an issue, all of that, but lighting is the biggest mistake we make. And once we get past, oh, let's say Christmas time, we get into New Year's it is time to be planting seedlings of things you're going to plant out in your garden in the spring. Things like tomatoes and peppers

and whatnot. Those all come after wee get past these holiday season, it's time to get them in the ground, maybe even before if you live in the southern part of the listening area. Let's see here, we're going to go out to Katie now and we're going to talk to Bob. Hello, Bob, Welcome to garden Line.

so I believe it's Blanc dubis is it. It's a green grape and it makes a white wine. And it's Pierce disease resistance. That's a number one grape killing disease that we have here in the southeast part of the state. It's Pierce's disease. And you've got to have resistant varieties. So Blanc dubis is a white wine one. If you're looking for let's see for red wines. Oh boy, there are you know what? Let me let me do this

first to give you the best answer. If you go to the Aggie Horticulture web page, just do a search for Aggie Horticulture.

are not going to perform. They're not going to have the qualities of wine that you might in some of the fine wines you buy in the store that are grown in more arid regions. But they they will grow here.

a commercials, but I would do that. I would go to the Aggie Horticulture website though. You'll learn a lot on there about those and get some other good ideas. I just threw out a few varieties for you all.

a few pins to pin it down. And that keeps them out of there. And if it's a bed where you've got to get in and change the flowers all the time, uh, then that that's not going to be practical. But if it's just some shrubs and things that would work.

outside if you're the ones blowing the right way. But you might try that and see if that kind of gets them out of that bed and off to something else. Just another idea, Sure you bet, Thank you, Thanks for the call. Okay, here we're going to go now to Bob in freend Ones. Would hey, Bob, welcome to garden Line.

don't know how to kill them. I just pull them out from the top, but it doesn't really kill the root, so I don't know how to get rid of them without hurting the azalea.

see how to build one. They're inexpensive and easy and you'll use them a lot around the landscape because that allows you to put that product on the sponges of the weed wiper, and you reach right in there and you get it on the stem of the vine, and you get it on the leaves of the vine, and

it'll translocate down and kill them. That's one option. Another is to cut the vines off a few inches above the ground and just use a little spongebrush like you get at the paint store, a little narrow spongebrush, dip it in the triclopere and wipe it on the stem and the cut surface of the vine. And that's another way to go about that.

It'll tell you what products to use to wipe on those particular kinds of unwanted plants.

Highway three, A few blocks south of ninety six. You're going to find the products I talk about, like nitrofoss and microlife, Nelson play food asamite. There. They carry a wide variety of pesticides and herbicides and fungicides, and of course they have feed store. They got feet stuff. But if you're a gardener or a lands it won't take care of your landscape. You got to go by there. Here's the phone number two eight one three three two

sixteen twelve. They are open Monday through Saturday nine to six, so you can swing by there after work, and they're closed on Sunday. League City Feet. I've got to run here to break Bill and Friends with You'll be the first up when we come back. Welcome back, Welcome back to garden Line. All right, on a good day for gardening. And yes, I know, I know you're saying, but it's raining outside. It's hardly going to get about fifty today. How can that be a good day for gardening. It's

a great day for gardening. It's time to listen to garden Line on the radio, which we're going to be doing that till ten o'clock. It is time to get out the seed catalogs and dream, dream about the wonderful things you're going to plant this year's time. You could even you know, brave souls can get out and visit a garden center if you want to do on a day like this, that's all right. I like I do it less crowds and days like this too. It is a good time to take care of house plants, to

plan your house plants, to fertilize. If you need anything repotted, this would be a good time to do it. To get online and order some equipment and things for gardening and supplies. You need lots of stuff to do for gardening, even on a day like this. Bukin's Native Plants, they've got a house plant greenhouse that is covered. It's it's

a greenhouse, a plast to cover over the top. You can go in there and shop on a day like this, and man, do they have a good selection all kinds of open things, all kinds of things that are there. And they're open today by the way too. Now if Buchanan, they've got an event coming up that is today that I really think you need to consider, and that's the holiday open house that's today. There's live music, there's kids crafts.

There's a sanob there. There'll be drinks. When Buchanans puts on a party, it's always a great event, always a great in this case a free event. They're on Eleventh Street in the Heights. Eleventh Street in the Heights is Buchanans. Now. They specialize in natives, native plants. Nobody has as many native plants as Beginnings does in this whole region. So if you're thinking about adding a native plant. Earlier I talked about I don't know what was it. Button bush

does well in wet areas. You know, so you got this wet, soggy area. What can what shrub can I plant there that will attract butterflies? Button bush is a good example. Where do you get it? Well, Buchanans has it. They've got a lot others too, And fall is the time to plant, even if you're not going to get out and planet it today, Get the plant, bring it home. When the weather clears and it'll be clearing up here, you can get out there and get the job done.

At Buchanans Plants, go to Buchanansplants dot com. That's the website Buchanansplants dot com. Sign up for their newsletter. You need to hear what's going on, and they always have good educational materials available. Throw on a coat, get out there, enjoy the holiday open house that they're having today. We're going to go to Friends with now and visit with Bill. Hello, Bill, Welcome to garden Line.

like wire those a little wire cages around them. I was wondering if it makes sense for me to go out and get some like leaf moll composts and dump it in there up to the stock up to the leaf level to try and protect the you know, would it be okay to put you know, something like that on the stems for that length of time to help help.

But that would do it. On my website, Gardening with skip dot com, there's a publication on protecting plants and frosts and freezes that I wrote with one of our hort specialists at A and M. It is nine page, I think it's nine pages, full color, lots of information. I would definitely go check that out today. You can print it up if you want, or just read it online and that will give you some guidance. You can create a structure over the more cold tender things. And

let's say you make a PVC box. Just think of that a PVC igloo or a box. I like to bend the PBC pipe in an arch over it in two or three different directions, and then throw a cover over the whole thing. If it's a clear cover, it'll get too hot underneath there. If it's a shady cover. To not have sunlight for how long are you going to be gone?

is to have that covering over it. That air dead, air space, no air blowing through covering.

stuff about mistletoe that you did not know. That's a bold statement that I am. I'm going to tell you stuff about mistletoe you not know.

and cross protection. Hey, don't wait until the night of the freeze. Download it now. Let this supply you know and you'll be ready.

I'm sure they're going to have some cover for you. I know they do in the greenhouse there. It's a good thing.

very popular with gardners. Medina Plus takes that Medinosol Activator adds about forty different trace elements natural growth hormones from seaweed like side of kindness for example. It's got additional elements like magnesium and iron and zinc and so on, of vitamins, and other things. It's going to be the kind of thing you would use as a folier feed, won't burn your plants. It is especially helpful at transplanting time. You can drench that new transplant in with Medina Plus

and it helps establish roots. It helps early growth. You're going to have better establishment, You're going to have better growth in everything. When a plant is healthy, everything is improved, so increasing blooming and promoting fruit set and other things like that by just making the plant very very healthy, very very vigorous. Now when you're using it, you can you can buy it by the court and mix it up, put it in a wateringkin. That's how I would apply it as I do apply it. Or you could do

a hose in sprayer. That's another option, so you could use it on lawns and things like that if you wished, Uh, but you could what are your plants in with that? Just go over the whole garden with that hose en sprayer, applying it to the foliage and the and the roots as well. Medina Plus from the folks at Medina and Medina products again widely available here in the Greater Houston area.

You're not going to mean trouble finding those products. Now I've been talking about coming in and discussing missiletoe, so let's jump in to the mistletoe discussion. So the mistletoe is a parasitic plant that essentially lives off of other plants. So you see it in trees. For example, some trees are especially prone to it. Hackberries very prone to mistletoe, but not the only variety. In fact, a lot of different trees are attacked by mistletoe. Did you know they're

over thirteen hundred species of mistletoe worldwide. Fortunately, they don't all grow here. We just have a couple of types here in North America that are native and then a few species that have found their way in to North America as well. But they can only live on a

host plant. So what they do is the mistletoe sea lands on the plant bark and it sprouts in its sends the equivalent of a root's actually called a hostoria into the tree branch, and then the root like structure just populates that area and it draws the nutrients and the water the minerals in the water from the tree. Mistletoe is green, the stems are green, and so they can photosynthesize and make their own carbohydrates on the plant. Okay,

that's how they live now. Interestingly enough, in the America, mistletoe the primarily one we deal with this called phorodendron. That's the genus of it, and what it means is thief of the tree in Greek. So it literally is drawing. It is sucking water nutrients out of the tree through those Australia roots and they can live many, many, many years, and it generally doesn't kill trees, although it can get to be so bad that it really severely weakens the tree.

Second fun fact about mistletoe. Did you know they're separate male and female plants. Yeah, separate male and female plants and mistletoe. So the female plants produce the berries, those little white, gelatinous, kind of sticky berries. If you've ever grabbed one and squeezed on it and everything, it's it's just it's a gooey mess. But here's another fun fact, a cool thing. The seeds. The berries have seeds inside.

They pump water into the seed and there is so much pressure in that berry that when it explodes, those seeds just shoot out of there and they've actually you know, with slow moo photography determined that up to sixty miles per hour as far as fifty feet away. So you got mistletoe in your tree, Boom, a berry pops and there go. Seeds fly in whichever direction and it's they're sticky. They have sicky substance, so they stick where they land

and then they germinate. Now you got mistletoe over there. Another way they can occur is birds eat them. They like the berries, and then the birds digest the berries and out the back end of the bird comes the seed. And when they do their little droppings and they land on a plant. That's another way that's gets into the plant that we have now. Now, yeah, controlling mistletoe is

very difficult and almost almost impossible. I've seen a lot of different things recommended, from wrapping a tree with burrowlap covered with black plastic and leaving it on for a long time because remember it truly is a plant that has to have sunlight to grow, but that it does just say it's impractical to try to do that. There are products containing hormones like ethophon that caused the missletoe to essentially be cast out of the tree that has

break often come out. That is a temporary effix, not going to last a super long time. You can do that. Did you know that? In Oklahoma mistletoe is the state floral emblem. Okay, I think you can do better than that, but we're going to go with it. In that tradition of kissing under the mistletoe goes back at least to the seventeen hundreds, and I don't know how that actually got started. But if you're underneath the mistletoe and someone finds you, they're supposed to be able to get away

with a holiday kiss. Good luck with that to an unwilling victim. Approach the mistletoe anyway. Mistletoe is hung up in our houses and stuff. Just remember it has a reputation of being a poisonous plant, but it's the European spee one European species. It's reportedly toxic. The American mistletoe is not deadly. I'm sure it doesn't taste good and it would be good for you to eat it, but it's not the toxic one. But it is one we use a lot for our decorations. A lot of birds

depend on the mistletoe berries. Other animals, deer, elk, squirrels, chipmunks, even porcupines will eat the leaves of mistletoe when fresh food is scarce. So you know what surprised me though? One other thing, and that is that it is an important nectar and palmen plant for honeybees and other native bees. So there you go, more about mistletoe than you ever thought.

I think the most amazing fact that I learned reading up about it was that those berries could burst and send sixty mile an hour seeds as much as fifty feet away. That's like, wow, that's cool stuff. All right, Time for me to take a break and we will be right back. Welcome back, folks. I tell the lad you're listening into garden Line today, how can we help you have a more downtiful garden, a more beautiful landscape and more fun in the process. That's what we want

to do here. I'll tell you how you have more success in your garden, and that is to get the products you need to do what you need to do. Do you need to fertilize, Do you need to control insects, our diseases or pests? Do you need tools? Quality tools that will help you to get the job done better? With less effort, less strain on your joints and hands and things like that. Southwest Fertilizer. As he answered all those questions, it's also the answer to other questions. Who

sells in bulk? Also, where you get those scoops and you scoop out. There's the most economical way to buy seeds. Southwest Fertilizer. You know, where can you go and get your lawnmower blade sharpened, small engine repaired? Southwest Fertilizer. It's it's the answer to a lot of questions. It's been around since nineteen fifty five, nineteen fifty five, and they've got every fertilizer or product you'll ever hear coming out of my mouth on guard line. They just do. They

carry it all. If Southwest doesn't have it, you don't need it. It's as simple as that. Southwest Fertilizer dot Com is the website phone number seven to one three six six six one seven four four seven one three six six six one seven four four. They're located on the corner of Byssinet and Renwick in southwest Houston. It is where veteran gardeners have long known to go for anything you're looking for, especially things that might be hard

to find in other places. By the way, it's a good place to get some cool Christmas gifts, like a soil knife. One of my favorite tools. If I were to say, like, what are my top five favorite tools, I think on that list would be a soil knife and the kneeling bench, and Bob's got both of those. By the way, I was talking to someone earlier about how to build a weed wiper. Go to my website gardening with Skip dot com. It'll tell you how to build a weed wiper. But the first tool you need,

the suction cup grabber tool. Bob's got it at south West Fertilizer. See this is what I'm talking about. Bob and I talk pretty often about things and what's in the market and what might be an item that gardeners are needing or looking for and things. And I'm telling you the guy stays up to date and then some on all these kinds of things. Southwest Fertilizer. I was visiting with the wild Birds store owner recently, and I always call them because they if there's a question about birds,

they know what they're talking about. They are experts at it. You know, there's six different wallbirds stores around Houston. You can go to WBU dot com forward slash Houston and find the store near you. Now, right now, you need to be there picking up the Wildbirds Unlimited Winter super Blend. Wildbirds Unlimited Winter super Blend that is packed with protein

and fat helps the birds out. You know, today's the day where it's kind of hard to get out and about looking for food, and the birds are going to be coming back to our feeders in large numbers as the natural food sources becomes more and more scarce out there, and Wildbird's Unlimited Winter Super Blend is excellent for that. Another reason to go to Wildbirds right now, though, is for your holiday gifts. There are wonderful options you can do.

My favorite feeder is a squirrel eliminating feeder. It is a Cadillac and it really really works. It's an excellent feeder. They can do replacement parts on in. I mean, it's real simple to operate and it works. Uh. But maybe a beautiful hummingbird feeder, maybe a bird house of Some people want to learn to attract blue birds and they can help you do that and they can even provide you with a variety of different kinds of bird out.

How about Purple Martins. By the time we get to February, Purple Martins are going to be here and a nice quality Purple Martin house. It's on a telescoping pole or something that allows you to take it down and clean it out the part the little sections come out. It's real easy. They have a really nice Purple Martin house. They also have the kind that are that look like white gourds that but they're plastic. But they also are well designed for Purple Martin. What a good gift. What

a good gift from Wilbirds. You are listening to garden Line. If you'd like to give me a call, the phone number is seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. We'll be happy to help you in any way we can. I saw something the other day, this from the Saturday Evening Post in nineteen oh three. Saturday Evening Post nineteen oh three, someone said, you've heard that you reap what you sew, but that does not always

apply to the pictures on seed packets. Is that not true? All right, Well, let's we get better at it. Maybe it applies more and more to you report yourself.

And I tell you the one job, one of many jobs I would not like to have a is writing descriptions for let's say, vegetables and flowers, especially vegetables for seed packets. Oh my gosh, some of these sea companies carry dozens of types of tomatoes, and what are you

going to say? It's red, it tastes like a tomato, it's sweet, and I mean, there's only so much you can say about a vegetable, and yet they've got to write another one and not make it sound like the one they just wrote and could go read a packet. Sometimes there are seed companies that specialize in tomatoes. There's one, what's it called Tomato Grower supply. There's another one totally tomatoes.

They're not really justtimated. They may have peppers and eggplant things in them, but they have more Dutch of tomatoes than you can imagine, most of which you shouldn't grow here, right, because not every part of the country needs to plant the same varieties. But I just think about how on earth do you write those descriptions. But anyway, that's a fun part of gardening. Hey, A good gardening gift would

be a seed starting kit. And by a kit, it could include things like a tray, one of those seventy two cell trays like you see. They're long about eleven inches nine inches wide and twenty inches long something close to that. Anyway, they're close to that nine or eleven and twenty inches long. And then they come with a little dome over the top of plastic dome. And then you just put the potting soil in them and you start your seeds and throw in a heating mat. Would

be a nice addition to that. By throwing in a heating mat. I start my seeds now in the garage, and it's a cold garage. I mean there's no heat out there. I mean it's protected, so it's nice cold as outside, but it's just a cold garage. But I have heating mats underneath the covers and then a plastic cover over that kind of holes creats a dead air space of some warmth in there, and it does well. In fact, did you know that young seedlings you're growing

yourself mention that not enough light makes them spinley. Another thing that helps that causes a lack of good strong, stocky transplants, or is temperatures. When when temperatures are very warm, plants tend to grow luxuriantly. If you could put a heating mat under a pad and keep the media you're growing the seeds in warm, but let the air be cool,

that helps create a very stocky transplant. While I'm talking about stocky transplants, I'll just throw one more thing that helps stocky transplants, and this one I think is cool moving the plants, I mean brushing over them in a greenhouse. It may be an oscillating fan blowing by that causes movement in the plants in your little few trays you're

starting at home. It could be running your hands over the top of the seedlings, just brushing over them, petting pets, your plants, and each time you move them, it stimulates responses to create a stockier stem and a stronger transplant.

causes those seedlings to become stockier. It does. It's a natural reaction that nature does to plants. And we bring them inside and put them in a real still, a very still air space where they don't move at all. We put them in not quite enough light and maybe it's a little warm in there. We're putting too much nitrogen fertilize all of those things, recreating that sp seedling

that doesn't survive well. Take advantage of big momorphogenesis and you can be the cliff Claven of your neighborhood horticultural Cliff Claven. Remember the the postman on Cheers who knew everything, or at least he thought he did, and he talked like he did. You can be the Cliff Clavin by just knowing great words like big moo, morpho, genesis. For those of you who grew up with Julian Andrews, supercrags are super catifragilistic, expieladoches. You thank me later. We're going

to take a break. I'll be right back. Actually, we got just a minute left. I don't have to stop talking quite yet. That's a good thing. I love quotes, you know. I was giving you a quote a little bit ago, one quote that I like. It was written back, oh gosh, I don't know when, by an unlingering English aristocrat, author and gardner. It goes this way. The most noteworthy thing about gardeners is that they always are optimistic. They

always are enterprising, and they're never satisfied. They always look forward to doing something better than they've ever done before. Man, is that ever true? I can tell you this. The best garden I've ever grown in my life is the one come in this spring. It is I always feel that way, not about spring, but all the time because I'm learning more, I'm trying something new, and I'm going to have success with I just know I am. I just know I am. That's a fun thing. I think

that's one of the beneficial things of gardening. In addition to the physical exercise, In addition to getting out there in nature, breathing the air and stuff like that, one of the best things about gardening is the hope and the optimism that it bills in us as gardeners. All right, I'll leave you with that. We'll be right back, folks. All right, folks, welcome back to guarden Line. Hey, if you'd like to give me a call, we are in

our last half hour of the day here. Seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven three two one two five eight seven four. I hope you're enjoying the weather we're having. And I know some people are going, wait a minute, I don't enjoy wet, forty degree whatever temperatures. Well, I know, but isn't it a nice break from the summer we just went through. And you can always here's how I look at it. When it's hot, it's hot. I mean, you can put on shorts,

sleeves and shorts and all that. But it's still hot. But in the cold weather, you can always bundle up. That's what I love. I love cold weather. I don't like being cold. I like cold weather. I just do. It's a nice, nice break. So here we are finally getting to it. And I'll tell you another reason it's important our plants. Plants go through a process called hardening off. Hardening off means that the plant is shutting down growth and storing up carbohydrates and preparing for winter as it

goes into dormancy. Even if it's a plant that doesn't really go into dormancy, it's still is going through those the processes. When a plant properly and fully hardens off, it is quite cold, hardy. I mean, you take really cool weather and that that plant does fine. When it doesn't properly harden off, a freeze, even a freeze that shouldn't kill that plant, suddenly becomes a big problem. And it happened. I noticed it, especially in the northern parts

of this listening area. But a couple of Decembers ago, we had a mid teen frieze that occurred in December, way early for the area, and also our crpe myrtles were not hardened off fully and we had crape myrtles killed to the ground. The next summer they sprouted out and we had this big bushy mess coming out of the bottom of the ground where they're where the crape myrtle trunk had died back, sometimes the only partial die back. But that's an example of why hardening off is important.

And when we have temperatures like today, it helps those plants to harden off, and that is important so that we don't have the significant cold damage that can occur when plants are not properly hardened off. So you can be glad we're having the day. Plus, if you got a fireplace in your house, I always I've always thought it was humorous that we have fireplaces in Southeast Texas. Of why, I tell you why, because of the ambiance. It's cool, it's fine. It just I mean, there's just

there's just an ambiance. You know. When it comes to winter, we don't get a lot of the cold spells. So all these Christmas songs which we're starting to hear, and we'll be hearing a lot, it's hard to relate. As the Texan you know, dashing through the snow. What snow on a one horse open sleigh? What's a sleigh? Chestnuts roasting on an open Wait a minute, what are chestnuts? Anyway? Yeah, I could go on and on about that one. All right, noth of that. Let's go out and take some of

your calls. We're going to go to Clear Lake and talk to Jane Heyan. Welcome to garden Line.

But just get a little more of the roots. I would lift it up and kind of shake some of the excess soil off the roots and then bring it in to put in a container. The size of the roots you dug, so that was a sixteen inch wide if I said eight inches on each side, so you would need a bigger container for that. I have mine and about a two thirds of size. It looks like an old whiskey barrel, but it's it's plastic, so it's about two thirds the size of a whiskey barrel. And

it does really well in there. And just fill it full of quality potting, soil, quality page so water. Okay, yeah, well, after you transport it inside, after you get it planted, yes, give it a good watering, make sure the container has drainage holes, and then just bring it into a protected spot. Now mine I leave out a lot during the cool season, but when it's going to be freezing, I take my dolly and put a strap around it and bring it into the garage and then take it back out again

because it'll still have some leaves on it. If you can give it a decent amount of light as much as possible, but that's it. And don't worry about fertilizing it a lot. Just keep it adequately moist, not soggy, adequately moist, and you can get it through the wintertime, and then I would that are leaving a container outdoors as well. It just makes it a little bit easier to bring it in and out. You don't have to redig it every year.

and water Garden. Of course, they're a water garden place are nationally known for that have been for a very very long time. But Nelson Water Gardens is also an really outstanding nursery from fruit tree plants to annual color, to vegetables, to herbs, you name it. Of course they carry the plants for water garden as well. If you've

been thinking about getting a watergarden. That would be a fun thing to do during the end of the winter season, getting it all set up and ready to go so as the weather worms up, you can get that thing stocked with fish and plants and other things. Nelson's will build those for you. They will also tell you how to do it. So if you want one of the disappearing fountains that they designed and created, you just get

a really nice large glazed pottery urned from them. It's set up to have water spout out the top, roll over the sides into a bed of gravel where it recirculates back up through the container. A beautiful feature, a nice feature. So you can get that thing out there and set up and weather worms up a little bit. Take off. Good to go. Nelson Water Gardens and Nursery, Katie fort Benroad. Go to the website Nelson Watergardens dot

com Nelson Watergardens dot com. When you get there you will find out all lot more about them, and boy, they are set up for the holidays right now. From trees to poinsettas, to holiday cactus to all kinds of other holiday decor. They have got you covered at Nelsonwatergardens dot com. I'm going to have to take a quick break here when we come back, Saviian and Beaumont, you will be our very first up. All right here, we're going to go out to Beaumont. Actually we're going to

go to Wharton. Excuse me first to Jeff and Wharton. Hey, Jeff, welcome to Guardline. Good morning.

to remember what the grass. Oh, was this the little small kind of shiny leaf grass that was just growing real thick in the lawn that I remember that that was? Yeah, that is called kai linga k y l I n g A. I think it has two l's actually, but Kayalinga is kind of nutgrass, but it doesn't have nuts underground.

we go. Halo sulfur on methyl halo sulfur on like halo like uh uh around your head and sulfur on s u L h h A l O s u l f u r O N. And I'm gonna stop spelling it out there. If anything that starts off with halto sulfur on on the garden market, that's it. So brand names sedge Hammer plus, get the sedge hammer that says sedgehammer plus uh. And Monterey. If you go where Moneray products are sold, it's called nutgrass Killer. Two. If you go where Martin's products are sold, it's nutgrass Eliminator.

And if you go where they carry high yield products, it's high yield nutsedge and horsetail control, but sedgehammer plus is the one most people find. It's a little one. It makes a one gallon. It's a little little small packet, very small packet that you put in water makes a gallon. And the hedge sedgehammer plus, I said, the plus this is important. It has a surfactant that makes it stick to those shiny Kailinga leaves because Kalinga and that said

you're very closely related. That'll work. You're going to have to redo it. You're going to be ready to do it, and maybe but doing it right now, you can do that. It'll do some good now, but especially when things warm up and it begins actively growing again in the spring. You want to you want to hit it then.

I used to say, for the guys that do it just no, no, no, no, we got We've got ladies that are bigger do it yourselfers than their spouses are or significant others. ACE has got you cut up are set up for that. If you need lights or decorations, things inside the house, things outside the house, things for the patio, Christmas lights, lights by the foot, which I think is really cool. You can buy a string exactly as long as you want it to be. Ace has got that.

all through the Houston area. The K and M Hardware has got a location in Kingwood and one in a Tascasita All Stories Hardware has got two locations. One is in the Spring, one is in Magnolia. For those of you up around Lake Conroe, you got Lake Conroe ACE Hardware. Over on the east Side you've got U Valdie Ace Hardware. And up in Brenham you got Brenham Ace Hardware. And

of course all through the Greater Houston area. Easy to find an ACE and when you go in there, you're going to find stuff that you need for a beautiful garden, a beautiful landscape, beautiful decorations. That's why they say ACE is the place. Well, I've talked all the way through the show today, four hours of garden Line, along with some of you calling in to talk. Appreciate that. I'll

be back tomorrow morning six am. I hope everyone is go ahead and get up at five so you can have coffee and be alert and ready to go, and we will hit the ground running at six o'clock in the morning answering your gardening questions or maybe even saying some crazy things or playing some crazy music for some of that as well. Thanks for being a garden Line listener.

I appreciate that. I just want to remind you my website gardening with skip dot com go check it out and download the publication on frosts and Freezes