garden tips and nematodes troubles

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Episode Transcript

(00:01):
For example, if a tree justbends over, like the trunk is literally
leaning over, as if you hada fishing pole pointing straight up and someone
grabbed the top and pulled it overaround toward the ground. In other words,
the root systems intact, but thetrunk has bent. Well, that's
due to the fact that trunk hadnot developed good strength yet. And with
really young trees that's often the case. They may be grown staked very tightly

(00:26):
to a stake to keep the trunknice and straight, and as a result,
it doesn't bend, it doesn't getstronger, and then you put it
out in the wind, and thewhole thing just basically, you know,
leans over. Sometimes splits or cracks, but just leans over. Those you've
got to pull back up into place. If you've got a smaller tree and
you have a tree stabilizer or athree sixty tree stabilizer and a iron t

(00:49):
post, you can hammer it inthe ground and use that as your support
for it. It's going to takea while for that tree to get strong
again. What you're going to haveto do is let them wind move it
around, don't you know, stakeit tightly to the trunk or to the
post. That way that movement,that trunk will develop strength and in time
you won't need that support anymore.Second thing that I noticed happens is the

(01:14):
tree itself blows over and the rootscome up out of the ground. If
it is a tree that's only ayear or too old from planting, then
you can straighten it back up,get it staked into place again. Get
you a three sixty tree stabilizer anddo that. It makes it really fast
and simple and effective too. Bythe way, and you put those roots

(01:36):
back down in the ground, youmay have to remove a little soil from
under it that washed in with therain that came with the wind, so
that that tree can stand straight upand not have this mound underneath it that
is going to pull up the otherside as you try to straighten it.
Bottom line is it's going to needto be staked for a good while because
those roots have to redevelop and that'sgoing to take a while. If a

(01:57):
tree is trying to get back afterbeing uprooted like that, it takes a
long time to not only grow rootsthat reach out, but that reach a
diameter and a strength where now theyare supporting the tree again. Now if
a tree is over five years old, and there's no magic in a specific
number. It could be the growingconditions of the site, it can be

(02:17):
the species of the tree, butin general, you get an older tree
like that that falls over and theroots go up into the air. You
know, it picks up the sodand everything, and you see all the
broken off roots that is never goingto anchor back down again except under crazy
extra links of staking and waiting,and even then I have my doubt,

(02:39):
serious doubts for it. Just thewhole process of straightening a huge tree like
that, it's not worth trying todo in my opinion, because in most
cases it's going to take so longand being able to have a support strong
enough to do all of the structuralsupport for that tree in the meantime,

(03:00):
it's just not practical to do that. The last thing that I mentioned,
well actually a couple things. Thesplit tree trunk. When you have a
branch that splits off, often atthe top where it broke loose, you'll
see black which is decaying bark.If you think of two trunks that are

(03:20):
growing in a narrow V shape straightup, you'll picture that with me.
When those trunks are the size ofgolf balls. They may look pretty far
apart, and then they get biggerand now they're the size of soft balls,
and they're pushing together as it getslarger and larger, as each grow
in diameter, it's like they're pushingeach other apart with that growth, and

(03:42):
you get included bark and it's avery weak branch angle, very likely to
split, and we saw a lotof that in this storm. When you
get a split tree, then there'snot a lot to do to prune that
all off is it's going to leavea huge wound and it's going to be
very difficult for it ever to heal, and in the meantime, over the
years, you'll get interior decay thatoccurs under minor splits. Sometimes arborists will

(04:09):
use a bolt to go through tohold it back together, or go further
out on the branch and connect acable between two branches to provide that same
structural support. That's a touch andgo thing, and you need a professional
arbist to make the assessments of whatshould be done and secondly, where should
that be done. You know,where would you put that structural support?

(04:32):
Doing it yourself, while possible,I wouldn't advise it. I would have
someone who knows what they're talking aboutcome in and fix that. The split
tree trunk. Final thing just tomention is when you're removing broken branches.
When you're removing broken branches, youwant to cut the branch off back near

(04:53):
where it attaches to the trunk oranother branch, but not flush up against
that trunk. So if you imaginea tree branch and you're following it down
toward the trunk, it's a certaindiameter, and right before it attaches,
it flares out. Not every speciesdoes this, but a lot of them
flare out in that attachment. Ifyou were to cut all the way against

(05:15):
the trunk, that's a huge wound. If you come out just to where
it hits its sigh the size thatyou had as you're following it down and
cut it off there, that's avery small wound. And you're leaving the
branch collar, which has the tissuesthat heal the fastest for that tree.
So basically what I'm saying is lookat where it attaches, if there's any

(05:38):
ridge around it around the base,just outside of that is where you cut
further. You leave a stub thestub dies and now the wound cannot close
back over with kellis. So thoseare a few tips for taking care of
your trees. Don't be afraid tobring a professional arborist in because that is
very, very important. That's whywe recommend Martin Spoonmore from a His Tree

(06:04):
Service. There's a how do Iput it, there's a line between people
that know what they're doing and don'twhen you pune a tree, and when
you hire an arboris like Martin fromAffordable Tree Service, you're going to get
somebody who understands what to do properlywith it. U there are a lot

(06:27):
of people that look around at whateverybody else has done and they mimic that.
And that's what gets us great murderwhere we think we have to chop
every crape murdle off at just abovehead high every year. It's not a
good practice, but it's because that'swhat other people do. You want an
arboris that knows what they're doing.An Affordable Tree is that kind of service.
If you like to contact them,it's afftre Service dot com. That'll

(06:51):
get you to Martin's website. Ifyou want to give them a call.
It's seven one three six nine ninetwenty six sixty. That's seven one three
six' nine nine two six sixthree. And you do want to call,
you do want to tell him?You listen to garden line. That
gets you to the front of hisline and he stays busy, and so

(07:12):
talk to him about booking something outthere to come in and get your trees
ready for the next hurricane or someother summer storm. Well, I'm going
to take a little break here andI'll be right back. Our phone number
is seven three two and two ktRHO. Welcome back to oad line.

(07:35):
Well, we're just talking about somecommon issues with the trees that we're seeing
now with the storm having passed throughand done its work, there's a lot
we can do over the course oftime to help our trees. I was
just talking earlier before break about someof the broken limbs, uprooted, bent
trunks, all of those kinds ofthings, and how to make a proper

(07:57):
cut. It's also important for usto talk a little bit about what do
we do to prevent problems going downthe line, and not just problems from
a storm. And listen, thereare storms that are going to take down
a tree no matter what you dothat if everything is right, the winds
be and whatnot. I mean,it's not like we just prevent that tree

(08:18):
from having any damage, but wewant to do everything we can to make
it as strong as we can,to provide a structure for that tree that
can take the weight of the wind, that can take the weight of branches
as the tree grows older and older. And one of that, one of
the first steps is choosing good varieties, good species of trees that want to

(08:41):
grow here. That's important. Rememberthe instinct of I want a fast growing
tree as one you need to puta little bit of a damper on.
We have some trees that grow ata very good pace if you will water
and fertilize them, get them going. But the fastest growing trees are generally
the worst choices to plant growth.I like to say, grow fast,

(09:03):
die young, because the bottom lineis it just falls apart. Arizona ash
trees used to be the thing plantedeverywhere in the nineteen sixties and seventies,
and you come back maybe twenty fiveyears after that, and you were seeing
entire neighborhoods where they're having to takethem down because this tree or that tree
was broken or split or whatever.Not a good tree. Not a good

(09:26):
tree. But we do have someexcellent trees that you can speed up considerably
and have a very good, strong, long term tree. Pick the right
species. Second thing you want tothink about is you want to make sure
that when you choose your tree,you plant it properly to give it the
best chance of good long term successand fast anchorage, good strong development of

(09:48):
root system outward in all directions togive it a good anchorage anchoring that is
important. Just some things to bethinking about. Those of you who did
go through the storm that have beendealing from with everything from power out to
you name it. Ace Hardware Storehas got you covered with everything that you
might need, especially when it comesto hurricane preparing preparation. You know,

(10:11):
you might be thinking, what itjust went by, why are we preparing?
Was not the last one. They'repredicting this to be one of the
one of the more plentiful hurricane seasonsof the year in terms of number of
storms, and so we're just gonnahave to watch and see on that.
But there's a lot you can doto get ready. You know, everything
from uh, you know, flashlightsand batteries to a little gas power generator

(10:33):
just to be able to run yourMaybe you got a freezer in the in
the garage. You just need tokeep that thing going. So there's a
lot of possibilities. But ACE haswindow units that you can plug into the
generator keep those things going when thepower goes out. You know how it
gets round here, gas cans,operative cooling systems for summer. For the

(10:54):
beautiful little systems that put out amissing that really is is nice. It
really makes a I don't know tenfifteen degree difference in the field of their
around you. Anyway, make yourlist and stop by ACE while you're there.
Pick up some fertilizer for your lawn. They've got everyone I talk about
on guardline. Pick up some fireant control, and definitely all the things

(11:18):
you're gonna want from mosquitoes, youknow, from the dunks to other types
of products at ACE Hardware. Aceharwaredot COM's their website. By the way,
It's easy to find the store locatoron there, and then you know
exactly what it is that you aregonna where it is that you're going to
shop. I like going to ACEHardware's because you know they're each independently owned,

(11:39):
so each one has its own,its own feel, its own personality,
if you will. And you know, some owners go into some extra
additions of different kinds of products ordifferent kinds of services, and it's just
kind of fun. I enjoy doingit. Of course I like going to
hardware, so that's that's a that'seasy and fun for me. Landscaper's Pride

(12:05):
is a purveyor of quality products forour plants, for the brown stuff that
I talk about all the time.Get that right right, Get the soil
mixes right. Well. They haveslow mixes, a number of them.
But they also have something I wantto focus on now, and that's quality
mulches. They've had a pine barkmolt, probably the most popular one they
have. It's locally sourced and itdecomposes a little slower than some other mulches,

(12:31):
so people kind of like that,so you're not having to add mulch
as much. They have cedar andcypress mulches that are wonderful in their qualities.
And you know, cedar smells goodinitially it has a lot of time
to age out there about a beautifulred streaking in it. But it's a
quality melt. Cypress sticks down kindof a heaviness, if you will,
and a durability is it sticks downand stays in place even when it's wet.

(12:54):
And nice light colored molts. Andthere's on the other end there's black
velvet, which is they're naturally darkcolored mults of very velvety, dense,
beautiful, beautiful mult and then ofcourse hardwood bark is a great multch.
When you grind up hardwood materials andmake a mulch out of them, you're
going to have well, it's kindof what nature does, right. Nature

(13:16):
drops things in the forest to coverthe surface of the soil, and Landscaper's
Pride can help you do that.Go to Landscaperspride dot com ful and learn
more. There's there's plenty of plentyof good products that I didn't even have
time to talk about here, andyou're going to find them in a lot
of places, very widely available,so it's easy, easy to get a

(13:37):
hold of. You were listening togarden Line. The number is seven one
three two one two fifty eight seventyfour seven one three two one two fifty
eight seventy four. I had anemail come in from someone who sent me
a picture of some grass that theywere indicating looks kind of like a thick

(14:01):
crab grass, and what it isis doveweed. And for those of you
that don't know doveweed, doveweed sortof looks like Saint Augustine initially when it's
growing in it it's got a fat, wide blade like Saint Augustine, fatter
and whiter than Saint Augustine. Butit produces a little tiny flower, very
tiny flower. But it also isvery invasive and when you it recedes profusely,

(14:26):
and when you have a wet area, doveweed is going to be really
happy there. So number one avoidingextra wetness in this lawn. Being a
remunalaw it could go a little onthe dryer side between waterings and that would
be helpful. But there are alsosome products out there that will kill doveweed
if you've got little spots of it. There is a cinnamon based powder product

(14:52):
that you can find at our gardencenters that will you sprinkle it on wet
doveweeds. Another way, turn onthe sprinkler, just wet the dove weed,
then wrinkle that summon product on itand it just turns it black.
Pretty quickly actually, and that's anatural way to do it. If you
got big areas of it, thatgets a little pricey, and so you
may want to shift to something likea celsius as an herbicide that can help

(15:16):
with that as well as a postemergent. Just make sure and get out
and do it early in the morningwhen it's the coolest time of the day
so that as it dries off andeverything. Celsius is less damaging in warmer
weather than some of the other broadleaf post emergent products. But I don't

(15:37):
just assume it can be one hundreddegrees and you pray it in the middle
of the day and that's not gonnabe a problem, especially Saint Augustine loss.
But anyway that should be able toget that under control. I know
a lot of you probably have thatweed in your lawn and whenever I do
appearances, inevitably I'll see doveweed comein a little plastic bag as people show

(15:58):
up to say what's the and whatdo I do about it? Yeah?
That is you know, we havea handful of weeds in our lawns that
are the problem child of the lawn. We have weeds that are easy to
control. You know, things likeeven cribgrass, you just put a pre
emergent down and it never comes up. You get a good dunse lawn.

(16:18):
It can't get light, it doesn'tcome up. Some weeds are easier,
but when you're dealing with stuff likedollar weed and Virginia button weed and doveweed,
those you kind of got to geta little specific with what you're going
to use on them. And somelike the Virginia button weed, you're maybe
going to take more than one applicationof something to really get ahead of it.

(16:41):
But on all three of those weeds, doveheat, dollar weed, Virginia
button weed, when you keep yourlawn too wet, the weed proliferates.
It's like you're creating Disneyland for thatweed. And don't do that. Let
it dry out well and then watera good deep soaking, let it dry
out again. That's not gonna makethe weed go away. It just slows

(17:03):
down the spread. And it makessense to always start with cultural controls before
we go grabbing for something to sprayand kill it. Well, it is
time for another break here. I'llbe right back if you'd like to call
Chris and get on the board.Seven one three two one, two fifty
eight, seventy four. There areHouston's News, Why there are traffic plus

(17:27):
breaking news twenty four to seven.This is News Radio seven forty kt RH
five Everywhere with more of what's happeningnow from the John Morris Services Studios.
Trump doing fine after shooting. I'mJarrett Lewis, SIS six thirty on News
Radio seven forty KHRH. A quicklook at traffic in weather. Good morning

(17:48):
too, Gary mack Hey, coupleof things going on. Good Sunday to
you. Road debris on our northwestside in a right lane to ninety northwest
freeways east bound around Skinner Rag.All right, we're back back on Garden

(18:12):
Line. Welcome back. We aregoing to head straight out to the phones
right now and start off with Travisout in Schulenburg and Travis him there we
go. Welcome to garden Line.Okay, I'm gonna have to put Travis
back on hold for some reason we'renot getting hold of. I'm gonna try

(18:37):
Kathy in Northwest Houston. Hello,Kathy, Welcome to garden Line. Hello,
Hey Keathy, good to have youwith us. Hey, I thought
the gremlins had invaded our electronics again. I didn't they have already out here.
I've been going almost a week withoutpower. Oh my gosh. Sorry,

(19:00):
Oh it's hard when you have septicsystems, you know, you're sort
of self contained. Power is theonly thing I need and I ain't getting
it. So anyway, yeah,right around the corner, I send you
to Quality Home. They sell generacsand they're excellent. Anyway. Oh really,

(19:23):
well, the Genera, the actualcompany is right around the corner,
all right, little yeah, Sowhat I want to ask you about poison
ivy. It is prolifically political,raking, excuse me, everywhere, and
I can't get control of it.And I have a son who's highly allergic.

(19:45):
Okay, do you have like poisonivy trunks going up the side of
a tree something, you know,larger stands, the sides of trees,
the ground, It's going everywhere.Okay. So poison ivy is best controlled
with a product that contains trichlo peerand I'll spell that. Do you have

(20:07):
a pen pencil handy? Yes,I'm ready, all right, t R
I C l O E y Rtry clove here. It's in a lot
of products. You may say thatwhen you go to a garden center shelf
and you look or ace hardware whereveryou're getting it. You look right there
and you see it may say poisonivy killer, or it may say stump

(20:29):
and brush killer or something, butthe ingredient is trico peer. You want
to get it just on the poisonivy, not on anything desirable, because
it kills broadly plants and it's reallyhard on Saint Augustine to the point of
I wouldn't. Oh, I don'thave much Saint Augustine. I have a
lot of treaties and a lot ofpoison ivy that's just getting bigger and bigger

(20:53):
and bigger, and it's going on. Yeah. So where it's going up
a tree, all you have todo, and you can take a little
like a hatchet or a saw orwhatever work and just cut the stem off
against the tree trunk. I'd taketwo cuts and make take a little section
out and to that fresh cut surfaceit's going down in the ground. You

(21:14):
paint that tricle pare right on it. Paint meaning get a little spongebrush and
just dip it in the product straightand then dip it on there. It's
probably less than a teaspoon is needed. On that fresh cover of the poison
of a poison ivy stump, andyou stay with it and it will you
will win. Well, there's apatch, and I say patch, Yes,

(21:37):
it is a patch under some oaktrees that I have, or pecan
is one of the other That's allI thought is pecan oak tree. Fortunately,
I'm not allergic to poison ivy.I can grab it, and but
I can't burn it. I knowthat I put in a plastic bag and

(21:59):
buried in a are I don't haveservice. So what are you asking me?
Now? What is your okay?So I'm just saying I can actually
I have to pull it out ofthe ground or dig it out, because
what's not going up the tree?I can rip that off. But what's
in the ground. Ah, whenwhen it's sprung it? Yeah, and

(22:26):
you can. That's why I askif it was. You know, if
there's any desirable plant and you gettricle peer on it, you're probably going
to be in trouble with that.Oh No, I don't have a no,
I'm on property. All right,You got okay, Kevin? Well,
I appreciate it. Thank you.Trickle pere is your answer, and
good luck with that. Thank youappreciate, appreciate your calling in the garden

(22:48):
line. We're going to go nowto Travis and Schulenberg. Hey, Travis,
are you there? Yes, sir? Can you hear me? Now?
I can? I can? Howcan we help? Yes, sir,
I've got a pecan tree, fullwell established contree, great shade for
the house. It's low close tothe car port. You know, I'm

(23:11):
wanting to put a live oak treewhere I need to put the live oak
tree to wor set best and notmess with the foundation kind of thing,
or I need a planet would putit just outside basically the canopy of that
established pecan tree. Can I planit now? Let it get it established?
Do I need to trim the limbsoff of that one side where that

(23:33):
live oaks should go? Do Ineed to just completely take out that pecan
tree from the start? Okay,Well, if you wanted to work your
way into this, you could takeout some limbs over there. But when
trees grow close together, they theyblock each other's light, and so when
you take one away after they've grownthat way for a while, now you

(23:56):
have a tree. This looks likeit was cut in half because nore inches
going out in that direction. Sothe sooner if you're gonna get rid of
the pecan, the sooner you do, the more the live oak can grow
into more natural shape and form.Perfect. Thank you very much, sir.
Yeah, And like I said,if you if you don't want to
do it all at once, Icertainly understand that maybe you could do some

(24:18):
partial printing on the pecan as you'regiving the live oak time to grow kind
of heading on. All right,all right, thank you. I appreciate
appreciate your call very much. Thesummertime is the time when our lawns need
good nutrition. Actually all year itis, but this is when they're actually

(24:40):
growing the fastest, and so providinggood nutrition that's moderated out to feed that
lawn is important. And here's whatI'm talking about. If you dump a
whole bunch of nitrogen at once,you're going to get a lot of top
growth. So you get to mowa lot and actually have a less root
growth than a wealth that early fedlawn. That that is the fact's been

(25:03):
determined by research. I see picturesin ages past where they grew long and
no hardly no nitrogen medium, andthen excess and crocs and they pick them
up and you see the root systems, and like in decent fertilization, it's
kind of nice root system, butwhen you overdo it, it's a reduce.
So what happens when a chinchbug comesalong or a grub comes along to

(25:25):
eat, or it gets dry andhot and you're trying to water enough?
Do you see what I'm saying?You want to moderate it out and Nitroflass
Superturf is a product that does thatfor you. You put it out now
and for the coming months up untilfall. Now it will gradually feed that
long over time, and I appreciatethe way that works. I think that's
a great way to go in summertime. Slow release fertilizer. You can get

(25:47):
it at D and D feed upin Tomball. You can get it at
Fissures Hardware, both the one SouthHouston on Southomore and in Laporte on Broadway
Street. That one's in Broadway Street. Easy to find those products. We're
gonna take a little break and whenwe come back, we got I see
Gary and Ken and a no namecolor. We'll be right back. Have

(26:11):
you with us this morning. We'regonna jump right out here and go to
let's see this is a situation whereit's not giving me a name. So
welcome to garden Line. Who amI talking to? Good morning? This
is John. I didn't get totalk to anybody to give my name,
but this is John. I'man belAir. Yeah, we got a little
glitch in the system, but we'regetting through it. Welcome John and Bellair.

(26:34):
Thank you. So I'm building apool. I'm building a pool.
I've got a the the link tomy battery. The width in my backyard
got about twelve feet between the pooland the fence. I'm looking for some
trees to put there that don't gettoo big. I don't really like the
palm tropical look. I was lookingmore for hill country. I wanted to

(26:55):
know what you thought about maybe someBradford pears or red butts. Learn about
the pears was after this storm.I see how easy they break apart,
and just kind of want to knowwhat you thought about some trees didn't get
too big. Yeah, I'm nofan of bread for pair. I could
gripe about it for an hour,but don't do that one. The red

(27:15):
bud is okay if you get itin a lot of full sun. Then
if you can hunt down a redbud that is a Texas red bud.
There are three kinds of red budswe have around here. One is the
Eastern redbud. That's what ninety percentof the planets you see around town are.
It's from the eastern forests and stuff. If you're going west, there

(27:37):
is a Texas version of that samegenus and species that has glossier leaves that
tend to be a little rounder withless of a point at the bottom of
the leaf, and it's much moretolerant in sun in our planet when you're
trying to go western from here.The third is a Mexican red Bud's another

(28:00):
one, but a very different kindof plant. Anyway, that that would
be an option you might want totry. When when you're saying you want
a tree, how tall do youwant something to be? It's not too
tall because I've got some power linesthat run the back. Yeah, and
so you know, something bigger thana bush. But I certainly can't take

(28:22):
a big oak tree or anything.Oh yeah, yeah, for sure.
Well, Chinese let's see, probablyChinese fringe tree would be an option.
It would do well. It growsat a moderately slow rate and it doesn't
get huge over time. It hasbeautiful white, shaggy booms in spring.
If you want again to go backwestern, there's oh gosh, Desert Museum,

(28:47):
Colo Verde, and that is avery different kind of tree. It's
it's you see it as you goin south southeast Texas. Related versions called
retama, but the trunks are green, and it's got thorns on the leaves
and it produces very wispy leaves withyellow flowers that are attracted. But it
has a good Western kind of appearanceto it if you want to go that

(29:07):
way. And then there's Anacaca orchid, which is a type of ahinea with
white flowers in the spring. Anothervery tough tree. And when you plant
those things you can kind of quitworrying about having to water them. Make
sure they do have good drainage.Though for all all of these species,
I was writing them down. Whatwas the Chinese when you said Chinese fringe,

(29:29):
there is also a native fringe.Chinese fringe is showier. But whichever
way you want to go on that, go online, look up some pictures
of these and see which one fitsyou best. That's all. Do that
Chinese fridge. Worry about the barefeet around the pool. Don hody toward
or anything? Does it none?And even the PalaVerde that has thorns,

(29:52):
it doesn't drop thorns. You knowwhat I'm saying that it's yeah, okay,
so unless a branch fell on theground and stepp okay, we'll go
look at them. Thank you verymuch. There's a bunch of palp.
Yeah, okay, you take care, appreciate the call. Al Right here,
let's see, I want to justmention one thing before we go any

(30:14):
further. When we get wet weatherand then dry weather, which is what
happens all the time. You know, this hurricane just drenched us and it's
going to dry out again. Andwhen that happens, that move that causes
clay soils to shrink and swell,which is why you see all of the
damage that we see from foundation damageto driveway damage to sidewalk damage. Yeah,

(30:38):
tree roots can get under and liftup a sidewalk, but basically it's
the shrinking and swelling of the soilthat cracks our foundations. Tree roots take
water away, which makes it driedeven faster. And fix. My slab
is here to make sure your foundationis properly assessed. And then properly fixed.
Ty Strickland has been doing this twentythree years telling me your guardline listener

(31:02):
free estimates for guardenline listeners. Butif you see a crack in the in
the bricks on the outside, acrack in the sheet rock inside, door
sticking, all of those are signsthat you may have a foundation that's moving.
And the sooner you deal with it, the better. Don't wait,
it doesn't get better, it getsworse. So call tie two eight one
two five forty nine, or justvisit fixmislab dot com. Fixmislab dot com

(31:27):
and you can get it taken careof. Good assessment. All right,
We're gonna go out now to Tumballand talk to Ken. Hello. Ken,
Okay, dud, good morning.Quick question for you. I'm thinking
about replacing a driveway that's over topof some roots of some oak trees,

(31:53):
and so I'm just wondering, isthere something I can do to help protect
the trees when they pour the newconcrete, because I understand that's it's a
cidic or it has some something init that can damage the roots. Well,
the concrete just yeah, and ifyou're pouring it right over roots too,

(32:17):
that that's probably not a good idea. They're going to continue to grow
and expand and everything. You know, I would I would call Martin spoon
Moore and have him come out anddo a side analysis and give you advice
on what he would recommend. Ican't see what you're seeing there at the
house, so I can't just say, oh, we'll put some of this
down and so many inches and thenput the driveway on top of that.

(32:38):
You need to be out there totake a look at it, and he
can. He can make a tripout and take a look and see that
you can put on a little bitof a base and then go ahead and
do the poor. Or it maybe that some roots need to be cut
or removed, which which is unfortunateand something we don't like to do unless
we have to. Yeah, andwhat was that name again, Martin spoon

(33:02):
More And the business is Affordable TreeService. Okay, all right, thank
you very much. Yeah, ifyou go to afftree Service dot com.
That's the that's his website. Wouldyou like a full seven one three sure
six six twenty six sixty three sevenone three six nine nine two six sixty

(33:27):
three. All right, thank youvery much. Yet thanks for the call.
I appreciate that a lot. Byall right. Uh, you know,
one of my favorite new products onthe market is a new product by
Medina. It's part of their Hastragro line. It's called Supergrow Plus.
This I like it for several reasons. Number one, it's a good ratio

(33:49):
for about ninety percent of the lawnsout there. It's a sixteen zero two
fertilizer ratio. Number two, ithooks up to a garden hose, covers
about four thousand square feet for thework bottle that hooks to the hose,
and it takes what ten minutes togo over your lawn and just do this.
Plus, in addition to nutrients,it's got a kelated form of iron,
which is important. That is anutrient by the way. It's got

(34:12):
molasses, it's got humic acid.It even has some seaweed in a seaweed
extract. So it just really givesa fast response and a good response,
and a little bit of that nitrogenis slow release too, so it's not
just you know, dumps it allat once and now there's nothing left.
It does provide that if you returnyour clippings, you can probably do the
supergol once or twice a year.If you don't return your clippings and you

(34:37):
bag them, well, first ofall, why are you throwing away for
a fertilizer. But you're just gonnahave to up them out of any fertilizer
that you use a look for Weare going to take a break here at
the top of the hour. Putour first hour in the books. Today
you are listening to garden Line andI'm your host, Skip Richer. If

(34:57):
you would like to do on thereand ask for questime seven one three two
one two KTRH seven one three twoone two KIPR eight don't forget. But
if you go online to my websitehere, y'all always should listen to guarden
Line with a paper and a pencilor pen in hand because we're always giving
your information. Not you know rightnow, Well, just go to gardening

(35:20):
with Skip. That's me gardening withSkip dot com. Gardening with Skip dot
com. There's the lawn care schedule, it's free, download it, you
for it. It's there's also thelawn pest Disease and wead Manners and schedule,
same thing. Go check them out. A lot of the answers to
these questions are on. There alot of need, a lot of folks

(35:45):
out there. Probably sixty of thepeople in the crossbing Arrette Station area are
still without power. Centerpoint estimates eightyfive percent of customers will be restored by
the end of the weekend. Rangersbeat the Astros two to one last nine
and ten innings. The two willplay again today with the series split at
one game apiece. First pitch isset for one ten. News on demand

(36:06):
at krh dot com. Our nextupdate will be at seven thirty. I'm
Jarret Lewis. Houston's news, weatherand traffic station is News Radio seven forty
kh r H. Kt r HGarden Line does not necessarily endorse any of
the products or services advertised on thisprogram. Welcome to kt r H Garden
Line with Skip Rictor It's trip.Just watch him as us. So many

(36:43):
good things to sup by Sun Well, welcome back to garden Line. We
are glad that you were with usthis morning. Uh, what do you
want to talk about? You gotquestions about lawns or trees, or shrubs,
or tomatoes or house plants. Wecan talk about just about anything that

(37:06):
is of interest to you. Iwant to tell you that now is still
a time to be planting, andI realized for a lot of people it's
like, oh, it's hot now, I shouldn't be plan. I'm not
going to plan. And no,we've got decent weather in the morning to
get out and get some planting done. And by planting things now that are
heat tolerant, the only key thingright now for success with this is for

(37:30):
you to water them a little biteach day to keep them adequately moist.
That's all it takes, because thatlittle root ball that you put in the
ground is going to dry out fasterthan it would have back in March when
we were doing spring planting. Andso right now you can do it.
Just get out there and do it. And you know, I said the

(37:50):
other day, our landscape has becomea sea of green in the summer,
green grass, green ground cover,green trees, green shrubs, and we
can add color to that a lotof good plants that do really well.
For example, in the shade,Terurinia, which is wishbone flower is a
nice, very nice plant. TheHedicium or white butterfly ginger will be blooming

(38:12):
well as we get into late summerand into the early fall, especially Another
one is kalladiums. You're familiar withthose kalladiums. The wishbone flower impatients.
Impatients are another good one that doesvery well in hot weather and shade and
just keeps on performing. We havemany many other plants, and so I
would suggest you get out and dothat. You know, for example,

(38:35):
right now out at Plants for AllSeasons that they're having a sale on a
number of different kinds of roses,knockout roses, drift roses, really a
lot of kinds, except not theLady Banks. The Lady Banks is not
part of that. But talking aboutthose flowers, you can get those also
at Plants for All Seasons on anincredible sale. I mean, like the

(38:58):
roses are like fifteen bucks. Inmany cases, that's more than half off
the annual flowers. You can buythe individual little flowers for a four inch
pot for a dollar, or youcan get a flat of eighteen for fifteen
bucks. Why not do that andput color in your landscape that is going
to carry you all the way tofrost. This is about as good a
deal as you're going to find,and I would just encourage you to think

(39:20):
about it. Also, Angelonia,you know. It's probably one of my
top five plants for the bedding plantsfor hot sunny areas. Oh by the
way, I didn't mention geraniums andcolias. I believe they have those on
sale too, But yeah, Angeloniais a super super plant Plants for all
seasons. That's a garden center upthere on two forty nine Tombol Parkway.
So as you're heading up toward tombaalexit Luetta crossover Luetta and just hop skipping

(39:46):
a jump right further down the street, the side street is there. It
is Plants for all seasons. Isaid that in a way, there's probably
confusing a further down the access roadthat you're driving on. Plansform. You'll
see it and when you pull inyou will see why people love to go
there. Plants for all seasons.You're listening to Garden Line. I'm your

(40:07):
host, Skip Richter, and weare now going to head out to Manville
and talk to Adolf. Follow Adolf, Yes, good morning, And I
have a question for you about cherryplum seats. Is it seeds? How

(40:29):
do I plant those? So youhave a cherry plum tree and I bought
cherry clowns at the store. Iwant to at the plant the seed.
Okay, well, let me firsttell you why you may not want to,

(40:50):
and then I'll tell you how todo it, so you get to
choose. I'm not telling you whatto do. I'm telling you. Uh,
whenever you take a a variety ora cultivar that has been bred and
developed of any kind of a fruitor a vegetable, especially if it's a
hybrid of vegetables or these fruit,the individual blooms were pollinated and therefore there's

(41:16):
two parents for that plant, soyou don't get exactly that parent's fruit.
In other words, if you plantedthe cherry plum seed, you might have
some plums that are in it thatare a different color because in the breeding
line that was there, you mayhave some plums that are larger, more
susceptible to disease, or there's otherissues. And then you don't have the

(41:38):
rootstock because you're planting a seed,so you're seedling is its own rootstock.
So those are the reasons why wegenerally don't just buy a wonderful tasting peach
and try to grow it at home, because it doesn't end up being the
woman in the store if you wantto do it, and it's fun.

(41:58):
It's your yard as you wish.I would take those plum seeds and I
would put them in either some moistspagmum, peat moss or a little bit
of moist sand or maybe even youknow what, a moist paper towels,
put them in a closed like azip lock in the refrigerator and leave them
there for about a month. Uh, and then take them out and put

(42:22):
them in the ground, and theywill sprout and begin to grow. That
breaks down a dormancyed that those seedshave. Plums, peaches, apricots,
neck gerens all have that dormancy.Okay, So you're telling the seeds that
they went through winter when they didn't, right, Okay, So after a

(42:44):
month then I can plant in thedirk. Yeah, a month of refrigerator
temperature is usually adequate to do that. You drive a little longer if you
want. But we also have fallcoming and you know you don't want to
seed the sprout and a month laterhave a first so okay, yeah,
okay, So I guess probably bebest for me to just order the tree

(43:07):
on online. Yeah, you probablycould. I don't know. On the
cherry plum. I don't know whatthe real variety is, and I'd have
to look that up. You needto make sure whatever you plant peaches,
plums, nectars, that their chillinghours is right for our area. That
would be one other tho. Weare far south for a lot of kinds

(43:30):
of traditional fruit, apples and peachesand things. But there are varieties that
will do well here. But alot of things, a lot of times
that's in the store has to begrown further north than us, where instead
of getting let's say you're medd midpart of Easton or something, five hundred
hours or so of chilling, they'regetting probably eight hundred nine hundred hours in

(43:54):
some places. Okay, I getso I'm looking for. When I was
a kids, there were plum treesin the neighborhood. Would go over and
borrow some. Yeah uh, butthey they were the trees were full of
those plums. They were tark.That's really what I'm looking for. And

(44:15):
this cherry plung is pretty close towhat I was looking for. So well,
it's there a Texas variety, youknow the let me let me give
you some another idea. If yougo online, there is a horticulture department.
Website up at a n M calledAggie Horticulture, and if you go

(44:36):
to Agi Horticulture, it's Aggie DashHorticulture. But you can just google it
too. From the front page,you'll see you can click on fruits and
nuts and when we get there,you'll have a free publication full color on
everything from avocados to I don't knowwhat's other into the alphabet line. But
they have plums, peaches, apples, pears, just on a BlackBerry,

(45:00):
strawberries, blueberry. There's a lotof publications on there that are free.
You might want to print out thestone fruit when that would include peaches and
plums, Okay, which one?I'm sorry? Which one of the best.
We call them stone fruit because theyhave a pit inside, you know
how it is with apricots, peachesand plums and nectare stone fruit, so

(45:22):
they're different apples, So they havetheir own publication. Alady, all right,
thank you, good luck with that. Good luck. Appreciate your call.
If you're fertilizing your lawn and youwant something to give a real quick
release, but to be a pleasantjust in general, just a pleasant smelling

(45:46):
and a very effective type of fertilizer. Sweet Green from nitrofoss is one that
will give you that it's about elevenpercent nitrogen, which about the highest nitrogen
analysis for any organic plant food.Sweet Green. I would take the application
of it. It's going to beat ten pounds per thousand square feet that
you apply it, and I wouldput five pounds down now, and then

(46:07):
I take the other five pounds andI'd put it down about six to eight
weeks from now and spread your feedingall the way out that way. Sweet
Green is available in many places,being a nitroposs product. So you're going
to find it at D and DFeed up in Tombole. You're going to
find it at Fisher's Hardware, boththe one in South Houston on Sophomore and

(46:27):
in the Port on Broadway Street.We're going to take a little break right
now. If you have us acall and talk about questions that you might
have about your lawn, your garden, your landscape. Well we're here to
help you have a more bountiful gardenand a more beautiful landscape. And our
phone number is seven to one threetwo one two k t r H seven
one three two one two kt rH. You know, Ace hardware stores

(46:52):
are kind of the one stop shop. Their motto thing is what ACE is
the place. ACE is a placefor and you fill in the blank.
Ace is a place for storm recovery, all kinds of things from me.
You need a little air conditioning unit, you need a little gas power generator,
you need to get some gas cans. Do you need a chainsaw?

(47:13):
Do you see what I'm saying?And anything you might need for storm recovery,
they've got it at ACE Hardware.In fact, they're stocked up even
ACE Hardware stores. If you knowlost power, they're finding ways to continue
going so you can get in andget the supplies you need. Well.
ACE is also the place for fertilizers, all the fertilizer I talk about on
guardlines at ACE Hardware store. It'sas simple as that. If you need

(47:35):
fire at control, I encourage youto start with a bait rather than an
individual mountain treatment. Ace Hardware hasgot a wide variety of bait options for
you. Do you need mosquito repellent? Do you need a fogging machine?
Do you need mosquito dunks? Theones we talk about all the time.
You put in water to kill themosquito larvae. Ace Hardware has got it
just go to Acehardware dot com,look for the store locator and you'll see

(47:59):
there's four stores in the Greater Houstonarea that you can choose from. ACE
Hardware is the place that you're goingto get everything you need for a beautiful
garden, a bountiful garden, abeautiful landscape. I was taking care of
some items that have been on myto do list. I you know,
we all have to do lists,right, and trying to get some things,

(48:21):
you know, knocked out and done. And I was in the garden
digging around in an area where Ihad planted okra a couple of years ago,
and I found a patch of nematodes. Now how they got there,
I don't know. Maybe they camein with some of the soil mix.
You know, when you have especiallywhen sandy soils are mixed in, you
often bring in nema toads, notjust sand, but that they love sandy

(48:45):
soils. They proliferate there. Maybeit came in with a transplant on some
plant that I put in. Iusually checked the roots on transplant, you
know, lift them up out ofthe container and just make sure there's a
little knots, not any little knotson them and things. But I've got
them, and so what I donow, Well, number one, I'm
not going to plan anything that Iknow gets nematodes in that spot. I'm

(49:07):
not because then I just build theirnumbers up higher and you have to hunt
around Online. You can see alist of different things you can grow that
are not prone to nematodes. I'mgoing to do solarizing this summer, where
I put clear plastic over that bedarea and I let it get as hot
as it possibly can. Just likewhen you walk out on a hot sunny
day and you get in your carand the steering wheel and seat buckle both

(49:30):
brand your hand and your lap asyou're getting in blistering hot. Well,
you can do that in a gardenbed, buppeting clear plastic over it.
That's called solarizing. That's another step. I've got a couple of products I'm
trying out to see if they work. They claim to work, but you
know that doesn't necessarily mean anything.But if they work, I'll tell you

(49:50):
more about them later we'll see.But also planting crops that trap the nematodes
in their roots. The nemotodes goin the roots, they cannot rep and
so it shuts them down that way, and in summertime, the little French
marigals are excellent. Maragals come inbasically two types. One is the pom
palm type I call it. Thatwould be something like golf ball or excuse

(50:15):
me, tennis ball size. Andthen there's the little French maragals that are
typically little single flowered daisy flower lookingmaragoles that are about the size I don't
know, a little bigger than aquarter maybe that is the other type,
And those seem to be the bestat trapping nematodes in the roots. So
I'm gonna have a wall to wallplanting of those this summer as well.

(50:36):
And then when the cool season comes, I'm gonna plant cereal rye. That's
not the rye you put in yourbond to make it green in the winter.
It is the cereal rye, thegrain type of rye. There's a
variety called Elbon Elbon, there's someothers out there, and in the cool
season you plant that and it doesthe same thing. Also in the cool
season, you can plant a cruciferousvegetables that would be things in the coal

(51:01):
crop group, so broccoli, cabbage, kale, mustard, coorabie, especially
the mustard. I'll probably solid seedssome mustard in there, and then when
you chop it up and mix itinto the soil, that decomposing mustard top
growth releases chemicals that are that havenomaticidal properties. They can can kill nematodes.

(51:25):
There's a fantas like you know,I give you the fancy word of
the day here. It is isothiocyanate. That is the name of a chemical
that comes out of a plant thatfumigates the soil and kills maricle, kills
nematodes in that cool So it's anorganic fuma gun. You don't usually see
those two words together in a sentence, but it works. It works pretty

(51:45):
well. But all these suppressed nematodes, nothing eradicates them. So once you
have them, you kind of gotthem. Uh. There was a time,
day and time where there were verypowerful fumaguins that were put out to
kill things like that. Those aregone now and you wouldn't want to use
them anyway. So those are somestrategies. Another strategy is to rototill in

(52:07):
the summer, bring moist soil frombelow the surface to the surface and let
it dry out. Do that repeatedly, and that will help reduce their numbers
and not good for the soil,but it's going after nematods. That's an
option. Those are a few thingsyou can do. Planting nematoad resistant plants
is also important, so they're moresomething we manage than something we control.

(52:31):
But I feel your pain if youhave them, because I've had them on
more than one occasion, and nowI just discovered them and where I like
to plant okra, but I guessI won't be in that spot for a
while because okra. You know,if nematods go to a restaurant, they
open the menu and they say doyou have any fig or any okra?
Because they love to attack those plants, but they attack a lot of other

(52:54):
species. All right, Well,our phone number if you'd like to give
us a call, is seven onethree two one two fifty eight seventy four
seven to one three two one twofive eight seven four. I was just

(53:15):
the other day outside looking at somebeds that I had mulched and mult with
a really good quality mulch uh,and I put this down. I think
I think this was nature's way shreddedhardwood malts that I put in these beds,
and it works great, except Isee little weeds coming up here and
there, and as sure enough,when you go up to it and you

(53:37):
kind of move, it's like themult is either not over that area,
there's a little beer soil exposed.That's my job operator error. Or it's
just too thin and sunlight gets throughand here comes up a few little weeds.
So jump on them, pull thoseup, throw the mult down a
little heavier over those areas. Becausemulch works, it blocks the surface of

(53:57):
the soil, the sun from reachingthe surface of the soil, slows down,
rain, reduces erosion, decomposes overtime to release nutrients. I mean,
the list of mulch's attributes is amile long. It's very beneficial to
happen. You got to keep itout there, and you got to keep
it thick enough. So there wasmy little Maya kulpas story. As you

(54:20):
know, I thought it had.I thought I had it all mult right,
and sure enough I had missed somespots. And that's not a problem.
Just go in and throw mulch ontop of it. It'll do just
fine. Star of Hope mission isone you've heard me talk about here on
Guardline before. It is something mywife and I have believed in for a
very long time. Back years ago, years ago we started we actually with

(54:45):
the churcher and we went and helpedwork at Star of Hope mission as volunteer,
and then we moved away. Itspent a long time and coming back
to the Houston area now we arejust all in to Star Hope having seen
the work that they do. Andlisten, we get a lot of requests
for will you donate to this causeor will you donate to that cause?

(55:05):
And I understand that and many goodcauses out there. When I donate,
I want to know that the moneyI donate is going to actually helping people
as much as possible. I wantto know that. I also want to
know that it's helping them in ameaningful way to change lives. And that
is Star Hope. When you thinkabout a woman that's on the streets with

(55:28):
their kids, living in a car, how on earth would that person get
a job, hold a job,where's childcare? They're with the paycheck and
Star Hope they bring people in,they give them housing, they give them
food, they give them training,and they help them get a job.
They give them both spiritual training jobrelated training, and it's amazing the difference

(55:52):
that it makes. And it doesmake a difference. And it's not just
that you made a difference for maybethe mom in that case, you certainly
did, but you made a differencein the lives of those kids and you
gave them a future. And listenthat. In my opinion, even even
if it is pocket change, anythingwe can do to help Starve Hope is

(56:12):
something we should do because you know, like I think, two dollars and
eighty cents will provide someone a mealat star Hope because they use their money
very wisely. Shmission dot org.Shmission dot org. That's how you find
out more. Take a little break, I'll be back shortly. Thanks for
being a Guardenline listener. Welcome backto the garden Line. Good to have

(56:37):
you with us. You'd like togive us a call and talk about plants
and gardening and anything you care totalk about, from seed starting indoors to
indoor house plants. It's nice timeto be working indoors, especially during the
hot part of the day. Sevenone three two one two k t r
H seven one three two one twok T r H. We're glad you're

(57:00):
listening today, and I love tovisit with you about the things that are
of most interest to you. AndI think right now kind of the elephant
in the rooms of storm that justwent by. That was a bit of
a doozy right hurricane, a lotof people out of power, a lot
of extra rainfall, probably more thanwe would have liked to have had right
at that point in time. Butit's good that we got the rainfall,

(57:22):
it's bad that we've got everything elsethat went with it. If you've got
areas of your lawn or your landscapethat aren't draining well, getting that fixed
is important and making sure that youprovide the type of drainage system that's going
to work. That's what I'm tryingto say, is there you can either

(57:45):
take water and drain it away withgravity to a lower area, or if
you've got a lower area and there'snowhere to drain too, you can have
a some pump type pump put downin the ground in a container and ump
that water out and essentially pump itout up to the street or wherever you're
going to move that excess water.Piercescapes can do that kind of work and

(58:07):
they know how to do it.And so if you've got areas that just
aren't draining well, you know,for maybe days after a rain, there's
still standing water that is that's rough. That's rough for most plants. There
are some plants that can take it, but most plants need good drainage.
Why not let Piercecapes fix that foryou? Do you need landscape lighting?

(58:30):
Would you like some stonework some hardscape done for walkways or a patio.
Do you want to see, youknow, maybe lighting along a pathways for
example. They know it all.They also know how to fix an irrigation
system. And right now we're enteringa season where once this dries out from
the hurricane, we're going to bewatering again quite a bit. And union

(58:52):
system that is efficient and that worksright where there aren't areas that aren't being
that failed to be covered by irrigation. So Pierce Scapes is the one to
do all of that, and theydo more. They also have a quarterly
maintenance of the landscape beds. That'sa very helpful thing. Just if they
come out and they do the colorchanges, they do the mulching and just
all the things you need to makespruce up a bed and make sure it's

(59:14):
looking its best. Piercescapes dot comis the website piercescapes dot com. The
phone number two eight one three sevenoh fifty sixty two eight one three seven
zero five zero six zero. We'regoing to head now out to the phones
and bring someone on. I can'tsee the name on this, but welcome

(59:37):
to gardenline. Who am I talkingto? May Cayrol Well, May welcome,
what's up? Thank you? Well? I live in Bay Vista,
which is real near Galbuston and Headwater. You know, brackish water all over
my yard front and back of thehouse. What do I need to put

(01:00:00):
on that in order to make surethat the grass doesn't die. You're talking
about your lawn, right, Yes, well, I would do a couple
of things. First of all,when you can, when it's not wet
still, a good drenching with waterhelps wash salt salts away. Salts dissolve

(01:00:22):
easily in water. That's how theygot there to your place with the brackish
water, and so drenching it reallygood, not just light waterings, but
good drenching that helps move the saltsout of the area, out of the
sort zone moves them down or movethem off surface either way. The other
thing you can do is you couldapply a fuliar spray or the hose en

(01:00:45):
spray of products that contain things likeseaweed, fish emotion products like the has
to grow from me dina and thosetypes of products very helpful in doing a
number of itself. But I wouldfirst do the drenching to try to get

(01:01:05):
as many salts as you could away, and then apply the products as a
surface application. What about gypsum.If your soil is clay, and if
the clay is very tight, itdoesn't drain well at all, then gypsum
would be helpful because sodium is whatcauses soils, clay soils to lose their

(01:01:30):
structure and drain well and be tight, and gypsum knocks the sodium off the
soil particle. So if you don't, if it's not a sodium related issue,
gyps right, the property here inthe vista was all clay sum step

(01:01:52):
to make canals. Okay, Okay, yeah, go ahead. I was
just thinking that that might be appropriatefor our yards anyway. Well it might
be, but again it comes downto the sodium part. You know some
areas have high sodium in the water, so every time you irrigate, you're

(01:02:13):
adding sodium to this. Other placesdon't have that problem, but so practice
it's going to add some sodium.But usually, you know, one flooding
is not the end of the world. You got to do something. It's
just the repeated application and build upover time. But there's a problem with
gps. Gypsum basically is calcium sulfate, so the calcium moves the pH up,

(01:02:37):
the sulfur moves pH down, soit's kind of a PhD neutral application.
But yeah, that's that would bethe difference. You're trying to get
rid of sodium the problem. Okay, right, okay, alright, thank
you very much. Thanks, Iappreciate you. It's uh, yeah,

(01:03:00):
that is something that you may haveheard that in going away in a minute.
I haven't heard that before. Ithought gypsum fixed clay soil, and
you just heard me say why.It's the sodium that ruins the soil structure
and causes it to get very tightinto hole water and not drain well and

(01:03:22):
not let oxygen in. And youknow up in the College Station area,
the water is very high in sodiumand it is a big problem up there,
and gypsum is a good solution.If you have a clay soil and
it's not excessively high in sodium,then gypsum is not going to change your

(01:03:43):
sol structure. It's not going tohelp much, if any at all.
Organic matter and air rating, coreaerating, deep time core aerating, those
help with a compost stop dressing becausenow you're getting holes in the ground,
you're getting organic matter down into thesoil, bringing oxygen down into the root
system. And coreration with compost hopdressing will help a lot for any clay

(01:04:08):
soil. And I would say thatwould be where I would put my money
as opposed to a gypsum application,unless you know that it is a sodium
issue and you have a soil testdone to find that out. If you
go to a website and I shouldhave mentioned this to the color when I
was just on lot, if yougo to a website called It's Soil Testing

(01:04:29):
dot t, a MU, dotedu. Soil testing is one word at
dot TAMU, dot edu. It'san A and M statesoil lab. When
you get there, you want tofind the urban soil test form. Now,
this is something I wish they hadn'tused the term urban because really what
it should be called is the gardenand landscape and lawn soil test form.

(01:04:56):
So vegetables, fruit trees, yourlawn, the trees are in your house,
those kinds of plants, rose bushes, that's the soil test for all
of those. It's a horticultural soiltest, not the one for pastures.
So why am I talking about itso much? Because just know when you
go there, you want the urbansoil test form, and you'll see when

(01:05:16):
you look at the forum. Imean, you can check a box this
is a rose bad or this isa vegetable garden, and you get your
recommendations and everything made accordingly, whichis very helpful. It's not very expensive
to have a soil test. ButI'm telling you this, all our fertilizer
recommending is based on standard general principlesof what plants use and take up.

(01:05:36):
But everybody's lawn could be a littledifferent. Your lawn may be very low
in an ingredient that some other lawnis very high end. So as a
result, having a soil test givesyou the best, most scientifically accurate way
of knowing how to fertilize what doyou use for your particular situation. Otherwise,

(01:05:57):
our standard recommendations are just they arerules of thumb. They're not come
messing anything up. But it's alwaysbetter to have a soult test. We're
gonna take a little break and I'llbe right back the phone number seven one
three two one two KTRH enjoy talkingabout all things gardening, anything related to
plants and helping you have success andhelping have more fun. You know,

(01:06:20):
gardening is a hobby, and itis. It is a wonderful hobby.
It gives you outdoor exercise, littlesunshine, just fresh air. It gives
you mental health benefits that are verysignificant. I'm telling you, it's a
peace of mind thing. There's areason why things like nature, what do

(01:06:43):
they call it forest bathing? Youknow, people going for a walk in
the forest are getting out and justbeing in nature. It really makes a
difference, and gardening allows us todo that. And the more you create
that outdoor scape around your property thatyou want to get out into that you're
proud of, the more fun itis and we can help you have success
with that. That's what we wantto do. But never be afraid to

(01:07:06):
fail at gardening, because you don'tfail at gardening, you just give up,
and don't give up. You seewhat I'm saying, Gardening is I
like to compare it to the etchof sketches that some of you remember growing
up with. You had to drawwith two little knobs. One went up
and down, one went sideways.And if you tried to draw anything like

(01:07:26):
a curve or a circle, itwas very hard, and inevitably you would
go left when you wanted to goright, or up when you wanted to
go down. And now you've messedup your picture. And what did you
do? You took the etch ofsketch, held it over your head and
you shook it. And then whenyou put it down, you had a
blank slate. You got to startover in a garden. That's called a
rototiller, that's called a hoe,that's called a spading fork. You get

(01:07:51):
to start over. And it's okay, there's no problem with that at all.
Listen, the best horticulturist in theworld that I know all will tell
you they've killed a lot of plantsover their lifetime. And I'll tell you
that for sure. Uh. Andsomeone once said, you can't be a
good horticulture. So if you don'tkill a lot of plants, and the

(01:08:11):
point is get out there, tryit, do it, learn, get
better. It's okay. All right, there's your permission to fail, but
you're not going to really fail.You're just going to get out and have
fun. That's what we hope.Well, we're glad you're listening to us
on guardline. Hey, by theway, the phone number seven one three
two one two fifty eight seventy fourseven one three two one two five eight

(01:08:32):
seven four. If you've got aquestion and we can help you with it,
we are more than happy to dojust that. Nelson Plant Food has
so many quality products on the market. They've got the color Star line,
which is a very famous line here. Lots of people use it, professionals,
you know, in the industry useit for color beds to create a

(01:08:55):
real pop of color in the landscape. Then they have the nutri Star line.
There's the hibiscus food that is alsofor anything that is kind of a
tropical plant that flowers, so thingslike for example, I can't say the
name of it, just blank.Oh some of the mallows, you know,
and the Texas sage is not tropical, but that's a good plant for

(01:09:18):
it. It does well with exra, with hollyhawks, alfia's any kind
of a tropical as well. They'vegot the indoor food. I was just
talking to one of my daughters aboutthe indoor plant food of called nutristar indoor
plants. So whatever kind of foldthat you have inside, whether it's a
fiddlely fig, a monstera philodendrons,rubber tree, schafflara, snakeplant, you

(01:09:43):
get the idea of Chinese evergreen.One of my favorite agema. The allocation
of the elephant ears that are oftenusually outside. It does well for them
as well. Turf Star Slow andEasy is their fertilizer. That is the
slow release, and boy is itever. It's designed in a way where
that nutrient doesn't come off the particleuntil some sort of a biocological process happens

(01:10:08):
to that particle, and so justa gush of water doesn't dissolve it all
and wash it away. It isgoing to be there and it's going to
feed for three or four months.So you do it now if you haven't
done it already, and you're goodall the way until your fall. Fertilization.
It's got a slight acidification effect,which is important for diseases like take

(01:10:28):
all root rot that do love ahigh pH condition. So by acidifying a
little bit the plant, the soilsurface, the plant runner and root zone,
that helps a lot with that.But that's turf star slow and easy,
one of many many products. Bynow some plant food this coming week.

(01:10:49):
One of the projects that I haveis getting some more planting done in
the vegetable garden. And when itcomes to summer, a lot a lot
of Texas gardeners just sort of losetheir imagination. There's a few vegetables that
get planted in summer, but notas many as should be because summer is

(01:11:11):
a great season for the garden too. So I know a lot of things
that do what it did well inspring from the summer squash, tomatoes,
pepper setting and things. A lotof that dwindles when we get into eat
cucumbers. Another one that when itgets blazing hot, it just doesn't pollinate
well and doesn't do well. Butwe have plants that do easy easy,

(01:11:34):
low hanging fruit would be sweet potatoes, black eyed peas, purple whole peas,
crowded peas. Those are all calledsouthern peas. The ones you shell
out and another good product or anothergood plant for that. Okra of course
is a good one for summer.But there's more. I've got some melowbar
out in the garden. I founda variety called large round leaf I believe

(01:11:58):
is what it was called, andit has very large leaves that are more
rounded, and it really does wellfor me. I some people let malabar
climb up a fence or a structurelike a tomtic age or something to grow
on. Once it starts vining,the leaves get smaller, and now you
start to get all these little seedpods produced, which turns your garden area

(01:12:20):
into a malivar wheat patch because itreadily volunteers and comes back. But it's
a good vegetable to use. Themalabar that I like, the large round
leaf types. I just pinch themback and so they're only about a foot
tall, and when a shoot comesout about six eight inches, it gets

(01:12:41):
cut off and I use that tendershoot to grow and now I have more
of a low growing malabar bush thana vine with the smaller leaves. Just
something you may want to think aboutand growing it. Another great one is
Molochia Molochia is an excellent, excellentproduct or an excellent vegetable for summer growing.
It's popular a lot in Mid Easterndishes and really arrange all around the

(01:13:08):
Mid East or different kinds of culturecultural cuisine where molechia is very popular.
But that would be another very summerproof one. There are some silosia types
that can be used. They generallycall those Egyptian spinach. They're not spinach,
but that's what they call it.And so the other one that I

(01:13:30):
just would say you ought to trygrowing is a vegetable type of person lane.
Now perslane is a weed in ourgardens. By the way, you
can eat the weed. Perslaine isthe colorful hanging baskets of flowers. But
percelaine also has varieties called like Mithrais a good one. In fact,
there's a number of different personalaane varieties. Gold gelber is another good one.

(01:13:54):
Red grower. Those have large freshingds and they are high in Omega three
fatty acid's very important for our health. Has a little bit of a lemonee
tang to it, but it lovesto grow in summertime, and there's others.
So we had to get out thereand do a little investigating and find
somethings to do well in the gardento keep you eating very healthy. And

(01:14:17):
these plants are tough. You givethem water and they're happy. That's about
what it takes not gave the diseaseand insect or problems at all. So
just a few things to think about. Well, you've been listening to the
Guardline. I'm your host, Skiprich Or. We're about to take a
top of the hour break. Ifyou would like to get on the board.
The phone number. Give Chris acall, it's seven one three two

(01:14:40):
one two kat rich and get onthe phone board. We'll talk to you
first up when you come back.Debra out in Montgomery, we're looking to
talk to you first. So manya. Welcome back, Welcome back to

(01:15:10):
the Garden Line. Let's get goingagain. We got plenty of things we
can talk about today regarding things outin the garden and the landscape. First
of all, I think we willrun right out here to Deborah in Montgomery.
Hello, Deborah, welcome to gardenLine. Good morning scape. How
are you. I'm well, Thankyou great. I have fifty shades of

(01:15:33):
gray and green in my front yard. It is lacking. I was reaching.
I was reaching for the button.Deborah, go ahead, we'll just
have a laughing go on. Fiftyshades of fifty shades of green in my

(01:15:54):
front yard, I thought. Andthen when I said gray, well that's
where my hair is going naturally.So there you go. I feel you.
Okay, let's get back to theexactly I attended to your Marguerite Deville

(01:16:14):
event I've been to. I've beento the plant store here in Montgomery,
Kathy Steward, and I put someweed meter down as instructed by you.
That's really working. Great, it'sa great product. Now on my on
my calendar. I did the lastthe last time you told me to do

(01:16:41):
the weed meter, So I'm donewith that for the summer. Would that
be correct? Yes? Okay,Now what can I do to get those
greens? I do have some photosof it, But if you could just
imagine, is it lacking iron?Is it? So you're getting yellowing occurring
on your learn a little bit ofyellow, but mostly just different beautiful shades

(01:17:04):
of green. Okay, Well,if you're happy with the color, that's
fine. You know, Saint Augustineis not normally like emerald green. It
has a towards chartruche green kind ofcoloring to it naturally, and yeah,
make it beautiful, but you don'thave to. I mean, you know,

(01:17:26):
if you see it losing enough color, you know that it needs definitely
use nitrogen. And even though thecolor may be acceptable, you may want
to have more nitrogen in order tofill in faster make a denser lawn.
So that's a possibility. Okay,has to grow. I was blessed to
be to be a winner of theweed nat Or, so we'll purchase more

(01:17:46):
of that next time I go tosee Kathy has to grow. We're some
samples that you shared with me.Would that be a product to put on
the grass to give it the rightamount of iron needs? And do you
do you know which has to growproduct you have, because they have a
number of them that are in thehas to go line. There's regular has

(01:18:10):
to grow, there's has to grow. I think it's the six six twelve
six. I was looking at thisproduct twelve four eight liquid Lawns, which
one, Yeah, definitely the twelvefour eight of That's what I was thinking.
Okay, but they also have supergrowhas to grow Supergrow that's also good

(01:18:33):
for lawns. So you can goeither way. Oh good, okay,
well great, well you've been abig help, all right, And what
about what about what's the name ofthat Azel Mike? Would that be a
product you would grow on there?Also? If you haven't or in the
past year, I would you coulddo that? You know how to do

(01:18:56):
it a bunch because you don't needa lot of it. If you'll notice
on the bag the rate is verylow. Uh, and so a bag
goes a long way because trace mineral. It's not like the big three numbers
on the bag that we need ongreat where you have a great Sunday.
I appreciate you so much. You'reso educated and you're just a wonderful person.

(01:19:17):
Love to spend the time. Yeah, thanks for the call, Debrah.
I appreciate that a lot. Ifyou'd like to be on guard Line,
our phone number is seven one threetwo one two fifty eight seventy four.
Or for those of you who liketo hunt down the letters seven one
three two one two k t RH. We had to have a poll
sometime. Do you prefer dialing byletters or by numbers? And see what

(01:19:41):
people think? I know what Iprefer. But anyway, Uh, you
are listening to guard line. I'myour host and we're to answer your gardening
questions. I want to remind everybuddy again that if you go online to
my website Gardening with Skip dot comGardening with Skip dot Com, you will
find on there a number of things, but I keep adding little bits and

(01:20:02):
pieces to it here and there,but you'll find my lawn care schedule and
the lawn pest Disease and weed managementschedule. They're both on there. They're
both multicolored, they're both free.You can print them out, you can
just look at them on the computerif you want. But what you'll see
is, for example, on thelawn care schedule, you'll see if you're
going to fertilize with a synthetic productor if you're going to fertilize with an

(01:20:26):
organic product, exactly what you puton and when, and it has all
a list of example quality example fertilizersthat you can use. Then there's a
line on aeration that talks about aeratingand what to do, a line on
mowing, and believe it or not, mowing is one of the most important
things. Most people don't give itthe value that it really has, but

(01:20:48):
one of the most important things youcan do to have a dense, beautiful
lawn is to mow often. Thatis key, and as my case in
point, the golf course green beingthe ultimate, it's mote every day,
just barely cutting off any grasp moteevery day, and boy is that ever
a dense, healthy, beautiful lawnsurface. So of course your lawn ain

(01:21:11):
gonna be a golf course s green. But it just points out that the
more often you mow, the betterit looks. Also on that schedule is
watering, and I give you howmany historically how many inches of water a
week do you need to apply tothe lawn. Now we can say apply
one inch a week. Well that'strue May, June, July, and
August, but April and September isthree quarters of an inch, March,

(01:21:33):
October and November are half an inch, and December and January and February or
zero inches historically because we get somenatural rainfall and in those cooler months the
lawn is just not using much waterat all. So that schedule helps you,
and that way. The other scheduleis a lawn past disease and week

(01:21:54):
management schedule, and that particular onehas a line for insects. So it'll
tell you when do we treat forchinchbugs and soid webworms, when do we
treat for grubs. If you missthat first treatment, when do you do
this second treatment? Because the productschange on the second treatment, and then
diseases take all root, rot,large patch, or people call it still

(01:22:16):
brown patch, gray leaf spot.When to do those kinds of things,
as well as tips to reduce diseaseattack then under weeds and big red letters.
I'm going to read it out loud. The first and most important step
in weed control is to build adense, healthy turf over time through proper
fertilizing, mowing, and watering.Remember, wherever sunlight hits a soil,

(01:22:40):
nature plants a weed. There yougo and there's post emergent controls. There's
pre emergent controls on there, andevery product, whether you want to do
it synthetically organically, is listed.It makes it so easy. I encourage
you to print those outs to comeon the fridge or put them out in
the garage by the fertilizer spread orwhatever you want to do. Just print
those out. We're going to takea break right now and I will be

(01:23:03):
back. The number is seven onethree, two one two five eight seven
four about them birds. You know, I think I've told you before.
I used to not be much ofa bird watcher or a bird feeder and
so on. It just wasn't partof a hobby that I ever was into.
And I got me some really goodquality equipment and in terms of bird

(01:23:26):
feeders, that that type of thing, and now I just love it more
and more. We got it.We have a little bird watering fountain out
there and some other things. Itis just so pleasurable to sit and watch
the different kinds of birds. Ihad no idea what kinds of birds we
had around here. I knew therewere a thing called birds, that's about
it. And so now I'm watchingthe feeder, going, oh, what

(01:23:46):
is that? And there's some reallycool apps out there too, one called
the Merlin like the Merlin the Magician, Merlin app. It's out of Cornell.
And if you that thing is socool. If you hear birds singing
in your yard and you can't seethe bird and you want to know what
it is, you go to theMerlin app and it will listen and it
will tell you what bird that is? Is that cool or what there's also

(01:24:11):
you know, different ways that willhelp you identify birds and other stuff.
But we just really enjoy the birdsin our landscape and why Birds Unlimited is
an absolute just wonderland of cool thingswhen it comes to birds. I for
example, I've told you about thesquirrel proof bird feeder, the squirrel eliminator.

(01:24:31):
It's called that one is awesome andI just my favorite one that I
have. There's a lot of othersuper quality feeders. But remember, whenever
we're dealing with feeding birds, wehave options. We have the dry of
course, granular bird seed that youput in feeders, but then there's birds
cylinders that's compacted bird seed kind ofglued together, if you will, by

(01:24:55):
natural substances, and it forms thiscylinder kind of like one of the larger
little candles you might buy in light. And you put that out there and
it takes the birds a while topeck it out, and so you get
to watch them for longer. Theydon't just grab a byte and fly away.
It takes them a little while.But also if you go on vacation,
you put a cylinder out there andthere's still going to be bird seed
available when you come back from vacationbecause it feeds them over a period of

(01:25:18):
time. Just a really good jobtoo. Wabird's Unlimited. Here's the website,
WBU dot com forward slash Houston.WBU dot com forward slash Houston.
While you're there, find the Warbird'sUnlimited store near you. You're going to
find there's a number of options orsix of them here in the greater Houston

(01:25:39):
area. Clearlake Cypress on bel Airin Memorial Drive in Houston, up in
Kingwood on Kingwood Drive, and downin Parland on Broadway Street. And just
click on their website and you canactually shop online. If you just wanted
to have them deliver something, well, you could do that. You go
to that particular store and you canshop for poles and by affles and other

(01:26:00):
hobby products, for gifts and books, bird baths, bird houses, bird
feeders, bird food, even agift card. Maybe you know someone who
loves birds and I'm telling you abird lover would love a gift card to
All Birds Unlimited. But get theirfood because it is high quality. I
don't deal with messes. Their fooddoesn't have you know, some foods have

(01:26:21):
up to seventy plus percent of theLittle Red beeby filler type of seed that
they don't like to eat, andquality feed from wild birds. You get
what you pay for. You buya pound of feed, the birds get
a pound of food. That's howthat works. W dot Com Forward Slush
Houston. I was enjoying. Wehad something go wrong with a breaker and

(01:26:46):
my bird fountain that normally is workingreally well, I just suddenly went off
and so I'm doing some electrical SherlockHolmes thing around. I've got several things
I've tried by time to have tohire an electrician to come in to fix
that, because that fountain is cool. By the way. You know,
with fountains, anything that moves thewater surface, mosquitos will not be able

(01:27:12):
to lay their eggs and have thelarva survive and then become an adult.
Mosquito aren't able to go through theirlife cycle and moving water as much,
and so ad a fountain that's movingwater will do it. There's even little
devices or some that are solar,but you put them in your bird bath
and they just create little tiny wavesmoving the water around in there, and

(01:27:35):
that works well too. Of course, you can also throw mosquito dunks in
there. Those don't hurt the birdsat all at all. If it's a
little shallow fountain, you can justblast it out with a water hose every
few days. Just don't get themtoo long, because in about a week
you can end up with mosquito larvathat are becoming adults. And now we've
got a whole new situation. Andthat's happening right now too, by the

(01:27:58):
way. Around town. We justhad all that rain. Some areas I
think got nine inches of rain.And when you have standing water, you
will have mosquitoes. There are severaldifferent species. They each of them prefers
a little bit different environment for howit it would raise its young. Some
would live in just a real stagnant, dirty water that's real common for mosquitos.

(01:28:24):
They love that decomposing leaves and organicmatter and stuff. That's a mosquito
happy place. Others are more ofa stormwater species and they come and go
in accordance with a schedule like astormwater event. So a lot we can
do to control them, and especiallyif you have birds and bird baths and
things, it's easy to keep themout of there. Don't be a skeeter

(01:28:46):
breeder. That's how I like toput it. Well, you're listening to
Guardline. Our phone number is sevenone three two one two five eight seven
four seven one three two one twofifty eight seventy four. I have told
you about Southwest Fertilizer many times before, but if you've not been there,
you need to go, you reallydo, just to see the place.

(01:29:11):
Southwest has the most complete supply ofeverything you could want for your garden and
your landscape. If you hear metalk about a fertilizer on guard Line,
Southwest has that fertilizer they do,they carry them all. If you need
a pest control, a disease control, a weed control, Southwest has that

(01:29:33):
also and every version you need.Most importantly, they have people in the
store that know how to advise you. You bring in a bug, you
bring in a weed, you bringin a picture of something, and you
go, how do I get ridof this? And they're going to show
you here's your options, here's whatyou can do, here's how you do
it, and they walk you throughthe process. Because I can't tell you,

(01:29:56):
over my years as a County EagerLife Extension horticulture agent, how many
times someone calls up or emails meand they say, well, I use
this and this and this, andit's just like they're throwing the kitchen sink
at a problem. But they're notusing the right products. And that's a
waste of money. It's unnecessary environmentaldegradation. We don't want that. So

(01:30:19):
get a good diagnosis so that youcan get a good product. And in
Southwest you're going to get that kindof thing. And I hope you'll call
here, and if need be,we go through email to look at photos.
Because you need to buy one thingand use it once and be done.
You don't need to waste your timeand money guessing at what to do
to control the problem. Southwest Fertilizersin the corner of Businett and Runwick and

(01:30:43):
Southwest Houston the website Southwest Fertilizer dotcom. If you haven't been there,
I highly recommend you go check thatplace out. I'm going to go now
out to Katie, Texas and talkto Doug. Hello, Dougkop, Good
morning, sir. Say a quickone for you. I've got a medium
sized pot that I'm growing mint inand it's been invaded by ants. I

(01:31:06):
don't know if the answered detrimental,but I'd like to get rid of them,
but I don't want to render themint unedible. Okay, do you
think do you think their fire?Answer is it's just ants and you don't
know what. Oh, I'm prettysure they're fire. Inch Okay, Well,
if you're not sure, you canput a potato chip in there and

(01:31:28):
within about five or ten minutes theyought to be crawling all over that potato
chip if they find it. Igot you. They love they love that
ly material. So you got acouple of options. How big is this
pot? You said, medium oflike, what's the diama? Oh,
it's it's it's it's actually more ofkind of a bowl shape. It's probably
about I don't know, foot anda half two foot in diameter, maybe

(01:31:51):
about eight inches deep. Okay,Well, so one option would be to
put a bay and around that pot. You could sprinkle a little bit in
the pot, but baits are supersuper low quantities of an insecticide that works
very slow in the end, andthat would be effective. You could also

(01:32:15):
do just a drench with something thatcontains lemon lemonine, lemonine L I M
O N and I believe as Ispell it, and it's it's a it's
a citrus oil. Product that's usedas a mound drench, and you would
just drench that in and that wouldbe another option. I would mostly try

(01:32:36):
to keep it off of the foldageof the Minnesota I've can talk. It's
going to come right back anyway.I don't think it'll burn it. But
I've never used it on that before. But that is a mound treatment that's
organic to use. Okay, well, great, well I'll certainly consider both
of those options and give them atry. Yeah good, all right,

(01:32:58):
Well thanks. Parents aren't any fun, are they? Oh? No,
they're not, especially when they geton you. I had a lady call
my office one time and she wasin tears. I'm not making fun of
her. I'm just telling you howit was. She was in tears,
and she said, is there anythingin Texas that doesn't bite? She had
just moved here from another state,and I think between fiants and mosquitoes and

(01:33:19):
rotten snakes, and she was prettymuch getting the creepy crawly there. Get
her understood down that all right?So hey, thanks for going. We'd
appreciate your call dog very much.We're gonna take a little break right now.
You come back if you'd like tobe First up, we got an
open board. Uh, you justgive us a call at seven one three

(01:33:40):
two one two k t r H. The kinds of things that we need

(01:34:09):
to be doing out in the landscape, by the way, after a lot
of the things your plants have beenthrough. Certainly the storm itself was pretty
tough for a lot of plants.For those of you who've had maybe issues
with bad water flood coming up intoyour area and moving out and trying to
figure out what do I do now? Well, Microlife has got a wide

(01:34:29):
range of organic products that you canuse to control or to enhance your soil,
so that a lot of the problemsthat you would otherwise have to figure
out, how do I control it? Well? By just growing good healthy
plants, you avoid some of thoseissues, and that is something well need
to do. We always start culturaland then go with any kind of a

(01:34:49):
product, spray or whatever we mightneed to do well with organics like Microlife,
you've got heumates plus that's a purplebag. That's like cont traded compost
in the bag. Anytime use somethinglike that, you make the soil better
over time, and good healthy soilmeans good healthy plant growth. They've got

(01:35:10):
the six two four that is theirfertilizer. That's kind of the standard one
for the things that you might wantto do like a lawn. I would
use it on a lot of otherplants as well, especially something you're growing
primarily for the grainery around it.It'll work good on that, but I
even use it on things like fruitand vegetables. It's widely, widely available
and widely effective really when it comesto the range of plants that you can

(01:35:35):
have success with it on. Now, Microlife has their liquid products too,
and that's one that's something i'd liketo just discuss real briefly with you here.
With Microlife liquids, you've got thingslike the fertilizer that I really enjoy,
the orange label Biomatrix. It's aseven to one three fertilizer works good

(01:35:57):
for anything loaded with microbes. Soif you're putting in a transplant, you
can water it in with Biomatrix waterfrom Microlife. You can get the Humans
plus as a liquid. You canget seaweed super seaweed it's called. You
can get Ocean Harvests, which isa fisher mulsion. Those kinds of combinations.
Things like additional ones like Microlife's molassesor micro microlife excuse me, humic

(01:36:20):
acid complex. It's got humic andfoldic acid both in it. Those are
very helpful for the plant. Andthere's other products for microlife like that.
And I would encourage you if youhave questions, you want to know what
can I do for it? Well, how about hooking it up to hoose
inspiring going over the lawn. Howabout using it in your flower beds or
your vegetable gardens or other things.These are all going to be good for

(01:36:40):
the soil and good for the plant. Microlife Fertilizer dot com. Microlife Fertilizer
dot com. That's how you findout where to buy it. It's widely
available. That's also how you findout what products are out there that I
even had time to get around totalking about from Microlife. Let's head out
to the phones now, and I'mbringing on new collar. I don't have

(01:37:02):
your name, So who am Italking to today? Missus? Kevin Fredell?
Hi, Kevin? How can Ihelp? Well? I sent an
email yesterday regarding a spot in myfront lawn that will not grow grass okay,

(01:37:23):
and sent some photos, And sincesince then, I've realized that my
lawn is basically just clay, andthe parts that have grass growing just have
a very thin top soil. Andso I'm thinking that's probably why there's no

(01:37:45):
grass growing in that spot, butI can't say for sure. I don't
know if you had a chance tolook at the photos yet I have looked
at the photos. So that almostlooks like where a tree was that got
dug out or something. It's soround, yeah, I know, and
it's not. Okay. Well,let me say this first. Clay is

(01:38:06):
not a problem for Saint Augustine.The sod producers along the Gulf Coast grow
it and that black clay soil thatsod comes in with, right, and
so that is a soil where grassis thriving. Because if a grower didn't
have thriving grass, they couldn't makecuts and make money by selling the sod.
So clay is okay. You justneed adequate soil moisture, and you

(01:38:30):
need a good nutrient content. Ifit were a compacted clay, then aeration
is also helpful. You can erateany clay, but that would be it.
But the fact that this is aroundnothing that you know, it's almost
like some product's put on the soilthat is still affecting the grass being able

(01:38:50):
to grow there. I don't know, but I don't know anything that makes
a round dead spot. We gotbrown patch in the winter, large patch.
It's all an now caohol which makescircles. But they don't kill the
runner. They regreen, they comeback. So I looked at your pictures
closely, and I don't see asign of anything in the photos. It

(01:39:10):
looks like the grass is trying tocrawl back in, and I see where
the old dead grass died out.I think I might take for a little
spot like that, Kevin. Imight go ahead and just take a spading
fork and wiggle it down into thesoil and then just kind of pulling it
to crack it open a little bit. You're not turning over the soil spading

(01:39:32):
it. You're just pushing it straightdown and loosening it up and doing a
whole bunch of those in there.I would throw a little leaf mold composh.
You can buy that in a bagand a lot of different places.
Throw a little leaf mold compost onit and water it in really good,
and then probably get a hold ofsome of Medina's has to grow super grow

(01:39:55):
Plus. That's a hose end applicator, and I would apply it to the
see how it looks and what someof your photos. The lawn looks a
little I don't want to say yellow, but it's less green, and so
I'm wondering if maybe there's not someissues going on with the roots and being
able to take up iron. SoI think that I would try the has
to grow super grow plus supergrow plus. It's a sixteen zero two. I

(01:40:19):
believe it's a number. The lastnumber. Okay, hooks up to a
garden hose. But first let's getthe soil structure as good as we can
in there, and hopefully that'll sodover. Now it's a huge area,
so if you wanted to buy afew blocks of sod to put in there
to speed it up, I thinkthat'd be better because as long as you
have bear soil, you're gonna geta lot of wheat showing up in that

(01:40:41):
spot. Okay, Well, wehad planned to do that, and in
my research on this thing, watchingyou tube, they talk about getting like
a one inch or a two inchauger bit and every six inches, you
know, hit get the the uhhit the lawn with it. Removed the

(01:41:02):
clay and then pack those with withthe compost. Would you think that would
be a good idea. That's evenbetter than the spading fork. It's just
most people aren't willing to stoop forthe amount of time it takes to drill
six inch apart holes through a largearea like that. But yes, I
don't mind it one. Yeah,you don't need to get bigger than one

(01:41:25):
inch, that's fine. And theaugur bit just get if you can get
down even six inches, that's enoughwith the auger Bet and okay, buy
able mold compost. You can buythose nature Sway cells, those heirloom soils
has a super quality one as well. I don't know what part of the
area do you live in. I'min sugar Land. Cornelius is the closest

(01:41:49):
I think that I have. ButI'm soeulthless fertilizers not having a question.
Yeah, that'd be good. Iyou just have to see if they have
a leaf mo compost on hand.Off the top of my head, I'm
not sure seeing them all should beanother good one. They're down the road,
but they're not far from your area, and they have you can get

(01:42:12):
the super quality screen leaf mold compostsdown there, but you're not gonna have
trouble finding it with all those options. Okay, well, I appreciate your
help. Thank you very much.Yeah, and hey, just as a
favor, if you think about itas we go on down, send me
a picture a couple of weeks andwe'll take a look, and I'd like

(01:42:32):
to see if maybe four weeks fromnow you're seeing a benefit. I got
to run to a break, buthey, thanks for the call. I
appreciate that. Folks will be rightback. You're listening to guard Line.
Good to have you back with us. How can we help you have a
more bountiful garden, a more beautifullandscape. That's what we're here for.

(01:42:53):
So let's dive right into it.We're going to go to Pearland and talk
to Kay. Now. Hello,okay, welcome to guard Line. Good
morning, Skip. Thank you andyour crew so much for forging ahead and
then doing what you can with youknow your problems. We all need you.

(01:43:14):
Yes it is now. Guess Ihave a simple question. I was
just wondering about ground up. Ihave some areas that have just gotten so
much weed. I pulled a lotof it up, but I need to
spray with round up. How longdo I have to wait before I can
plant something? Let me ask afew questions. What what is the what's

(01:43:42):
growing in that area that you don'twant to kill anything? Hibiscus ammirellis a
variety of what am I trying tosay, guardena plant? I mean,
I have a board that I putbut you know, against everything when I've

(01:44:02):
spray. But okay, Well,if as long as you can protect it
from the spray, I definitely won'tdo that. You can use that around
them. You just need to barelyget the weeds wet, and after you've
applied it, it's gonna take itabout five days to really have moved in
there where you start to see somesymptoms on it really good, right,

(01:44:25):
And after that you can just youknow, physically remove the weeds out of
the area if they're very big,because anyway, well I've removed a bunch
of them by hand already. I'vejust pulled them up physically and there's just
little things coming back, and Iwant to clear it out and get them
to the roots. After you dothat, you put seeds in the ground.

(01:44:46):
It won't hurt them. It's okay. It's not poisoning the soil to
where you can't grow something back inthat spot, but you get it on
green, that's going to kill it. There are other riptions, you know,
if your wage are all great,there are grass only killers that would
be fine with everything you got there, except maybe the ammerillis you mentioned.

(01:45:06):
I don't think that would be goodto use a grass killer around, but
I'm okay, I'm just that's that'sthe best guess. Yeah, I think
those are some good options. Justbe real careful when you use a product.
Use a coarse spray droplet so youdon't have high pressure and make a

(01:45:26):
mist that drifts, right, okay, be real careful. Okay. And
if it's just weeds here and there, you can make a little wiper applicator,
so you just well, some ofthem are kind of bigger beds,
maybe twenty feet long, that arejust dirt. You know, there's nothing
really I've just been trying to decidewhat to do with it. And I

(01:45:51):
have a big long one forty feetin the backyard that you know, has
one high discus on it and itgot blown mostly way. Yeah, make
sure the weeds are in an activelygrowing state, so if they're struggling,
give them a good ring and gettingthem, get them actively growing, because
then the product really works if it'sstressed. Okay, okay, okay,

(01:46:13):
well I'll probably hit it once andthen give them a chance for the ones
that I've pulled up. Basically,make every effort to get the roots,
you know, and then go backand see if something else comes back.
Thank you so very much, andyou have a blessed day, you two
k Thanks for the call. Iappreciate that you've heard me talk about a
Star of Hope before. By theway, they just celebrate their one hundred

(01:46:34):
and seventeenth anniversary July first. Canyou believe that that is how long they've
been part of Houston, making Houstona better place. While they change lives
one at a time through training,through guidance, through drug abuse program recovery
programs, through everything. They takesomeone who doesn't have a way to get

(01:46:57):
a start now and they set lifeup in their system so that that person
can make a life. For example, if you got kids, who's going
to take care of the kids?Star Hope when you standing there? They
have childcare in some of their facilitiesfor that, How do I learn a
job skill, Like, how doI do an interview some people? That

(01:47:17):
is something we need help with andStar Hope does that. I need food
in the meantime when it comes timeto go for a job, how about
a really nice little let's say usedclothing, but almost a boutique kind of
level where you're getting some quality stuffto show up for the interview and present
yourself with. See what I'm talkingabout. Star Hope covers the whole thing,

(01:47:40):
and in certainly including the spiritual formationpart that is the basis of what
they do Star Hope Ministries. Iwould recommend that you join me and being
a supporter of Star Hope, youcan go to shmission dot org. Shmission
dot org. I tell you allthe time that it recommend things that I
haven't tried or don't know work orwhatever. I can tell you this,

(01:48:03):
I have first hand experience and haveseen the results of what Star Hope does
and it is I can't think ofa better way to put your compassion to
work than a donation to Star HopeMission. We're going to now go buy
a phone. Let's see here.Yeah, we're go by a phone out
here to talk to Anna. Gohey, Anna, Welcome to garden line.

(01:48:28):
We've got about a minute, butmaybe we can get it done.
Hello. Hi, Hello, Okay, I wasn't sure I was on Skip.
I have an Eagleston hally that hasjust had a major leaf drop,
and I've got photos of what's goingon with the leaves, and I wondered
if I could send those in.I don't know if this thing has a

(01:48:51):
fungus or if it's I don't seehow it could be a water problem.
Right, I'm about to put youon hold, but when Chris picks up
the phone, make sure that whenyou send the email, he'll give you
the address. Make sure you sendme photos are a good sharp focus.
I want to see that they are. Oh, I'm sorry, I just
realized something. We're not our systemissues. We're not able to do what

(01:49:15):
I normally do to fix us.Okay, Well, the leaves they're getting
little tiny yellow spots around the outeredge of the leave. And yeah,
it's just little spots now looked formit so I've read about funguses, you

(01:49:36):
know, I cannot figure out.Uh, and then the leaves just eventually
turn brown and drop and I'm goingto cut in here. Uh, Chris,
how's your phone number from calling in. He's going to call you back
and give you the email. It'sokay, it's that all right, thank
you, all right, we justhang on. He'll be with you in

(01:49:58):
just a day, all right.Folks, you're listening to guard Line.
We are working our way through someof the issues that have come up with
all the storms and things we're dealingwith. But the show goes on and
we're having a good time. Ihope you are if you're listening to it.
I'll be back after the top ofthe hour in the news and we'll
continue with your questions. We've gotto open board and so if you are

(01:50:19):
interested in asking a question or gettingon Guardline, give Chris a call.
The phone number is seven one threetwo one two k t r H seven
one three two one two K twoare a welcome back to the guard Line.

(01:50:45):
Good to have you with us today. Looking forward to helping you have
a more bountiful garden, a morebeautiful landscape. And how can we do
that. Maybe maybe a plant recommendationwould be in order or to write,
well, I tell you what Ielson water garden and nursery out there,
and Katie, don't if you haven'tbeen. You need to go, but
it's out. You got eye townto Katie. I mean you get to

(01:51:06):
Katie four Ben Road, Katie fourBen Road, you turn right, go
north, cross over the tracks andyou'll get to it real quick. It's
right there. And they're a watergardens specialist company. They have been.
They're nationally known for their water gardens. They invented the fountain, the disappearing
fountain that's like a big, tall, skinny vase that water comes down the

(01:51:27):
side and goes into pebbles and thenit comes back up through the middle.
That they should know how to dothat. They're the ones that created it.
And boy do they ever have beautifulones on site. You just got
to go and walk through the peaceand quiet of a nice cool shaded spot
with the sounds of water all aroundyou. That's Nelson Water Garden. This
is your West Houston nursery and destinationnursery as a matter of fact, for

(01:51:54):
all kinds of things. But they'replants, selections unbelievable. Oh, gorgeous,
hibiscus, beautiful, the tropicals theyhave such gorgeous ones. All the
roses right now are fifteen percent arefifteen dollars, which is half price essentially.
So you're looking time to get arose, get it established and stuff,
you take care of it, getit in the ground water right You
can do that right now, andthat would just get you set up for

(01:52:16):
a gorgeous rose display, especially thisfall when they put on some of the
best displays they do of the year, all at Nelson Water Garden and Nursery.
It's not hard to find them.Ari told you how to get there.
If you want to go to thewebsite, go to Nelson Watergarden dot
com Nelson Watergardens plural dot com.It's an excellent site and it will help

(01:52:36):
direct you to the many things thatI don't even have time to mention that
they can do for you there interms of creating a more beautiful, beautiful
setting around your home. I'm goingto go now out to Missouri City and
we're going to talk to Ruben.Hello Ruben, good morning, sir.
This morning I heard you talk aboutthe nematodes, and I found it rather

(01:52:58):
fascinating when I've planted the garden area. Before I even got started, I
did plant some of that ebon rye, and once it dried up, I
chilled it in Now just the nematod'sgoing to the roots. Am I just
perpetuating them growing? Or what happensnext? They go in and I don't

(01:53:19):
know biochemically exactly what's happening in there, but they're not able to reproduce.
Normally, a female nematod would goin create a little cyst which eventually becomes
those nots you see, and shewould create a bunch of eggs that then
are released out. The little larvaereleased out, and the soil is those
eggs hatch. And when you dothat, it's something about trapping or in

(01:53:41):
there, and you're not getting thereproduction of nematods. And so it's a
slow way, but it's a oneby one at a time away each roote
captureum to help rid that soil.So if you're going to use a nematod
trap crop like the French margoles inthe summer or the elbow and in the
winter, you want to plant sothick that every you know, cubic inch

(01:54:06):
of soil is just filled with rootsfrom those plants, because you want every
nematode somewhere in the soil to havea root to try to go into and
so not just I've seen people saybefore a while, you put a mirragold
on each side of your tomato andit'll control nematodes, And no, it
won't. It won't at all.That's just that's just tomato wheels you got,

(01:54:28):
okay, and you got to leaveit in for a period of time,
let them grow, give it sometime. So you may want to
rotate and not use this bed forthe first part of the summer season,
but then stay away from things theylike to eat and plant things that drap
them. That's kind of what alot of that amounted to. Okay,
And since you had so much information, do you have this on your website?

(01:54:53):
You know I don't, And I'mgoing to make a note. I
appreciate you bringing that up, Rooven. I need to take over about Nema
toads and put it on there andI'll try to add it and if I
do, I'll certainly announce it onthe air. That would be great.
Well, thanks a lot. Iappreciate your information. All right, Ruben,
I appreciate your call. Thanks alot giving us a call. Uh,

(01:55:17):
all right, there we go.Uh, yeah, Nemo toads.
We have several things in horticulture wherethere's really not a you know, silver
bullet solution to it, and NMAtoads are one of those. If you
were to ask me how do Imanage NIMA TODs, you're going to get
about five answers and you need todo them all. They're all different things,

(01:55:38):
but you need to do them allto stay on it. But they're
not invincible, and we can keepthem managed so that it's you know,
a really good NEMA toad free soil. We just have to talk to work
around it. Let's go back outto the phones now, and we're going
to talk to Anna. Hello,Anna, welcome to Garbline. Yes,

(01:56:01):
the email thing did not work.Are you not able to transfer me over
to the phone screener? Oh uhno, that's the problem with our gain.
Okay, well I'll try again nextweek. Did you receive an email
from him and a call from himwith an email? No? I did

(01:56:24):
not get a call. Oh okay, well hang on, I think Chris
will I'm going to hang up onyou. I'm sorry, I need to
hear that again. Okay, uhyeah, I think he will give you.
He will give you a callback sohe can give Okay, great,

(01:56:45):
I'll just email address we were talkingabout, so he'll give you a call.
Just hang on. Okay, thankyou, I appreciate it. All
right, we're going to go outto Noah and Lake Jackson. Hey,
Noah, how are you today?All right? Good morning, Skip.
I was calling with a question abouttermites and an old oak tree. Is
there a systemic control or what?Do you have any advice on a pesticide

(01:57:11):
that might treat termites and a tree. Yeah, that's a good question.
There are a lot of different productsout there on the market. I am
not what we call a structural pestexperts. That's what termites fall under,
is structural pest control. You probablyI would think that any kind of a

(01:57:34):
persistent product like by fen Thren.By Fenthren is an ingredient that you find
in many products. It's a persistentsynthetic perrethroid. And if you could get
it up in there and soak thewood, then as they try to come
back and crawl through it and doanything, you're going to get some benefit
from that. But again, I'mnot I don't want to make it like

(01:57:58):
I'm an expert in that. I'mjust so that that is what I would
do is try something along those lines. You're in Where are you located?
Lake Jacksons? Okay? I wasgoing to ask you, is there a
resource I can find an arborist inBrazoria County with the Brazoria County ag website.

(01:58:19):
Have an arborist I could contact?Yeah, I would call the Brazoria
County Extension Office. You said you'rein Brazoria County, Yes, sir,
okay, Yeah, I call yourBrazoria County Extension Office and there's a horticulturist

(01:58:39):
and an agriculturist both on staff there, and one or the other ought to
be able to help you with directingyou to a good termite control for your
area. Thank you very much.I appreciate it. All right, you
take care. I got to runto a break, folks. We are
going to do that right now,and I will be right back with your

(01:59:00):
questions. Got a couple of folksonline on guarden Line looking forward to talking
to you about the things that areof interest to you, and I think
that is what we will do.The first thing here we're going out here.
I can't see your name, sotell me who I'm talking to,
and welcome to garden Line. Hi, Hi, Hi, Hi, Sorry,

(01:59:27):
I wasn't screening thought I didn't know. I know we're having trouble.
We're having trouble on that screen ableto screen like we normally do. So
tell me who I'm talking to.I'm so excited. My name is Rebecca.
I'm insci fare okay, and myissue is this Our front lawn looks

(01:59:47):
like something out of I don't evenknow. It's decimated. It has large
brown areas where all you can seeis dirt, and then it's interspersed with
we there's really no more grass,and it's been this way since the last
freeze that we had. And ourHOA is you know, threatening action against

(02:00:10):
us unless we get this remedied.And I don't know first of all,
how long that will take to remedy, and then second of all, short
of spending a lot of money witha lawn care service, I'm not sure
what to do to fix this problemother than just you know, going through
and chilling everything up and then eitherlaying down seat or putting in you know,

(02:00:33):
patches of new grass. I don'tknow what to do, so I
wanted to get your input on that. Have you tried anything already in that
area or it just your way.Yeah. No. The other thing is
my husband's been very very ill.So now we haven't really done anything as
of yet. We're now in aposition where, you know, we want

(02:00:54):
to start trying to figure it out. Okay, Well, what I would
recommend first of all, is itin full sun, full shade or part
shade or what? What's it?Well? One one half of the lawn,
yeah, one half of the frontlawn is in full sun. The
other half is partial because there isa tree on that side. Not a

(02:01:15):
very big tree, but you know, a tree nonetheless, all right,
but it's getting enough sunlight. Ohyes, oh yes, I would.
I would go into how big arethese areas in diameter? Like how far
across? Oh gosh, I'm notthe right person for this. I don't
honestly know, to be honest withyou, I don't know. I mean
it's a good size. It's agood size. It's not huge, but

(02:01:36):
it's a good size. I meanwe live on a Our total wat size
is just under nine thousand square feet, so and we've got a two story
housed. So okay, Well,if you if you do a aeration of
the soil, I would just dothat as an extra precaution. You're not
gonna for little areas unless you justwant to hire someone to do the whole

(02:01:58):
line, which wouldn't be a badidea for little areas. You can kind
of do a hand do it.I was talking about pushing a spading park
in the ground and wiggling it andpulling back up out again. Someone talked
about a drill with a it's calledan auger, but it's a soil drill.
It's about an inch across and itdrills one inch holes. And you've
got a good bower, battery poweredor corded drill. You can just go

(02:02:20):
in there and drill holes about everysix inches if you can through those areas,
and then buy some bags of leafmold compost. It's called leaf milk
compost. It's a fine ground upmaterial. It can be from airloom soils
they produced that, it could befrom nature Sway resources up towards Conroe area.

(02:02:42):
They produced that. Uh did youyou You said you're in Lake Jackson,
so you're not, noiair. I'msorry that was a pret call.
Sorry about that. Yeah, Soyou're going to have both of those kinds
of products available, you know,in the ciphair area. You've got a
number of different hardware stores are realclose to you can see if they have

(02:03:03):
a leaf mold compost in hand oron stock. That would be a good
quick thing to do. And ifyou're not able to find it there,
then you could actually purchase it.Your garden centers and pieces will often carry
that sciphi. You're close to thearbigage, you're close to plants for all
seasons, you're close to RCW tree, You're all close difference. But I

(02:03:26):
top it off with about a halfinch of leaf mold compost in those areas
and then kind of watered and reallygood and then lightly just kind of you
know, scratch that leaf mold intothe soil just a little bit, just
a little bit, and then layyour sod down. And when you lay
your side, you will water itthe first week, every day the first

(02:03:47):
week, and I would do it, in fact, every twice a day.
A little water in the morning,a little water in the afternoon,
because that sod has very little rootsand you need to try to, you
know, keep it constant moist withoutjust drownding everything. And so that takes
a late twice a day water aftera week, go to once a day

(02:04:08):
for a week, and by thenyour grass will be rooted in enough to
back off toward and a schedule.Okay, so this is something that we
could do. We didn't necessarily haveto hire someone to do it. You
could do it yourself if you chooseto. If you have someone that has
a good errator, you could dothat as well. Yeah, there's no

(02:04:29):
one way to do what we're talkingabout, and it kind of gave you
one way, like, here's somethingto do. Do this, But you
could also put the leaf mold outand do a light rototilling over the area
and that would work too. Typicallywe run into a lot of tree roots
and rototilling is not easy to doin the bond. There's trees around.
And one last question, if Icould, is this something you're finding that's

(02:04:51):
common after this last breeze that wehad. I mean, I've never seen
any We've lived in this house fortwenty years. We've never had this problem
ever. Yeah, well, notreally related to the freeze. I haven't
seen that. But there are alot of things that can go wrong with
the lawn compacted soil to diseases,to insects. We've got disease. Take

(02:05:13):
a root rot that anytime the grassgets stressed, that disease is likely to
show up. And eight kills grass. That's emple. Yeah yeah, I'll
be able to you're not able toget that back in shape? Okay,
wonderful lot if you if you ifyou wanted to air out the whole lawn,
there are companies up there that cando that kind of thing. So

(02:05:39):
I don't know what your what's yourlong term goals in terms of l care.
What else do you hope to peopleto do well? I mean,
ultimately we're looking at selling in thenext you know, just say two years
roughly, So obviously we want tohave that lawn looking one hundred percent better
than it does now and obviously addsome landscaping in, you know, to

(02:05:59):
really help it with its curve appeal. So that's going to be another goal.
So what I would suggest is,let me give you a company.
It's called green Pro and they serveyour area green prow and the website is
greenpro dot net. Okay, Now, you know, having aeration and compasstop

(02:06:23):
dressing guns not cheap, but itis a very effective practice, and I
would I would do that before youplant the sod and that I think overall
your lawn is just gonna better andmaybe that from the sides will even growing
faster when better health. Yeah,yeah, wonderful. I appreciate all of

(02:06:44):
this information so much. I'm soglad to be able to talk to you.
Normally you calling, you just can'tget through. Well, I'm glad
you got through, Yes, sir, yes, sir, Well, thank
you so much. All right,I have good Sunday. All right,
you're listening to guard Line. We'rehere to help you have a beautiful garden
and a bountiful landscape, bountiful lands. A bountiful landscape includes a beautiful lawn

(02:07:06):
too, right, And turf grassis interesting. It has its detractors,
and it has its what aficionados,I don't know, there's I call them
lawn lawn rangers. They're the peoplethat their whole life goal is to have
a beautiful green lawn and they spendthe weekends making sure they do that.
And that's fine, you can dothat. You know, Turf can be

(02:07:30):
a water use problem, meaning ifyou don't get adequate rainfall, and if
you're having to do all the rainyourself or watering yourself, if you've got
something like Saint Augustine and it's ina very sunny spot, you can't have
to water to keep it going.But over here in this region of Texas,
there's so much natural rainfall that evenif we have some droughty conditions,

(02:07:53):
it's it's the exception to have todo that much supplemental watering. But it
just makes sense because turf does anumber of things. Do you know it
has a BTU effect of cooling inthe landscape. If you compare turf to
a hard escape, whether it's gravelor concrete, or you name it turf,

(02:08:13):
rather than heating up the air,which is why our cities have a
heat island effect all the roofs andconcrete and asphalt and everything else, turf
has a very cooling effect, andso that's a nice thing out there in
the landscape. Prevents erosion. Ithelps build its own soil because grassroads grassroots
live about a year and then theydie and the organic matter from them goes

(02:08:35):
back into the soil. The chamberthey opened is a way for air to
move down into the soil better,and so it takes care of itself.
But I think overall, turf canbe a wonderful thing. It certainly provides
that outdoor carpet that the family andfriends enjoy to be able to gather around
on it, maybe play, letthe kids kick a ball around, and

(02:08:56):
other things. So I'm not aturf detractor, but I reckon guys that
when mismanaged, there can be issuesthat we don't need to have. They're
unnecessary, and so we can avoidthat with proper care. So anyway,
that is why I have a turfschedule online so you can look at it
and you can see the things thatyou might need to do and make sure

(02:09:18):
that you're doing them so that youhave the best turf that you can have.
By the way, you are listeningto Guardline, I'm your host,
Skip Richter. I'm not to takea little break here, but if you
would like to get on the board, that would be a good time to
call. We got an open board, and so you can give us call
it seven one three two one twoKTRH. You know we're just talking to
Rebecca. I had a little troublegetting through in the past. Well now

(02:09:39):
when I say that, if amillion people, I'll call it once.
I guess I was a liar becauseit won't be easy to get through,
but that's usually not the case.We appreciate you being a listener. We're
here to give you advice. Whenwe come back, I want to talk
just a little bit about some thingsthat we can be doing right now to
have more success in our gardens duringa time when it's somewhat difficult to be

(02:10:00):
outside. But we'll do that whenwe come from come back from break in.
Just a moment for those of youtuning in recently and you didn't get
the website information I gave Gardening withSkip dot com. That's the website Gardening
with Skip dot com. Keep checkingback because there's gonna be something new going
up there. Thanks a lot,We'll be right back. Plenty of stuff

(02:10:26):
to talk about here, and gota few calls on the board. We've
got to jump into those pretty quick. Here. I want to mention if
you are a person who's had todeal with side by worms or chinchbugs in
the past, or grubs. It'seswith grubs and things. Night Fuss makes
something called bug out Max, andbug Out Max is an insecticide that stays

(02:10:48):
around through the rest of the season. So you apply it now and it's
going to last you all the waythrough the upcoming chinchbug attacks or waves of
sid weebworm that come in. Wenever know each year what's going to happen
when, because it could be abad year, it could be a not
so bad year. But we doknow in general the times of the year

(02:11:09):
that these things attack, and now'sthe time to get ahead of that.
And night Foss bug Out Max willcontrol ants, ticks please, and it
does control chinch bugs as well inthe soil. You just have to apply
it at the right rate, andit's going to last year a good time.
Within forty eight hours. It's prettymuch gonna knocked out whatever you're going
after out there. And you canget knight Foss bug Out Max at Lake

(02:11:31):
Hardware Clue which is in Lake Jacksonon Dixie Drive. You can get it
Gym's Hardware up in Montgomery or Plantsand Things out in Brenham Growers Outlet in
willis just another place for nitrofoss productslike bug Out Max. I'm going to
head out to the phones now,and so we got mystery callers up here.
You'll have to tell me your names. Okay, Well, welcome to

(02:11:52):
Guarden Line and who am I talkingto this is keing hello again. How
you doing. I'm good man,I thanks for asking. I can barely
hear you. But anyway, Iuh, you know, yes, yeah,
yes, you know. I know. I noticed. I noticed a

(02:12:13):
couple of people called about the SaintAugustine grass and I talked to you about
I guess a couple of weeks ago, and right at the end of the
show we didn't get a chance totalk much. And uh, I'm having
the same problem with Saint Augustine grass. I stay in Baytown, and uh
the grass grass looked good for years, plush grass, green grass. But
this year, man, I'm gettingsome some root rots and you know,

(02:12:39):
yellow spots, brown spots, andSaint Augustine grass and never did that.
The only difference that I noticed isI have a big live oak tree there
and uh, I don't know.I mean for years it didn't do that.
Now or I took up all thedead grass and I put some some
good composts there and some mossad therein certain places, and it did good.

(02:13:03):
It come back good with all therain and everything. But I see
it study coming back now. Iknow. At the time when I talked
to you, briefly, you saidsomething about it could be an iron efficiency
or something. I don't know.I put some fungal side out and uh,
that don't seem doing any good.I don't know what's going on.

(02:13:24):
Okay, Well, you know,it could be a lot of things.
Grass has a number of It doesn'tlike compacted soil done like a tight compacted
type of clay soil. Uh,it doesn't. It has chinch bugs.
They can attack it as grubs thatcan eat roots. It's got three or
four different diseases that can hit it. And then there's the watering issue,

(02:13:45):
you know, getting enough water uhand enough sunlight. If it's in too
much shade, it doesn't have theenergy to fill back in and so it
just sort of sits there. Sowhen you start to get die back,
it just gets worse. And shadeis one of the stressors that can lead
to call root rot also, Sothat may be what you're seeing as you're
describing it. But I guess thebottom line is we got to figure out

(02:14:07):
which one so you can do theright thing to fix it. Right now.
I've got plenty of sunlight because Ihad I got a big live uk
tree and I had it trimmed upand you have it. You know,
all the lamps cleaned up and fullat the top, got plent of sunlight.
But I just don't know what itis about the grass dying like it
is, like I say, everytime it does it, I know,
take all the dead grass and putsome sal on there. But it keep

(02:14:30):
happening in certain places, so Idon't know what's going on. Tell me
again where you're located, please,and bytowntown. So I think what I
might do if I were you,is send a sample of your lawn to
the plant clinic up in College Stationand you can go online to Plant Clinic

(02:14:54):
dot t A m U dot Ed U and they'll tell you how to
take a sample, uh and thatway, when they get it in there,
they're gonna be able to see ifyou take the sample right, they're
gonna be able to see if it'schinchbugs involved, or if it's uh you
take a root rod or what they'refinding on it. And I think that's
the best way I could give you. We'll go try this, then try
that, then try this. Butwe're just sort of you know, throwing

(02:15:18):
everything at the at the wall bydoing it that way. So it's probably
more efficient for you to just havethat sample analyze. Can you say that
this clinic B what do you say? Uh? Uh, it's the abbreviation
for Texas A and M University.It's t A m U clinic dot TAMU

(02:15:43):
dot E d U. And theyhave a form you fill out and you
send your your grass in. You'regonna wanna here's here's how you don't want
to do it. You want totake a plug of soil about four by
four or four by six inches,a plug of sod in the zone between
healthy and dead. Of course,if grass is perfectly healthy, there's nothing

(02:16:05):
to see. If it's already dead, they can't do the autopsy, but
they can't be the diagnosis on sickgrass. So look at this area.
Go to the edge between healthy anddead. Take your sample or to there,
send it to them, and whateverit cost is on the sheet there,
and to have them really analyze itand give you the accurate answer rather
than guessing over the phone. Ohcool. See. I think that's a

(02:16:28):
lot of problem what people have becausethey kind of have the same same thing
happening. Man. I just Idon't know what's going on. I mean,
but you know, you don't know. I don't put several things out,
but he can still happen, youknow, So yeah, I get
you, I get you. Hey, I'm all run on to another call,
but good luck with that, andthen call back if we can help
with anything else on it. Allright, thank you, thank you,

(02:16:50):
sir. I appreciate the call.We're going to run out here again.
Welcome to garden line. Who amI talking to? This is Jay and
Woodland. How are you doing?I'm good Jay? How can we help?
I've got a little bit of timehere for I have to go to
break okay, just very quickly.Didn't catch the brown patch last fall and

(02:17:11):
timely fashion. So now I've gotVirginia button weed coming in. I've got
another type of weed that grows loads, very dense. And what do I
do about that? Well, Ithink your best approach would be to use
a product called Celsius. Like thetemperature Celsius, it is less stressful to

(02:17:37):
grass than most other good broadleaf weedcontrol products are during the warm season.
Most of those, once we getinto the upper eighties, they're going to
start to do they can start todo damage. So with Celsius even I
would still use it first thing inthe morning. I would direct it to
the weeds as best you can.Virginia button wheed is tough enough to where

(02:17:58):
you may have to do celsius againlater. It's not often a one off,
but it is. It is oneof the best products you can buy
over the counter for Virginia button withcelsius spread early that morning, before the
before the day heats up at all, and that that's my recommendation, and
just have some on hand to beready to do it again. Okay,

(02:18:20):
And when do I start putting outfor brown patch brown patch? If you
if you look at my schedule that'sonline at gardening with Skip dot com,
you will notice on there that westart talking about brown patch issues on in
October. I have it from Octoberfirst is to about the third week of

(02:18:45):
November to do the brown patch control. But remember you're preventing it, you're
not curing it. So I wouldget out there in early October, not
much later than mid October ideally,to get a head start so that when
that disease shows up, you geta cold front in here, you get
some rain, and brown patch explodes, and you don't have to wait till

(02:19:07):
after that to treat it. It'smuch better to get ahead of it.
And those products will last you twoor three weeks outstanding. Well, hey,
I appreciate it. Thank you,you bet, thank you for the
call. We're going to run toa break right here, I say,
I got another caller, unknown calleronline and we'll come to you right when
we get back power line. Goodto have you with a little eagles this

(02:19:31):
morning. Enjoy them a lot.Actually, this past week we've had family
staying at the house all week,and most of them have headed out,
so we're kind of an empty nestright now. But some of our family
was from Houston because they lost theirpower and it was out a long time.
You know, a while back wehad power out for a very long

(02:19:54):
time during some storms we had,and they came up and we're always glad
to see them. I mean,it's wonderful to see, but I'm sure
they would like to not lose power. Well. Recently, over two million
homes, a record number I thinkof homes after Hurricane Barrel have gone without
power and several hundred thousand are stillwithout power. That does not need to

(02:20:15):
happen to you. GENERAC is aquality generator and purchased from Quality Home Products.
You've got the perfect combination. Nowthey will sell you a Generaic generator.
Their offer, by the way,is five hundred dollars off and zero
percent interest for eighteen months. Oryou can trade in your dusty old portable

(02:20:35):
generator for one hundred for fifteen hundreddollars off. So again, five hundred
dollars off and zero interest for eighteenmonths. Or trade in your old,
dusty portable generator for fifteen hundred dollarsoff a new Generaic automatic stand by generator.
The automatic standby is when power goesout, you don't have to run

(02:20:56):
outside and turn the thing on.It automatically comes on. It has the
ability to do that Quality Home.It's the customer support that sets them apart.
Listen, you go all over town, find generators all over the place,
but you cannot buy the customer serviceEquality Home provides. And it's not
just me giving my opinion. Fourteenthousand plus five star five star reviews eight

(02:21:20):
times. They've won the most PrestigiousCustomer Service Award the Better Business Bureau offers
eight times. I'm telling you youtwenty four hours a day, seven days
a week, three hundred and sixtyfive days a year. There's someone available
to help you if you have anyissues with it. They provide that financing

(02:21:41):
if you purchase one now there's zeropercent interest, so I can't beat that
for eighty months. Qualitytx dot com. That's a website, QUALITYTX dot com.
The phone number seven one three Quality. Look. We've had two wake
up calls here, so it doesn'thave to be a hurricane to put out
power. As we learned from thelast one, Well, why not be

(02:22:03):
prepared. If you work from home, you've got to have power all the
time. If you, you know, have a little generator that keeps a
refrigerator going or something. That's onething, but what about the house being
so hot and well summertime? Whowants to be without ac Quality Home Products
of Texas is where you need togo, and Generic Generator is the one

(02:22:26):
that they can get you fixed upwith that you want to look into.
I kind of feel strongly about thatbecause I just see so many people going
through a lot when there are someways to help avoid that or at least
to take When life gives you lemonsand tournament of lemonade, we're going to
go back out to the phones.Now and welcome to garden line. Tell

(02:22:46):
me who I'm talking to? Hello, Hello, are you there? All
right, let's see, I'm gonnaI don't have your name, so I
don't know to tell you to cometo the phone. I'll check back on

(02:23:07):
you just a minute. Here.I wanted to mention a few things that
are important to me to convey toyou, and I'm going to call it
four tips for success with plants inthe hot summer weather. Number one,
when you water, do a deepsoaking. Don't just squirt a little bit.

(02:23:30):
I've stood it with my film onthe end of a garden hose and
wet so much it's like puddles andrunning off and then I go do something
else and I come back and Idig down and it's what a half inch
deep? You got to soak thesoil deeply with a gradual deep soaking.
That is the most efficient way.That's the way to not waste water,
and it's the way to build adeep, healthy, extensive root system on

(02:23:52):
your plant. Number two, incontainers plant and larger containers, don't watch
TV shows from cooler areas of thecountry and look at the little containers and
think that's adequate. For here,it's not we need to bump our containers
at least one size up from thosekind of areas because the bigger container,
the more soil, the more rootvolume, the more bank account of nutrients

(02:24:16):
and water to draw from. Andin our blazing hot summers, it you
know, a five gallon bucket witha tomato in it, well, you're
going to water it twice a dayto try to keep that thing adequately moist
and out of stress. Make abigger container. Number three. If you
can move your containers to where theyget less mid to late day sun and
morning sun, that's even better.So for example, I like geraniums.

(02:24:43):
My life loves duriniums, and soin the springtime you put geraniums out in
full sun and they're just happy.When we get into summer, move those
geraniums to where they get some morningsun, because they do need light,
direct light. But give them somebreak from the sun later in the day
and it's much easier on the plants. And that's just one example. Number
four, and the final one isyou need to choose quality soil mixes for

(02:25:09):
your containers, or improve the soilin your beds with decomposed compost products with
bed mixes like rose mix or veggianherb mix or fruit remix, because when
you do that again, you createa deeper effective root zone for your plant.
You get down deep in a claysoil, there's no oxygen and very

(02:25:31):
little root development down there. Whenyou improve that soil, you have a
larger volume now that roots are thrivingin, so that when summer sun says
I need this many gallons of wateridea day plant, the plant has more
to draw from and it just doesbetter. Those are four tips. I
hope that I hope that helps you. I'm going to now go back out

(02:25:52):
to the phones here. Welcome togarden Line. Who am I talking to?
You're gonna go all right, I'mgonna have to on that one and
let's see here. Well hear themusic plan, folks. I appreciate you
calling in today. We'll do thisagain next weekend when we get back next

(02:26:16):
weekend on Saturday at six am toten am and on Sunday from six am
to ten am. That is thenext opportunity to talk live with you.
In the meantime, you can goto the kt r H website seven forty
am website and you can listen topast shows. If you've got the iHeart
media app, you just you know, follow garden line. There's two garden

(02:26:39):
lines in the country, not hardto tell apart. One is a lady
somewhere up northeast. The other isthis guy down in Houston, and that's
me. That's the garden line youwant to listen to. I hope you
listen to pass shows there. Ifyou heard me say something, you a
chance to write it down. There'syour chance. But I hope you have
a wonderful west rest of your Sundayand a great week this week. M