The Invasion Of Web Worms

Skip answers your calls all morning long!

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Katie r H Garden Line does notnecessarily endorse any of the products or services
advertised on this program. Welcome tokat r H Garden Line with Skip Ricord.
It's crazy gas trim. You justwatch him as us so many things

(00:27):
to supop basic, not a sadHey, Welcome to garden Line. Good
morning, Good Saturday morning. Yougot plans today, maybe plans to get

(00:50):
outside and threw things up a littlebit. There's some fertilizing. If you
haven't gotten that done, make surethat you've replenished your mom. Maybe we'll
talk about that a little bit more, a little bit later. That is
very very important. You know,it's easy to get excited about vegetables and
fruits and flowers and beautiful lawns andall of the things that we enjoy in

(01:15):
terms of creating a little piece ofeden around our property. But I tell
you what, sometimes people don't gettoo excited about the brown stuff, the
dirt, the maltz, the thingslike that that go into the ground that
set the stage for success and thathelp prevent extra work. I think I
got your attention with that one.At least I would have gotten my attention

(01:36):
with that one. Nobody likes tobe out there doing extra work, especially
when it's one hundred degrees outside andnow you got knee high weeds you're trying
to deal with in the garden orsomething that that's no fun at all.
But we can avoid that. Wecan avoid that with a good quality application
of malts and just constantly keeping iton the surface of the soil. Nature

(01:57):
abhors bear soil. It just it'sif you scratch open a piece of bear
dirt and leave it, Nature's gonnafill it with weeds. The way I
like to put it is, whereversunlight hits the soil, nature plants a
weed. So how do we usethat to our advantage. Well, don't
let sunlight hit the soil in yourlawn. Make a dense healthy lawn.

(02:20):
Create a dense healthy lawns through propermowing, watering, and fertilizing. My
schedules are online and they're free atgardening with skip dot com. You can
find out how to create a dense, healthy lawn and that chokes out the
majority, not all, but themajority of your weed problems. How about
in the garden, the vegetables,the flowers keep mulch over the surface of

(02:40):
the soil. Why deal with weeds? Why get down on your hands and
knes pulling weeds. If you arepulling weeds, one of two things has
happened. Either you didn't mulch,and now they've gotten ahead of you,
So here we go catch them backup again, as we say, regaining
lost ground right. Or it's aperennial weed, things like nut said and

(03:00):
bermuda grass. It comes crawling inand it just takes over. And so
those have to be dealt with ina different way than just mulch. But
staying ahead of them is important becauseI don't know. My opinion is that
I don't put in flower beds soI can pull weeds in them. I
put in flower beds I can enjoyflowers, and I know you do too.
So how do we do that?Will we do that by keeping a

(03:22):
mulch covering over the swell about threeinches deep. It depends on the material
you use. Some mulches are verydense, they block light very well,
even at a more shallow depth.Others a little more chunkier, open,
looser. You need them a littlethicker in order to accomplish the same thing.
But however you go about it,go about it. That is how
nature takes care of the soil,and that's how we should too. Well,

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you're listening to Garden Line and thisis a call in show. If
you'd like to give us a call, how about I give you a number
seven one three two one two fiveeight seven four seven one three two one
two fifty eight seventy four. Ifyou've not done your summer fertilizing, get
out there and do that, becausea good slow release fertilizer application right now

(04:05):
will carry you all the way into our fall application. A fertilizer,
a good quality product like nitrofoss IsSuperturf. That's a silver bag. Nitrofos
Superturf, the silver bag. It'snineteen four ten. Those are the three
numbers. You don't need to knowthe numbers. If you can just remember
nitrofoss silver bag. That'll do itnow. It's designed the chemistry, and

(04:29):
this product is designed to release theright amount of nitrogen over time, for
a very long time, for severalmonths out there, and when you apply
it properly at the proper rate rightnow, it's going to give you gradual
feeding through the year. Avoid thosespurts of growth, and you know,
extra mowing and grass getting top heavy, meaning it's lots of top growth not

(04:51):
as much root growth, which isnot a good thing for summer nitrophs.
Superturf feeds gradually to help avoid that. You can find it at a number
of places. You've got to singleranch at the ace out there, they've
got it out there. You cango to a Tascasita ace and they've got
it there. Our Lake Hardware inClute in Lake Jackson. Lake Hardware Clute
and Lake Jackson, our Gym's Hardwareup in Montgomery. Those are all places,

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just examples of the many places youcan get nitrofoss super turf. We're
gonna I think we'll just go straightonto the phones now. We're going to
head out to Katie and talk toRalph. Hello, Ralph, skip your
morning. Morning. Hey, quickquestion. I had my sprinkler guy come

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out and adjust the heads and someother items, and he suggested having the
sprinkler set for about ten minutes aday, six seven days a week.
Yeah, I'm thinking he said thata little bit of water instead of heavy

(06:00):
water a couple of times a weekmight improve the yard. Besides everything else
I'm doing for your schedule. Whatare your thoughts? I disagree with that
strongly. And here's why. Whenyou put a squirt of water out there
and then the water goes off,a good part of that water with the

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grass blades and the thatch and verylittle got down into the ground, and
if it did, it only gotdown an inch or so deep, and
that just promotes disease. It wasteswater because everything that evaporates away after the
water goes off is lost, andit doesn't wet the soil volume. If
you were to take all those littlesquirts of water and put them down in

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one or at most two applications perweek, then after it wet the leaves
and that that's the additional sprinkling that'sgoing to continue on, is putting water
down in the soil, and soyou actually get more of your water when
you give it a good soaking.The other reason is when you keep it
wet right at the surface, itdoesn't allow oxygen down in the soil as

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well. You can't breathe underwater,and so if you give it a good
soaking and then let it dry outfor a week or at least a half
a week, then it pulls oxygenback down in the soil. As that
soil, water moves into the plantand out of the soil and opens up
space for air to move in.You see what I'm saying. Sure,

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So, a couple of good soakingsa week, it's what you would recommend.
Yeah, I would say a halfinch twice a week. I try
to go one inch a week whenI can. And sometimes, you know,
the shade versus sun clasoil versus sand, there's a variation there, but
in general, the less often youcan water, but a good soaking when

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you do, you should apply aboutan inch of water. If you're going
to do it once a week,you should apply about one inch of water
in order to consider the soil soakedproperly. All right, Ralph, I
need to add one little thing tothat for you. You're not going to
be able to put an inch onat one time. So what you do

(08:09):
is you run the sprinkler for howeverlong it can run before you start going
to get run off, and thenhave it go off and sit for forty
five minutes and then cycle back onagain, and it may take two or
three cycles. Let's say Monday morningis when you're watering early first thing Monday
morning. It may take two orthree cycles on that Monday morning, but
it gets the water in the soilthat way. It's called cycle and soak.

(08:31):
Okay, okay, thank you allright, Ralph, appreciate it.
Yeah, that is watering properly isreally really important. And I hope those
hope those thoughts made sense. I'llrepeat them as we go through the summer.
We're going to take a little breakright now for a little bit of
information and news, and I'll beright back. Our phone number, if

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you'd like to get on the boardsis seven to one three two one two
KTRH. Welcome back to Guardline.Good to have you with us. We
are talking gardening today, all kindsof things. How do we help you
have a more bountiful garden and amore beautiful landscape. That's kind of what
we're here for. You can giveus a call. It's seven one three

(09:13):
two one two fifty eight seventy fourseven one three two one two five eight
seven four and we can do justthat. Plants for All Seasons is a
garden center you've heard me talk aboutmany times before, and it's it's one
of those independent garden centers you cancall them a mom and pop, you
can call them an independent garden center. It's also a full service garden center.

(09:35):
And what do I mean by that, Well, for example, not
only do they have plants, theyhave full service advice for you. You
can bring a sample in, youcan bring a picture in. You could
say, hey, what is this? Can you identify it? Or my
neighbor has this flower, I wantone, what is it? You can
take a picture of a bug orwhatever. They do that, but they
also deliver if you need. Maybeyou don't have a vehicle that can haul

(09:58):
some of the a tree or ashrub a home. They do that.
They will deliver within a certain range, certain charge. Of course, they
can bring the plants to you,so you don't have to worry about going
to buy a truck. So youcan go buy some plants they plant.
They do tree planting services as well. And then they do something that I
think surely you need call custom potting. So if you go there and you
buy a pot or you can bringone in and buy some plants from them,

(10:22):
and they will put it all togetherinto a beautiful little mixed arrangement.
Planting one of those gorgeous things youlook and you see them, and you
know they sell them to by theway, hanging baskets and containers. You
see that and you want one ofthose, will build it yourself or have
them build it for you. That'sjust examples of what I mean by a
full service garden center. You know, they've been around since nineteen seventy three.

(10:43):
The Flowery family has been advising gardenersin that region for a very very
long time. Really, the wholeHouston area. A lot of people go
from some distance to get there.So all you have to do is go
to Plants for All Seasons. Theyare on just a bus Luetta if you're
heading up Tambo Parkway to forty ninecrossover exit Luetta Crossover Luetta, and they're

(11:05):
right there. Plants for All Seasonsdot Com. Here's a phone number.
You're gonna write this down. Twoeight one, three seven six sixteen forty
six. We're gonna go out toMagnolia now and talk to Jeff. Hello,
Jeff Skip, good morning. Howare you. I'm good, sir,
I'm good good. I need yourhelp. I get a couple of

(11:26):
large pine trees that have died.They're probably seventy eighty feet tall, maybe
foot and a half two foot indiameter at least, and I need somebody
that can take those down from thetop. They're just too big to you
know, to cut down with thechainsaw myself. Anybody that you could recommend

(11:50):
in that area that you know,license bonded and could safely do that.
Let me let me give you aphone number and name here. You got
a pin er pencil handy, Ido, give me just a second.
Yeah, that's fine. So itis important whenever, yeah, whenever you're
gonna have somebody work in your trees, is very important to get somebody that

(12:11):
knows what they're doing, that doesgood work, but knows what needs to
be prune, what does need tobe truned. I know when you're removing
a tree, that is first ofall, it is very smart of you
to get those done soon because hurricaneseason is here now, and uh,
there's nothing those old pines they rotfast and they get weak and they become

(12:31):
a major hazard. All right.So the name is Martin Spoon, Martin
Spoon More. The company is AffordableTree Service. The website is a fftree
Service dot com, a f FTree Service dot com. And then here's
the phone number. Seven one threesix nine nine twenty six sixty three,

(12:54):
seven one three six nine nine twentysix sixty three. Have Martin come out
and take a look at it,telling me you heard it on guard line
and just see what what is needed. He may notice some things you're not
seeing right now that he can pointout to you as well. Skip can
give me that phone number one moretime, please, I sure can,
I sure can seven one three sixnine nine twenty six sixty three, seven

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one three six nine nine two sixsixty three. That's it. Thank you
so much. I appreciate all right. Sorry about loss of those trees.
But those, I tell you pinesare tricky. They grow in kind of
a spiral shape as they go upand you start cutting the pine, you
don't know which direction it goes.You need a professional, so you're wise
to seek that out. Thanks forthe call, Joe, Yes, thank

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you, skipping Yeah YouTube, Byebye. Our phone number is seven one
three, two one two five eightseven four seven one three two one two
fifty eight seventy four. I uhwas looking at my lawn fertilizer spreader I
have. I've got one of thepush behind kinds and looking at some of

(14:05):
the settings and I'm about to beputting out some other things. I haven't
done azimite this year yet. I'mgoing to put some azamite out on the
lawn, but also some fertilizing andwhatnot. And I got this at Southwest
Fertilizer. I got it from Bobdown a Southwest Fertilizer which is on the
corner of Businet and Runwick for thoseof you who haven't been there, And

(14:26):
by the way, if you haven'tbeen there, you really need to go.
You will see what I mean whenI always say this about Southwest Fertilizer.
If they don't have it, youdon't need it, because they have
it anything you need and then something. They've got their fertilizers and pesticide,
anything to control. If you're anorganic gardener, they've got the best selection

(14:48):
of organic fertilizers, organic insecticide,disease control, weed control, they have
it right there. But anyway,I got this fertilizer spreader from them and
it works really well. And Ialso have one of the little hang crank
types. That's what I used toput out fire ant bait and it's time
to get that done as well.There. But anytime you go into Southwest.
You're gonna you're gonna be pleased withthe results. The people that work

(15:13):
there, the whole team, theyknow what they're talking about. They're very
helpful, very friendly, carry stuffout for you. It just makes it
easy. It makes it easy tohave success. As well as getting some
really cool new tools. They've alwaysgot a excellent, excellent supply on hand
of the kind of tools you need, like the one that I keep talking

(15:33):
about, and you may not thinkof it as a tool, but it's
the folding seat, the kneeling bench. That's another way to put it.
Imagine something that folds up and whenyou unfold it, you can flip it
one way and sit on it.It's a bench, very comfortable, just
the right height. You flip itthe other way and it's a kneeling bench,
so you can kneel down to theground and then you have the what

(15:56):
was the legs of the bench orhandles to get up and down. Man,
that is so convenient, especially youknow, if you're having some trouble
with the joints, or if you'rejust getting up and down and up and
down and up and down a bunchas you're working through the yard on a
on a Saturday like today. Uhit is. You will love it,
trust me, you will love it. I want. I bought one originally

(16:18):
for my my older sister who issignificantly older than me, a point I
like to point out as often asI can. Uh. And after I
got to looking at it, Ithought, you know what, maybe I
need one of those. You don'tyou don't have to be up in the
years to benefit from one of thosevery very handy folding kneeling benches, And
Bob's got them there. It's SouthwestFertilizer, just corner Businet and Runwick.

(16:41):
If you'd like to give him acall seven to one three six six six
one seven four four seven to onethree six six six one seven four to
four to go to the website SouthwestFertilizer dot com. You can find it
there. But anyway, I'm gettingout my my uh spreader to put out
some different products and things on thelawn. And I'm always experimenting. You

(17:03):
know, you've heard me say thisbefore, but if you hear me talk
about a sponsor and a product,it's something that I've used because I'm not
going to promote something if I don'tknow that it works. I need their
needs. I'm really good serious,you know, research evidence that this works,
or having done it myself, orthere are people that I trust that
I know they know how to applythings and how to evaluate things, and

(17:26):
you know, if they're telling meit works, well, I'm inclined to
give it a shot because I believethem. But anyway, always out trying
to find a new thing that isgoing to help us do a better job
of gardening. We want to wewant to do a better job. We
want our plans to do better,but we also want it to be easier
and we want it to be moresuccessful. We really really do. I

(17:48):
find that when you when you getout and you create a garden following the
simple principles we talk about on gardenLine, you just enjoy it more because
when you drive up and you seebeauty and color and you know you did
that. When you go out tothe backyard garden, like I was cleaning
up some old beds in my gardenthis week, and you get them cleaned
up, and there's just a gratificationseeing that you got it cleaned up,

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and now here comes something else that'sproducing and it's providing fruit. By the
way, We picked all our pastetomatoes this week. It had a whole
bunch of them. They tend toripen, the cultivars I used tend to
ripen pretty much all at once closeto it, And so we were getting
all that picked so we could doI did some dried tomatoes if you have
never taken a paste tomato like Aromafor example, sliced it just under a

(18:38):
quarter inch thick, just a littleunder, and then seasoned it however you
want. I mean, I've usedthat everything bagel seasoning. I've used salt
and garlic only you know what doyou like? If you like some sprinkle
some dried basil on the tomato,go for that anyway. Then dry it
in a food dryer or an oven. You can figure out how to do

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that. And I'm telling you itis just really really cool. It's like
it concentrates the flavor down. Soanyway, we're making good use of those.
My wife made some tomato soup aswell, and so just getting out
and enjoying the garden. Remember thatjust because it's summer doesn't mean you have
to quit gardening. We've got alot, a lot of gardening still to
do this year. We can createthe flower beds that have plants that laugh

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at our sultry Southeast Texas summers thatthey can just really take that heat and
that takes a special plant. Butwe've got those kind of plants that we
can do. I was visiting aWaldbird's Unlimited recently and looking at some of
the seed selections that they have,and they have a wide variety of seeds.

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At Wadbirds Unlimited, you're going tobe able to find the product that
fits the birds you're wanting to bringin. It's not like every product has
just one bird that it brings in. But whether you're looking for finches or
whether you're looking for like a littletip mouse, or you want to bring
in some cardinals or things. Theyhave blends for all of that. And
wild Birds Unlimited is the kind ofplace you want to go because when you

(20:10):
buy a pound of seed, youget a pound of bird food. They
don't kick out the little red bebieslike cheap bird feed. Nope, they
have quality stuff. Six stores aroundthe Greater Houston area. Take a little
break here for the news and I'llbe right back. I want to talk
about birds a little bit more whenI come back. Welcome back, to
guardenline. Good to have you withus today. What do you want to
talk about? Well, we'll justmake this a show about the things that

(20:33):
you're interested in, and in themeantime, I'm going to talk about some
of the things that I'm interested in. You can give us a call it
seven one three two one two fiftyeight seventy four. I was talking about
birds going into break there and rightnow is an excellent time to get out
and do the kinds of things thatbring birds to your property. For example,

(20:56):
water Now, I know we've hadrain this spring, but that's not
going to continue the whole time.Providing a dependable source of water is very
important as the weather heats up.Birds have to have water, I mean,
living things have to have water.So when you provide water at your
place, especially if there's a soundof water. Number one, it's so
soothing to sit out and enjoy thesound of water. But that also attracts

(21:19):
the birds in and they will cometo your place for that. Now,
you can also put out quality feedslike I was talking about from Wildbirds Unlimited.
They have the blends. They evenhave hullless blends. Hull less so
sunflowers for example, they love sunflowers, crack them open, drop the shells,
but then eat the inside. Well. You can buy hullless blends from

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Wildbirds so you don't have any messat all, and which is pretty nice.
But they also have quality feeders andbird houses. In fact, you
know what, it is, timefor Father's Day shopping, right, and
I think an excellent option would beto purchase Dad a quality bird feeder from
Wallbirds Unlimited. They have the kindfor hummingbirds, They've got the kind for

(22:03):
every kind of bird you can imagine. I like the Cadillact feeder that they
have. That's what I call itthe Cadillact feeder because it just does everything.
It is a squirrel proof feeder.You just have to go in.
Say I want to see your squirrelproof feeder. When you go in there,
squirrels try to get into it,they can't, and squirrels are pretty
darn smart. But I'm telling youthis stuff works. I've yet to have

(22:25):
a squirrel get into my feeder thatI got from Wallbirds, and it's just,
you know, a quality built thing. If anything goes wrong, you
can get parts for it to fixit and stuff. It's not one of
those cheap oot things you end upthrowing away when it breaks. This is
quality, which is what you getfrom Wallbirds Unlimited. It's quality types of
things. By the way, onSaturday the fifteenth, guess when that is?

(22:45):
A week from today, I'm goingto be at the Wallbirds in bel
Air, bel Air, southwest Houston. I'll be at the Wildbirds in bel
Air from eleven am to one pmnext Saturday. You got samples of plants
you want to bring in. Yougot pictures of plants or areas of the
landscape you want to ask questions about. Get them on the phone, check

(23:06):
them, make sure they're in goodsharp focus. I'm going to have to
identify something. Make sure it's closeup and the sharp focus and we'll get
to the bottom of it. Comeby and see me at Wildbird's Unlimited.
We're gonna be given some things awaythere. I know that Medina is going
to be providing some giveaways and wejust I just got a lot. I'm
going to give away Texas Gardener magazinestoo. I've got a little box of
text Gardener magazines. They provide itfor us and everybody who shows up.

(23:29):
If you're not a Texas Gardener,subscriber already, come by. Let me
put a magazine in your hand.I think you will be soon after that.
At least let me say this whilesupplies last. I only have one
box. We're going to head outnow to Siena and talk to Romy.
Hello, Ronny nice Ski, thanksfor taking my call. Yes, sir,
I have a question about groundcovers.I'm looking at three different types of

(23:53):
groundcovers. One I think is reallypretty. I want to use, but
I just don't know if it's goingto do well in this area. It's
a lemon coral seedum. Okay,I don't know if it will do well
in this area. You know,I haven't grown that particular and there's a
lot of seedums, and they varya lot, but most of them do

(24:15):
well here if you have decent drainage. You know, if it's a thick
clay spot a little on the lowside so it stays soggy, they will
not do well. But if youif you get good drainage, they do.
They most of them want a lotof sun too, Okay. The
other two I was looking at whereit was a creeping jenny and a sweet

(24:36):
potato vine. My only concern withthe creeping jenny is that it's really expressive.
So well, have have you hadit before? I have not?
Okay, Yeah, I don't thinkit's that aggressive. I mean, and
it's real simple to trim. It'snot like going underground and popping up in
flower beds everywhere like bermuda grass oranything. It spreads on the surface real

(25:00):
nice and low and flat, andit's got a attractive look to it.
But it's pretty easy to keep inbounds. The creeping jenny would be fine
again, decent drainage for it todo well. What was the other one
that you just mentioned, the sweetpotato mine. Yeah, sweet potato vine
does fine. And the shark cruisetype is very very light green in color

(25:22):
and it actually helps brighten a shadyarea. It will grow in sun,
but it was also growing shade andit spreads pretty well. The only thing
to remember about it is where itis a sweet potato, it just happens
to be ornamental foliage. So whereverit gets roots in the ground, you're
going to get little finger sized sweetpotato swellings that next year will pop back

(25:45):
up and you'll it'll kind of comeback in. I'm not saying it's just
perennial plant and forget it. ButI am saying that if just be aware
that it, you may be pullingit up later in some places to get
okay, where these are perennials,those are well, sweet potato. We
think of it as an annual,but it it will behave as a perennial.

(26:07):
Like if next year you wanted thesweet potato back, you probably would
still want to plant it because itprobably wouldn't fill in it fill in as
nice and pretty and evenly as youwant. This Jenny mine came back year
after year that I had. Well, okay, okay, well I'll try
to see them. If that doesn'twork, then I can try the other

(26:30):
the other two. Yeah, thatthat's what I would do. And uh,
A lot of it on the Jennytwo is going to depend on on
your your weather and your you knowwhat kind of winter we have and all
that kind of stuff. Okay,all right, thank you very much.
All right, have a beautiful timeout there in the garden. Appreciate your
call. Our phone number is sevenone three two one two five eight seven

(26:52):
four seven one three two one twofifty eight seventy four. When you're thinking
about supplies, for your guard.Ace Hardware is the place you need to
think about because there are forty AceHardware stores in the Greater Houston area,
so it's easy to find one.You can find them by going to the
website acehardware dot com. Can itget any more simple than that? Acehardware

(27:15):
dot Com. There's a store locatorif you tell them, can I use
your location to say? Yeah?Let me Yeah, you can use my
location and it'll just give you amap and you'll have all the all the
lower red dots of the places youcan go. So what do we need
to be doing now? We needto be fertilizing for summer. ACE has
that we need to be doing fireant control. Now. ACE has that

(27:36):
you want to put a good qualitybait out at a very low rate.
Follow the label, cover the wholearea of your property. You can get
your neighbors to do it to atthe same time. By the way,
it works even better. The largerof an area that uses a bait,
whether it's an organic or synthetic bait, whatever kind you go about, the
larger of an area that does it, the better and longer lasting the suppression

(27:57):
will be. So just keep thatin mind. Have a neighborhood party.
Maybe be a good thing for homeownersassociation to get together. And I don't
know you guys figured that out anyway. Mosquitoes, Oh my gosh, do
you need mosquito dunks? You do? You do? If you got any
kind of standing water? Do youneed a fogger to kind of clear out

(28:18):
that patio area so you can actuallyget out there and enjoy some time in
the late day with family and friends. Ace Hardware has all of that.
Acehardware dot Com. Check it out. We're gonna take a little break right
now. We'll be right back.Our phone number if you'd like to get
on the board to be first upwhen we come back. Seven one three
two one two KTRH. Welcome backto It's good to have you back with

(28:41):
us on Guardline. We got sunshineout there, folks, and a bright,
beautiful sky. What a good day. What a great day actually to
be out gardening. Let's head upto Tomball and talk to David. Now,
Hello David, good morning, sir. Hey, I got two questions
for you. One, back inthe spring, you kind of spoke about

(29:02):
a particular plant or flower that putoff of a really nice aroma and that's
all I can tell you. Yes, hopefully that'll drinking your brain. And
then the second question is I've gota patch of grass that between the driveway
and property line and not really doinganything with it. Yeah, and uh,

(29:25):
my wife she wants a blue bonnetpatch. I know it's kind of
late, but what do I needto do to prepare that land for next
year to cover that little area withblue bonds? All right, let's do
those in a reverse order. Bluebonnets you need to plant in the fall.
I would plant them in September.Uh, and get them in the
ground, and then when we getsome rain on them, they'll they'll start

(29:45):
to sprout. Sit there through thewinter and come up in the spring.
Don't don't plant them now, oryou won't you won't get to enjoy them.
Do I need to feel the soilor just throw the seeds out there
wild? Yeah? If you canmowlo break out the debris and put the
seeds out there, that would bebest. Uh. They do grow wild
out there. Uh and and uh, but they need to have a little
bear spot of soil. When youput the seeds out, they kind of

(30:07):
sink in and as you water it, you know, the soil settles in
around them. A little scratching upof that area is fine, but roto
tilling is not necessary. Okay,So that's that's that's blue bonnets. Uh.
Now, as far as fragrant shrubs, goodness, there's so many.
I may have been talking about TexasMountain Laurel. That is one that has
a great bubblegum fragrance. It growsvery slow. Yeah, okay, well

(30:33):
you got to give it good drainage. You know, it grows out of
a crack in a limestone rock inCentral Texas, so it will grow here
and bloom here, but you needto get it very high and dry so
that it doesn't sit in a clayswamp. Texas Laurel. What Texas Mountain
Laurel. The cliffs grow the likeyou grow them, like in big pots

(30:56):
with a hole in the bottom orsomething. I've never seen one in a
pot. I think that it wouldnot be very happy in a pot.
To be honest, you might giveit a try. There are some other
fragrant shrubs out there. Almond verbinais one of the most fragrant shrubs.
But it's a big, gangly thing, so you know it's going to get

(31:17):
ten feet tall and you can dothe trimming on it. But boy,
when it blooms, it's got thisthese white blooms that are strong vanilla flavor.
Does your website have shrubs that shown? I don't, but that would
be a good thing for me toadd. Yeah, that would be a
good one. Okay, Hey,but you're up there and you're up in

(31:41):
Tomball, why don't you just goby Arburgate and say what are the most
fragrant plants you got? Because they'regoing to have some other things up there
too. There's a number of excellentyou know, I don't have time on
the call to go through all thedifferent ones, but just go by and
talk to Beverly or Kennon there atArburgate, you know where they are,
right on the way side of top. Yeah, go by, go by

(32:02):
there, and they have I've beenin there a lot of times, and
every time there's some new plant they'vegotten in, it's like, oh,
now they carry this here, soyeah, you should try that. All
right, Well do man? Thankyou? All right, thank you,
David. I appreciate your call verymuch. Yeah, Arbrogate has got so
many kinds of things, and withthat new parking lot in back off Trishel

(32:25):
Road just twenty nine to twenty Highwaytwenty nine to twenty go west of Tomball,
not very far out on the edgeof town. There on the left
you will see Trishall Road as you'reheading away from Tomball and it goes around
behind Arburgate and it makes it soconvenient and easy to park. Some of
the best new things that's happened there, and there's been a lot of cool
things happening. It's always something happeningat the arbor Gate. Let's let's go

(32:49):
to Anna and Laporte. Hello,Anna, good morning, Skip Skip.
We need some help over here inLaporte. We have been bombarded with the
way worms. Yes, the wavesare all over their trees. The worms
are eating all my plants. Yes, and so what can we do well?

(33:10):
First of all, the earlier youdo something when webworms attack, the
better. The young small caterpillars areeasier to kill than the old ones that
are about to become moths again,but spraying is probably your best option.
There are organic sprays that are verylow toxicity. There are some synthetic sprays

(33:30):
that are also low in toxicity thatwill work pretty well on the webworms,
but you have to get any sprayyou use on the foliage they're eating because
they eat the poison and that's whatkills them. So sometimes if it's not
a big, big plant, youcan use a strong stream of water or
a long pole to break open thewebs and then spray. But if it's

(33:53):
too high for that, you eitherhave to hire somebody to do it or
just ignore it. They eat theleaves off the plants tend to come back
and it weakens them a little bit, but you know, their nature is
able to bounce back from that.It just looks like, yeah, looks
one of our problems is I havea fruitless smawberry that is oh yeah,

(34:14):
so full of leaves, you know, just beautiful in now they just covered
with the webs. Mulberry is oneof their top five favorite. They love
mulberry. They love mulberry's, theylove pecans. You know, there are
some others that they love. ButI've seen them on all kinds of things
this year. But yeah, that'sthat's what you do. But just remember
and they'll be back again later inthe summer. So watch for them.

(34:36):
And at the first sign of them, that's when they get out you can
spray. It's easier to get thespray of the foliage because they haven't built
those big webs yet. Okay,so what what do you suggest as far
as spraying If you want to dosomething organic spinosaid s p I M.
Yeah, yes, and you're gonnahave to do it about once a week

(34:58):
until you've gotten rid of But okay, but remember, I don't think I
can get rid of them. They'reall over their breaks of the house.
Yeah, it's just horrible. Well, we're getting towards the end of the
time, and I think that ourspraying is going to be less effective because
now they're they're dropping out of there. They're crawling around looking for a place
to go. Pupaid so they canbecome a moth and do it all again

(35:20):
later in the summer. Oh sodo's become moss. Yeah, they'll become
little moths that that lay eggs andthey'll be back. Yeah. Oh I
don't want them on my Yeah.And I've just recovered my yard from in
my yard, you know, theprevious year, and so I'm dealing with
all stuff. I got it.I got it. Thank you, you,
bet, thank you, thank youAnna, thank you. I appreciate

(35:43):
that call very much. Let's see, we're going to run here to pair
Land and talk to Kay. Hello, Okay, good morning, Skip,
thanks for taking my call. Ihave a question. My daughter in law
has has a what was about asix foot tall, gorgeous fig okay,
and it lived under an oak treein their front yard and it was too

(36:07):
heavy. My son was she couldn'ttalk him into moving it into the garage,
so it didn't make it. Andwe actually covered it with freeze blankets
and put Christmas lights in it andeverything, but it didn't. It didn't
survive, and after a couple ofweeks she was ready to trash it,
and I said, no, no, no, don't do that. Yeah,
k kay, I'm just letting youknow. We're just a few seconds

(36:30):
away from music, so we'll seeif we can help. But you may
have to hang on to the nexthour. That's okay, okay, No,
but I just it's coming back.I talked to her. I said,
no, it'll take two to threemonths okay for it to show any
signs. And it's coming back.And I wanted to know, should it
fertilize it, should I do anything? Yeah? Modern moderate amounts of fertilizer.

(36:52):
Get you a good quality mix,just on small doses, give it
a little bit. You can usea slow release of course Star color Star
bey excellent. It would be fine. That will be just fine. If
you got someone hand, go aheadand use that, but just small amounts.
Don't overdo it, okay, justonce a month or so? Yeah,
probably so, it just depends howbig is the container. I don't

(37:17):
know. It's it's a pot ofdon't I don't know, pretty good size,
well I get okay, Yeah,I would just do like a couple
of teaspoons of color Star about oncea month in there, and that ought
to be pretty good. Great,all right, hey, thank you so
much. All right, you bet, thank you. Hey, folks,
Matthew and Marty. You'll be thefirst two up when we come back.

(37:40):
Just ran out of time this segment. We'll be right back. Welcome to
kt r H guarden Line with ScaredRict. It's just watching as Welcome back,

(38:16):
Welcome back to guard Line. Goodto have you with us today.
We're talking about all kinds of thingsgardening, and I'm gonna run right out
to the phones. Uh. We'regonna start off with Matthew and Northwest Houston.
Welcome to garden Line, Matthew.Good morning, Skip. How are
you doing on this wonderful Saturday.I'm doing wonderful. It's a great day,

(38:39):
fantastic. I had two questions Iwas hoping you could help me with.
Okay, the first off, so, after this last rain we had,
I was looking at my flower beds, looking at the damage, seeing
what had been done, and Inoticed all these runners that looked like many

(38:59):
ature like gopher runners. It waslike a small child had gone into the
flower bed and created a scene fromcaddy shack. And I can't tell what
it was, and it didn't looklike it was coming from the plants.
And when I went on Google,the closest thing I could come to was,

(39:23):
I believe it's called a mule cricket. Oh you're talking about little You're
talking about little bitty, little bittytunnels, like smaller than your little finger.
Okay, yes, okay, yeah, perfect, Yeah. Moul cricket
is probably it that tunnels right underthe ground. It tends to push the
swell up a little bit. Yousee these little raised crumbly mounds trails.

(39:45):
That's mold crickets and they do feedon plant roots. Uh, generally we
don't worry about them a lot.It's not a common thing that every year
we're treating our beds for mole crickets. But they can cause trouble for I
know, golf cour just have todeal with them and things like that.
But yeah, they're they're controllable withany any kind of an insecticide is going

(40:07):
to be pretty effective against them.So I just picked up the nitrofoss bug
out Max take care of that.Oh yeah, do you put that out
at the rate that they recommend andwateredn real good and it'll it'll control uh
pest, especially one like that downin the ground because it's a granule.

(40:27):
Perfect. Perfect. The second andlast issue I had since with all this
rank, we have just been inundatedwith black flies, just the your common
household black fly. What can Ido to help treat and kind of manage

(40:47):
that because it's just made sitting outon our patio or being out in the
garden just yeah, deep nightmareage.Do you have some Do you have some
pets around out there? Yes?A small dog, a small dog.
Okay, there are some fly baitsthat work really well. They're little granules

(41:08):
and you put them in a littletray and the flies get them and it
poisons the flies. I wouldn't wantto get that bait anywhere where the dogs
could get to it. I don'tknow how toxic it is the dogs,
but you definitely don't even want tofind out, so just keep them away.
The other thing would be sprays thatyou put out, But the problem

(41:29):
there is, you know, theflies fly away and then they spray drives
and they fly back, and somesprays are persistent enough, but in general
that's not a very effective way totry to control flies. So the baits
are really your better option if youcan find a way to, you know,
put a little tiny tray of somethingon a shelf. Okay, do

(41:51):
you have a name or a brandthat you recommend or a chemical? Yeah,
de bait go into your up innorth west Houston. You've got several
ace hardware stores. I don't knowwhat part of northwest Houston you're in.
Are you by Cyprus or Overclimb?I am? I am half mile west
of Arbor Gate? Oh okay,well half min right there. Half mile

(42:15):
west of Arbor Gate is D andD feed out of twenty nine to twenty
and they definitely are going to havelots of fly control stuff because they're dealing
with people with you know, ahorse barn and oh my gosh, you
talk about fly heaven. They willhave They'll also have little bags that it's
like a bag of some smelly stuff, but the flies go in and drowned

(42:38):
in it, so then you justthrow the whole thing away. Those are
also effective, as are the baits, and that may be with a little
pet around, a little bit saferthing. Just remember, if you do
the baits, don't put them inlike a little paper plate or something,
because the wind will blow and it'lljust blow it off on the ground.
So be a little extra careful withthat. Perfect Yeah you know, oh

(43:02):
absolutely, yeah, I'm literally nextdoor to them. Oh well, they
definitely are going to have you setup for everything you need. Okay,
it sounds perfect. Thank you verymuch for your help. Skip, you
wonderful morning, and you as well. Thank you very much. I appreciate
that. Let's go now to Martyand Fairfield. Hello Marty, good morning

(43:24):
money. Skip. They have aCherry laurel and it's not happy where I've
got it, and I wonder ifI could a pluit out a ground chance
planet. I can put it ina pot if I need to, but
I'd rather put it in the ground. It's my variegated privet kind of took
over its sunshine. Oh okay,so this is a pretty small cherry laurel.

(43:46):
Then, huh, it's very small. Okay, baby, I just
planted it like a year and ahalf ago. A year and a half,
you know, moving it now isprobably possible that its like it.
And if I were you, Iwould wait until probably early November and dig

(44:06):
and move it. Then you cando some root pruning where you take a
shovel and go straight down in theground, maybe a foot out from the
cherry laurel and maybe four sides ofit. So if you can just imagine
a bird's eye view looking down atthe cherry laurel, like you shove the
shovel in straight down on the northside, and then you shove it in

(44:28):
on the south side and east andwest, so you're not completely digging it
out, but you're just cutting someroots out. It's not that big.
It's not that yeah, it's notthat big. Okay. Well, I
could probably spoil it out by hand. Oh this is small. Okay.
In that case, it just doesn'tlike where it is, all right,
so dig it up. What Iwould do is I would slide a shovel

(44:50):
down and I'd go underneath it.Even if you could only get about maybe
six inches or so below it,just go underneath it and then slide it
onto any kind of a tarp whereyou could drag it to your new spot
to minimize disturbance of the soil whenyou try to reach over, and if
it's very much so volume picking itup number one, it's it's hard on
your back, but it all fallsoff the roots anyway. So I like

(45:14):
to use a tarp to drag thingsaround, but maybe it's too small for
that too. What is the besttype of location? Full sun? It
likes sun. It'll put up withsome shade, but it likes sun.
And the more sun you get,the denser it'll be. But when you
put it in its new spot,go ahead. Well, I thought I

(45:36):
had it in pretty good sun,but it's it's not happy. Well,
it's a it's related to peaches andplums, and those plants hate wet feet.
So if the spot it's been inunderground, it tends to be a
little saturated after rains and stuff thatcould be part of the reason why it
wasn't happy, because those plants lovegood drainage. So uh, when you

(46:00):
move it to the new spot,just make sure that it's it does have
good internal drainage of the soil too, Okay, and how big should it
be getting I put it in thereas a screen between my names. Yeah,
the standard Cherry Laurel gets pretty big. Probably, I'd have to check

(46:22):
it's been ages since I look,but probably fifteen twenty feet, potentially more
like fifteen. But there's a varietycalled bright and tight, and there's some
other varieties that are more compact.They're not dwarf, but the density the
distance between leaves on a stem ismore compact, and so they're going to

(46:43):
grow slower, but they'll also stillget up to about twelve feet in time.
Okay, all right, I'll justget it moved. Take you all
right, Marty. Good luck withthat. Thank you, all right,
thank you, bye bye. Allright, you're listening to garden Line.
Here's our phone number seven one threetwo one two fifty eight seventy four.
I'll be right back. Welcome backto Guardline. Good to have you with

(47:04):
us today. Hey, have youbeen to Orges Hidden Gardens. Orges Hidden
Gardens is down in Alvin, Texas. Now, this is a garden center
that is south the words south ofthe Houston area, So any of you
down in that whole region you needto swing by there and check it out.
They are on Elizabeth Road in AlvinTexas. Elizabeth Road in Alvin,

(47:27):
Texas. You go down, youcan check out the website if you like.
His website is tech txgrounds dot com, txgrounds dot com. But Hoorhes
Hidden Gardens is going to have anexcellent supply right now. There are the
amount of crape myrtles and the sizesof cratemurdles. There a lot of variety
multi stem whatever you're looking for,they've got plenty of them on hand.

(47:50):
They also have some gorgeous eagleson hollies. If you're looking for a really tall
screen, Eagleston makes a very goodscreen. Ores got plenty of those on
hand as well. And also citrustrees. Citrus in very impressive containers of
a variety of different things. Areyou're looking for kumquats for example, there
they've got a kumquat tree that they'regoing to raffle for father's day. So

(48:12):
you just have to go to youknow, go check it out, give
them a call on and find out. How do you how do you you
know, get involved or sign upfor the raffle and he'll tell you how
to do it. But Orges HiddenGardens with all your citrus. If you're
looking for a quick way to getinto citrus, grab one of his fifteen
gallon citrus trees. We're talking aboutmeri, lemon, we're talking about limes
and oranges, satsumas. Got itall there, Just Orges Hidden Guardens again,

(48:37):
if you are looking for how toget there. It is on Elizabeth
Road in alvin Texas. We're goingto head out now to Montgomery and talk
to Terry. Hello, Terry,good morning, Thank you for taking my
call today. Sure, I havea very large mature oak in my backyard,

(48:59):
and several weeks ago I noticed apussy like white substance substance oozing out
at the base of the trunk,and I'm just wondering if you know what
that is. I do, Iactually do. It is a It is
called slime flux or sometimes sime slimeflux fl ux okay, and it's also

(49:27):
sometimes called bacterial what would What happensis bacteria get inside the trunk the outer
tissues, maybe crack a little bitor something that allows them in, and
they get into that sweet sap materialthat's inside and they ferment it, and
that pressure of fermentation causes it topush out and leak down the side of

(49:50):
the trunk. And so sometimes it'sit's kind of a dark, slimy looking.
Sometimes it's white and frothy looking.But that's just the bubble bubbling out,
and it's not a disease of thetree. It's just an infection that's
under the bark, and that buildup of pressure can kind of lift the
bark up off the inner inner wooda little bit, So sometimes the wound

(50:12):
gets a little bit bigger. Buta good healthy tree is able to we
say, wall that off and closeit back over with callous and time.
If it's a very old tree andit's not very vigorous, it's not growing
much, sometimes that will be alittle bit of a nagging problem, but
it's not something that's going to infectthe whole tree and kill it. Okay,

(50:34):
So I could just leave it alone, I treat it with something.
Well, there's no there's no treatingit. You can't get a product to
the bacteria in there, and youmay find certain kinds of butterflies and wasps
will hang out because that that basicallyis like a little wasp beer joint on
the side of the tree, sothey can sit there and and drink from

(50:57):
the fermented sap. Okay, well, well, as long as they don't
drive, I'm okay, that's it. That's it. Don't don't drink and
fly, all right? Aye,Yeah, that's kind of interesting. We
see that a lot, and uh, people get very alarmed, especially when
you start seeing all the bugs onit and things. But it's more of

(51:19):
a physical damage than a disease kindof effect. Uh. Earlier I was
talking who is it telling with somebody? Excuse me? That was had a
container tree of fudd leaf and stuff. We're talking about fertilizing and things.
One of the things that if you'vegot some container plants and you were looking
just to give them a quick boost, you ought to look into Microlife's Ocean

(51:44):
Harvest and they're super seaweed. Thoseare two products. Ocean Harvest is a
blue container you can buy by thegallon, bye by the court, and
it's a four two three fertilizer,a fish based fertilizer. You would want
to use that outdoors, not insidethe house. They've got other fertilizers you
use inside the house, but thisone outdoors because it is fish based.

(52:07):
And then the super seaweed is justexactly that seaweed. It's in a green
container again a galloner quart, andboth of these contain all kinds of minerals,
hormones of plants, plant vitamins.There's a lot of plant activity in
things like seaweed extract and certainly withfish and mulsion. That's one of the

(52:27):
standard liquid feeds for organic gardeners.So if you're wanting to fertilize liquid organically
a combination, I actually would usea combination of the super seaweed and the
fish and mulsion. Or it's calledMicrolife Ocean Harvest four two three. Again,
like all Microlife products, high quality, readily absorbed, and easy,

(52:49):
easy to use, just two ouncesin a gallon of water, so you
can use it as a foli orspray, or you can just drench your
containers with it every one, twoor four weeks, depending on what you're
growing and how much nutrient boost itneeds. All from Microlife. If you
have more information on Microlife, MicrolifeFertilizer dot com is the website Microlife Fertilizer
dot com. It's really easy tofind, gosh, that stuff is for

(53:12):
sale everywhere, easy easy, andit works. I've used it myself,
absolutely does work very very well.You're listening to Gardenline. Our phone number
is seven one three two one twofifty eight seventy four seven one three two
one two five eight seven four.Give us a call. Let's talk about
the things that are of interest toyou. I earlier was discussing the importance

(53:37):
of planting things that do well inour climate here and for summer, that
means vegetables and flowers and herbs thatcan take the heat. And we have
a lot of good options for that. You know, Zenias is certainly an
excellent option. Angelonia is a beautifulOne of my favorite summer flowers now,
I think is probably angelonia. Ilove that thing. It's so many color

(54:00):
options, a little bit of ranges, and size. Lantanas. They the
breeders just keep coming up with morelantanas. Some are so compact they barely
get a foot tall. Others getwaist high and above you know, you
have a wide range with lantanas andin colors, and they do so well,
so very well. Here. Mexicanheather is a little dainty little flower,

(54:22):
but it makes a little We useours at my house as a border
shrub. I just put in abed, or I'm putting in a bed
that kind of curves around the drivewayand I'm using the the Mexican heather as
the initial border plant, and thenit'll have taller things going in behind it.
And by the way, it isan excellent plant for bees. Bees

(54:43):
love the little Mexican heather blooms andin the summertime there aren't as many flowers
for bees, so it's always goodto have something that's blooming that can help
them out. Have you been youknow, I talk about these garden centers
and I tell you you really needto go. You need to need to
check it out. But if you'vebeen out to Nilsen Water Garden out there
in Katie, Texas, Nelson WaterGarden and Nursery is it's just an outstanding

(55:08):
nursery. I don't think I've evermentioned before the houseplants that they have indoors,
but they have indoor plants that arejust gorgeous. In the indoor part
of the garden center and then outdoors, you've got everything you can imagine.
Do you need herbs? They haveall the standard herbs and they have unusual
herbs like, for example, haveyou ever tried cuban variegated oregano? Looks

(55:30):
almost like a little colius type leaf, but yeah, it's a very fragrant
little herb. They have beautiful hibiscus, some with just deep burgundy foliage like
the starry, starry night hardy hibiscusseries. These aren't the tropical hibiscus.
He's the kind that die of theground and then come back again. Big
old dinner plate sized blooms. They'vegot plenty of that. They've got grapefruits

(55:52):
and lemons and limes and pomelos andsatsumas, tangilos. They have figs like
the lsu gold and the purple anda rappah and Natchez blackberries. I mean.
Nelson Water Garden and Nursery is verystock full of the kinds of things
you really would want to find ina garden center to have success at home

(56:13):
with that. That is the bottomline on it. While you're there,
you gotta go just to see toothe beautiful water gardens that they have all
the supplies from fish to plants toactually constructing the gardens themselves. How about
starting with just a disappearing fountain comingout of a big, beautiful ceramic container.
Go buy Nelson Watergarden, and Katie, you'll see what I'm talking about.

(56:37):
And when I went there, itis like my job spent half the
time hanging down because I was reallysurprised at the beauty and just the inspirational
layout of the whole thing. Whenyou walk through there, you will definitely
want to bring water home with youto add beauty and that wonderful sound of
water to the backyard. By theway, Nelsonwatergardens dot com. That's the

(56:58):
website out there in Kate our WestHouston Nursery, Nelson Watergardens dot com.
We are going to go now toSpring Branch and talk to Robert. Hello,
Robert, good morning, skipt Hey. I know you've covered this before,
and I did the right thing.I've got web worms and they ate
ninety nine point two four percent ofthe leaves off of my tree. I've

(57:20):
got sparse here and there. Ibroke up, broke up, the webs.
Hit them with the spinosat through thewater hose because it's a reasonably tall
tree. But now that the wormshave kind of run their course, and
I think I got rid of mostof them. Man, it was like
a savage attack on my house.They went through everything. So I threw
the spinosat on everything from the yardto the bushes, to the lilies,

(57:45):
to wherever they could go, andthen I hit the house with the home
defense type chemical. So I thinkI basically eradicated to them. I don't
see any live ones now, butI need to know what can I do
to this tree to help it recover, because as much as I broke up
the webs, I've still got webremnants and a multi million car guy up

(58:06):
in the yeah, in the tree. What can I do to help the
tree recover? At this points,sir, it is going to bounce back
itself. You know, it's gotplenty of nutrient in the ground. I
mean, if the tree was let'ssay, not very vigorous going into the
problem, then you might want todo some fertilizing of it. But in
general, the trees were okay goinginto this, and they're going to bounce

(58:27):
back. So The main thing isjust now start watching the trees carefully over
the coming weeks and months, becausewe should have another one or two webworm
attacks. Hey, Robert, Iam hitting a break I have to take
right now. If you want tohang on, we can continue this discussion.
I'm going to put you on holdin the meantime, Murray, you'll
also be first up when we comeback. Welcome back to Cardline. Good

(58:47):
to have you with us. Let'ssee here, we were in the big
middle of a conversation with Murray,and we're going to hop right back in
there. Murray, I think wewere talking about the tree had been hammered
pretty good, and I'm basically sayingthat it'll be fine, it'll come back.
If it was a little week goinginto the web worm problem, then
maybe a little fertilizer would would behelpful. Are you there? Yeah?

(59:13):
I think you. We were bothcalling about webworms. Pardon, Oh did
I have the Do I have thewrong? Okay, go ahead, sorry,
but we're both I'm calling about webworms. Also, my phone is
just webworm in today. Let's talkabout your web worms. You got to
you got a mulberry tree, Ithink right, Yeah, yes, sir,

(59:36):
Okay, it's about it. It'sonly a few years old. It's
about fifteen foot tall. But andthis year it's completely covered up with web
worms. Yeah, yeah, youknow, it's it's that kind of year.
It's been a bad one, andI expect there'll be another round or
two, and so I think mostimportantly, it can afford to lose its
leaves and it'll bounce back. It'snot going to kill the tree, but

(01:00:00):
we could have two more waves ofwebworms this summer, so I would be
extra diligent and at the first signof a little bit of activity. After
this tree releaves out, you reallywant to protect that second set of foliage.
You don't want it to have toreleaf out twice during the summer seasons
too. That's too much stress.So be extra diligent to just watch and

(01:00:22):
catch them as early as possible.So I didn't catch what you said to
put on them to get the wormsalved. Okay, there are a lot
of insecticides that will work for that. I generally recommend spinosid because it is
an organic product, not very highin toxicity, and it lasts for about
a week out there on the foliage, which is a little bit of an

(01:00:45):
advantage over BT lasts a little bitlonger. But there are many other there's
a number of synthetic perithoid products.Pretty much. If it says it's an
insecticide for use on your trees andshrubs and plants, it'll control webworms.
Okay, I should be got toget something like this at Yes, excuse

(01:01:06):
me, Yes, you can getit at feed stores. ACE Hardware stores
have it. Well, where areyou located in Dayton? Okay, yeah,
you're a little bit further out there. I know we got an ACE
hard rover in Crosby area, butyeah, you probably have some places out
a little closer to you. Okay, So I should go ahead and get

(01:01:29):
them off now, then I would, And just remember the earlier you treat
them, the more effective the treatmentis. Number one, you protect the
leaves that the tree has. Youknow, if you don't treat them,
it's going to lose all those leaves. So getting something on it is good
for that reason. But also it'sjust when they're young, they're easy to
kill. When they get older,not so much. Okay, Okay,

(01:01:52):
all right, thank you sir,Thank you appreciate the call. Murray appreciate
that very much. I talk alot about the importance of building your soil,
about the importance of doing the brownstuff, the setting the stage,
getting the soil ready so when youput a plant in, you're going to
have success. But equally important itis putting something on top of the soil

(01:02:13):
because we're entering the summer season,and when you have bear soil, you
have weeds. When you have bearsoil, the soil temps can skyrocket and
it makes a huge difference for theplat roots up in the top maybe three
or four inches of soil for sure, where it just gets too hot.
Well Louisiana, Louisiana Landscaper Landscaper's Pridehas got a quality group of mulches that

(01:02:37):
go on the surface and they alldo really, really well. For example,
the black velvet molts, that's nota dyed molts, that's a naturally
dark molts that they have a verybeautiful black velvety look just like the name
implies. They have a hardwood molts. It's an organic base. It's not
ground up pellets like some cheap oldthings that you see in certain stores will

(01:02:58):
be no. This is truly hardwoodmaterials from land clearing kite, you know,
removing hardwood materials, very very highquality, holds together well, it
locks up, it doesn't float away. Pine bark malts probably the most popular.
Very beautiful, very beautiful, slowdecomposition with the pine bark malts,
so it lasts a little bit longer. Cedar malts there's another one. It's

(01:03:20):
gonna take a little longer to decomposeagain. It locks together really well and
doesn't float away. And then theCypress Molt cypersmultch is locally sourced from Cypress
Logs, very durable and it youknow, when it gets set in place,
it tends to hold its spot prettywell too. The Cypress Mults works
really well and it has a nicelight color. So those are just some

(01:03:43):
examples of the many twenty seven differentproducts at Landscaper's Pride. Go to Landscaperspride
dot com and you can find outmore about every one of them and also
where to get them, and theyare very widely available. We're going to
now run to Lamarck and talk toDesmond. Hello Desmond, Yes, good
morning, yeah, yeah, goodmorning, Yeah, thanks for taking my
call. Sure, I've got twoquestions for you. In the Lamarck area

(01:04:08):
and also up around clear like especiallythere's some kind of remediad thing that is
in all the crape myrtle trees andsome of the oak trees, especially ones
that are a little bit distressed,and it's killing all of the crape myrtles.
And I didn't know if there wasanything that you could spray on on
a crepe myrtle tree that would getrid of that. Yeah, so that's

(01:04:30):
called ball moss. There's also onecalled Spanish moss. Ball moss is little
balls that are in the tree,spiky balls, and the Spanish moss just
hangs down in long sheets or ribbonshanging down right, which is okay,
So okay, does men believe itor not? It's not killing the tree.

(01:04:51):
What happens is the tree gets weakand it starts to thin out,
and that's whatever is the problem withthe tree. It could be so something
wrong in the roots. It couldbe poor soil compaction. It just could
be a lot of things. Thetree starts to thin, it's cannot be
a little and the light comes throughand the ball moss proliferates. But I've
seen bal moss growing on power lines. So if it was a parasite,

(01:05:15):
needing the juices of the tree.It wouldn't grow on a power line.
I've seen it on fence posts too, So it's along for the ride.
And it's more a sign that thetree is weak and thinning and they're the
bal moss proliferates. It loves thathumid environment. You can spray it in
the spring before the tree leaves outwith a copper based spray. You don't

(01:05:38):
want to do that right now.Copper sprays will burn foliage of a lot
of different kinds of plants depending onthe copper. But a good quality copper
based spray sprayed on it in thespring, just you know, as we're
getting into that cool, mild rainyperiod in the spring, those sprays at
that time are effective. What willhappen is ball mus will die and dead.

(01:05:58):
Baal moss looks a lot like livingboss and it eventually just rots and
falls out of the tree. Yeah. Does it spread by a spore because
it does have small flowers. It'sa it's a little it's it's more like
a little you know how like dandelionshave these little things that float out there
and right, and it's more somethinglike that. It lodges in the bark
and then it gets its start andagain it doesn't have It's not like mistletoe

(01:06:24):
that has roots in the tree asa parasite. It's it's more just hanging
on the outer bark. It'll alsogrow and get its roots underneath the shingles
on your roof too. It canYeah, I mean it'll grab on to
whatever whatever it has. But yep, that that would be what I would
use. Okay, so it's calledBOMs then ball b A L L ball

(01:06:47):
moss yep. Okay, all right. And my other question is is there
anything you've come up with that willget rid of doveweed? Yes. After
Howard and Harvey went through, myplace was in undated with doveweed, and
I've been spraying. I started offusing Blindside and that I would have to

(01:07:10):
spray it twice and that's got controlof some of it. And now I've
been recommended a product called Celsius.Yes, and I wondered if you'd had
any success with that, because doveweedis really really difficult to get rid of.
Yeah, sure is absolutely So letme ask you this, do you
have a lot of it or justa small area of doveweed? No,

(01:07:32):
I've got well. On the frontlawn, I've got to where I can
just spot spray now okay, Buton the back I virtually spray the whole
lawn. Mm okay, well yeahyou could. You could do the you
could do the celsius on it.Did you say Blindside was the other one
that you did. Yes, Yeah, Blindside is very effective. It's just

(01:07:54):
a one that's a little harder tofind for most people. But there's also
for people that just have a littlebit of doveweed. There is a cinnamon
based product, and our garden centerscarry it. It's it's just a cinnamon
based and you sprinkle on it andit just turns it black and it really
knocks it out well. But it'sa little pricey, and so to go

(01:08:15):
dusting cinnamon on weeds. If you'vegot a big area, it's not practical
to use the cinnamon approach. Sothe others that you're that we've been talking
about, they're they're probably the betterway to go. Right, where would
the cinnamon be available most garden centers, I've seen them in ace hardware stores,
I've seen them, you know,just your mom and pop kind of

(01:08:36):
garden centers that we look at andit's called Agra Lawn a g R I
l A W n Agri lawn.And I'm trying to think of what else
is part of the name. It'sgot picture of a little fist that's pounding,
pounding a weed on the cover.But yeah, but again that that's
the little dusting here and there.If you've got a big yard full of

(01:08:57):
doveweed, you're going to need touse these other products. Yeah, well
on the instructions on both of themactually even recommends that for doveweed and one
or two other weeds. Okay,you'll have to probably have to do it
at least twice. Yes, that'strue. That is just going to be
true. And the more you cankeep it dry by avoiding overwatering, uh,
the better off you are. Hey, I got to run for a

(01:09:18):
commercial Desmond, but good luck withthat. I appreciate your call very much.
Our phone number seven one three twoone two k t R H Steve.
You'll be first up when I comeback. Welcome back to garden Line.
Thanks for listening today. You'd liketo give us a call and maybe
ask a gardening question. Seven onethree two one two kt RH seven one

(01:09:38):
three two one two kt R hH. If you are interested in a
natural based product fertilizer for your lawnthat has a very high nitrogen level,
that would be Sweet Green high.I mean eleven percent nitrogen, which for
an organic type product is very veryhigh. Sweet Green is a molasses based

(01:09:59):
product. When you put a onthe soil, that melts away down into
the soil, releasing the nitrogen throughbiological activity. Microbes love sugary substances.
They need that carbon, and basicallySweet Green is loaded with the kind of
carbon that they need. Now,Sweet Green is a nitrofoss product, so
it's available in a number of differentplaces. It smells wonderful too. By

(01:10:19):
the way, Sweet Green is availableif you got to Katie, Ace Hardborough
and Pinoak, they've got it outthere. Ace Hardware CITYO Memorial Drive is
another place. Or go down toStanton Shopping Center and Alvin or North Taylor.
You can find Sweet Green and nitrofossproducts there as well. Sweet Green
ted out Now to Deer Park andwe're going to talk to Steve. Hello,

(01:10:42):
Steve, good morning. Well,I've got a quite a few ag
of panthers in the front yard andlast year none of them bloomed, and
this year one of them bloomed.Can you recommend anything I could do for

(01:11:03):
that? That's a good question.Agapanthus is one of those frustrating plants for
me. It sometimes it just bloomsand blooms and people aren't doing anything to
it, and it's just happy inblooming. And other times it's doing what
you described. It needs sunlight.Doesn't have to have full sun. It
likes a break from the full sun. But it needs good lighting in order

(01:11:24):
to bloom well in a deep deepshade. It's not It needs to be
a good, healthy plant and notover fertilized. You want to go a
little easy on the nitrogen for agapanthos. Don't just push it like you're going
to create a lot of vegetative leafygreen growth. You know you want it,
You want it to settle in alittle bit. I would use something

(01:11:45):
like a color Star fertilizer. Nelson'scolor Star would be a good choice for
agapanthos. But just watch the overdoingof that first number, and then of
course keep it keeping it moist adequatelymore. Okay, is there much chance
of getting at the bloom at thislate neat season or well? I would.

(01:12:09):
I would hope so, but Idon't know all the specifics of you
know, the soil in sight andwhat it's what all it's struggling with there.
I just kind of threw out somegeneral ideas, but uh, I
would. I wouldn't give up onit just yet. Yeah, well I
don't mind even just the leaves arekind of pretty, but yeah they are.
But you sure would like those beautifulblue uh oh yeah, like blue

(01:12:31):
fireworks going off above the plants.Yeah, I think they're really pretty.
Another question I heard you talking earlierabout webworms. Yes, if you can
see when they're just starting, canyou just trim off that branch or a
part of that branch. Yes,you can. If there are a lot
of them, you know, that'smaybe more pruning than you want to do

(01:12:56):
to a plant, but yes youcan. It is also an option.
But I tell you, if youcatch them when they're really early, it
is easy just to squirt the foliagebecause they don't have that big web built
all around a big large area ofleaves, and you can just squirt the
foliage with all kinds of different insecticidesand it will be very effective on shutting
them down. Okay, I hadone more question that you got time.

(01:13:17):
Okay, I've seen on YouTube wherethey deadhead roses and they say cut them
back to five leafs instead of threeleaves because the five leaves make more flowers.
Okay, you agree with that.Well, yeah, it's cutting them
back a little bit further back fromthe end there's more vigor and that bud,

(01:13:42):
you know, like the five leafleaflet that you're referring to, there's
a bud at the base of itthat will vigorously push out new growth and
then have flowers on the end ofthat shoot that comes from that bud.
That's why they say that. Okay, and I got another rose is kind
of a climb and type rose,and I kind of tried to s play

(01:14:03):
how we pronounced it on the fence, you know, had the three rails
and I'm trying to run it outon each rail. That Is that a
mistake or is that? Will itwork? Like, tell me what kind
of rose it is? Again,it's a climbing rose. I don't know
the variety of Yeah, you cando that. Climbing roses in general do

(01:14:27):
better when the canes the shoots areoriented horizontally. So if you let them
go like and I know you're talkingabout going horizontally, but if they go
straight up, you end up withblooms up at the top, but no
blooms up and down the shoots.There's actually a type or two of rows
that will bloom better on the shootslike vertically, but in general we run
them like back and forth, youknow, go left or right across the

(01:14:48):
trellis, back and forth because thathorizontal orientation you get a better bloom set
in there. And so, yes, you could do that, but it's
going to be a job because there'sgoing to be a lot of new shoots
forming and you're kind of having tobundle them together and get them on those
those rails of the fence, youknow, to create the look you're looking
for there. I guess I shouldlet it get a little bit bushy,

(01:15:10):
huh, or on each each runner, or well you could, you know,
you just kind of have to.Some roses are not as vigorous as
others, and so it depends onthe kind of roads you're trying to do
that too. Some of them willwork out trying to keep up with them,
okay, and you can continue tofertilize them through the summer or not.
Yes, you can, you shouldsmall amounts. Okay, okay,

(01:15:32):
okay, Well thank you for thoseanswers. I appreciate it all right,
thank you appreciate the call very much. Well let's see here, we are
running out of time for this hour. That one went fast. Archie in
Paarland and Robert up on the northwestside. You'll be our first up when
we come back. By the way, if anybody is familiar with when the

(01:15:54):
plumerius sale is out in clear likethe Plumarous Society, would you give me
a call here on Garden Line andyou can just tell the producer if you
don't want to be on the air. But we I need that information.
I've been having people ask about thatand I do not know the answered that
question. So Archie, if youhave a follow up to that, stick
around. If not, the minuteI find out something, I will let

(01:16:15):
you know. Don't forget Next Saturday, I'll be at wall Bird's Unlimited in
bel Air, Southwest Houston, elevenam to one pm right after garden Line
next Saturday to fifty Welcome to kr H Garden Line with scamp Ricard's just

(01:16:45):
watch him as World. Welcome backto garden line, Well, wellcome back.
Good to have you with us,Good to have you with us.
Well, I have a guardline quiz. If you listen to guarden line more

(01:17:08):
than one time, you oughtn't knowthe answer to this. What is the
most important thing you do if youwant to have success with a new planting?
The answer is, prepare the soilfirst. Yes, soil type is
important, Yes, drainage is important, Yes, sunshine is important. All
of those things. But I'm tellingyou the foundation for success is the soil.

(01:17:30):
Plants live in the soil. Theydo. The top sticks up and
its job is to grab sunlight tofuel the plant. But the roots are
taking up the water, they're takingup the nutrients that the leaves used to
make everything that plant needs and thatyou want. Maybe what you want is
beautiful foliage, maybe it's fruit,maybe it's flowers. That all happens if

(01:17:53):
you've got good soil. And HeirloomSoils has put together a combination of options
for quality soil mixes that are likenone other. They're fruit berry and centrismex.
For example, you're gonna plant anythingthat's going to grow fruit there it
is fruit berry, et cetera.SMEs veggie and herb mix. The name
tells it, Cacti and succulent mix. The cactine cyce very gritty. It

(01:18:16):
drains well. So if you're gonnado plants that don't like to have mukys
wet soil conditions, cact Insculent isdesigned just for those kind of plants.
They got their works potting soil.They have the roses and bloomers blend.
It's like talking about it. It'sa multipurpose rose soil, very very effective.
Not just roses, but anything thatyou're going to grow that is a

(01:18:40):
shrub or putizelias and the roses andbloomers blend. They do very well in
that as well. Heirloom Soils ofTexas. That's the website, Airloom Soils
of Texas. Go check it out. You're going to find these products all
over the place. You can buythem by the bag, you can buy
them by the bulk, you canhave them deliver it. Just go to
Heirloom Soils of Texas com and findout more information. But whatever you do,

(01:19:03):
get that soil ready so that whenyou put that wonderful new plant you
just bought in the ground, ithits the ground running. That's the goal.
We're going to go now to thenorthwest side and talk to Robert.
Hello, Robert, do we getyou there? Robert? Oh, yes,
sir, How can we help you? Hey? Hey, I got

(01:19:25):
a question about our trees and havebroken during the storm a couple of weeks
ago. I had a big limbon a Chinese elm laid over okay and
big star right where there where thetree was. Luckily it didn't tear the
whole tree down or nothing, butuh, it didn't feel any park.

(01:19:45):
I was able to cut it rightwhere it bent down, you know,
and good. But what I puton that? What do I cover that
up with to protect that tree fromyou know, getting any diseases or anything
else. You know. For formany years now, research and our rubriculture
has been telling us that we don'tneed to be painting wounds on trees.
It's better to let it be openand dry out those wound paints. You

(01:20:09):
know, it seems logical that theywould help, but actually they end up
holding moisture behind them, and youget more decay behind them, and there
are other issues that they can cause. The only exception of that, Robert,
would be if you had an oaktree and you were in an area
with oak wilt, then we wouldpaint the wounds immediately. But that is
not for the sake of healing.That's for the sake of keeping the bugs

(01:20:30):
out that spread that disease. Sojust a good clean cut and made it,
making it at the right spot.You don't want to leave a stub
because that'll die and then you havethis dead piece of wood that prevents the
tree from putting callous over to closeup that wound. On the other hand,
you don't want to print it rightflush up against the trunk, because
that just makes a bigger wound.All right, Chip, I appreciate it.

(01:20:56):
I almost send you a picture maybetalking about it next weekend to her
and just make sure that what I'mseeing is exactly what you're describing, all
right, appreciate it. All right, Robert, I'm gonna put you on
hold and my producer is gonna giveyou my email to send that picture too.
I unless there's something different, Iwon't comment back on it if you

(01:21:17):
don't hear from me that it waskind of what we had said. But
thank you very much. I doappreciate the call. Yeah, when whenever
trees whenever they break and storm,typically the wound is one that is not
going to heal well at all,very very slow, if at all.

(01:21:38):
And then whether that tree lives anotherdecade or ten decades, it just is
going to be a weak spot thatmore and more rots away interior and causes
a weak spot. We say itweakens the structural integrity of the tree.
There's the fancy way to put it, but the bottom line is you want

(01:21:58):
to get in there and make agood clean and you wanted to close over.
And there's a proper way to prune. For those of you who are
doing it yourselfers learn how to pruneproperly. Do a Google search for something
called three point cut. Look athow to do a three point cut.
That is the best way to makethe pruning cuts where you don't end up
causing problems. And better yet,how's somebody that knows what they're doing.

(01:22:20):
And that's why we're always talking aboutaffordable tree. Martin spoon Moore here on
garden line seven one three six ninenine twenty six sixty three. That's his
number, seven one three sixty ninenine two six sixty three. Go to
the website aff Tree Service dot com. But Martin knows how to do this.
And so if you're at all indoubt or you don't maybe have quite

(01:22:41):
the equipment, don't risk going upon a ladder and holding a chainsaw on
one hand for crying out loud tryingto do pruning. How's somebody come in
that knows what they're doing, uh, and can do it right and safely.
A lot of things do not endwell when you go up on a
ladder and start stretching the limits ofsafety a little bit. We love feed

(01:23:04):
stores here on Garden Line and LeagueCity Feed is an outstanding feed store down
in League City. When I sayoutstanding, I like the old time feed
stores. You know, I wantto go in and I want several things.
I want to find the products thatI need. And at Leake City,
if you hear me talk about fertilizer, it's at League City they carry

(01:23:25):
that. They're at League City.Do you need stuff to control diseases or
insects or weeds, They've got allof that at League City Feed. Of
course it's a feed store. Theygot all the feed things. I'm talking
more from a gardening standpoint, butwhatever you need, they're going to have
copies of it. They have aircopies. They're gonna have products of it,
airloom soils. They carry that there. That's just an example. The
asimitostombout earlier today. They carry thatthere, and on and on down the

(01:23:48):
line. Now, Leake City feedis just three blocks, just a few
blocks actually, south of Highway three. Are on Highway three, south of
Highway ninety six. Let me saythat again. You're in League City.
You go south of Highway ninety sixon Highway three, just a few blocks
and you're right there. So forall of you and all those communities clear
Lake and Webster and Santa Fe andLamark and Baycliff, San Leone, this

(01:24:12):
is your hometown feed store. It'sopen Monday through Saturday nine to six,
closed on Sunday. So today wouldbe a good day to get by there
and get what you need. Theycarry it out to the to the car
for you too, or the pickup. So that just makes it even better.
Two eight one three three two onesix one two two eight one three
three two one six one two.We are now going to go here to

(01:24:36):
Kim, Hello, Kim, HiSkip. I was just wondering if I
could do a little plug for ourMaria sail today out here in clear Lake.
Well, we had a caller earlierthat was wanting to ask about that,
so go ahead and just tell folks, uh, you're having the show
too, right, Yeah, wellyes there, Well there's a lot of

(01:24:58):
Plamerius here and then of course wewe have our balloom table that has all
the balloons on it that people cantake a look at. We're out here
at clear Lake Park at the BayArea Community Center at five thousand and two
East Nasa Road in Seabrooks. Sevenseven, five eighty six is the actual
address. Well, the simple wayis is Bay Area Community Center on Nasa

(01:25:20):
Road. That's absolutely yes, thankyou so much, And it's from nine
to one today and we have aboutwe have twenty five cellars, and we
have everything from you know, thenovice up to a serious collector. So
we'd love to have people come out. Like I said, the doors open

(01:25:41):
at nine for people to purchase plants, and we've got other merchandise and T
shirts and beautiful tumblers and things likethat. So any listeners who loves Flumerius
or maybe even wants to just learnmore about and we'd love to have you
out here. Well, good,that sounds fun. One of these days
I'm going to get out there.I have I have do not have Plummerius
and I need to get some andso one of these days I'm going to

(01:26:03):
head out and join y'all out thereas well. But I know you guys
have a wide variety. Well thatwould be fabulous. And thank you so
much for letting us, letting usget the word out and hopefully we'll see
some of the listeners out here today. All righty, thanks a lot.
Appreciate the call, Kim little publicservice announcement there for those of you who
were asking me about it earlier onthat is going on today. There are

(01:26:30):
always new products and new things comingon the market, and I'm typically skeptical
upfront. I just am because youknow, there's always some new thing you
can't live without out there, nomatter what the category is. Gardening just
is one example. But Medina cameout with a new product that before I
even tried it, I was excitedabout it. And it's super Grow Plus.

(01:26:53):
It's part of their hast Grow series. It's a court bottle that hooks
up to your garden hose. Ever'sabout four thousand square feet. It takes
about ten minutes to do your lawn, but you just took it to a
garden hose and you just like yourwater in the lawn very very lightly.
It's a sixteen zero two. Andthe reason I was excited about it is
that zero, that low middle number. That is a good thing if you

(01:27:15):
have a lawn that's been fertilized yearafter year after year after year. A
lot of the nutrients can be volatile. They can wash away, they can
nitrogen can go off as a gas. They don't stick around, but phosphorus
does. That's a middle number,and so a lot of parts of the
country now are limiting phosphorus and fertilizersto protect surface water. And so there

(01:27:38):
are places where you just can't useany particular thing you want without special In
some cases it's a prescription even butgetting back to the Houston area, supergril
plus is a great way to greenup a lawn quickly. Now it's not
all fast release. About a fifthof the nitrogen is slow release to it.
It also has some other things tohelp green up, like the keylated

(01:28:00):
form of iron that helps with thatyellowing that we typically see in our Saint
Augustine lawns. It's got things likemolasses and humic acid in it and seaweed
extract even so, it's just agreat concoction. Has to grow super grow
plus. I'm going to be givenaway some of that at one of our
upcoming appearances and I'll tell you moreabout that when we get a little bit

(01:28:23):
closer to it. But has togrow supergrow plus by Medina high quality,
very high quality product. You arelistening to Gardenline. Our phone number is
seven one three two one two fiftyeight seventy four seven one three two one
two five eight seven four. Don'tforget that. Next Saturday, I'm going

(01:28:45):
to be at Wallbirds Unlimited in bellAir, Texas Wilbirds in bel Air.
I was talking earlier about some Father'sDay gifts and the squirrel excluder feeder I
think is one of the best Father'sDay gifts. If dad likes to,
you know, get out and enjoya cup of coffee early in the morning
and listen to the birds and watchthe birds and things. This feeder is

(01:29:06):
cool. It's my favorite feeder thatI've got, and I've got a lot
of different kinds of feeders around thehouse, but Wibird's Unlimited. The squirrel
excluding feeder is a really cool one. Now, they got a lot of
other things here. They've got feedersfor every particular kind of bird and seed
that you might have. But comeout and see me at bell Air Wildbird's
Unlimited in bell Air. It's oneof the six stores here in the Greater

(01:29:30):
Houston area. By the way,if you looking for a Wildbirds near you
go to WBU dot com forward slashHouston and that's where you can find out
more about them. WBD dot comforward slash Houston. Let's go out to
Mansfield now and talk to Martha.Oh, I tell you what, Martha,
I'm sorry, I pull the callup and I might put your right
back on hold because I just sawI let a brake slip by here.

(01:29:51):
We'll be right back. Welcome backto the guard Line. Hey, good
have you with us today? Weare going to head out now to let's
see where we want to go.I think I went to Brenda and Woodville.
Hello Brenda, Hello, how canwe help? Well, we've had
Encore Sobias for about two years andthey've not done well. Okay, they

(01:30:13):
did bloom a little bit earlier thisyear. But they're real tall and scraggly,
and we were wondering if it's toolate to prune them. It is
not too late to prune them,but go ahead and get it done.
They need to be able to regrownew shoots after your pruning and set the
bloom buds for next spring, andit'll they'll be doing that by the time

(01:30:34):
we get into mid to late summer. So you need to go ahead and
get them prune now so they havetime to grow and set the buds.
Okay, when we prune them,do we also need to fertilize them or
just let that go for a while. Uh, you know it kind of
looking how are they looking? Ifthey're looking like they could use a little
boost, I'd give them a boostthat there's nothing wrong with that gets you

(01:30:55):
a good product for acid loving plants. If you have a particular brand do
you like to use, but somethingfor acid loving plants would be a good
choice. Okay, well, thankyou very much. All right, thank
you very much. I appreciate that. Brenda. Thanks for the call.
Now we're going to run out toVents in the Woodlands. Hello Vents,

(01:31:16):
good morning, Thanks for taking mycall. How are you going this morning.
I'm good, I'm good. Howare you today? Well? Thank
you. I am calling because itseems as though we've got a phenomenon going
on in our particular subdivision where alot of trees are beginning to get just
enveloped in these spider web type ofmasses that just envelop entire branches. And

(01:31:44):
I was wondering, what is that? And because it's all so high up,
what do you have to do?Do you cut down that branch?
Is if it's left to go withoutany kind of action on our part?
Yeah, does it eventually take thetree? Okay, you're talking about webbing
on the outer branches right, Justto be clear, Yes, okay,
that's webworms. And I just postedsomething a while back to our Guardenline Facebook

(01:32:11):
page on it webworms or we're havingone of the worst years we've had in
a while for this early in theyear. Normally they aren't a big problem
until a big problem until later inthe summer, but this year came early
and you can spray them. Thereare a number of products that will kill
them. They're just caterpillars, andso you just have got to get the

(01:32:32):
spray to the foliage they're feeding on, and that's the challenge. If you
can use a long pole to breakup the webs, or if you have
a spray stream that's strong enough thatwill kind of cut through the web a
little bit and get it on thefoliage inside. You can control them with
that. They're not hard to kill. You just got to get the product
to them. That's the war.In the event that you cannot. I

(01:32:57):
mean, this is pretty high up. I would imagine we'd need bring out
a tree service or something to climbon up there. Will it eventually take
the tree? No? Well,okay, now this year we're seeing plants
where all the foliage was lost,but the tree can bounce back and grow
new foliage. But when it's doingthat, you really want to watch it
because you don't want it to dothat two or three times in the course

(01:33:19):
of the year, and we couldhave another two generations still here in the
greater Houston area. So just watch. If the new foliage comes out and
you start to see the very firstsigns of it, go ahead and get
sprays on it. However, youhave to go about doing it to protect
that new set of foliage. Okay, well, I appreciate the info.

(01:33:42):
Thanks very much. All right,thank you very much. Vince appreciate the
call very much for sure. Let'ssee, we're going to now go to
talk to Jim. Hello, Jim, Hey, good morning. Hope you're
doing just fine. I am,sir, Thank you good. I've got
some live oaks that need trimming up, and I mean because they hang down

(01:34:09):
a bit. Okay, what's thebest time of year to do that?
Well, winter, late winter isthe best time to do the majority of
tree pruning. If you need todo a cut here and there and yonder,
you know, you can do twoor three cuts anytime of the year,
but if you're going to do quitea better pruning, we try to
get most of that done in thewinter because spring is the time of fastest
wound healing. But it's not ablack and white thing like, if you

(01:34:32):
got pruning needs to be done,now, go ahead and get some of
it done. Don't wait until nextwinter to do it. Okay, very
good, thank you. Okay,and just where you located, by the
way, Jim, I'm on theenergy corridor. Oh okay, all right,
yeah, that's fine. I justwas checking. If you're in an

(01:34:54):
area with oak wilt, that's adifferent thing. But we don't have as
much of it here as they doin Central Texas, that's for sure.
Okay, all right, sir,good, thanks a lot, Thank you,
sir. Take care. Now we'regoing to go out to La Bark
and talk to Gail. Hello,Gail, Hi, good morning. I
have I sent a picture yesterday whichI think is called turkey tail fun guy.

(01:35:19):
Oh my huge hackberry tree, andI want to know if it's going
to kill it or not. Idid not get an email from you.
I sent it from my phone yesterday. Okay, I don't I don't see
it here. Could you resend No, I'm driving right now, Okay,
yeah, don't do that. Don'tdo that. What are the first few

(01:35:43):
letters of the email or would itcome from a phone number? You're saying,
I can M G O N.Okay, uh yeah, I'm sorry.
I don't see it here for somereason. Yeah, well it's as

(01:36:04):
I googled, I mean, Isent. I had that app on where
you can take a picture what you'relooking at to identify it. Yes,
and it came a turkey tail fungguy. Okay, well it could be,
but let me let's whenever you're ata place where you can stop and
resend. Maybe use your email andattach it to an email and email it

(01:36:27):
to me. I'm going to putyou on hold and I'm going to get
the producer to make sure you havethe right email address. Okay, so
just hang on. He's going topick up. All right, Thank you
very much for that call. Yeah. We try to do as best we
can with emails, especially when you'redescribed. People are describing something and I
may not picture what you're seeing U, and so the email is a good

(01:36:49):
way to confirm that I just amnot able to in general open up the
emails to just all the questions peoplewould have. There's just absolutely no way
I could begin to to answer those. So we try to connect the emails
to a call. So if youemail me, well, I'm going to
ask that you follow up with acall to garden Line. Or sometimes it
goes the other way. You callme and then I say, hey,

(01:37:10):
I need to see a picture.Go ahead and send me an email.
We're gonna take a break here,it's time for the news our number seven
one three two one two kt rH. I'll be right back and John,
you'll be first up. We goback to the garden Line. We
are gonna head straight to the phones. Here. We got John in Galveston.
First up. Hello John, Heysir, how are you. I'm

(01:37:31):
good? Thank you. Yeah.So, four or five years ago and
there was we had an outbreak inour lawns here in South Texas of something
called a sod webworm with with everybodytalking about you know these this webworm problem
that we're having right now kind ofin every tree we see it's the same

(01:37:55):
bug and we need to start lookingat treating form already or not or okay,
looking for it. That's a goodquestion. No, it's not the
same bug, completely different. Thesoid webworm doesn't build these big old webs
like you're seeing the fall webworm,which is what tree is in your trees

(01:38:16):
doing right now. It has alittle bit of webbing down in the thatch
of the grass. But if yougo online, I have a website gardening
with skip dot com and on thereare two schedules. One is the lawn
care schedule. One is the lawnpest Disease and weed management schedule. On
the second one the pest disease andweed in the insect row. From January

(01:38:38):
through December. It shows when chinchbugsand sod webworms can appear, and then
when we treat for grubs also andso soid webworms typically come later in the
year. We can get them earlierin the summer, but typically you don't
really see the big outbreaks until weget in around August, maybe even September,

(01:39:00):
but we start watching for them inJune. Just repeat the website a
please. Gardening with skip dot commakes it easier to remember. Yeah,
you bet you got Those are freeto download. All right, there you
go. Yeah, good question.Webworm and webworm, we have a lot
of confusion. There's also something calleda bagworm that's different than what we're dealing

(01:39:25):
with now, So I'm not goingto confuse the issue by describing it.
But yeah, that is that isa factor. Uh, let's see.
We're going to go now to LakeJackson and talk to Doug. Hello,
Doug, Hey, good morning.I have a Saint Augustine yard and I

(01:39:46):
have what it seems to be avery active weed that seems to be outgoing
my Saint Augustine. It's kind ofa tear drop on each side. It's
like a fern, but it's verysmall. Okay, okay, okay,

(01:40:12):
it's not it's not a bern.It kind of looks like a large fern,
but it's very small. But okay, kind of the end is like
a reverse tear drop. And okay, boy, it could be several things.
I really need to see a pictureto know for sure, but I
can tell you this, if Iwere you, I would get a product

(01:40:34):
called Celsius. Now that the temperaturehas heated up, Celsius is a little
safer to use. Still apply itearly in the morning before the weather really
heats up. Good, but itis good against a wide variety of weeds.
And I you know, you couldbe talking about a lawn ber weed.

(01:40:54):
You could be talking about even what'sthe Virginia button weed? That the
little teardrop thing sounds more like Virginiabutton weed. But anyway, whatever it
is, the Celsius would be agood place to start in shutting that down.
You mix it out and spray ittarget directly to the weeds. And
what is the name of that product? Again, I'm sorry, celsius like

(01:41:15):
temperature cel si U s celsius andit's just celsius. And I can get
that at any loads or I don'tknow about that. I don't about loads.
If you go to a if yougo to like an ACE Hardware store,
you're going to find it. It'sa little bit of a drive for
you to come up to Southwest Fertilizerup in Southwest Houston, but they have

(01:41:38):
it there. But you should beable to Cornelius have it. They might.
You just have to try, justhave to call around. It's not
the most common of the products outthere, but most of our good garden
centers we'll be carrying it as wellas Ace Hardware, and some other places
like the feed stores sometimes do too. Okay, thank you very much.

(01:41:59):
All right, thanks done, appreciatethat call. Okay, somebody left the
gate open. Here we go.We'll going to Crystal Beach and talking to
Riley. Hello, Riley, Hi, Hello, good morning. I have
recently moved down to Crystal Beach andnot used to all the sandy soil so
and I have four dogs who areinundated their poor fur with these burrs.

(01:42:23):
And I researched too late because Irealized just recently that I should have taken
care of that in the winter.What can I do to get rid of
these dang birds? Okay? Isthis a grassy plant that the birds are
on? It's just like, Idon't even know what kind of I think

(01:42:43):
I have a I think I havea lawnful of just weeds that I'm ow
and pretended to out. Okay,there you go. That's fair enough,
fair enough, it's great, andtake off here. But the whole thing
is these furs. Yeah, well, so send me a picture. I'm
gonna put you on hoe when we'redone with this talk. Send me a
picture. Let me look and makesure I got the right plant. But
are a pre Well, I'm drivingat the moment and I'm not at home,

(01:43:08):
so I don't have a picture.I don't worry about that. Don't
worry about it. Pre Emergent harbicide, the products called barricade barrack. Oh,
that's right, pre emergent. Yeah, it's called barricade. Yes.
But here's here's what you need todo. Just if you can remember gardening
with Skip dot com, that's mewith skip dot com. When you go

(01:43:28):
there, click on the schedules.Look at the weeds schedule, the one
that has weeds on it. Itlists the products, it tells you when
to apply them. It's all there. You don't have to remember anything.
You just print it out. It'sfree and and get ahead of them.
The more you fertilize, if it'struly grass birds that you have, the
more you fertilize, the more thegrass birds don't have the upper hand.

(01:43:51):
They like drug. The more I'mrepeat, I'm sorry, repeat that,
the more I fertilize, the grassbirds don't thrive. When you fertilize the
low it oh day like dry,drowdy, poor sandy soil. And so
when you start making the soil whereyour lawn is going to be happy,

(01:44:12):
the grasspurs will be less happy.But you got to do the barricade.
Got it to prevent the seeds fromcoming up. And it's on the schedule
when to apply it, so Iwon't go into it on the air.
You can just look at the schedule. Okay. Now, so am I
actually making mistake? I'm mowing downas far down as possible so that my
dogs don't get all these birds intheir fur. But they're am I making

(01:44:33):
a mistake because it's only they're gettingthe so called grass is getting quite brown?
Yeah? Well, it's not greatfor your grass to mow low.
And the grass bur is capable ofjust setting its burrs down lower when you
mow it low instead of the grasspurscan be almost knee high. But they
can also set birds down in thetwo inches above the ground. And if

(01:44:55):
you know it, so the mowingis not going to make them quit setting
burds. Okay, okay, soit was gardening Skip dot Com. That's
it, got it awesome. Thankyou so much, Thank you you take
care. Well, here we are, time for another quick break. Let's
see when we come back, Danand Steve and Ken you'll be the first
up. We'll be right back.Good to have you back on garden Line.

(01:45:19):
I'm your host, Skip Richter,and we're here to answer your gardening
questions. If you are thinking aboutmaybe taking that backyard and turning it into
a beautiful outdoor gathering area. Maybeyou got a little bit of a patio,
but you'd really like to expand theheart scape, put out some landscape
lighting, perhaps some the sound ofrunning water. That'd be a nice addition

(01:45:43):
to it. Puercecapes can do allof that, and I want you to
go to their website. I wantyou to see the work that they're capable
of doing. You may not havea taj mahal out there, but I
mean They can do anything from youname it from A to Z, whether
you need any of the things Ijust mentioned, whether you're looking at maybe
some custom sprinkler work, checking out, making sure that the system is working

(01:46:05):
right, landscape lighting. I thinkI mentioned that they've got their certifications,
they got their licenses, they've gottheir experience, Their employees have been with
them for a long time and theyknow how to do it right. And
you can see that at piercescapes dotcom pierscapes dot com. You can also
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(01:46:27):
you're there, ask them about theirquarterly maintenance for the beds. They come
in every quarter. They do thecolor changes, like hey, this old
plant is worn out, time toput in a new one. They do
that. They do weeding, theydo fertilizing, They top off the malts,
they make sure that the irrigation isworking right. In other words,
quarterly maintenance at pier Scapes two eightone three seven oh five zero six zero.

(01:46:53):
Let them make having a beautiful placeeasy for you. We're going to
now go to Nadville and talk toDan. Hello, Dan, Hell,
let's skip part of you this morning. I'm good, sir. How can
we help great? Listen. Iplanted a couple of cypress trees about fifteen
years ago at my home and theyhave grown beautifully until this year. One

(01:47:15):
of the trees it started to setleaves, the leaves to come out,
or the pines, whatever you callthe things, and it just looks like
has stopped and it's starting to turnbrown, where the other tree is growing
beautifully. And I don't know whatto expect out of this tree. Now.
Wow, I didn't know you couldkill a cypress tree. They're tough

(01:47:36):
old trees. I got knees everywhere. Hey, yeah, I feel your
pain on that one. You know, if the whole tree is doing that,
something's wrong in the root system.And cypress can take soggy wetsil,
so it's not that it's right andpoorly drained. They can take that.

(01:47:57):
They actually do okay. On drought. Uh. Typically, you know,
we get toward the end of Augustand it's hot and dry. They may
turn bronze and drop leaves and thencome out with fresh foliage in this and
again in the fall. But rightnow there's no reason why they should be
browning leaves. So I don't knowwhat to tell you on that. One.
Probably ought to have a tree person, you know, take a look

(01:48:19):
at it. You know, MartinSpoon Moore would be one I would.
I would talk to about it andsee what he thinks. Okay, okay,
do you have a contact for himor no, I don't. Would
you have that handy? Yeah?Yeah I do. His phone number is
seven one three six twenty six sixtythree. I'll say that again, seven

(01:48:40):
to one three six nine nine twentysix sixty three. Have him come out
on site and look at it.You know, he charges his feet to
come out. But any work youhave done that, he goes right into
the work. So that's his name, as mark. His name is Martin
us it. Yeah, Martin SpoonMoore Affordable trees. Yeah either here his
wife will answer the phone. Yeahkind of business. All right, Well

(01:49:04):
I appreciate that. All right,Dan, good luck, good luck with
that. Yeah wow, what achallenge. Now we're gonna go to Steve
and Cyprus. And how you doingtoday, Steve? Good good? Gonna
be a hot one today. Ohboy, here we go. So anyway,
I've got some crape myrtles. I'vegot three full grown crape myrtles that

(01:49:29):
I transplanted about fifteen years ago.Randy Lemon helped me get those going.
And now the leather on them,their skin on them is turned black and
it's and they're peeling off. Butmy question is how how do I get
get these things to bloom? Beautifulcanopies? Yeah, just no blooms at
all, and I don't want tobutcher them. Yeah, well, full

(01:49:51):
sign is what they want. Ifit's lest the blooming typically is last.
There is a variation between cultivars orvariety on how well and how early they
bloom, So that could be itanything stressing the plant and just keeping it
from having good health and vigor.When you have good vigor, you're gonna
have good bloom production out on it. So you might dig around the plant,

(01:50:14):
look at the base, see ifyou see anything binding the trunk,
wrapped around it, strangling it.You might also want to just get you
a good quality turf type fertilizer andput it out all around that plant and
water didn't really good, and geta little bit of vigor in it.
That would be helpful. Some selectivepruning is fine, but pruning isn't the
problem. And you're right you don'twant to butcher it. That is true.

(01:50:39):
Okay, I did you know Idid trim him last year and they
and they bloomed better. Yeah,I mean they bloomed better. But yeah,
I'll try to fertilize it. Andthey look healthy as salting as can
be to me. But hopefully somefertilized will kick the in I think.
So you mentioned, you know theblack peel off bark. That city mold

(01:51:00):
is either coming from aphids or fromgreat myrtle bark scale and those kinds of
things can also take some energy outof the plant and reduce the bloom production.
So when you see all that cityon there, you got some kind
of insect that's causing that. Okay, all right, okay, thank you
sir. Thanks Steve, appreciate thatcall. You know, it is storm

(01:51:25):
season, it is hurricane season,and when a storm comes through, it
doesn't have to be a hurricane andshuts down power. As we just learned,
right over one hundred thousand people lostpower in this last storm. That
you have got to you've got tobe able to have some sort of a
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business and you've got to work fromhome. Quality Home Products of Texas can

(01:51:48):
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(01:52:33):
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Just call them seven to one tothree. Quality start that process of
finding out how to protect your homeand to protect the things that are valuable
to you as well. Well.We are right up against a break time.

(01:52:58):
Ken and Tom Ball and Susan,you'll be my free two when I
come back. I just don't haveenough time to do justice to your call
right now. So we're gonna we'regonna hold you over if you can hang
on just a little bit, alittle bit longer. For us. ACE
Hardware stores, you know, isthe place. ACE is a place that's
the motto. ACE is the placeyou're gonna find everything that you need.

(01:53:18):
Your fire ant bait is there.Your mosquito control products, whether it's the
dunks or whether it's a foger oryou name it, they've got it.
Today's the fertilizers I talk about onguardline, the soils on Guardline. Ace
hardware dot com. Go to acehardwaredot com. There's forty of them around
you here find the one near you. I always love going by ACE Hardware

(01:53:40):
store. You know, each ofthem is independently owned. You know that,
so it is. It is abrand ACE, and there's a lot
of similarities, but there's also somedifferences because the owner of the store can
choose to do some very unique things. And that's some of the coolest parts
of us. All right, Well, top of the night, nine o'clock

(01:54:00):
here about to enter our last hourfor the day. If you'd like to
give us a call, our phonenumber is seven one three two one two.
K T r H will be rightback. Welcome to Katie r h.

(01:54:29):
Garden Line with Skip Rictor. It'scrazy gas Trim just watch him as
well, gall Us, so manygood things to see that crazy in ways,

(01:54:51):
gassa not a sun, incredible classGas. Welcome back to the guard
Line. Glad to have you withus today. What are we going to

(01:55:13):
talk about? Well, let's goto the phones and find out. We're
going to start off with Ken andTom Ball. Hey Ken, thanks for
holding on and let's see how wecan help today. Good morning. Question
for you. I was gonna dosome fertilizing of some uh some as okay,
and I was wondering if that arborGate has that chicken poop fertilizer.

(01:55:36):
Is that good for the azal?Yeah? Be fine that Yeah, it's
anything, it's got roots in it. It's an organic fertilizer, and uh
it will do. It will dojust fine for your azalias. You can
do that. You can occasionally,you know, top it off with something
a little acidifying, or you canuse a little bit of sulfur. If
you feel like you need to lowerthe p h any of those alias that

(01:56:00):
would that would show itself by kindof some pale color on that material,
Well, just just ask them whatthey have there that's in a set of
fire. They probably have a sulfuror something along those lines. But if
your zalias are not showing yellow orloss of color in this foliage at the
ends of shoots, then you're fine. Don't worry about it. Okay,

(01:56:24):
Yeah, I know they're green.Yeah, it's it's it's the their organic
fertilizer's part of their one two threecompletely easy system. Uh. And it
pretty much the I think the waythey put it is for everything with roots,
and azelias definitely have roots, sothat work. Yeah, sure on
our Augustine grass. Uh. Andwhat height should that be cut? Well,

(01:56:47):
ideally about two and a half tothree inches. If you're in shady
areas and having trouble getting enough sunlight, you can go above three a little
bit, but at some point itjust is, you know, it's just
a little too tall. But asfar as the grass is concerned, it
about two and a half to threeinches is a good height for Saint Augustine

(01:57:09):
mowing. Okay, if you gobelow that, is it too short?
I mean, is there a levelthat's too short? What happens is the
way the Saint Augustine plant grows,it's not made for creating a golf course
green like bermuda would be real,real short. So as you go below
two and a half, at twoyou're still okay. At an inch and
a half you're starting, you're goingto end up having some bare spots and

(01:57:32):
you're gonna have more weed problems init. The density just won't be there.
And the shorter you mow, theless of a root system that it's
going to be able to have becauseyou just don't have the talk to support
it. And is there an issuewith water the shorter you go, is
it just to take more water ordoes it matter? Well, the only

(01:57:54):
thing would be if your root systembecomes more limited, then you're going to
have to water more often for theroot system that's there. If you have
a deep extensive root system, youdon't have to water often at all.
In fact, nature takes care ofthe majority of our watering when we have
a good turf with a deep extensiveroot system. Okay, well, thanks

(01:58:16):
very much, all right, Ken, take care. Thanks lot appreciate the
call. Now we're going to goto Susan in Missouri City. I believe,
yes, thank you. I've gota sego plane that's planted by twenty
years so when it's eleven feet tall, okay, and it's always survived the
winner. But this year it's Itook off the frozen leaves on it,

(01:58:41):
but then it's not coming out again. It has two spikes that grew from
the very top that I fit tall, and now they are bent over like
there. So I thought it wasdead. Okay, I noticed there's new
growth at the bottom of the segoYes, uh huh? Is it dead

(01:59:04):
or what should I do with?Well, the trunk may be dead,
I can't tell based on the verbaldescription there. But those things at the
bottom we call pups. They're likelittle side shoots that come out and they
will. You can. You canlet them grow. You can cut the
trunk off if you need to.But you still got a sago going down

(01:59:25):
there, even if the top wasgoing to die. Well, I don't
want to start over with a smallsago again from from what's left of this
one? Okay, do you thinkthe trunk is dead? Can you can
I put you on hold and youget an email and send me a picture
of it. Yes, I thinkthat's better than me guessing trying to picture

(01:59:48):
what it might look. Okay,let's do it that way, Susan.
Otherwise I could be misleading you withthe best of intentions, and I don't
want to do that. Okay,Okay, all right, let's I'm going
to put you on hold and I'mpretty sure we'll get a hold of give
you my email to take it fromthere. All right, We're going to
go now to Betty and Lake Conroe. Were at Lake Conro. Hopefully you're

(02:00:12):
not in Lake Conroe right now.Maybe it would be a good day to
be in like Conroe. True,I have a question about venkas. I've
planted them a couple of times,and they just some of them keep dying.
Just the one planet is good andthe next one to it in a
few days, we'll just turn brownand die. And I don't know understand,

(02:00:33):
because I've had them before and theywere great. Yeah, you're talking
about the plants that have the red, pink and white flowers. Yes,
yes, the venkas. So Ican't tell you for sure because I'm not
seeing the plant. But there's adisease called aerial fight top through a light.
That is, it just wipes outvenca. And not everybody has it,

(02:00:57):
but if you have it, it'svery persistent and it just builds up
up, and so next year whenyou plant venka, they get it and
so on. There's a a varietyor a series of vinka called Cora cor
A, like the girl's name.There also used to be one called Nirvana.
I don't think Nirvana is on themarket now. It might be,

(02:01:17):
but Cora and Nirvana were bred tobe resistant, so if you plant those
you should be okay, even thoughit has the phytopthor aerio blight present.
Oh okay, that's good to know. Thank you. That's that's my best
guest. Not much kills a vinka. I mean, neglect does not kill
vinka, and so yeah, Ithink it's probably that disease. Okay,

(02:01:43):
thank you so much. I'll dothat next year, all right, you
bet, thanks a lot. Appreciatethat call very much. Well, I
can see we're bumping right here ona break, so I'm gonna I'm gonna
hold off and when I come back, let's see we'll talk to Gale and
Ed and Larry. In just amo I want to remind you that I'm
going to be at wild Birds Unlimitedin bel Air, Southwest Houston next Saturday,

(02:02:06):
June fifteenth, So put it onyour calendars. Come on and see
me, Grab some pictures, grabsome samples. Let's talk about the things,
the questions you might have. Yougot some photos of a garden area
or a landscape area and you wouldlike some ideas on how to improve it.
We'd be happy to help you withthat as well. We'll be right
back. Welcome back to Guardline.Good to have you with us today.

(02:02:29):
Let's talk about the things that areof interest to you. First of all,
I want to make a point,and that is, if you're dealing
with any kind of a insect pestin your lawn, Nitrofoss bug Out Max
is designed just for that. Thisis a granule. You put it out,
you watered in, and within fortyeight hours it is taking care of
whatever the pests are there. Thatcould be firehants crawling around the surface.

(02:02:53):
It gets those. It's going tobe chinchbugs. If we are about to
enter we actually are entering chinchbug seasonand we begin to see issues with them,
and there's a summer goes on,it just gets worse. Well,
with the Nitrofoss bug Out Max,it just keeps working. I mean it'll
last through the rest of this summerseason. When you put it out.
It's a persistent product that continues towork for you. So you don't have

(02:03:14):
to apply it and apply it andapply it now. Soid web worms,
we're looking at those again being somethingto come on as we move on into
the summer season. Well, NitaFuss Bugout Max is also effective for that.
So night Fuss Bugout Max is easyto find. All you have to
do is go to one of themany places it carries Nita Foss products like
the East Hardbor and Kingwood. TheArborgate up in Tomball Shades of Texas,

(02:03:38):
which is in South Houston on GenoaRed Bluff, Alvin, Texas has Stanton
Shopping Center, than on North Taylorand Baytown has Fisher's Hardware for example,
one of many many places where youcan find Nitrofoss products like their Bugout Max.
We are going to now go toEd in Cyprus. Hello, Ed,

(02:03:58):
good morning morning. Did you getthose pictures that I sent you of
the trees? I did? Okay, two of them are river birch,
and I called you about those earlier. And then the other two are rosebuds,
even though one doesn't look like arosebud. Okay, the river birch.

(02:04:23):
You know, three trunks, andyou can see by that photo they
didn't come back very well after Iguess the drought and everything else. What
should I My question is the Iread your online, your deal about trees

(02:04:44):
and drought, et cetera. SoI think that's what the problem is.
The edges, the top edges andthe outer edges of the limbs have not
come back. So I've got whatdo I do with the trunks that are
likely did? How do I prunethose back? And if I do prune
those back, is another trunk goingto come out? I'd like the three

(02:05:09):
trunks, you know the look ofthat. Yeah, And if I'm going
to have one or two, Idon't know if I want it right.
Well, you will get some othersprouting, you know, it'll be way
behind the one that's left the remainingtrunk. So I don't know the aesthetics
if you'll appreciate that or not.But they can re sprout from the base

(02:05:30):
and you can get some more upfrom the bottom. It could be drought
issues, especially if the tree hadn'tbeen fully rooted in, hadn't had several
seasons to fully root in. Well, that drought's even worse on the river
birch like that. They like tobe where they have a dependable water supply,
so that's a possibility. It alsocould be cold injury. We've had,

(02:05:51):
you know, we had a realbad cold here a few years ago,
and then we had two Decembers ago. We had a time when the
cold came too early and it wasn'tsuch a severe call, but it was
too early and we saw some damage. Like I said, I think they've
been in the ground a couple ofyears. Yeah, okay, so they
were big when we started, butthey've grown more, you know, up

(02:06:12):
to they're about fifteen foot tall now. But you know, maybe it was
a combination of those things because ityou know, I don't know, two
years is enough to get rooted yep. Well, well good, Yeah.
And as far as the red budis concerned, the red buds look okay
to me. I don't do yousee a problem with them or they look
okay? Well, My question isthe one red bud that is sprouting from

(02:06:38):
the ground. Yes, that one. It must have had a wound or
something when it was put in,because in a strong wind several months ago,
you know, it was greening upand then it broke about two foot
above the ground. And what Ifound in there was the It was green

(02:07:00):
kind of on the outer edges,but inside it had an iridescent green beetle.
Okay, so you know, Ikind of just gave it up or
dead, and I was going topull it out, but then it started
sprouting. And what I'm noticing isthe leaves from the sprout are so much
bigger, yeah then the other one. So I was thinking, well,
maybe it's come in. Do theygrab those trees? Oh, they can

(02:07:25):
if you have a variety. There'sjust the standard red buds and then sometimes
there's varieties. But it's not unusual. A sprout from the bottom is called
immature wood, and it is notwell it Typically the leaves will be larger
on immature wood when a sprout iscoming, that tree will grow up and

(02:07:46):
it will get older and it willbloom. I would tip the two shoots
that you're not going to keep thatare down low, Okay, just cut
the last six inches out, butleave those leaves on them. Those leaves
are making carbohydrates and that tree needssome help right now. And you might
want to steak loosely the one that'scoming upward because it's pretty pretty slender and

(02:08:07):
could easily get blown over. Don'tstake it tight. You want it to
move around, but you just don'twant it to blow over, you know,
forty five degree angle or something.Okay, and then it'll be the
ones that are I'll get the onethat's coming up straight. Then there's I
think a couple or more that aregoing out sideways. Yeah, or just

(02:08:28):
tip them, yeah, just cutoff at base. No, cut six
inches out of the end of them, and leave the leaves that are on
them. That'll stop them from beingdominant by cutting the tips out. But
you'll leave those leaves. At theend of this winter, you can cut
those branches off where they attach,but let's leave them for now. We
call that nurse limbs. We're leavingthem because they are providing carbohydrates to support

(02:08:50):
the growth of that tree. Okay, Well, I appreciate that. I
also appreciate your show. I meanthe I am a novice guard, so
everything you say is really interesting.Well, good, Well, I'm glad
you enjoyed it, and that's whywe're here. Thanks a lot for the
call. Appreciate that very much.We're going to go now to Larry and

(02:09:11):
Bastrop. Is this bass drop Texas? Yes it is. Are you listening
on your computer or phone or onthe radio on the computer, okay,
I'm just curious. How can wehelp, Larry? Okay, I have
a severe infestation of pepperbine. Myfront law has approximately about one hundred shoots

(02:09:39):
that come up in different lengths.Some of them are one or two foot
tall. Yeah, and I've triedjust about everything. But last week I
read online your idea about the littleplastic bags with rush killer in it,
and so I put out about twentyof those little plastic bags with the weed

(02:10:01):
killer just a little bit in thebottom, and it seems to be working.
That's why I'm calling. I havea question. I don't Larry,
I don't remember writing about plastic bags. What what? What is what is
that about? Well, I thoughtit was on your website. You put
brush killer into a little plastic bag, or maybe a tint of it,

(02:10:26):
pull and then you wrap it aroundthe vine pepper vine and you leave it
and yeah, now that that wasn'tme. Now what I have talked about
is putting it on a sponge andwiping it on there using those little grabber

(02:10:46):
tools where you you get a jaroff the shelf, you know, but
instead of section cups or whatever onthem, you replace it with a sponge.
You can do that, or youcan cut them off, or you
can just spot spray them with triclophere tr r I c l O P
y R. That's the brush killer. Try close here. But tracopere will

(02:11:07):
hurt Saint Augustine. So you're gonnasome little dead spots if you spray it.
But if you use a wiper applicator, you you don't get it on
your grass. You just wipe itonto the foliage of that pepper vine.
Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, good luck getting into getting ahead of
it. It is a booger,isn't it? All right? All right,

(02:11:30):
Larry, thank you appreciate the call. Thanks for listening out there in
bash Drop, Texas. Let's see, we are now heading to Missouri City
to talk to Linda. Hey,Hi, good morning. Well we were
out town and last week before weleft our painfull tree, which is old,

(02:11:58):
but it's so tall all and beautiful, and the princes are even it's
just a gorgeous tree. Well,excuse me. We came back last night
and one of our cars is coveredwith webworms from these bags of I don't

(02:12:24):
know what they're called webwork that we'rein the tree, and all over our
glass, all over and driveway,the sidewalk, the front door, easily
over a thousand of these caterpillars crawlingeverywhere. We're concerned that our tree it's

(02:12:46):
just decimated. If it's going todie, and these critters have gone to
our pear trees, Okay, wellit will, it will read The tree
will grow new leaves they lived withwebworms. In some years they get completely
defoliated by webworms, and you don'twant it to happen. It looks ugly,

(02:13:09):
but it's not going to kill thetree. Now the webworms are going
to have another generation. These caterpillarswill turn into moths that lay eggs,
and there'll be more caterpillars. Soyou just want to watch a tree that's
lost its foliage and make sure whenyou first start to see them again after
it regrows new foliage, you wantto be ready to spray early, because

(02:13:30):
that's when you can shut it downbefore it loses another set of leaves,
which that's starting to get too stressfulwhen it's tried to leave out twice and
had to eetn off twice. Soonce is okay, let's try to avoid
the second one. So two,you spread with any kind of an insecticide

(02:13:52):
labeled for controlling insects on your plants. There's a lot of good ones out
there. I generally recommend spinosa becauseit's an organic product. Uh and it
lasts about a week out there onthe foliage. But you have to you
have to spray what the caterpillars you'reeating. That's why starting early before there's
big webs you can't get spray insideof. Starting early is important. Okay,

(02:14:15):
so we should spray the pair oftrees since we see they have moved.
John, Yes, you know,go ahead and spray. Break up
the webs with a stick and spraythe pair. Linda, I've got a
heart break coming right this moment.Show I got to run. But break
up the webs first, and thenspray the foliage with spinos at S P
I N O S A D.All Right, folks, we'll be right
back seven one three, two onetwo five eight seven four. Welcome back

(02:14:41):
to garden Line. Ready to gohere, got a call, a board
full of calls, so we're goingto jump right into the big middle of
it. We're gonna go out toLamark and talk to Gail. Hello,
Gail, good morning. Okay,I try to send up pictures again.
Did you get him? Yil itnot? I don't know. I don't

(02:15:01):
know what's going on here. Idon't either. Okay, do you know
what a turkey tail god looks like? I have. I've never had one,
but I've heard of them. Yes, So okay, that's that's It's
exactly what it looks like on thebase of my tree. There's like it's
on two of them. There's twoof them on one really healthy looking hackberry

(02:15:24):
tree. And I wonder, I'mjust hoping that I don't have to take
it down, that it's it's notgonna that it's gonna be okay, well,
turkey tail mushroom. It's it's justthe they describe it because of the
coloring and stuff, and it it'sreal pretty, by the way, but
it is. Yeah, but it'sa it's because there's a decomposer of fungi

(02:15:45):
that's working inside inside of the plantcausing decomposition. You know, you think
about it. In the forest,you have trees that fall and die,
and that wood gets turned back intodirt by funt fundi basically primarily doing the
work on it. And so turkeytail is just an example of one of
mini fungi that's out there in nature. Uh. And and so I don't

(02:16:09):
know that yours is turkey tail.There are others that have that. As
you look from the outside towards thecenter of those little bands of different coloring
a little bit, yes, differentshades of coloring. Uh, there are
other fungi that can do that.So it may not be turkey tail.
It may be there are several others. There are some that can be a

(02:16:30):
disease. Ganoderma g A n OD E r M. A ganoderma is
another one that's not so good.It is a it is a decay organism
that we don't want to have.But you know, I can't I can't
tell you for sure based on thisthe it was talking about the app was

(02:16:52):
talking about that the turkey tail islike a beneficial that I mean, they
use it for cancer treatments and stuff. Yeah, harmful to the tree.
So I'm just hoping well in anykind of a shelf type fungi, which
is what this is, it's it'sa it's one that sticks out sideways.
It's not a mushroom that comes upin your yard. You know it looks

(02:17:15):
mushroom shaped. This is a shelftype of arrangement. And any of that
means that something's decaying inside. Soif if anything, it's it's the trunk
is weakening as the wood decays insidethere. But try and spray it or
no, no that you can't controlit. You can't spray it superficially and
do anything. I think I thinkyou would just have to ignore it.

(02:17:39):
Watch it. Just recognize that's anindication that there's a weak spot there.
So if there's anything that plant canfall on, that just something to be
aware of. Okay, Okay,I appreciate it so much. Thank you
for the call. You take careit all. Right. Let's see we
are now going to go I losttrack of things here. Let's see we're

(02:18:01):
going to go to Ken in Spring, Texas. Hey Ken, are you
there? Ken? I'm good,sir. Hey listen, So I've had
this Virginia button weed problem for thelast couple of years. I put down
some granules at one time, Idon't remember the name of it. I
tried some spray. What is thebest thing to get rid of Virginia button

(02:18:22):
greed? You know, I'm Igenerally am recommending the Celsius fungus or herbicide
it because it's the weather's hot now, and when when the weather gets hot,
a lot of the more effective broadleaved weed controls that we spray on
existing weeds can hurt your Saint Augustinewhen the temperatures are in the upper eighties

(02:18:46):
and nineties, and so that's whyI would try the celsius. Just know
that button weed is not going tobe a one spray deal. You're gonna
have to spray later on. You'reprobably have sprayed again. Anything you can
to drive that area out would begood. So if you've got an irrigation
system, be real hesitant to useit. And very infrequently the wetther it

(02:19:07):
is, the happier the button weedis. And so we do. Yeah.
Wow, with all the rain,it really came back with a yes.
With the storm, with all therain going around, I got some
speci side spray that I went tohome. People. I've tried that because
I've not got to get up eartin the morning before it gets hot the
spray. That's what I've been doing. I've done it twice. Okay.
I just want to look with there'ssomething really that will really let me get

(02:19:30):
rid of it. Yeah, Ithink that Celsius is one that I would
look for. You're going to haveto probably go to a let's see where
are you You're in spring there?Yeah you got some you got some Ace
hardware stores that are close to you. Yeah, be real, real,
real easy, you know, toget to spring Ace on Spring Cypress there
would would probably. Yeah, Iknow that is yeah, all right,

(02:19:52):
all right, can have a goodday, yes, sir, you too.
Thanks a lot. Mary and westHouston done. Hey Mary, Hey
Skip. I called about two things, caterpillars and philodendron. Okay. Philadendron
was zapped by the freeze recent youknow this past a few months, okay,

(02:20:15):
and it is I have put amiracle row and in combination with a
roots stimulator. How long do Ihave to wait before I see any life?
It was a philodendron that was zapphilodendron that I've had is over twenty
years old. I had it,Well, you should, you should be

(02:20:35):
seeing life by now. I don't. Well I do. I do.
There at the root, below thedirt, below the I see some green
just there. Yeah, the extrapatient, it's going to have to have
a living bud, not just livingtissues. But I know I don't see
any living buds. Well, ifit were mine, I would be patient,

(02:20:58):
and I would give it through June, maybe a little into July,
just because sometimes there's this tiny littlething that eventually comes back out. But
what about August. Well, ifyou had to wait that long, you
can. I mean, there's noharm, no harm waiting right, Sure,
Sure, I want to try tosell it because I've had it for
a long time. The other thingis I have an epidemic infestation of caterpillars.

(02:21:22):
Okay, they're white, they're white, and they're hairy. Okay,
they're everywhere. Now are they onplants or are they crawling across your crawling
on the garbage train trash can They'recalling on my philodendron that I'm trying to
resurrect. So what that what thatis is, it's webworms that have finished
eating leaves and they're dropping out.Now they're they're gonna pupate and become a

(02:21:46):
little moth so they can lay moreeggs and do this again. Once they're
crawling around like that, it's verydifficult. I mean, you can spray
them with a contact killing pesticide,but in general that that's not a real
practical way to go about it.Catching them earlier is important, okay.
And to catch them earlier what Ineed to spray with you. You can

(02:22:07):
spray with a number of things.Spinosa is an organic product, but then
there's a lot of insect controls thatare synthetic periphthoids that will also work on
them. The key is catch themas soon as you first start to see
them in the trees and make sureyou get it on the foliage. Mary,
I've got a heartbreak. I gotit. I leave and go do
but good good luck for those youbet. Thank you for the call.

(02:22:30):
We'll be right back. Welcome backto the guard line. Good to have
you with us today. Let's seewe're going to head out to Charles in
Spring. Hello Charles, good morning, Skip. How are you sir?
I'm good, I'm good. Guickquestion. I sent you some pictures of
a I just called it ever again. I finally realized it's a blue ted
unifer that needs some help. It'sbeen in the ground about three years.

(02:22:56):
It fell over one time it waschasing the sun. I was able to
pick it up stake it down,and it just doesn't look good. Okay,
if you saw the pictures, well, I got your email. This
was on Tuesday. I believe yousent it. Yes, sure, but
there it says image removed by sender. So I don't have an image.
But that's okay. I have yourdescription. I think number one, if

(02:23:18):
you can avoid spray in the foliage, that would be a good idea.
Anytime you get the foliage on thosethings wet, we have more problems with
some blight diseases that can be aproblem, and so I would avoid that.
If you can change the watering,if it's been in the ground for
a while so it's gotten established,then I don't think. I think you're

(02:23:41):
watering it several times a week.Really at the most, it's in just
in my sprinklers says it's in aflower bed, So I'm doing it about
I think two or three times aweek. We just minimum water. Yeah,
so a shrub auto need water maybeonce every two weeks, maybe once
a week if it's fair early young. But in general they've got a good

(02:24:03):
root system and they shouldn't need towater that off. It may be staying
a little too wet, and junipers, arborvid's that whole group of plants.
They do not like soggy conditions,and with all the rain we've had,
that could be part of the problemwith it. So I'd let it dry
out a little bit and try towean it from three times a week to
maybe once every ten days eventually.Okay, what about any I'm not fertilized

(02:24:26):
any kind of nutrients that should giveit some kind of food. Ye,
you know you could, but that'snot the problem right now, that's not
the need. If you're going todo that, find a tree and shrub
type of product, and there's anumber of good ones out there, you
know, for trees and shrubs.Nitroposs makes them, Nelson's make them,
for example, Microlife makes them.It's easy to it's easy to find a

(02:24:50):
tree and shrub fertilizer, just followthe label on it. But I think
right now I'm more concerned about thesoul moisture and the fact that maybe it's
the foliage is getting wet a littlechear. It seems kind of dry,
but I'll check it out closer.Next question, real quick. I've been
plagued over the years with torpedo grass. Okay, so the point that I

(02:25:11):
want up killing, getting rid ofwell the beds, and reducing my beast
is a smaller size. I stillget little little one's coming up, but
they're so deep. Yeah, anysuggestions on what to do besides, there's
a factor that you that you wipeon it. Yeah, putting getting a
wiper type applicator, You're probably gonnahave to do a homemade one with sponges
and wiping a product. Either Iwould you could either use glifas, which

(02:25:39):
is the round up product because anythingget it on, or you could use
a grass only killer, which wouldbe there's two different chemicals that just kill
grass. But when you go toyour local ice hardware store or something and
you say, hey, I needa grass killer your local feed store,
they're going to have stuff that's justkilling grass, not broad leaves. But
you still have to wipe it onor you'll kill your law on that it

(02:26:01):
gets on. Okay, yeah,torpedo grass is a booger. You got
your work cut out, no kidding. Oh I know. I've done it
for years and I finally gave up. But one last question. When I
if I dig down way down inthe roots, is it safe to put
anything like a roundup down at thebase of it at all? No?
No. The only time you putroundup is when you put it on green
plant material. Don't don't put iton your roads, don't put it on

(02:26:24):
the trunk. It just it's justfor on the leaves. But be very
careful, be very careful with becauseit kills anything green you get it on.
Ok thanks so much, sir,have a good one. Thank you.
I appreciate it. Thank you youtake care. Thanks all right.
Well, I may have lost accessyep, I just lost access to the

(02:26:46):
phone boards here. Uh I willI'm gonna try to pull those. I'm
gonna try to pull those. Itclosed. It closed up on me and
so I'm not to pull it backup again. I can do that.
It just take me one second.I didn't want to mention B and B
turf Pros be turf Pros is yourgo to person if you live South and
a little bit to the west ofHouston. They're your go to person to

(02:27:07):
do compost top dressing and to dodeep time aeration. That's what they do
and they are excellent at it.Their goal is customer satisfaction. They do
high quality work. I've seen thework they do, I've talked to them,
and I've seen the ratings. Theyare so highly rated online because they
really go above to make a personalconnection with their clients to ensure that you

(02:27:30):
are satisfied. Here's the website bbTurfpros dot com. Bbturfpros dot com.
Here's the phone number. Write thisdown seven one three two three four fifty
five ninety eight. Whether you're inFresno, Iowa Colony, or coolis Cieno,
as far north and west as Sugarlandand Missouri City, or as far

(02:27:50):
east as Pearland, this is yourlocal place to get quality work done.
And I'm telling you, when you'vegot an issue with still compaction, when
you've got a loan that's struggling,a cor ooration followed by a compost top
dressing is a quick way to getthat thing turned around and back in business.
We're going to now go out toBrenham and talk to Leonard. Hello

(02:28:11):
Leonard, good morning. Okay,I've got a question for you. I've
got two crape myrtles, one oneach end of the front of my house
that's got to be pulled because they'regetting into my water system. Okay,
And I was wondering they're surrounded byin a circle box would so I'm trying

(02:28:35):
to spare them. How deep doI have to go? How far these
are twenty year old trees? Yeah, probably more. Try to get as
far out as you practically can.If you can get about a foot foot
and a half away from the trunkof it, that would be best.
But just dig it up and thenbe ready take all the cuts that you

(02:28:56):
make and paint them with a littleome brush with brush killer on it.
Triclo peer is the ingredient tri Ic l O underg where you cut the
roots are still on the ground whenyou're cutting close to the base, because
the crape sometimes can re sprout fromdown there. But you just when you
make the cut, immediately you justtake that spongy brush and dab it in

(02:29:20):
Triclo peer and then dab it righton the fresh cut service. That's all
don't spray, don't drench, don'tjust just dab it on the fresh cut
service and that helps reduce the resprouting. Hey, I've got to run.
I'm sorry, I run out oftime on us today here Leonard,
but thank you very much for thatcall. You know, when it comes
to lawn fertilizing, right now,we need to go to something that's going

(02:29:43):
to give you a gradual, slowfeed all the way up until fall,
and that is Slow and Easy fromNelson Products. Nelson's Slow and Easy will
feed for over four months. Imean it is constantly gradually releasing the nutrients
to make your lawn successful. It'seasy to find Slow and Easy. Like
all Nelson products. While you're outlook for their nutri Star Plumeria and all

(02:30:03):
flowering Tropicals really Food. It's anexcellent, excellent product. They also have
a Palm and Ornamental Grass's food.They've got nutri Star Rose food. Nelson's
has a wide variety of quality productsthat will do an excellent job of providing
exactly what you need to have successwith your plants. Nelson Plant Food.

(02:30:24):
Start with that slow and easy thoughon the lawn. You will be very
impressed with the results. You getwell. I don't know how it happened,
but today I felt like I jumpedon a roller coaster and after a
couple of clicks going up the hill, when we at the top and went
over, it started moving. Ihope you've enjoyed it. I've had a
good time. We're going to beback tomorrow morning, six am to ten

(02:30:45):
am. Tell your neighbors about gardenLine. Tell your family and friends.
They may live somewhere far away,like today, we got a call from
we out in bass Struck direction.Tell them about it. They can listen
in. We happy to help themas well. Well. I just want
to remind you next Saturday. Writeit on your calendar. Come see me

(02:31:05):
at wild Birds Unlimited in bel Air, Texas, Southwest Houston, six fifteen
twenty four, Saturday the fifteenth,eleven am. Bring me some samples,
and hey, I'm going to begiving away some really cool fertilizers from the
folks at Medina