That time we talked to the Master Gardeners

This is episode number 26 of The Homeowner's Show. Whether you're DIY or looking to hire, we're here to help you find the best information and options for you and your home. My name is Kevin Hackett, and here with me is Craig Williams.

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to The Homeowner's Show. We are so glad that you could join us today. Uh, we have a very interesting show for you today. We are out on location.

Yeah.

Location.

Yeah, we are not in the studio today.

The Homeowner Show is a-travelin'.

Yeah.

Yep, on the— hit the road.

Yeah, it's good. It's a little bit different, doing something we've not done very often, so.

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Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, how's it going, man?

It's going good, man. It's, it's, it's a, it's been a blustery day.

A blustery day. It's been a blustery couple of days. I don't know what's going on down here in Houston, y'all. It is March and it is way too cold for March.

We had a freeze, man.

Yeah, 2.

It was ridiculous.

Yeah. It's unbelievable.

So, but we just got done taking the official tour, and I'm gonna see if I get it, and our guests are gonna probably correct me here, but we just got done taking a tour of the Montgomery County Ag Extension Center Master Gardener Area. That was a mouthful.

Yeah.

Did I get it right?

We call it the Master Gardener Extension Research Facility.

There we go. So I got you completely wrong.

No, that's okay.

Well, yeah, I mean—

You can call it what you want. It's a big green space. As long as you get here.

Yeah, exactly.

I got you. Yeah.

And I'll be honest, Craig, I didn't even know this place was out here. And, and I think, um, there are probably a lot of people that don't know if a place like this even exists, uh, but specifically in our area where we live. Um, and, and I— not only that, I'm walking around, I realized how ignorant I am about so many things.

I've been trying to tell you that for years, man.

It's—

but Anyway, we showed up here this morning and were completely blown away by the volunteers that were— I think we had like 100 people sitting in this, if not more than 100 people who show up here every Wednesday to help take care of this facility, to grow vegetables and herbs and flowers and trees, and are doing research and experiments on what plants— I mean, it's just absolutely incredible what's going on out here. And so, we wanted to come in and sit down with 2 of the experts from this group. I mean, we got the crème de la crème of the Master Gardener group here. So if you guys could go ahead and introduce yourselves, let everybody know who you are.

Go ahead, Miss Crum.

I'm Linda Crum, and I have been a Master Gardener since 1996. Wow.

'96, okay.

I'm Michael Potter. I'm the County Extension Agent for Horticulture here in Montgomery County, and one of the things I do is manage the Master Gardener program.

Okay. Awesome. And so since '96, and how long have you been here?

I've been here since '12.

Since '12, so she beat you.

She beat me.

Okay.

Definitely.

All right.

She beats me in more ways than one too, so just her knowledge alone.

Yeah. Well, I'll have to tell you guys, so my mother actually has a degree in horticulture, and so my big childhood rebellion was plucking the cantaloupes too early.

Oh man.

I'm 38 years old now, and to this day, a year has not gone by where she has not reminded me of those blessed cantaloupes that just went to waste. I don't even think she mulched them or composted them that year. She let them sit outside to remind me what I did wrong.

I think there's a lot of pent-up anger about that still. I mean, here's the thing. I mean, I've heard your mom talk about you before.

Yeah.

I don't think she likes you very much.

And I'll anger eat some cantaloupes.

Okay, there you go.

There you go. Well, so just let everybody know, you were telling us earlier this was actually like the first in the state of Texas to do this.

So, yes.

And what is that exactly?

The Master Gardener program is a program run through Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service. We are part of the land grant university system, which is basically in every state. I mean, Arkansas has their land grant university system and extension agents throughout the state. That's, that's what it is here in Texas, 254 counties. We have extension agents in every single one of those. And so what happened back in the '70s is Sam Cotner and my predecessor Tom LeRoy got wind of this volunteer program that was helping up in Seattle, helping the agents up there deal with horticulture questions and concerns and everything, and fielding questions from the public and doing some education. So they brought that program to Texas, and in fact, In 1979, it was the first

class. I think they actually kind of had a preliminary one in '78, but in '79 they hosted the first class and established the first Master Gardener volunteer program in the state of Texas. And so we're basically this year celebrating 40 years of being the first and one of the biggest and best in Texas. as far as a Master Gardener volunteer person.

This is important in Texas. You want to be the best.

Yes, darn right.

Yeah. So is this a program that exists in other states as well?

Yes, it does. In fact, Arizona has a Master Gardener program. California has their own. So it's a nationwide program. In fact, it's international.

Okay. I was going to ask, do you all interact in any sort of way?

Yes, they actually do have international Master Gardener conferences and as well as national Master Gardener conferences that our volunteers can attend. And a lot of times as Extension agents, we have our own associations as well that are national, that we get to interact with people who also manage the volunteer programs, or, you know, we interact with them all the time as far as what they're doing and stuff.

But Texas is still the best.

Yes.

Okay, sorry.

And biggest.

And biggest.

That's right.

Well, so I hear this term Master Gardener, But I have no idea what that means. Can one of you give me some information just about what a Master Gardener is, and on maybe an extension of that, what do you do here?

I think that's important because Linda was scolding me earlier for not being one.

Yes, well, you said you kill a lot of plants, and that's exactly why I became a Master Gardener, so I would stop killing plants.

My wife's really good at that as well. I tell people all the time, if you want a plant to die, just give it to my wife, and it will die quickly. She knows that about herself.

Survival of the fittest.

Yeah, exactly right, exactly right. So yeah, tell us, what does a Master Gardener do, and what does it take to become a Master Gardener?

Well, you have to go through a program here. You have 2 months, usually it's a 2-month period where we have lectures twice a week, and it's all day, 9 until 4 in the afternoon.

Wow.

And we get professors from A&M to come and teach some of the classes. I teach one of the classes. Some of the other Extension agents teach the classes. So Michael puts all of this together, the schedule together, and the Master Gardeners, we call them interns, come and attend class all day, and once they've gone through that period, Then they do their volunteer work, and they have to put in 60 hours of volunteer service to be certified.

Wow.

And they have to spend time in the floral gardens. They have to spend time in the vegetable gardens. They can't just pick a garden and say, well, I don't like any of the others. I want to just stay here.

No. It's a well-rounded program.

It is. It is. And then after that 60-hour period, they can do more, of course, but 60 is the minimum that they're required, and then once they're certified as a Master Gardener, they have to do— we as Master Gardeners have to do 6 hours of continuing education each year plus 30 hours of volunteer service.

Okay, wow.

So does all the continuing education stuff typically happen here?

It can, but it can be other places too, like our state conference has programs that count.

If somebody goes to the national conference, sometimes they'll be hosting speakers at some of the other garden areas, you know, one of the other nurseries or something like that where they host a whole bunch of speakers. They can get hours that way down in The Woodlands as well.

And online. Yeah, there's some programs online they can get their continuing education.

Okay, awesome. And so when I become a Master Gardener, do I get a badge?

Yes, you do, with your name on it.

And what about these? I saw these people with the blue jackets. Is that—

Oh yes, you have to buy a blue jacket. You have to, okay. It's required.

Especially for mornings like today.

We have more than one way to part you from your money.

That's good.

Plants being one of them.

Yeah, absolutely.

A dead plant's barely an opportunity.

Linda, I've known you for 10 minutes, and you strike me as not just a master gardener, but a master hazer. I get the sense that—

I was enjoying that story about your mother. Yes.

That's fantastic.

That's one of the reasons why I have her assist me with our presentation when we go or do our plant sale pretty soon, because we just banter back and forth and we have a good time with it. So she's, she's always been great.

I get the sense y'all get along.

Oh yeah, we do just fine. That's good. Well, there's— so, um, Michael, if I remember correctly, you told me that the— so, so you tell me it's about 2 months for this program, uh, to go through the class training twice a week. Um, you know, like 8-hour days.

Yes.

And I think you told me it's, it's roughly 80 hours of classwork and then another 60. So we're bumping up on 140 50 hours to become a certified Master Gardener.

Yeah, and we start basically from general botany, and we move into, I mean, composting, worm composting, natural products and everything that can be used, vegetables, turfgrass, I mean, entomology, plant pathology. We have 2 full days of plant pathology that we do alone with one of the retired plant pathologists from A&M. And so it just We try to cover everything that is for our area, so to give our Master Gardeners the knowledge to be able to help address educational needs of the community. And that's the whole thing. When people come in and call in and say, I have a grass problem, our Master Gardeners are there to help as far as answer those questions. You know, hey, this is what it could be and this is how you solve it. And a lot of that, when we offer those recommendations, it's all research-based information.

And I'd like to add one thing. When you're going through the classes, it's like drinking from a fire hose. You get a little bit and a lot goes by.

It's a pretty master's degree.

I sat through those classes 4 years in a row, and I finally felt like I had a little bit of knowledge after 4 years.

Wow.

And I think you mentioned before that you teach a class. Which class do you teach?

Composting.

Composting, okay. And is that something Like, I have a compost pile at home. So like, what is it that most people are missing by making their own compost? Should they be making their own compost?

Sure they should. Yes. I mean, you can read all the books on gardening, you can buy all the fertilizer, but if you don't get the soil right, and it takes organic matter, compost, to do that, you're not gonna have a good garden. So making your own compost is great, but you can never make as much as you need. At least I'm not able to make as much as I need. So I buy compost.

But you also make some yourself as well?

Yes.

Do you use like one of those rollers that's like a giant bingo machine?

No, I don't even recommend those because they stay too wet. And you know how I don't know if you've ever washed tennis shoes and dried them in a dryer, but that's what—

Not because I wanted to.

Yeah, but that's what the compost is like in one of those bingo machine-like things.

Well, because I've heard terms like compost tea, and I assume that's like pretty wet and that's what they're doing.

We make compost tea every week starting in mid-March here and go through about October. And I make the compost tea, And we spray it on our plants. It's good stuff.

I think I'd prefer sweet compost tea as to unsweet compost tea.

Well, we add things like fish emulsion and seaweed.

Yeah, see, I can sense that that would be a lot better for me. Kevin wants all the additives.

But we do use molasses to make the tea.

Oh, there you go. All right.

There you go. See, that's a true Texan over here.

That's right.

Gotta have the sweet tea.

That's exactly right. Well, so there's a lot of volunteers here today, and there's a lot of investment that you put into becoming a Master Gardener. So what, I mean, beyond working here and volunteering here at the research center, what types of things are Master Gardeners out there doing? I mean, do you see most of these people just really doing it because they want their home to be a certain or are they using this as a business practice? What do you really see people doing with this?

There are a lot of other things that people use this Master Gardener— we're not supposed to use it for commercial purposes. That's against the rules, I'll say.

Can't put it on the resume, huh?

No, you can't. You can't put a sign up in a nursery saying you're a Master Gardener, but we do have a lot of people who run nurseries or, you know, landscapers and so forth take our class. We have Master Gardeners that really go into the community with it and grow vegetables in a community garden for a food pantry, things like that.

Presentation, we have a speakers bureau that gets out. I think this last year they spoke to over 800 and some odd individuals. Various civic groups and everything will call in and ask for a presenter on bluebirds or or composting or whatever it may be. And then we have a speakers bureau that handles those requests. So it's just to provide that good research-based information back to those people.

Yeah, and there are classes that you offer here as well for just the public to come and sit in on as well. Is that accurate? And how much do those cost?

They are, we have 2 on, it's typically the second Saturday of the month. I think in fact March 9th coming up, we do have some classes. And forgive me, they just went out of my head somewhere, and I think they're flying around with the rest of the birds. But we do have 2 classes typically.

Vegetable gardening.

And it is vegetable gardening.

Yes, it is.

Okay, thank you. See, that's why I keep her around. That's why she keeps me around, so she can make me look bad. All right, so 8 to 10 is one class, okay, and then 10:30 to 12:30 is the other, and it's $5 per class or $8 for both.

Okay.

So then that's kind of how we do that. And it's— we prefer that people just bring cash because it's just easier for our organization to handle cash. But it's, it's very good as far as, you know, it's good information to help those people further their vegetable gardening. A lot of times they have problems and they're just not sure where it comes from. And then that's why we design them. In fact, we have an outreach education committee that we start in like February or March planning for the next year. And we try to do as many as we can once a month as far as classes, just, just so we can offer that to the public. And we

try to do it at a good time too.

Sure.

You know, I think I mentioned to you earlier about, you know, I always do a fruit and nut tree class, you know, somewhere around January, right before our plant sale, conveniently so. But also to let people know that there's a right time to do things and a wrong time. And the same thing when I do turf grass in February is trying to get ahead of all those people wanting to put out, you know, pre-emergents and everything and fertilizer and then, you know, whatever else. There's a right time to do things.

Yeah. I really liked earlier when you scolded Kevin about the stuff he's putting on his lawn.

So yeah, we'll see. And that's—

We have to talk about that a little more too.

Yeah, no, that's— but that's the point, right? Is like, I mean, I, I was doing what I thought I should be doing.

Um, was he doing weed and feed?

He was.

Yeah.

See, look at this.

Linda doesn't like you now either.

No, see, but But, but here's the problem with this. Okay? People are ignorant about this.

Mm-hmm.

And it's probably not because they wanna be ignorant. Right. They just don't know where to get the information. And honestly, I mean, I've got an app on my phone that supposedly tells me when I'm supposed to put this stuff out.

Right.

And there's a window of time that, that I put out this specific triple action stuff. That's supposed to kill all those clover and dollar weed stuff that I hate in my yard right now that's just coming up like crazy. And so I look at it now and those things are dying off and I'm thinking, hey, it did pretty good.

Well, and some of those products do work effectively. It's a lot of times, in fact, our job in Extension is to really tell people to make sure you read that label because there's some of those active ingredients in there that they say don't put next to oak trees. Make sure they're not within the root system of the oak tree or whatever tree. I made the mistake many years ago having a little bit of weed and feed or something like that that somebody gave me. And I was doing some yard work and I didn't think about it. And I had a little about half of a cup or something like that. And I threw it over on a plumbago and went, oh, that's going to haunt me. And

sure enough, next time it rained, that sucker would die. And then, you know, and stuff like that. And it's— and that happens on a much larger scale sometimes that you got to be real careful about how you do things. And we're always trying to tell people, you know, Read the labels. Yeah. And that's very important.

Yeah, I think we actually talked about that recently on our fire episode. We're like, how to store chemicals and different things like that. Read the labels on these things. It'll tell you what not to put it with, where not to put it, where to apply it, right, how to mix them and all that. Yeah, it's a big bugaboo of mine.

Yeah, even in the commercial industry, you know, a lot of times we get people, you know, say, hey, you know, I've got roaches in my house, how do I treat it? Well, you know, we have publications for that. We have stuff, you know, that's listed that homeowners can do. And of course, some of those are just You know, make sure things are clean. You know, some of those are, you know, don't, you know, indoor plants. I got a lot of gnats. Well, you know, make sure your plants are not soaking wet, you know, to the point where they're growing the fungus gnats and stuff like that.

So we probably should have mentioned this earlier, but you probably have a lot of this stuff available online too.

Yes. Yeah, the AgriLife bookstore is one. aggiehorticulture.tamu.edu is the general horticulture website for the entire state. We also have the Master Gardener website, the mcmga.com. There's a place on there that you can sign up to receive basically email blasts or anything that we send out through there, like, oh, upcoming plant sale, educational classes, or sometimes it's even articles on, you know, how to treat your camellias or whatever it may be. There's stuff that you can receive information from there and get from that website. And then of course, our Montgomery County Extension website.

Yeah, Kevin will link all those pages up in the show notes for sure. We wanna make sure people have access to those pages. I mean, that's how I found you guys.

And a lot of people don't know too, they can call. We have Master Gardeners that man the phone room, our help desk, basically, 5 days a week, 8 to 12 and 1 to 5. And we have basically 4 Master Gardeners a day that come in and help answer questions from the public.

Now, I was walking around the offices over there a minute. Is that the room that has like the library in it?

Yes, exactly.

So like if they don't know the answer, they pull it off the shelf and, I mean, that was a very well-organized room.

Right, or you just have the library that's in there that works on a Friday sometimes.

You know, that, that's, that's just really important because, you know, I've got a, uh, I got a magnolia tree in my, in my yard that's dying and it's probably because I did something stupid. Right. And so like weed and feed. Exactly. Exactly. That's, that's exactly what I'm talking about. And so I, you know, again, these are, these are things that I think a lot of people are just, you know, unfamiliar with.

Right.

And they're doing the best they can. Mm-hmm. They see, they see, you know, a warm day and they're like, oh, it's time to go to Lowe's. I'm just gonna buy all the stuff and then I'm gonna put it all out. And, and that's probably not the smartest thing to do.

We used to have a weatherman in South Texas that would go tell everybody it's time to fertilize. We're getting a rain this week. It's time to fertilize. And if you know anything about South Texas, we don't get just an inch rain. It's typically 5 to 8 inches at one time.

Oh yeah.

So, you know, those, those things like that and that kind of misinformation, you gotta be careful with.

Since we're on the subject of using chemicals, I'd like to say one thing. When I was in the Master Gardener class in 1996, I had never really used any chemicals, but I listened to all these professors come and say, well, if you've got this disease on your plant, you use this chemical. If you've got that disease, you use that chemical. And I thought, oh, that makes sense. I used to be a microbiology med tech, and if you've got strep, you give them penicillin.

Right.

So that fit right in with my head. into my mindset, so I started using chemicals to control some things, but I soon learned that you really can't control nature. Pretty soon, I noticed I had no frogs in my yard anymore. I had none of the little green anoles in my yard anymore, and I thought— and all this time I'd been reading Organic Gardening magazine, but I just thought that was a bunch of hippies in Pennsylvania. What do they know about the bugs in Texas?

Right.

But I decided to put the chemicals on the shelf and go totally organic, which I try to do unless I get nutsedge in my yard, and then I fall off the wagon and use Sedge Hammer. But I don't use chemicals anymore, and it took almost 3 years to get my yard back into balance. And I found that using compost and some organic methods works a lot better for me.

A lot of times it's prevention. There's a lot of things you can do if you know What's coming up. And, you know, we know that we get large patch during the fall. You know, if you're watering too close to that time frame, or if we get rain, because Mother Nature can do that, but if it's a point in time where it's dry, you just reduce your watering.

Mm-hmm.

And, you know, and there's things like, okay, I always get it in this spot. You know, you add sandy loam, or you add something for drainage, or maybe even do some type of of core aeration or something in the lawn so it will stay drier. So there's a lot of kind of things, and it falls along the lines of what we teach our Master Gardeners is integrated pest management. You know, you're using lots of different strategies, you know, and you want to choose— I mean, according to integrated pest management, you want to choose the least toxic first, and then you move on. I mean, I once had a lady ask me how to control scorpions in her house

organically. And we came up with the Aggie method with a sticky trap, but it worked. But there's times to choose things. And basically, chemicals are a tool in your tool belt, and it's depending on how— if you're willing to use them or not. And some people aren't, and that's perfectly fine.

Some people may not know what you mean by large patch. It used to be called brown patch. And one of the things that really makes it rear its ugly head, not only moisture, but it's really high nitrogen fertilizers. So if you cut back on or use an organic fertilizer, which is absorbed much more slowly, you can keep that large patch in check.

That's exactly right.

And I think I remember hearing or reading something recently about testing the acidity in the soil when you're dealing with brown patch and some other diseases in the grass. I mean, how do you test for things like that? Is that something you guys do?

Texas A&M, the Extension Service out of College Station. We have a soil laboratory that you can actually get the sample bag and the form from our office, or you can actually download it from soiltesting.tamu.edu. And it's like, for homeowners, it'd be urban soil testing.

Right.

And you— it tells you how to collect the sample, which is basically taking slivers of soil throughout the whole yard, mixing it in a bucket, putting it in this bag or a quart Ziploc bag, and sending it off to the laboratory. And with Within about a week, they send you results. In fact, I've got 4 or 5 sitting on my desk.

Oh, wow.

Where it tells you, you know, here, this is how much nitrogen you need for the lawn, or if it's a vegetable garden or floral garden, they break it down in that way. But, you know, it tells you what your pH is.

Right.

So therefore, and it'll tell you how to adjust your pH depending on what it is. If it's a lawn and you're highly susceptible to a lot of fungal issues, you're basically you're basically in that 6.8 and above pH range. So, and the higher up you go, the more susceptible it can be. So, there's recommendations for maybe adding sulfur or acidifying that soil in some way to drop it down below that so it's less susceptible. So, that's one of the ways you do it is do it through a soil test, and it's about $12 for a general soil test.

Or if you're trying to grow a certain plant like blueberries, they require acid soil.

A lot of acid, yeah.

And so, you'll need to adjust your pH.

No, I actually have some blueberries and somebody recommended putting coffee grounds in my soil because it could help raise the acidity level. I don't know if that's true or not. Somebody told me that.

Sphagnum peat moss would be better.

But they make good blueberries.

That's good.

Yeah.

You got an acid soil.

Yeah. And you mentioned fungus a second ago, and I'm gonna go down this trail a little bit just because I'm curious. Do you guys do anything with mushrooms or raising fungi or, you know, I mean, like edible mushrooms, obviously. I'm not—

I haven't done that since college. That was— no, but that wasn't the bad stuff. We actually— I had a microbiology class where we did grow— we grew out some like oyster mushrooms and things like that, but we don't offer anything here. It can be— there's too much out there. You have to be very specific as far as—

Some of our Master Gardeners are interested in growing strange things. We have one, he's an organic gardener, and I just—

That statement should have no clarification. That's a good conversation right there.

Just let it hang.

And he has a booth at a farmer's market somewhere. Anyway, through a mutual friend, I am now eating sunflower sprouts and wood sorrel in my salad grown by Ed.

Oh, wow.

Wow.

But I don't know if he grows mushrooms.

Yeah, he sounds like the guy.

Yes, he does.

So what does that taste like? I mean, sunflower sprouts and you said sorrel?

Mm-hmm, wood sorrel.

What is a sorrel?

Wood sorrel's a weed.

Basically, it is a weed, but it's an edible weed. I mean, you talked about dollar weed. Mm-hmm, that's edible. It's edible.

I wish something would eat mine.

Put it in your salad. Doesn't have a distinctive taste to me.

Okay. What are the— is there like a health benefit to it?

Yes, it's supposed to have a lot of antioxidants in it.

Interesting.

Well, so, and you guys, obviously, I mean, one of the big reasons you guys are here is to help educate the public. And so you probably have a lot of new gardeners come through, maybe some people that have had gardens for a while or maybe not as successful. What are like 2 or 3 of the things that you guys see with folks that come in that they're struggling the most with?

We see a ton of turf problems, turfgrass problems, homeowner turf that's just It's a constant thing.

Yeah.

And a lot of time has to do with, and I always use the term, loving your lawn to death. We tend to take it a little too extreme and do too many things to it, which increase the fungal issues, which increase the root dieback and things like that nature, or thinning out. That's probably one of the, I guess, the most predominant questions that we see across the board.

Well, another thing is we have people moving to Texas from places like New Jersey, and they're trying to apply gardening practices that work in New Jersey, and they don't work here. You have to take your brain out, flip it 180, and then you can garden in Texas.

Yeah, so one question I've got akin to that is, do you feel like people overwater their lawns?

Absolutely.

I mean, the reason I ask this question is this. So We, we have an irrigation system at my house.

Learn where the off button is.

Yeah, because, because here's the thing, I just, you know, in my head, my lawn needs water in order to grow, right? And it's hot outside, and therefore, right, it's gonna dry out, all these things. So for a long time, I was, you know, just 3 days a week, you know, however long a day, watering my lawn. And then I bought a smart water, um, uh, what are they called?

Sensor?

Yeah, well, not a sensor, but the, the main hub. Like a controller? Yeah, the controller. The controller, Rachio. And I'm just gonna put that name out there. Okay.

Got it.

So, um, I installed this thing and it was really cool because it, it asked me what kind of grass or plant that I'm watering, and it set up a schedule for me. And I put it on the most smart setting, and it watered literally less than a quarter of the amount that I was watering before. And I found that my lawn looked a lot better than it did before. And so I am— yes, I am putting a plug out there for a smarter system than what most people—

We've got 2 of them that we use here.

Okay, great.

Oh, is it the same brand?

Yep.

Yeah, we've got 2 of them. I've got controls on it where I can pull it open and, you know, operate it from here. They wouldn't let me put— I wanted a water cannon.

Ah, well, I think they need to update their system.

I wanted to put it out there so I could, when y'all are getting hot, you know, during the summer, I could be, you know.

Thanks, Michael.

Well, I think if you did that, what we would need is some outdoor cameras.

Yes.

So that when we did it, we could capture the footage.

Yeah, I can get some teenagers out here to help operate it.

One thing I'd to say about watering lawns is not only do people water too much, but sometimes they don't water long enough. They water 15 minutes every day, which gets the water into the very top of the soil, but where do you want your roots to go? You want them deep, and you're just training that grass, I don't have to put roots out. That fool's gonna give me water every day.

And I did notice that, that it was watering like an hour and a half per zone, which is a lot longer than it was watering before, but it was only doing that like once a week.

Right. In fact, if you, if you really think about it, okay, turfgrass needs 1 inch of water per week. That's during the growing season. These are warm season turfgrasses. Once temperatures get up above 75 degrees, they start to kick in. So they're only growing at that point. It was typically about mid-April Is when we start to see green-up occur, which fertilization shouldn't even take place before then anyway. But water, so 1 inch a week. What is our average rainfall in this area? About 50 inches. Okay.

Is that annually? Is that—

okay, so it's almost 1 inch a week annually. There you go.

So unless there's a hurricane, right?

Yeah, yeah, unless there's a hurricane, you're 50 inches in, you know, 1 week. I don't water my lawn at all. I don't have an irrigation system. Now, do I water it when necessary? Yes, but only to the point where I start to see stress. So, and stress can be visual. If you walk about 20 paces across your lawn and the leaves do not pop back up, Mm-hmm. then you know that your grass is under some water stress because water causes the leaves to pop back up. So I don't water unless necessary. So last year I think I watered twice.

Wow.

Just because it needed it, but I watered very deeply because I want a good established root system. And there's, there's some research that shows, um, they did it in San Antonio through the San Antonio water system where they, they tested all these turf grasses for drought tolerance on different soil depths. And what they discovered is that 60— if you— they simulated a 60 to a 90-day drought 90-day drought was tough on a lot of these turfgrasses. 60-day drought, once irrigation came back on, within about 60 days they were almost all the way back up to 100% coverage.

Wow.

So it shows that dormancy can occur during a drought, which is good for us to know because sometimes I like to, I like to use the term, maybe we should be drinking it rather than wasting it, because technically that water with all the stuff that's in it for us to drink is not really good for the plant.

Yeah.

Right.

So more natural water sources, of course, are better, but occasionally, yeah, we have to supplement, and that's the way I think it should be done, is supplemental only when it comes to irrigation.

And are some people having issues then because maybe they have— they're using practices on the wrong variety?

That could be as well.

'Cause I mean, around here, I mean, I would imagine the number one is like St. Augustine.

Yes, and largely because of the shade amount that we have here because of the trees.

Yeah, but you were taking us around earlier. That's not what you guys are experimenting with, right?

We got some zoysia, we have some Bermuda. Okay, 2 different types. And we're just, you know, looking at some of the different ones that are out there. Emerald, actually the one that's out there in the water testing plot, it's one that's an old standby because what we're really testing is just the watering. Yeah, we got no water, you know, some irrigation above and then some below. And so, of course, with below-ground irrigation, you're delivering right to the root system. You're not getting the evaporation that you would, or, you know, from wind or from the sun or the heat up on the top, on the surface, like you would with a regular irrigation system.

There's some other practices you can do to not have to water your lawn too, and that's to top dress it twice a year with compost. Just a quarter inch to a half inch of compost, because it can hold 20 times its weight in water.

Also reduces fertilization.

Right, it does.

She's getting her plug in for compost again.

I'm telling you, it's the key. It's that magic ingredient. You know, your grandmother used to give her a recipe for whatever she was cooking, but she'd leave out something so yours wouldn't be as good. That's the ingredient, the compost.

That's the one.

I spent 4 days this last week in College Station at a turfgrass ecology and management short course, and they were talking a lot about creating soil problems. And it was real interesting how they were talking about topdressing and, and doing all these kind of things. Things change. Now they're talking about sand capping lawns and things like this, and, and it works for some areas and it works for— doesn't. So you have to be real careful sometimes about what you read. Sometimes you read an article in the paper, like Linda said, from somebody from New York. Yeah, because that's where they got the article from. And, you know, they're talking about something we can't do here or is not a good practice for our soil. So you have to be careful what you read.

And you just used the term I think I know what it means, but sand capping, what is that?

Basically taking sand and top dressing the lawn with it.

And is the idea there that it has better irrigation at that point?

Well, yeah, what it does, it helps as far as permeability of the water, and it also allows it to dry out a lot quicker too, so you don't get the fungal issues.

Yeah.

So.

Well, and since we're talking about water, I mean, one of the coolest things that I've seen on campus since I've been here is y'all's water collection systems. Could you tell us a little bit about that?

Yes, we have roughly Roughly, I think, 16,000 or 18,000 gallons. Is that right? Is that close enough?

Close enough.

Close enough. We got a ton of rainwater harvesting. Just alone on this building, our education building, we have 8,000 gallons of rainwater harvesting that feeds a lot of the irrigation from most of some of the floral area and some of the other areas behind the building, etc.

And they're used to flush our toilets in this building.

That's correct.

Oh, really?

Yes, yes.

Yeah.

It's from these barrels right out front. Wow.

All the toilets, yeah, that uses that.

So do you guys, are you guys attached to any sort of water system?

Yes.

So I imagine your water bill is rather low.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah? So you've got the 2 buildings, you're irrigating the whole, how many acres are we talking about here?

It's about an acre.

The whole place is about an acre?

The whole place is about an acre and a half with all the buildings on it.

So in these water collection systems providing water for the toilets, Water to the buildings, water for the irrigation, watering the plants. So how much does that reduce your water bill for the—

Goodness, that's one of the things I think we want to find out. In fact, we're constantly adding meters to the different areas so we can find out what water usage is.

So, but I mean, it's probably significantly less than what it would be otherwise, right?

I guess you'd have to ask the county what the water bill is. We don't pay the water bill.

Exactly.

But, you know, we do our part as far as reducing that cost.

Okay.

You know, I mean, it's just natural.

Well, and I was surprised earlier when we were walking around and I asked you, is this legal for homeowners to do? And you said, yes, it is. That's incredible.

But some homeowner associations won't allow you to put it so it's visible from the street. I mean, they have all kinds of rules, so you really need to check with them, right? But you notice the design of this building, the big slanted metal Yes, ma'am. That was designed to collect rainwater.

Okay.

That's just smart.

Yeah. And you think you were— how big were the tanks that we were looking at in the back?

The ones here?

2,000 gallons. Yes.

Out there by the— behind the bog?

Okay, that one out there, those are 1,500 each. So there's 3,000 gallons total.

Okay, because I asked you how long it takes to fill those up and you said it was like 15 minutes?

Yeah, 15 minutes in an inch an hour rain. I mean, it'll We have nothing around here. Yeah.

I mean, yeah, and that water will last?

It'll last, it'll last because we—

Because it'll continually fill up?

Yeah, because we constantly get, you know, an adequate amount of rain to fill those puppies back up. Thank goodness. Um, there are— there have been years where we have been dry. Um, we— but we were smart with the fact that what we did is double plumb some of these where we can actually pump city water into those.

Okay.

To get us by because it is part of the irrigation system.

Sure.

And the good part about doing that, once you let water that has been treated sit for a while, a lot of those chlorines and fluorines and everything kind of evaporate out of it.

Okay.

So you can—

In fact, these tanks have a float in them, and so when the water level gets below a certain level, it automatically kicks on.

And I imagine—

Gives us city water.

This will be an important thing for at least people around here. I imagine you guys have measures in place to prevent these from becoming mosquito farms.

Oh yes, that's just making sure they're covered.

Yeah, and one of the other things I just want to mention that we noticed here on your property, and I'll mention this as well, that most of what you do is research, correct?

Yes.

I mean, you're trying to educate yourselves so that then you can educate other people. And so a lot of these Master Gardeners that are here volunteering are taking care of the beds and the areas that that are the research that you're doing. In fact, one of the things that we saw that was really cool is we noticed that you're testing out kiwi, which is not native to Houston, right?

Yeah.

And you don't know yet whether or not it's gonna work.

Nope, we don't.

I immediately volunteered to taste the fruit and make sure it was okay. Don't let him pick them immaturely.

Yeah, and that's if it produces any kiwis.

He's got a reputation. Oh, that's why he needs a Master Gardener. But I also want to mention that y'all keep bees as well, which is a huge part of this whole process, is the idea of making sure everything's pollinated correctly. And we've got an episode that we did a few episodes back specifically about beekeeping. And you said something that I didn't know that was really interesting, is that bees are not native to Houston either.

They're not native to the United States. Well, we have a lot of native bees, but the honeybee is a European variety.

Yeah, they were all brought over to help as far as pollination of, you know, row crops. Cotton was the primary one, you know, back in the early '20s and '30s. And that's before my time too. But I just remember reading some of those old articles about, you know, them bringing truckloads of bees into areas and they They would basically open it up, let them pollinate, load them back up, and move them on to the next place.

It's big business. I mean, there are beekeepers that move their bees, and when there are almond trees in California that need pollinating, the beekeepers move in and charge the almond growers a price for the bee pollination.

That's one of the things I always loved about beekeeping too. We used to have some hives when I was living in Hawaii, and the honey would take on the flavor of whatever's there. And we had all kinds of tropical fruits and everything like that, but you can always tell Well, we had the— when they were close to avocado, it was just a different flavor than you can imagine. It was just unbelievable.

That's interesting. And the fall that's produced— I mean, the honey that's produced in the spring is quite different from the honey that's produced in the fall because the bees are feeding on different things.

Yeah, in the spring you tend to have like a golden honey kind of a color, and then in the fall it's more of like an ambery, richer color going on.

It's just really interesting stuff. And, you know, I want to say, first of all, you know, I know they're— you know, hopefully many of them will be listening to us. But thank you for what you do, because I think it is helping our ecosystem and it's helping people educate themselves about our ecosystem. You know, we hear so much about processed foods and about, you know, ways that we're trying to feed the population that's here on the earth, right? Honestly.

smaller postage stamp.

Yeah.

Yeah. And so there are things that I believe that we can do to help reduce some of those things. And if, you know, if you're, if you're trying to figure out how can I be more healthy with my family, especially if you've got kids, this is a great way to start educating them, give them something to do besides sit in front of a screen and, you know, get outside and work and do some things that are going to produce some real results but are in, in the end going to teach them and help them become, you know, a little bit smarter for whenever they become adults and have kids of their own.

And if they were taught right, they wouldn't prematurely pick cantaloupes.

That's right. Or it just depends on what, you know, he was—

you will never live that down.

No, now the whole world knows.

Cantaloupe man.

My deal was when I was a kid, I hated picking weeds.

Ooh, like that.

No, I didn't want to do it, never did. Then I became a horticulturalist.

There you go, that'll show them.

Well, is there anything else that we haven't touched on that you would really like for us to know?

We need to talk about the plant sale. I mean, like, that's coming up in 3 weeks, right?

March 23rd.

Yeah, and so we've got the— is it the spring plant sale? Is that okay? So we've got the spring plant sale. What kind of plants? So it's open to the public, Right, and what kind of plants should people expect to find at the spring plant sale?

Well, they'll find native plants. They will find vegetables, little seedlings you can plant out. Hopefully, we buy plants that are good for our area. You will not find lilac bushes for sale. They just don't grow here. And so we try to pick plants, but there'll be a lot of perennials, a lot of floral plants for their garden. And you know, a lot of people want People want to buy the plants that already are blooming, that have the flowers on them, but that's not necessarily what you ought to buy. In fact, we don't even sell those to the Master Gardeners. They have to buy the plants without the flowers because the plants with the flowers are for the public.

But there'll be a great variety of plants here.

Okay, great.

We'll have some herbs as well.

Herbs.

Are there citrus trees?

Yes, there will be citrus. We do the bare root trees and the citrus actually in January, but we do the container fruit trees like citrus and avocado in spring too.

Yeah, I want some avocado trees so bad. I may just have to dive off that board and get some this year. I haven't gone that route. I've always gone citrus, done pretty well with citrus. Big blood orange guy, but man, the avocados scare me.

Well, they're a little bit more of a challenge. Yeah.

Well, I didn't— But again, you, you come here to this sale here and you're getting stuff that you know is gonna grow in your yard. And if for some reason it's not doing what you want it to, there are people here that know how to do it.

Yeah.

And they can talk to you, you know, talk you through that and help you know how to be successful at it.

Yeah.

And you know, there's just something, I mean, how cool would it be, Craig, for you if you were to walk around being like, yeah, I made that guacamole from the avocado that came from my yard. I mean, that's a, That's something that is a little prideful to be able to say, I think.

It may not go— they'll probably be a little stiff because I'll take them off the tree a little too early.

Yeah, yeah, probably because you want that guacamole.

I know, I can't wait.

It's all about the guac.

That's right. Is there any new plant or any plant that y'all are really excited about with this sale that, you know, what goes really fast?

The citrus. The citrus goes quite quickly, and avocados as well. Yeah, so we've had those sell out within about 9 minutes.

And the vegetables go quite fast.

Okay, and should they come get the plants and immediately get them in the ground? What's step 2?

Yeah, in fact, most of the citrus, what we tell people to do is wait till after the last freeze because Mother Nature will always mess us up.

She'll throw you a curveball.

Oh, darn right, and it never fails. But, you know, they can plant them, you know, most of the stuff that they can plant when they get home. Just make sure, you know, anything that's kind of tender is protected and stuff to that, but we'll let them know all that information.

You can grow citrus in containers. In fact, I have a Satsuma that I grafted in 1996 when I was an intern. It's still in a pot on my deck and produces Satsuma every year.

Wow, beautiful.

Patio citrus, you can definitely keep a size which is manageable.

Meyer lemon is a good container plant as well as a lime. Limes are very tender, so they should never be put out in the ground.

Mm-hmm.

You know, it's interesting, just a little side note. I've spent some town— some time, excuse me, down in Central America. And, you know, if you, if you want a— a lot of times you'll get a lime down there and you'll say, hey, I want a lime. They don't know what limes are. They think they're lemons. That's exactly right. They think they're lemons. And I'm like, no, a lemon's yellow. And they said, no, lemon's green. And so it's pretty— it's really funny to— in different areas of the world to see What we call things and what, you know, what's available. It's really what's available. They think that's a lemon because that's what's available to them, and we, we think it's something different. Pretty interesting.

I agree. So, well, I think we're coming up on some hard time here, so we—

Yeah, I think so too. Yeah. Hey, thank y'all again for, uh, for your time. We do have 4 questions that we want to ask you guys, and these are questions that we ask all of our guests. They're, they're pretty simple, so just kind of the first thing that comes to mind. We'll let both of you answer these. The Final Four. The Final Four.

You can't not say it. You gotta introduce the segment.

That's right. Yeah, here it is.

It's like eating a cantaloupe too early.

Yes, let's not do that. All right, so here's the first one, and we'll let ladies go first. Okay, what's the must-have tool that you won't leave your house without? And so, um, when you're thinking of—

Is this a gardening tool?

It can be. It can be a gardening tool, or it can be, you know, Can be my lipstick. There you go. Whatever is the must-have tool that you just— if you have to run out, gotta grab one thing, what's the one thing that you want to make sure you have?

Felco pruners.

Oh, okay.

That's very specific. Are you like Kevin, getting some pay on the—

No, no. Felcos are expensive, and a lot of people don't want to spring for them, but you can take them apart. If the blade gets nicked and you need a new blade, you just You just put a new blade on. You don't have to buy a new pair of pruners. They're the Cadillac of pruners. That's my one tool I've gotta have.

Okay, great. All right, what about you?

Pocket knife. I'm a guy. I don't need pruners. I'll just cut it off.

There you go.

Oh, it's a switchblade.

I'm from South Texas. Come on now.

Linda feels threatened.

I can handle him.

Yep, she's got the Cadillac of pruners.

What are you gonna do?

What are you gonna do?

Exactly.

Can you take that knife apart? I didn't think so. All right, okay, uh, good answers. Number 2, the second question: what's a job you've walked away from? Okay, so this may not necessarily be a career, um, as much as just something that, you know, especially— I just think especially what we're talking about today, um, there's something perhaps that maybe you're like, I don't wanna handle that, I don't wanna take care of it, I tried it, I'm failing at it, I gotta call in the big guns, I just needed some help, something like that. So what's a job you've walked away from?

I don't know if it's a job, but I walked away from the chemicals in the garden.

Okay, yeah. That's good to know. I appreciate you saying that because it gives me a little bit of hope that maybe I could do that someday too. And that probably, on some level, Well, you're probably saving money at the end of the day, too. Compost is cheaper than fertilizer.

Yes, it is, in the long run anyway. But there were times I wanted to walk away from being a wife, but I stuck with it.

That's good.

That's good. Oh, wow. That's good stuff. All right, what about you?

Taxes. I just started doing them earlier this week, and I said, you know what? I'm done. I can't do this anymore.

Calling the people.

Yes, it is that magical time of year, isn't it?

I'm with you. I get it. I think that's a good, good answer. Great answer. Okay, a couple left. Number 3, how do you wind down at the end of a long day? So Craig and I are big believers that if you don't— I mean, especially after you've worked a long day, if you don't do something to just kind of, you know, chill out and relax, then at some point it's gonna bottle up, it's gonna come out. So how do you wind down at the end of a long day?

Glass of wine and some dark chocolate.

There you go. There you go. Easy peasy, right?

That's right.

All right.

Fishing.

Fishing.

Okay. Going fishing.

Don't even care if I catch.

You just want to cast.

I got you.

Yeah, I'm good at casting. Not so good.

You got access to do that pretty regular?

Yes, sir.

Yeah, cool. We live by a pretty big lake.

There must be something about horticulturists because Tom LeRoy, the previous horticulturist, was a big fisherman too.

You would think they would be golf, but no.

That's how it is for me.

We've seen enough grass. We don't want to see any more.

Let your work and your play be your play. That's all right.

There you go. There you go. Okay, last one. What are the best pieces of wisdom or advice that you've ever received?

My mother gave it to me.

Okay.

Never marry a mama's boy, and make sure you marry a man that can support you. I took both That's the only advice she ever gave me. So, I took it, man. I said, that must be important.

So, you did it the right way.

I did it the right way.

And you stuck with it.

And I stuck with it.

Even when you wanted not to.

That's right.

So, imagine how much harder it would have been if you hadn't taken the advice. You could have had a mama's boy that didn't support you.

That's— well, not for long.

That's good. All right, Michael, what about you?

Beauty's only skin deep, but ugly is to the bone. Just because it looks good sometimes doesn't mean it is.

Yeah, things are always deeper down to the root, right?

That's exactly right.

And that's a good place to kind of wind this up. Thank you guys so much for, uh, thank y'all for taking the time and doing this with us. It's been a, it's been a learning experience for me, and I'm, I'm just glad to know about this place because, uh, some— you're gonna start getting some calls from me.

Yeah, and hopefully we can come back. I mean, like And if you guys didn't like Kevin, I'll just come.

It's fine.

Yeah, we like Kevin. Look at me.

Please make sure he's not out.

He waits and picks the pants.

Let me come out in the fall.

But I also use the chemicals.

So yeah, we'll work on that, Kevin.

Okay. Okay.

Okay.

Well, uh, well, thank you. Uh, like I said, thanks for, for being part of this.

And, um, appreciate it.

Thank y'all. You know, if, if anybody who's listening today has any questions, we're gonna link all of these things up, uh, in the show notes, the ways to get ahold of them. You can also email us at info@homewonershow.com and we can get those questions answered for you and back to you. Um, also visit our webpage at, uh, homeownershow.com. There's information there. You can download our episodes. You can also see our show notes and those sorts of things as well. And, um, so yeah, we're here every Tuesday. Thanks for joining us and we'll see you next time.

Thank y'all.

See ya.