FM Talk 1065 Podcasts
Plain Living w/Bill Finch 9.22.2024 Hurricane Summer
It's time for Plain Living for Alabama and the Gulf Coast. With nationally recognized nature writer and award-winning horticulture and nature expert, Bill Finch. Bill shares his knowledge of conservation, natural history, and gardening. Let's talk about living and growing in the deep south with your personal garden and nature consultant. Here's Bill Finch on FMTalk1065. Hey welcome back to the Gulf Coast. It's an Alabama Sunday morning. It's a Sunday morning to talk about seasons because they're changing. Those wildflowers are rising up to meet the butterflies, tapping in pastures that aren't heavily mowed all across the state. If you don't see wildflowers in your pastures, you're doing something wrong. It's a beautiful time. It's an interesting season. In North Alabama, I'd call it the season of seer. It's that time when you're bound to get some droughts. That can happen in South Alabama as well. But there's a better name for it in South Alabama and it almost applies all the way up to Huntsville. I would call this, as I have called it for a long time, Hurricane Summer. Hurricane Summer starts about August 15th, ends about October 15th, though maybe things are kind of changing a little bit because we are seeing those hurricanes come a little earlier and sometimes a little later, but this is when they're concentrated and it's still going to be that way I suspect for many decades to come that this is going to be the season of concentration of hurricanes and well boy, do we not like to talk about this kind of thing and it would be good to talk about it even better to talk about it long before hurricane season gets here before hurricane summer comes on us because you need to prepare for it just like you need to prepare for everything else. Just like you need to prepare for all the excess rainfall that we have every year, just like you need to prepare for the heat, just like you need to prepare for those days that it's going to be a little extra cold and some of your plants may not survive and you have to protect them. Hurricane summer should be part of our planning. There is a more compelling reason right now to talk about hurricane summer. It's not yet an investigation. It's not a formal investigation by the hurricane, by the folks at the National Hurricane Center. It's not an invest yet, I think, but every model I've looked at suggests very strongly that there will be a very distinct well put together tropical low that's going to move towards Mobile and the western Florida panhandle sometime mid to late next week. One of our problems is we don't have a lot of time to prepare for those kinds of things when they're coming out of the Caribbean and sometimes they don't get really organized until they hit the middle of the Gulf and then boom. Some of the models are saying that that boom could be significant. We know it will probably be very close to being a category one. If it moves up, I think most of the models are now agreeing on that and it's probably going to move up. So what do we need to do to prepare? Well, there's all the stuff that folks are going to tell you about what to do about your house and what to do about your car and to do all of that. I can't judge that right now because we just don't know. But here's the thing you should always be doing to prepare and I want to remind you of it because it's very important because much of the damage that's going to be done even if this isn't a true hurricane. Even if this is just barely a category one hurricane, if it remains a tropical storm, if it comes across where we are, we're going to see damage. And the damage is going to be mostly from trees falling on houses. And it's huge. It's big all across the state and we're seeing it. It's one of the reasons why insurance rates are going up and the insurers really, I think the insurers sometimes want to be on top of these things and want to be prepared but they really aren't being very smart about this. Maybe because they don't have to be. But they would begin to recognize and if they analyzed it, they would see that a huge percentage of the damage that's done to these from these storms from mobile all the way up to Huntsville is because of trees that are problem trees and trees that we should have recognized would be problem trees. So it's a good time to think about that and I want you to think about that in your yard. One of the things we always think about is how close is that tree to your house? We sometimes think about what kind of tree it is because some trees are much more vulnerable than others because they're much more prone to rot. Water oaks, very prone to rot, laurel oaks, very prone to rot. Probably much worse than a lot of other trees out there and there's a sort of a group of those but it's water oaks and laurel oaks that cause a huge percentage of damage in south Alabama. And sometimes other oaks as you move up in the other part of the state, oak trees, yes indeed do a ton of damage, do a ton of damage. And they do damage because they're big. And because they're prone to rot, the white oak group, it's all, happens, it's good to know that there are 40 species of oaks in Alabama, sorry you live in such a rich place. Sorry you have to think about these things. It's the price of living in an incredibly rich place like Alabama. But there are 40 species of oaks and not all of them have the same problems. White oaks, for example, trees in the white oak group and there are what, 17 of those, let's say, 17 of those white oak species. They tend to not rot as easily as some of the red oaks so they have fewer problems and so we sometimes say, oh well that's safer. Live oak is in that white oak group. And a lot of people feel it's a very safe tree, but it's not a safe tree, it's not a safe tree if the limbs have gotten too big for their britches. And we talk about this a lot, I don't talk about it enough. You got to look up, you got to look at those limbs and say have they gotten too big for their britches. The limbs are enormously almost the same size or close to the same size or even half the same size as the place in the trunk where they emerge. That limb has gotten too big for its britches. It's probably well extended, way out from the tree. And those limbs are going to be very vulnerable and they're going to be very big and if it's a live oak limb, it doesn't take the whole tree going over on your house, it only takes that one limb. So we have to think about those things. What can you do? Do you cut the limb off? No. No. You thin the edges so that there's not so much weight. You thin the tips so that there's not so much weight leveraging on that trunk. And you need good people who know what they're doing to do that. You should be thinking about that. Be thinking about it very carefully. Clean your planting trees and it doesn't take a hurricane, it doesn't. All it takes is one of the normal tropical storms and one of the really strong thunderstorms that we get with 30, 40, 50 mile per hour gusts. Be careful about planting trees too close to your house. I mean I just say step out 50 feet from the house before you decide to plant a tree. There are many reasons for doing that. Be very careful about assuming that trees that were already on your property will survive if you've just built a house there or if you've just built a road because the damage to the roots is probably extensive and those trees are going to be very vulnerable, very vulnerable to falling. Just things you need to think about. It's the trees. Now, let me also say I got to say one more thing. It's the trees that protect us. It's amazing because in a city like Mobile, which is a city of trees, at least the older parts, those trees probably protect the city broadly from a lot more damage. They buffer those winds as they come in. It's amazing how much difference they make in terms of the winds that come in. But individual trees can be a problem and you need to watch that and you need to make sure that they're properly pruned. Look up at the trees around your yard and you take it, make an assessment. Give us a call this morning. Let's talk about them. It's a good time to do it, a good time to think about it. Welcome back to Plain Living for Alabama and the Gulf Coast with Bill Finch. Ask Bill about gardening and nature in your backyard. Call 251-343-0106 on FMTalk1065. Random banjo, I got to figure out what that banjo is. Steve, do you know what that banjo is? We'll figure it out. Catherine sent me a message this morning and I want to get to it real quickly. We're going to talk about trees. We're going to come back and talk a little bit more about trees. We've been talking about hurricanes. We've been talking about what causes damage from hurricanes and what saves us from hurricanes. And trees save us from the worst of hurricanes, in many cases. Now, if you're down below 20 feet, trees aren't going to help a whole lot. But up above 20 feet in elevation, trees help a lot. And it really makes a big difference in terms of the kind of damage done by hurricanes. We're going to talk a little bit more about that this morning and talk about what to look for in your trees because there is a great way to limit the amount of damage that occurs to your house. Just got to think about it. You got to think about it carefully. I have to think about it carefully. We're going to do that this morning. Catherine sent me a picture of a Sasanqua last week. I said, "Catherine, I need a few more pictures." She sent me more of those pictures. So these were two Sasanqua's that got transplanted recently, I think, is what I understand. And one of them looks like it's doing okay and the other one doesn't look like it's doing okay. And there are a couple of things that I would say that hop out at me really quickly. I asked to look at the base for a variety of reasons because sometimes there's a disease that affects the base of a committee is and we need to be aware of that because when open wounds happen that disease can become a problem. But the bigger issue and what happens more often is that kameyas get planted too deep in a world spot, both. And that can happen independently. They get planted in a wet spot that's too wet and/or they can be planted too deep or A and B plus they are both planted too deep and in a wet spot. And when that happens you're going to run into a lot of problems. So they're awful close to the house and I would say that kameyas needs to sit out from the house. No part of the root ball should be closer than three feet to the house, Catherine. So step out three feet, make sure that's the case. Now when I look at the picture of your kameyas, here's what I can see. Here's a branch that's emerging from the dirt. It's a small one but it's emerging from the dirt. Catherine, that one's way too deep. Here's what you should see when you plant a kameyas or a tree or most anything except maybe you could get scape by without doing this with tomatoes. But most woody plants, what you want to see is you want to see the top root. You want to at least be able to see the top of one root flaring out from the base. You want to see the flare of that trunk. You want to see that trunk spread out above the ground. If you're not seeing that, if you don't see the first where the first root is emerging, you just need to see a little bit of it. It's too deep. And so, Catherine, I'm just going to say, I don't think it's hiding there under the mulch. I think it's just too deep. You need to, I think it's probably okay. You're going to be surprised that that root ball has probably not expanded much at all. I think you need this winter, this probably in, say, late October, November as it begins to cool down. I think you need to lift this kameyas and replant it. And when you replant it, step out three feet from the house. Make sure it's not too squishy there. Make sure it's not getting too much runoff there, that it's not pooling there. But whatever you do, plant that kameyas high. It needs, you need to be able to see those roots. And if you've got any dirt sitting on top of the, on top of that flare that I'm talking about at the base of the kameyas, you need to shake or brush that dirt off. And then as always, I say, it's almost like a cork that you can't quite get in the wine bottle. That's how particularly a kameyas and as they should look when you plant them, you do not want, you don't even have to get the top part of the root zone in the soil. You want that to be sitting a little bit, just a little bit above the soil. I don't know what your root ball looks like, but you definitely want to be able to see that flare and you want it to be sitting mounted up if there's any wetness there at all for extended periods. So Catherine, that's what's causing it, I think, and it just looks way too deep. I'm going to, oh, I did bring that picture up and I'm going to call it up one more time just to make sure I'm not making this up. But now I do see the limbs. You can see the branches, Catherine, they're coming out. There's actually branches emerging below the dirt level, even below where the monkey grass is growing. So you need to raise that. It may have sunk, but, and it looks pretty close to the house, even if you, three feet is a minimum for that root ball, and I'm not talking about from the trunk, I'm talking about from the edge of the root ball from that house. If you can pull it out four feet, it would be even better. It's going to be even happier. So pull it out from the house a little bit and let's replant it because it's too deep. Does that help? Good. So we've got, there's the, there's the sassanqua. Let's come back and talk about trees just a minute. And what causes problems in trees? Let's talk about why some trees are more vulnerable than others and why you really have to be able to judge one tree from another. Why it's good to know the difference in trees. This is a wonderful thing about living in the south, is that, you know, if you, if you don't like this, you can move to places like England where, in fact, they have one or two species of oaks. They're native, makes it really easy. Whatever problems those oaks have, everybody has them. There's just not a lot of variety there. Now they bring in trees from other places and they need to think about it, but generally they have fewer problems with tropical storms. Not entirely free of them, believe it or not, but they have fewer problems with these tropical storms, only when they become extra tropical do they, become a problem there. But they have fewer problems, fewer problems in England than we do. And they don't have to think about trees as much and they don't have as many trees to think about. But you live in Alabama, you live on the Gulf Coast, you live in Mississippi, you live in Northwest Florida where tree diversity is very high where there are a lot of different kinds of trees and where there are lots of tropical storms and trees do the damage. So you got to pay attention to your trees. You got to pay attention to your trees. Let's talk about differences in trees real quickly. Some trees have sort of a grow fast, die young philosophy, I'll call it that effectively, that's the way it works. Now if they're in ideal conditions, they may live a little longer, but a yard is not ideal conditions for a lot of reasons. And these trees, these live fast, grow fast, die young trees can be a serious problem. And here's why. They really don't spend a lot of energy on their immune system. And what does a tree's immune system look like? You have an immune system, right? I don't need to explain what that does, it keeps you from getting colds, it keeps colds from getting bad, super bad, produces fevers which help you control infections and sometimes the immune system goes berserk and all those things. But we have an immune system that helps protect us from diseases. Trees have the same thing. Some trees, like some people, have a much better immune system than others and on trees it's usually on a species by species basis. So water oaks, for example, have a very, very poor immune system. You know what a water oak looks like? Ooh boy, you ought to, because it's going to be the sickly tree in your yard, it's going to be the tree that's going to be, that's going to be most likely to have rot and not to have protected that rot and it's one of the trees in which the rot is going to go up and down that tree at a rapid rate. And consequently, it's the tree that is going to be most likely to break off and rot at the base and fall on your house. One of the trees is very likely to happen. Here's another thing about those grow fast, die young trees, the trees that don't have immune systems, they grow very fast. And so you're thinking, gosh, this tree has been here forever. It's fine. It's been here forever. You know, you may have a tree that's 80 years old, 80 feet tall, at 8, 80 years old. It's probably somewhere between 25 and 35 years old. We're going to come back and talk about that here in just a minute. FM Talk 1065 with Plain Living for Alabama and the Gulf Coast. Call 2513430106. Here again is your personal nature expert, Bill Finch. All right, welcome back, Alabama Sunday morning Gulf Coast Sunday morning. Oh, there's this thing floating out there because it's hurricane summer and there's always things floating out there during hurricane summer over the Gulf, over the Caribbean, out over the Atlantic and they, you never know exactly how big a thing they're going to be. You never know exactly where they're going to come ashore, but you know they're going to be floating around out there and you know that there's a reasonable chance that they're going to come ashore and that they're going to do some damage. You don't believe that? Well, let's look at the history. Let's look at the history. And you never, it's hard to predict how many are going to happen any year. It's hard to predict exactly how many of those things are going to happen. Make landfall and how many of them are going to make landfall near you, but the probability is high that if you live on the Gulf Coast for any length of time, you're going to experience one. Tropical Storm Hurricane, it almost doesn't matter and we get a lot of both because tropical storms can do a lot of damage even if they don't reach Hurricane's strength and they do a lot of damage in part because of the trees we have in our yard and it's not that trees are bad. In fact, they're very good and we tend to worry about the wrong trees a lot and we tend to feel safe under the wrong trees a lot and that's what I'm trying to help you with this morning. There's some trees that you should really worry about and you feel free to give me a call. So somebody this morning sent me a message about pecan trees and pecan trees are lovely trees. I love the wood. It's a beautiful wood. I love the pecans like some hickories better actually, but pecans are pretty good. Some hickories are much better actually, but are not so better. But pecans are pretty good and they're nice to have. And if you want pecans a lot of times that you want those pecans to be in reach, you don't want the tree to be super tall, you want the tree to have a wide crown with limbs that are spreading way out. And that means you're going to end up if you want a lot of pecans with trees that are too big for their britches. This is what we talked about. Trees where the limbs are more than half the size of the trunk where they emerge on the trunk. Does that make sense? So you got this big limb, it's half the base of that limb is half the width of the trunk where it emerges. That is a limb that's way too big for its britches and it's going to shear off. And so the way we prune pecan trees and the way pecan trees are prone to grow, particularly if they're open grown, they're going to have these big sprawling limbs and they're going to shear off very readily because pecans don't have very strong wood. Some hickories have strong wood. Pecans don't. They are a member of the soft hickory group, the brittle hickory group. And so when those limbs spread out and they get too big for their britches and they're way away from the trunk, they are going to shear off. You do not want one of those pecans over your house. Oh my goodness, they're you're very vulnerable under those situations. Helps to think about this pecans, water oaks, laurel oaks, they can be a particular problem if they're too close to your house because they're very vulnerable to wind damage. Very vulnerable to wind damage. So you want to think about that. What can you do? I have a very big old pecan trees with large limbs over the last 10 years, about half of them have blown over or just died. Could it help to save, to cut the ends of big limbs? I have learned that their roots are very sensitive to any damage. And they are, they're very, all hickories are sensitive to damage on the roots. So if you're digging, if you're planting your house there in the middle of an orchard of pecans or you're planting your driveway in the middle, it's going to do tremendous damage to those tree roots and they're going to have a tendency to blow over. Even a water line, you may think that's not very big. Well, look at what it does, it cuts off all the roots on that side and those roots are expanding out easily as far as the crown is high, if that makes sense. So if your tree is 50, 60, 70 feet tall, you can figure it's got roots extending probably 50 feet virtually on all sides, easily. And within the first 25 feet of that tree, those roots are going to be very, very important in holding the tree up. You hear what I'm saying? And you see how we kind of ignore that when we're out there, building our houses, building our driveways, building our water systems. And trees like pecans are going to be very vulnerable. So when you have existing pecans, they can be a particular problem if they're around your house. You have to be very careful. Yes, if you were to, yes, if you were to tip prune those pecans, it would help thin those pecans on the end tips. I don't know what you want your pecans for. It makes it a little harder to balance if you're actually trying to get nuts if you do that kind of tip pruning. But get up, you really are going to need a professional arborist if you're going to keep those pecans. And they're going to need to do a good, better work on those trees to keep them upright. And by professional arborist, I mean, we're not talking about a mortician who does great work. In fact, I highly respect the people who have to take out dead trees. And the people who just take out trees altogether, their work is very hard and they do a great job of it. But that's not what you need at this stage. You're trying to keep that tree alive. And that means you need somebody who's really more sensitive to how do I keep this tree healthy while keeping it from breaking apart. That's why you need a certified arborist. We have some who advertise on our show. There are others out there, as those people who advertise on our show would say, but you need to think carefully. You need to think very carefully about how you treat those trees, how they're thinned. And it's going to cost you a bit more money. Now, if the trees are in a place where they're not going to do huge damage when they come crashing down, that's fine. I wouldn't put that much effort into them, honestly, because it's going to be pretty expensive. And pecan makes great grilling wood. Ooh, boy, does it ever. Great grilling wood. Probably the best. Probably the best way to do to grill seafood is on pecan. Just absolutely delicious. Not too powerful. It's about right, a nice, smoky sweetness, just beautiful. Great way to do, well, any meat works great on pecans. Great way to do vegetables on your grill. Just saying. And if you've got a nice big piece of pecan, oh, man, figure out if it doesn't have any nails in it, if it doesn't have somebody who didn't run a fence through it, figure out how to get it cut up because it's beautiful wood. I think it's one of the prettiest woods. It's really pretty. You can have that done if you've got a nice, long piece. That's good. But pecans are very vulnerable. And you need to think about it. Water oaks are very vulnerable because their brittle, laurel oaks are very vulnerable. There are a lot of other trees out there. What do you do about trees close to your house? Well, let's think about this. One, don't plant one too close to the house. If you're going to plant something close to the house, plant a small tree, a tree that doesn't get more than, say, 35, 40 feet tall. There are a lot of them out there. It's a lot of fun to think about. And there are many of them are flowering trees and they're really beautiful. What happens if a 35-foot tree falls on your house? Not much. Might break a gutter. It doesn't do huge damage, right? Smart thing to do. In shade. Well, let's think about how to do that with the roof rather than with a tree. Because the trees are going to be on the Gulf Coast and in much of Alabama, the trees, if they're hanging over your roof, they can create problems. There are ways to build your roof so that you stop that heat from penetrating into your house. Great ways to do it. We can talk about that. Don't do that in the show, but don't try to do that with a tree. Trees can help around your house most when they're on the west and east facing sides of your house because that's where you get a lot of intense sunlight. You want to protect your house from that intense sunlight. That's what's coming in your windows. That's why your house is really heating up. That's going to be the greatest source of heat, probably even greater than your roof if you have a lot of windows in your east and west sides. Small trees work great. Palm trees, let me say this about palm trees. Palm trees will be the last tree surviving a hurricane. They will survive everything, even Katrina. It was amazing to see the palm trees. Live Oaks would have been dug up and pulled inland by the surge. Like piled up on the railroad track. Amazing. I mean, it's not even funny, but it is just bizarre to think these huge live Oaks pulled up and dragged by the surge. How many yards was that? I don't know. A couple hundred yards inland. Amazing. To dug out of the ground. I mean, these were huge. Palms are still there. I don't know how they do it. It's amazing. Well, I kind of understand how they do it, but it is an amazing thing to see how well they survive hurricanes. You can plant those right next to your house. No worry. Not a problem. Not a problem at all. Plant those small trees, plant palm trees. Those are the safe ones. Live Oaks are not safe to plant right around your house. Not within 50 feet of your house if you can avoid it. If you've got live Oaks on the street, that's probably a great thing. We need to plant other trees besides the live Oaks on the streets because we can cause disease problems and we'll lose all the live Oaks. But live Oaks on the street, probably a good thing as long as there's a little bit of space between that tree and your house and as long as the limbs aren't overhanging your house. If you have an old live Oak and the limb is overhanging your house, let me tell you. I have a desk that I sit at on most days. It was made for me by my good friend, George. And we had a beautiful live Oak limb that sheared off. That live Oak limb was the size of most trees that just sheared off in the middle of the day. Perfectly beautiful old tree, great looking tree and the limb just sheared off. And even a high wind crashed. And we said, you know, I made a bench out of it. And then I said, you know, there's a piece, there's a piece that we could make a beautiful desk out of. And we did and it's beautiful and it's a beautiful color and it was a booger. It's really hard to, it's really hard to make anything out of live Oak because it's hard wood and it's all got all kind of burl in it and it's, but it, but George did it and it's beautiful and it's live edged and it's great, beautiful brown color. But that's not why I'm telling you the story. The story is the limb fell off, folks. And every time I look at that desk, I think about that limb falling off in the middle of the day just sheared off and we can talk about why, but you didn't want your house to be under that limb because it, and luckily my house wasn't. Every limb in that yard that I didn't trim, that I didn't remove the stuff on the edges, I had problems with. We're going to come back and talk about that. FM Talk 1065, home for Plain Living for Alabama and the Gulf Coast. Let's talk about living and growing in that deep south with Bill Finch. Call 251-3430106. Hey, let's talk about trees this morning. Pay attention to your trees. This is the time to do it. You don't want to look. You got your head in the sand. Don't look. Don't look now. The fact of the matter is we always need to be looking at our trees. We always need to be looking at the fact that there are tropical storms and hurricanes out in the Gulf and that the high winds that we get with storms throughout the state can do real damage to trees. So we really need to think about those trees. So we're taking some time to do that today. You're going to hear it from me a lot. It's because I just want you to look out the window and I want you to think about your trees right now. I'm not sure you're going to get anything done if this tropical system develops in the Gulf. You know it's going to happen. It's called Hurricane Summer. We even have plants named. If you're an old Gulf Coast veteran, you have things called Hurricane Lilies. You know what Hurricane Lilies are if you're a Gulf Coast veteran and they would emerge during Hurricane season. That's why they're called Hurricane Lilies. We used to be frank about it. We need to be frank about it again. It's out there. It happens. We've got to be prepared for it. You've got to think about your trees. You've got to look out your window. We're going to talk more about it. I'm just telling you, but we got a lot of callers this morning. Catherine Good. I'm glad you got that. Tell me if you have any questions about how to do that. We talked a lot about pecans and what pecans are good for. Let me tell you, they break off a lot, but they have incredible, incredible. The good thing about it, if they're not in a place where they're going to do damage, just use the limbs as they break off because of incredible grilling wood. You might even can advertise and sell your grilling wood because people love it. I mean, it's great. Jim and Georgetown says, "That's all he uses." Then he sends me this beautiful picture of what he's grilling. Jim, that's not fair. He says pecans wood is the only one I use. These are beef cheeks and shanks, the door is hammer. He's got some beautiful pictures here. He sent me another picture which he doesn't have a text with, but I'll get it soon and I'll come back to that. David from around Birmingham says, listening to your show, that's what I'm hearing from people, it's don't worry about if things are shorter, they're not going to see the kind of damage and they're not going to do the kind of damage. Now you get a Bradford pair, gets 35, 40 feet tall, it's going to have limbs everywhere and it doesn't take a big storm to do it. I mean, Bradford pairs are just a mess, they're messy, they're stinky, they're messy. They're not suitable for planning along the Gulf Coast because they're going to break up because they're artificial trees. They've been selected to have artificial branching structure. Pairs aren't much better in general. All other pairs, they all have vulnerable things, but Bradford pairs are really bad and so you know what happens if a Bradford pair falls, you use a wood for grilling because it's not going to do huge damage to your house. As I said, it might pull off a gutter. Be thinking about this, be thinking about this, do not plant a huge tree next to your house. There is no tree that I would feel good about saying, "Planning this tree within 25 feet of your house if it's a large tree." In fact, you really want to keep those large trees about 50 feet away from your house. I don't know how else to say it. Now if you do have a large tree and it's within 50 feet of your house, I had a beautiful old magnolia. It's really cool, it's within 50 feet of the house. You know what I did? It was falling on my neighbor's house like Gracie's, breaking up. Magnolies are actually pretty wind-burnt, but they do get rotted after a time and some of those upper limbs can fall out and these upper limbs can be very damaging. Actually the trunks are pretty stable, they rarely go over, not saying they never do, but rarely. So I had my good friend, Chris Francis, come out and trim it. It was an operation and we've not had any problems with that magnolia tree. Because we reduced the limbs that had gotten too big for their britches, we reduced the areas where there was rot. It did okay, it's doing fine, it's doing fine. Now it may need some more work in a few years, it's the price we pay for living in a place with tropical storms. We think about those things. We think about those things and we try to do right because we live in a place where trees protect us and trees can do severe damage, both. And we have to keep those things in balance. Caught more about it. Ooh, let's see what we got here. Johnny has sent me this beautiful picture reminding me that at 645, the sun sank due east. Sun's rotating for the first time, you know, the sun sinks gradually to the northeast during mid-summer, isn't that bizarre. The sun actually moves north and actually can shine into a north-facing window at times, if you don't have any overhang, during summer, which is bizarre for a few days. And then it begins to move south and it will move south so that only south-facing windows get much sunlight by mid-December, but Johnny's pointing out I think he's right, I haven't looked, but it was kind of that oh, it's that point in which the sun sinks due east and he showed me a picture of that sun sinking down towards the edge of his yard, down on the edge of the road. It was really a beautiful picture. Lots of other issues. So Johnny's talking about to have 21 Dixie hybrid yellow squash that so far are doing well. Peas have produced well and are on second flush of rooms to peas require pollinator insect. I think in general, yes, I think most peas do. And so there's a lot of them out there doing it. And it's probably small bees, could be even serfid flies. I'll have to look to see what all pollinates peas, but yes, because peas can cross very easily, unlike tomatoes, which actually don't require pollinator, most of them don't. They fertilize themselves before anything ever gets there. And so they don't out cross very easily, but peas do out cross. Yeah, so there it is. I'll look up some of those pollinators. I have seen, I certainly have seen some of the smaller bees hitting the peas in my yard. I just haven't done a full survey to figure it out. Let's see. Jim is going to kill you if I don't mention these precipitaries. So we got a couple of questions on persimmons. We'll try to deal with them briefly here. We'll come back and talk a little more. Somebody sent me in a picture of a gumbo, which has several slightly different names. It's a great persimmon. I love it. It's one of my favorites, big old persimmon fruits, really quite tasty. And they can be very productive. It takes them a little bit longer than some other trees to get into steady production. Generally around five years is when you start getting production. On many trees, that's pretty good. With gumbo, you probably will see if it's really happy and healthy, you might see some fruit that third or fourth year. But it's generally going to be the fifth year when you're going to start seeing fruit. And it's going to be a little off those first couple of years. If you get a big year of fruit, which often you do on that fifth year, the sixth year may not be as big. So you want to thin the fruit initially so that it doesn't put too much stress on the tree. Now, this gumbo that I'm seeing the picture of is not entirely healthy. It's not, well, let's say it's not happy. And I think there are probably several reasons for that. I think the soil's probably compacted around it. I think the grass is a little too close. There are several things that I think can be done, and I'm going to come back and talk about that in the next hour because I'm not going to have time to do it all here. But when you've got a fruit tree like that and you just put it out in the middle of the yard and you dig a small hole for it, it may not grow very fast. So what we want to do is we want to clear that grass away from the tree as much as possible. And we're going to come out about three feet from the tree, which that's about the right size for it, maybe four feet, and we're going to start cracking the soil around that. And we're going to talk about how to do that when we come back. And I am not going to forget to talk about Jim and George Toutes, old girl. It's time for plain living for Alabama and the Gulf Coast. With nationally recognized nature writer and award-winning horticulture and nature expert, Bill Finch. Bill shares his knowledge of conservation, natural history, and gardening. Let's talk about living and growing in the deep south with your personal garden and nature consultant. Here's Bill Finch on FM Talk 1065. Yes, so welcome back, Gulf Coast, Sunday morning, Alabama, Sunday morning. I have a lot of votes for pecan wood is one of the best of all the smoking woods. Redford pear is not bad as a smoking wood. I use it. I think apple is really good. We don't get as much apple because we don't have as many apple trees dying around in south Alabama. There's a few more in north Alabama, that's always very good. Some of the other hickories are a little stronger than pecan. So some of the hard hickories I think give a lot. Pretty intense, pretty intense flavor. Unlike pecan, a member of the soft hickory group, I can't tell you whether the other soft hickories have the same flavor. The reason we're talking about why these trees make good grilling wood is we're trying to figure out what to do with pecans when they break up and fall, which they're going to do. It's inevitable along the Gulf Coast, in part because of just the brittleness of pecans. And in part because of the way we grow them, we want those limbs to stretch way, way out because we think it increases production of pecans and probably does. And that means you've got limbs too big for their britches. And then there's that third factor, which is that we get lots of storms. And they're going to break limbs of pecans off. And sometimes you don't even have to have a severe storm to cause those limbs to fall because they're very pecans are pretty prone to rot. So we're talking about trees for your yard. We're thinking about how do you pay attention. And I feel like it's my obligation to remind you in the middle of Hurricane Summer, which we are in the middle of Hurricane Summer, really cool time. I love Hurricane Summer. We're in the middle of Hurricane Summer. And you need to think about, what do I do about the trees in my yard? Will they cause me damage? I, you know, I wish we could talk about trees in other ways. I want to talk about the 40 species of oaks in Alabama. I want to talk about the new oaks we're finding. I want to talk about this really new cool oak that we're looking at that's just bizarre. And you think, gosh, how did we overlook that? It's because we don't really pay attention to trees in Alabama. And we got an oak species that hasn't been named just staring us in the face. I want to talk about the Buckeyes. You know Alabama is the Buckeye state? Sorry folks from Ohio. There are a lot of Buckeyes in Ohio, but Alabama has more species of Buckeyes I think than any other state. And we're probably going to name in you in here soon. Oh, I want to talk about elms. But what really cool trees? And I'm not saying planting elm next to your house. But actually elms do quite well in Alabama. And they don't get Dutch elm disease in any appreciable way in that interesting. That's really important. I'd love to talk about elms. I'd love to talk about maples. Oh, I got a black maple and some of the other hard maples. It's really interesting. We really don't even know how many maples we have in Alabama. We're still trying to sort that out. And some of them are really gorgeous. They're really beautiful trees. Go up and look at the Red Hills that some of the maples there. Monroe County, Choctaw County. Just beautiful maples. Caneca County. Beautiful, beautiful stuff. I want to talk about all those trees. They're really beautiful. Alabama is the center of tree diversity in North America. Can you believe that? You know, people go to the mountains. Oh, one of the other trees. You want to see the trees? Come to Alabama. Alabama is the center of tree diversity in North America. Yes, I am not making that up. Look at the look. Go to the Baudive North America program. Look at their maps for tree diversity. Pretty good measure. Look at that big blue splatch and look at where that big, dark, darkest blue splatch occurs. Right, smack Dave in the middle line. It's the center of oak diversity in North America, isn't that amazing? Greatest concentration of oak species in North America. We need to understand those trees. They protect us. They're really important to us. If we're careless around them, they cause us problems. That's what this show is about. We're having to talk about it because of Hurricane Summer, which we should glorify in many ways. You know, hurricanes are going to be really important to the future of the Gulf. One of the things we're finding, and not just in a bad way, they're beneficial. They've always been beneficial. I just got to say this out loud and I want to think like how many times do I really want to say this out loud, but they play a huge role, not only do they bring rain at a time when we probably wouldn't have rain. These tropical fronts bring rain in during Hurricane Summer. It's the tropical fronts that determine our rain more than anything else. If we don't have some tropical fronts coming in, we can get real severe droughts, and we're having some severe droughts in some places in Alabama, and we're having a lot of rain in other places because the tropical storms hit just right. It's a big source of rain, but here's the other thing. They actually feed the marshes. We think that hurricanes destroy marshes, which are, we consider the protection for our shoreline, or we used to when we understood that, but they actually feed those marshes. They keep them healthy, which protects our shorelines, and they do that by pulling sand up and depositing it in those marshes where they wouldn't get sand otherwise, and that means even as sea level rises, which it's been doing steadily for a long time, and now really rising much faster than the normal rate, oh you don't have to believe me. You didn't have to believe Noah. It's rising, and it's rising much faster, and the marshes help to mitigate that. They help to lessen the impact of those rising sea levels. We're going to need those marshes to grow, and the marshes can grow if they're getting sediment, and it's often the tropical storms and hurricanes that bring in that sediment that covers those marshes that helps them to grow places like Grand Bay. It's survival now, depends on tropical storms hitting at the right time. Grand Bay, beautiful place, gosh I love Grand Bay. I just have vivid memories of Grand Bay, and some of the days I spent out in boat in a little stouter, and just seeing that mist, and not knowing the difference between the sky and the water, you've ever been out on those days, it's almost impossible to tell. What is sky? What is water until you see those little floating islands out there, and you realize, oh I now see the horizon. Ah, incredible, I love Grand Bay, love those islands. But those islands probably won't remain, and much of Grand Bay will be inundated unless we get the hurricanes bringing in that sediment. Really very important, very important, because it doesn't have another source of sediment. Delta's another story, but I suspect Hurricane's play a really important role in Delta diversity as well. They're there, they're gonna happen. They're not all bad, they're not all bad things, but they cause problems around your house, and I want you to look at your trees, I just want you to look at your trees. Jim says pecans fall apart, Jim, do you think I must say that on the air? He's tempting me, pecans do fall apart, and it doesn't take much, we'll just say a good belch, they're very very prone. Let's see, I'll look that up Beth, and we'll see, it looks a little bit like, but I'll look again, and I'll look when we have a break, Beth, and see what we can find out. You get plain talk on plain living. Let's talk about living and growing in that deep self. With Bill Fitch, call 251-3430-106 on FMTalk1065. Alright, so, let's, Beth, let me, let me try to come back to your question. I am looking at this plant more closely, and I keep coming back to Doveweed, now the problem we have with names like Doveweed is at their common names, and I'm, and so there are other plants called Doveweed, and maybe you're looking at those. You don't look at the flowers right now, let's just look at the leaves, and look up a plant called N-U-R-D-A-N-N-I-A, sorry, that's the way we're going to do it, Mardania, Mardania, however you want to say it, Mardania, sort of like, starts like murder, M-U-R-D-A-N-N-I-A, and the second word is Nuda Flora, N-U-D-I-F-L-O-R-A, Mardania, Nuda Flora. You know, when it comes to common names, there's no rules out there, there's no official person out there, there are no common name police, so people get, if they got a cute name, they give it to lots of things, and unfortunately Doveweed is a name that's given to lots of plants, and I think you might have looked at the Croton, but look at Mardania, Nuda Flora, and I think that's what you have, check again, but Mardania, Nuda Flora, Doveweed, and if you just look up, I am looking to make double sure, if you simply call up Mardania, you don't even have to remember the second word, M-U-R-D-A-N-N-I-A, and the word Doveweed, there you go, you're going to see the picture of the plant. Now, don't look at the pretty flowers, you may not see the flowers because you're mowing, look at the vegetation, this is a problem in lots of yards, it's, I will say it tends to happen in the areas that are over watered, so if you have an irrigation system, we need to deal with that, if it's in a wet spot, it's going to be tricky, but keep your St. Augustine mode as high as possible, and that's what most of the websites are going to tell you. St. Augustine should be able to out-compete it in most cases, if you're mowing your St. Augustine too low, you could have problems. Now, no grass is perfect, and nature abhors the idea of lawns that are composed of only one species, so there's always going to be disease issues, and there's going to be holes in your St. Augustine where a variety of weeds like Mardania might take over, and you're going to have to figure out, well, why didn't that work as well, is this all compacted there, but generally St. Augustine will regrow into those areas as long as you keep your mower set as high as possible, but what I can tell you is that you've got Mardania, and you'll find that Mardania is very hard to eliminate, there's no magic potion for it. It's really a mechanical thing, can you shade it out, can you keep it from getting more, the moisture it loves, St. Augustine doesn't love that much moisture, it hates it, can you keep the Mardania from getting the moisture it loves, if you have an irrigation system, you need to think about that, you probably only need to turn it on four or five times a year, so what I tell people with irrigation systems, once that lawn's established, really only four or five times a year, seriously, you need to turn it on for a good long time when you turn it on, and then turn it off, and don't turn it on again for weeks, or you're going to get weeds like Mardania, if you live in a wetland, it's going to be a problem because St. Augustine doesn't like living in a wetland, neither does any other grass, so it's just, we can't fix that, it will always be a little bit of a problem. We got some other interesting information about smoking wood, I really had not thought about using grapes as smoking wood, but yeah, it could be interesting, could be interesting, and I haven't tried it, but one of these days I'll have to try it, it sounds interesting, let's see here, what have we got, there we go, it's threatening to call in, that's a surge, if you're seeing that, it's the lawn's being cut awful low there, I will say that, I also want to address your pines, I think there, jar head, I think those are lob lollipines, it could be slash, but I'm pretty sure it's lob lolli, I can't quite see, because it's the pictures taken from quite a distance, I don't see the hooks, I would see a little bit more of a hook if it were slash, I would say that the trunk would be a little bit more prominently reddish if it were slash, and I would say that I wouldn't see the cones retained like I seem to see if it were slash, so I think those are lob lollipines, those are lob lollipines that I'm seeing there, and they look pretty good, doesn't hurt, it looks like they're a long way from your house, so I don't think they're going to cause huge problems if they do fall, and they don't have an immense crown, but there are a few limbs that are getting a little big for their britches, might be good to have, if you have somebody just tip prunes some of those lower limbs, and some of the, some of the limbs, the crown is shaping up nicely, but there are few limbs right below the crown, oh about three quarters of the way up, and then some other limbs about two thirds of the way up, that look like they could use a little pruning, just to be, just to be safe, just to be safe, and then I, there's another picture you sent me a long time back, that's Privet, you sent this to me back, I just noticed it back, it, the picture didn't come through in time, that was Sunday, June 23rd, that was Privet that you were sawing in those, in those things, and Spurge, by the way that I got there. So Tim and Cypher Shores, I gathered seed from the environmental center and planted Lyatres seed, transplanted this year and planted it at a pot level, however, all the plants seem to fall over, should I plant the little bulbs deeper, like maybe you would have lily, Tim and Cypher Shores. So it's very, it is very interesting. So when you take a wild plant that gets tall, and that's used to living in lean conditions, in a native lonely forest, and you put it in conditions, perfectly happy there, gets everything it needs, and you put it in a lawn where there's lots of fertilizer, and lots of fertilizer run off, and lots of moisture, maybe more moisture than it might have had, next to beds, it gets big and gets top heavy and it falls over. As time goes on, as time goes on Tim, it will probably straighten up, there's really no way to bury the bulbs deeper because they really like to be on the surface. So you can prop them up as they become, as they become a bigger clump, they may hold themselves up a little better, but you definitely want to be careful not to over water them because they don't need it. You want to be careful not to get too much fertilizer around them because they don't need it. You do that, they get big, they get top heavy, and they fall over, they're perfectly happy, they're doing great, but it's not what you wanted, you wanted something that was the wand stood up and that's what happens sometimes. I don't think you can, you can't handle it, you can't handle it by planting the bulbs deeper, there it is. It's just they're getting too much, they're getting too much love, they're getting too much attention, and so they're getting too big for their britches, that happens. We've talked a lot about that. Can you suggest a tree for shade on the west side around house in well-drained soil, a border to hide in your subdivision area and your greaty pond that is very wet except when they dry out? So, oh boy, I hate to see these greaty ponds wrecked, but what I can tell you about a greaty pond is that it's got a hard pan that's gonna make it very difficult for trees to grow there, gonna make it very difficult for trees to grow there, and the trees that grow there are gonna be very shallow rooted. So, just that caution, and probably it may mean you have some compacted soil around the greaty pond that your house is built on as well. Let's think about what you want for shade. Use a small tree for sure around a greaty pond. You do not want to use a tall tree. If you want shade for your house on the west side of the house, it doesn't need to be tall because the sun is lower in the sky. So, where you're gonna get the heat on the west side of your house is through your windows, not so much through the walls, not even as much on the roof. It's gonna be, it's gonna be if you have even moderate roof insulation, the biggest impact of that heat is gonna be through your west-facing windows. And so when you think about blocking the sunlight that comes through your west-facing windows, you realize that's gonna be light that's late in the day, around 2.30 or 3 o'clock and later, it's gonna be light that sunlight that's low. And so, you can use a banana. It works great. You have to plant it right in front of your window, just plant it to the south of the window. Even a large shrub can do it. And they may be more effective than many trees, but if you're gonna plant a tree, oh, I don't know. It's so much fun. There's so many trees to plant, just make sure it's not more than about 30 or 35 feet tall. We'll talk about some of those when we come back. Welcome back to Plain Living for Alabama and the Gulf Coast. Questions on conservation, natural history and gardening. Talk with Bill Finch. Call 251-3430-106 on FM Talk 1065. Amy, Amy's gonna get upset if she, if I implied she was gonna do, she is not gonna do something under a grady pond. I didn't think that. I actually, Amy, I was thinking about how these grady ponds get trapped and they may lose some of their natural hydrology and it gets to be very hard to repair them. I understand what you're doing. So, I apologize for that. I'm just worried that there may be some compacted dense soils. And I wouldn't go with a large tree. I would go with smaller tree. Amy, let's think about it. You know, if you wanted, it's always great to have some nice fruit tree next to your house. A persimmon could be very great. Beautiful. You know, like a yambo persimmon, really nice. That'd be a really nice thing on the west side of your house. It could be really good. You could plant a citrus for that matter. It would take a little longer to get up to size. You could plant a beautiful flowering tree like, oh, I don't know, hailsia. Like, what do we call hailsias now? We call them silver bells. A beautiful silver bell, hailsia diptera. H-A-L-E-S-I-A, D-I-P-T-E-R-A, hailsia diptera. Great plant would be great for shade there, make a great shade tree, grows reasonably fast, beautiful flowers, really nice. And it would be great for the west side of your house. Not going to fall on your house. That's a nice thing about it. If it does, it's not going to do any damage. Hilsia's a great one. You know, tell me what you want. Tell me what you need. Think about what it is I can do. It's not just that I want to plant a tree. I want the tree to do this. I want the tree to shade my west-facing windows. I want fruit from my trees. I want flowers from my trees. What's the most important thing you want from a tree there? And then still don't plant it too close to the house if you plant a tree. If you plant a persimmon, step out 15 feet at least and plant the tree. If you plant a silver bell, step out 20 feet and plant it. They, you know, they're going to get wide. They're going to get, that's all fine. And you might plant a couple of trees. You might plant a little grove of trees there. They could be really cool. And then you can mix the trees. So you could throw in a red Buckeye, which will grow really slow, but it could be really cool. Mixed in with that Hilsia. You can grow fringe trees mixed in, which is going to grow reasonably fast. They're not going to get huge, but they're really nice, really beautiful. What are some other things? Oh, I don't know. There's a whole bunch of them. You grow some hollies. Grow it nice, deciduous holly. It could be really pretty there. Like, oh, like, I don't know, there's a bunch of those red fruited hollies if you can find them. I hope they're still out there. These are things that are going to, you're going to find it mobile botanical gardens. So you may not find them as common, you're not going to find them at Home Depot and Lowe's. You might find them at local nurseries. Your local nurseries may have some ways of getting hold of these trees. Ask them. Ask the folks at Home Depot and they're going to say, oh, it must be on all 15. They ain't going to have a clue. And they're nice folks, but do you think Home Depot tells them? No, they don't have any training for this. And Home Depot doesn't sell these kinds of things. Low down depot, I'm sorry. All right. We have a caller. Your head, you promised you, well, no, let's see. Mark, I got to go to Mark first. I'm sorry. Mark and Daphne is asking about planning Carolina silver bells. I'm listening. Mark, you there? Yes. Bill, you hear me? Yes, sir. Yeah. So you were talking about trees that are good for your yard. And I was kind of searching for a Carolina silver bell myself. And it's been difficult to find. So I didn't know if he had any recommendations other than the local nurseries where I can remember. Yes, so every every tree worthwhile is going to be hard to find now because we basically seeded our nurseries to Home Depot and Lowe's. And they don't really care. So it is getting more difficult. Check with mobile botanical gardens. They should have those trees in. There's no need to buy a really big one, but I can almost guarantee you at the fall plant sale, there will be a silver bell. And I keep saying this. And I really, I don't know how to fix it because we've we've basically said, okay, well, we'll take whatever Home Depot and Lowe's gives us. And that's really trashy stuff. Sorry, it is occasionally you get some good plants there, but you're just it's pure luck. So we've got to figure out how to get the nurseries local nurseries back involved. We've got to figure out we're losing growers because they're all stuck with the Home Depot Lowe's thing. But mobile botanical gardens does a pretty good job of finding those plants and bringing them in. And we're going to need places like mobile botanical gardens to get them in. That's probably the only place. Don't feel bad if it's not a giant tree, because those smaller trees are going to get started much more quickly. They're going to they're going to beat a larger tree. And really I don't recommend planting any tree that's larger than six feet when you buy it. Eight feet's okay, but anything, but you know, even a three foot tree is going to be great. The only problem with a one foot tree is that you might mow over it. Sure. It takes a little longer. But yes. So I did this whole work and reached out to mobile botanical gardens just proactively, I guess a couple weeks ago, and they were not going to have any this this time around for the, I guess the fall plant sale. So I didn't know if there was a kind of all line option. Yeah. So, you know, I'll have to I'll have to look. I would, well, we've lost woodlanders too, haven't we? Let's see if woodlanders is still around. They are still around. Check with woodlanders. Okay. And you should be able to find them. They'll be in small sizes. Let's see if let let me see if they it's they've changed their business a little bit. Woodlanders rare plants. Yeah, just just check to see if woodlanders doesn't have it. I'm trying to think you and I will be looking. I mean, it looks like we're going to have to do that is look look a bit harder for some of these things. Plant delights may have it. Plant delights nursery is is a mail order place that may have it though they tend not to deal with trees as much. Sure. I'll start there and start pecking away. I was just trying to I was looking for the magic the magic law in there for the. Yeah. So I don't know. We but but seriously, gosh, I mean, people who really want things we're really going to have to work. I really I really worry about gardens and even being able to offer advice because we've basically cut our legs out from underneath us by not promoting local growers and local nurseries that grow these kinds of trees and we've just seeded everything to Home Depot and Lowe's. So anybody who's interested and I just I'm not preaching to you. I'm saying to everybody if we really want good plants, we're really going to have to have we're really going to have to assemble ourselves. We're going to have to have a co-op, which is what's a botanical gardens is all about and we're going to have to work with that botanical gardens because that botanical gardens does not get a lot of money. I can tell you. I know for sure. And it struggles every year. So we're going to have to make sure that they have the right leadership to get these kinds of plants. Maybe bellongrath can help too. I would love to see a coalition where bellongrath and mobile botanical gardens can work together to produce these kinds of plants for sales and maybe get them into local nurseries as well. But we're losing growers. We're losing retail sources. So yeah, it's getting tougher. Check out woodlanders. I will be looking to see if there's some online sources as well. It's kind of rare that they don't have them in fall and I'll have to check to see why not. But I'll check on that. Sounds good. Thank you for taking my call. I appreciate it. Thank you, Mark. Sorry. It's hard to find. Jarhead, I'm sorry. Here I am. Tell me what's going on. Well, you identified the weed for me. But I mean, I tried to do what you say and I cut my grass at a pretty high level. But that particular area is in a part of the yard where the St. Augustine is trying to take over and it's growing into Bahaya. And I'm just wondering, is this stuff going to die out during the wintertime? Or is it going to be visible where I can get out there and eat or learn it? Oh, yeah. So there must be a gap. For some reason, there's a gap. So Spurge tends to really like bare soil. It comes in in bare soil and you're mowing pretty high. Five out of eight on the notches. Yeah, that probably is around two and a half to three inches. And even with, I would go ahead and raise that to about four inches, which is probably going to be eight. Okay. So is there a way to kill it other than getting out there and pulling it out with your hand? Well, there's pulling it with your hands works, you could use Roundup, but it's going to kill the grass too. Well, I was actually thinking about doing was using the new Roundup once the winter sits in at this stuff stays green that way. I could more specifically put it on that in which the grass is going to be dead anyway. And then, of course, just new Roundup does not really do anything but kill what's on top of the ground. I do have some glyphosate that you recommend. Hold on, hold on, let's think about it. Because the new Roundup actually, okay, I think I see where you're coming from, but it's not quite the way to think about it. So what you want is the old-fashioned pure glyphosate if you're going to use it. And if it's still green while your lawn is brown, then you can treat this plant. If the Spurge is still green while the lawn is brown, you can use the old-fashioned glyphosate on it. If you use the new glyphosate, the so-called new glyphosate, it's actually got other things in there that are going to be ground active and it's probably going to do a real number on your grass. You don't want to use that. You would only want to use pure Roundup. I don't know that Spurge is going to be green, however. If the Spurge is green while the grass is dormant, you can clearly use Roundup on it, but only use straight glyphosate. Do not use another herbicide mixed with it. So you want to use the old-fashioned Roundup, if you will. You want to use pure glyphosate and just use that. And if the Spurge is green and the grass is truly dormant, then you can use it. And it might not affect the grass if you're sure the grass is dormant and the Spurge is green. I-- Spurge is kind of a warm season. I'll have to think about whether that's going to work. I'm not sure. You're pretty sure that's-- I don't remember the Spurge being that green during winter. Is it green during winter? I don't know. I don't know, Bill. This stuff just came up. Yeah, I don't think it's-- I think it's going to be not green during winter. So we got to come up. We got to take a break first. Let me see if I can come up with another solution for you. Welcome back to Plain Living for Alabama and the Gulf Coast with Bill Finch. Ask Bill about gardening and nature in your backyard. Call 251-343-0106 on FM Talk 1065. Yeah, so Jarhead, the herbicides that are going to-- I think I would try to avoid using herbicide in this case if you've got just a few outbreaks of this. Unless it's covering huge areas of your yard, I'm afraid you might-- it's going to get really expensive and you might do some damage to the lawn. How much Spurge have you got? It's not a big patch, maybe about six foot across, but it seems like it just came up out of nowhere. And I mean this stuff goes like a carpet. Yeah, and it's because there was a-- so Spurge is one of those weeds that will not really take over unless it can see the sun from the ground, unless the dirt can see the sun. So there was a-- there was an opening there. Either the grass got scalp there or there was a problem with the grass not growing well there. And so there was a lot of bare dirt and the spurge seeds which were already in the soil just germinated because it was getting so much sunlight to the soil. So I would control it there if you herbicide it at this point and it's already flowering, you're going-- all those weed seeds are going to fall into the ground again. You see what I'm saying? Yeah, well it is flowering because it's got some little purple flowers all in it. Right, so in a small patch like that it's so easy to-- it's so easy to just go ahead and pull it out and let the hay you take over. Now you need to figure out why there was a bare patch there. I do think you need to raise your lawnmower. I'll just tell you, there is always going to be a problem with grass. I could spend-- there will always be a new question with grass because it's a weird solution to a lot of problems with lawn grasses. Well, now you said that no lawn is perfect and by the pictures that you've seen that I sent you, there's either some dollar weed or a little bit of pony foot in there. There's a couple of pieces of gripe weed here and there which, you know, has been getting less and less because I do cut higher and-- So what is the-- What kind of mower do you have? Zero turn. Zero turn. And so it's not going to go above four inches. So I would raise the mower to the high setting and these mowers are designed for northern yards, I'll just say. And increasingly, we're seeing a few mowers that are introduced for southern yards where we have warm season grasses. But warm season grasses need to be cut high and there's increasing evidence that with things like St. Augustine, even mowing five inches is not a bad thing at all. It's really a good thing. So use your highest setting and I don't think you're going to have a problem with spurge over the long haul. But go ahead and pull that up and I think just raise your lawn mower. If that soil seems a little compacted where the spurge is, if it seems hard to get like a fork in it or a shovel in it, wiggle a fork into it and just pull back and crack it just a little bit, just make a few cracks in it, and that'll allow the Bahaya grass or St. Augustine or whatever you have to quickly take that over again. But go ahead and get it out because it's already going to set seeds and those seeds are going to be there. And so even if you kill the mama plant, if all the conditions are the same, it's going to recede next year. Right. Well, I will try that bill and I will raise that lawn mower height up some more and see what happens. Yeah, yeah, it'll make a big difference. Nothing's perfect. No lawn's perfect, but it'll make a big difference. All right. Well, thanks, Bill. Enjoy your Sunday and we'll talk to you later on. Thanks, your head. All right. Let's see here. All right. If I planted 50 square feet of broom's edge and the cogon, how long would it take to spend about a half acre? You know, it's going to be tough. And here's what I would say, Jim. Gather your, gather your broom's edge seeds. Go ahead and gather them or get your plants, whatever you want to do. Scatter those broom's edge seeds now. Well, go ahead and scatter them now. Kill the cogon grass with a, with round up. Knock that cogon grass back. Or do a treatment where you get the cogon grass. You keep spraying it back. The broom's edge should be there. It should be there ready to come out. The more you kill that cogon grass, the more that broom's edge is going to invade those areas. But get your seeds ready and, and, and let's talk about this a little more next week. It's, that's a complicated question. But there's an answer to it. I just want to make sure that we got a program because I don't, you're going to have to make the gaps where the broom's edge is coming in. Because cogons got it pretty well commanded and it's not letting a lot of sunlight get to the ground. And I could tell you just to mow it and you might be able to mow that into oblivion. But then you're still not going to get the broom's edge back because the broom's edge likes higher mowing levels. So let's think about it. I think you're probably going to have to do a little bit of treatment no matter how you look at it. And I would, I might even do it in strips. I might not try to do the whole thing, but do it in nice broad strips and keep doing it. And I think you might see some success. Let me come back and let's talk about that next week, Jim. We'll, we'll figure it out. Yes, somebody said thanks for the heads up. And the heads up and they sent me a picture of tropical systems moving in. Look, the way things are shaping up, the way things are shaping up, we're probably going to have a serious problem with, with hurricane in the coming week or tropical weather trying to get you to think about those trees. Gosh, I wish we had more time. The person who had the persimmon, I wanted to come back to that. Look, do your best to get rid of the grass around that persimmon. Step out about three feet away from the persimmon, three to four feet away from the persimmon. Take a fork and just crack the soil in a band about two feet wide in a circle, sort of like a donut around that persimmon, out about three feet from the trunk, just make a donut around that. And then mulch the whole area. It looks like the persimmon is struggling because that soil is compacted. I don't know how deep, how far those roots are out from the trunk yet, but if you do that, step out, let's make it three feet from the trunk, crack that soil, crack it. So those roots will have something to go into and a little better drainage. If you don't know what I mean by cracking it, you call me next week and let's talk about it, Wayne. We'll figure it out. If we got room, gosh, I think Morris wants to talk about tomatoes. Steve, I don't think we're going to have time. Morris, can you give me a call back next week to let's talk about your tomatoes? Because it's a little late in the show and you'll get cut off by the music before we get very far. David is sending me a note that we've got, he's going to have a report on his melatonin vine and status for this coming year. What else have I missing? Got CB. We're good. I have not made Jim and Georgetown happy because Jim and Georgetown always ask me the hardest questions. So we're going to talk, we're going to work on that next week because it's a little bit of a trick, get it going from A to B when we're doing about it. I got a note that I have these two oak trees on my property, but I don't know what they are. You could send me pictures of those next week and we can try to sort that out. Folks, be aware of where you are, be thinking about your trees, be thinking about hurricane summer. [Music]