BRAD FOWLER CHECKS IN 6/24/26

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Radfowler, your Clemson Extension commercial horticulture agent. You know, proper irrigation is key to keeping things thriving, especially with our unpredictable weather. And speaking of irrigation, a big shout out to Conservative Irrigation. They truly are your sprinkler system caretakers. From the Liz Callaway Show with Nick Summers.

SPEAKER_03 0:21

What's up? Good morning.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

Welcome to the show, Brad Fowler. Uh good morning. That's Dye Radio.

SPEAKER_03 0:30

Yeah. Yeah, we've met we've met. Yeah, that's Quintern.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Yeah, we we knocked him off the uh the mic for a moment. I'm sorry. Brad Fowler, the last time we saw you, you were all uh getting down and dirty at our planting party at the tiny home village.

SPEAKER_02 0:45

Yeah, well, I wasn't actually doing anything. See, I've gotten it. Carmen Carmen was the one actually doing something.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

We bragged about her, and you're right, she's way better than you.

SPEAKER_02 0:53

Exactly. That's what I've been trying to tell people. One day y'all believe me. I'm just faking it till I make it around here.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

But she wouldn't come to the microphone, so that's why that's why you're here.

SPEAKER_02 1:02

Because she was actually working. See, I just like the attention.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

At least you're honest.

SPEAKER_02 1:09

We like your knowledge.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

Honest gardener. All right. So a lot going on with our gardening. Um, you know, whether it's uh grass, sure. Grass issues, uh, what do you see coming up? We had some weird weather, lots of rain, then lots of heat, humidity.

SPEAKER_02 1:24

Right. I think it's just gonna be one of those years where it's kind of feast or famine as far as the the rain is. We're still in the drought though, wouldn't you say?

SPEAKER_03 1:31

Yeah, we are thinking we still need like 18 to 20 inches of rain, something like that.

SPEAKER_02 1:36

We we we need we need a lot. We need like one of those good weeks of just steady soaking rain. Yeah, exactly. So you know, but it is what it is. We'll we'll get through it. But I have started to see some uh fungal issues when we do get some of those some of those rains, especially in the in the lawn. Um so I would just encourage people if if you're having some issues with your lawn, think about using fungicides. I don't I don't often just say, hey, throw out a bunch of chemicals. You know, I think we need to be very selective on how we do that. But fungicides are the one thing that I kind of recommend doing preventatively because that's the way they work. They don't work real well once you have the problem. It's not gonna cure it, it'll help stop it, but they do work really well to prevent it to begin with. And so that's kind of one of those things I would recommend people think about doing preventatively, is the fungicide.

SPEAKER_01 2:29

How do you know when you have a fungi among among you?

SPEAKER_02 2:32

A fungus among us?

unknown 2:33

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 2:34

So normally it will look like some sort of circular yellow patch or brown patch. Yeah, it looks weird. You'll see maybe mushrooms popping up and they will either pop up a lot of times in circles or semicircles.

SPEAKER_01 2:49

Like a bunch of them in one place. Because I think they're weird ones, and they like you go to like pull them out and they just throw all the s spores out.

SPEAKER_02 2:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:58

What are those things? Those red things, they're like really like from another planet.

SPEAKER_02 3:03

There are a whole there's a whole world of different fungi out there.

SPEAKER_01 3:07

And it's it's it's it's kind of an interesting creature.

SPEAKER_02 3:09

Oh, yeah, they are. They are definitely, definitely. It's interesting how they spread with those spores and stuff.

SPEAKER_01 3:13

But uh there's I was like, I try not to breathe them in because I don't know if they're poisonous because some of them are to your dogs and sure, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 3:21

So, you know, we actually can ID a lot of those. I might not personally be able to do it, but some mushrooms and stuff we can send to our lab and have them out. Not necessarily. See, that's the thing. A lot of the time, they're not necessarily hurting anything in and of themselves. It's just the fact that it's it's pres especially in the in the lawn. Signal. It it it's possibly a signal saying, hey, you have a fungus problem. But like a lot of times we'll see uh uh like stinkhorn fungi and slime mold and stuff like that in our mulch, in our hardwood mulch. That's not really hurting anything. It's just it's just kind of an indicator that stuff is breaking down in that uh in that mulch. But it's not really hurting anything.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

You're like the let them live kind of camp.

SPEAKER_02 4:05

Yeah, I mean at the end of the day, if it's messing up your aesthetic, you know, you can get rid of them.

SPEAKER_01 4:10

But nobody wants a fun guy in the mulch.

SPEAKER_02 4:13

Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 4:13

I always I I don't like eating mushrooms, so I've always said I'm a fun guy, but I don't eat them.

SPEAKER_01 4:20

All right, what's the next uh for our grass? Aery to aerate or not to aerate?

SPEAKER_02 4:25

Yeah, so uh I was talking with some folks uh this week about aerating. Um aerating is one of the only things that we can do to try to improve the soil. You know, we all have really bad soil. We've got essentially gumbo clay with a little bit of sand on top, and you know, it can get really, really compacted. Grass doesn't like to grow in that really compacted soil, and so it needs to be aerated. And when I say aerated, it's using one of the machines that is actually you know sticking into the ground and then pulling a plug of soil back out of the ground. Some of the like I've seen people use like spikes on their shoes or like a pitchfork or something. That kind of can work, but it's just very surface. It is, and you have to think about the fact if you're sticking a spike down in the ground, it's compacting on either side of that, it's not relieving any pressure, you're not pulling anything out, and so that is something to consider. I mean, it's better to not.

SPEAKER_01 5:21

When they make all those holes and as a reason why.

SPEAKER_02 5:24

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

So what does that do for our lawn?

SPEAKER_02 5:27

It's just it actually it provides oxygen. The soil and the grassroots and all that stuff, they need oxygen, and it just provides a it provides a better place for those roots to grow. At the end of it, that's the simplest way I can put it is a better place for those roots to grow. Uh, better texture, better porosity, better drainage.

SPEAKER_01 5:46

My problem is I got all that green netting from sod. Does all sod have that? Were they supposed to take that off before they put it down?

SPEAKER_02 5:56

No.

SPEAKER_01 5:56

And what do you do? You gotta pull all this up now. I mean, it's the whole lawn.

SPEAKER_02 6:00

You hope you have a nice thick lawn that you never see that.

SPEAKER_01 6:03

That covers it, yeah. No, I got a lot of netting.

SPEAKER_03 6:06

I've been there where you are, and that's because your pl your grass has died off. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:11

Well, yeah, and the soil is washed away.

SPEAKER_03 6:13

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 6:14

Because probably they should have aerated before they put the sod down.

SPEAKER_02 6:18

Well, yeah, well, there's probably a whole lot of things that might should have been done before the sod was put down. See, the one thing we run into a lot of times is is nothing is done before the grass is put down. Yeah. Really and truly, before any grass is ever put down, we should be putting down three inches of either a really nice compost or a really nice topsoil and then tilling it in. You gotta break up heavily heavily compacted soil. And yeah, it doesn't, it doesn't happen. A lot of times there are some people that are doing it.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

I don't want to, you know, no, that's the right way to do it, obviously, because they slap like a layer of grass on a solid surface. It didn't take, it got washed away.

SPEAKER_02 6:54

It lasts for about a year, maybe two, mostly sandwiches. Yeah, you've bought the house and then you know you move on. So all right.

SPEAKER_01 7:02

We're speaking with Brad Fowler, the uh Clemson Extension Commercial Horticulture Agent. Uh this Grand Strand gardening segment is brought to you by Conservative Irrigation. Speaking of which, what should we be doing with our irrigation?

SPEAKER_02 7:18

What should we be doing with irrigation? It it it is a tough year for the for to decide what to do with irrigation because like I said, we are so feasting famine when it comes to rain. What I tell people all the time, and this is gonna seem really simple and kind of stupid to be honest with you, but if it looks like it needs water, water it. I I mean that's that's honestly the best thing to do. If it's green and it's growing, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:43

You know when it's plush.

SPEAKER_02 7:44

You'll know, yeah, exactly. You know when it like look for your lawn, your lawn, for instance, you know when it needs water because when you walk out there on it, it'll feel kind of crispy. It'll start to turn a little bit of a different color. That's when we should water. So, you know, the irrigation systems are great and and they're very useful, but a lot of times I you know I've talked about this before, we end up just overusing them, you know. Sometimes I think we just like to see them run, you know, and so just water when you need it. The trees and shrubs in your yard, they probably don't need any additional water, they can withstand uh twice as much drought as you would think they would be. The roots are much deeper and you know, they've got a taproot. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 8:24

But the thing is, is if you have a new planting, you really need to baby them. Yeah. And I learned um to put that like um moat.

SPEAKER_02 8:33

Like a mulch ring around it, yeah, yeah. That's very healthy.

SPEAKER_01 8:36

And then stick the hose in there a while and then cover it up with the mulch and uh make sure it's kind of getting right to the roots because things were looking droopy. When the leaves of the little baby trees start to curl under and droop.

SPEAKER_02 8:49

So this is what I'm talking about. You are paying attention to the plants and you are watering it when it needs to be watered.

SPEAKER_01 8:56

But we're we're doing the actual thing that needs the watering. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 9:00

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 9:01

But that really did help a lot, and it helped us save a lot of our plants during that drought, you know? All right, what other topics did you want to bring up?

SPEAKER_02 9:09

So I had a question the other day, and and people may have seen this m more often than they realize, but I had a question the other day about an individual had a pine tree in their yard, and there were small holes in it and what looked like sawdust kind of falling out of it or at the at the base of that pine tree. And so we do get some some boring beetles that will go inside, you know, bore themselves inside of the pine trees, and you will see that sawdust material, you know, at the base or kind of on the side of the tree. And so eventually those things will probably kill that tree. You know, that's just not happening in mine. Exactly. And there's there's not a whole lot you can do about it, to be honest with you, but it's something that I want people to kind of be on the lookout for, and I'm not trying to, you know, don't go out and and freak out and think, you know, all of my pine trees are gonna die. That's that's not the case. It's just something to be aware of if you've got a lot of pine trees in your yard or something. Uh, you know, just always kind of be on the lookout. And it's more so not me telling you to look for it so that you can save that tree, it's more so so that you can be aware, hey, something might be wrong. It may be time to to you know have somebody come in and take down that tree.

SPEAKER_01 10:19

I noticed it it was like uh, you know, one of those woody bushes. A woody bush. And what happened was um one half like one section of it died. And we're like, oh, why did that happen? And then we were like, the next section died, and then I looked at it and I saw these holes right through the whole stem of it.

SPEAKER_02 10:40

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:41

And uh we ended up pulling the whole thing out, and it only affected that one entity.

SPEAKER_02 10:47

Right.

SPEAKER_01 10:48

Uh it didn't spread.

SPEAKER_02 10:49

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:50

But I guess it could.

SPEAKER_02 10:51

Yeah, I mean, and and stuff like that's gonna happen. Some of these these insects that do this are are native insects. I mean, it's not like they're even invasive insects. It just is what it is. It's just something that we should if we're interested in the lawn, and I guess if you're listening to this segment, maybe you are interested in your yard and your landscape, then you should be paying attention. That's the that's the the biggest part of this is paying attention to see what's going on.

SPEAKER_01 11:14

All right, let's check the budget blinds text line to see if we have any rapid fire questions for breakfast.

SPEAKER_03 11:19

We do. We've got a question. Uh please explain what hemlock is. Uh it has little white flowers, and I have been told it's very poisonous. All right.

SPEAKER_01 11:29

I know hemlock is pro is not Romeo and Juliet. Took out Socrates. Yes, right.

SPEAKER_02 11:34

There you go. Yes, so I I'm not an expert on hemlock. I have I have kind of read about it a little bit here and there, but it is poisonous. That's one of those situations where if you think you have something like that, send me a picture or send Carmen a picture, and let's try to make sure, let's try to confirm exactly what that might be. Um, you know, before we try to do anything about it. I'll tell you a quick story. One time I had a lady send me a picture of something, she was holding a vine. Um and I looked at the picture and I was like, man, that's poison ivy. It was obviously too late for her because she was holding it when she sent me the picture. So you know, send a picture, not holding it, and let's try to figure out what it is first.

SPEAKER_03 12:13

Brad, I had poison sumac as a kid. Oh, yeah. I was about 15 years old and oh my gosh, it rotted my arms. I'm surprised I'm not scarred. It was very bad. It can be really bad for you. It was really bad. Um uh will a soil drench system help what does that say? Bores? The boars.

SPEAKER_02 12:34

The insect boars. Yeah. That's a good question. It depends on probably the plant. When it comes to something like a pine tree, I really don't know. That's kind of a little bit out of my realm of expertise. We do have forestry agents that can help with stuff like that. In certain situations, yes, you can drench insecticides that the the plant will take up and it will help to manage them. But once again, let's not do that unless we absolutely have to. You know, okay. Uh uh, what fungicides product would you recommend? So I can't recommend a specific product, but what I will tell people is we have fact sheets on our Home and Garden Information Center websites uh that talk all about fungus and fungicides. Um we have landscape supply stores in the area that can you can go in there and say, hey, I need a fungicide for my lawn, and they will hook you up on all of them.

SPEAKER_03 13:19

And then uh can boxwoods and evergreens be fertilized anytime during the year?

SPEAKER_02 13:24

They can be fertilized anytime during the year, but once again, they still have a main growing season, which is you know uh uh May through August, September. So I'd recommend doing it sometime around mid-May. That's a good time to fertilize most things.

SPEAKER_03 13:38

Okay, and then fairy rings, that's all he wrote.

SPEAKER_02 13:41

Yeah, so fairy rings is uh is another fungal issue that we see in the lawn. Um, and yeah, it it makes very you know circular patterns and stuff. It's kind of crazy looking. Uh, and it you have to use those fungicides to try to prevent that stuff. But with all that, if you are not doing the cultural practices like fertilization, fertilizing properly, watering properly, making sure your soil health is in the right place, you can put all the chemicals out in the world you want to, and it's not gonna do anything.

SPEAKER_01 14:08

You know, it's interesting you should say that because one of the questions on the budget blinds tax line is if you don't have any experience with that, is hiring a professional company that does exactly that a good idea.

SPEAKER_02 14:21

Yes, but you if you are interested in that and you want a high quality lawn, you need to do some research and you need to understand what that company is doing in your lawn. If you don't understand it, then you may have some some unrealistic expectations or not you just you need to look into it as well. And I can help people with that. Yeah, I can help people with that, Carmen can help people with that. We've got fact sheets that tell you everything you should do for every lawn, every lawn grass that we can grow.

SPEAKER_01 14:53

So you can say, Are you gonna do these things?

SPEAKER_02 14:55

Exactly, exactly. And work with that person, not in a confrontation confrontational way, but work with them and say, hey, you know, what kind of fungicides are we doing? How often are we doing it? This is kind of what Clemson says, or this is what whoever says I don't care if it's Clemson, you know. Um so you should look into it a little bit if you're interested in it.

SPEAKER_01 15:11

Yeah, because I mean I have a company and I just let them do what they do.

SPEAKER_02 15:16

Right.

SPEAKER_01 15:17

Um, I'm not a hundred percent happy with my lawn. Sure. So I don't know if they're doing something wrong or neglecting something, or what should be doing something more.

SPEAKER_02 15:26

And that's the thing, they might not be even even be doing anything wrong. We have to understand too that we live in the climate where we are going to have every single possible problem we can have with our lawns and with other stuff in the landscape too. That's just our just that's just where we live. And so you can do everything right and still have issues. And you're not alone. Uh a lot of people are very unhappy with their lawns this year. Yeah. It's been a tough year. Tough spring. We had a tough winter with snow and ice, we had a tough spring with drought. It's just it is what it is.

SPEAKER_01 15:54

All right. Any announcements you want to make before we go?

SPEAKER_02 15:56

Nah, I think I'm good. Uh, this has been really weird. A couple weeks ago, me and Nick actually like didn't cut up or anything. We talked about stuff, and now we've talked about stuff this week too. So I'm not next time I committed, I'm not doing anything serious.

SPEAKER_01 16:09

I know. Usually we're comedy acts.

SPEAKER_02 16:11

Yeah, I know.

SPEAKER_01 16:12

For sure. All right, Brad Fowler, thank you so much. What's your email?

SPEAKER_02 16:16

It is B Fowler, B F O W L E R at Clemson.edu.

SPEAKER_01 16:21

All right, no P in Clemson.

SPEAKER_02 16:24

Just sounds like it.

SPEAKER_01 16:25

Sounds like it. All right, we'll see you next time. Thanks, Brad.

SPEAKER_02 16:27

Thanks, y'all.