Garden Success with Stephen Brueggerhoff

This week on Garden Success, host Stephen Brueggerhoff answers listener Gary’s question with a complete how-to on transplanting mature roses: why late February to early March (dormant season) beats doing it now, pre-digging the new planting hole, root-pruning around the root ball a week ahead of the move, lifting from the bottom rather than the trunk, and getting a soil test before replanting into nutrient-depleted ground.

The mailbag also brings a memorable identification request — listener Lorraine’s photos of “spiny abominations” turn into a profile of two thorny Texas natives, Texas ebony (Ebenopsis ebano, a nitrogen-fixing legume with fragrant yellow puffball blooms) and retama/palo verde (Parkinsonia aculeata, notable for photosynthesizing through its bark when it drops leaves in drought). Stephen also recaps a busy fair season: three days exhibiting pecans (and cracking them with kids) at the Brazos Valley Fair and Rodeo, where fairgoer Liz asked about reviving underperforming peach trees — covered here with pruning timing (mid-February, once buds show color) and chill-hour basics — plus pecan variety recommendations for East Texas growers.

Looking ahead to November, Stephen runs through what’s ready to plant now: trees (while the cooler, moist soil favors root establishment), spring wildflower seed, hardneck and elephant garlic, and his own experimental first attempt at growing shelling/English peas.

Plus: a reminder about the Trees for Brazos County sapling giveaway and Texas Arbor Day celebration on November 7th, and the ongoing Aggie Horticulture pecan sale at Research Parkway every Friday.

This week on Garden Success, host Stephen Brueggerhoff returns from a field-trip stint at the International Plant Propagators Society’s Southern Region conference in Houston, sharing a quick tour of the region’s botanical treasures (Houston Botanic Garden, Mercer Botanic Gardens, Houston Arboretum) before diving into the real business of fall planting season.

The centerpiece is a practical lesson on sizing trees to their space — why large trees like Texas red oak, Mexican sycamore, and Mexican white oak need roughly 40–50 feet of clearance from a house, while smaller stature picks like redbud and desert willow can go in closer at 15–20 feet, all building toward the upcoming Trees for Brazos County giveaway event (November 7th). Stephen also walks through sowing wildflower seed this October-to-November window: checking whether a “wildflower mix” is actually native, the stratification process some seeds (like Gulf Coast penstemon) need in the refrigerator to break dormancy, and why pretreated bluebonnet seed still won’t hit 100% germination.

A listener email from Terry rounds out the show — her blackberries and muscadine grapes produced heavy foliage but little fruit this year despite fertilizing, and Stephen walks through the two likely culprits: chill-hour mismatches for the specific variety, and pruning timing that may have accidentally removed the floricanes (second-year growth) that actually bear the fruit.

Plus: a full slate of weekend events, including the Brazos Valley Fair and Rodeo (with a Master Gardener pecan exhibit), the Aggie Horticulture pecan sale at Research Parkway, and the Leach Teaching Gardens Fall Festival.

This month’s Ask the Plant Doctor segment brings host Stephen Brueggerhoff together with Hannah Ayala from the Texas Plant Disease Diagnostic Lab for a season-spanning tour of what’s landing on her bench — canker pathogens on roses and conifers, drought-driven root stress masquerading as disease, and viral infections turning up in watermelon and tomato. Hannah walks through proper sample submission (fresh tissue in a dry Ziploc bag, shipped early in the week, never a wet paper towel) and shares the lab’s full rose virus testing panel.

Two listener cases anchor the hour: Kate’s mature bur oak with browning, crunchy leaves turns into a lesson on secondary stress — Hannah and Stephen trace it back to a lush, well-watered lawn effectively drowning the tree’s root system, with a practical how-to on digging and sniff-testing a root sample for rot. A second case, a white oak with marginal leaf cupping and browning, points toward anthracnose, with a broader discussion of fungicide timing (always preventative, ahead of a growing or dormancy period, never after symptoms appear) and Hannah’s own daylily rust story, including its surprising alternate-host lifecycle on plants like gladiolus and cedar.

Callers round out the show: Juliana’s oddly patchy, whitish St. Augustine lawn gets narrowed down to possible salt buildup, nutrient deficiency, or chinch bugs (with a soil test recommended either way), and Elizabeth’s brittle, holey yellow lantana leaves get diagnosed as lace bug damage, with guidance on dormant oil timing and why Texas heat makes horticultural oils risky to apply right now.

Plus: a reminder about the Trees for Brazos County sapling giveaway on November 7th, and that November 19th is the next Ask the Plant Doctor segment.

This week on Garden Success, host Stephen Brueggerhoff works through a stack of listener emails and photos, starting with Walter’s rental-property crape myrtles — planted too close to the foundation and showing a light infestation of crape myrtle bark scale. Stephen walks through why mature size matters before planting any tree (oaks need 40 feet of clearance; crape myrtles vary wildly by variety, from ground-cover types to 75-footers), and the right-time-of-year strategy for treating bark scale: pressure-washing light infestations now, saving systemic treatment for the spring crawler stage.

Listener Georgia, new to the show after Skip Richter retired, asks for replacement tree recommendations after two established oaks (a chinkapin and a Shumard) died at her South College Station home — Stephen runs through cedar elm, Mexican sycamore, and Mexican white oak as alkaline-soil-tolerant alternatives, plus thornless blackberry variety picks (Prime-Ark Freedom and Natchez) for her backyard fruit patch. A separate caller, Ameena, gets a detailed pruning lesson for leggy rosemary bushes — identifying dead wood, why cutting back into old woody growth won’t regenerate, and the “semi-woody tissue” sweet spot for selective pruning (with the same rule applying to lavender), plus a reminder to stop pruning both about six weeks before first frost.

Plus: a full slate of upcoming events, including a free Trees and Tree Planting program at the Mounce library (October 17th), the Texas New Fruit Growers Conference in Rosenberg (October 15–16), the Trees for Brazos County sapling giveaway on November 7th (Texas Arbor Day), and College Station’s Trunk or Treat event at Wolf Pen Creek Park later in October.

This week on Garden Success, host Stephen Brueggerhoff opens with a cabbage comparison trial underway at the Brazos County demonstration garden — heirloom varieties Early Jersey Wakefield and Early Flat Dutch going head-to-head with hybrid Red Ball and the supersized Sapporo Giant — before digging into a listener's sweet potato harvest puzzle.

Listener George, growing sweet potatoes at a Baylor Scott & White community garden, found long healthy vines but small, underdeveloped roots. Stephen walks through the likely culprits one by one: too much nitrogen favoring foliage over root swelling, the benefits of extra phosphorus and potassium (bone meal and muriate of potash get a mention), inconsistent irrigation during root development, and simply digging too early relative to the variety's 90–120 day maturity window — sharing his own at-home sweet potato experience (11 pounds from one slip last year, a less impressive harvest this year) along the way.

From there it's a rundown of what's ready to plant now and what to hold off on — broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage transplants; Swiss chard and leek seed now; carrots and garlic in a couple more weeks once it cools down; and turnips as a surprisingly good, forgiving cover crop. A walk-in visitor's unidentified yard plant turns into a profile of slender fall aster (Symphyotrichum subulatum), a native annual with modest flowers, a dormant seed bank triggered at 75°F soil temps, and control options that boil down mostly to hand-pulling before it goes to seed. Caller Ryan gets practical advice on seeding a backyard wildflower meadow — including the extra care bluebonnet seed needs due to its hard, scarified seed coat.

Plus: upcoming events including the Native Plant Society of Texas Post Oak Chapter meeting tonight at Lick Creek Park, the Texas A&M Horticulture field day rescheduled to October 9th, and a shrub and root ball preparation workshop at Martha's Bloomers (October 2nd).

This week on Garden Success, host Stephen Brueggerhoff tackles the question every Brazos Valley gardener is asking right now: is my browning lawn dead, or just dormant? He walks through the telltale signs — a uniform brown across the whole yard versus irregular patches, whether blades pull free easily from the crown, and checking for green material at the soil line — plus how salt buildup from irrigation water and off-season fertilizer use can compound summer stress on St. Augustine, Bermuda, and zoysia turf.

The practical lawn-recovery checklist runs deep: why now's the time to ease off (or skip) mowing, keeping the deck high, holding off on fertilizer until 4–6 weeks before the average first frost (roughly Thanksgiving for Brazos County, at half the spring rate), the soil-temperature window for pre-emergent herbicides and large patch fungicide treatments, and the classic DIY can-and-dish-soap trick for scouting chinch bugs before reaching for a pesticide.

Stephen also works through a detailed listener email about a newly planted oak in a narrow street-median strip with a thinning canopy — diagnosing likely water stress (too much or too little) in a tight, clay-heavy root zone, ruling out a discontinued irrigation bubbler as the culprit, and identifying a harmless cosmetic "smooth patch" fungal growth on the bark. Plus a fall-garden pick-me-up: Mexican mint marigold as a heat-tolerant, licorice-flavored stand-in for finicky French tarragon.

Plus: upcoming events including the Wings in the Garden pollinator celebration and the Brazos Valley Beekeepers Association's Bee School (both this Saturday, September 26th), and the Native Plant Society of Texas Post Oak Chapter meeting on October 1st.

This month's Ask the Plant Doctor segment brings host Stephen Brueggerhoff back together with Dr. Kevin Ong of the Texas Plant Disease Diagnostic Lab. The two open by tackling one of late summer's most common misdiagnoses: patchy, crispy lawn areas that homeowners assume are disease but are often just hydrophobic dry spots, with practical fixes ranging from soil polymer gels and compost topdressing to core aeration.

Kevin shares a milestone for the lab — recent National Plant Diagnostic Network core accreditation, a rigorous standardization process tracing back to a post-2002 federal effort to protect U.S. agriculture from bioterrorism and emerging pathogens — and gives a tour of Texas's three-lab diagnostic network, including the virus-focused Weslaco lab working with USDA APHIS and Border Patrol. The conversation moves into real quarantine stakes close to home: citrus greening and citrus canker restrictions covering the greater Houston area, and lethal bronzing disease now showing up in palms in Galveston and Harris counties, with insect-vector research still very much unsettled.

Building on last week's caller conversation, Kevin and Stephen dig deeper into distinguishing chili thrips from spider mites on roses (the classic shake-test-over-white-paper trick), why horticultural oils and soap treatments can backfire into sunburn-like leaf damage in Texas heat, and a fascinating detour into biopesticides — including Kevin's own past work with beneficial nematodes and a mystifying case where doubling a biological treatment's rate made it perform worse, not better. Caller Lynn phones in with details on the Brazos Valley Beekeepers Association's daylong Bee School (September 26th). Plus: a genuinely fun tangent on corn smut as a Mexican culinary delicacy, and a reminder that product labels aren't just guidance — they're the law.

Plus: upcoming events including blooming bulbs at the Bryan library (September 19th), Wings in the Garden pollinator event (September 26th), and the next Ask the Plant Doctor segment on October 15th.

This week on Garden Success, host Stephen Brueggerhoff kicks off with an insect he'd never encountered before: the rhodesgrass mealybug (also called rhodesgrass scale), identified through a Texas Plant Disease Diagnostic Lab report on listener Robin's newly-established zoysia grass. Stephen traces the pest's history back to a 1950s introduction to the U.S., the parasitic wasps brought in decades ago to keep it in check, and why a systemic treatment with imidacloprid — rather than the contact insecticide her lawn service used — is the likely path forward.

Caller Catherine calls in with a chili thrips battle on her roses and Belinda's Dream shrub, and gets guidance on light fall pruning, rotating treatments to protect beneficial predator insects, and the Texas Superstar plant program for finding proven, drought-tough performers. That conversation opens into a broader tour of Stephen's own drought-resistant, low-water backyard favorites — Turk's cap, rock rose (pavonia), Mystic Spires salvia, African blue basil, thornless blackberries, and his six-plus-foot Belinda's Dream rose.

Listener Nick, working with an acre in the Wixon Valley area, gets a detailed how-to on establishing a blackberry berm: full sun, a percolation test for drainage, soil pH in the 6.5 range, berm dimensions, row spacing, and variety picks like Prime-Ark 45, Prime-Ark Freedom, and the thorny-but-tasty Kiowa.

Plus: a preview of next Thursday's Ask the Plant Doctor segment, and a reminder about the Texas New Fruit Growers Conference in Rosenberg (October 15–16) and the Wings in the Garden pollinator event (September 26th).

This week on Garden Success, host Stephen Brueggerhoff welcomes a bit of rain to the Brazos Valley and starts with a listener's flower ID request: a photo from Jimbo turns into a deep dive on zinnias, from the common Zinnia elegans (native to Mexico, named after 18th-century German botanist Johann Gottfried Zinn) to the more compact Zinnia haageana and the disease-resistant Profusion series hybrids.

Stephen lays out a full September to-do list for Brazos Valley gardeners: seeding beets, radishes and turnips; transplanting broccoli, brussels sprouts, cauliflower and cabbage (including his own trial of "Sapporo Giant" cabbage at the demonstration garden); light pruning of reblooming roses and leggy basil and thyme; and why it's still too early to fertilize dormant-heading turf. Caller Frances gets container-gardening advice for cool-season crops like radishes, beets, lettuce, spinach and mustard greens, plus tomato variety tips for a fall harvest.

Caller Bill works through a puzzling dead patch of St. Augustine grass under a shade tree — Stephen walks through shade stress, drought stress, chinch bugs versus take-all root rot, and how to submit a sample to the Texas Plant Disease Diagnostic Lab. And a Tyler-area listener named John gets a two-part answer: his red oak's heavy acorn drop is "stress shedding" tied to heat and inconsistent watering (with a bonus explainer on the natural boom-bust cycle called "masting"), while his declining water oak leads into a rundown of how certified arborists assess internal decay, from sounding with a mallet to tomography imaging.

Plus: upcoming events including the Texas New Fruit Growers Conference in Rosenberg (October 15–16) and the family-friendly Wings in the Garden pollinator event (September 26th).

This week on Garden Success, host Stephen Brueggerhoff tackles a mailbag full of late-summer heat casualties, starting with a Master Gardener's bronzing Nellie R. Stevens holly — diagnosed as sun scald from sustained triple-digit temperatures rather than disease, with a side lesson on why this acid-loving holly (ideal soil pH 5.5–6.5) benefits from an actual soil test rather than guesswork.

Two callers write in about oddly similar mysteries: sticky droplets under a crape myrtle turn out to be aphid honeydew (harmless, and not worth spraying a tree too large to treat safely), while a post oak dripping sap on a driveway in Burleson County likely points to woolly aphids — with a fun aside on their beneficial lookalike, the mealybug destroyer. A hibiscus grower gets a rundown on treating a genuine mealybug infestation (insecticidal soap over DIY dish-soap mixes, and why horticultural oils are a summer no-go), and a grass mystery from listener Tom turns into a genuine discovery: a rarely-seen "Lindheimer muhly mealybug," solved with help from AgriLife entomology colleagues, with cutting back the grass mound recommended over chemical treatment.

Stephen also covers current stage-one water restrictions and the BV Water Smart app's cycle-and-soak watering guidance for the ongoing dry stretch, and reminds fall vegetable gardeners it's time to get broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower transplants in the ground.

Plus: upcoming events including blooming bulbs at the Bryan library (September 19th), a Texas A&M Forest Service tree research talk (September 22nd), and the return of the family-friendly Wings in the Garden pollinator event after a several-year hiatus (September 26th).

This month's Ask the Plant Doctor segment brings host Stephen Brueggerhoff together with Hannah Ayala, head diagnostician at the Texas Plant Disease Diagnostic Lab, for a wide-ranging conversation about what's landing on her lab bench this summer. Top of the list: Phytophthora and cotton root rot, both driven less by the pathogen itself than by overwatering-stressed roots — a reminder that fungi in the soil only take hold once a plant is already weakened.

The two dig into plant-parasitic nematodes (microscopic root-feeders identifiable by nodules on pulled-up tomato roots), why no home nematicides exist and cultural controls like solarization and trap crops are the real fix, and a memorably gross tangent on tobacco mosaic virus — including the lab's go-to demonstration of detecting it straight off a cigarette. Hannah also flags a genuine first in her decade of diagnostic work: oak wilt confirmed in a post oak, a species she'd never seen it in before, alongside a growing caseload of Cercospora leaf spot on crape myrtles and a peek at the lab's forthcoming faster molecular testing for oak wilt (cutting turnaround from weeks to about a week).

Along the way: fungicide rotation and FRAC codes to avoid resistance, herbicide misapplication damage, a cautionary tale about a caller who'd been watering only her plants' leaves, and listener cases including JD's crape myrtle leaf spot and a persimmon grower's marginal leaf necrosis and mysterious fruit spotting. Plus a shared soft spot for American beauty berry, and a reminder that the lab (Research Park, Centeq Building) accepts walk-in samples Monday through Friday.

Plus: upcoming events including a tree-pruning workshop at Martha's Bloomers on August 22nd and the family-friendly Wings in the Garden pollinator event on September 26th.

This week on Garden Success, host Stephen Brueggerhoff reports back from the Texas Nursery and Landscape Association's annual trade show in San Antonio with a redbud tree deep-dive: the diminutive "Emerald," the finicky non-transplantable "Carolina Sweetheart," and weeping, variegated varieties like "Golden Falls" and "Ruby Falls" — plus a reminder that the drought-tough "Oklahoma" redbud remains the reliable local pick. He also flags frog fruit's resurgence as a native ground cover after years out of commercial favor.

Water conservation coordinator Jennifer Nations calls in for a timely check-in on the toll a month of near-100-degree, rainless weather is taking on local water systems — from shrinking soil pulling on water pipes to spiking demand — and previews a Healthy Lawns, Healthy Waters workshop in the works for early 2027.

Stephen then runs through a lineup of ground cover alternatives to go-to but aggressive Asiatic jasmine, including purple heart, obedient plant (a rain-garden-friendly pollinator magnet), silver pony foot, and woolly stemodia, with notes on drainage needs and spreading habits for each. Listener mail rounds out the show: Kathy shares success growing red yucca from seed, and Tanya gets practical advice — hand-grubbing plus herbicide painted on freshly cut vines — for a nine-years-in-the-making poison ivy battle creeping in from a drainage ditch.

Plus: upcoming events including fall vegetable gardening and the Brazos County 4-H Club Fair on August 15th, two programs at Martha's Bloomers in Navasota (August 18th and 22nd), and the family-friendly Wings in the Garden pollinator event on September 26th.

This week on Garden Success, host Stephen Brueggerhoff walks through his own late-summer irrigation routine — twice-weekly watering, 15–20 minutes per station, guided by the Be Water Smart app — as a model for conserving water during the Brazos Valley's dry, triple-digit stretch, and shares a fellow gardener's report of possums and squirrels doing the fig-harvesting for her.

Caller John opens a fascinating detour into insect galls on his live oaks — the tiny, non-stinging gall wasps behind those strange growths, why they're a curiosity rather than a health threat, and even their surprising historical use as ink (including, Stephen notes, in the treaties signed at Washington-on-the-Brazos). John also asks about weeping lesions on his water oaks, which Stephen flags as worth a closer look — with pictures headed to the upcoming Ask the Plant Doctor segment.

From the inbox: a new Texas transplant named Jenkwan finds a bird nest in his garden hose holder and learns about the state and federal laws protecting non-game bird nests and eggs; Aubrey asks about a potted prickly pear cactus developing corky growth and a mature crape myrtle that won't bloom, prompting a rundown of light, pruning timing, and fertilization factors behind stubborn crape myrtles; and two different Johns write in about tree-watering habits — one wondering if watering the base of an oak helps the tree (it doesn't — absorption roots extend well past the drip line) and a site-visit with clients Vickie and her husband whose Shumard oak was showing leaf-margin burn traced back to overwatering.

Plus a full slate of upcoming events: a native seed-saving workshop at Lick Creek Park tonight, fall vegetable gardening and the Brazos County 4-H Club Fair on August 15th, and the family-friendly Wings in the Garden pollinator event on September 26th.

This week on Garden Success, host Stephen Brueggerhoff returns from a Texas County Agricultural Agents Association conference in Abilene with a suitcase full of plant inspiration from "cow country." He shares a personal-history detour — from Sam Houston State to the City of Houston Parks Department to a botanical program in Seattle to a full-circle stint at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center — before diving into the drought-tough natives he spotted around the Abilene convention center and on a field trip to the 5,000-acre Rolling Plains Quail Research Ranch.

The plant rundown is a highlight: Turk's cap and its hibiscus-family flower anatomy, hummingbird-magnet autumn sage, pastel-pink rock rose, and three silver-leaved ground covers — silver pony foot (including the cultivated "Silver Falls" selection), woolly stemodia, and their trade-offs around drainage, aggressiveness, and pet-proofing your beds. Mesquite as a street tree turns out to be an Abilene surprise worth talking about too.

Back home, Stephen works through listener correspondence: Alison's struggling redbud tree, diagnosed as a case of oversaturated soil and superficial mycelium rather than disease, and JD's Asian persimmon client dealing with minor marginal leaf necrosis. Along the way: a primer on parthenocarpic (seedless) Asian persimmon varieties, a sugar-light almond fig cake recipe offer, and a reminder to use free tools like Be Water Smart to avoid overwatering Brazos Valley's notoriously clay-heavy soil.

Plus, a full rundown of what's coming up locally: Birding 101 at Lick Creek Park (Aug 1), a hummingbird program at Martha's Bloomers and a native seed-saving seminar at the Gary Halter Nature Center (both Aug 6), and fall vegetable gardening at the Bryan library (Aug 15).

This week on Garden Success, host Stephen Brueggerhoff checks in after a brutal 104°F day, sharing how his container fig trees, in-ground vegetable garden, and irrigation system held up — and offers practical watering wisdom for the sustained summer heat ahead: no more than once (or twice) weekly deep watering, cycle-and-soak techniques, and why a little wilting in the landscape is nothing to panic about.

Then it's back to listener mail. Joel writes in about marginal necrosis on his bald cypress needles, prompting a deep dive into this Texas native's quirky "knees," its surprising flexibility across soil types, and how to rule out spider mites versus simple drought stress on a tree too large to spray. David asks about black spots on his dwarf yaupon, leading to a rundown of Cercospora fungal leaf spot in the holly family and when (rarely) fungicide is worth reaching for. And Richard sends in photos suspecting rose rosette disease — a real and detected threat in the Bryan–College Station area — but Stephen walks through why his roses' red new growth and leaf cupping look more like normal growth and irregular watering than the virus itself.

Caller Karen phones in with a fresh set of raised garden beds and questions about when to start planting vegetables, and gets pointed toward the upcoming Learning at the Library fall vegetable gardening session. Plus: an update on Stephen's own fig harvest (27 pounds and counting), a first sighting of fig rust on the foliage, and reminders about upcoming events — the Brazos County 4-H Club Fair and fall vegetable gardening class on August 15th, and the return of Ask the Plant Doctor on August 20th.

This week on Garden Success, host Stephen Brueggerhoff launches a brand-new monthly segment, Ask the Plant Doctor, with guest Dr. Kevin Ong, director of the Texas Plant Disease Diagnostic Lab and associate department head of Plant Pathology and Microbiology at Texas A&M.

Kevin pulls back the curtain on how the plant clinic actually works — from processing summer's flood of samples (mostly from arborists, landscapers, and commercial growers, with homeowner inquiries routed through county extension offices) to Texas's small network of specialized diagnostic labs, including the High Plains lab in Canyon and the plant virus lab in Weslaco. He and Stephen also dig into the state's larger role in the National Plant Diagnostic Network, a nationwide web of land-grant university labs protecting U.S. agriculture from emerging and exotic pathogens.

The conversation covers real biosecurity stakes: laurel wilt's foothold in Houston, sudden oak death's watery, swimming spores (still not established in Texas — knock on wood), and why bringing home plant cuttings or seeds from a trip abroad is riskier than it looks. Closer to home, Kevin and Stephen trade stories from actual client cases — a live oak in decline traced back to root damage and compacted soil, a squirrel-stripped tree bark mystery, black spot disease plaguing roses across the state, and an update on the multi-state research hunt for rose rosette disease resistance.

Plus: practical guidance on reading fungicide labels and timing treatments correctly, where to find AgriLife's free rose disease fact sheets, and a plug for Stephen's free native-plant landscaping talk this Saturday, July 18th, at the Bryan library.

This week on Garden Success, host Stephen Brueggerhoff sits down with Dr. Jake Mowrer, the newly appointed director of Texas A&M AgriLife Extension's Soil, Water and Forage Testing Laboratory, for a deep dive into everything happening beneath our feet.

Jake shares how he stepped into the lab director role after 11 years as a soil fertility and water resource management professor (and 15 years in Extension work in Georgia before that), and explains why "don't guess, soil test" should be every gardener's and farmer's starting point. The conversation ranges from the philosophy of "soil function" versus the trendy NRCS term "soil health," to Texas's declining rice acreage and Jake's cutting-edge research showing that intermittent flooding can cut rice irrigation water by 25% with zero yield loss — a potential game-changer for water-strapped Texas rice farmers.

Along the way: the surprising size of the soil microbiome, why extension work touches far more of daily life than most people realize, and a candid look at what did and didn't work in Jake's multi-year solarization trials for weed and nematode control (spoiler: mustard-based biofumigation is winning out).

Two callers phone in with real backyard battles: Jennifer wrestles with Bermuda grass overtaking a flower bed and asks about solarizing with plastic, and Rose seeks mulch strategies to keep lawn grass from creeping into her front garden bed. Jake and Stephen offer practical, science-backed advice for both.

Plus: a reminder about next Thursday's new monthly segment, Ask the Plant Doctor, featuring the Texas Plant Disease Diagnostic Laboratory, and a plug for Stephen's free native-plant landscape design talk on July 18th at the Bryan library.

Stephen Brueggerhoff discusses BV Water Smart, upcoming local events, wild grapevine varieties, a leaning oak tree, weed control, Canna Leaf-roller, a preview of next week's guest, and rosemary plants.

Stephen Brueggerhoff discusses the warm weather, future show guests, pollinator week 2026, native grapevines, ornamental purselane, upcoming local events, and beetle damage to a tree.

Stephen Brueggerhoff discusses the recent rains and heat, takeaways from last week's tomato tasting event, tomatoes in depth, cold-hardy citrus, use cases for liquid humic acid, delayed pruning of crape myrtles, upcoming local events, and purselane plant.