Garden Success with Stephen Brueggerhoff is a call-in gardening show airing each Thursday from noon to 1:00pm on KAMU-FM. Stephen, an extension specialist in horticulture at Texas A&M Agrilife, serves as your garden consultant, answering questions to help you grow a bountiful garden and beautiful landscape in the Brazos Valley. Stephen will give you time-saving tips, guide you to the best plants selections and provide proven pest management strategies including both conventional and organic techniques.
Garden Success — Redbud Roundup, Ground Cover Alternatives, and a Water Conservation Check-In
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.
6 Aug 2026
Garden Success — Galls, Nests, and the Water You’re Not Wasting
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 BV 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).
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
YouTube views
587,138
Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025
Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
4 ratings
Spotify
5.0 / 5
2 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 72 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
83
Social presence
0
YouTube
86
Engagement
68
Contact Garden Success with Skip Richter
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Questions about Garden Success with Skip Richter
Who hosts Garden Success with Skip Richter?
Skip Richter host the show. Published by KAMU Studios.
How often do new episodes come out?
The show publishes weekly, based on its RSS feed.
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The show does not typically feature guests, based on episode analyses.
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