July 10, 2014 • 49 mins
There's nothing more boring than watching grass grow, which is why Josh and Chuck aren't asking you to do that. Instead, you can learn about all sorts of neat things about grass - like how America became obsessed with perfect lawns - in this episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to you Stuff you should Know from house Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark, There's Charles t. W Chuck Bryant, and we
were just talking about Canada, so I said to you,
and there's Jerry over there. So this is stuff you
(00:21):
should know. Hello, live from the Bowling Green how Stuff
Works dot com. Mhm, that's what the site's slogan is. Yeah, uh,
are you doing all right? I'm doing great? Watch this, chuck. Yeah,
have you ever seen grass? I have, sir, you won't
(00:43):
find a lot of good grass in my yard. But no,
is it terrible. I've I've seen it before. I don't remember.
It's pretty bad. Well, I mean i'll I will um
bemoan myself all throughout this one. So well you have.
It turns out the traditional American yard, did you know
that peck dirt, maybe a little bit of garden around, um,
(01:06):
and there you go some native grasses. That's the that's tradition.
And it turns out, um, that's the way if you
went to an American house, chuck um, pre Industrial Revolution. Yeah,
pretty much you're going to find that. Like you're just
gonna find peck dirt in the yard, maybe a garden,
some weeds. Nobody really cared much. They were more um
(01:30):
trying to survive. Yeah, right, And then um in the
nineteenth century, as Americans said, you know, we've been hanging
out here for a hundred years, let's go back to
England and visit. Yet they found it was But they
also found that the English had something called a lawn,
which is a beautiful, well manicured expanse of grass that
(01:53):
a very wealthy English could afford. Well, wealthy Americans were
never wants to be um out by wealthy British now,
So they came back and they're like, I want a lawn.
I am worth so much money it's mind boggling. Make
me a lawn. And whoever they were talking to said,
(02:13):
we can't really do that here, right, The native grass
is not conducive to camped lawn. You can't pop over
to the big box hardware store and buy huge sacks
of seed, right, And so they said, well, you know what,
I'll be right back. I'm going to the UK to
buy my seed. And then they traveled there, and then
fourteen weeks later they made it all the way back
(02:36):
and they said, here, you go grounds keeper, Willie, make
me a lawn. Here's some British seed for turf grass.
And he said, hey man, he said, when I'm done
with you, they're going to need a compost mortem. Whoa wow,
the deep cut. That was good. I think that was
treat house with horror, like oh the one where he's ready. Yeah, yeah,
(02:58):
nice man. Gonna need to come Postmoredom. So he said that,
and then he said, well, here's the problem. Our climate
is different than the UK's and these seeds aren't going
to survive here. So the lords and the ladies said,
I give up. We'll figure something else out. And it
took the Golf Association, the U. S. Department of Agriculture,
(03:24):
and the American Garden Club to finally get together and say,
let's make this happen. Everybody. Yeah, they got together. The U. S.
D A got together with the U S. G A
and they said, our names are similar, so let's let's
plant some grass together. Right. Uh So what they had
to do basically was looked for, you know, kind of
full around with the right combination of seed varieties which
(03:48):
they imported from around the world. Yeah, just to see
like all right, what this, what's gonna grow here in
this new country because we gotta place in golf. Yeah,
like Kentucky bluegrass. Friends, that's from Europe. Firm muta grass.
Where do you think that's from? Obviously Africa, that is right.
God knows where Zoisja came from, although I believe Asia
(04:08):
and not just because Zoysia and Asia are somewhat similar sounding. Uh.
It took him about fifteen years and they finally kind
of settled on some good combination of grasses. Yeah, but
you can thank golf to start. So if you hate
golf but you love your lawn, yeah, you have to
kind of like golf anyway. That's right, Um, but still chuck.
(04:29):
Even though they finally came up with the right grass combinations,
you had to still be pretty rich to have a lawn.
The reason why was because irrigation was a factor. Cutting
it was a big factor. Like all of those manor
houses in the in the UK, they had people whose
job it was was to cut grass with a scythe Yeah,
(04:50):
a lot of people, I would imagine. Yeah, because these
lawns were not small. Um, and like you said, they
didn't have like garden hoses back then, Nope, and buckets
of water is not a great way to water a lawn.
Um all the livestock that you know, they did cut
them with the sites, but they also had cows and
goats taking care of a lot of that. Yeah. Who
(05:11):
was it who had the uh the um sheep on
the front yard of the White House. I don't remember
what administration that one. I think it was Wilson was it.
He was saying like, look, what you can do is
an American you can put a sheep on your lawn. Yeah,
so do it. And then he sold the wool or
auctioned it off for like a hundred thousand dollars. Wow,
(05:32):
and he kept it. Probably it's a good story. Um.
The lawnmower mechanical mowing in the nineteenth century became a
real thing when an Englishman named Edwin Budding, who was
an engineer, developed what it's called the real mower, and
that is R E L And you've seen these. You've
probably seen some suckers in your neighborhood with one. I'm
(05:54):
just kidding. I actually have a real mower. I live
in a Konda. Yeah, real mower's I mean you can
still get him in. They're great and they have zero emissions.
Which is really neat because a lot of lawnmowers, um
are pretty bad offenders. Yeah, their internal combustion engines, which
means they put out all sorts of greenhouse gasses. Yeah,
and and they're not you know, it's not like a car.
(06:15):
You know, they don't have catalytic converters and things like that.
I mean, it's just straight up bad junk. So you
can get a real more if you're into it. Um
it is. You've seen them. It's a series of blades
around a cylinder and uh it is. It's geared, which
is the key to making it work. If you just
pushed it and it traveled like the wheel did, you
wouldn't be cutting a lot of grass. But there's a
(06:36):
sixteen to one gear ratio, so when you're pushing it,
your wheels are turning at this speed, but the blade
is turning really fast. Yeah. That's sort of the secret
how they work. And apparently, um Mr Budding said or
he found another machine that was similar that was used
to cut the nap on velvet. Yeah do you know that? Yeah,
(06:58):
and that's kind of where he got the idea. And
it took off like a rocket all of a sudden.
People were like, hey, we can have lawns. Now, let's
buy these things. Apparently there were somewhat affordable. In eight five,
America built fifty thousand of these things and sent him
around the globe. Yeah, that was the beginning of lawns
in America. Really. Uh. And you know what else that
got in vided? What the adjustable wrench? Is that? Right? Yeah?
(07:21):
You dynamo or is they called it the adjustable spanner?
Who called it that? Uh? The internet? And I was like,
what the heck of spanner? And then it turns out
it's a wrench spanner. This doesn't even make sense. Yeah,
that may be an English thing. So um. The garden
host comes around and that helps too. That was a
big help as well. But even still you had this thing.
(07:42):
It was kind of like, Okay, Richie, rich love your lawn,
I don't really care. I don't need one. And the
American Garden Club said, oh, yeah, it's the nineteen fifties.
You live in suburbia. You have to have a lawn
if you are a clean cut, decent America Rican person.
And the American Garden Club had this whole thing where
(08:04):
they had contests and publicity and p s a s
and basically drummed it into the head of every American man, woman,
and child that part of your civic duty was to
have a perfect lawn sally. Yeah, and there was this,
uh this article, man, I can't remember what the the
(08:24):
article is, um or what the website is. I wish
I could, because you know this, they did a great
job describing the history. But they quoted an American garden club. Um,
I guess stipulation that's an appropriate type of lawn was
quote a plot with a single type of grass with
no intruding weeds, kept moaning at a height of an
(08:46):
inch and a half, too short, uniformly green, and neatly edged.
And then today Americans spend about thirty billion dollars a
year on lawng care, you know how like people are
crazy for their pets and everything. Half a half a
billion really thirty billion on long care? Yeah? Now is
(09:09):
that long care? Is that outdoor care care? Ok? Yeah,
I looked it up to just grass long care, not
planning a zaleus. No. I imagine like just the whole
total of outdoor stuff is sends it through the roof
of thirty billions long care. I mean I looked because
that that UM article we borrowed from way outdated. Well
(09:30):
it was from like two thousand survey and it was
like seventeen billion on all outdoor stuff, outdoor home improvement.
I think they put thirty billion dollars on lawns. That's crazy. Yes,
all right, let's get into grass. Um. It is the
name for the Grandma gramina family of plants, of which
(09:52):
there are more than nine thousand species. And uh, if
you think, well, nine thousand species of grass, you might
not realized that things like corn and rice and oats
are grass plants. Bamboo is grass. Yeah, so building materials, plastics, room, sugar,
all this stuff is made from grasses, corn grass, and
(10:17):
some like if you look at a corn plant and
then you get down on your hands and knees and
look at your bermuda grass plants, because your lawn, although
it looks like one large, single organism, and technically you
could make the you can make the argument that it
is really is a series of interconnected related grass plants
(10:41):
that form a lush patch of turf. And if, like
you said, if you get down and look at the
little individual plants closely, it doesn't look so far off
of a corn plant. Thank you for that thought for
me obviously growing No, but what is corn but a
type of flower? Right? Yeah? I guess is it? No,
(11:03):
it's the fruit of the grass. I guess okay, because
corn does have like a flowery top. Yeah. And I've
heard I don't know if this is true. I've heard
that each corn stalk only grows one corn cob. Is
that right? M I don't know. I'm not a farmer.
We used to grow corn when I was a kid,
but hated gardening when I was a kid. Man, I
have to say, you remember we just recorded sushi, Yeah,
(11:25):
and it made me want want sushi. This is like, man,
I love gardening. Yeah. Yeah. I think when you get
older you get into gardening because eventually, like you might
own a home and then you want it to look
nice and you want it to be a pleasurable place.
And gardening is just really uh like that's why every
old British rock star now just gardens out in the countryside,
(11:49):
because it's just quiet and peaceful and it's just a
really nice thing to do. Meditative. Yeah, very much. Um
right now, though, So you know, I live in a condo,
Like I say, I've got like a pretty nice little
patty garden going. But I am combating this one squirrel
who was driving me crazy. Is it the same one?
Do you know? I believe it is. There was one
(12:10):
that was driving me crazy. I thwarted him, send him packing.
Now there's this I put up. So I have a
bird feeder that squirrels love to attack. But I hung
it in a way and cleared off branches around it,
so this one squirl go dive for it, miss and
go sailing. And one time he hit it and realized
that he couldn't hang onto the chain and like fell off,
and that was it. This new squirrel man, he is
(12:34):
persistent TOAs squirrel. I'll look outside at any given point
in time and he is hanging upside down by this
chain with his feet eating out of my bird feeder
safflower seeds, which squirrels aren't even supposed to like. And
so that's just that he comes onto my patio. Now
it's war. He just digs up stuff, and it's like,
stop digging in my plants. But I'm really kind of like,
(12:58):
you get a have a trap. I don't know if
it's big enough for a squirrel, but you can get
traps and then just drive them out to Piemont Parking. Yeah,
or you can set the trap behind like the exhaust
of your car and turn on your car for a
little while. I want to kill a squirrel. No I don't,
but man, this thing is pushing me. Yeah. I mean
if you look on like getting rid of squirrel websites, yeah,
that's pretty much number one. Yeah, I don't want to
(13:21):
do that. No, all right, you murderous thug. Let's talk
about you're a thuggy. I'm not, though, is the thing.
I don't smoke cashi and I'm not. I don't. I'm
not a band. Yeah, I just hate the squirrel. Let's
talk about grass. The grass plant itself. Um, at the roots,
they are a little fibrous thread like and they're gonna
(13:44):
reach down to the ground like little fingers. They're gonna
soak up water and nutrients, and they're gonna secure it
to the ground and then fustly that ground is gonna
be more secure as well. Yeah, because anywhere you have grass,
it prevents erosion. Any type of grass is huge at
preventing erosion. Yeah. And I would recommend, as we're describing this,
actually go to the article on how stuff works dot
(14:05):
com um about grass and pull up this great picture. Yeah. Yeah,
it breaks it all down. Um at the base. Uh,
the stem is called a calm, and the base is
the crown, right, And the crown is like almost like
this clump of matter that's above the roots that the
roots are growing from that gives rise to the to
(14:26):
the crown, yeah right, yeah, or to the um to
the stem, the calm. Yeah, there's a lot of like words.
I had no idea existed until this article came along. Yeah,
always just called it the stem, but apparently it is
a calm. And from the calm on the calm our nodes,
which is I guess where new calm growth starts. But
(14:47):
for the most part that stem is going to be
hollow except that the node, which is kind of like
a connective ball. Yeah. Like if you've seen bamboo and
how it looks like it's segmented, those the little places
where it's segmented, those are the notes. But it also
happens in your backyard grass as well. And then you
have the leaf, the leaf, Yeah, the stuff that we
(15:09):
call grass. We're actually talking about the leaf and we're
not even talking about the whole leaf. We're talking about
the blade. So anytime you hear some old timer called
grass blades, grass he or she is correct. That's right.
The lower part of the leaf is the sheaf, and
then the upper part is the blade. And then you're
gonna have a leg ule l I g u l
(15:30):
e um surrounding the connection of the sheath and the blade. Yeah,
it's almost like the blade comes to the calm the
stem and just wrap it around in a hug. And
the hug is the sheath. Which makes sense when you
see this picture because the stem it looks like it's
growing out of the sheath that leads into the blade. Uh.
(15:51):
And then you're gonna have a couple of other things, um,
these additional stems that grow sideways that you you might
have noticed. Um. If it's on the ground, it's called
a stolen and if it's below the ground, it's called
a rhizome. And this is where you're gonna get new
grass plants. Yeah, this is how it spreads. Yeah. There's
two ways that um grass reproduces. One is through seeds
(16:13):
that are usually blown by the air um that are
produced by their flowers, or through um basically moving sideways
via a stolen or a rhizome, this kind of root
system that just goes over and produces a new crown
and new roots and a new plant. Yeah, if you've
ever seen a new yard, um, then we'll get into
(16:35):
this later. You can either just plant seed, you can
do sod, or you can plant individual sprigs or plugs.
If you've ever seen a yard that's all dirt and
a ton of little individual plants like a foot apart,
and you think, well, that's interesting looking, that looks very modern.
Eventually that's gonna all grow together thanks to the rhizomes
(16:55):
and the stolen and fill in and form a yard. Yea,
So they are connected and because of that they are related.
But really these are different plants, that's right. And it's
because of chlorophyll photosynthesis, because all grasses is a photosynthesizing,
(17:16):
sugar making little machine. That's right. Remember sugar powers the earth,
that's right. So um chuck. There's probably a lot of
people out there who are just like, just tell me
how to improve my lawn. And we say, hold your
horses because we're gonna take a message break first, Okay,
(17:37):
we're back. And that wasn't such a bad way, No,
I'm sure it was very helpful to Um. So we're
talking how to take a lawn and make it into
a world class American Garden Association approved lawn. Yeah, they
still had a lot of neighborhoods still have that junk,
you know, where they have the contests and you're very
(17:58):
much expected to keep it up. It's to your civic
duty for your neighborhood association rules. I don't live in
one of those type of neighborhoods. There's no association, and
there's a lot of crappy lawns like mine as a result. Alright,
soil that is uh, I guess your first start. If
you want a good lawn, you're gonna have some good soil. Uh.
(18:18):
Well yeah, I mean you technically your soil is um
what holds your nutrients, It holds your water, It gives
stability to the roots and the plan itself. Soil is
pretty important. Let's just come out and say it, all right, um,
And so with the soil, apparently for most turf grasses
(18:38):
in America, you want to have what's called loam, and
loam is a sand clay soil mixture. Uh. And ideally
loam would be sand silt and then clay. Yeah, it's um.
You know, you want it to be sort of loose.
(18:58):
Uh so things can spread around and breathe and water
can get down in there, but not too loose. It's
got to be the right combination. And you also want
a pH of about six and a half to seven.
And um, this isn't something you can look at your
lawn and be like, uh five point three. Well maybe
if you're like the grass the soil whisper. Maybe if
(19:20):
you are like that, then you should be charging people
for that kind of thing. I would think you'd at
least have to stick your finger in it. Right, If
you have like a wacky disco ghost that follows you
around and it's really the one that's telling you the
pH of different soils, you'd better be making money from that.
Uh So the pH you can get a home test kit,
or you can have you can pay for someone to
come out and test your pH level. That's the more
(19:41):
typical way of finding out. Yeah, it'll either be acidic
or basic, and you can add various things to correct that,
like sulfur or lime. Yeah, if you want to make
it more acidic, d sulfur, if you want to make
it more basic headline, Yeah, and I've never done my
pH trading my soil. I've got you know, George is
famous for red clay. It's pretty awful. It's actually good
for growing, not not this. I mean, it's got to
(20:05):
be a mixture. So I've seen like clay. I think
I think you're just just this is what I think
is going on. Oh boy, I know. I think your
soil is compacted. Yeah from I mean, have you ever
aer rated? Uh? Okay, Uh. You also have a lot
of trees, so there's a lot of shade. Front yard
is way too shady, and um it's dry. Yeah. I
(20:29):
think if you fix those three things, you would have
a fine yard. Well, here's what we're gonna do. We're
gonna forget about grass in the front yard and zero
escape it. Oh yeah, cacti and just small plants and rocks. Yeah,
we're gonna go that route because it's too shady. And
then in the backyard. I have no excuse other than um,
(20:49):
just not spending the kind of time you need to spend.
The backyard seemed fine to me. Well, if you have
enough leeds and you cut them down, it can give
the appearance of a green lawn. Oh, I got you.
But it's not it's not real grass. All right, let's
get back to it because we're gonna solve your problems
just by explaining the rest of this to everybody. Okay,
by the way, to improve your soil, um, not only
can you use the lime to get the right pH,
(21:10):
but you can amend it with compost or fertilizer top
soil as well. Yeah, you can use manure, you can
use whatever. Just go out there and poop. Actually, I
looked into this. You want to use composted manure. You
don't want to add just poop to it now, that's
all right. And you can just spread that stuff with
(21:31):
like UM fertilizer spreader. Yeah, you just have to use
more of it because it's organic, that's right. It means
it's weak. Yeah, and we'll get into some some cleaner
options too if you're not into chemical herbicides and stuff
like that. So you've got you've got your soil. You're
thinking about your soil, now, share a little bit of
brain space for the actual kind of grass you want
(21:54):
to plant. So like UM. If you in America, there's
basically two types of grasses that we use, warm season
grasses and cool season grasses, and then there's a transition
zone in the middle. And by the way, you and
I live smack dab in the middle of this transition
zone where you can considerably grow. Either the winters are
(22:15):
mild enough and the summer's used to be not so
hot that either one was prohibited. You could use both,
so that like, uh, cool season grasses like Kentucky blue
grass a k a. Euro grass, warm season Bermuda grass,
and that's the one that turns brown in the winter, right,
(22:35):
I don't like it. It looks great in the summer,
but I don't like it in the winter. No. I mean, like,
if you've ever driven through a subdivision in Georgia in January,
it is a depressing site. It's just this kind of mustardy,
light brown khaki field with houses that all look exactly
alike right next to one another. But it looks great
(22:58):
in the summer. I mean, Bermuda is soft and uh
it's great to walk around on barefoot and lay in
and what's the stars? Yeah, Plus it looks dynamite too.
When you have you ever seen people who have their
like bermuda cut like a golf course, yeah, where it's
maybe a quarter of an inch tall. Yeah, and there's
special mowers that you have to get. There are thousands
(23:21):
and thousands of dollars that let you cut that without
killing your grass? Are they the ones where you stand
up and ride? Those are my favorite? That's just a mower.
Those these ones that are like they cut in a
certain way. Um, that are bermuda, just for that super
short bermuda. But yeah, bermuda turns brown in the winter
because it's a warm season grass, which means it's growing
(23:43):
season is the summer, cool season grasses. They don't go dormant,
but they only really grow in the spring and fall. Yeah.
And by the way, blue grass, if you've ever wondered
why it's called blue grass, is not named for the leaves. Uh.
It is named for the seed heads. Is that right? Yeah?
So uh, if you let blue grass grow and don't
(24:04):
touch it to like two or three feet tall, uh,
it will appear blue at the tops. Beautiful. Yeah. And
I never knew that. I didn't either Chuck schooled everybody, Terry.
Did you know that everybody, well everyone Kentucky is going
no crap, buddy man, Did I just insult Kentucky? That
was dead? Only? Okay? I love Kentucky. All right, so
(24:27):
you're you're picking your grass, you probably uh will end
up getting unless you're you know, a big bermuda ficionado
or something, You're probably gonna get a mixture or a blend.
Mixture is a combo of types of grass, and a
blend is a combo of varieties of the same type
of grass. Right, So like, um, a mixture is like
warm and cool season grasses maybe, or you get a
(24:49):
zoisha blend and it's all different types of zoisha. Yeah, uh,
And a blend is not as adaptable, but it will
probably look more uniform and attractive. Been pretty right. It's
not like pets work. But if you're just looking to
fill in like some shady spots or something like that,
you might want to get a mixture, agreed, um. And
(25:10):
then another thing you want to take into account when
you're considering what kind of grass to get is the
amount of sunlight that your yard gets. Like grass loves
sun direct sunlight. Uh, some love shade or not love shade,
but some tolerate shape. That's way better way to put it. No,
grassually love shade. And then there's some areas that are
like just shady all the time, in which case you
(25:32):
might want to consider something else like monkey grass or
something that's not a turf grass but it's still a
grass that you can cut. Or zero escape. Yeah you
could do that too. I got that big oak tree
and it's just not very sunny in my front yard. No,
which I'm glad you bring up zero escape because reading this,
especially when we get to the watering part, it's like
grass is not going to be around for many more decades. Lawns.
(25:56):
If we're gonna start fighting resource wars over water the
next fifty years, there's no way that there's going to
be such a thing as lawns. Yeah, it's a good point. Yeah,
we're back to the old dirt dirt DApp or days. Yeah.
I'd welcome that dusty America, would you really? Yeah? The
(26:16):
dust Bowl was great times. We have one game it
was called chew the bark off the Tree. What's that from?
What was the crumpy old man the Dana Carvey thing?
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, to the park off the tree.
I think that's what he said. That's pretty good. Uh
So the sun is you're gonna, like I said, or
like you said, take that into account, and then the
(26:38):
water as well, um, there are grasses that like water
more than others, and some do a little bit better
without as much water. So if you live in Phoenix, um, well,
you're probably just watering all the time. But if you
don't want to water all the time, because you shouldn't
be watering all the time, because we'll get into watering
later and you should never be watering every day. No,
I predict lawns won't be around in fifty alright, mark
(27:01):
my words. No, Launce, we'll be dead. But let's see,
I could still be around. I'll be Aney three. If
I'm still around in anty three, it's that'd be a
sad case of the human beings. I don't know, chuck, Like,
they're making some serious advances in um in aging. Do
you want to be that old if I were healthy
(27:22):
and happy? Heck yeah, all right, sure, especially if you
know friends and loved ones were like that old too. Yeah,
I guess so. I mean I wouldn't want to be
like cursed to walk the earth forever and like just
me be that way. But I mean I'm not talking
about a science fiction movie. No, I'm talking about, like,
you know, advances in aging. Supposedly, if not our generation.
(27:44):
Then definitely the one right below us will see the
triple digits for average life expectancy. And yes, that's the key. Yeah,
I don't want to be chuffling around and drooling on myself. Well,
there's a whole school of thought that like all of
these are un necessary byproducts of aging. That it's not.
You don't automatically become stooped over and demented just because
(28:06):
you get old, Like we're doing something wrong or not
doing something that we should be. Well, that can come
bad all that. Like sarcopania, Yeah, that's easy, but like
getting into the brain stuff, that's a little trickier. But
I mean we're there and you and I may live
to benefit from it. Yeah. I think keeping the mind
active is huge totally because you know, Emily's grandmother's in
(28:27):
her nineties. She's sharp as attacked because she does puzzles
all day long and reads and on the internet. Balance
your checkbook all that chance. All right, So let's talk
about if you want to start a new on as
they call it, establishing a lawn. You can plant seed.
If you want to go the cheap, hard working route, yes,
but you have to wear nothing but overalls, nothing under
(28:50):
them no shoes. While you're planning seed. You can do SOD,
which is we'll talk about that, or you can do
the plugs and sprigs which I mentioned. Um, first things first,
and you're gonna have to do this for all three methods.
You're gonna have to prepare your soil. Yeah, so you
want to get like a tiller. Yeah, go down to
like your hardware store and rent one. Yeah, my mom's
(29:12):
got one in this case. Okay, so borrow it from
your mom. Anyone can borrow it from my mom. And
basically you're gonna it's probably a good idea to depending
on where you live. But if you live in a
subdivision and you value your cable UM TV or internet,
you might want to call your local cable provider, your
gas company, you like a company and say, hey, someone
(29:33):
your people out and mark this and they'll come and
they're gonna spray paint your lawn and everything and give
you an idea of how deep it is. But you'll
know where your cables are and you can make sure
the areator does then go too deep. You're gonna cut
right through one of these cables. That's a good point.
So once you've done that, then you're gonna take that, um,
not areator, I'm sorry, the tiller, and you're gonna till
the dirt up. You're just kicking it up down to
(29:55):
probably what six inches or so, I would guess. Yeah,
and you you can, um, if you're oil is bad
and you know this, that's when you're gonna add in
your top soil or fertilizer compost and you just kill
all that up together to a delicious soily soup. Yes, chuck,
it is very important to add something to your soil. Like.
You can't just kill it, that's right, and just leave
it like that? Well you can, I mean, if you've
(30:16):
got good soil, I guess, But I mean it doesn't
hurt to add more nutrients, does it? No? Probably not.
But in some parts of the country you're good, like
you've got great soil and you're good to go. But
in Georgia, like I said, there's so much freaking clay
it's a nightmare. Um. Then you want to break that
and level it out. They said you can use a
board scraper two. But you don't want to leave it
(30:36):
super bumpy and clumpy, right, Just smooth it out as
best you can. Yeah, and you're gonna thank yourself later,
because if you have big bumps or holes or divots
or whatever, you're gonna run into those with your lawnmower.
So you're doing yourself a favor by smoothing things out
and leveling them. Now, that's right. Then you want to
scatter your seed. Um, you can't do it by hand.
But what you want is one of those little walking
(30:57):
behind spreaders, uh that you get it hardware store. They're
pretty cheap, and you just dump your seat in there
and uh remember when you dump your seat in there
to keep a little gate closed, otherwise it'll just start
pouring out in a big pile. And then start walking
and open your gate. And it's got a little wheel
that's flywheel that spins and flings the seed out in
in a nice equal distributive manner. Yes, if you're doing
(31:20):
it by hand, you're probably gonna put too much some
places and not enough in others unless you're really good.
It's very tough to do that unless you're that soil
whisperg guy he can do anyware right because his ghost friend.
That's right. And then you take like a regular rake
and you just kind of want to cover this stuff up.
A little bit, just rake over it. About half of
(31:41):
the seat is covered. Yeah, if you have a lawn roller,
you can use that, but um, I've never used that.
So that um is basically it's like a big metal
drum that you fill a certain amount of water to
make it heavier and you just roll that over it
to compact it something. Yeah, And like I said, I've
never done that. Um, but I got a crappy lawn
(32:03):
that was the key. Yeah. Maybe so Uh, then you
want to cover that up if you want, with straw
multi material. They sell stuff in sheets as well. Um,
I've never done that either. I'm telling you I think
I realized the mistakes I'm making. I think that you
should be a case study in this induced step by
step exactly what it says, and see what happens here long.
(32:26):
All right, maybe I will Maybe I can get work
to pay for it. I'll bet you could. If I
document it via video, I'll back you up. All right.
We'll see about that. Uh. Or you can go the
easy route, which is side and that is when you
see the big rectangular rolls have already grown awesome turf
and you you roll it out on your lawn after
(32:46):
your soil is prepared green side up and straight rows.
Make sure it's green side up. Stab. My friend used
to yell at out the window when he'd go by,
like lawn cruise green sewed up. This is really obnoxious
a little. He's not my friend anymore because of that.
But that says a lot about why greens, you know, uh,
(33:08):
and you want to stagger it, like if you're doing
a brick wall, don't lay them out, you know, and
exactly in a row, right, because the water will just
run right through there. It won't get trapped. Yeah, and
it'll look a little funny for a while. It'll look
like squares of grass, and it will eventually grow together
and look like one big solid turf unit. That's right.
And the closer you lay your side together, um, the
(33:30):
better off you're gonna be because any patches in between
them will allow weeds to grow. Uh. And that's a
big problem with using spriggs, which is the third way.
Spriggs are plugs and spriggs are plugs. A sprig is
just a grass plant, a little individual grass plant that's
bare root. A plug is the individual grass plant with
like a little dirt root ball associated with it. Yeah,
(33:52):
and you can order those online and get a bunch
of them shipped to your house if that's what you're into. Yeah,
because some some grass doesn't it doesn't grow well from
seed like zoisja isn't. It doesn't propagate well from seed.
But then some people are like, I don't have the
money for sod. See can order a bunch of sprigs
or plugs zoeysa and do the work yourself. And you
(34:15):
dig these little holes about six or twelve inches apart,
fill them with water. Then you take your plug, your sprig,
put them in the hole and cover around it with dirt.
There you go, boom. You want to weed these things
while they're growing in But zoisa apparently grows very fast
with the stolens and its rhizomes and whatnot. And uh,
(34:38):
there you go lawn sixty eight weeks later or months
or years. Yeah, and all of these methods, you're gonna
you're gonna water a lot at first, um, just to
get things going. But we'll get into watering here in
a minute. To all right, Um, before we get into maintenance,
should we talk about weed and feed? Oh yeah, which
(34:59):
is like the shampoo plus conditioner lawn care pretty much.
That is a combination of weed and feed um herbicidal
chemicals and fertilizer chemicals. It might be pre emergent if
you don't know what that means. That is a herbicide
that kills weeds before they sprouted in the cradle, that's right,
or post emergent, which kills already grown up weeds. And
(35:20):
UH experts say this is not a good way to
go because optimum fertilizing time isn't the same as optimum
weed killing time. Yeah. Plus another problem is it's like
you may not need her and herbicide all over your lawn,
Like you don't want to use it just as a
matter of course, Like if you have some real problem
with weeds, um, you want to target them as much
(35:42):
as possible using kind of a low level herbicide rather
than just spraying herbicide all over your lawn because your
lawn is a plan as well. Yeah, and if you
have the children and animals and yeah, that you know
you don't want to grap in your yard, at least
I don't. So you got your plugs grown in, uh
you or your sod or your seed or whatever, and
(36:03):
you're like it's ready, I'm ready to maintain this lawn,
it's established, what do you do? Well, there's eight steps
to lawn maintenance, and we will start with watering. Um.
And like I said, you never want to have a
sprinkler set to water your lawn every day. No, it's
total waste. It's a total waste. Um. You might have
to water every day at first, but once it's established,
(36:25):
Oh yeah, we should say that, like when you plan
or whatever, you have to water a lot more than
you normally would, I guess. Yeah, but once you're up
and running, um, it's a total waste of water. Um,
and you're gonna run your bill up and it's not
good for your lawn either. So you're really there's absolutely
no reason to know. What you want to do is
deeply soak your lawn when you water it and when
(36:47):
it needs it. Right, and you can tell when it
needs it when you're when you step on it and
it doesn't bounce back in a minute a few seconds,
then uh, it probably needs water. Yeah, it might curl
up a little bit. If you see it curling up
or changing color at all, you need to water, um.
And so get out there in the morning. Yeah, that's
(37:08):
the best time to do it. Yeah, don't dur in
the middle of the day, it'll burn off. Yeah, it'll evaporate,
and the water in the morning will keep the soil
cool throughout the day. That's right. It's just a big
treat for your lawn. Yeah. And like we said, you
deeply soak it, so much so that you want to
have about an inch of water collecting above ground. Like
that's a that's a big long soak. Yeah. And if
(37:30):
you think, well, how in the world do I figure
that out? Just put a little cup out there, turn
your sprinkler on, and when that cup has an inch
of water in it, you're all set. I don't know
if that's right now, that's exactly right. No, because think
about it, that cup is going to fill up immediately
because no water is soaking through it. No, that's that's
how you do it. You put a cup and the
(37:50):
cup just collects little drops and it takes, you know,
about an hour or more to fill that thing up
an inch. I think what I said makes sense anyway,
because you out there and or not when when it
fills up in how is he going to tell if
it's I don't know. I guess you would take a
little measuring stick and like go out there every once
(38:10):
in a while and see you just put a cup.
Trust me, I think mine's better. Just guess. No, measure
with the measuring stick, because then you're measuring how much
water is collecting on top of the ground. And that's
what you're looking for because that means about six to
eight inches of the ground has been soaked. So measure
down six to eight inches. Is that what you're saying. No,
(38:31):
just put it on top of the grass, like on
the ground to like put it in the grass until
its measuring stick a ruler. So want I want to
get this. You stick a ruler into the ground. No,
you stick a ruler into the grass until it comes
in contact with the ground. And then when there's an
inch of water that measures up to the inch, but
(38:52):
it doesn't it soaks into the dirt, right, and you
want to keep doing it until there's about an inch
of water that's collected. Yeah, I'm telling you, dude, you
will never have an inch of water sitting in your yard.
That's called the lake. Dude, I'm telling you, that's what
this article is saying. All right, I'm gonna leave it
out there. Okay, this is what we're gonna do the
people here. We're going to call for a turf pro
(39:15):
to tell us which one's right, and he will say, dude,
if you have an inch of water, that means you
are flooded. We'll just find out. Agreed. So you're saying
the water the ground has become so supersaturated that the
water sits on top of the ground. Yeah, I'm not
saying it's saturated, but the water has accumulated enough that
it hasn't all soaked down enough. Okay, Okay, I think
(39:39):
it's clear he lives in the condo. Anyway, I recommend
you put a cup out. When that cup fills up
to an inch, then that means you're watered enough. I'm
calling for a terf expert to let us know what's what.
All right, this is a good, legitimate disagreement. Okay, so
we were done with water? Yes, well, yea, that's right.
(40:01):
Uh and we mentioned water in the morning. Um. Mowing
is the second part of upkeep, and this is another
important thing because a lot of people think, oh no, man,
you mow really low and then you don't have to
mow as much, and that is not what you should do.
You should you should let it grow because it's better
for your lawn because when you cut too low, that
(40:21):
grass is gonna race to try and grow more blades
to make sugar, and it's gonna grow super fast, and
it's gonna use storage sugar. It's gonna weaken your plant
if you have tall grass, and that storage sugar is
gonna make new rhizomes and so it'll just be thicker
and more lush. Yeah. But if you let it grow
too long, then it's using up a lot of the
nutrients from the root system and a lot of energy.
(40:43):
So if you do something in between, I think for
like a cold seasoned grass, they say keep it at
about three inches um. When you cut it, you're just
basically forcing it to propagate because it's like, oh I
need to I need to pretty small chlorophyll, so I'm
gonna grow some more blades. So actually cutting it unlike hair,
actually does make the grass thicker and more lustrous or
(41:07):
your lawn. Yeah. So you're doing the lawn of favor
and yourself with favor because you're not gonna to mo
your grass as much. That's the dirty little secret. And
you can tell your wife, no, you're supposed to let
it grow and she'll say look it up and show me,
and then you go to how stuff works. That's right. Uh.
And in the summer you should let it grow a
(41:28):
little longer to in the falling winter, um, and spring
you cam o a little bit closer because you're um,
your temperatures are cooler, right, so you don't need to
sweat it as much. Um. And then when you do mow,
you should vary the direction you mow in, so like
one week mo north to south right and then the
next week mo east to west. Yeah. And I think,
(41:50):
and a lot of experts think you should always leave
your clippings on your lawn and not bag them and
dump them. Um. Because when you're doing that, what when
you leave in the clippings, it ends up coming compost
and it just helps your soil. If you constantly are
removing the clippings, that soil is gonna compact and get
hard and um. Yeah. So I'm I'm a big proponent
(42:11):
of of getting a multi mower and just leaving the clippings.
And those clippings are do not equal thatch. Apparently the
clippings breakdown in like a week. Um. Thatch is actually
build up of dead crown and calms and other stuff
of the plant. It's not the cut blades. Yeah. It
actually if you remove your clippings, you're gonna encourage that. Yeah,
(42:31):
So don't do it. Yeah, that's is no good. No,
it isn't good because it keeps air and water out
of the soil, which are essential. Well, a little bit
of thatch can be okay some yeah, but not much. No. No.
And if you do have a thatched problem, you can
just break it out, yeah, and then your clippings will
come back the next week exactly. Uh. Fertilizing is key.
(42:55):
You want to add nutrients to the soil. Um. Granular
fertilizer once or twice a year is the way to go.
The spray on stuff it you know, that's not a
great thing because that just kind of gets on the
blade of grass itself. The granular stuff soaks into the
ground over the course of weeks, and it's like slow releasing, right, yeah,
slow releasing. And um, a lot of these are chemical fertilizers.
(43:18):
I'm not into it. There's a great brand called Ringer
and it's natural and um a lot of the chemical
fertilizers are just salt, and salt is no good for
the ground. So it's really weird that made up of
salt understood that then the Romans used to salt the
earth of the lands they conquered. People couldn't grow stuff. Yeah,
I mean what about idiocracy accidentally salted the soil using
(43:40):
gator right? Really? Yeah, I remember aerating, something I've never done,
which is one of my reasons why my lawn stinks. Well,
that's basically like, so over time, your soil becomes more
and more compact, and as it becomes compact, there's less
error movement. Water trickles through, it's easily and is um aerobic,
(44:01):
which means they need oxygen bacteria that helps like keep
things nutrient rich down there, and if they're not getting oxygen,
they're not able to do their thing. That's right. So
you want to aerate, depending on how high traffic you are,
maybe once a year where you use like one of
those it looks like what's the drum barrel the drumroller thing,
(44:22):
but with spikes, hollow spikes and they just pull plugs
out of the grass that you just leave in place
and bam, aerraated. Yeah, and you can rent those two
at a hardware store. Um or they even have these
if you have a small yard. Um, they have aer
rating shoes that like, yeah, you just basically attach them.
You just attach them to your regular shoe and strap
(44:45):
them on. And it's like just spikes that you walk
around in your yard. But you'd have to have a
pretty small onto, you know. Or kids. Yeah, that's true. Yeah,
put them to work, attach spikes on their shoes. Yeah,
that's probably safety. Like go run around, just don't run
around the same place. Um, we've talked about detaching. Uh.
And then there's weeding. Um. Weeding is the bane of
(45:07):
my existence. And I don't really know what else to
say about it. It stinks I got a lot of weeds. Um.
Weeds aren't necessarily terrible for your yard if you have
a few, But um, no, and what are weeds besides
plants that we decided we didn't like. Yeah, but certain
types of weeds can indicate like if you have a
lot of dandelion, that means you're soil is too alkaline
(45:28):
or to compact, Or if you have a lot of clover,
means it's too low in nitrogen. So it can be
a sign of some amendments that you need to take
care of. You can read the weeds. Yeah, read the weeds.
And one thing if you, um, don't make the mistake
I made, which is, hey, I'm gonna put a bunch
of weed killer on my yard and see what happens.
(45:49):
Because it's um. You might be surprised of how much
your yard is weed. And then you'll look out one
day and it's all brown except for a couple of
patches of green. Well, then you just start over right
with some seed. Yeah, I need to start from scratch
back there anyway, in the backyard. Yeah, it's just it's time.
(46:10):
And then do you have pests? Yeah, I got all
kinds of pests. So there's UM this I guess it's
called biological control. UM, pest control using this stuff called
Bacillus thuri giensis that is how you say it. And
it's a gram positive bacteria. It's similar to the stuff
(46:30):
that causes anthrax. Totally fine for humans, but for certain
kinds of long pests like flies, mosquitoes, butterflies, beetles, moths, um.
They eat this stuff and it creates a um, a
crystalline protein in their guts that turns their guts to mush,
(46:50):
and so the things starved to death and you can
just put that stuff on your soil. Basically, you're putting
bacteria on your soil and it will take cara pests.
It's nice, man, that was this is informative, I think. Yeah.
It was like, we don't do a lot of how twos,
but we just did the mother of all how twos?
(47:10):
Has you got anything else? I got nothing else, man,
So if you want to know more about grass, you
can type that word into the search part how stuff
works dot Com. It will bring up that really helpful
demonstrative picture too. Oh yeah, uh, and I said demonstrative,
which means it's time for a listener. Now, I'm gonna
call this fish bowl at the LaBrea tar Pits. Hey, guys,
(47:35):
a huge fan of the show. Gets me through my
long commute. Just listen to the LaBrea tart Pits and
the fish bowl at the Page Museum sounds similar to
a setup that I've worked in before at the Aquarium
of the Pacific and Long Beach, which I've been to.
It's pretty nice. Is there a fish bowl? Is offich
bowl there? Well, there's a fish bowl where they work.
I interned at the veterinary department which had glass wall. Also,
(47:57):
visitors could check out the procedures. Turns out the glass
walls are really neat for the observer, but really annoying
for the fish inside, meaning uts. I never saw anyone
tap on the glass and yelled nerd, but we did
have a regular onslate of small children tapping and smashing
their faces against the glass. One day, in particular, we're
doing surgery on a chuck wala, a lot of people
were outside the glass watching a little boy started tap
(48:20):
tap tap tap tapping. Eventually, the veterinarian got fed up,
slowly turned with a scalpel and glared and pointed at
the little boy. Ve shook his finger at him, and
the little boy's eyes widened in fear and he ran
away crying. And that was my favorite day of my internship. Anyway,
that story always makes me chuckles. I wanted to share
(48:40):
keep being awesome, And that is from Caitlin with a K.
Nice thanks a lot, Caitlin. Yeah, you threatened a boy
with a scalpel and that was Caitlin was just witnessed
that and he cried, and that was Caitlin's favorite day.
If you have a favorite day, oh that's a good one, Chuck.
Tell us about your every day. We want to hear
(49:01):
about it from everybody. You can tweet it to us
if it was a short day uh s y s
K podcast. You can post it on our Facebook page
at Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know. You
can send us an email to Stuff Podcasts at Discovery
dot com and, as always, joined us at our beautiful
home on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot com
(49:24):
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it how Stuff Works dot com
Welcome to you Stuff you should Know from house Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark, There's Charles t. W Chuck Bryant, and we
were just talking about Canada, so I said to you,
and there's Jerry over there. So this is stuff you
(00:21):
should know. Hello, live from the Bowling Green how Stuff
Works dot com. Mhm, that's what the site's slogan is. Yeah, uh,
are you doing all right? I'm doing great? Watch this, chuck. Yeah,
have you ever seen grass? I have, sir, you won't
(00:43):
find a lot of good grass in my yard. But no,
is it terrible. I've I've seen it before. I don't remember.
It's pretty bad. Well, I mean i'll I will um
bemoan myself all throughout this one. So well you have.
It turns out the traditional American yard, did you know
that peck dirt, maybe a little bit of garden around, um,
(01:06):
and there you go some native grasses. That's the that's tradition.
And it turns out, um, that's the way if you
went to an American house, chuck um, pre Industrial Revolution. Yeah,
pretty much you're going to find that. Like you're just
gonna find peck dirt in the yard, maybe a garden,
some weeds. Nobody really cared much. They were more um
(01:30):
trying to survive. Yeah, right, And then um in the
nineteenth century, as Americans said, you know, we've been hanging
out here for a hundred years, let's go back to
England and visit. Yet they found it was But they
also found that the English had something called a lawn,
which is a beautiful, well manicured expanse of grass that
(01:53):
a very wealthy English could afford. Well, wealthy Americans were
never wants to be um out by wealthy British now,
So they came back and they're like, I want a lawn.
I am worth so much money it's mind boggling. Make
me a lawn. And whoever they were talking to said,
(02:13):
we can't really do that here, right, The native grass
is not conducive to camped lawn. You can't pop over
to the big box hardware store and buy huge sacks
of seed, right, And so they said, well, you know what,
I'll be right back. I'm going to the UK to
buy my seed. And then they traveled there, and then
fourteen weeks later they made it all the way back
(02:36):
and they said, here, you go grounds keeper, Willie, make
me a lawn. Here's some British seed for turf grass.
And he said, hey man, he said, when I'm done
with you, they're going to need a compost mortem. Whoa wow,
the deep cut. That was good. I think that was
treat house with horror, like oh the one where he's ready. Yeah, yeah,
(02:58):
nice man. Gonna need to come Postmoredom. So he said that,
and then he said, well, here's the problem. Our climate
is different than the UK's and these seeds aren't going
to survive here. So the lords and the ladies said,
I give up. We'll figure something else out. And it
took the Golf Association, the U. S. Department of Agriculture,
(03:24):
and the American Garden Club to finally get together and say,
let's make this happen. Everybody. Yeah, they got together. The U. S.
D A got together with the U S. G A
and they said, our names are similar, so let's let's
plant some grass together. Right. Uh So what they had
to do basically was looked for, you know, kind of
full around with the right combination of seed varieties which
(03:48):
they imported from around the world. Yeah, just to see
like all right, what this, what's gonna grow here in
this new country because we gotta place in golf. Yeah,
like Kentucky bluegrass. Friends, that's from Europe. Firm muta grass.
Where do you think that's from? Obviously Africa, that is right.
God knows where Zoisja came from, although I believe Asia
(04:08):
and not just because Zoysia and Asia are somewhat similar sounding. Uh.
It took him about fifteen years and they finally kind
of settled on some good combination of grasses. Yeah, but
you can thank golf to start. So if you hate
golf but you love your lawn, yeah, you have to
kind of like golf anyway. That's right, Um, but still chuck.
(04:29):
Even though they finally came up with the right grass combinations,
you had to still be pretty rich to have a lawn.
The reason why was because irrigation was a factor. Cutting
it was a big factor. Like all of those manor
houses in the in the UK, they had people whose
job it was was to cut grass with a scythe Yeah,
(04:50):
a lot of people, I would imagine. Yeah, because these
lawns were not small. Um, and like you said, they
didn't have like garden hoses back then, Nope, and buckets
of water is not a great way to water a lawn.
Um all the livestock that you know, they did cut
them with the sites, but they also had cows and
goats taking care of a lot of that. Yeah. Who
(05:11):
was it who had the uh the um sheep on
the front yard of the White House. I don't remember
what administration that one. I think it was Wilson was it.
He was saying like, look, what you can do is
an American you can put a sheep on your lawn. Yeah,
so do it. And then he sold the wool or
auctioned it off for like a hundred thousand dollars. Wow,
(05:32):
and he kept it. Probably it's a good story. Um.
The lawnmower mechanical mowing in the nineteenth century became a
real thing when an Englishman named Edwin Budding, who was
an engineer, developed what it's called the real mower, and
that is R E L And you've seen these. You've
probably seen some suckers in your neighborhood with one. I'm
(05:54):
just kidding. I actually have a real mower. I live
in a Konda. Yeah, real mower's I mean you can
still get him in. They're great and they have zero emissions.
Which is really neat because a lot of lawnmowers, um
are pretty bad offenders. Yeah, their internal combustion engines, which
means they put out all sorts of greenhouse gasses. Yeah,
and and they're not you know, it's not like a car.
(06:15):
You know, they don't have catalytic converters and things like that.
I mean, it's just straight up bad junk. So you
can get a real more if you're into it. Um
it is. You've seen them. It's a series of blades
around a cylinder and uh it is. It's geared, which
is the key to making it work. If you just
pushed it and it traveled like the wheel did, you
wouldn't be cutting a lot of grass. But there's a
(06:36):
sixteen to one gear ratio, so when you're pushing it,
your wheels are turning at this speed, but the blade
is turning really fast. Yeah. That's sort of the secret
how they work. And apparently, um Mr Budding said or
he found another machine that was similar that was used
to cut the nap on velvet. Yeah do you know that? Yeah,
(06:58):
and that's kind of where he got the idea. And
it took off like a rocket all of a sudden.
People were like, hey, we can have lawns. Now, let's
buy these things. Apparently there were somewhat affordable. In eight five,
America built fifty thousand of these things and sent him
around the globe. Yeah, that was the beginning of lawns
in America. Really. Uh. And you know what else that
got in vided? What the adjustable wrench? Is that? Right? Yeah?
(07:21):
You dynamo or is they called it the adjustable spanner?
Who called it that? Uh? The internet? And I was like,
what the heck of spanner? And then it turns out
it's a wrench spanner. This doesn't even make sense. Yeah,
that may be an English thing. So um. The garden
host comes around and that helps too. That was a
big help as well. But even still you had this thing.
(07:42):
It was kind of like, Okay, Richie, rich love your lawn,
I don't really care. I don't need one. And the
American Garden Club said, oh, yeah, it's the nineteen fifties.
You live in suburbia. You have to have a lawn
if you are a clean cut, decent America Rican person.
And the American Garden Club had this whole thing where
(08:04):
they had contests and publicity and p s a s
and basically drummed it into the head of every American man, woman,
and child that part of your civic duty was to
have a perfect lawn sally. Yeah, and there was this,
uh this article, man, I can't remember what the the
(08:24):
article is, um or what the website is. I wish
I could, because you know this, they did a great
job describing the history. But they quoted an American garden club. Um,
I guess stipulation that's an appropriate type of lawn was
quote a plot with a single type of grass with
no intruding weeds, kept moaning at a height of an
(08:46):
inch and a half, too short, uniformly green, and neatly edged.
And then today Americans spend about thirty billion dollars a
year on lawng care, you know how like people are
crazy for their pets and everything. Half a half a
billion really thirty billion on long care? Yeah? Now is
(09:09):
that long care? Is that outdoor care care? Ok? Yeah,
I looked it up to just grass long care, not
planning a zaleus. No. I imagine like just the whole
total of outdoor stuff is sends it through the roof
of thirty billions long care. I mean I looked because
that that UM article we borrowed from way outdated. Well
(09:30):
it was from like two thousand survey and it was
like seventeen billion on all outdoor stuff, outdoor home improvement.
I think they put thirty billion dollars on lawns. That's crazy. Yes,
all right, let's get into grass. Um. It is the
name for the Grandma gramina family of plants, of which
(09:52):
there are more than nine thousand species. And uh, if
you think, well, nine thousand species of grass, you might
not realized that things like corn and rice and oats
are grass plants. Bamboo is grass. Yeah, so building materials, plastics, room, sugar,
all this stuff is made from grasses, corn grass, and
(10:17):
some like if you look at a corn plant and
then you get down on your hands and knees and
look at your bermuda grass plants, because your lawn, although
it looks like one large, single organism, and technically you
could make the you can make the argument that it
is really is a series of interconnected related grass plants
(10:41):
that form a lush patch of turf. And if, like
you said, if you get down and look at the
little individual plants closely, it doesn't look so far off
of a corn plant. Thank you for that thought for
me obviously growing No, but what is corn but a
type of flower? Right? Yeah? I guess is it? No,
(11:03):
it's the fruit of the grass. I guess okay, because
corn does have like a flowery top. Yeah. And I've
heard I don't know if this is true. I've heard
that each corn stalk only grows one corn cob. Is
that right? M I don't know. I'm not a farmer.
We used to grow corn when I was a kid,
but hated gardening when I was a kid. Man, I
have to say, you remember we just recorded sushi, Yeah,
(11:25):
and it made me want want sushi. This is like, man,
I love gardening. Yeah. Yeah. I think when you get
older you get into gardening because eventually, like you might
own a home and then you want it to look
nice and you want it to be a pleasurable place.
And gardening is just really uh like that's why every
old British rock star now just gardens out in the countryside,
(11:49):
because it's just quiet and peaceful and it's just a
really nice thing to do. Meditative. Yeah, very much. Um
right now, though, So you know, I live in a condo,
Like I say, I've got like a pretty nice little
patty garden going. But I am combating this one squirrel
who was driving me crazy. Is it the same one?
Do you know? I believe it is. There was one
(12:10):
that was driving me crazy. I thwarted him, send him packing.
Now there's this I put up. So I have a
bird feeder that squirrels love to attack. But I hung
it in a way and cleared off branches around it,
so this one squirl go dive for it, miss and
go sailing. And one time he hit it and realized
that he couldn't hang onto the chain and like fell off,
and that was it. This new squirrel man, he is
(12:34):
persistent TOAs squirrel. I'll look outside at any given point
in time and he is hanging upside down by this
chain with his feet eating out of my bird feeder
safflower seeds, which squirrels aren't even supposed to like. And
so that's just that he comes onto my patio. Now
it's war. He just digs up stuff, and it's like,
stop digging in my plants. But I'm really kind of like,
(12:58):
you get a have a trap. I don't know if
it's big enough for a squirrel, but you can get
traps and then just drive them out to Piemont Parking. Yeah,
or you can set the trap behind like the exhaust
of your car and turn on your car for a
little while. I want to kill a squirrel. No I don't,
but man, this thing is pushing me. Yeah. I mean
if you look on like getting rid of squirrel websites, yeah,
that's pretty much number one. Yeah, I don't want to
(13:21):
do that. No, all right, you murderous thug. Let's talk
about you're a thuggy. I'm not, though, is the thing.
I don't smoke cashi and I'm not. I don't. I'm
not a band. Yeah, I just hate the squirrel. Let's
talk about grass. The grass plant itself. Um, at the roots,
they are a little fibrous thread like and they're gonna
(13:44):
reach down to the ground like little fingers. They're gonna
soak up water and nutrients, and they're gonna secure it
to the ground and then fustly that ground is gonna
be more secure as well. Yeah, because anywhere you have grass,
it prevents erosion. Any type of grass is huge at
preventing erosion. Yeah. And I would recommend, as we're describing this,
actually go to the article on how stuff works dot
(14:05):
com um about grass and pull up this great picture. Yeah. Yeah,
it breaks it all down. Um at the base. Uh,
the stem is called a calm, and the base is
the crown, right, And the crown is like almost like
this clump of matter that's above the roots that the
roots are growing from that gives rise to the to
(14:26):
the crown, yeah right, yeah, or to the um to
the stem, the calm. Yeah, there's a lot of like words.
I had no idea existed until this article came along. Yeah,
always just called it the stem, but apparently it is
a calm. And from the calm on the calm our nodes,
which is I guess where new calm growth starts. But
(14:47):
for the most part that stem is going to be
hollow except that the node, which is kind of like
a connective ball. Yeah. Like if you've seen bamboo and
how it looks like it's segmented, those the little places
where it's segmented, those are the notes. But it also
happens in your backyard grass as well. And then you
have the leaf, the leaf, Yeah, the stuff that we
(15:09):
call grass. We're actually talking about the leaf and we're
not even talking about the whole leaf. We're talking about
the blade. So anytime you hear some old timer called
grass blades, grass he or she is correct. That's right.
The lower part of the leaf is the sheaf, and
then the upper part is the blade. And then you're
gonna have a leg ule l I g u l
(15:30):
e um surrounding the connection of the sheath and the blade. Yeah,
it's almost like the blade comes to the calm the
stem and just wrap it around in a hug. And
the hug is the sheath. Which makes sense when you
see this picture because the stem it looks like it's
growing out of the sheath that leads into the blade. Uh.
(15:51):
And then you're gonna have a couple of other things, um,
these additional stems that grow sideways that you you might
have noticed. Um. If it's on the ground, it's called
a stolen and if it's below the ground, it's called
a rhizome. And this is where you're gonna get new
grass plants. Yeah, this is how it spreads. Yeah. There's
two ways that um grass reproduces. One is through seeds
(16:13):
that are usually blown by the air um that are
produced by their flowers, or through um basically moving sideways
via a stolen or a rhizome, this kind of root
system that just goes over and produces a new crown
and new roots and a new plant. Yeah, if you've
ever seen a new yard, um, then we'll get into
(16:35):
this later. You can either just plant seed, you can
do sod, or you can plant individual sprigs or plugs.
If you've ever seen a yard that's all dirt and
a ton of little individual plants like a foot apart,
and you think, well, that's interesting looking, that looks very modern.
Eventually that's gonna all grow together thanks to the rhizomes
(16:55):
and the stolen and fill in and form a yard. Yea,
So they are connected and because of that they are related.
But really these are different plants, that's right. And it's
because of chlorophyll photosynthesis, because all grasses is a photosynthesizing,
(17:16):
sugar making little machine. That's right. Remember sugar powers the earth,
that's right. So um chuck. There's probably a lot of
people out there who are just like, just tell me
how to improve my lawn. And we say, hold your
horses because we're gonna take a message break first, Okay,
(17:37):
we're back. And that wasn't such a bad way, No,
I'm sure it was very helpful to Um. So we're
talking how to take a lawn and make it into
a world class American Garden Association approved lawn. Yeah, they
still had a lot of neighborhoods still have that junk,
you know, where they have the contests and you're very
(17:58):
much expected to keep it up. It's to your civic
duty for your neighborhood association rules. I don't live in
one of those type of neighborhoods. There's no association, and
there's a lot of crappy lawns like mine as a result. Alright,
soil that is uh, I guess your first start. If
you want a good lawn, you're gonna have some good soil. Uh.
(18:18):
Well yeah, I mean you technically your soil is um
what holds your nutrients, It holds your water, It gives
stability to the roots and the plan itself. Soil is
pretty important. Let's just come out and say it, all right, um,
And so with the soil, apparently for most turf grasses
(18:38):
in America, you want to have what's called loam, and
loam is a sand clay soil mixture. Uh. And ideally
loam would be sand silt and then clay. Yeah, it's um.
You know, you want it to be sort of loose.
(18:58):
Uh so things can spread around and breathe and water
can get down in there, but not too loose. It's
got to be the right combination. And you also want
a pH of about six and a half to seven.
And um, this isn't something you can look at your
lawn and be like, uh five point three. Well maybe
if you're like the grass the soil whisper. Maybe if
(19:20):
you are like that, then you should be charging people
for that kind of thing. I would think you'd at
least have to stick your finger in it. Right, If
you have like a wacky disco ghost that follows you
around and it's really the one that's telling you the
pH of different soils, you'd better be making money from that.
Uh So the pH you can get a home test kit,
or you can have you can pay for someone to
come out and test your pH level. That's the more
(19:41):
typical way of finding out. Yeah, it'll either be acidic
or basic, and you can add various things to correct that,
like sulfur or lime. Yeah, if you want to make
it more acidic, d sulfur, if you want to make
it more basic headline, Yeah, and I've never done my
pH trading my soil. I've got you know, George is
famous for red clay. It's pretty awful. It's actually good
for growing, not not this. I mean, it's got to
(20:05):
be a mixture. So I've seen like clay. I think
I think you're just just this is what I think
is going on. Oh boy, I know. I think your
soil is compacted. Yeah from I mean, have you ever
aer rated? Uh? Okay, Uh. You also have a lot
of trees, so there's a lot of shade. Front yard
is way too shady, and um it's dry. Yeah. I
(20:29):
think if you fix those three things, you would have
a fine yard. Well, here's what we're gonna do. We're
gonna forget about grass in the front yard and zero
escape it. Oh yeah, cacti and just small plants and rocks. Yeah,
we're gonna go that route because it's too shady. And
then in the backyard. I have no excuse other than um,
(20:49):
just not spending the kind of time you need to spend.
The backyard seemed fine to me. Well, if you have
enough leeds and you cut them down, it can give
the appearance of a green lawn. Oh, I got you.
But it's not it's not real grass. All right, let's
get back to it because we're gonna solve your problems
just by explaining the rest of this to everybody. Okay,
by the way, to improve your soil, um, not only
can you use the lime to get the right pH,
(21:10):
but you can amend it with compost or fertilizer top
soil as well. Yeah, you can use manure, you can
use whatever. Just go out there and poop. Actually, I
looked into this. You want to use composted manure. You
don't want to add just poop to it now, that's
all right. And you can just spread that stuff with
(21:31):
like UM fertilizer spreader. Yeah, you just have to use
more of it because it's organic, that's right. It means
it's weak. Yeah, and we'll get into some some cleaner
options too if you're not into chemical herbicides and stuff
like that. So you've got you've got your soil. You're
thinking about your soil, now, share a little bit of
brain space for the actual kind of grass you want
(21:54):
to plant. So like UM. If you in America, there's
basically two types of grasses that we use, warm season
grasses and cool season grasses, and then there's a transition
zone in the middle. And by the way, you and
I live smack dab in the middle of this transition
zone where you can considerably grow. Either the winters are
(22:15):
mild enough and the summer's used to be not so
hot that either one was prohibited. You could use both,
so that like, uh, cool season grasses like Kentucky blue
grass a k a. Euro grass, warm season Bermuda grass,
and that's the one that turns brown in the winter, right,
(22:35):
I don't like it. It looks great in the summer,
but I don't like it in the winter. No. I mean, like,
if you've ever driven through a subdivision in Georgia in January,
it is a depressing site. It's just this kind of mustardy,
light brown khaki field with houses that all look exactly
alike right next to one another. But it looks great
(22:58):
in the summer. I mean, Bermuda is soft and uh
it's great to walk around on barefoot and lay in
and what's the stars? Yeah, Plus it looks dynamite too.
When you have you ever seen people who have their
like bermuda cut like a golf course, yeah, where it's
maybe a quarter of an inch tall. Yeah, and there's
special mowers that you have to get. There are thousands
(23:21):
and thousands of dollars that let you cut that without
killing your grass? Are they the ones where you stand
up and ride? Those are my favorite? That's just a mower.
Those these ones that are like they cut in a
certain way. Um, that are bermuda, just for that super
short bermuda. But yeah, bermuda turns brown in the winter
because it's a warm season grass, which means it's growing
(23:43):
season is the summer, cool season grasses. They don't go dormant,
but they only really grow in the spring and fall. Yeah.
And by the way, blue grass, if you've ever wondered
why it's called blue grass, is not named for the leaves. Uh.
It is named for the seed heads. Is that right? Yeah?
So uh, if you let blue grass grow and don't
(24:04):
touch it to like two or three feet tall, uh,
it will appear blue at the tops. Beautiful. Yeah. And
I never knew that. I didn't either Chuck schooled everybody, Terry.
Did you know that everybody, well everyone Kentucky is going
no crap, buddy man, Did I just insult Kentucky? That
was dead? Only? Okay? I love Kentucky. All right, so
(24:27):
you're you're picking your grass, you probably uh will end
up getting unless you're you know, a big bermuda ficionado
or something, You're probably gonna get a mixture or a blend.
Mixture is a combo of types of grass, and a
blend is a combo of varieties of the same type
of grass. Right, So like, um, a mixture is like
warm and cool season grasses maybe, or you get a
(24:49):
zoisha blend and it's all different types of zoisha. Yeah, uh,
And a blend is not as adaptable, but it will
probably look more uniform and attractive. Been pretty right. It's
not like pets work. But if you're just looking to
fill in like some shady spots or something like that,
you might want to get a mixture, agreed, um. And
(25:10):
then another thing you want to take into account when
you're considering what kind of grass to get is the
amount of sunlight that your yard gets. Like grass loves
sun direct sunlight. Uh, some love shade or not love shade,
but some tolerate shape. That's way better way to put it. No,
grassually love shade. And then there's some areas that are
like just shady all the time, in which case you
(25:32):
might want to consider something else like monkey grass or
something that's not a turf grass but it's still a
grass that you can cut. Or zero escape. Yeah you
could do that too. I got that big oak tree
and it's just not very sunny in my front yard. No,
which I'm glad you bring up zero escape because reading this,
especially when we get to the watering part, it's like
grass is not going to be around for many more decades. Lawns.
(25:56):
If we're gonna start fighting resource wars over water the
next fifty years, there's no way that there's going to
be such a thing as lawns. Yeah, it's a good point. Yeah,
we're back to the old dirt dirt DApp or days. Yeah.
I'd welcome that dusty America, would you really? Yeah? The
(26:16):
dust Bowl was great times. We have one game it
was called chew the bark off the Tree. What's that from?
What was the crumpy old man the Dana Carvey thing?
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, to the park off the tree.
I think that's what he said. That's pretty good. Uh
So the sun is you're gonna, like I said, or
like you said, take that into account, and then the
(26:38):
water as well, um, there are grasses that like water
more than others, and some do a little bit better
without as much water. So if you live in Phoenix, um, well,
you're probably just watering all the time. But if you
don't want to water all the time, because you shouldn't
be watering all the time, because we'll get into watering
later and you should never be watering every day. No,
I predict lawns won't be around in fifty alright, mark
(27:01):
my words. No, Launce, we'll be dead. But let's see,
I could still be around. I'll be Aney three. If
I'm still around in anty three, it's that'd be a
sad case of the human beings. I don't know, chuck, Like,
they're making some serious advances in um in aging. Do
you want to be that old if I were healthy
(27:22):
and happy? Heck yeah, all right, sure, especially if you
know friends and loved ones were like that old too. Yeah,
I guess so. I mean I wouldn't want to be
like cursed to walk the earth forever and like just
me be that way. But I mean I'm not talking
about a science fiction movie. No, I'm talking about, like,
you know, advances in aging. Supposedly, if not our generation.
(27:44):
Then definitely the one right below us will see the
triple digits for average life expectancy. And yes, that's the key. Yeah,
I don't want to be chuffling around and drooling on myself. Well,
there's a whole school of thought that like all of
these are un necessary byproducts of aging. That it's not.
You don't automatically become stooped over and demented just because
(28:06):
you get old, Like we're doing something wrong or not
doing something that we should be. Well, that can come
bad all that. Like sarcopania, Yeah, that's easy, but like
getting into the brain stuff, that's a little trickier. But
I mean we're there and you and I may live
to benefit from it. Yeah. I think keeping the mind
active is huge totally because you know, Emily's grandmother's in
(28:27):
her nineties. She's sharp as attacked because she does puzzles
all day long and reads and on the internet. Balance
your checkbook all that chance. All right, So let's talk
about if you want to start a new on as
they call it, establishing a lawn. You can plant seed.
If you want to go the cheap, hard working route, yes,
but you have to wear nothing but overalls, nothing under
(28:50):
them no shoes. While you're planning seed. You can do SOD,
which is we'll talk about that, or you can do
the plugs and sprigs which I mentioned. Um, first things first,
and you're gonna have to do this for all three methods.
You're gonna have to prepare your soil. Yeah, so you
want to get like a tiller. Yeah, go down to
like your hardware store and rent one. Yeah, my mom's
(29:12):
got one in this case. Okay, so borrow it from
your mom. Anyone can borrow it from my mom. And
basically you're gonna it's probably a good idea to depending
on where you live. But if you live in a
subdivision and you value your cable UM TV or internet,
you might want to call your local cable provider, your
gas company, you like a company and say, hey, someone
(29:33):
your people out and mark this and they'll come and
they're gonna spray paint your lawn and everything and give
you an idea of how deep it is. But you'll
know where your cables are and you can make sure
the areator does then go too deep. You're gonna cut
right through one of these cables. That's a good point.
So once you've done that, then you're gonna take that, um,
not areator, I'm sorry, the tiller, and you're gonna till
the dirt up. You're just kicking it up down to
(29:55):
probably what six inches or so, I would guess. Yeah,
and you you can, um, if you're oil is bad
and you know this, that's when you're gonna add in
your top soil or fertilizer compost and you just kill
all that up together to a delicious soily soup. Yes, chuck,
it is very important to add something to your soil. Like.
You can't just kill it, that's right, and just leave
it like that? Well you can, I mean, if you've
(30:16):
got good soil, I guess, But I mean it doesn't
hurt to add more nutrients, does it? No? Probably not.
But in some parts of the country you're good, like
you've got great soil and you're good to go. But
in Georgia, like I said, there's so much freaking clay
it's a nightmare. Um. Then you want to break that
and level it out. They said you can use a
board scraper two. But you don't want to leave it
(30:36):
super bumpy and clumpy, right, Just smooth it out as
best you can. Yeah, and you're gonna thank yourself later,
because if you have big bumps or holes or divots
or whatever, you're gonna run into those with your lawnmower.
So you're doing yourself a favor by smoothing things out
and leveling them. Now, that's right. Then you want to
scatter your seed. Um, you can't do it by hand.
But what you want is one of those little walking
(30:57):
behind spreaders, uh that you get it hardware store. They're
pretty cheap, and you just dump your seat in there
and uh remember when you dump your seat in there
to keep a little gate closed, otherwise it'll just start
pouring out in a big pile. And then start walking
and open your gate. And it's got a little wheel
that's flywheel that spins and flings the seed out in
in a nice equal distributive manner. Yes, if you're doing
(31:20):
it by hand, you're probably gonna put too much some
places and not enough in others unless you're really good.
It's very tough to do that unless you're that soil
whisperg guy he can do anyware right because his ghost friend.
That's right. And then you take like a regular rake
and you just kind of want to cover this stuff up.
A little bit, just rake over it. About half of
(31:41):
the seat is covered. Yeah, if you have a lawn roller,
you can use that, but um, I've never used that.
So that um is basically it's like a big metal
drum that you fill a certain amount of water to
make it heavier and you just roll that over it
to compact it something. Yeah, And like I said, I've
never done that. Um, but I got a crappy lawn
(32:03):
that was the key. Yeah. Maybe so Uh, then you
want to cover that up if you want, with straw
multi material. They sell stuff in sheets as well. Um,
I've never done that either. I'm telling you I think
I realized the mistakes I'm making. I think that you
should be a case study in this induced step by
step exactly what it says, and see what happens here long.
(32:26):
All right, maybe I will Maybe I can get work
to pay for it. I'll bet you could. If I
document it via video, I'll back you up. All right.
We'll see about that. Uh. Or you can go the
easy route, which is side and that is when you
see the big rectangular rolls have already grown awesome turf
and you you roll it out on your lawn after
(32:46):
your soil is prepared green side up and straight rows.
Make sure it's green side up. Stab. My friend used
to yell at out the window when he'd go by,
like lawn cruise green sewed up. This is really obnoxious
a little. He's not my friend anymore because of that.
But that says a lot about why greens, you know, uh,
(33:08):
and you want to stagger it, like if you're doing
a brick wall, don't lay them out, you know, and
exactly in a row, right, because the water will just
run right through there. It won't get trapped. Yeah, and
it'll look a little funny for a while. It'll look
like squares of grass, and it will eventually grow together
and look like one big solid turf unit. That's right.
And the closer you lay your side together, um, the
(33:30):
better off you're gonna be because any patches in between
them will allow weeds to grow. Uh. And that's a
big problem with using spriggs, which is the third way.
Spriggs are plugs and spriggs are plugs. A sprig is
just a grass plant, a little individual grass plant that's
bare root. A plug is the individual grass plant with
like a little dirt root ball associated with it. Yeah,
(33:52):
and you can order those online and get a bunch
of them shipped to your house if that's what you're into. Yeah,
because some some grass doesn't it doesn't grow well from
seed like zoisja isn't. It doesn't propagate well from seed.
But then some people are like, I don't have the
money for sod. See can order a bunch of sprigs
or plugs zoeysa and do the work yourself. And you
(34:15):
dig these little holes about six or twelve inches apart,
fill them with water. Then you take your plug, your sprig,
put them in the hole and cover around it with dirt.
There you go, boom. You want to weed these things
while they're growing in But zoisa apparently grows very fast
with the stolens and its rhizomes and whatnot. And uh,
(34:38):
there you go lawn sixty eight weeks later or months
or years. Yeah, and all of these methods, you're gonna
you're gonna water a lot at first, um, just to
get things going. But we'll get into watering here in
a minute. To all right, Um, before we get into maintenance,
should we talk about weed and feed? Oh yeah, which
(34:59):
is like the shampoo plus conditioner lawn care pretty much.
That is a combination of weed and feed um herbicidal
chemicals and fertilizer chemicals. It might be pre emergent if
you don't know what that means. That is a herbicide
that kills weeds before they sprouted in the cradle, that's right,
or post emergent, which kills already grown up weeds. And
(35:20):
UH experts say this is not a good way to
go because optimum fertilizing time isn't the same as optimum
weed killing time. Yeah. Plus another problem is it's like
you may not need her and herbicide all over your lawn,
Like you don't want to use it just as a
matter of course, Like if you have some real problem
with weeds, um, you want to target them as much
(35:42):
as possible using kind of a low level herbicide rather
than just spraying herbicide all over your lawn because your
lawn is a plan as well. Yeah, and if you
have the children and animals and yeah, that you know
you don't want to grap in your yard, at least
I don't. So you got your plugs grown in, uh
you or your sod or your seed or whatever, and
(36:03):
you're like it's ready, I'm ready to maintain this lawn,
it's established, what do you do? Well, there's eight steps
to lawn maintenance, and we will start with watering. Um.
And like I said, you never want to have a
sprinkler set to water your lawn every day. No, it's
total waste. It's a total waste. Um. You might have
to water every day at first, but once it's established,
(36:25):
Oh yeah, we should say that, like when you plan
or whatever, you have to water a lot more than
you normally would, I guess. Yeah, but once you're up
and running, um, it's a total waste of water. Um,
and you're gonna run your bill up and it's not
good for your lawn either. So you're really there's absolutely
no reason to know. What you want to do is
deeply soak your lawn when you water it and when
(36:47):
it needs it. Right, and you can tell when it
needs it when you're when you step on it and
it doesn't bounce back in a minute a few seconds,
then uh, it probably needs water. Yeah, it might curl
up a little bit. If you see it curling up
or changing color at all, you need to water, um.
And so get out there in the morning. Yeah, that's
(37:08):
the best time to do it. Yeah, don't dur in
the middle of the day, it'll burn off. Yeah, it'll evaporate,
and the water in the morning will keep the soil
cool throughout the day. That's right. It's just a big
treat for your lawn. Yeah. And like we said, you
deeply soak it, so much so that you want to
have about an inch of water collecting above ground. Like
that's a that's a big long soak. Yeah. And if
(37:30):
you think, well, how in the world do I figure
that out? Just put a little cup out there, turn
your sprinkler on, and when that cup has an inch
of water in it, you're all set. I don't know
if that's right now, that's exactly right. No, because think
about it, that cup is going to fill up immediately
because no water is soaking through it. No, that's that's
how you do it. You put a cup and the
(37:50):
cup just collects little drops and it takes, you know,
about an hour or more to fill that thing up
an inch. I think what I said makes sense anyway,
because you out there and or not when when it
fills up in how is he going to tell if
it's I don't know. I guess you would take a
little measuring stick and like go out there every once
(38:10):
in a while and see you just put a cup.
Trust me, I think mine's better. Just guess. No, measure
with the measuring stick, because then you're measuring how much
water is collecting on top of the ground. And that's
what you're looking for because that means about six to
eight inches of the ground has been soaked. So measure
down six to eight inches. Is that what you're saying. No,
(38:31):
just put it on top of the grass, like on
the ground to like put it in the grass until
its measuring stick a ruler. So want I want to
get this. You stick a ruler into the ground. No,
you stick a ruler into the grass until it comes
in contact with the ground. And then when there's an
inch of water that measures up to the inch, but
(38:52):
it doesn't it soaks into the dirt, right, and you
want to keep doing it until there's about an inch
of water that's collected. Yeah, I'm telling you, dude, you
will never have an inch of water sitting in your yard.
That's called the lake. Dude, I'm telling you, that's what
this article is saying. All right, I'm gonna leave it
out there. Okay, this is what we're gonna do the
people here. We're going to call for a turf pro
(39:15):
to tell us which one's right, and he will say, dude,
if you have an inch of water, that means you
are flooded. We'll just find out. Agreed. So you're saying
the water the ground has become so supersaturated that the
water sits on top of the ground. Yeah, I'm not
saying it's saturated, but the water has accumulated enough that
it hasn't all soaked down enough. Okay, Okay, I think
(39:39):
it's clear he lives in the condo. Anyway, I recommend
you put a cup out. When that cup fills up
to an inch, then that means you're watered enough. I'm
calling for a terf expert to let us know what's what.
All right, this is a good, legitimate disagreement. Okay, so
we were done with water? Yes, well, yea, that's right.
(40:01):
Uh and we mentioned water in the morning. Um. Mowing
is the second part of upkeep, and this is another
important thing because a lot of people think, oh no, man,
you mow really low and then you don't have to
mow as much, and that is not what you should do.
You should you should let it grow because it's better
for your lawn because when you cut too low, that
(40:21):
grass is gonna race to try and grow more blades
to make sugar, and it's gonna grow super fast, and
it's gonna use storage sugar. It's gonna weaken your plant
if you have tall grass, and that storage sugar is
gonna make new rhizomes and so it'll just be thicker
and more lush. Yeah. But if you let it grow
too long, then it's using up a lot of the
nutrients from the root system and a lot of energy.
(40:43):
So if you do something in between, I think for
like a cold seasoned grass, they say keep it at
about three inches um. When you cut it, you're just
basically forcing it to propagate because it's like, oh I
need to I need to pretty small chlorophyll, so I'm
gonna grow some more blades. So actually cutting it unlike hair,
actually does make the grass thicker and more lustrous or
(41:07):
your lawn. Yeah. So you're doing the lawn of favor
and yourself with favor because you're not gonna to mo
your grass as much. That's the dirty little secret. And
you can tell your wife, no, you're supposed to let
it grow and she'll say look it up and show me,
and then you go to how stuff works. That's right. Uh.
And in the summer you should let it grow a
(41:28):
little longer to in the falling winter, um, and spring
you cam o a little bit closer because you're um,
your temperatures are cooler, right, so you don't need to
sweat it as much. Um. And then when you do mow,
you should vary the direction you mow in, so like
one week mo north to south right and then the
next week mo east to west. Yeah. And I think,
(41:50):
and a lot of experts think you should always leave
your clippings on your lawn and not bag them and
dump them. Um. Because when you're doing that, what when
you leave in the clippings, it ends up coming compost
and it just helps your soil. If you constantly are
removing the clippings, that soil is gonna compact and get
hard and um. Yeah. So I'm I'm a big proponent
(42:11):
of of getting a multi mower and just leaving the clippings.
And those clippings are do not equal thatch. Apparently the
clippings breakdown in like a week. Um. Thatch is actually
build up of dead crown and calms and other stuff
of the plant. It's not the cut blades. Yeah. It
actually if you remove your clippings, you're gonna encourage that. Yeah,
(42:31):
So don't do it. Yeah, that's is no good. No,
it isn't good because it keeps air and water out
of the soil, which are essential. Well, a little bit
of thatch can be okay some yeah, but not much. No. No.
And if you do have a thatched problem, you can
just break it out, yeah, and then your clippings will
come back the next week exactly. Uh. Fertilizing is key.
(42:55):
You want to add nutrients to the soil. Um. Granular
fertilizer once or twice a year is the way to go.
The spray on stuff it you know, that's not a
great thing because that just kind of gets on the
blade of grass itself. The granular stuff soaks into the
ground over the course of weeks, and it's like slow releasing, right, yeah,
slow releasing. And um, a lot of these are chemical fertilizers.
(43:18):
I'm not into it. There's a great brand called Ringer
and it's natural and um a lot of the chemical
fertilizers are just salt, and salt is no good for
the ground. So it's really weird that made up of
salt understood that then the Romans used to salt the
earth of the lands they conquered. People couldn't grow stuff. Yeah,
I mean what about idiocracy accidentally salted the soil using
(43:40):
gator right? Really? Yeah, I remember aerating, something I've never done,
which is one of my reasons why my lawn stinks. Well,
that's basically like, so over time, your soil becomes more
and more compact, and as it becomes compact, there's less
error movement. Water trickles through, it's easily and is um aerobic,
(44:01):
which means they need oxygen bacteria that helps like keep
things nutrient rich down there, and if they're not getting oxygen,
they're not able to do their thing. That's right. So
you want to aerate, depending on how high traffic you are,
maybe once a year where you use like one of
those it looks like what's the drum barrel the drumroller thing,
(44:22):
but with spikes, hollow spikes and they just pull plugs
out of the grass that you just leave in place
and bam, aerraated. Yeah, and you can rent those two
at a hardware store. Um or they even have these
if you have a small yard. Um, they have aer
rating shoes that like, yeah, you just basically attach them.
You just attach them to your regular shoe and strap
(44:45):
them on. And it's like just spikes that you walk
around in your yard. But you'd have to have a
pretty small onto, you know. Or kids. Yeah, that's true. Yeah,
put them to work, attach spikes on their shoes. Yeah,
that's probably safety. Like go run around, just don't run
around the same place. Um, we've talked about detaching. Uh.
And then there's weeding. Um. Weeding is the bane of
(45:07):
my existence. And I don't really know what else to
say about it. It stinks I got a lot of weeds. Um.
Weeds aren't necessarily terrible for your yard if you have
a few, But um, no, and what are weeds besides
plants that we decided we didn't like. Yeah, but certain
types of weeds can indicate like if you have a
lot of dandelion, that means you're soil is too alkaline
(45:28):
or to compact, Or if you have a lot of clover,
means it's too low in nitrogen. So it can be
a sign of some amendments that you need to take
care of. You can read the weeds. Yeah, read the weeds.
And one thing if you, um, don't make the mistake
I made, which is, hey, I'm gonna put a bunch
of weed killer on my yard and see what happens.
(45:49):
Because it's um. You might be surprised of how much
your yard is weed. And then you'll look out one
day and it's all brown except for a couple of
patches of green. Well, then you just start over right
with some seed. Yeah, I need to start from scratch
back there anyway, in the backyard. Yeah, it's just it's time.
(46:10):
And then do you have pests? Yeah, I got all
kinds of pests. So there's UM this I guess it's
called biological control. UM, pest control using this stuff called
Bacillus thuri giensis that is how you say it. And
it's a gram positive bacteria. It's similar to the stuff
(46:30):
that causes anthrax. Totally fine for humans, but for certain
kinds of long pests like flies, mosquitoes, butterflies, beetles, moths, um.
They eat this stuff and it creates a um, a
crystalline protein in their guts that turns their guts to mush,
(46:50):
and so the things starved to death and you can
just put that stuff on your soil. Basically, you're putting
bacteria on your soil and it will take cara pests.
It's nice, man, that was this is informative, I think. Yeah.
It was like, we don't do a lot of how twos,
but we just did the mother of all how twos?
(47:10):
Has you got anything else? I got nothing else, man,
So if you want to know more about grass, you
can type that word into the search part how stuff
works dot Com. It will bring up that really helpful
demonstrative picture too. Oh yeah, uh, and I said demonstrative,
which means it's time for a listener. Now, I'm gonna
call this fish bowl at the LaBrea tar Pits. Hey, guys,
(47:35):
a huge fan of the show. Gets me through my
long commute. Just listen to the LaBrea tart Pits and
the fish bowl at the Page Museum sounds similar to
a setup that I've worked in before at the Aquarium
of the Pacific and Long Beach, which I've been to.
It's pretty nice. Is there a fish bowl? Is offich
bowl there? Well, there's a fish bowl where they work.
I interned at the veterinary department which had glass wall. Also,
(47:57):
visitors could check out the procedures. Turns out the glass
walls are really neat for the observer, but really annoying
for the fish inside, meaning uts. I never saw anyone
tap on the glass and yelled nerd, but we did
have a regular onslate of small children tapping and smashing
their faces against the glass. One day, in particular, we're
doing surgery on a chuck wala, a lot of people
were outside the glass watching a little boy started tap
(48:20):
tap tap tap tapping. Eventually, the veterinarian got fed up,
slowly turned with a scalpel and glared and pointed at
the little boy. Ve shook his finger at him, and
the little boy's eyes widened in fear and he ran
away crying. And that was my favorite day of my internship. Anyway,
that story always makes me chuckles. I wanted to share
(48:40):
keep being awesome, And that is from Caitlin with a K.
Nice thanks a lot, Caitlin. Yeah, you threatened a boy
with a scalpel and that was Caitlin was just witnessed
that and he cried, and that was Caitlin's favorite day.
If you have a favorite day, oh that's a good one, Chuck.
Tell us about your every day. We want to hear
(49:01):
about it from everybody. You can tweet it to us
if it was a short day uh s y s
K podcast. You can post it on our Facebook page
at Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know. You
can send us an email to Stuff Podcasts at Discovery
dot com and, as always, joined us at our beautiful
home on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot com
(49:24):
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it how Stuff Works dot com
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