David McCabe from https://reset.fm/ is back this week as we wrap up the 2020 Lawn Care Series with a look at fall lawn care. What needs to be done now and what can wait till spring? Can you bring your lawn back from a long summer drought? What about over seeding and spraying for weeds? Dave answers it all. We also open the show with a little Windows 95 conversation as the OS turns 25 years old and look back at the early days of podcasting for Jim and Dave. I think you will find it very interesting.

Full show notes, transcriptions, audio and video at http://theAverageGuy.tv/hgg457

Join Jim Collison / @jcollison and Mike Wieger / @WiegerTech for show #457 of Home Gadget Geeks brought to you by the Average Guy Network.

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Podcast, Home Gadget Geeks, lawn, grass, mow, Dave McCabe, pre-emergent, notebook, weeds, water, spring, summer, soil, cool season grass, Scotts

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On August 24, 1995, Windows 95 was launched, introducing the iconic Start menu. Over the past 25 years, Windows has continued to evolve, building on this rich history of innovation. Join us for a look back at how Windows has changed to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. 

Let’s just get this straight. I’m not a pro. This is not a “how to” you will still need to do your due diligence on your grass type, area, and listen to part 1 of this podcast.

Also, realize that I have a COOL season grass.  I am 6A and very close to 5B. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardiness_zone

If you live South of me you might be a WARM Season grass.  You STILL need to know your zone and grass type. 

Average First Frost for your area?

This weather guy YT

When To Expect Your First Frost

Video also has a fall forecast at the end. Temperature Anamolies.

If you are in the Below Average Map could be earlier for first frost so be ready for that.

Having said all that. By the time this podcast publishes you are behind if you have not started to implement your fall plan.

Fall

It’s a new lawn season. 2020 is over. What did you learn? Did you do the notebook? When did you apply your pre emergent? When did your soul temps change? When did the weeds pop up? How did your ferts do? Did you see fungus? When did you start watering?

Now, when should you have done all the above?

Learn and plan your 2021 season!

Why Dave doesn’t do Big Box Bags and Combo applications.  Typically, fertilizer time and weed control time are not the same date.  Post emergent weed control combo with fertilizer especially.  Pre Emergent combo with fert in the fall is somewhat do able, Spring, No.  You will find this sentiment in every extension office or turfgrass EDU program.

I tried to find an edu close to you boys –https://www.extension.iastate.edu/turfgrass/blog/when-do-i-apply-my-crabgrass-preventer

This is why I love EDU turfgrass programs – https://www.extension.iastate.edu/turfgrass/blog/nick-christians-ben-pease-adam-thoms/can-hand-sanitizer-kill-creeping-bentgrass

Get your notebook out. Plan out every day of the year until December. What you are going to apply and what you are going to do and when you will do it. Put your vacation in there. Weekends away, know every day.

Overseeding Takes time! It will wear you down if you have a big yard. 

Gear up our equipment. Aerator.

https://www.greencastonline.com/tools/soil-temperature

Angies List. Get a login, search for Aearator, Aeration. You know how you search something and then that’s all you see in ads for a week after?  You have now shown interest in this as per Angie and when deals pop up she will let you know.  You can get your Aeration done for $50 some years. Be careful that you don’t depend on it and you can plan your date. If you can take advantage of it is nice and cheap!

Cooler temps I’m going to mow shorter. Train it lower in increments. 

Cut back on watering

Watch for fungus

Double Dark

How was your summer? Did you lose any grass?  

Are you going to overseed?  There are two plan timelines, Overseed or not overseeding.

Good Lawn with weeds, lets look at just a pre-emergent plan. Thin lawn, tough summer, disease, let’s overseed. Just remember if you go pre-emergent route, you can’t come back over it and aerate. That process will break the bond of the chemicals that are preventing those weed seeds from germinating.

Three resources you ABSOLUTELY must utilize. 

LCN Fall Seeding Guide – https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-HW34xmUEYAPYRcbm7kqNUTipWhQgKDJ/view?usp=sharing&mc_cid=2767936ca5&mc_eid=6689b47ca7

Cool season guys, I cannot tell you how awesome this guide is. Follow it but understand what you are doing.

AND Ryan Knorr. Watch this

Fix an Ugly Lawn with Overseeding // Complete Step by Step Guide For Beginners

Fall Pre-Emergent Strategy (this is the Fall Defense of Winter Annuals Strat)

https://thelawncarenut.com/blogs/news/fall-pre-emergent-lawn-care-strategies

https://www.doyourownpestcontrol.com/pre-emergent-herbicide-guide.htm

Read Labels and Read Grass Types.  When you research and read or watch YT make sure it is information for your area and your grass type.  No sense to watch a bluegrass guy from Georgia talk about grass when you are in Chi Town and Turf Type Tall Fescue.  You know what I’m sayin?

If you can, weigh out your material. Listen to the spring episode on how to practice.

https://store.doyourownpestcontrol.com/dithiopyr-40-wsb

https://turf.purdue.edu/when-will-crabgrass-germinate/

My Fall 2019 plan in OneNote

Mow, Mow, Mow!!! 1/3rd only

Good time to fix your sprinkler heads. Change filters/Clean Filters

Timing for projects

Late Nov/Dec – Throw a fert down. Typically called winterizer. Use anything you can get your hands on. Preferable 18 Nitrogen or higher. Lawn won’t use it, stores it for spring, and then BOOM, 2021.

You should have a Log of what you did and when you did it in 2020. Time to learn and write down what you want to change.

Jim Collison  [0:00] 
This is The Average Guy Network and you have found Home Gadget Geek show number 457. recorded on August 27 2020.

Here on Home Gadget Geeks, we cover all your favorite tech gadgets that find their way into your home news reviews, product updates and conversation all for the average tech guy. I’m your host Jim Collison broadcasting live from the average guy TV Studios here. Super hot! Mike, I can’t keep enough water on my lawn like that can’t water it enough.

Mike Wieger  [0:40] 
You took the words right out my mouth. We’ve had a string of just high 90s for a long period of time and no rain. I mean, it’s been gorgeous if you have a pool and if you hadn’t gone back to school yet like I’m sure kids were loving it because it’s that perfect just sit by the pool. Weather and when I was gonna say the same exact thing I if there’s areas of my life There’s no shade. It’s browned up, because I cannot keep enough water on my lawn right now.

Jim Collison  [1:05] 
Now I do know a guy who does have a pool and is in the right spot. Dave McCabe’s with us today, Dave, how is the pool?

Dave McCabe  [1:13] 
Hi guys tell me. I’m having some trouble tonight. So everybody just I’ll get it figured out. Yeah, no worries. My pool is actually really good. And it has been. It’s been crazy. If you haven’t had trouble this this summer with your lawn, then you are a miracle worker.

Jim Collison  [1:33] 
Yeah, it’s been pretty tough.

Dave McCabe  [1:35] 
I’ve had a rough one. I mean, I can tell I can give you guys a lowdown whenever you’re ready.

Jim Collison  [1:40] 
But yeah, we’ll talk about it.

Dave McCabe  [1:43] 
You know, for someone who is so into this stuff, I have had such a hard year.

Jim Collison  [1:48] 
I just can’t. I can’t keep enough water early in the spring and maybe even early summer. I felt like a champion. I was getting out every other day. Measuring all the stuff we talked about in the spring show like I was applying it it was working great the lawn was green. In the front are my front lawn which is Zoysia grass just it’s usually pretty drought tolerant does pretty well it’s kind of designed for the hot weather. I’ve been watering and watering water which has been so hot and no moisture that it’s having trouble keeping up. So we’ll talk more about that of course of course we’ll have some great show notes that we’ll post out. If the average guy TV you can go to http://theaverageguy.TV/HGG457 for the show, and get all in access to all the show notes.

Don’t forget you can download the mobile app HomeGadgetgeeks.com Android and iPhone available there for you for free. Just downloads the best way to listen on the road or whatever whenever you need to stream it. It’s an easy way to get it done. Just have it on your phone as a backup just have it there even if you don’t use it. It doesn’t cost me anything but it does cost me something. We appreciate our Patreon subscribers who help us pay for that each and every year HomeGadgetgeeks.com

Big thanks to Ryan and Bob from the computers.org they hung out with us last week. We kind of got old school on on builts. And we talked about cooling in particular, which is the subject we’ve never Mike we’ve never really drilled down on it. And it was it was good for me to kind of catch up on where cooling has gone and with with liquid cooling, I think really just being an option. Now, the days when I looked at it, it was kind of awful. It’s kind of a lot easier. I think you can just do it right. You got a liquid cooler, right?

Mike Wieger  [3:27] 
Yeah, the eo is make it so simple. Right? not have to do your own custom loop. Just doing an AI o and AI. Yeah, I agree.

Jim Collison  [3:34] 
So big thanks to Ryan and Bob joined us from thing computers next week. Next week or last week, next week all ham show So Mike is going to Mike’s done some new ham radio stuff over the last couple of weeks. So we’re going to dive into what he’s doing. He admitted to me he was doing some soldering today. And it wasn’t going well.

Mike Wieger  [3:53] 
First time out solder. Not a good idea to Oh, man. It was. It just takes some time, I think to practice so I was doing it on Just some wires I had never soldered in my entire life have a soldering gun, which I found is I think a lot harder than to be accurate with an iron. But yeah, I’ll talk about that next week my adventures with a soldering gun and getting to that definitely yeah

Jim Collison  [4:13] 
Dave, you’ve done some you’ve done some soldering your day, right

Dave McCabe  [4:17] 
I’m formally trained at the School of Top Gun from the US Navy to work to solder on F 14. Now, if anyone has an F 14 you just bring it to me I’ll gather

Mike Wieger  [4:31] 
very practical skill.

Jim Collison  [4:33] 
Oh, good old Good Old Navy days. Have you done much have you done much soldering post Navy?

Dave McCabe  [4:38] 
I have a big huge bag. Now. I used to gym I used to. I used to work under a microscope, right? I would put stuff together and fix boards and I would sit at my desk and we’re I remember we’re out in the Persian Gulf Desert Storm and someone burned a hole through a board and Like, you know, we got to fly, we need to fix this board. You know, today McCabe. So you relay the epoxy over your relay, the solder runs, you drop the eyelets you drop the circuits in, and you’re like, you hand over this masterpiece of a circuit board and you’re like, this is two days of my entire life. Take care of it. And then 30 minutes later, you’ll get another work order. It’s the same board with a big hole burnt right there. And you’re like, Ah, that’s the military.

Jim Collison  [5:31] 
Yeah, yeah. Have you done post? Have you done? Did you have to do any work like that post Navy, have you done anything on computers that way? Have you soldered anything

Dave McCabe  [5:40] 
not big jobs.

I still love to do it. I love to like pull things off and fix things and make my own. You know, do breadboard you know kind of projects and repairs but nothing like I used to. I used to have this huge station with vacuum solder and you know, it was awesome.

Mike Wieger  [5:58] 
Yeah, yeah. This is nowhere near that level this is putting together just ham radio antennas and you know soldering P259 connectors to cables and stuff.

Dave McCabe  [6:09] 
Yeah it’s a little bit different than you know the cat shot you know than an F 14 takes a very different at home there’s just one quote you know bigger the blob better the job so just solder it up man just soldered it up

Mike Wieger  [6:25] 
it but yeah, keep your about cold solder joints, all that stuff. It’s gonna take some time. It’s gonna take some googling.

Dave McCabe  [6:31] 
Yeah, just reflow it just flux it jabs,

Mike Wieger  [6:34] 
I would do that if it meant

Dave McCabe  [6:37] 
it will work.

Mike Wieger  [6:38] 
All right. A lot of new skills.

Jim Collison  [6:42] 
For those who are. Maybe you’re new to Home Gadget Geeks or you’ve just joined us in the last couple of years of course, Dave longtime podcaster that I had the opportunity. My very first podcast was with Dave, back on home server show, Dave August 24, which was just a couple days ago. 1995 was the Windows 95 launch and 25, 25 years ago, and not that we were podcasting then but you know,

Dave McCabe  [7:08] 
Let me tell you a significant story for that because I went to Best Buy that, that very day for the launch because I was going to buy it and I did buy it. And they were having specials and I bought what little did I know it changed my entire life on that one day was called a diamond Rio.

And it was an mp3 player that probably held two songs. And I used that diamond Rio for years and years and years and years. And then when podcasting came around, I was trying every software package I could find to get podcasts on to that player. So I could listen while I mowed and did things and I eventually bought bigger and better things. But that was my first mp3 fire was the Windows 95 And it was like this special you bought. You bought the windows 95 and they gave me this diamond reo. I don’t know why but they did.

Jim Collison  [8:08] 
Well in good. They did that Really? I mean, those days from then until early 2000 you know, right there was that was kind of the early era of it. I remember, maybe 2001 a buddy of mine bringing in an iRiver and saying I can get like 35 songs on mp3.

I mean, I remember and 97 a buddy of mine saying, I’m ripping. I’m ripping mp3 is at my house. I worked at a computer store in 97 in a guy saying I’m ripping mp3, it’s gonna take all day, but they’ll be there when home, you know and it was like he was ripping them you know, there and in those were some significant times we we don’t even think twice. Now. In fact, we think about enhanced audio and some of those kinds of things last less in that but that those were the days right getting thing started.

Mike Wieger  [9:01] 
I was four years old and Windows 95 came out.

Jim Collison  [9:04] 
Well, it’s a world other than you. But Dave, I kind of think about that. April, I think it was April day about 12 years ago when you said yes to allowing me to be on home server show and I think you had Chris and john and me on the same night. And no, we I don’t think we broadcasted live in those days. I think it was just recording. Yeah, and and show around show 40 or something like that. And that’s about 12 years ago. I think now that 11, 12 years ago, coming up December 3 is the 10th anniversary of Home Gadget Geeks which started as Hometech and so be celebrating will have a big show that December 3 would be kind of fun. But I always I always hark back to the day I contacted you and said, Hey, if you’re ever ever interested in having a a you know, having a guest I’d love to be on the show you

Dave McCabe  [9:56] 
I know, were my crazy fan that emailed me and said Dave, I’ve listened Every single show on a cross country trip with my family. Good. And I just really emailed you back and said, Can I have the address of your wife? Because I want to apologize to her. Yeah, no, I did. You aren’t and Chris and Zajdler. And I thought one of these guys has got to be good enough to podcast with me, right? Yeah, I was like, man, I love all three of these guys. We’re just gonna have this big, fun podcast, all four of us will do it.

Jim Collison  [10:26] 
We had the best time.

Mike Wieger  [10:27] 
I have an assumption from back then cuz you said you used to just record and then you obviously you move to going live. When I started my podcast, and now this was a lot later, after podcasts were already relatively big. I’ve always assumed that people only started doing live podcasts because of Leo Laporte and the Twit network and what they were doing over there and the fact that they were live streaming, because when I got into I used to listen to his podcast because I found it through iTunes. And then I realized that they, you know, broadcast live, they’re doing video. I mean, were they really the first time pioneers of a big podcast doing live streaming. I’ve always assumed that, but I guess I never, you know, I don’t know my podcast history of where there are people doing live streaming before, twit.

Jim Collison  [11:14] 
That’s a good question.

Dave McCabe  [11:15] 
Yeah, it’s a good question.

Mike Wieger  [11:16] 
Okay. Cuz I mean, they were my inspiration to do things live. I loved that format that that was so cool. They had a chat room. You know, they they were able to people were able to interact with them. So that is, that was my inspiration for if I’m gonna do a podcast, I’m just going to do it live. But obviously, like I said, I joined after live was already a thing for podcasters, who started just recording. And then they switched over at some point.

Jim Collison  [11:37] 
There were some Silicon Valley startups like cranky geeks, that was John C. Dvorak is early work.

Dave McCabe  [11:43] 
Yeah. The other guy the pod father I can’t even think of is

Jim Collison  [11:46] 
Adam, Adam Curry.

Dave McCabe  [11:48] 
Yeah. So I would probably say maybe he did. But yeah. You know, honestly, what changed our lives was Google. Yeah. When hangouts became a thing, it’s true. We all You know, Jim and I were on the forefront when hangouts had their, their live invitation for YouTubers. I got an invite and I remember Jim was mad at me because he didn’t get one. And I was like, let’s just try it tonight. We’ll go live. And because everybody was asking us to write

Mike Wieger  [12:18] 
Yeah, there’s too much work before that, right? I mean, you had to get Skype or all different ways. I mean, it was it was difficult to do before Hangouts. I remember doing a few of them before that. And like with Skype, it’s it’s you use Call Recorder and, and good luck doing it live.

Jim Collison  [12:32] 
Yeah, we did live audio on Ustream before the video we did that

drew and I read it for almost a year, I think.

Dave McCabe  [12:40] 
Ustream and then we did a live stream comm

Mike Wieger  [12:45] 
Justin.TV was big back then. I never

Jim Collison  [12:47] 
Justin, but But well, then then Google came along and I remember that day I called Dave we talked and it launched I

think that was day

the video. We were on it on. Yeah, we were on Wednesday. I was like I was figuring it out at work. And I’m like, we could do this. And so we that that Wednesday night, I think because we recorded Wednesday nights in those days. And which is why Home Gadget Geeks i think is on Thursday. Because we did a home server show on Wednesday. And, and I remember having that and just thinking and man, we did not move away from hangouts forever. I mean, I took it down to the nearly down to the end of it. The end of life with it, we used it a ton. It really changed for us it really changed a lot of the way we interacted with our audience. And I think of the folks out there you know, like, like Jim Shoemaker, who would come to the meetups, be a part of those groups, Tony Rainer. Kevin Schoonover those those folks who would be a part of all those times and just kind of part of our community. And it continues on today. They listen to reset I’m sure you still hear Dave, I’m sure you still hear from some of those folks right on Reset?

Dave McCabe  [13:58] 
Yes. I have a podcast. Almost forgot. Yeah, yeah, I have a podcast and I honestly I’ve taken the summer off. I, I didn’t tell anybody I just kind of

Mike Wieger  [14:11] 
It’s okay

Jim Collison  [14:12] 
We’re gonna, we’re gonna dive in to some work here. But it sure is great. I mean, I think about, you know, the 10 years coming up for Home Gadget Geeks, I think about the 12 years that I’ve been hanging out over 13 years I’ve been hanging out with Dave, Windows 95 anniversary, and it’s just great. I mean, those are some very fun memories for me, and in a very important, you know, 20 years of my life that have been all around tech. So thanks for thanks for sharing it with me. Yeah. Well, we want to talk lawns. I’m going to get a comment in YouTube from somebody that says that took you 25 minutes to get to the point. I just got I just Dave, I just got one of those like two weeks ago, something again, you took your five minutes to get to the point. Like Yeah,

Dave McCabe  [14:56] 
sorry big congratulatory back slappers.

Jim Collison  [15:00] 
So great.

We exactly, we, we were in part three of a three part series that we’re kind of doing online care. We spent some time in the spring talking about kind of what to do to get ready. day we had to schedule for the summer, you couldn’t make it a little, a little bit of an emergency. And so we filled in for you to talk about summer. The goal today and I think kind of the important part is think about fall, because there’s a lot of things if you can set up now, you’ll have such an easier time in the spring. And so I think fall is the key. A lot of people think it’s spring. But I think fall is really, really, really key

Mike Wieger  [15:38] 
before you get to fall, I think you know, so I have a suggestion. I want to run it by running by the master here and see if it’s a decent idea. So this is more of a recovery from a really hard summer. We talked about it earlier that you know if you’ve survived this summer, you’re a magician. So my lawn is weed free crabgrass read the grass like where it’s not Brown. It’s healthy, luscious. Gorgeous, right? But if if there’s areas of my lawn that don’t have shade right now they’re just they’re turning brown.

So my idea and I haven’t done this yet, but my idea is so when the sprinkler guy came out to adjust my sprinklers I think he was looking for even spread across the entire yard. Right here is your you know, we’re making sure everywhere is getting covered right now I think is a good time to go out and take pictures of all the brown spots in your yard. Because then you know, those places need more water and the places because I have areas that are super green, right, I have the areas that are growing up really tall and some areas where they aren’t growing a lot. And those areas don’t need as much so I don’t think I need even spread of water. I need more concentrated water in certain areas.

So I’m wondering if I take pictures now this is so hard to do in the spring because you don’t know really the areas of your lawn that are going to really need that water that don’t get enough shade. So I’m wondering, you know, to kind of pre to kind of plan for this, going out taking pictures and then is it smart to adjust your sprinklers to maybe not do quite even spread but more Did these areas I know need more water? Or will that just screw me up and then next summer I’ll have the opposite spots being brown

Dave McCabe  [17:07] 
you know what I would say? Don’t overthink this.

Mike Wieger  [17:11] 
I think I am I’ve already overthinking because my children

Dave McCabe  [17:14] 
have brown watering just fine. Okay, it just means that that grass under the shade is not just it’s not letting off the water that that grass over there in the in the pure Sun is and and so if you don’t have weeds and your grass is dormant, you are in fantastic shape. You’re going to have a great fall plan and we are going to see to it on this very show that you have a successful spring going into the fall

Mike Wieger  [17:44] 
okay we talked me off the ledge so so there’s there’s hope it’s not all bad if your lawns looking a little brown right now. Not terrible Good to know. Okay, so now I’m ready then for the fall stuff because I who I need some motivation here.

Dave McCabe  [17:56] 
Yes, you are. And what I would say is it’s it’s always is a good time to go out and see if your sprinklers are operating correctly. You know, if you don’t have an automated sprinkler, you know, I stand in the middle of my yard getting sprinkled all the time just checking zones, making sure things are running fine. And just like you said, it’s a good way to. It’s more for when you have green grass, and you’re having a heat stretch. You can look inside that green grass for little patches of dryness. And you can see it, it’s all over my yard, there are certain spots that don’t get water.

And I go out with a clipboard and I circled them. And it’s been the same two years in a row and I’m just, I can look, standing in my yard and think, man, if this head was over, like three feet, I would be good to go. So it’s a good thing to just do that. Now if your lawn is dormant, your lawn is dormant. It’s not because you Weren’t watering it’s, it’s just it was hot and it was humid and the grass checks out. But you still have to water you you the crown of the grass, which is right near the ground is still alive, that needs to be healthy that still needs to be watered.

So we always say don’t don’t stop watering in the summer, keep watering. But if your grass goes dormant, just embrace it, it’s fine. It will come back and it was it was a very difficult summer. I mean it was very difficult. Now, I brought you guys something. Since we’re talking sprinklers, we’re just going to go for it right now. And this is a sprinkler head filter. So if you pop off your sprinkler head, it just maybe even a small nozzle. Not well, every sprinkler head has it in it drops down in just like just like so. And you can see mine right here. very dirty caked up with sediment. So that’s something you can do is just go head to head and twist off the top. Just YouTube it. If you have hunter nozzles, or you have rainbird nozzles or there’s a couple other brands, house brands for Lowe’s and Home Depot, just Google it, and you’ll find how to take the heads off and you can check these little filters. And you can buy these you can buy a bag of these at the store.

Jim Collison  [20:23] 
Dave, I think sprinkler heads are something that people don’t think like growing up, you know, we had a irrigation system. I grew up in California. We had an irrigation system. My dad never used it and and it certainly wasn’t on a schedule like it was you had to go and turn it on, right? He just didn’t he just did. And in those days, you kind of put your sprinklers and you kind of set it and forget it. They really just came on.

Now I think I watched these guys on YouTube and sprinklers get pretty sophisticated like, I mean you got different patterns. You can do different you can put different heads in there like you’re talking about trying to get have a filter. So it may good I think a guy like Tony Raynor, who just got here His kind of irrigation system up and running, it had been broken. I think it’s worth it to kind of dig in figure out okay, what kind of heads do I have? What do they do? What are my options? What? What are the parts for him? And especially going into the fall, you talked about, maybe areas going dormant. Mike, I don’t think it’s a bad idea. Dave, you said this as well. Take a few notes where things didn’t go really well. And you’re right, right. And fall is a good time to start thinking about your plan for the spring. like okay, what am I going to do? What can I do now? What kind of things can I change? Could I move ahead? Could I change some things around? Could I put a different head in there and you might have a half or a 180 and you need more concentrator, you need to shoot it farther or some of those kinds of things. So getting to know those parts Dave, I think is really key. Know what you have, know what’s available to you, right?

Mike Wieger  [21:51] 
I didn’t even know there was a filter. To say that I had no idea sprinkler heads had filters in them. I’ve never taken them apart.

Dave McCabe  [21:58] 
Yeah, some of the biggest things is like On a rainbird rotator head, there’s also a nozzle, and it has a flow rate. And it’s a different color code for flow rate, it could be a two gallon or a three gallon or a four gallon, sometimes even a one gallon flow. And that will change how much water is getting on your yard, you know, per hour. So you really should know that. And, you know, just like we talked in the spring, and by the way, you guys did a fantastic job on the summer show. Spring in here in the fall, the two things that we’re going to do right is we’re going to water and we’re going to mow, it doesn’t stop. So we’re still going to have to do those things. Right. And one of the things that Mike, we’re going to start with you right now, is you need to do, you need to go out and be a weatherman. We’re going to be a weatherman right now we’re going to look at 30 days into the future. And we’re going to see when those temperatures start to drop because when those temperatures do start to drop your grass is going to just be like, hey, it’s time to go. And you want to you want to make sure that grass has what has been watered and has a decent shot of fertilizer when it wakes up and it’s going to it’s going to go gangbusters again we went so we want to make sure that we give it a drink and we feed it and it will take off when you when your temperatures start dropping.

Mike Wieger  [23:23] 
Oh when you said it’s they’re gonna go I think you man it’s time to go quiet for the winter. No, they’re gonna pick back up again. You’re gonna have an entire fall

Dave McCabe  [23:31] 
gorgeous lawn. One more time before winter. Okay, because you guys are cool season were almost the same. Would he call this one latitude?

Mike Wieger  [23:40] 
Yeah, I don’t know longitude. I don’t

Dave McCabe  [23:43] 
know if I did very really well in that class. Here’s your here’s your weather. Yeah, we’re looking for low humidity as well. But look at these 70s and these nighttime temperatures, look at your nighttime temperatures, guys.

Jim Collison  [23:57] 
Yeah, 50s which are great for the cool season grasses. Right, that’s gonna trigger those. Dave let me just say to before we before we dig into this, I think it’s important if you’re coming to this podcast and you’re thinking like, okay, I wanted I ignored the spring in the summer one because I’m not in the lawns but now I want a better lawn next year. I think the first step is to know what kind of lawn do you have? Right? Is it a, we say cool season or, like I have a choice out front which is our Bermuda type grass it’s kind of designed for really hot weather it goes dormant in the winter back is fescues and Kentucky Bluegrass, which are cool season grasses right? They act very different I actually have to treat them very very different full set out front shade in the back it works perfect for my kind of my environment here. I’ll show my I’ll show both ones here in a little bit. But okay, so knowing that I think, folks don’t you think it’s good to kind of like you talked about in the spring show of getting maybe like let’s let’s figure out what you got.

Dave McCabe  [24:55] 
Going downfall, my goddess on sprinklers, what’s getting me excited. Love My spring. Colors

Mike Wieger  [25:01] 
derailed us.

Dave McCabe  [25:02] 
Let’s not forget that there’s a couple of requirements for this show. And I really think you should go back and listen to the spring show. And that will, that will explain a lot of things. But remember, I’m not a pro. I just kind of do this because I got shafted by some pros. And I like to do it myself. A couple of things we want to know is we want to know what zone we’re in. And Jim, you’re just crazy. You’ve got a warm season grass in the front and the cool season grass in the back. That would drive me absolutely nuts. Right. It’s great for me would kill me. Yeah, but it’s fine. It works in and you can do it. But make sure you know what zone you’re in just search on Google, you know, zone hardiness zone, and you will figure that figure it out. Next, you need to know what grass type you have. And I got an app for us the other day and I haven’t been able to make it work and Cuz I know you always ask me what are some some apps that you can apply to this and it’s called canno. Can RPO ca n o p o you’re supposed to be able to take a picture pointed at your lawn is supposed to tell you what grass type you have. ca n o p o someone needs to figure it out and let me know if it works. Say

Jim Collison  [26:21] 
that one more time. After Dave tap your your notes Okay.

Let’s see I get along. Is that better? Yeah, there you go. Okay. So canto

canto p O.

Dave McCabe  [26:38] 
Can opio Oh, weirdest name. Yeah, it is a weird name. So ca n o. p Oh,

Mike Wieger  [26:44] 
this is great. Because we were just talking Oh man, I lost my video again.

I got distracted in Australia and there goes my video. So keep going. Okay, so

Dave McCabe  [26:55] 
we want to know what zone we’re in. We want to know what graph Type we have and for the fall, something huge is we need to know when to expect our first frost because our first frost is going to tell us when we’re going to basically slow down and stop almost. We will work back from that first frost. So generally about 40 to 45 days of work time prior to our first frost. So we need to know that in the fall as well. And that will set us up for gangbuster spring one more time.

Jim Collison  [27:41] 
We were we were talking about the weather so let’s let’s I interrupted in the middle of that is we were thinking about the viewer. You’re kind of give us this is our This is Omaha Bellevue. I’m not that far from Mike. We’re we have been in a heatwave. We’re coming. It looks like we’re coming out of it. And we’re seeing some Some knightly temps of 75 some morning temps of 50 which is for cool season is dynamite. Why is that? I mean so mike mike is admitted he’s got some damage he’s going into the fall he hasn’t really paid attention cuz he’s been on vacation every other deflated. So So Dave, some seeing this knowing what’s coming up in our, our first frost, hard to protect here in Nebraska, really hard to predict, but we’ll say maybe late October probably is what is when we’ll experience those but it’s a good What, what would you say?

Dave McCabe  [28:33] 
So I put that I put it up, I put a YouTube link in the chat for a video. It is a video about the average first frost per zone in the the the 49 states. It just lets you know when your average first frost is going to be and you can take that average and then you can look up averages for your area. You know in past years, and you can you can work from that as well. And the other thing that I like to do is I’d like to know what my soil temperature is. And I would be really interested to see what your soil temperature is. So if you have just a thermometer that you stick in a pork chop to make sure it’s 165 degrees, sneaking out when your wife’s not at home and go stab it in the lawn, it will tell you that you guys are probably if you’re having those cooler nights, you you’re probably around 70 to 7374 degrees right now. And I did mine last week and I was about 74. So I’m thinking maybe you’re a little lower, because we’ve had, you know, some 90s and a lot of humidity so we might be a little warmer than you. The reason you want to know that as well is because when the soil temperature gets down to 70 degrees, those dormans weed seeds in the soil decided to wake up. So, Mike if you don’t have weeds now, you’re going to in about two weeks because those weeds are going to wake up. So I was talking with Jim earlier with you guys earlier his fall gives us two pathways. And if you had a rough summer, perhaps like me I one part of my yard looks great. The other part, I had a little bit of $1 spot fungus problem. So when you have a fungus problem, grass dies. So if you have a like a turf type tall fescue or any type of fescue lawn, that grass will not regenerate itself, that dead spot is there forever, forever, unless you have something like a blue grass or a Kentucky blue grass that will heal itself and grow into those new areas. You literally have to put seed and that’s why When you go to Lowe’s and Home Depot, they have that jug called the patch master or something, and you sprinkle it in, it has seeds, and it has insulation and you sprinkle it on the dirt, like you scratch the dirt. you sprinkle it on the dirt, and then you water it in. And then in 10 days, you get little baby grasses and your patches fixed. Well, we have to decide if we’re going to fix our yard with overseeding. Or if we want to just keep attacking weeds are like Jim, like your backyard. Sounds like it’s done great. It’s had a good time is about time to party again. So probably we’re going to do the pre emergent route. And we’re going to throw down at 70 degrees. We’re going to throw down a pre pre emergent die appear or a pro diamine. We can throw down either one of those. Generally you would use the one that you didn’t use In the spring, so if you threw down pro diamond in the spring, let’s switch over to a dye appear right now and put that down at 70 degrees. And what that does is it puts a barrier on your grass, that when the crabgrass comes up, it will still grow. It just hits the top of the soil layer, and that that barrier and it will die It will kill it. So it’s like throwing in like this weed preventing blanket inside your soil. And I think it’s amazing.

Jim Collison  [32:28] 
I didn’t quite understand that and I used to try to overseed and put down pre emergent and of course, you’re defeating the purpose right? I mean, it’s it’s also gonna block you’re

Dave McCabe  [32:39] 
hurting anything, you’re just throwing money away. That’s the thing with lawn care you. It’s really hard to hurt your lawn these days. It’s just how can we do it efficiently, right. So these two pads will tell us what we want to do a lot of people gym, they will throw down pro diamond, they’ll spend $100 Put down the pre emergent and then they’ll go rent an air Raider and start poking holes in the lawn. And what you’ve done is just like a little blanket that you’ve put out over something you want to keep warm. You just poke holes in your blanket. Yeah, so it makes it ineffective. So we really have to plan now. I gave you guys a task on the spring show is to create a spiral and track everything. So my hope is that you tracked your your water usage, your rain, your Mo’s your fertilizers, when you put down your weeds. If you walk around in your lawn lawn, what weeds are you seeing? And are you are you identifying the weeds? I believe that we talked, did we not talk about an app last time called picture this? If we didn’t, there’s not if we did, did we? There’s an app called I don’t sure this I don’t think we want again, you take your phone You take a picture of the weed and it will tell you what it is. So you can defeat it. So more tech for you that way but that that spiral that book is so important because it it will humble you, and you can say, you know, my book is honestly Jim it’s full of. I did this too late. I did this too late. I did this too late. Right. I my region has high humidity. Do you guys have humidity? Oh yeah. Oh my god. Yeah. We have high humidity in Central Indiana is a fungus Wonderland. So we have a lot of dollar spot. We have a lot of rust and all these yucky and I totally missed my window. So instead of doing a preventative fungicide, I had to do you know, double rate as a curative rate. It worked. Everything works. It just it’s double. It costs more And I’m kicking myself. And sometimes it’s just, we were on vacation, and you come back and it’s like, are these yellow rings in my yard? And why is all my stuff dying? I set my sprinklers to go, you know. So sometimes things happen just life happens. But you have to take notes and write it in your spiral even when you screw up.

Jim Collison  [35:21] 
We we talked about this the mower app plus or the mower plus app from john deere. And you can put any mower you don’t have to have a john deere mower. But this is kind of cool, because you can put it you can start it Yeah, you got it even older. There you go. But

Dave McCabe  [35:37] 
I do have a long folder

Jim Collison  [35:39] 
in which is which is right is what you should put what you should do, but it’ll track your most and it’ll track the GPS on your Mo’s. Yes. How long and I mean, if you like that, if you like that kind of stuff. It’s pretty great. It also tells you how much it’s rained in your area since your last Mo.

Dave McCabe  [35:56] 
Okay, that’s a good thing to know.

Jim Collison  [35:58] 
Oh, and to your point. I I took a little vacation this summer and I came back and my mom was super thick. Like, I thought I just mowed it and I checked the app. Nope, it had been nine days. And I was like, okay, no wonder, Well, I’m not going to want to mow that I’m not going to clip put those clippings back on the lawn, there’s too many of them, it’s too hot, it’ll put too much stress on the lawn. So you put your finger on and you bag those you don’t like to do that I have a I actually have a flower garden up at the top of my property where those nutrients will leach out and Leach back into the lawn. So don’t worry about it too much. But it is one of those things where it just helps with the data. Right and I think with the spiral or whether you keep track of it in OneNote or whatever, right? It’s kind of knowing that Mike Did you get a spiral started? Just write anything down this year? Use OneNote

Mike Wieger  [36:46] 
Yeah, I started using OneNote and I did that and I put in there a win win. See cuz I’m still using the chemical company that we talked about last time because it’s a darn good deal. And I can tell it works because my flowerbeds have weeds in it. Lot of weeds like we are just plucking so many weeds those flowerbeds, nothing in the grass so it’s been working so I’ve been tracking when they’ve been commenting I’ve been trying to put in because they leave us a sheet when they leave and says here’s what we did. Here’s all the stuff here’s some and they give you like some tips of like water it’ll you know this much next few days keep your dog off this one because this one needs to sit in for a day before you let people walk on it. Stuff like that. And so I’ve been keeping track of that. The biggest one for me is when did I sharpen my blade last? Because I keep forgetting Okay, was that did I do it in the spring did I just do that in the summer when I did oil changes for my mower I like to stay on top of that. I do a lot of oil changes on there probably more than I need to. But I like to do it. All sorts stuff. You really got me on a kick and I started tracking everything. I even took it beyond the home beyond the lawn I’m tracking furnace filter changes. Everything around the house is now in OneNote I love it. It’s It’s nice.

Dave McCabe  [37:54] 
I’m in the middle of Lowe’s and I opened it up I’m like okay, I need to 20 by 25 by four And I need 116 by 20 by four. Yeah, thank god it’s in there. Because no

Mike Wieger  [38:04] 
matter how many times you buy filters, you’ll always forget the size and you’ll second guess yourself when you get there. You’re always

Dave McCabe  [38:09] 
going hundred percent. I love doing that. And so, Jim coming back to your your problem, you come back from vacation and a lot of folks will do this. They have this gorgeous lawn, but it’s nine inches long and laying over. It’s gorgeous. And then they’ll mow it. And then the next day, they’re like God, why is my lawn look like dog? It’s yellow. Well, most folks will stress the crap out of it my moment because we still need to observe the one third mowing height. So if you have a high lawn, it’s no big deal. But you may have to hit it twice. So you’re going to have to raise to your highest level. You may even have to move wheels. Move your mowing deck if you have if you have a rider and cut off that top. Just a little Little bit, just cut a little bit off, and then go a different direction. And do it again. Yeah, you’re more than twice, but your lawn is going to be happier. Because you haven’t stressed it so much by, you know, mowing, most people will mow two thirds of it off, and then leave it lay in there. And it’s just, you see all those clumps. It’s like, wow, I don’t know why I do this. I should bag all these clippings. Well, if you if you mowed it, right, you wouldn’t have clippings, you know, laying all over the

Jim Collison  [39:30] 
well. That’s the key day, right? I mean, if you’re mulching and you’re starting to see mulch come out, like, Okay, it’s time to bag. And that’s really hard. I think for some of us because you’re like, No, I want to leave it on the lawn. Well, okay, even when you bag you’re still gonna leave some of your clippings on the line. So don’t totally freak out about that. The bag doesn’t get 100% but then find a way to incorporate those clippings back into your yard. If you can, like mold them into something, put them in a bed somewhere. You know, it just depends on what you will Do I like I said, I’ve a little bit and you know, this sounds weird, but I’d like a little bit of a Leach field that sits at the top of the yard and stuff goes up there. And then as it as it rains as just things begin to break down, it can work its way down into the grass, it goes through the landscaping and worked its way into the grass. Man, the grass that’s up by that area is green all the time. Like it loves the microorganisms and everything that’s up there. You’ve got to decide kind of how to get that done. And so it just kind of depends on the yard and that you have but if you’re leaving clippings, throw the bag around there until you’re not like if you’re leaving clippings often you’re probably not good enough right?

Mike Wieger  [40:44] 
Or you’re a double sinner like me, and you don’t know enough and you bag every time no matter what I have never not bagged my lawn. And so as you usually because I’ve gone too long, and then I end up because especially when I have the wrong I don’t have the mulching kit. So it just shoots it out the side. And then I ended up with piles, places. So I’m a double sinner, and I’m probably really stressing my lawn out.

Dave McCabe  [41:09] 
Okay, well just just, that’s, that’s in your spiral right now. All things I’ve learned you need a mulching kit.

Mike Wieger  [41:17] 
So I need to go to confession to you. I need to go to Confession or something.

Jim Collison  [41:19] 
It’s okay. It’s yours.

Dave McCabe  [41:25] 
But you are throwing away free nitrogen because you’re clipping off that grass that has nutrients in it, and you’re throwing it away. Yeah. Instead of returning it back, you know, in in your your grass needs that people are so scared of fache it’s just like this keyword people are so scared of a bag and bag in bag and bag. So

Mike Wieger  [41:46] 
don’t be scared of it. That’s been me. I was kind of raised on the whole like, oh, I’ve never had to detach because i don’t i bag every single time and it works really well. And, and I guess I’ve been I haven’t been bitten by it hard enough to learn my lesson. Is that but going back? Dave, if it’s been one week since I bagged glass,

Jim Collison  [42:05] 
right? You can bag it’s okay to bag, right? I mean, you could do it, you just, you’re gonna end up feeding your lawn more to get the same. Like you’re it’s a trade off, right? And all these things are trade offs. I mean, you can water last year just during times of stress your lawns not going to look as good. Right, right. So they’re all just they’re just kind of trade offs in the system. David speaking of watering as we think about going into the fall. What? In things locked up here, so I don’t know if you guys can still hear me, but if you can, Dave. Yeah.

Dave McCabe  [42:43] 
Yeah, sounds like the internet is giving us.

Jim Collison  [42:46] 
Maybe it’s Jim. Because that’s the mic movement.

Yeah, I think it is. I’m here. Yeah. No, it is. I think you guys can hear it. I lost I lost earlier.

So I’m good.

Mike Wieger  [42:59] 
I think Jim’s Can’t hear us. Yeah. Where

Jim Collison  [43:01] 
are we? Are we back? We can we’ve been able to hear you. Okay, good. So, yeah, it was definitely me some weird things were going on in this side. But Dave as we think about moving into the fall in and you know, okay, so summer’s over, I made some mistakes. I wrote them down. Maybe I didn’t need to do that next year. How can we start over in the fall? I mean, can we kind of make up for some Sins of the summer in the spring?

Dave McCabe  [43:26] 
Oh, I hate to tell it to. I hate to break this to you guys and everybody listening. But 2021 there’s one good thing, the lawn season for 2020 is pretty much over. Everything we’re going to do now is for next year, but fall is one of the most funnest times for the lawn guy. Because you get to make all kinds of decisions. You get to throw all kinds of stuff down on the lawn, and your lawn will forgive you for all of your summer transgressions against them. Mike. Yeah, no kiddo,

Mike Wieger  [44:02] 
but like you said, bring back a little bit too in the fall, but maybe not if it’s been completely dead.

Dave McCabe  [44:08] 
Well, if you had, if, if you like, didn’t water at all and you have huge fissures in your in your dirt garden, your grass, your crowns probably have died. But grass is very, very forgiving. If it got just a little rain and a little water, it just went dormant. It will bounce back, but we’re going to try to time it in the calendar that I saw from you guys. I’m thinking, do some work this weekend, trim it up, edge it, do all the stuff you need to do, and let’s start hitting it with water. And let’s wake it back up. And more water than we have been you mean if it sounds like yours is dormant, so we probably haven’t done any. I would make sure I did on a water. Really? Oh yeah. You want to make sure that you’re doing Deep in frequent watering, so I wouldn’t do three days a week, but I would do maybe a couple of deep water. So I’m weak. When that grass wakes back up. We want that water to be in the soil, right? Not on the top. You know, because if you if you just run your your heads for 10 minutes, and then shut them down, all that water’s on the top, it’s never going to see seep down into the soil. So we want to do deep, infrequent watering to wake our soil back up, and that’s probably two or three times a week. Okay, good to

Jim Collison  [45:40] 
know. And Dave, could we plan that? Okay, I’m gonna bring that page back, john, just because and this is our area, right? But, you know, we’re going to see at least now September 7, we start a run of 70s. And so we’re not going to lose a lot of I mean, we’re not going to lose a lot of the water during the day. I put that water in on Line by water it deep it’s going to go in it’s going to sit in them this one today when i when i water areas It’s so hot by the afternoon that soils already dry like it goes fast right? But but it is it safe to say like starting on our schedule here you know we see 70s here starting Monday the seventh. That may be a good time for Mike to change his watering schedule to go maybe Monday Thursday and run those twice as long or maybe three times as long as he had before. To really let that water settle in. Right.

Dave McCabe  [46:36] 
Yeah, and we talked about this in the springs we really need to know how much water your sprinkler puts down. You can water it 10 minutes zone 30 minutes zone. I have no idea. You really have to do the tuning can chapter eight so

Mike Wieger  [46:50] 
it’s probably too low no matter what. But it runs three, but it is around debate around debate and around debate runs three times in the morning.

Dave McCabe  [47:00] 
That’s not bad. Okay. Yeah, you’re doing a soak. So you’re letting that water not sit on top and run off, but it’s eight minutes. It soaks in, and it does another eight minutes. Yeah.

Mike Wieger  [47:11] 
Because I noticed it was just running off if you just let it run for four minutes altogether, so it’s 888

Dave McCabe  [47:18] 
cycles. Are you good? So let’s do that. And the biggest thing you can do my kids just take one of those little hand shovels and go jabbing into your ground. Pick up a plug or grass and get down six inches. What does it look like since it’s six inches down? And you can do that once a week? And just figure out what your yard looks like during the week that I’ve been watering. Am I my effective enough? Am I getting watered down low? And the thing we want to do this right, we want to do that deep infrequent watering because this grass is about to wake up and it’s about to start consuming all that nitrogen that you know the guy put out For you, and it wants to grow, and we want to tell its roots to grow down to the water not up to the water, it will, it’ll be healthier when it comes to, to the frost. It’ll be much healthier when it gets to that. But yeah, it’s go time for you guys, we, we have to decide if we’re going to do a pre emergent weeding, or we’re going to do an overseeding, run overseeding and even even a pre emergent run most of the times in the fall, we do a detach, we do an error rate. And then we do our overseeding prep, or we go down the path of the pre emergent and we need to know what our soil temperature is. In order to start this process. Guys, I’ve been I opened my OneNote probably 10 times a day and I go over my fall plan. It just I constantly go over and over and over. And things change. Things have changed for me so much. In just in the last month that I have two plants in the backyard, I’m doing an overseed my front yard, I find I just decided, I’m not going to seed. I’m not going to patch. I’m just going to go pre emergent. And I’ve got issues out there that I need to attack, but some things you have to make a decision What am I going to do? You know, this year I have like 21 22,000 square feet of lawn. So I have a lot to take care of. And you you have to make these decisions early. Because when that soil temperature gets to 70 degrees, you you need to have your pre emergent down, folks don’t understand that the weeds will reactivate in the winter and they will grow up Now granted, these weeds most folks just let grow and the winter We’ll take care of them. That’s usually what folks do. But the angel types like myself, I want that beautiful fall lawn. I don’t want any crabgrass heads in it. If you do get crabgrass that pops up in the winter, it will seed the seeds go back down into the into the soil. And you have to deal with those in the spring. It’s just a never ending cycle. So we we like to take care of it when we see it right or before

Mike Wieger  [50:26] 
it happens. So David that much lawn, are you making the same decision for the entire lawn? Or are you saying you know, this part of the lawn i’m doing i’m going down this road and the other part I’m going on the opposite road.

Dave McCabe  [50:38] 
I thought I had a plan this year. And then we had a trampoline. We sold the trampoline. Well now I have a huge round spot that’s dead. And then my neighbor decides to put in a patio. So he’s got equipment going over the grass, and he used part of my lawn. So now there’s some dead spots there. So I’m like, you know what, I’m going to overseed that my front yard. I have, I have yellow nutsedge that’s killing me. And I’m I’m trying to attack that. I have creeping bentgrass. I live near a golf course, the golf course mowers go back and forth all day long. They drop bent grass, and it gets into your yard and it starts growing like weeds. It’s great for putting greens but it looks awful in your lawn. So I meant to attack that as well. And I decided those little patches of bent grass are just going to stay there. I’m just going to deal with it. Because we also have an internet provider of fiber providers are going to start digging fiber lines in everyone’s front yards and I’m like, anything I do, they’re going to tear up. So sometimes you just have to accept what the factors around you give you and just do the best you can and I’m going to Go in my front yard. I’m gonna go the pre emergent round

Jim Collison  [52:04] 
pitcher pitcher Mike again, Dave. Yeah.

Dave McCabe  [52:07] 
All right, there we go. So we’re gonna do the pre emergent in the front yard. So I’ve been watching temperatures.

Jim Collison  [52:13] 
So Dave, I think what you’re saying and by the way I really appreciate this I think sometimes we think we have to apply one size fits all to every spot in our yard. In other words, you know, hey, I’m gonna put all I’m gonna go buy a system to put it on the whole yard. I actually have three different yards. I have this front of the front yard which is 100% full sun Southern facing, even leans into the South. So it just gets blister. zasa grows great under those conditions, right. all summer carpet grass, you could sleep on it. It’s awesome. Like, it is incredible. does pretty well with water. Even in this kind of heat is still struggling but it’ll come back. The back. bluegrass. Kentucky Bluegrass grows great partial shade, then I’ve got some real shade stuff and actually go to a, I go to a specialty grass store and I get a specialty kind of grass that they make just for the shade. And I plant that in that area this year, and it’s going to take me a couple years to fix that area. I’ve also had moles, which have just been devastating. The grass right on to Oh my god, dude,

Dave McCabe  [53:21] 
late, Jim, I was fighting them all I know, we’ll have to have a whole have to have a whole show

Jim Collison  [53:26] 
at some point. But, um, so I have to treat those three areas very, very separately, right. And I and I actually put down I do different things a little bit different. I do the Scott’s program on all of it, but I treat them all a little bit differently. And Mike, I think that’s the key is for you to learn those areas of your yard right and be like, Hey, I’m gonna do this here and that they’re today’s point writing it down and knowing it because you’re not going to remember in the spring, like, you know what, what was I thinking? Like, what was that like? You know, and I think you’re on to take some pictures and drop those into OneNote like remind yourself of what those things kind of look like. Dave, you had mentioned and I want to show this really quick. I think one of the best tools I’ve ever come across for getting soil samples is one of these little weasel wieder, whatever they come by, they have a whole bunch of different names. But basically, they’re great for dandelions, you put them in, you twist them, pull them out, pull the weed out, one of the great things, so it’s a great leader. But one of the things as good as getting soil samples, so we talked about, like, How deep is the water going like this would be a good thing for you How deep is the water going right now, you have no idea. You don’t know how deep it’s going. This thing will get you down about four inches, go down, spin it, pull it look at the core, and then you can tell like oh, okay, that’s how that’s how deep the water is going. I’ve also used these for seeding. So if I have some areas that I just need to spot seed, in other words, I just want to get some seed in there to get some grass grown to kind of fill that area with. Go in there, half, drop it, spin it, pull it out. throat, I just carry some seed with me throw it in there, push the dirt over the top of it, and I’m good to go. And that seed will then grow and today’s like grass seed and weed seed aren’t any different at 70 degrees they germinate. So as soon as we hit that, if I have more seeds in my lawn that are not weed, the the grass will overcome the weeds because there’s more of them. So I just try to keep seed in my lawn all the time to make sure when the conditions are right. It just starts it’s go time.

Dave McCabe  [55:33] 
Yeah, and and Mike has a unique situation because he has a lawncare chemical company. So there are things that he can control and control very well and that is his watering and his mowing and spot treating I would say you probably could treat it I put I gave you a link in in the private chat and also put that link.

Mike Wieger  [55:56] 
Yeah, I haven’t pulled up here. I might order some of that for especially for the better.

Jim Collison  [56:00] 
This is a, this is a

Dave McCabe  [56:05] 
it’s a, it’s a way to deliver roundup basically via a foaming application very directly. And I like to use this because I will get something that grows like two inches from a bush that I want to keep. But if roundup touches it, it will die. So you use this little foaming applicator and when the weed has a little V, it’ll grow up and it has a little V and you just place a little bit of that foam right there in that plant and it will die. You will die in seven to 10 days. And you can take this and I get I don’t know what you guys call them. I call them stinging nettles. It’s those weeds that have the little pricklies on them and if you touch them, they will burn your hand. And I get those grown in my flowerbeds all the time I can throw out 10 pounds of preen PR in which is a preemergence For mulch and and garden areas, I can throw out tons of that, but I’ll still get steamed nettles. And all you got to do is just put a little drop on all of those. If you get vines growing up into your rose bushes, again, you just maybe even cut the vine and then drop it drop the foam, right?

It’s just a way to deliver, you know, a weed killer very effectively, it works really well. And so you can control spotting, you can control your water and your mowing. And the cool thing is, is I would get to know my chemical guy and say, Hey, what are we doing this year? I don’t think I need to overseed do you? Do we want to air rate? Are we going to throw down a pre emergent? What do you think about sounds like you don’t have a fat tissue. Yeah. So we may not need to, to do that. But Air rating is always good for a lawn. And what I like to tell folks around here is check your next door app, your Facebook marketplace app. And another thing you can do is, if you don’t, if you’re not a member of Angie’s List, create an Angie’s List account. Go on the website and search for the service that you need done. Like aeration. Just search for it. Because what we’re doing is we’re telling Angie, what we need and their marketing engine will start churning. And when somebody comes out, and inevitably all these lawn companies want to aerate your lawn, and you’ll find someone who will send out one of those Angie’s List coupons $50 per yard per yard, you know up to 10,000 square feet or something so you’ll get a deal. You don’t have to go to Home Depot and rent the air Raider for 120 dollars for four hours, the things are so heavy, you have to get a neighbor to help you to make it cost effective, right? And they’re their work. I mean, I think it’s fun.

But you literally have to chase that thing because it’s so fast. And it’s a lot of work, you got to turn it, the turning is killer in your head, a sprinkler head. So just do that. Try the Angie’s List hack, search for it and see if you get a coupon. But otherwise use next door and Facebook marketplace, you can find people that will do aeration for you. And then and then you know what I like to do is my fall plan. I’ll give you some links later for your fall plan but you need to make your fall plan you need to write it down in your spiral. And it is you know it’s water, water water mo Momo. But when we start to execute our plan, we need to mow once and then we need to mow shorter and then we need to more grass almost to the point where it says don’t mow me anymore. Get it as short as you possibly can. And then error rate the crap out of your guy and just poke holes everywhere. It’s the funnest thing ever to do with all those little mud plugs all over your yard, you can throw them at your kids, it’s fun. And,

and then you can throw in a fertilizer or you can, you can throw in your pre emergent, whatever you whichever route you decide to take. If you’re going to overseed then you would throw your seed down, you would throw down some peat, or or some of the straw, you know, whatever you want to do to cover it. But that’s the best way to overseed is just start poking holes and then go to your brown spots. Get up all the dead grass and put some seed down, put some topsoil down. And you know in 10 days for fescue you’ll have you’ll have baby grass for rye 10 days. Kentucky blue grass, probably 2128 days of germination, and you keep you keep the soil wet. You’ll have great grass growing in it. That’s prior to the frost. Right? Right. So we talked about that frost, we need to do we need to know what third week of October 1 frost with those baby grasses. If the baby grass has just come up, they get a first frost. They’re gonna die. But we want to mow our baby grasses two times before first frost. If that baby grass grows up, you mow it, and it goes up again and you mow it again. You’re golden. When it gets the first frost, it’s just grass. By that time, it’s just like whatever you know will go dormant we’ll see in the spring.

Jim Collison  [1:01:42] 
Mike, you’re gonna ask a question. Yeah.

Mike Wieger  [1:01:44] 
No, I’m just gonna recommend to wonder. Yeah, well that and then for aeration too. If you do have a lawn care company for chemicals, oftentimes they do a really discounted areas. I think like my lawn care company for like 40 bucks, they’ll come out and do your area and if you use them for all the chemicals All yours you

Dave McCabe  [1:02:00] 
get your lawn done for $40 they’re either under charging you, or something crazy going on up there in Omaha.

Mike Wieger  [1:02:08] 
Well, I’m probably paying for it in all the other you know, I’m paying 60 bucks an application like eight

Jim Collison  [1:02:15] 
times a year. It’s 4050. I paid a couple years ago I paid 30 to have my yard done. Yeah, it’s not too expensive. It’s not It’s not that, Dave.

Mike Wieger  [1:02:23] 
Also that was without a lawn care company, though. So that’s a good balance. Maybe there are even cheaper options out

Jim Collison  [1:02:27] 
there. I think you’re I think 40 or 50 is going to be what you’re going to pay Mike. Yeah, to be honest. And I think it’s worth it. If you went to Dave’s point, you don’t want to go rent the thing unless you get a neighborhood that where everybody can chip in even that’s kind of a pain.

Mike Wieger  [1:02:39] 
I’ve never even done variations. I’ve lived here in four years. And it hasn’t been terrible. I don’t know.

Jim Collison  [1:02:45] 
Grab a screwdriver. Just grab a big fat screwdriver and go out and if you stick it in the ground, I mean, you got to go to a couple different places. If you stick it in the ground, it just slides in. You could probably get away. I mean, I think it’s a Good idea to do it, but if your soils loose, you don’t have to do it.

Dave McCabe  [1:03:04] 
Okay? oxygen into the soil. That’s all you’re doing.

Mike Wieger  [1:03:08] 
It’s not about water, it’s not about it’s about dentures, you’re just,

Dave McCabe  [1:03:12] 
you’re just loosening the soil getting oxygen down into it. And if you do the overseeding route, it’s just a very good mechanism in in which to get seed into the dirt for seed to soil contact, right? Yes.

Jim Collison  [1:03:28] 
Yeah, so if it’s good, if it’s a good shape for soils loose, if you don’t have a lot of batch, you’re probably I mean aeration also covers a faction, it’s a dethatching. In it, you know, it starts breaking down that tax and then the tax will start naturally start breaking it down because you’ve broken holes in in the layer right. And so it’s a good idea Mike to do it. It’s always a good idea. You can run behind it. You can also if you’ve got one of those landscaping rakes one of those not terribly expensive. 6075 bucks, whatever. You can go out and throw that seed and then rake your lawn or drag something over it. Dave, I had a question for you. Okay, so you saw that you saw the weather coming up. I’ve kept my lawn at three inches. pretty consistent. whole summer, keep it long, healthy. You just said, okay, start shortening it. Like when, for me seeing my knowing when the frost is coming and seeing when if I was going to start shortening that up. Do I start shortening up on the next cut or?

Dave McCabe  [1:04:31] 
Yeah, Pat does. Yeah, I have no idea right now you’re Kentucky Bluegrass. However, it wants to be mowed low, but you have to train it. I really do. And that’s one of the cool things I love about winter is because I can get it a little lower. Yeah. And it it just has this little matted look to it and it’s really good. Now, you can’t come out of summer and just whack off two inches. Right, right. Right. You really have to train it so

Jim Collison  [1:04:57] 
but if I moated it with a motive, the regular length We saw a couple hot days. Yes. And it’s gonna start coming down if I every week if I lowered it one notch a

Dave McCabe  [1:05:06] 
little bit, a little, little, little bit and maybe if you need to check what it looks like after you mow it, right if, if you’re still growing out dormancy, it’s going to look yellow but after a couple of fomos and you’ve hit it with nitrogen that you want to make sure there’s a lot of nitrogen so it’s going to grow grow grow right yeah and then you can start getting it cuz

Jim Collison  [1:05:30] 
I’m gonna lay I’m gonna lay down some fertilizer next weekend so I can begin to kind of start get that in there get it in the soil and then start reducing that and I could with the the cool season grass I could go into the winter with it short,

Dave McCabe  [1:05:44] 
right? I doesn’t need to be solidly winter okay. You want to short Yeah, so you don’t want it lay and over and getting snow mold in any you know, we don’t want to hurt it with fungus or anything. That’s a

Jim Collison  [1:05:55] 
mistake I made in the past. They’ve just left my mower high into the fall. I’ve left it too long. Yeah. This voice is gonna go dormant like mid October, or maybe even November, and then I can, there’s nothing you can do wrong after that. It’s just as Brown. You can either literally nothing you can do wrong, it just stays that way. In fact, here in Nebraska, we have some people who paint

Dave McCabe  [1:06:23] 
right? I don’t, I don’t dress. It’s just a wonderful grass. It loves the cool weather. So when it gets 70 degrees, and the temperature the daytime highs drop into the 80s and below, it’s just gonna take off. So hit it with nitrogen. And don’t do any slow release. We talked in the spring about this Mulligan height, which is a slow release natural fertilizer you want to get I know Jim, you’re a big box guy. So you’re going to be fine. Just make sure it doesn’t say you know slow, we leave Because that makes people happy that they’re not going to burn their yard. Now we want to hit it with nitrogen, we want to water it in, and we want that grass to start growing. And you can also do if you’re going to seed you want to get a starter fertilizer because it will have the the NPK numbers that you need for establishing new roots. But a starter fertilizers always good in the fall anyway, because you’re going to tell your grass Hey, we’re giving you all these brand new nutrients to you know, establish deeper roots to be healthier through the winter. So I tell folks, just go anywhere and get a fertilizer go to Walmart if staples sells it. Go buy it because what they’re trying to do is they’re they’re clearing it out, Jim, you can get fertilizer at Walmart for cheap and You don’t have to go to the big box store and fall into the trap of a winter riser. I’m doing air quotes because everybody old school thinks that we need throw down some winter riser to winterize this lawn. Well, we’re not winterizing anything. We’re just giving it nitrogen for it to store in late October, maybe for you guys, November, you can even have the dormancy process start. And you can throw out you can throw down some nitrogen in some cheap, big box store nitrogen, and let it sit there. And it will use that in the spring. And boy, will it use it in the spring.

Jim Collison  [1:08:49] 
So that first number is nitrogen. Is that right in the three in the three number? Yes. So like so I put down their fall turf builder, okay. 32 right. The very first numbers are all burst and nitrogen. Grass is going to go crazy. Yeah, and I’m going to want to cut it short. In that I’m going to want to get an order

Dave McCabe  [1:09:11] 
kind of high, right and look at your grass. Make sure your blades are sharp, right? Look at the tops of the grass. If you’re still growing out dormancy, if there’s still yellow shoots coming up, your grass may have a yellow or brownish tint it’ll be greenish brownish tint you want that? We need to wait for that spring look that full carpet of green and then we can start Okay, well golf course this thing can start cutting it short.

Jim Collison  [1:09:41] 
It realistically, Mike you and I like our our grasses under enormous amounts of stress. So anything right now, get some nitrogen in the grass, some kind of treatment. You’ve got somebody doing that for you, right. And then as we were going to get some rain over the next couple weeks, it looks like it’s going to cool down. We’re gonna Get some rain in both you and I should start then. As soon as that grass looks really good, long, cut it twice and start bringing it down each week, right until we get that we get it lower. I’ve never done that step day. To be honest, I haven’t

Dave McCabe  [1:10:15] 
either. And I keep my cat though, so we have to be careful. You want to make sure that it’s growing like gangbusters. And this is a step you don’t have to do, guys, you don’t want people listening to this think, Oh, I gotta get my lawn cut down. I got to get this thing short. You don’t have to just mow the top third, and just mow like normal. And then when dormancy starts right before your first frost, if you think it’s time, it’s time to put this thing to sleep. Just mow it twice.

Jim Collison  [1:10:44] 
Well, it’d be nice to have it short before the leaves come. So that it’s it’s down and then when I’m when I’m mowing or pulling up leaves. I’m not also trying to mow the lawn at the same time from that perspective, so the super cool

Dave McCabe  [1:10:59] 
Yes, yeah. there’s a there’s a couple of resources that I’d like to share with your listeners because I’m not the end all be all and I’ve jumped around like crazy and I want folks if if they want to overseed I want them to be successful. There are two guys that they’re YouTubers. And they have their own companies. They have their own YouTube channels that they they share this stuff all the time. The first one is a guy that who knows how to tear a lawn down and rebuild it. His name is Ryan nor kn o RR. Search him on the YouTubes and he has an overseeing strategy and he will go over it step by step by step. Now, a lot of the times he is these YouTubers, they’re kind of crazy. So you have to watch out for them. They will actually burn down the entire lawn with glyphosate with roundup and scrape off the dead and re topsoil and throw down a single cultivar meaning one type of grass, Kentucky blue grass or perennial rye, and grow that brand new in the fall. And they’re nuts. I mean, they’re absolutely nuts. If I did that to my lawn, my wife would kill me. She’s like, You’re killing the grass. I’m like, Yeah, but it had clumping fescue in it, just like I don’t care. It was breeding. So, so you have to be careful. You can’t do that. But they will show you how to overseed the other guy lives in Florida. But he used to work in Indiana, kind of Northern Indiana, Chicago area up overbuy there. That’s the lawn care nut, Allen hain. This guy worked for Scott’s true green for a decade. He knows what he’s talking about. When Talks cool season grass. The guy lives in Florida, but he covers cool season grass the most. And if you just get on his email list, he’ll send you a free guide. Here’s how to overseed Just go. And it’ll give you step by step by step

Jim Collison  [1:13:15] 
by step. I just watched him last night if mazing

Dave McCabe  [1:13:20] 
Yeah, the guys the knowledge these guys have. And the more you watch, the more that’ll seep into your brain. Because I can rattle off chemical names. You’re like, you know, what’s that weed? Well, that’s spurge. Well, what do you need for that? Well, you need some Quinn. Clorox right there over butter to kill that one. So you know, it just it’s soaked in. You’ll figure it out. And it’s fun to watch these guys. I don’t like watching a mo. I skip over there. They try to get all cutesy and GoPro on the mower.

Jim Collison  [1:13:53] 
Tell me what to put down

Dave McCabe  [1:13:54] 
right now. Right? So these guys have taught me a lot and in fact, I’m Tonight Jim I was late because I was putting down what I call the double dark. And I’ve gotten into I told you in the spring that I like throwing down granulars I like pushing the spreader. But I’ve got into the backpack, liquid game, right. And there is there’s a couple of products you can buy online. And these guys are going to peddle their wares on their online stuff because they all sell it right. But they’re really good. So you can buy this. It’s called a double dark and it has a lot of iron in it. And your grass is going to love iron. And it has sea kelp and humic acid and all these things and I’ve I’ve done this a few times before you spray this on your on your grass in your grass. It’s not like a fertilizer. It’s a mild fertilizer, but all that iron will make your grass too Like this bluish green. And if you have a neighbor, where you have a line, like their grass in your grass and there’s a line, you can get the bluish green as grass and the line and the neighbor’s grass looks kind of awful. They call it domination line. And I really don’t. I really don’t get off on making the neighbor cry. But I have a golf course right next to me. And my Your heart is deep, luscious green. And theirs is limey green. It’s real bright. And you can just tell there’s a domination line. So I take it personal against the golf course guy,

Jim Collison  [1:15:42] 
it’s good. It keeps you it keeps you motivated, right. I mean, that’s you gotta compete against somebody for that stuff. And I

Dave McCabe  [1:15:48] 
had to do it tonight, Jim, because we’re getting a rain event, you know that that hurricane Laura is coming up. So we’re going to get some rain events. So I was like, if I don’t do it right now, and I can’t Do it in the heat of the day, right? Because it’s too hot. You can’t apply things during the heat of the day. I literally had to wait till 7pm and I mixed up three, four gallon backpacks full of chemicals. And I did my entire front yard which is 9000 2000 1000. So 12,000 square feet.

Jim Collison  [1:16:21] 
Yeah. Now sometimes you just got to get it done. That’s one of those things. I Mike this summer you didn’t but I there were there were moments where I was like, I just got to get a mo in. Dave, back to our spring episode. You’re like, sometimes you just need to get the mo in so that you don’t get behind. So you’re not cutting a half or two thirds, right. And so I took that to heart and this summer I did better than I’ve ever done as far as like, it’s Wednesday. I don’t care what it’s like out there. I need to get a bow in and I’d go out and mow and I’d run I’d almost run around to get it done fast. I wasn’t trying to make it look pretty Put lines down. I’m just trying to get the mode done. And in that, actually, that actually paid big, big dividends for me throughout the summer. So that’s really good advice.

Dave McCabe  [1:17:10] 
This year, I tried to take different paths. So I get into, I get into no pun intended a rut with my mower, and I mow the same spot up and down, up and down, and it creates literal ruts in your yard. And if you go the other way, and you’re like, gosh, what are all these bumps? Are there the wheel marks of you’re riding on more? So always try to cut opposite and cut angles, you know.

slashes,

Jim Collison  [1:17:42] 
yeah, cross your rectangular lawn. It’s really hard on the edges, because you you have to mow you know, you kind of have to mow the edges. One wheel Right. Yeah. Now I’ve got wheel ruts around there. This this year actually one of the things I did for the wheel ruts as I carried a little bit of seed with me. And as I’d see the writes every once in a while I just I took a little you know little oil funnel you know so it comes down a long one about this just carry with me and I would punch it into the ground and make to do dude about six holes, throw a little seed in there and then just turn it upside down and those, those the little that you’re seeing

Dave McCabe  [1:18:19] 
You are a seed guy

Jim Collison  [1:18:21] 
and it cuz I got some I got some spots like those drive me crazy. And then I would then I’d break up those. Well, I timed there’s couple times a summary time that was just right. We got some rain, whatever it was perfect. And man, those those ruts grew. They’re now fully seated right there. They’re written right now, even during the heat because they kept the water on them. They’ve done they’ve done pretty well this fall, they’re going to do great. So I’m just I’m pretty pumped about that.

Dave McCabe  [1:18:49] 
Let’s Let’s leave your listeners with that. I have guaranteed patch repair success. And you can do it by going to Lowe’s and you can do it so cheap. You don’t have to buy the shaker bin. So I do it with I have a, I have a cart that I pull behind my mower. And so we’re going to go to Lowe’s, we’re going to look for it’s a brown bag, and it’s called. It’s probably a lawn repair top soil. It’s about seven bucks. For one of those big bags. It’s a bag of dirt. Yeah. But it’s it’s screened weed less topsoil. If you just if you go over and get the $2 bag of topsoil, you’re buying a bag of crabgrass, so don’t do it. This bag is screened. Okay, so we’ve got that. We’re going to buy some seed, we need to make sure we know what kind of long grass we have before we buy our seed. Most of y’all are probably fescues which is great because that stuff germinates in 710 days. We’re going to fix some patches. And then we’re also at Lowe’s, we’re going to buy there’s a bag you may have to ask someone about this but it is pelletized paper cellulose product and it will hold water. So we’ve gotten that we throw this in our wheelbarrow, or or our cart or whatever we’re going to patch repair with. So I’ve got this ginormous yellow spot in my front yard where the dog nuked it with, you know, 24 hours of holding it. My dog is a freak of nature and will hold urine for days.

Just kill my grass, and it’s literally nuked with all that urea of urine. So you have to get that dead grass out. I’m sorry y’all, but you’re gonna have to probably touch it. Most of the time. You can rake it but you need to take it out and throw it away. Just throw it over in the grass you get mowed in later. Take your rake the one with the pokey tines, not the the loose ones and scrape. You can do it with Jim’s whole poker. You can do it with a claw garden claw, but you need to break up the soil. Because we need seed to soil contact. That is the number one thing for seeding, the seed needs to touch the soil or be a quarter inch under the soil. And we’re going to take care of both of those. So now we’ve, we’ve, we don’t want clumps. So if you have clumps, just step on it, we’ve got this big patch of pretty yard dirt. Get a handful seed, throw it in there. Now go to that brown bag of lawn repair soil and just crumple it and fill up that that patch that you’re repairing. Get another handful of seed and throw it on there. And then step on it, just step on it. So what we usually do is we rent the roller and we roll that seed and we make good seed to soil contact. But you can just step on it and squishy Sit down and then get cellulose product and sprinkle over it.

And then that will hold the moisture, and then get it wet. And then keep it wet for 10 days until you see your baby grasses. And then even when you see your baby grasses that 10 days, you still need to keep it wet. So if you can’t I tell this to folks all the time, Dave, want to overseed Well, if you do not have a successful watering program, you can overseed right, because it has to stay moist for 10 days. If you seed Jim, if you grab a cultivar of Kentucky Bluegrass to fix in your backyard 21 days minimum. Yeah, most of the time. 28 days 28 days until you get a little bit of shooting baby grass. Yeah, stay on top. Just it’s it’s awful. But I mean Kentucky Blue Grass is the ball so we do it because we love it looks Yeah, it does. You got to keep your head. Yeah, so this patch master You can, you can do a whole yard with this. And you can do it for probably less than 20 bucks. Less than 20 bucks,

Jim Collison  [1:23:10] 
get out there and get it down. Just get it that Mike your repairs starting Monday. Like as we look at the calendar, what we can’t predict is a late September heatwave like this is, this is the hard part. I mean, it’s looking good right now, right, the 10 day is looking good right now, we have to be careful that that just means that if you put seed down now, you get some you get a good watering program. You can’t let it if we get a second heat wave, you can’t let up. You got to keep you got to keep it watered, it may still kill it. That’s the that’s the starting this early September 1. That’s what you run into. Now, that being said, you could start now and we could have a fabulous fall and you could like you could be a lawn hero. Like you know, because you we may get those perfect conditions and everything’s Just like going, you know, gambling like Yeah, yeah, it’s a little bit. Yeah.

Mike Wieger  [1:24:06] 
I’m gonna make a bet I’m gonna stick with my

Dave McCabe  [1:24:08] 
hat if you get some heat you just water you just got to make sure you stay. Yeah, and you’re just gonna have to be that dude. You know in your bathrobe with a stogie with the lawn with the hose, can you just just hose it down?

Jim Collison  [1:24:21] 
It is literally Jim. How’s it?

No, no bathro but I definitely out of my shorts and and no shoes.

And he had

Dave McCabe  [1:24:34] 
something most satisfying watering conditions right there. It’s just

Jim Collison  [1:24:38] 
it’s pretty great. I’ve actually Dave, we’ve I’ve got some weird areas in my yard where like, it’s just to use sprinklers. It’s just it’s almost a crime because it’s so much such a waste of water. And so during the summer because we’re home because I’m home because the pandemic every morning at 630 I can go out, you know, have a little breakfast, grab the cup. Coffee go out on the and I’ll just hand water it. And then that area typically struggles because it’s in the high concrete area, it’s a high temp area and normally it has trouble getting water. I’ve always struggled to have grass in those areas this summer, it’s lush and green because it gets every other day attention. You know, it gets me watering it by hand. You know, drink a cup of coffee and water it every morning not every every other morning. Or based on the soil temperatures I’ve actually been watering it more because it’s been hotter. And so I’m just trying to keep trying to keep some moisture in the grass just to kind of keep it you know, kind of keep it alive. So I have turned those watering moments into one to be a little more efficient but to to kind of be outside you know, just to kind of be outside water and lawn and join a cup of coffee or walk my lawn constantly.

Dave McCabe  [1:25:51] 
Yeah. Because I have yellow nutsedge and I like to go out and curse at it. But

I I am always Walking the line, I know every little detail I need to do. And I’ll never I’ll never get it all done. I know all this stuff, but I, at some point, you have to decide, this is what I’m going to do. This is what I’m going to fix this year. And it’s like my yellow nutsedge problem. It’s a three year battle minimum. It’s a three year battle, because that thing just grows and grows and grows. And Indiana is just covered in nutsedge. So, right.

Jim Collison  [1:26:31] 
Yeah, and I had some kind of weed for the last five years that I’ve been working on just every year. And this was my first year. It’s not there. I think it’s just you know, every year kind of going like any other any other final questions while we get Dave before we wrap this thing up.

Mike Wieger  [1:26:46] 
I already have I don’t want to ask any questions because that’s gonna be more things on my list I need to do. I have I have a lot of homework. I need to just go take a break. All the stuff I’ve been doing has been has been helping and I think that the frequency of the mo is That’s probably just like honestly the easiest thing. But also the hardest thing to like stick to right is like getting out there because first week after week like even if I get a few days and then you don’t do it a few days and then it’s two weeks you haven’t mowed and, and that’s been the biggest struggle for me is staying on the schedule.

Jim Collison  [1:27:18] 
Dave. Dave said something in the spring that freed me up when he said, You just got to get them all in like don’t if this isn’t your, this isn’t your premium Saturday mow. This isn’t the mow that the neighbors are going to be envious of. He just got to get a moment in the way he said that in the spring. I was like, Oh, I guess I can just do a Thursday or am I just oh Wednesday as

Dave McCabe  [1:27:41] 
fast as humanly possible. You don’t have that edge. You don’t have to we? You should blow if it’s too dark and you’re running into cars. Just leave it

Jim Collison  [1:27:53] 
Yeah, right. No, no right on it. Dave that that was a like that freed me up to just this like Just get out there like 738 o’clock. Okay, I’ve got 30 minutes to get this mo in. I’m just gonna get it in.

Dave McCabe  [1:28:07] 
It’s the most beautiful thing to get you out of all kinds of evening chores. Like, maybe I know there’s dishes there and I’d love to help you with those. But it is going to rain tomorrow. Yeah, I do not get this on the lawn. Right. If we don’t cut this

Jim Collison  [1:28:25] 
all weekend, so great. It’s so great. Well, Davey continue to influence me along after the home server show days. So thanks for thanks for jumping in and first ever three part series on lawn on lawn maintenance. Well, we’ll probably come back again to this next year because it’s just tons of fun to kind of talk about and think about maybe, maybe we’ll do a winter. I mean, there’s not a lot to do in the winter, but maybe we get together. This winter sometime.

Dave McCabe  [1:28:51] 
You guys can handle it. Just everybody. Find your frost time and work back. For most of us from your time. From your state line down to probably Central Indiana, it’s go time. You really have to have your plan down. Anything lower than than that gym, though you’re getting into transition zone and warm season grasses. They got a lot of time you guys can you got time to figure it out? That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t plan it. But find your frost frost date. And, Mike I think you’re good. Ask ask your guy if he’s going with what pre emergent he’s putting down and when is he putting it down?

Mike Wieger  [1:29:35] 
I’m gonna write that down questions to ask him the next time he shows up. What pre emergent are you putting down Got it?

Jim Collison  [1:29:40] 
It’d be like, have you been listening to a podcast? That’s what he’s gonna say. One of the things and I know this sounds weird, but it’s

Mike Wieger  [1:29:46] 
podcast. No, no, it wasn’t me.

Jim Collison  [1:29:49] 
As we think about winter, yeah, going into winter you can overseed in the winter. A lot of people, especially here in the northern climates, you can throw that seed right on top of the snow and as the snow snow melt, it will pull that seed down into the soil and make that soil the seed contact. And when those perfect conditions hit in the spring, that seed will germinate and so it’s a great way of for

Dave McCabe  [1:30:13] 
my gambling There’s your gamble right there.

Jim Collison  [1:30:16] 
It will you hit the last snow of the year, you know, right for us, that’s going to be March maybe in early February. And you can just go out with your with this, you would use the hand crank, right just go out there. If you have some areas you particularly when overseed throw that right on top of the snow. It’s the weirdest thing ever and it feels like you’re just throwing money away. But that snow will pull that seed right into the right into the dirt for you. This thing’s right now, I’m just seeing you driving, driving down the driveway to work. You got a cup of coffee here. You’re like, slow down, you roll the window down. You grab from the door and you just start springing sprinkling seed out of your car.

We’ll see

I’m a seeding fool Dave. I am a seeding. Well, I love

Mike Wieger  [1:31:05] 
that one note, I added that question in right there like, right? Oh, right in a one to one I love having to write here instead of like, you know, spiral is great too. But

Jim Collison  [1:31:13] 
well, we we went a little long, but we appreciate you guys hanging out great. Thanks for everybody in the chatroom doing what they do if you’re listening on the podcast site, all those links that Dave mentioned are going to be in the show notes. So head out to the average guy TV slash Htg 457. And you’ll get access to those show notes including those YouTube links. I love the one that I also watch Conor ward. I think he’s the lawn rebel. And he’s just a nut like it’s made.

Dave McCabe  [1:31:41] 
He’s great. He’s, he’ll teach you something, but he’s very entertaining.

Jim Collison  [1:31:48] 
Yes, it’s, yeah, he’s the best if you’re gonna watch a lawn guy and you just want to be entertained, because he doesn’t care. He doesn’t do it right. He doesn’t care how he does it. He’s just he throws stuff together. He is kind of the average guy in law. guy I think right that’s how we all do it right? Yeah. We’ll mix these things together. I hope it works. He always says he’s not a how to guy but I love Connor. So lawn rebel if you want to look him up on I’ll try to remember to throw something.

Dave McCabe  [1:32:14] 
Allen Haines the lawn care net and Ryan nor

they’ll answer anything.

Jim Collison  [1:32:20] 
Yeah, no, that’s super, super great. And Connor lives in Idaho and he has like he’s in one of the worst lawn environments ever because it’s growing seasons like three months. And so he’s got to do when he does stuff and then he gets they get heavy snow up there. So they deal with snow mold and some of those kinds of things. So you have to be careful watching those guys especially Ryan, because they they do a single cultivar or like perennial ryegrass and then they’ll mow it short. And they’re what they call real mowers are e L and they mow it like at it like three quarters of an inch you know like golf greens. Like a green

Dave McCabe  [1:33:01] 
Yeah, yeah. Which is nuts. I I like my graph standing up. I like to be able to run my hand. Oh,

Jim Collison  [1:33:06] 
it looks good though. The other thing we didn’t talk about that they talk about all the time as lawn leveling, and that’s maybe a winner. Maybe that’s a winter topic.

Dave McCabe  [1:33:13] 
That’s a scary scary thing for me. I don’t

Mike Wieger  [1:33:16] 
I use my riding lawnmower. We talked about the ruts. I think I have physical big ruts from my riding or tires. I might

Dave McCabe  [1:33:24] 
these guys do there. They use sand. Yeah, yeah. For that real mowing. And they say don’t use topsoil. Don’t use topsoil, but I can’t throw sand in my yard.

Jim Collison  [1:33:36] 
I’m not really good. It’s really good for the soil. Dave,

Dave McCabe  [1:33:39] 
my grass really good for the grass low enough to do. Yeah, I would do maybe a seed or maybe a soil sand mix. Yeah, I can see doing that. And I do.

Jim Collison  [1:33:50] 
Do a soil sand seed mix and then you get all three and one out there. So just a couple reminders before we go. We’re live every Thursday. 8pm Central 9pm Turn if you’re just joining us or you’re coming in and you haven’t listened to it before, join us live love to have you come out and be a part of the live show. The average guy TV forward slash live. If you want to join us in the discord group, the average guy TV slash discord same thing slash Facebook if you want to join us in the Facebook groups. If you want to send me an email, you got some comments, some questions you can’t find something I made a mistake on the show notes. Whatever send me an email Jim at the average guy.tv

Big thanks to Christian for for his 10 years of running Home Gadget Geeks as a platform, you can head out to Maple Grove partners.com he’s got hosting plans as little as $10 he knows he now he now has redundant environments now too. So it’s not just one server farm but two. It’s pretty great. I think ones in Maryland ones in Buffalo and in so it’s great stuff $10 as little as $10 a month Maple Grove partners.com we want to thank you for joining us tonight. This is super fun like I just gave thanks for thanks for coming out. I could geek out about this for a long time and then appreciate you coming in tonight. Next week, Mike Wieger is covering all things Ham Radio, or at least what he knows on the side. So he’ll be doing that as well. And then I’m starting to line up kind of the fall episode. Schedule. So wherever you’re listening live, stay around for a little bit of a post show with that

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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