Mike and Jim are filling in for Dave McCabe (we will get him back for the fall episode) and we talk all things summer lawn care. From weeds to watering, we cover many of the things you need to consider as we move into summer and how to make the most of your lawn!  I think you will enjoy the show.

Full show notes, transcriptions, audio and video at http://theAverageGuy.tv/hgg450

Join Jim Collison / @jcollison and Mike Wieger / @WiegerTech for show #450 of Home Gadget Geeks brought to you by the Average Guy Network.

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Podcast, Home Gadget Geeks, Lawn, Lawn care, grass, riding Lawnmower, mower, water, yard, seed, mowing, schedule

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Briggs & Stratton PowerSmart 6500-Watt Gasoline Portable Generator

https://www.lowes.com/pd/Briggs-Stratton-PowerSmart-6500-Watt-Inverter-Gasoline-Portable-Generator/1001472820

16TB drives are upon us! Seagate Externals at B&H for $315. Sweet spot seems to be the 12TB drives now for $215

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1558328-REG/seagate_steb16000400_16tb_expansion_desktop_usb.html/

Lawn tips from Jim

1. It’s never going to be perfect
2. You looked like a rockstar in spring, now it’s time for a rock garden – its not too late to bring it back for the fall, just don’t try to do it all in one day.
3. Weeds, weeds and more weeds – Spot applications vs the nuke option
4. Your watering is key. 
   1. Monitoring is important. (Use security cams to check how it is going if you can) Deploy irrigation automation whenever possible.
   2. Hand watering can be helpful if you are in a place where water is expensive or in short supply. I am going back and forth between front and back everyother day.
5. Weather apps for long range forecasts. I like MyRadar and the Weather Channel App. (Screenshare MyRadar). Been thinking about getting weather stations. Recommendations in the comments on YouTube
6. Scott’s tips – https://www.scotts.com/en-us/library/lawn-care-basics/summer-lawn-care-tips
   
7. Think like a weed, it might be time to seed (check your upcoming weather for openings)
8. Change in mowing habits and directions
9. Oil and blade – and don’t forget to keep that fuel clean (Ed’s recommendation – PRI-G https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005JP16TA)
10. Check in on Mike’s log
11. If your lawn is just dead, let’s get it prepped for the fall. Get a soil check (talked about this in the spring show) Hammer weeds with round up. Starting looking for advice for the best grass for your area and show around for it. Line up an aeration service and get ready to overseed in Fall
12. Need some new Garden Equipment? Consider setting up Slickdeal alerts for items you have been watching over the summer. Lots of items drop in price in the fall so they will move. Grills and Smokers too. What other sites to you use to track deals? Add them in the comments on YouTube or join us over on Discord.

Jim Collison  [0:00] 
This is The Average Guy Network and you have found Home Gadget Geeks show number 450. We’re halfway to 500. actually probably that’s not mathematically correct. But that’s okay. recorded on June 25 2020.

Jim Collison  [0:26] 
Here on Home Gadget Geeks we cover all your favorite tech gadgets that find their way into your home and sometimes in your yard 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 and, Mike, we’re in the throes of summer I

Mike Wieger  [0:40] 
did get outside today. I did. We had

Jim Collison  [0:43] 
a break. It’s kind of nice. Then today it’s all back right?

Mike Wieger  [0:47] 
Yeah, we had a I was inside most of the day we did have a mandatory like training thing on zoom from three to four. So I did that outside and sat outside in the sun for a little bit. Got a little bit of sun and in the boys. Of course, everybody When they’ve gotten home, it’s been they want to play outside in the water, which has been nice.

Jim Collison  [1:03] 
I need to take the laptop out in the back, like in the mornings this morning was beautiful and just work out the deck. The problem is I am super spoiled with that 34 inch curved monitor that I don’t want to I don’t want to look at anything else. I don’t want to look at a crappy laptop. Yep. Even though my laptop screen is great. It’s nothing compared to a 34 inch curved monitor.

Mike Wieger  [1:24] 
Not at all. So I’m used to that you’re on your insect man.

Jim Collison  [1:28] 
Phone, the screen really smells cool. And the breeze is blowing down here in the in the in the basement. And it’s just fine. So, of course, the show notes are also just fine. We’ll post those out at the average guy.tv Htg 450. There’ll be a few tonight. So you might want to head out you can also get full transcripts out there as well. So if you ever wondered if you were like where did Jim say this, go to the post do a Ctrl F put the word you’re looking for to search through it. You use a search on the site to actually put a new plugin that does a better job of indexing the site. If you go to the average guy.tv slash search or hit the search button in the menu, you can search through things that we’ve done. I don’t know if it’s helpful or not. But if it is, it’ll be there for you. Don’t forget, you can join us join us live on the mobile app, Brian said earlier he was going to do that he was going to watch the first half of the show then needed to go out for a walk. So he’s going to listen to us on the mobile app as he’s walking a great way to do it. head out to the average guy.tv you can download it there actually, the shortcut is Home Gadget geeks.com. So if you want to download it from there, it’s only this show so you can put you have a little icon on there if you always just want to kind of stay up. It always have the most current and it will stream it live. If you want to do it that way. Hundred percent streaming Home Gadget geeks.com. Don’t forget, you can follow the show schedule. Now. The average guy.tv slash schedule will get you there. And there’s a little schedule tab or I think it says calendar on the website. You can click if you want to know what’s coming up. Great way to kind of stay up to date. There’s a lot of shows Come on according including my daughter who’s coming back July 31. We’ll talk about those here at the end of the show. But you can get all of that out at the Amazon guy.tv couple reminders. And I wanted to thank Ron, we didn’t get a chance to do this. I’m a couple weeks behind on that one. If you want to subscribe on Patreon, if you want to have kind of a one kind, there’s not too many of these on on the planet, there’s a few maybe, I don’t know less than 15. If you want to get like scout a couple, you want to get a Home Gadget Geeks coin, head out to the average guy.tv slash Patreon. Ron just printed a bunch more of these for me and I have brand new envelopes. And I know how much it costs to get it to you. So if you Sorry, I won’t you

Mike Wieger  [3:30] 
won’t have any postage if

Jim Collison  [3:33] 
it happens, send me or head over to the average guy.tv slash Patreon and just do a $5 plan and I’ll send you one of these as well. You know that Ron sent me one of these so that’s the big version of it this as big as my head I could just do it this way you wouldn’t see me throughout the show. You have to be watching the YouTube version for that sorry for those that are on audio only. But Ron printed one of these. He also printed me up a really cool stand for it. So you know here’s a three that’s super cool, right? Yeah. Then you just put this on there right? yeah make it straight right that’s pretty cool. It’s hard to see with the glare but you get the point he printed two entities for me he printed two because he made a Cyber Frontiers for Christian which is super cool. So I’ve been holding on to this. He’s been working on this for a while wanted to get it just perfect in in Ronda. Nice job with that. We’ll do a 3d printer round table by the way from our discussion last week Mike of maybe doing some more roundtables. I didn’t hear from anybody this week with roundtable ideas view if you got a subject you want to talk about you want to help me host a roundtable let me know Jim at the average guy.tv but we’ll do a 3d printer one here later in the fall. Ron sent this I’m gonna mail this to Christian I’ve been just waiting to get the to show it because it was so cool. He sent a stand for two so I love the stand. That’s a cool way to do now they are they’re super cool. Yeah. And it’s a two parter. So it just comes apart, you know, shipped it. Let’s see it now. There it goes. So two parts, they clicked together. Boom, you got it. You got a nice stand. For these Christian it’s on its way in No we get that too. He also he made some for you right we talked

Mike Wieger  [5:02] 
super cool no expected yeah so this if you guys are on audio only the people on video are seeing it so it’s almost like a station identification plaque for my Amateur Radio Shack you know even close your shack or your ham radios are so it’s got you know it says amateur radio station it’s got my callsign that whiskey zero echo golf Romeo on there got a cool microphone I don’t know if you guys can see if I turn it sideways so the words of the microphone are raised on there from the black so everything’s raised all done on his 3d printer. He even put a screw slot on the back so I’ve got a screw in there and I put up on my pegboard it actually goes right there next to the screen. So super cool. I was like really impressed when the picture on Twitter did not do it justice. It was cool. Then I got it in my hand and first of all, it’s a lot bigger than I thought. It’s bigger than my face. So it’s massive and just just super cool. So Ron, we appreciate all the stuff you do for us and you do really good work. So if you guys are looking for anything Canadian maker project is is YouTube and That’s his name out there so you can look him up and see all the cool stuff he’s doing.

Jim Collison  [6:03] 
Yeah, Ron, thanks for sending those I gave him a couple days notice and said, Hey, I need some more coins and he printed them up mailed them to me. And, and they’re available for you so we can get those out to you, as well. We mentioned we had Dave McCabe scheduled to be on the show tonight. Just couldn’t make it. I had a conflict come up, Dave. We’ll go reschedule Dave, maybe come back in and do a late summer, early fall. I put some show notes together. After he said he couldn’t make it. I thought well, I will shorten the show up a little bit. And I started writing kind of what I wanted to cover and I thought we did a full show. So don’t don’t hesitate. We’re going to talk about Summer Lawn Care tonight. And I got some tech involved with it as well. And but it should be fun and a great opportunity. So we’ll get Dave to come back on again. Mike. I gave you some Jeffersons last week. Yes. You did your anniversary gift. How was it? How’d you amazing

Mike Wieger  [6:56] 
I still need to get Hannah to try it. She hasn’t. She has Want to try it? Yep, I need to hurt you. I had I had probably two glasses this week. I’m trying to like save this stuff. So like, I don’t want to go through it really fast. I’m like, you know one little tiny, nice little drink just to end the night kind of thing. And man, that stuff is so good. You impressed Collin calling him over and I was like, Oh, so So Jim came over the other night last night and he gave me a five year anniversary gift and he’s like isn’t the Jeffersons up on the table? I was like, Man, you have a good idea. He spotted that fast. Like that’s good stuff. I really like that. He’s a that’s right up his alley. So he was like he was trying to get some sticky fingers and steel. I’m like, No, no, no, you don’t know that stuff. Yeah, this is that’s gonna be my nice sipping sipping stuff. So yeah, thank you again. That’s That’s amazing.

Jim Collison  [7:41] 
And Elena. Good little bourbon. By the way, Jeffersons if you haven’t tried it, you can find it almost it’s in a lot of places in the country. We get it our local hyvee which is just kind of a grocery store. Just check it out. It’s got a picture of Thomas Jefferson on it and super good. 25 to $35 depending on on Where you pick it up?

Mike Wieger  [8:01] 
And do people ever do bourbon? Like on the rocks, like with them? Sure. Okay, that’s why I’m like I might like this a little colder. That’s how I like I like tequila I like almost frozen like I put the big ice cube in there and get nice and cold. I didn’t know if I was like sacrilege though. I don’t want to like do that out in public and be like, no, I can

Jim Collison  [8:17] 
find you know, Phil, my son has bought we have those little cubes there. They’re made us the rock cubes. you freeze. Yeah, you just freeze the cube and put it in the water. You know, so you’re not diluting it. Yeah, no, you can throw a cube in if you like on the rocks. That’s That’s fine. Joe in the chat room says he checked in the Jefferson’s ocean is available locally. That’s your favorite. Right Jim? That Oh, my god ocean is so great. They put it in barrels and then it goes out to sea. And it just sloshes around out of sea. They take it down to they take it down to the Arctic or the Antarctic and bring it back up. And so you have these cold and hot swings that are supposed to do some pretty amazing things to the to the flavor and so super cool. It’s three times more expensive than allow regular jobs. And so you’re going to spend 65, then 90, just kind of depending upon where you get it, all the batches are numbered, the voyages are numbered. And so my very first bottle was voyage. 17. And the bottle I have now is voyage 20. Not that I’m reading or keeping track, but it doesn’t have those memorized. What’s super cool, right? I think it’s just one of those super cool kind of things. And it’s it’s probably a gimmick, but pretty great. Thanks again, Mike for for doing this for five years. And yeah, appreciate it.

Mike Wieger  [9:30] 
There’s another cool bottle of some and I’ve got to find the name because I keep I think I’ve brought it up on the show before but whenever whenever you mentioned the stuff that goes out to sea, there’s like a champagne company. I think it’s champagne. And they actually put it in the bottle. And then they just drop it to the bottom of an ocean. And so it comes up you buy it, it’s got like, crusted see stuff all over the bottle. You almost have to like break it apart. It might be a gimmick too, but it works like I saw him like that is super cool. Very expensive, I think goes like 150 bucks. 200 bucks, but kinda wanna cool things you might just buy and put on your shelf is like a showpiece almost.

Jim Collison  [10:03] 
Yeah. No, I think it’s I think it’s super cool. Yeah. So Joe is saying his bottles more like 100 Yeah, your prices might vary, you might want to check on line to there’s some great, great ways to purchase some of those things. Have you ever had Blanton’s? No buttons whiskey are super hard to get. And they only make so many and we’ve reserved lists a couple times to try and get those and sometimes you just got to work at it. It’s you know, sometimes it’s just a gimmick, but

Mike Wieger  [10:30] 
it drives demand, right? Yeah. It’s work. Yeah, yeah. sales. They know scarcity drives

Jim Collison  [10:34] 
demand. That’s just Nintendo. Yeah. That’s Nintendo every time right? Yes. Yeah, this new thing and you can’t buy it but it’s super great. And then everybody you know, just keeps the price high. So it’s

Mike Wieger  [10:45] 
like webcams or microphones right now. You can’t find them anywhere. You really can’t. Yeah, really monitors anything like that. Maybe it’s getting a little better. Now maybe it’s rebounding a little bit.

Jim Collison  [10:53] 
I think some but I went to buy a went to buy an audio interface for mica. She’s my co host Theme Thursday, Gallup and I was going to buy her a little Behringer audio interface for 50 bucks no not not right now there are $100 and the $50 ones are on backorder so right you’re like okay yes I’m waiting so no there there is some supply issues on some of those our road

Mike Wieger  [11:15] 
makes it because that when I was seeing my getting this boom I was also just thinking about going with the wireless mic set. Because then I wouldn’t need to sync my audio in post I can just do the wireless to my camera. So road makes one of the better cheaper ones the road wireless go. That thing is sold out everywhere. You can’t buy it at b&h photo you can’t buy on Amazon, not even like for more money than you would want to spend. It’s just not there. makes a great YouTube

Jim Collison  [11:39] 
though. Clip right if you’re gonna be doing Yeah, she’s videos. Yeah,

Mike Wieger  [11:43] 
yeah, exactly. Or you can it even has a you can plug in a lav mic if you want to it, too. So it’s it’s double, you can just clip it, or it’s got the lav mic and you can clip it on your belt. Cool. Nice.

Jim Collison  [11:53] 
Well, speaking of that, give us a quick rundown. What are you doing on YouTube? You started a new thing. I mean, I know that’s unusual, but

Mike Wieger  [11:59] 
yeah Yeah, well, okay, I it’s unusual. But actually Jim doesn’t know this yet, but Jim’s gonna be my accountability buddy with this Jim and Hannah. And Hannah’s already riding me. She’s like, if we’re gonna do this, we’re going to do it, and you’re gonna stick to it. So, yeah, started up. You guys know that when I was doing streaming I was the dad nerd. Well, we’re doing that but it’s not streaming is not gonna be the focus we might stream in the future, but we’re really taking it to be we’re gonna make YouTube videos on everything that dads nerd out on Home Improvement tools, barbecuing, everything like that. We’re doing two videos a week right now. So we’re going to be publishing two videos a week we’re on Facebook, YouTube, YouTube is where I would love people to watch obviously, but you can we’re putting the full videos on Instagram On Facebook. It’s just the Dattner and everywhere makes it super easy. there so I have a second Twitter. So don’t get confused. I mean, I just try started the second one. I don’t know. I’m still on Wieger tech, which is probably where you guys should reach out to me but if you want to start talking about my dad nerd stuff, it’s there. So the dad nerd. It’ll be fun. We did what we’ve done one video so far. We have one coming out Sunday. The first one was on how to use a speed square right? Speed score is like the most useful tool and I think a lot of guys just have never saw one and use one before. So real these videos are quick. They’re not long though that was four minutes, right? Get in, get out. learn the basics. It’s just you know, Jim knows I have like this creative itch that if I don’t scratch it, it gets it turns into like a rash. And so I when I stopped streaming and streaming for me wasn’t streaming is hard. Because you have to be behind the camera, you have to start a schedule. If you’re not live, you’re not doing anything. And for dad, especially in my stage of life right now, it’s just not doable. YouTube is much more sustainable. You can crank those out that first video I made in 45 minutes, from shooting to editing to release over my lunch hour, the other day. So those are the type of things that can crank out in 45 minutes. That’s a lot of fun. But if you guys want to want to follow it, that’s where you can find me make sure you keeping me tagged on Twitter when you’re putting those things out so I can retweet them. Oh, sure.

Jim Collison  [13:54] 
Yeah, no, and we can talk about it here on the show. A lot of stuff. It’s almost like it’s a Like an add on to what we do here on Home Gadget Geeks

Mike Wieger  [14:03] 
is there’s a lot of stuff that we would talk about. There will be probably some tech stuff too, will be a few things tech related. But a lot of it’s just like anything that got dad’s it doesn’t have to be dads I use dad dad’s just kind of always gives you a focus brand. And it’s a it’s a area of focus on. But I mean, this is for men, women, anyone. So it’ll be a lot of fun. And so now I have Hannah, who’s like, if you’re going to start doing this, you’re going to do it. Okay. So I’ll get Jim to hold me accountable to

Mike Wieger  [14:30] 
I don’t. After a week I quit.

Mike Wieger  [14:33] 
You got to write me so hard. You got to take back that Jeffersons. Okay. Oh, there we go.

Jim Collison  [14:37] 
Just get over and get with you.

Mike Wieger  [14:38] 
Yeah, drink it in front of me without me getting any. There you go. Or with you that would be good with regard to

Jim Collison  [14:44] 
the, is it just on your regular YouTube channel? So if yes, or subscribe there before they’ll do it. And if they go, subscribe.

Mike Wieger  [14:51] 
Yeah, YouTube makes First of all, it’s super hard unless you want to create a whole new channel to change any form of your branding. I know. So I was able to so I’m still just my Mike Wieger so if you search Mike Wieger on YouTube, that’s how you find me. But everywhere else facebook.com slash the dad nerd twitter.com slash the dad nerd and

Jim Collison  [15:08] 
stuff in the show notes in the show notes for this show. So as we awesome as we go just put them in the show notes. Yeah, well, last week I mentioned that I had a generator coming. And so Friday, I took Sara out to dinner on Friday, we went down to our favorite Italian place. And it came Of course, while we were gone, I’d been home for a haul all week, and he had to leave dinner early two hours, but I sped up pretty fast. So I get home and as I say go is I’m walking up to it, the boxes just beat you know, you’re like, Oh no, now it’s 145 pounds. So like it was it was a pretty heavy box. And I guess I learned my lesson on this one. I’ll tell you what that is here in just a second but so we get up there and one of the corners is all just almost gone and that the packing from the inside is hanging out and The bands that go around it you know that two bands that went one way and two bands that one another, there was only two of them left so the other ones were gone just like in as like oh this isn’t this is not good. And so we watched on the ring and we watched the footage of him kind of taking it off the off the truck. They parked right in front of the house so we could see and then and he had a cart he wasn’t trying to carry it it was he was alone and he couldn’t have done much damage just taking it off the cart and putting it right away. So it was during shipping during the Mustang right over whatever must happen during shipping. They must have done something but it looks like it slid off something in the corner of it hit because it broke a wheel on a generator or the wheel yeah shattered the wheel. The engine housing separated and then came back together and so you know where you’d have an overlapping segment. It pinched like this so that there was a piece of plastic out and plastic was dropping out. Okay, we’re not this is I was sad I was very wait the whole time for that. Yeah, it’s very very sad Where did you order that from again? order from Lowe’s from Lowe’s right shipped via UPS free shipping? You know it was it

Mike Wieger  [17:13] 
was no or they’re

Jim Collison  [17:14] 
like the exchange was no big deal. Well, I tried calling it’s impossible to call anybody right now and get any kind of customer service anywhere it seems like over the phone so I ended up Saturday afternoon just driving up to Lowe’s and went in masked with to their customer service and said, What’s your advice? What do I do like? And she’s like, Look, I know it’s I know customer service has taken a long time but that’s the way we need to do this. Just get on with them and they’ll take care of it. So sure enough, I got so I actually called Lowe’s as I was leaving the parking lot and it’s a 25 minute drive home for me. So I drove home unloaded the car from the concrete block that I bought at Lowe’s installed the concrete block with I put I put your

Mike Wieger  [17:54] 
why you were just on hold.

Jim Collison  [17:57] 
So got the block most of the block put in and then got A gal and it took another 45 minutes for her to process the what basically what they did is they just sold me another one at the same price but the price had already gone up and the warranty price had already gone up and I was like I want the whole price right and it took them forever to get that part done but again I was working so I was like hey all wait forever if you’re gonna get whatever time you need yeah and he gave me 10 bucks off of the thing to for the for the trouble which is no more cost to you they just no no and then they’re like take the other one in and they’ll just they’ll refund it right on the spot and so I packed up the one in the in the out in the in our Outback and and took it back to to Lowe’s and dropped it off no questions asked. I said do you want to took pictures Do you want to see they’re like because you don’t want to go sell this to somebody like this thing took a dive right? And they’re no no, we’re good. Well, we’ll inspect it and we’re fine and God flows was great about that. I know it took time and they would have been there would have been some who would have lost their mind to be on the phone for an hour. hour and a half with more. Yeah, but, but it was for me it was like, Okay, well, I want to get this done. And I want it done right. I’m gonna wait. She several times she offered. Can I just send you an email? No, no, I want a final price. I would have no this is done always right. I can’t wait. And she did a great job. Megan, I think was her name. She did a great job on just kind of taking care of me and making sure it was done. Right. So this time I had it shipped to the store. I learned my lesson learned. If you’re going to use ups, it can’t be heavy, like they’re going to destroy. They’re just not geared for that. Like that’s just not a UPS and was it their freight,

Mike Wieger  [19:36] 
like lying because, you know, like FedEx, FedEx free and it comes in a totally different truck.

Jim Collison  [19:42] 
Okay, not that I know of, not that I know of. So I had them shipped directly to the store going forward, and it’s coming in early next week and I get ahold of that. And then I’m going to nerd out on some generator tech that’s going to be kind of fun. I’m kind of looking forward to all the different things I can do with that, including installing a cutover switch in the house, some of those other kinds of things associated with it. So that’s coming. But you know, that’s kind of the that’s kind of the way the world is. Now if we’re going to you think, oh, drop shipped to the house, this will be great. No. And I actually started filing a claim through ups. Oh, I got do they make that intentionally hard? Or do they really? Oh, it’s awful. It is. I mean, they are you have to

Mike Wieger  [20:27] 
be easy to abuse now. Totally. Right. If it wasn’t super complicated,

Jim Collison  [20:31] 
yeah. So you sign a waiver saying it’s, you’re being as truthful as possible. And like, if I that’s so I went Friday night, I went through the ups, I thought, Well, I better file a claim. I started it on and I’m like, Oh, I definitely and I’m patient, like I stayed on the phone for an hour and a half. But I did not want to fill out that ups form. It’s just as long and ugly. And I was like, I’m not interested in this. So generator will be here over next week, early next week, sometime and then one last update before we jump In the lawns I noticed this week the 16 terabyte external drives are out. So it’s been a while since I’ve been in the in the storage game talking about

Mike Wieger  [21:09] 
ages that you need to scratch and Jim has a hardware or hard drive if he needs a scratch. Oh

Jim Collison  [21:14] 
my god 16 terabytes, three on b&h 315. And I’m not saying this is new, I’m sure there’s been others that I just noticed 300 bucks for a 16 terabyte 16 terabyte hard drive? I wouldn’t pay that. But they’re out there reasonable. That’s a reasonable price for it right now. It’d be an H you can do that. I was trying to look in the documentation to see if that’s SMR it has to be SMR I can’t imagine it not being SMR on those. So la has to be Yeah, you think right, you think it has to be SMR and then it seems like it used to be 10 terabytes was a sweet spot and now it’s up to 12. So the twelves are like 215 that seems to be a pretty good sweet spot for for pricing in there if you’re going to if you’re going to get one of those You could get a tan I think they’re just under 280 or 100. And let’s say 150 maybe somewhere in that space. So that 810 12 is still a pretty good, pretty good price point.

Mike Wieger  [22:12] 
You know, this is a debate we don’t need to get into now but the one thing I’ve been wondering is as the sweet spot has been going up, right so if you’re saying the sweet spot now is like 12 with you know, when did that sweet spot cross over? Hey, that’s that’s just too much for what I need, right? For even the average guy cuz like I was waiting for and once the eight terabytes hit the sweet spot like that’s perfect because a couple eight terabyte drives is great. Even you know, for me, honestly, four terabyte drives because I have I have a big Bay now I get that a lot of people with smaller Bay units, right? I can only put four drives in here. You probably do need a 12 terabyte drives, but for me, I have like 12 bays, so I can just load them up with four terabytes and be totally fine. And now it’s like 12 terabyte drives like there’s only a few people who that’s like, I need a bunch of those. Yeah, but i and i It probably probably, as I was talking, I probably hit it as the guys with you know, a to a system that’s great because then you can get 12 terabytes with redundant on a two base system for still pretty affordable you know for 420 bucks. You’ve got 12 terabytes of storage if you did, you know redundant raid. Kind of cool.

Jim Collison  [23:18] 
Yeah Joe Joe said there’s a big conversation about this on reset so if you want to go there and then on entertainment to Dotto with with Richard and and Josh, they talked about this as well. But Joe says he was happy to find the six terabyte reds that are CMR right. Those are what we’re looking for. That’s what you want. What you want in your NASS, you don’t want SMR in some, some folks will debate me on that and that’s okay if you want to debate me on you can leave that in the in the comments on Facebook, I mean on YouTube, if you want to do that, but typically most of us that I hear from what the CMR drives, and so the swift the six is a sweet spot for that if you can still find them. You You got to be careful right now their Western Digital is not being completely forthright and no none of them are. I think there are. A lot of the companies are getting Well, we know Seagate’s been using SMR on those cheap drives for a while we know that going in but I I take your spot or to your point, Mike, you know at what point is enough is enough. And I think for the average guy eight is actually plenty. I think six is actually plenty in for most for the average guy. There’s this that’s not this audience, you you who are listening right now, you’re like, Oh, come on six is like I’ve got that in my laptop on an SSD drive. You know, and so I get that, I get that but I just thought I’d bring it up because we’re, we talked about that from time to time. We haven’t really talked about drives in a while but oh, we have, they are out. They are 16 terabytes are coming out. We we promised a lawn show, Mike and of course Dave couldn’t make it tonight. But As I started taking some notes, I thought, Well, I mean, we’ll shorten it up a little bit. Well, I got a bunch of things to say apparently. So, a little bit of tech, mostly some advice. I know some guys struggle like the lawn is a struggle. It’s a struggle bus. It’s especially right now this summer is what separates the men from the voice on Right, right. We said this during the spring lawncare episode, by the way, if you haven’t listened to that, and you want to go back and listen to it is you can catch it just search spring lawn care at the average guy.tv and you can find it there. But, um, a couple things I want to preface this with as we think about this experience of going through and it’s important for some people like how their lawn looks is important. Since I’ve been home working from home during the pandemic, my lawns gotten way more care than it ever would have if I was going into the office. And that’s because in between meetings, I can go move things or apply things or I mean, I’m not going to say my boss probably won’t listen to this. But, and he doesn’t care to be honest. But I snuck out a couple times at 330. mowed the lawn, just saying like, you know, you can you do? Yeah, you’re trying to get it before the rain comes in right or whatever. But one of the one of the things I want to say kind of just as we get started here is one never start lawn care. Thinking that you’re going to have a perfect lawn, you just want no matter what you’re doing. And Mike you could probably attest to this, no matter what you’re doing or how you’re watering it or the chemicals you’re adding to it and the services you buy for it or the whatever the amount of time you spend on it the sharpness of the blades or whatever. You’re still gonna have spots, right? You’re gonna the lawns never gonna be perfect. Right, right

Mike Wieger  [26:41] 
about Yeah, exactly. And the larger lawn you have, the worse it is, right because there’s always gonna be spots and you know, if you have trees in some areas, but on others, right, you get shade on some of your grass, but on others, it’s it’s really hard to account for all that so the more uniform of a yard, you have a little bit easier. It is Right, do you have no trees, no shade or you have all shade? That’s, you know, you can account for that with water levels, right? I it’s really hard for me to account for my non shaded spots for my speech shaded spots and the water levels and things like that. So yeah, no, I totally agree. And I’m going to tack on to that. Don’t expect the changes you did right now to have any effect on how it looks this season. Right? A lot of times you’re building for next season, or you’re building for the next. You’re building for fall. Really, you’re building for the next year. Before you do so that’s why spring I think Dave Wilson was so important as you’re really building for this year, but you’re setting yourself up for success. The next spring and then I think fall summer I would say is probably the the least important time. It’s there’s really not. There’s a lot things you can do. But I would say as far as prep work goes things that are important spring and fall, right. recover from winter prep for winter. If you’re in a climate that gets winter I think that that is true.

Jim Collison  [27:51] 
And everybody’s you know, we know we are going across zones from California to New York from right Florida up to Wisconsin from Texas. to North Dakota. So of course we everything we say we’re a little tainted. We’re here in zone four a here in the Midwest. But, of course, what matters is your zone. And so Dave mentioned this in the spring, learn what your zone is, and get familiar if you if you want to know what works and not just with the lawn, but with the yard. You know, think about the yard plants and some of your trees and some of those things. Understanding those and not fighting them is kind of kind of half the battle for your lawn. Right, especially when it comes to trees in what you can plant and what’s going to be messy. And so again, that’s when if you’re thinking if you’re moving into a new property, you’re thinking about planting a tree. Man, a tree is a commitment, like you’re going to spend 50 years with that tree. In a lot of cases. Make sure you get the right one you planted in the right space. That’s one of those things you really want to spend some time thinking about. We mentioned to in the spring, you always look like a rock star like you come out of the winter. You could have done nothing to the lawn for the last five years and most cases, it’s gonna even the weeds are gonna mow green. Like, you’re gonna mow it and for that day or two, it’s gonna look great. You’re gonna feel good about yourself. I do this I lower myself into every spring of feeling, gosh, I am good at lawn care like this. I just this I am rocking this and then of course, summer come and crushes all those right? summer comes and Tony has been Tony Raynor has been posting pictures. He’s been struggling, finding the valve and getting his irrigation system going. And he finally found that and some things go and he’s like, ah, is it too late? No, it’s not too late. We’re gonna have some advice. I kind of coming up but don’t think like if you’re feeling good about your lawn right now. Awesome. But you’re coming up in the summer here. You’re coming up on the most difficult time like right bugs, moles, birds, weeds, heat, like all those things are coming. So just know you know If you’re looking at your lawn right now, and Mike, you kind of alluded to this and it’s bad, don’t despair, like start thinking about the fall start thinking okay, what can I things can I do just to kind of get this thing ready because there’s some, there’s some repairs you could do for the fall that that might work. We’ll talk about

Mike Wieger  [30:17] 
that. And there’s, there’s cosmetic things you can do to we, you know, we haven’t really talked about that a lot, but it’s kind of important. You know, the grass is one thing, but you know, things you can do that are trim up that bush that’s a little scraggly, right? I’m notoriously bad for this. Jim was just over and he noticed, you know, on my back patio, I’ve got some bushes that definitely be taken care of back there. Those are things that drastically increase the look of your yard without having to be a chemical without being mowing. Right that stuff you can do. You know, maybe line it with brick or something or lay down new mulch or there’s a lot of other landscaping type items that you can do to if for some reason, your kind of your your lawns a lost cause this year, do the lawn work, but hey, I want some improvement. You can do the landscaping.

Jim Collison  [30:59] 
Keeping some brick I’ve been buying concrete block, you know, brick the doubt of brick and putting it in, I’m not a big deal at all at once kind of guy. I buy eight bricks at a time I install those. And then that’s usually a day and it’s hot and I need a beer. So, like, you know, I don’t need them stacked up in my yard, just to be honest. I can I just pick them up in little increments. It’s lighter. That way my back feels better. So it’s kind of the way I do it. Yeah, the late spring, early summer are really a time for weeds. And so many of you like you saw some great grass growth in the spring. And then he celebrated it and you stopped looking at your lawn, and then you came back a week ago and you’re like, Oh my god, where did all those weeds come? What happened? Yeah, exactly. And so you’re you’re really is you’re going into this, you really have got two options to kind of think about when we think about weed control, and I think summer has to has really two themes. One is weeds. One is water, right? We’re going to talk about let’s let’s talk about weeds for a second. You really have two different ways Handling weeds. One is take some pictures get online figure out what kind of weeds you have because not all standard weed control methods are applicable and you want to be really really careful what you’re spraying in your area. This is where tech can really be your friend in getting online and asking some professionals Dave alluded or talked about using your extension office, but they’re in communities there’s by the way there’s communities on Facebook and redhead and all over the place. This is all he talked about. So if you want to get if you want to get into that you can but with weed control it may be good because various parts of the country have different kinds of weed problems we’ve got African Violets here in Nebraska that are just brutal like they are that you know Mike that’s a broadleaf purple little flower with beautiful imported not native to Nebraska abroad in and they just love Nebraska and there’s nothing really to stop them. Nothing eats them. The bugs don’t know what they are. They just flourish right now if you’d like a pretty little purple flower, let them know grow like that they do really, really well. Except when you try to grow then they would never grow. Like if I actually tried, like, Oh yeah, this section is for all four African Violets and not one would grow in there. But they did they require a different kind of weed control or weed killer than, than your standard garden variety. dandelions, right? And so might want to spend a little time and again this right now may be a good opportunity with a cold beer in the shade to be looking around your lawn taking a few pictures of like, what are my weed problems like what am I having? What am I having trouble with? In in can identify what my yard is. The other thing you might want to do, especially if you’ve inherited the lawn, or you’ve never really done this, figure out what varieties of grass that you have, again, take some pictures, compare them online, go go. There’s YouTubers that talk about this kind of thing, but figure out like, what is the what’s the composite make of mow my lawn? What am I dealing with because Dave talked about applying chemicals last time we had him on in the spring through the summer it’s really really important as knowing what kind of grass you have as a as it one how to treat it with for weed, weed control and then to how to water it. And so Mike, if I were to ask you Do you know what kind of you know kind of grass you have, but we don’t know.

Mike Wieger  [34:18] 
We talked about this in the spring and I even went and looked, I think, and you mentioned it, it’s the you know, say some of the probably the ones around here,

Jim Collison  [34:28] 
rye or Kentucky Kentucky Bluegrass is another one where there’s two versions of there’s like a long or broad in a skinny or, I don’t know anyway,

Mike Wieger  [34:38] 
I don’t. But the thing about that too is the other people you can access. I guarantee if you have a neighborhood you have the neighbor with the perfect lawn, right or class close to perfect you can get it’s probably an older gentleman who has a lot of time to spend. He would love nothing more if you saw him outside mowing his lawn and you went and said Dude, you have the perfect lawn. What’s the secret? And he might have some tips to write. Obviously, whatever he’s doing is working pretty good chances he has a similar makeup to you. Or at least close, right he’s in he’s got the same climate. I know the guy that I need to ask. He’s right across the street to get almost catty corner to my house. And I haven’t I haven’t had the guts to ask him yet but I’m about to on some of this stuff because he’s his just, it’s flawless. It’s made so as close to perfect as you’re gonna get around here. And that would be a huge like if someone came over and asked me that. I’m like, Oh, please come in and I get you a beer like let’s talk about this. I thank you for the compliment, right? Everyone loves talking about their lawn.

Jim Collison  [35:35] 
Well, that might be different. How much time into like, make a friend of the person in the neighborhood whose lawn looks the best? Yeah, definitely. Because they probably have some local advice on Yeah, on what happened. I runs out front. So that’s the carpet kind of grass. It’s very aggressive. It chokes everything out. Even dandelions struggle they sent a few of them make it through those poor guys. They pop up out and I just snatch them out with a little tool that I have to get them But voice a very aggressive creates a carpet very soft, very beautiful, pretty good with water in and great and full sun. That’s the front like I don’t have any trees out front, back a whole different story and so I have a mixture I’ve actually gone to my we have a sutherlands which is kind of a grass company here in Omaha. And they you can buy about nine different kinds of variety of seed out there. They have one that and oh shoot now that I’ve now that I want to say it, it’s going to I think it’s called nuke something like Duke Nukem or something like that. And it’s just supposed to be the toughest grass on the planet. It’s combination of a couple different kind of grasses that grow really well here in Nebraska. So I go in there say give me that and then that’s what I’ve been. That’s what I’ve been putting on my grass and can actually see kind of the different areas that I seated in there with some of the old grass. So it’s good to know in the chatroom couple folks have been identifying you know, john says he has Japanese Still grass extremely difficult to kill it is a grass so normal weed killer for lawns won’t kill it and it will take over the whole lawn. If you like it, let it if you don’t Okay, well it’s gonna take you’re gonna you know you have to make some kind of decisions on that. Ron says he’s got some in Ontario you can’t buy weed killer and there are some there are again on YouTube you can find like natural weed killing solutions that will do things for you vinegar, some of those kinds of things.

Mike Wieger  [37:29] 
I imagine like the Breaking Bad Guy of there of weed killing stuff selling in his garage, I get some underground thing that he’s mixing up. Yeah, some rounds. There, you get some scanning goods.

Jim Collison  [37:41] 
with weeds, you really got two options, right one is the nuclear option. So you can just you can just get a maybe here in the United States. You can just get around up and just knock that like, crush everything. I used to have a buddy who would say what he would do for a new lawn is he would he would he would Crush it with Roundup, it would die, he’d burn it, then he would wait, water the heck out of it. And all the seeds that survived the roundup and the burning would come up. And he’d knock those down with Roundup, burn that, then water it again and just wait. He’s trying to get all those weed seeds out of his lawn and then either put in either this process takes a year. No, no, you can do in about a month.

Mike Wieger  [38:25] 
You can Yeah,

Jim Collison  [38:26] 
because most seeds germinate pretty quick a couple days. Wow. You know, and then you’ll see, you know, you’ll see sprouts seven to 14 days, you’ll see you’ll see weeds come up. And then he would put like he would put her you know, he gets some sod put that on top of it a very easy way to get a new lawn going. One way that’s one way to handle if your lawn is poor, I wouldn’t do that. Now by the way, that’s not you don’t want to put sod and revenue seed in the summer but that that’s the nuclear option also is maybe even going with a Scotts weed and feed. Right so those come in liquid and powder form you can spread them You can spray him that’s spraying your whole lawn and trying to get everything in one shot right that’s one way of doing it. Generally you should have done that a couple weeks ago. To a month ago. Depends on what area you’re in. You could still do it now but some of those are pretty harsh. I waited a little too long Mike and I burned my lawn a few spots. Because it’s also got fertilizer in it and it was just, it got hot here really fast. So there’s kind of the broadcast or the spray option. There’s also some great options just if you’re if you’re not struggling with weeds, and you just have a few just spot treat them. So get a little one gallon, you know a little pumper thing, buy a little concentrate. Make sure it’s good for your area. drop that in there and go spot spray. Are you doing Do you have somebody how are you how are you handling your weeds your spot spray?

Mike Wieger  [39:45] 
Okay, yeah, we have the one gallon mixer. I got actually you know my dad loves to bring this stuff over. He’s like oh, this is the best stuff. So he brings me over some mixture, some concentrated mix it up. We do. Like I said we do have the the company that comes out and does chemicals for But a few weeks you know still obviously going to pop up and then in the summertime so been spot treating those. They’ve been super heavy for us recently. I don’t know what it is. And it’s not in my grass actually it’s in our beds are just destroyed right now with weeds, we cannot control them no matter how much we do and actually I don’t know, I think it was Tony earlier asked the question of, you know, do you believe in the fabric that inhibits the weed growth? My wife and I were just talking about that the other day because we would love to put it you know, we would dig up all the mulch we have could we have nice mulch still lay that down and just kind of start fresh because, you know, a week ago, it they were all clear and now they’re literally weeds a foot to two foot high. I mean, they just take off like crazy,

Jim Collison  [40:43] 
perfect growing conditions here in Nebraska, right? Yeah. Moist, warm. Yeah,

Mike Wieger  [40:48] 
it’s weird how you can tell though, like the lawn is treated by chemicals and these beds are not because there’s very few weeds in the grass.

Jim Collison  [40:56] 
Now there’s a chemical you could go by called Preet. That is a pre emergent inhibitor so you can put that on in the spring. And you can even do it now. You could read it now and throw that in there. Not as

Mike Wieger  [41:06] 
nothing needs to grow in these certain bed writer. Yeah. And so I was like, I could just pour like gasoline, I don’t care, whatever it is, and just

Jim Collison  [41:13] 
Yeah, no, I think it’s called death. I think it’s called Preet. Okay, and you can get that it’s a pre emergent chemical that you can you just sprinkle it in the landscaping on those beds and it keeps anything from germinating. Right and so you just want to be careful not to get that online especially if you’ve just seeded this right so with weed control this time of year you you’re coming out of Canada, you know, in the early summer you should have either done the kind of the nuclear option where you’re hitting the hole on in one big shot like spreading it everywhere. Or if you had some success in the spring and like for me I actually I did both I use a spreader to get it all around and then I’m spot treating at this point. So great opportunity again to know some spots, take some pictures know what you’re doing. Put those on your It’s also um you know one of the things where you can use technology on this is to like I have mole issues right now and I don’t know like I’m trying to get them I’m trying to get rid of those things that’s a whole nother show by the way. But I have DEF CON levels for the moles you know DEF CON level one is just the little things you put in the ground and make a lot of noise def on DEF CON two. I don’t know if I’m doing this the right way but just go with me on it is the the hose in the hole filling them up DEF CON

Mike Wieger  [42:25] 
one is the worse situation Oh is on five is the five is this is not bad.

Jim Collison  [42:30] 
So five is going in the ground. That means the noise four is the water hose in it. Three is going to be the poisoned pellets that I put in the ground okay. A two is going to be because it’s Fourth of July gonna be fire. It’s going to be not fire but smoke bombs, legalizing smoke, smoking those things out there. And then what DEF CON one we’re digging them out like I’m getting the shovel. I’m just going to start digging holes until I find those little

Mike Wieger  [42:57] 
Yeah, I got a pellet gun. You can just do the hose thing when they pop. Head up.

Jim Collison  [43:01] 
I thought they would, but I couldn’t. I don’t try. No, I got a lot of water in the yard though. That’s for sure. So you got a couple options with your weeds. Now actually dandelions, at least here in our region, dandelions are way down. It’s too hot for them. They want to look a little cooler. So now it’d be a good time. If you have any lingering dandelions get them out because you don’t want the seeds lingering throughout the summer, they’ll they’ll come back again or they’ll be available for you in plentiful numbers next spring and it does make a difference even if your neighbor has a lot of dandelions by them right or you’re moving out of your yard. Assuming you don’t want them can make a difference. Mike, the second thing right so weeds this time of the year weeds are number one watering is really number two. And there’s a whole bunch of different ways of thinking about this. And this is really where you can add the tech and I think Dave talked a little bit last time about having the the to the tune it can test right put it put an empty tuna can in the middle of the yard, water it and now kind of tell you how much you’re getting. I think the average yard in a various area needs to get one to one and a half inches a week to be healthy, right? People always say yeah, but what about the rain? Okay, what about the rain? Well, this is an area, you can use a little technology called a screwdriver. So, go out to your yard, take a screwdriver get, you know, we all have those Craftsman or whatever screwdrivers right there, what, six or seven inches, maybe eight inches long. Jam that thing in the ground. And it should if you’re getting proper watering, you have good intuition. I think I’ll just slide right in the ground all the way to the handle.

Mike Wieger  [44:32] 
Yes. Right is like

Jim Collison  [44:34] 
six, six is what you kind of like six to eight. If you can take it to the handle. You’re in pretty good shape, right? That’s a good kind of test. If you can’t get a couple problems, then that’s where you might want to do. You might want to dig a little bit to say okay, when do I have compaction? Is this an area that’s just dry and compact? In other words, no matter how much water I put on it, it’s gonna run off or is it just Dry, like maybe this, you’re just not getting enough. You’re not getting enough water to add an area I was watering today it was just soaking it up. It was like, Oh, it’s been a while since you visited me. Right?

Mike Wieger  [45:10] 
Right. So or are you? Are you watering at the wrong time of day and there’s a lot of your water evaporating. A lot of people say, Well, yeah, I turn it on for seven minutes. Well, the seven minutes that you run in the morning is way different than seven minutes in mid afternoon, right? Because you’re gonna get a lot of evaporation off in this hot heat of that water. It’s not going to soak down as far. So if you’re watering time in the morning, before the sun comes up is seven minutes per section, whatever it is, maybe you need to come up to 10. Right in the afternoon, whatever it is so, so double checking what times you’re watering as well. Yeah, and the other thing too, is to or sorry, keep going the watering thing. I’ll bring this up later.

Jim Collison  [45:47] 
Yeah. So one of the things where you can really deploy some tech in this is actually with your security cams. So if you’ve if you play security cameras around the house, chances are they’re facing out. Spend some time if you’ve if you’ve got an error system by the way, we’ll talk about technology and education here in a second. But we have an irrigation system and it’s coming on early in the morning. planned some time See if you can get a recording from your security system when they’re supposed to be running David talked about running some things into the air watching it with a you know, watching it from overhead with a with a drone, right? There’s some things that you can do there might be able to use your security cams to just say, okay, is it spraying in the right spots? Am I getting the intended coverage that I that I want? It’s going out in the street Is it is it doing its job, right? You may be able to get those to get that recorded in that way. And then Mike Never underestimate the power of a hand water, like of going out and watering areas by hand. This has been something especially this year I’ve enjoyed in the evenings and really should water grass in the morning. So I’ve been kind of doing it that way too. But in spots whereby I do manual irrigation, which means I put a sprinkler in a place and it’s just I’ll talk about that schedule here just coming up. But, um, there’s spots it doesn’t reach. And sometimes those sprinklers can be really wasteful. If you’re in an area where water is expensive, you might really want to invest just in some hand watering tools to make sure you’re applying that water just to those spots that need it and you’re doing it efficiently.

Mike Wieger  [47:23] 
Well, that’s what I was gonna say is, you know, you can do it yourself, or you can hire it done. Once you’ve watched someone do it or Google it, YouTube it the first time, if you have an irrigation system, like go out there and you need to test probably once a year, if you can probably get away with once every other year. The heads don’t move that much. But turn them on section by section and see where those heads are hitting. You might be wasting a ton of water on the sidewalk, right and that’s easy. They’re so easy to adjust on the head, how far left it goes, how far right it goes, how high they pop up, you can replace the heads, things like that. So look at that and then start to look at to certain sections by time Things are all different depending on what section of the irrigation system is going right one section only needs to go for like three minutes it’s the skinny part between the sidewalk and the street and that just gets soaked and water is running off after a few minutes and just wasting water you can just tell spend that time because that number one is saving you a ton of money. And number two, it’s gonna lead to a better one like I think that is probably the best thing you can do right now. If you do anything and you have an irrigation system is go out turn on section by section see where those are spraying and you might have overlap thing to pay attention to is do your sections. Your numbers might not go by where they are. So definitely check turn them on this section is right next to the section turn them on and make sure you’re not getting overlap or you are if you want overlap, all that stuff is super important. I do that I do that once a year I do it every single spring because somehow I swear my heads move because I will also like I just adjusted this last year and it’s now it’s spraying the street again. So they do move on. Yeah, you know they they a lot of money. stuff like that but yeah easy way to make money.

Jim Collison  [49:03] 
Yeah, no, it’s just a good good way kind of good way to check in to make sure it’s it’s happening the way it should. When it comes to the irrigation control I don’t have irrigation system I’m you know I use kind of the sneaker, you know the sneakernet method where I walk I walk things around in fact, I was at Ace Hardware they’ve actually I really Ace for this kind of stuff has been really good for me they said like, I got a 50 foot hose for 25 bucks a pretty good one their premium hose it was on sale, they’re normally like 50 you know, you know another five off so, um, so I pick up my stuff there but I manually put things out and one of the ways I do it is I i alternate between the front and the back yard. So Monday, Wednesday, Friday is the front Tuesday Thursday, Saturday is the back I have different I put them in different places are not watering the same spot the same time every day and moving it around. And then I kind of make it based on the weather. So if it’s raining a lot, of course, I’m not gonna water it. That’s one way of doing it. There are manual timers Brian, our in the chat room says he uses a manual timer. You can buy pretty inexpensively 30 to 50 bucks, you can buy kind of a manual timer, you put the hoses on, set them up, it’ll do a thing that, you know, you can program them. They have different levels of sophistication. And then now they’ve got some really sophisticated electronic controls. And if you want to get into that, I can’t recommend any of those because I don’t have any of that. But I have seen them and they’re pretty cool. It’s kind of like the Nest thermostat of irrigation for your house. Yep. And there’s tons of things you can do there. Well, this is an area you can waste a lot in like let a hose go unchecked for a long period of time and you will, you will send a lot of water downstream. So I think it’s one of those good things just just kind of check. Like I said, set up your cameras, take some snapshots, do some things. Pay attention to what you’re doing. But this time of year because of the stress That the heat is going to put on your lawn. It’s a really good time to water. And yeah, how much do you need to water? This is this is where the log book helps. Did you did you start a log book? I did. Well, I use OneNote. Now.

Mike Wieger  [51:12] 
Yeah, so I started a digital book.

Jim Collison  [51:14] 
Yeah, this is where log log helps. And every once in a while, I’ll walk around your yard with a screwdriver and it’s good for your lawn to have those little holes in them anyway, so just jam those things in there. And get that done. During the summer weeds in water. Those are the two things that can really kind of change things make sure you spend a little bit of time getting those right by the way morning better than evening to work on things. It’s just it’s one of those kinds of things if you’re going to get the lawn wet. Um, Mike, I mentioned I control my water habits the what how I water based on apps, because I want to know when it’s gonna rain, like I’m like, well, am I going to do a big watering thing? I talked about this and show us pass but man, I tell you what, let me bring it up. I have really I am really digging this My radar as a weather app. And so this actually sits on my, if you listen to the audio, apologize, we’re showing the US representation, the satellite representation for, for the weather and I leave this on my Surface Pro three and I just leave it on all the time I just come by and look, there’s a great indication of what’s going on nationwide where the wind directions are happening where rain is happening. We can see we’ve got some rain maybe coming tomorrow, as I kind of look at that right there. forecast down below all the way to the right, you know, it kind of says, Hey, here’s the next five or 678 hours. And then here’s some chances for heat and rain. And I just love the visual representation they make here. I know it’s 89 degrees outside. I know there’s no rain and sight for the next couple hours. And I can easily see that hey, tomorrow is our best chance of rain now it’s not a very good chance of rain. So tomorrow let’s see today I wanted out front. Tomorrow is the back and it’s kind of the back corner. That’s gonna get watered chances are because Cuz it’s not looking good. And we haven’t had a lot of rain yet this this summer, I’m going to probably water tomorrow. Like, I’m going to take that chance I just, it’s not strong enough, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to be. Now if it if I water and it rains, it’s not that big of a deal, right. But it is one of those things that I just love. You know, I call myself the weather nerd on Twitter. By the way, if you follow me on Twitter, you’ll get Omaha weather every morning at nine o’clock. So you can see many of you tweet that back to me, and I appreciate that. The Weather Channel also has a really good app powered by Watson. And if you actually want to keep track of the COVID stats in your area that’s included. I don’t know why they did that. But it’s included in the weather app. Mike, do you use what do you use for weather?

Mike Wieger  [53:42] 
I use the weather app. Yep, I use that. But actually I was just opening up so this is the my radar because I like the look of this as somebody could leave up on a screen, just like what you said. And there’s actually an app for Windows like you talked about. I thought it was a browser thing, but it’s not. There isn’t an option for To the ads, is this what you’re using on your iPhone as well? Or you

Jim Collison  [54:05] 
know, I almost I use the Weather Channel app on my phone. Yep. It’s I like to look at the COVID stats and some of those kinds of things as well. So

Mike Wieger  [54:14] 
yeah, our routine is usually you know, for me it’s in the morning, or actually it’s right before we go to bed, is it going to rain overnight and into the morning, go out to the garage to switch the system off. If I know that our system runs Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Sunday, so every other day, ours is running and we just go out and we will turn it off if we know and we’re usually getting into a pretty good habit of that the hard part sometimes we forget to turn it back on. So there have been days where it’s been missed because it’s it’s not on but that’s that’s kind of our system. The other thing about the watering in the summer too is even the cheap the the main irrigation system you have when it came with your system has an A setting right so are you in a setting to be setting or CCN to mine comes like three different presets, you can set it to other programmable, so I have spring and summer, right A and B. And B just increases the times by just a little bit around each section. And I double check those every year just to make sure okay, by summer I didn’t go too much into like I’m not having to run off into the streets. I’m not wondering too much. But it does give it a nice little boost. And I only do it really when it starts to get into I haven’t even switched to this year yet. It just started getting hot around here. So I’ll probably switch it into the summer mode now. Yeah, now the heat has hid there’s definitely no reason to do it before. And it’s a nice it’s just easy, right? And then you just switch between your your spring or summer modes and you’re set.

Jim Collison  [55:39] 
I think the key to all of this is monitoring, like is getting out walking your lawn from time to time walk it not just promoting it, but like walk it just like one. You’re spending this time on it. Like go enjoy it. Right, walk through it, take your shoes off, walk, walk through your grass, it’s pretty great, right? For me, especially out front. It’s just like But I’ve contemplated sleeping out there so soft that voices so soft. It’s so great when that thing is perfect and working well man, my there’s no better looking lawn in the neighborhood than mine. When it’s bad, it’s really bad. So, get out, get out, walk around, see where your trouble spots are, make sure you’re you’re applying and you’re treating those trouble spots, getting them early. If you’re saying if you’re seeing an infestation of weeds or bugs, get to those earlier you’ll you’ll appreciate and trust me in August. You’ll appreciate you knock that thing out in early July to make sure it gets done. Scott’s who I’m a big fan of Davis and he does his own. He does in the spring he talked about he does his own chemicals. I’m the four step plus grub, guys so I go Scott’s I buy that in early spring. It’s sitting in my sitting in my shed right now just waiting to go through the four steps. I’m already one and two are down three and four are waiting for me to do and I’ve already put in grub control but Scott’s make some recommendation. I think they’re good. As we think about some things to think about, right so for the early summer, feeding your lawn making sure it’s got enough like you got the right you know the right food for that stuff to grow. You don’t want to you don’t want to fertilize it too much but certainly you want to make sure it’s healthy right treat for grubs mow high the sunlight lot of guys and gals anyone make the mistake like you know of just grinding it down some in the very early early spring I set my moral way down just to kind of take everything down. Get all that junk out of my lawn and then let the spring kind of it’ll come back pretty quick that grasses reserved energy for the spring anyways through the winter. But in summer you want to mow as high as you can. Dave said this when he was on like clippings lie.

Mike Wieger  [57:46] 
You know just I was gonna say that one as well. And that’s one of the do as we say not as I do. I have I never I bag every single time. Mainly because I don’t I don’t want to switch between on my writing lower. I don’t want to switch Between the mulching kit and the non mulching kit yes which blades and it’s just the pain. So I just bag every time. But the you are supposed to Yeah, especially in the summertime summer is really important to let those clips lie. It’s just nutrients that are good for the lawn. Yeah,

Jim Collison  [58:14] 
some tips during the summer, it’s the most stressed. So spread your feedings out a little bit. But make sure you’re still feeding there’s a bunch of different ways to do that you might in the summer, you might want to change to liquid instead of granular if you’re a granular person that liquids a little a little easier to put down, little ease or spread out. And so again, that’s your options, right sets how you like it. But make sure you’re feeding and then water a little bit deeper. So not as often but water more get that water down, get those encourage those roots on the grass to go down deeper, not just at the at the top level because if the top level dries out, you don’t want those roots there, right. Um, as we think about late summer, and I really do think this is you could be thinking about this right now. sharpen your blade, change your oil, check your fuel. is one bit me this week as I had some fuel problems and my mower was not running well and I think I either had too much water or too much stable. like one of those two that were in there wasn’t right I had to drain that thing out, run it kind of run it out. I went got some brand new fresh gas premium, put it in there I ran it for about 10 minutes it was still running like crap. And then at one point, it just kicked over and came back like I had gotten some bad fuel in the system, whether it’s water or like I said stable or whatever I use. I’ve been using like a stable fuel stabilizer and there’s a couple different we’re gonna I’m gonna give you a recommendation here in just a second. But it may be a good time to just run some maintenance on your mower. Mike I always thought I had to go to a shop to do that and I have learned the average guy can do their own maintenance you hundred percent you don’t drain your oil. Fill it back up. It’s not that hard.

Mike Wieger  [59:52] 
Yeah, even for you guys. Yeah, you can even for those guys. If you have a riding lawnmower, I have the these little lifts and they’re they’re literally I mean, I’m on video I’m trying to show. They’re not that big. So therefore your wheels, right, and they are probably the width of the wheel, they stack. So they’re super small and tiny, not really long. And they literally, they’re ramps that as you drive over them, that’s when they level out. So they’ve got like a curve to it. So you wedge them onto your tire, and you just drive a little bit and it kind of like pushes you up onto them and they rock and then they stop. Super cool for doing maintenance on a riding lawnmower at home. Jim, can I tell you my embarrassing story about changing my oil?

Jim Collison  [1:00:30] 
Don’t do it do okay, so

Mike Wieger  [1:00:32] 
I was changing the oil in my riding lawnmower. And I was listening to a podcast while I was doing it, you know? And all sudden so I’m putting the oil and I’m like, Oh, geez, Mike, I’m not even paying attention almost oil I’m putting in like I don’t know where I’m at. You know, so I let it sit for just like a minute. I put the dipstick in pull it out like oh, I must have put like nothing in here. I caught myself too soon. Good to go. Kept pouring dipstick again. You know, and I’m doing that I’m doing it right. I’m doing the towel and stuff like that only. pan like where is that like okay, Like it had was so high. I was looking at the bottom and I was looking for a line. It was so high, but I didn’t notice I’m like okay, this I’m just gonna I’m just gonna turn it on and see, I turn on and it just flumes smoke. I mean, there’s smoke just roll. It looks like I started a diesel truck. This thing is just rolling smoke. I’m like, well, it was way too much oil and yeah, so I did the dipstick one more time it was it’s supposed to be like an inch on my dipstick. It was really six all the way up it was as full as you go. Which the hard part was about as I was wasting oil. It was one of those where I wasn’t paying attention. I was listening the podcast I drained it and on this riding lawnmower it’s super easy to drain. It’s got one of those twist pull out and it just you put the title hose on it you put the hose on first twist pull out in the oil just drains nicely for you drained a little bit out, close it up, ran fine, but I was it was embarrassing moments as dad other dads were driving by him like I don’t like I know this. She’s like it’s there. Like Rogen.

Jim Collison  [1:01:55] 
Yeah, rookie. Holy Yeah. No, it’s good. Good to go on YouTube and watch others, they’ll be somebody who’s changed the oil on your mower, they’ll know recorded it

Mike Wieger  [1:02:06] 
and you can look at your manual for how much oil goes in.

Jim Collison  [1:02:09] 
Well, generally like a lot of engines for most guys, you have a standard mark, it’s 2020 I would say 20 ounces, but 20 maybe just 20 ounces. It’s pretty standard. So if you buy this small bottle of oil, you know the 20 ounces measured Yeah, it’s measured out for you just put it in like you don’t have to think about it. But yeah, good to check. Good to check how much is going in there but you absolutely can do the maintenance yourself. You can sharpen that blade yourself. You can change the air filter yourself. That’s probably the easiest thing to do. If you if you’re in dusty conditions that help you mind you. You may have not checked your air filter ever. Some people like forget like yeah, who and that is all those things. You can order them on Amazon, you can order them from Walmart, you can get it delivered direct. You don’t even have to go to the store anymore. You can just have it dry. shipped oftentimes you can look up, I looked up those parts online and I was just like, okay, I did buy an air filter. That was the wrong one. I bought two babies too big. It’s five bucks. So it wasn’t you know, it wasn’t the end of the world. But as you do more, you do this more often. You get better at it. One of the things Ed Sullivan heard us talking about this, and he threw me a recommendation for this was both for the well this was originally for the generator, but you could use it for your mower too. If you’re gonna be storing gasoline out in your shed or in the garage or it’s gonna be sitting for a while you might want to stabilize that and so he swears this by this pre g super concentrated it’ll get you 256 gallons out of this one, you squeeze it, it fills up the top. Then you pour it out super good. Stable is another brand that does this. But he swears by this. It’s $30 so it’s a little pricey, but he swears by it. So that may be another thing you want to think about is just making sure you gasoline is true. If it’s gonna be sitting for a while,

Mike Wieger  [1:04:01] 
yeah, and Okay, so here’s another real quick tip, not for milling, but it’s for your car. There is I call it the magic juice. There is stuff this old old mechanic told me about at one time, like the engine was acting up and he’s like, ah, but put this stuff in it and see if it it clears up. So you can put any gas station and you guys might have heard it. It’s called heat. I think it’s like h e t, it’s in a yellow bottle. You know, when you put it in your gas. That stuff solves so many problems. And the main point, I think, is people get water in their tank, right? And it can it can happen for a lot of reasons. It can sit for a long time and do whatever that stuff has saved. I mean, there are times I’m like, I need to go to mechanic like well, I’ll try heat first like a $3 bottle but in they’re not in your room. Fine. Now we’re all good. Like who knows what it’s doing? I call the magic juice of your cars ever sputtering or something? Try some of that heat in your

Jim Collison  [1:04:50] 
destiny they recommended here in Nebraska in the winter. Yes. of our conditions,

Mike Wieger  [1:04:54] 
right. Yep. And so, that gas tank a lot easier in our condition.

Jim Collison  [1:04:57] 
Yep, run a run a bottle heat. through there. I never thought about running that through

Mike Wieger  [1:05:02] 
through my mower actually didn’t either. Yeah.

Mike Wieger  [1:05:07] 
Not a terrible idea. You have to give it a

Jim Collison  [1:05:09] 
maybe I’ll give it a try a couple more recommendations kind of before we close this up. One is summer as an easy time. You know how Dave when he said, you know, he’s like do a mode during the week, just get it out of the way, just get out there and crush it and then go back on Saturday. Take your time. I see a lot of guys do this, where they just mow the exact same way every time they mow. Like they mow the same pattern the same way. And you might be thinking all those cross lines on someone’s lawn is vain is the entity you know it’s vein now, it’s actually a good thing to do is to change up your patterns even slightly. You know, go just go make that angle just a little bit different. Go a little flatter on the angle than you did before. Change up if you’re always going around. One way go around another way to get it right.

Mike Wieger  [1:05:53] 
Yeah, just kind of a minimum. If you can do that, right go the opposite direction. It’s not gonna help with your wheel lines. A lot of times. It’s you wheel lines that are you know if they’re running in that same system over and over. And one other quick tip someone gave me when I got a riding lawnmower and I don’t know if it’ll, it’ll help you new riding a lot more the ones you guys have had it for a while you know when you do your, your lines right, always go one full wheel with back over the other way which is really only going to utilize half your deck it cut your deck almost in half a little more than half so you’re only getting half your decks worth of width. When I first got my riding lawnmower, I was trying to get almost as much as I could almost a full decks worth every time I went down. Though those wheels was riding really smash it down. And when you need to go back over it you need, you know to go all the way back over so it really picks that grass back up and moves it again. I was getting and especially on my turns I was getting like almost like a wave effect that totally solved it. So on your turns is going one wheel all the way in. It’s important on a push mower even more important on a running on more

Jim Collison  [1:07:00] 
Yeah, no good advice. It’s just a good way to kind of make sure you’re not putting grooves in your lawn and you will, you will, you’re going to mow it with that ground to wet you’re going to push it down and you’re going to do it again I got some spots, especially on the edge where it’s just it is and I need to get some you know, every year I put seed down in there to try and fill in those spots and it just at one time you’re rushed and it was way too wet and you should have waited but you needed to get it done before company comes over and all sudden you pay for it for the next few weeks cuz you got an indent in your yard. Again, back to rule number one, your lawn will never be perfect. So I just kind of go Okay, good. Last bit here last bit of the the the 12 commandments. I should have said that earlier. These were the 12 commandments of summer lawncare. But if you need some new garden equipment, and as you’re, as you’re working through this, you might be thinking you know, my stuff is just not stacking up. We always think about slick deals for computer stuff. You can use slick deals for guards. stuff. Okay. Yeah, no, you can’t. I’ve actually slick deals for my running shoes. So I put I put in like what I want, especially when, like, the running companies that they’re run by the mafia, I swear. Like this shoe is, you know, new is 130 bucks, and everybody sells it for 130. There’s no like there’s no price pressure. Every place has it for 130 bucks, then they run and like this is the 20. Now this let’s say this is the 19. When the 20s come out, these drop off into the 70s or 80s and they go to the outlets. And then the 20s are 130 bucks right and what you want to do you want to catch that sweet spot is when they first hit the outlets, because the size I need it’s a pretty average size so it goes pretty fast. Same thing with one with lawn equipment, right? What do you think the best time Mike What do you think the best time to buy like lawn care is?

Mike Wieger  [1:08:56] 
I would guess fall

Jim Collison  [1:08:57] 
Yeah, right. Right right going into winter. Yeah, so they’re trying to everybody’s trying to dump that years where it’s very seasonal. Yeah, target Walmart, whatever the Ace Hardware, they’re trying to dump their, their false stuff in in oftentimes. And you know, slick deals is people who find deals and then post them there. And so the community I was looking up today, I love to wall tools that can be the slick deal community when they’re actually a new drill hasn’t been used yet. The slick deal community around a wall is amazing. Really, oh, I get a slick deal almost every day on the wall tool of some kind. And you know, and I’ll never fail to pay full price for any of those things because there’s always a deal going on right somewhere and slick slick deals helps me kind of so go to slick deals calm. There’s an alert there, easy to set, go search for something, find it, make sure that’s what you want set the alert. So maybe you’re looking for particular mower, you’re looking for a an edger you’re looking for hoses, you’re looking for whatever Right whatever those things, chances are, it may be on slick deals so set up those alerts and wait you know if you’re you’re thinking God I gotta fix this first of all Mike said this and it’s never been more true you can’t do anything today that’s gonna have an effect tomorrow. No, it’s just not gonna happen so you don’t have to hurry on these. But it may be good opportunities we think about going into fall What are those tools that you don’t have that you could pick up as they are clearanced on their way out irrigation stuff especially the mechanical target does this all the time. The mechanical watering timers and stuff like that? They carry those they clearance those for close to nothing on the interesting, okay. Might want to watch that. Your chemicals. That’s a good time to start thinking about picking picking up some of those things. Sometimes the spring stuff so the plants or the chemicals or whatever that are spring, they’re going on sale right now because they’re not they can’t use them anymore. They’re there. marked spring, they want to get rid of them. now’s a good time to pick it up, that stuff doesn’t expire, pick it up, throw in your shed, you can use it next spring, you know, get it, you know, pennies on the dollar and store it somewhere if you can safely. You can use it the next year round. So keep keep you know, keep those deals keep looking for those deals, Mike if there was one piece of gardening or lawn equipment you think you’re missing right now. Oh, what don’t you have?

Mike Wieger  [1:11:32] 
Ah, um

Mike Wieger  [1:11:37] 
that’s tough. I would love a more powerful gas edger. Right now in the springtime, I use the edge hog the Black and Decker edge hog which is plugged into a power cord. Just because that thing needs some power to get through that winter. It’s grown onto the sidewalk, right? You need some power after that. So I’ll trench for two Two weeks with that thing ever since then I have an attachment that replaces the end of my weedwacker but again, not very powerful, so I think I would use them a gas edger being can be my thing. I could also use some sort of I don’t even have a cedar. I don’t because I don’t put my own chemicals on but there are times where I want to do something. But really, I think what I really want is a trailer for my riding lawnmower. There are times when Hannah and I are doing mulch, I would love to load it all into a little wagon and then just drive it around the back of the lawnmower to all the different spots we have because we’re you know, heaving it everywhere and you know, a wheelbarrow would be nice to take up a whole extra spot I already have, you know, the riding lawnmower there so I think that’d be cool

Jim Collison  [1:12:43] 
chat room. Let me ask you that same question. What are you missing? Tony says backpack blower. This is not what he’s missing. You can put what your favorite or what you’re missing. backpack blower is the best thing ever and that is great. I have a I have a little 20 volt battery A blower that just does what I needed to do I don’t need to fail I don’t need to put put a full backpack on so that one that one works out pretty pretty well for me Joe says I use a 80 volt trimmer works better than any two stroke one so there’s there’s maybe again look on slick deals yeah there and never have to worry about it starting that’s that’s true. Yeah,

Mike Wieger  [1:13:26] 
I think I’ve I was so against battery powered stuff. But I think I’ve seen the light I know better people well and for me all when I start to see all the really big construction guys on YouTube using battery powered saws, everything I’m like, Okay, these guys are using it day in and day out if it’s good enough for them it’s definitely good enough for me when I’m doing I always just didn’t I couldn’t trust the power before right like how much power has is given me and I think I’m ready to pretty much start going. Battery everything.

Jim Collison  [1:13:56] 
Yeah, I’ve been doing that for a while the exception of my

Mike Wieger  [1:13:58] 
blower I still do like my game. basketball or

Jim Collison  [1:14:01] 
you get it’s a backpack. It’s not

Mike Wieger  [1:14:03] 
it’s a handheld steel brand one I love steel branded stuff is awesome. I see but I have gas everything so I either have gas or plug in with a plug. But I’ve only actually only have anything that’s plugged in with a plug. So for my hedgehog, everything else gas powered for me.

Jim Collison  [1:14:18] 
Tony says he loves his john deere dump trailer

Mike Wieger  [1:14:20] 
is I wonder if that’s the one that there’s one that folds up. Actually, it’s like a full trailer for it. I think it’s john deere brand even it’s your john deere Cub Cadet, and you can fold it up flat and put it like on the wall and then unfolds kind of cool.

Jim Collison  [1:14:33] 
Tony says he’d love Narrator And that I’d actually love like a mini Arranger. I don’t have full you know, I’d love I’d love a smaller version. Somebody in the chat earlier said you know they have this shoes you can buy that have the spikes on the bottom, you can walk around your lawn and that that will help rate the lawn. You know, yeah, you could do it that way. I don’t want that one. I just like I’d love to have more of a mini eraider than then a full size one.

Mike Wieger  [1:14:59] 
So So this has been my app idea forever. We talked about these things that we all want, right? And odds are when your neighbors has it. I talked about I might have talked about this to stop if I did, but I think the next door app needs to integrate this is but pretty much like an app called like, I have it, right, which is, I have the I have a snowblower right? I list all the big tools that I have, and all my immediate neighbors, can everyone list what they have? And you can go and swipe it and check it out for like, Hey, can I have that on Sunday at this time? And you could I have one of the options I hey, I’ve charged a price for renting this out. I don’t, there’s a contract built in there. So that hey, by the way, when you’re signing this in the app, you’re signing a contract Just so you know, if you break it, you buy it kind of thing, whatever. Right and kind of having it because like there’s no need for everyone on the block to have a snowblower. There’s no need for everyone on the block to have an area. We all use it once. It’s expensive. So if one guy on the block has it and if he wants to charge if he wants to do it for free. I think that’d be an awesome app. Maybe it already exists, but

Jim Collison  [1:15:56] 
it’s like it needs to be crypto backed You know, it needs to be Yeah. Sounds like for smart contracts. Sure. Perfect. Why would he with the crypto back with crypto? Great. Let’s let’s do it that way. Tony said this is the one area that I kind of agree with. He said in my old house had a battery mower and trimmer but battery died super expensive. On the mower side, I am not completely convinced that battery operated mowers are a great idea. Like I had one that we were going to make the robot lawnmower out of it. Still might someday. And I it just does it that battery starts going bad and then you’re kind of screwed. It gets worse and worse and worse and worse. And it’s not terrible to replace those batteries. But my son bought one I was like, Oh, he had a big yard too. And I’m like, you know, if you get fit grass, the thing you’re gonna mow and he bought two batteries and it’s gonna chug and you Replace it you’re gonna chug and they can’t they can’t charge fast enough for you to keep going right so you’re gonna get separated across a couple days now the goal in that then is just stay up on your lawn don’t don’t let it get through

Mike Wieger  [1:17:12] 
Yeah, well there were spring days when my when I push gas mower would chug on stuff and just die because I had let it grow a little bit too long and that spring when it’s nice and thick and and there was sort of a no way an electric motor would have gone

Jim Collison  [1:17:25] 
through it. Brian our says he loves his cobalt trimmer. We all have those

Mike Wieger  [1:17:29] 
recommendations for that cobalt trimmer.

Jim Collison  [1:17:31] 
Yeah, you know, we all have those tools that we just love. You know, I my current mowers, gas and it’s just a craftsman Craftsman or maybe No, I think it’s a Briggs and Stratton brand you know, just pretty typical Mari just does just does what it’s supposed to do. It needs to be sharpened. I need to I need to pull the blade off and sharpen it. My little Dremel tool I lost a piece so I can’t I can’t do it myself right now but I need to need to go find it or go buy it. So it you know it is it’s, it’s great. It’s summer. Hopefully your lawn is in great shape. I am having the best summer I’ve had mostly because

Mike Wieger  [1:18:13] 
I’m here to kind of advice.

Jim Collison  [1:18:15] 
Yeah, no, no right on that too, you know I spent some time not as motivated. It did. It did and I man the receding that I did back in the spring and an area that was almost bare has all filled in now and there’s still some bare spots, I’ll get those in the fall. I’m also a big believer in seeding right after what you think might be your last snow. So just seed right on top of the snow one and as you can see where the seeds going. You can see where you’re putting the seed down to the seeds not affected. You know that kind of seeds not affected by cold like seeds are designed to last through the cold. That’s why things come up the next year right. seeds will be fine. They sit on top and then as that snow melts, it pulls those seeds down into the green And you get that soil contact, because the water is pulling that seed down to the ground as it’s going in. And it’s just a super effective way of planting seeds. Now, we’ll talk about that in the winter episode when we come up, but it’s a great way. Great way to get your seeds if you have if you live in an environment with snow. For me, what really worked for me this spring was I had we gotten a whole bunch of rain and then it dried up in the ground cracked. So I had all these you know, you ever had that I was like, hole seeds. So I threw as much seed in those cracks as I possibly could because I get that ground seed the ground contact. Yeah, and then I watered it in and that ground closed up. Beautiful grass, like a friggin genius. It was super great. Mike anything else you’d add?

Mike Wieger  [1:19:43] 
No, uh, you know, besides, you know, Jim mentioned in chat to sharpen your blades. I am doing it probably every two months, which leads in here with our milling season leads to about three times a year, three to four times. I think every quarter is probably a good way to do it. He says mentally At least once a year and I agree like at least once a year be sharpening your blades. Easiest Way. Pick up a piece of grass look at it. If it’s straight across the top after you mowed, you’re good. If it starts to get jaggedy that’s not good. It’s one number one flooding water out. Number two, it shows brown a lot easier that jaggedy is brown makes your glass grass look a lot more brown. So be sharpening your blades a ton. Super easy to do now that you should get that drill attachment if you want. I use a bench grinder and just run around across run across again. And you’re good to go.

Jim Collison  [1:20:31] 
Yeah, you’re golden I need to do that I’ve been that’s one of the areas got oil change. You got to feel taken care of I got that the the air filter changed. I need to now sharpen that blade spin it up and it’s been over a year so I need to get it done. A couple reminders before we go wind Don’t forget rank kershner is here next week. Ryan was in chat a little bit earlier. He might still be out there. So Ryan’s Join us next week. We’re going to kind of talk about a water cooling a PC cooling so he’s going to come in awesome. We’re going to kind of dive in deep on I think you’re here we work that out right

Mike Wieger  [1:21:00] 
hoped though, because he was the one they gifted me the water cooler. I have the i o in here.

Jim Collison  [1:21:05] 
So you can talk about that and I haven’t been here way happy with this thing and then you’re out for your out for the next couple weeks and weeks. Brenda joins us j Madison joins us. So I’m excited to have both those guys on here and Jay just had a new review come out on YouTube on a micro I mean, man, that guy he keeps pushing those PC boundaries, getting smaller and smaller and smaller. His stuff is just awesome. Like, I just love what that guy does. So Jay. Jay is back here on the 16th 23rd Daniel J. Lewis is going to come and talk about some room lighting, which would be super cool. Some RGB room lighting. Yeah, I think of that in terms of PCs, but he’s ordered some stuff and is installing it at his house to get some really cool kind of setup on lighting. So we’ll have him Conan, and then right at the end of the month, Sammy is coming to join us. He’s going to talk a little bit about what she’s been doing this summer and Pokemon Go and some technology she’s using it will just catch up with her she’s you can ask For all the questions that she’d been locked with her dad, for, she’s looking to talk to other people five or six months with me like she’s does hate to see some of the scars that I’ve probably given her over the summer but she’ll be in here at the end of the month as well. We are alive every Thursday at 8pm Central nine Eastern. Why since every well we’ll say every most most Thursday’s maybe 48 out of 52 weeks. Coming up. I do have a planned trip out to Colorado Springs coming up in early August and so we will be off for that. But we’re here most weeks. We Mike we mentioned last week we’d like to start some roundtables. So you have some ideas on particular Roundtable. Jim, this was kind of your idea Jim Shoemaker. It’s kind of your idea. He has some ideas of a roundtable and you wanna you want to help me lead it we’ll put two or three or four guys together and we’ll and gals if you want to join us. And we’ll just do that the whole show. Just be on that topic you need to bring something to give and make Sure you have your stuff together, it’s not time to come and sit and listen, it’s time to give. So if you want to do that contact me Jim at the average guy.tv tell me the topic idea and we can start putting groups together to get those done. I’d like to get those kind of cranking maybe one or two a month here starting in the fall. And then let’s see what else I say Oh, I should say that Home Gadget Geeks into the average guy TV Of course powered by Maple Grove Partners get secure reliable high speed hosting for people that you know and you trust that his Christian plans start as little as $10 a month. Maple Grove partners.com if you want to get that done, join us in our discord groups but no quiet but that’s okay. I think we’re I think we’re all pretty busy at the moment. So the average guy TV slash discord if you want to jump in that conversation over there, and Brian, you have to let me know how the app when he was out. He’s gonna listen to the first half and then go out for the second half. Hopefully still listening. We’ll stay around for a little post show. So Brian, maybe you’ll be From your walk, you can let me know, Brian, if that is you can let me know how it went on the app going forward. We will stay around for a little bit of post show. Thanks for listening tonight. And with that, we’ll say goodbye.

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