Stuff You Should Know - How Grass Works? Yes, How Grass Works

Episode Date: July 10, 2014

There's nothing more boring than watching grass grow, which is why Josh and Chuck aren't asking you to do that. Instead, you can learn about all sorts of neat things about grass - like how America became obsessed with perfect lawns - in this episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey guys, it's Chikis from Chikis and Chill Podcast, and I want to tell you about a really exciting episode. We're going to be talking to Nancy Rodriguez from Netflix's Love is Blind Season 3. Looking back at your experience, were there any red flags that you think you missed? What I saw as a weakness of his, I wanted to embrace. The way I thought of it was,

whatever love I have from you is extra for me. Like, I already love myself enough. Do I need you to validate me as a partner? Yes. Is it required for me to feel good about myself? No. Listen to Chikis and Chill on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Attention Bachelor Nation. He's back.

The host of some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. During two decades in reality TV, Chris saw it all. And now he's telling all. It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. We have a lot to talk about. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. We were just talking about Canada, so I said, W, and there's Jerry over there.

So this is Stuff You Should Know. Hello. Live from the Bowling Green, HowStuffWorks.com. That's what the site slogan is. You doing all right? I'm doing great. Watch this. Chuck.

Have you ever seen grass? I have, sir. You won't find a lot of good grass in my yard, but. No, is it terrible? I've seen it before. I don't remember it. It's pretty bad. Well, I mean, I will bemoan myself all throughout this one.

Well, you have, it turns out, the traditional American yard. Crappy. Did you know that? Yeah. Packed dirt. Yeah. Maybe a little bit of a garden around. Yeah.

And there you go, some native grasses. Yeah. That's the tradition. And it turns out that's the way, if you went to an American house, Chuck. Pre-industrial revolution. Yeah, pretty much. You're going to find that.

Like you're just going to find packed dirt in the yard. Maybe a garden, some weeds. Nobody really cared much. They were more trying to survive. Yeah. Right? Sure. And then in the 19th century, as Americans said,

you know, we've been hanging out here for 100 years. Let's go back to England and visit. Is it safe yet? Right. They found it was. But they also found that the English had something called a lawn, which is a beautiful, well-manicured expanse of grass that they very wealthy English could afford.

Well, wealthy Americans were never wants to be outdone by wealthy British. No. So they came back and they're like, I want a lawn. I am worth so much money. It's mind-boggling. Make me a lawn. And whoever they were talking to said,

we can't really do that here. Right. The native grass is not conducive to a camped lawn. Yeah. You can't pop over to the big box hardware store and buy huge sacks of seed. Right. And so they said, well, you know what?

I'll be right back. I'm going to the UK to buy my seed. And then they traveled there. And then 14 weeks later, they made it all the way back. And they said, here you go, groundskeeper willie. Make me a lawn. Here's some British seed for turfgrass. That's right.

And he said, hey, man. He said, when I'm done with you, they're going to need a compost mordem. Whoa. Wow. It was a deep cut. That was good. I think that was tree house of horror, like.

Oh, the one where he's ready. Yeah. Yeah. Nice, man. You're going to need a compost mordem. So he said that. Yes. And then he said, well, here's the problem.

Our climate is different than the UK's. And these seeds aren't going to survive here. So the lords and the ladies said, I give up. Yeah. We'll figure something else out. And it took the Gulf Association, the US Department of Agriculture, and the American Garden Club to finally get together and say, let's make this happen,

everybody. Yeah. They got together. The USDA got together with the USGA. And they said, our names are similar. So let's plant some grass together. So what they had to do, basically, was look for, kind of, fool around

with the right combination of seed varieties. Which they imported from around the world. Yeah, just to see what's going to grow here in this new country, because we've got to play some golf. Yeah, like Kentucky bluegrass? Yeah. Friends, that's from Europe. Bermuda grass?

Where do you think that's from? Obviously, Africa. That is right. God knows where Zoysia came from, although I believe Asia. And not just because Zoysia and Asia are somewhat similar sounding. It took them about 15 years. And they finally, kind of, settled

on some good combination of grasses. Yeah, but you can thank golf to start. So if you hate golf, but you love your lawn, you have to, kind of, like golf anyway. That's right. But still, Chuck, even though they finally came up with the right grass combinations, you had to still be pretty rich to have a lawn.

The reason why was because irrigation was a factor. Cutting it was a big factor. Like all of those manor houses in the UK, they had people whose job it was was to cut grass with a scythe. Yeah, a lot of people, I would imagine. Because these lawns were not small. And like you said, they didn't have garden hoses back then.

And buckets of water is not a great way to water a lawn. Nope. Although livestock, they did cut them with the scythe, but they also had cows and goats taking care of a lot of that. Yeah, who was it who had the sheep on the front yard of the White House? I don't remember what administration that was. I think it was Wilson.

Was it? He was saying like, look what you can do as an American. You can put a sheep on your lawn. Yeah, so do it. And then he sold the wool or auctioned it off for like $100,000. Oh, wow. And he kept it probably. That's a good story.

The lawn mower, mechanical mowing in the 19th century became a real thing when an Englishman named Edwin Budding, who was an engineer, developed what is called the real mower. And that is R-E-E-L. Yeah. And you've seen these. You've probably seen some suckers in your neighborhood with one. I'm just kidding.

I actually have a real mower. I live in a condo. Yeah, real mowers. I mean, you can still get them in there great. And they have zero emissions, which is really neat, because a lot of lawn mowers are pretty bad offenders for emissions. Yeah, they're internal combustion engines, which means they put out all sorts of greenhouse gases.

Yeah, and it's not like a car. They don't have catalytic converters and things like that. I mean, it's just straight up bad junk. So you can get a real mower if you're into it. You've seen them. It's a series of blades around a cylinder. And it's geared, which is the key to making it work. If you just pushed it and it traveled like the wheel did,

you wouldn't be cutting a lot of grass. But there's a 16 to 1 gear ratio. So when you're pushing it, your wheels are turning at this speed, but the blade is turning really fast. Oh, yeah. OK. That's sort of the secret to how they work. And apparently, Mr. Budding said, or he

found another machine that was similar that was used to cut the nap on velvet. Yeah. So you know that? Yeah, and that's kind of where he got the idea. Right. And it took off like a rocket. All of a sudden, people were like, hey, we can have lawns now.

Let's buy these things. Apparently, they were somewhat affordable. In 1885, America built 50,000 of these things and sent them around the globe. Yeah, that was the beginning of lawns in America, really. Right. And you know what else that guy invented? What?

The adjustable wrench. Is that right? Yeah, the little wrench that you. Yeah, dynamo. Or as they called it, the adjustable spanner. Who called it that? The internet. And I was like, what the heck's a spanner?

And then it turns out it's a wrench. Spanner. This doesn't even make sense. Yeah, that may be an English thing. So the garden hose comes around, and that helps, too. That was a big help as well. But even still, you had this thing. It was kind of like, OK, Richie Rich, love your lawn.

I don't really care. I don't need one. And the American Garden Club said, oh, yeah? Yeah. It's the 1950s. You live in suburbia. You have to have a lawn if you are a clean cut, decent American person.

Yep. And the American Garden Club had this whole thing where they had contests, and publicity, and PSAs, and basically drummed it into the head of every American man, woman, and child that part of your civic duty was to have a perfect lawn. Yeah, front lawn specifically. Yeah.

And there was this article. Oh, man, I can't remember what the article is or what the website is. I wish I could, because they did a great job describing the history. But they quoted an American Garden Club, I guess, stipulation that said an appropriate type of lawn was, quote, a plot with a single type of grass

with no intruding weeds kept mown at a height of an inch and a half. Too short. Uniformly green and neatly edged. Yeah. And then today, Americans spend about $30 billion a year on lawn care. Wow.

You know how people are crazy for their pets and everything? Oh, yeah. Half a billion. Really? 30 billion on lawn care. Wow. Yeah. Now, is that lawn care or is that outdoor care period?

Lawn care. OK. Yeah, I looked it up. It's just grass. Lawn care. Not planting as early as? No, I imagine like just the whole total of outdoor stuff is, sends it through the roof of $30 billion lawn care.

I mean, I looked because that article we borrowed from. It was way outdated. Well, it was from like a 2000 survey, and it was like $17 billion on all outdoor stuff. Outdoor home improvement, I think they put it. $30 billion on lawns. That's crazy. Yes.

All right, let's get into grass. It is the name for the Gramma, Grimonea family of plants, of which there are more than 9,000 species. And if you think, well, 9,000 species of grass, you might not realize that things like corn and rice and oats are grass plants. That's right. Bamboo is grass.

Yeah, so building materials, plastics, room, sugar, all this stuff is made from grasses, corn, grass. Yep. And some, like if you look at a corn plant, and then you get down on your hands and knees and look at your Bermuda grass plants, because your lawn, although it looks like one large single organism, and technically, you could make the argument

that it is, really is a series of interconnected, related grass plants that form a lush patch of turf. Yeah, and like you said, if you get down and look at the little individual plants closely, it doesn't look so far off of a corn plant. Right. Thank you for computing that thought for me.

Obviously, growing. No, but what is corn, but a type of flower, right? Yeah, I guess, is it? No, it's the fruit of the grass, I guess. Because corn does have like a flowery top. Yeah, and I've heard, I don't know if this is true. I've heard that each corn stalk only grows one corn cob. Is that right?

I don't know. I'm not a farmer. We used to grow corn when I was a kid, but I hated gardening when I was a kid. Man, I have to say, you remember we just recorded sushi? Yeah. And it made me want sushi? Yeah.

This is like, man, I love gardening. Yeah. Yeah, I think when you get older, you get into gardening, because eventually, like, you might own a home, and then you want it to look nice, and you want it to be a pleasurable place. And gardening is just really, like, that's why every old British rock star

now just gardens out in the countryside. Yeah. Because it's just quiet and peaceful, and it's just a really nice thing to do. Meditative? Yeah, very much. Right now, though, so you know, I live in a condo, like I say, and I've got like a pretty nice little patio

garden going. Oh, nice. But I am combating this one squirrel who is driving me crazy. Is it the same one, do you know? I believe it is. There was one that was driving me crazy. I thwarted him, sent him packing. How?

Now there's this, I put up, so I have a bird feeder that squirrels love to attack, but I hung it in a way and cleared off branches around it. So this one squirrel would go dive for it and miss and go sailing. And one time he hit it and realized that he couldn't hang onto the chain and, like, fell off. And that was it.

Yeah. This new squirrel, man, he is persistent. Tenacious, the squirrel. I'll look outside at any given point in time. And he is hanging upside down by this chain with his feet eating out of my bird feeder, safflower seeds, which squirrels aren't even supposed to like. And so that's just that.

He comes onto my patio, now it's war. He just digs up stuff, and it's like, stop digging in my plants. But I'm really kind of like, I have a trap. I don't know if it's big enough for a squirrel, but you can get traps and then just drive them out to Piedmont Barking. Yeah, or you can set the trap behind, like, the exhaust of your car and turn on your car

for a little while. Want to kill a squirrel? No, I don't. But man, this thing is pushing me. Yeah. I mean, if you look on, like, Getting Rid of Squirrel websites, that's pretty much number one. Yeah.

I don't want to do that. No. All right, new murderous thug. Let's talk about your thuggy. I'm not, though, is the thing. I don't smoke hashish, and I'm not a bandit. I just hate the squirrel. Let's talk about grass.

The grass plant itself, at the roots, they are a little fibrous thread-like, and they're going to reach down on the ground like little fingers. They're going to soak up water and nutrients, and they're going to secure it to the ground, and then, fussily, that ground is going to be more secure as well.

Yeah, because anywhere you have grass, it prevents erosion. Yeah. Any type of grass is huge at preventing erosion. Yeah, and I would recommend, as we're describing this, actually go to the article on howstuffworks.com about grass and pull up this great picture. Yeah, it's a really good one. Yeah, it breaks it all down.

At the base, the stem is called a comb, and the base is the crown. Right, and the crown is almost like this clump of matter that's above the roots that the roots are growing from that gives rise to the crown. Yeah, right? Yeah. Or to the stem.

The comb. Yeah, there's a lot of words. I had no idea existed until this article came along. Yeah, I always just call it the stem, but apparently it is a comb. OK. And then from the comb, on the comb are nodes, which is, I guess, where new comb growth starts.

But for the most part, that stem's going to be hollow except at the node, which is kind of like a connective ball. Yeah, like if you've seen bamboo and how it looks like it's segmented, the little places where it's segmented, those are the nodes. Right. But it also happens in your backyard grass as well.

Exactly. And then you have the leaf. The leaf? Yeah, the stuff that we call grass. Yeah. We're actually talking about the leaf. And we're not even talking about the whole leaf. Yeah.

We're talking about the blade. So anytime you hear some old timer called grass blades grass, he or she is correct. That's right. The lower part of the leaf is the sheath, and then the upper part is the blade. And then you're going to have a ligule, L-I-G-U-L-E, surrounding the connection of the sheath and the blade.

Yeah, it's almost like the blade comes to the comb, the stem, and just wraps it around in a hug. And the hug is the sheath. Which makes sense when you see this picture, because the stem looks like it's growing out of the sheath that leads into the blade. And then you're going to have a couple of other things. These additional stems that grow sideways

that you might have noticed. If it's on the ground, it's called a stolen. And if it's below the ground, it's called a rhizome. And this is where you're going to get new grass plants. Yeah, this is how it spreads. There's two ways that grass reproduces. One is through seeds that are usually blown by the air, that are produced by their flowers,

or through basically moving sideways via a stolen or rhizome, this kind of root system that just goes over and produces a new crown and new roots and a new plant. Yeah, if you've ever seen a new yard, and we'll get into this later, you can either just plant seed, you can do sod, or you can plant individual sprigs or plugs. If you've ever seen a yard that's all dirt and a ton of little individual plants, like a foot apart,

and you think, well, that's interesting looking. That looks very modern. Eventually, that's going to all grow together, thanks to the rhizomes and the stolen, and fill in and form a full yard. Yeah, so they are connected, and because of that, they are related, but really, these are different plants. That's right, and it's green because of chlorophyll.

That's right. And photosynthesis, because all grasses is a photosynthesizing, sugar-making little machine. That's right. Remember, sugar powers the earth. That's right. So Chuck, there's probably a lot of people out there who are just like, just tell me how to improve my lawn.

And we say, hold your horses, because we're going to take a message break first. I'm Mangesh Atikulur, and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology.

And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention, because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends, and we dove in. And let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop.

But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change, too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, guys. It's Cheekies from Cheekies and Chill Podcast. And I want to tell you about a really exciting episode. We're going to be talking to Nancy Rodriguez from Netflix's Love is Blind Season 3. Looking back at your experience, were there any red flags that you think you missed?

What I saw as a weakness of his, I wanted to embrace. The way I thought of it was, whatever love I have from you is extra for me. Like, I already love myself enough. Do I need you to validate me as a partner? Yes. Is it required for me to feel good about myself?

No. Listen to Cheekies and Chill on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. OK, we're back. And that wasn't such a bad weight. No. I'm sure it was very helpful, too. So we're talking how to take a lawn

and make it into a world-class American Garden Association approved lawn. Yeah, they still have a lot of neighborhoods still have that junk, you know, where they have the contest. And you're very much expected to keep it up. It's part of your civic duty. Per your neighborhood association rules. Right.

I don't live in one of those type of neighborhoods. There's no association. And there's a lot of crappy lawns like mine as a result. Nice. All right, soil, that is, I guess, your first start. If you want a good lawn, you're going to have some good soil. Well, yeah, I mean, technically, your soil is what holds your nutrients.

It holds your water. It gives stability to the roots in the plant itself. Soil is pretty important. Let's just come out and say it, all right? And so with the soil, apparently, for most turf grasses in America, you want to have what's called loam. And loam is a sand, clay, soil mixture.

And ideally, loam would be 40% sand, 40% silt, and then 20% clay. Yeah, it's, you know, you want it to be sort of loose so things can spread around and breathe and water can get down in there, but not too loose. It's got to be that right combination. And you also want a pH of about six and a half to seven. And this isn't something you can look at your lawn

and be like, 5.3. Well, maybe if you're like the grass, the soil whisperer. Maybe, if you are like that, then you should be charging people for that kind of thing. I would think you'd at least have to stick your finger in it. If you have like a wacky disco ghost that follows you around and is really the one that's telling you the pH of different soils, you'd better be making money

from that. So the pH, you can get a home test kit or you can have, you can pay for someone to come out and test your pH level. Right, that's the more typical way of finding out. Yeah, it'll either be acidic or basic and you can add various things to correct that, like sulfur or lime.

Yeah, if you want to make it more acidic, add sulfur. If you want to make it more basic, add lime. Yeah, and I've never done my pH rating. My soil, I've got, you know, Georgia's famous for red clay. It's pretty awful. It's actually good for growing. Not this, I mean, it's got to be a mixture. So I've seen you.

I have like a hundred percent clay. I think, I think you're just, this is what I think's going on. Oh boy. No, I think your soil's compacted. Yeah. From, I mean, have you ever aerated? Okay. You also have a lot of trees, so there's a lot of shade.

Yeah, front yard is way too shady. And it's dry. Yeah. I think if you fix those three things, you would have a fine yard. Well, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna forget about grass in the front yard. Okay.

And zero-scape it. Oh yeah. Put some cacti out. Cacti and just mulch and plants and rocks. Yeah, we're gonna go that route because it's too shady. And then in the backyard, I have no excuse other than just not spending the kind of time you need to spend.

The backyard seemed fine to me. Well, if you have enough weeds and you cut them down, it can give the appearance of a green lawn. Oh, I gotcha. But it's not, it's not real grass. All right, let's get back to it because we're gonna solve your problems just by explaining the rest of this to everybody.

Okay, by the way, to improve your soil, not only can you use the lime to get the right pH, but you can amend it with compost or fertilizer or topsoil as well. Yeah, you can use manure. Yeah. You can use whatever. Just go out there and poop.

Right. Actually, I looked into this. You wanna use compost and manure. Yeah, yeah. You don't wanna add just poop to it. No, that's species. All right. And you can just spread that stuff

with like a fertilizer spreader. Yeah. You just have to use more of it because it's organic. That's right. Which means it's weak. Yeah, and we'll get into some cleaner options too if you're not into chemical herbicides

and stuff like that. Right. So you've got your soil. You're thinking about your soil now. Yeah. Share a little bit of brain space for the actual kind of grass you wanna plant. Yeah.

So like if you, in America, there's basically two types of grasses that we use. Warm season grasses and cool season grasses. And then there's a transition zone in the middle. And by the way, you and I live smack dab in the middle of this transition zone. Oh, really? Where you can conceivably grow either.

The winters are mild enough and the summers used to be not so hot that either one was prohibited. You could use both. So is that like cool season grasses like Kentucky bluegrass? AKA Eurograss. Warm season Bermuda grass.

And that's the one that turns brown in the winter. Right. I don't like it. It looks great in the summer, but I don't like it in the winter. No. I mean, like if you've ever driven through a subdivision in Georgia in January.

Yeah. It is a depressing site. Yeah. It's just this kind of mustardy light brown khaki field with houses that all look exactly alike right next to one another. Yeah. But it looks great in the summer.

I mean. Sure it does. Bermuda is soft and it's great to walk around on barefoot and lay in and watch the stars. Yeah. Plus it looks dynamite too. When you, have you ever seen people who have their like Bermuda cut like a golf course?

Yeah. Where it's maybe a quarter of an inch tall. Yeah. There's special mowers that you have to get that are thousands and thousands of dollars that let you cut that without killing your grass. Are they the ones where you stand up and ride? Those are my favorite.

That's just a mower. Those are these ones that are like they cut in a certain way. Yeah. That are Bermuda just for that super short Bermuda. But yeah. Bermuda turns brown in the winter because it's a warm season grass

which means it's growing season is the summer. Right. Cool season grasses. They don't go dormant, but they only really grow in the spring and fall. Yeah. And by the way, bluegrass, if you've ever wondered why it's called bluegrass,

it is not name for the leaves. It is name for the seed heads. Is that right? Yeah. So if you let bluegrass grow and don't touch it to like two or three feet tall, it will appear blue at the tops. Beautiful.

Yeah. And I never knew that. I didn't either Chuck. So there you have it. Schooled everybody. Jerry, did you know that? Everybody. Well, everyone Kentucky's going.

No crap, buddy. Yeah. Man, did I just insult Kentucky? No. That was dead on. Okay. I love Kentucky. All right.

So you're picking your grass. You probably will end up getting, unless you're a big Bermuda aficionado or something, you're probably going to get a mixture or a blend. A mixture is a combo of types of grass. And a blend is a combo of varieties of the same type of grass. Right.

So like a mixture is like warm and cool season grasses maybe. Yeah. Or you get a Zoysia blend. Right. And it's all different types of Zoysia. Yeah. And a blend is not as adaptable, but it will probably look more uniform and attractive

and pretty. Right. It's not like patchwork. No. But if you're just looking to fill in like some shady spots or something like that, you might want to get a mixture. Agreed. And then another thing you want to take into account

when you're considering what kind of grass to get is the amount of sunlight that your yard gets. Like grass loves sun. Yeah. Direct sunlight, some love shade, or not love shade, but some tolerate shade. Right. It's a way better way to put it.

Yeah. No grass really loves shade. And then there's some areas that are like just shady all the time. Yeah. In which case you might want to consider something else like monkey grass or something that's not a turf grass, but it's still a grass that you can cut.

Yeah. Or a zero escape. Yeah. You could do that too. I got that big oak tree and it's just not very sunny in my free yard. No. Which I'm glad you bring up zero escape because reading

this, especially when we get to the watering part, it's like grass is not going to be around for many more decades. What? Lawns? If we're going to start fighting resource wars over water in the next 50 years, there's no way that there's going to be such a thing as lawns.

Yeah. That's a good point. Yeah. It's going to be zero escaping. Yeah. We're back to the old dirt dober days. Yeah. I'd welcome that.

Sure. Dusty America. That's how it used to be. Yeah. The dust bowl. Those great times. Yeah. We had one game.

It was called chew the bark off the tree. What's that from? How old is that grumpy old man? Oh, really? The Dana Carvey thing? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Chew the bark off the tree. I think that's what he said.

That's pretty good. So the sun is, you're going to, like I said, or like you said, take that into account. And then the water as well. There are grasses that like water more than others and some do a little bit better without as much water. So if you live in Phoenix, well, you're probably just watering all the time.

Right. Yeah. But if you don't want to water all the time, because you shouldn't be watering all the time, because we'll get into watering later. And you should never be watering every day. No, I predict lawns won't be around in 50 years. All right.

Mark my words, 2064? No lawns. Well, I'll be dead, but let's see. I can still be around. I'll be 93 if I'm still around 93. It's a, that'd be a sad case of a human being. I don't know, Chuck, like they're making some serious advances in aging.

Do you want to be that old? I'm Mangesh Atikular, and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has

been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention, because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in, and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious

show about astrology, my whole world can crash down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change, too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, guys. It's Cheekies from Cheekies and Chill Podcast. And I want to tell you about a really exciting episode. We're going to be talking to Nancy Rodriguez from Netflix's Love Is Blind Season 3. Looking back at your experience, were there any red flags that you think you missed? What I saw as a weakness of his, I wanted to embrace.

The way I thought of it was, whatever love I have from you is extra for me. Like, I already love myself enough. Do I need you to validate me as a partner? Yes. Is it required for me to feel good about myself? No. Listen to Cheekies and Chill on the iHeart Radio App,

Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. If I were healthy and happy, heck, yeah. Yeah, all right. Sure. Especially if you know friends and loved ones were like that old, too. Yeah, I guess so. I mean, I wouldn't want to be cursed to walk the earth forever

and just me be that way. But I mean, I'm not talking about a science fiction movie. No, I'm talking about advances in aging. Supposedly, if not our generation, then definitely the one right below us will see the triple digits for average life expectancy. And feeling good? Average life expectancy.

Yes. OK. That's the key. Yeah, I don't want to be shuffling around and drooling on myself. Well, there's a whole school of thought that all of these are unnecessary byproducts of aging, that it's not you don't automatically become stooped

over and demented just because you get old. Like, we're doing something wrong or not doing something that we should be that can combat all that. Like, sarcophania, that's easy. But like, getting into the brain stuff, that's a little trickier. But I mean, we're there. And you and I may live to benefit from it.

Yeah, I think keeping that mind active is huge. Totally. Because Emily's grandmother's in her 90s. She's sharp as a tack because she does puzzles all day long and reads and is on the internet. Balance your checkbook. Call that jazz. All right, so let's talk about if you

want to start a new lawn, as they call it, establishing a lawn. You can plant seed if you want to go the cheap, hard working route. Yes, but you have to wear nothing but overalls. Nothing under them, no shoes while you're planting seed. You can do sod, which we'll talk about that. Or you can do the plugs and sprigs, which I mentioned. First things first, and you're going

to have to do this for all three methods, you're going to have to prepare your soil. Yeah, so you want to get like a tiller. Yeah. Go down to like your hardware store and rent one. Yeah, my mom's got one in this case. OK, so borrow it from your mom. Yeah, anyone can borrow it from my mom.

And basically, it's probably a good idea, too, depending on where you live. But if you live in a subdivision and you value your cable, TV, or internet, you might want to call your local cable provider, your gas company, your electric company, and say, hey, send one of your people out and mark this. And they'll come, and they're going to spray paint your lawn and everything

and give you an idea of how deep it is. But you'll know where your cables are, and you can make sure the aerator doesn't go too deep. You're going to cut right through one of these cables. That's a good point. So once you've done that, then you're going to take that, not aerator, I'm sorry, the tiller, and you're going to till the dirt up.

You're just kicking it up down to probably what? Six inches or so, I would guess. Yeah, and you can, if your soil is bad, and you know this, that's when you're going to add in your topsoil or fertilizer or compost, and you just till all that up together to a delicious, soil-y soup. Yes, Chuck, it is very important to add something

to your soil. Like, you can't just till it. That's right. And just leave it like that. Well, you can if you've got good soil. I guess, but I mean, it doesn't hurt to add more nutrients, does it? No, probably not.

But in some parts of the country, you're good. You've got great soil, and you're good to go. But in Georgia, like I said, there's so much freaking clay. It's a nightmare. Then you want to rake that and level it out. They said you can use a board scraper too, but you don't want to leave it super bumpy and clumpy.

Right. Just smooth that out as best you can. Yeah, and you're going to thank yourself later, because if you have big bumps or holes or divots or whatever, you're going to run into those with your lawnmower. So you're doing yourself a favor by smoothing things out and leveling them now. That's right.

Then you want to scatter your seed. You can do it by hand, but what you want is one of those little walk-behind spreaders that you get at the hardware store. They're pretty cheap. And you just dump your seed in there. And remember, when you dump your seed in there to keep the little gate closed, otherwise it'll

just start pouring out in a big pile. And then start walking and open your gate, and it's got a little flywheel that spins and flings the seed out in a nice, equal, distributive manner. Yes. If you're doing it by hand, you're probably going to put too much some places and not enough in others, unless you're really

good. It's very tough to do that. Unless you're that soil whisperer guy. He can do anything. Because he's a ghost friend. That's right. And then you take a regular rake, and you just want to cover this stuff up a little bit.

Just rake over it so that about half of the seed is covered. Yeah. If you have a lawn roller, you can use that. But I've never used that. So that is basically, it's like a big metal drum that you fill a certain amount with water to make it heavier. And you just roll that over it to compact it some. Yeah.

And like I said, I've never done that. But I got a crappy lawn. That was the key to the drum roller. Yeah, maybe so. Then you want to cover that up if you want with straw, multi-material. They sell stuff in sheets as well. I've never done that either.

I'm telling you. I think I realized the mistakes I'm making. I think that you should be a case study in this. And do step-by-step exactly what it says and see what happens to your lawn. All right, maybe I will. Maybe I can get work to pay for it. I'll bet you could.

If I document it via video. I'll back you up. All right, we'll see about that. Or you can go the easy route, which is sod. And that is when you see the big rectangular rolls of already grown awesome turf. And you roll it out on your lawn after your soil is prepared, green side up, and straight rows.

I'm going to make sure it's green side up. My friend used to yell that out the window when he'd go by like lawn crews, green side up. This is really obnoxious. A little. He's not my friend anymore. Because of that? No, but that says a lot about why.

Green side up. And you want to stagger it like if you're doing a brick wall. Don't lay them out exactly in a row. Right, because the water will just run right through there. It won't get trapped. Yeah, and it'll look a little funny for a while. It'll look like squares of grass. And it'll eventually grow together and look like one big

solid turf unit. That's right. And the closer you lay your sod together, the better off you're going to be. Because any patches in between them will allow weeds to grow. And that's a big problem with using sprigs, which is the third way.

Sprigs are plugs. And sprigs are plugs. A sprig is just a grass plant, a little individual grass plant that's bare root. A plug is the individual grass plant with a little dirt root ball associated with it. Yeah, and you can order those online and get a bunch of them shipped to your house if that's what you're into.

Yeah, because some grass doesn't grow well from seed. Like zoysia, it doesn't propagate well from seed. But then some people are like, I don't have the money for sod. So you can order a bunch of sprigs or plugs, zoysia, and do the work yourself. And you dig these little holes about six to 12 inches apart, fill them with water.

Then you take your plug of your sprig, put them in the hole, and cover around it with dirt. And there you go. Boom. You want to weed these things while they're growing in. But zoysia apparently grows very fast with its stolens and its rhizomes and whatnot. And there you go.

Lawn six to eight weeks later, or months or years. Yeah, in all of these methods, you're going to water a lot at first just to get things going. But we'll get into watering here in a minute, too. All right, before we get into maintenance, should we talk about weed and feed? Oh, yeah. Which is like the shampoo plus conditioner of long care?

Pretty much. That is a combination of weed and feed, herbicidal chemicals and fertilizer chemicals. It might be pre-emergent if you don't know what that means that is an herbicide that kills weeds before they sprouted. In the cradle. That's right. Or post-emergent, which kills already grown up weeds.

And experts say this is not a good way to go because optimum fertilizing time isn't the same as optimum weed killing time. Yeah, plus another problem is it's like you may not need an herbicide all over your lawn. Like you don't want to use it just as a matter of course. Like if you have some real problem with weeds, you want to target them as much as possible using kind of a low level herbicide rather than just spraying herbicide all over

your lawn because your lawn is a plan as well. Yeah, and if you have children and animals and you don't want to crap in your yard, at least I don't. So you've got your plugs grown in, or your sod, or your seed, or whatever, and you're like, it's ready. I'm ready to maintain this lawn. It's established. What do you do?

Well, there's eight steps to lawn maintenance, and we will start with watering. And like I said, you never want to have a sprinkler set to water your lawn every day. No, it's total waste. It's a total waste. You might have to water every day at first, but once it's established.

Oh, yeah, we should say that. Like when you plan or whatever, you have to water a lot, more than you normally would, I guess. Yeah, but once you're up and running, it's a total waste of water, and you're going to run your bill up, and it's not good for your lawn either. So you're really, there's absolutely no reason to. No, what you want to do is deeply soak your lawn when you

water it. And when it needs it. Right, and you can tell when it needs it when you step on it and it doesn't bounce back in a minute, a few seconds. Then it probably needs water. Yeah, it might curl up a little bit if you see it curling up, or changing color at all, you need to water. And so get out there in the morning.

Yeah, that's the best time to do it. Yeah, don't do it in the middle of the day, it'll burn off. Yeah, it'll evaporate, and the water in the morning will keep the soil cool throughout the day. That's right. It's just a big treat for your lawn. Yeah. And like we said, you deeply soak it so much so that you

want to have about an inch of water collecting above ground. Yeah. Like that's a big, long soak. Yeah, and if you think, well, how in the world do I figure that out? Just put a little cup out there, turn your sprinkler on, and when that cup has an inch of water in it, you're all set. I don't know if that's right.

No, that's exactly right. No, because think about it, that cup's going to fill up immediately because no water is soaking through it. No, that's how you do it. You put a cup, and the cup just collects little drops, and it takes about an hour or more to fill that thing up an inch. I think what I said makes sense. Anyway, put a cup out there.

Or not. When it fills up, how is she going to tell if it's an inch? I don't know. I guess you would take a little measuring stick and go out there every once in a while and see. Now, you just put a cup. Trust me. I think mine's better.

Just guess. No, measure with the measuring stick, because then you're measuring how much water is collecting on top of the ground, and that's what you're looking for, because that means about six to eight inches of the ground has been soaked. So measure down six to eight inches, is that what you're saying? No, just put it on top of the grass.

Like on the ground. So put it in the grass until it hits ground. What's the measuring stick? A ruler. OK, so I want to get this. You stick a ruler into the ground. No, you stick a ruler into the grass until it comes in contact with the ground.

And then when there's an inch of water that measures up to the inch. But it doesn't. It soaks into the dirt. Right, and you want to keep doing it until there's about an inch of water that's collected. No. Yeah, I'm telling you.

Dude, you will never have an inch of water sitting in here. That's called a lake. Dude, I'm telling you, that's what this article's saying. All right, I'm going to leave it out there. OK, this is what we're going to do. Let the people hear it. We're going to call for a turf pro to tell us which one's

right. And he will say, dude, if you have an inch of water, that means you are flooded. We'll just find out. Agreed? So you're saying the water, the ground, has become so super saturated that the water sits on top of the ground? Yeah, I'm not saying it's saturated, but the water has

accumulated enough that it hasn't all soaked down enough. OK. I think it's clear who lives in the condo. Anyway, I recommend you put a cup out when that cup fills up to an inch. Then that means you've watered enough. I'm calling for a turf expert to let us know what's what. All right, this is a good, legitimate disagreement.

Yeah. OK, so we're done with water. Yes, well, yeah. You've ruined your lawn one way or another. That's right. And we mentioned water in the morning. Mowing is the second part of upkeep. And this is another important thing, because a lot of

people think, oh, no, man, you mow really low. And then you don't have to mow as much. And that is not what you should do. You should let it grow, because it's better for your lawn. Because when you cut too low, that grass is going to race to try and grow more blades to make sugar. And it's going to grow super fast. And it's going to use stored sugar.

It's going to weaken your plant. If you have tall grass, then that stored sugar is going to make new rhizomes. And so it'll just be thicker and more lush. Yeah, but if you let it grow too long, then it's using up a lot of the nutrients from the root system and a lot of energy. So if you do something in between, I think for a cold

season grass, they say keep it at about three inches. When you cut it, you're just basically forcing it to propagate, because it's like, oh, I need to produce more chlorophyll. So I'm going to grow some more blades. So actually cutting it, unlike hair, actually does make the grass thicker and more lustrous, or your lawn. Yeah, so you're doing the lawn a favor and yourself a favor,

because you're not going to have to mow your grass as much. That's the dirty little secret. And you can tell your wife, no, you're supposed to let it grow. And she'll say, look it up and show me. And then you go to howstuffworks.com. That's right. And in the summer, you should let it grow a little longer

too. In the fall and winter, in spring, you can mow a little bit closer, because your temperatures are cooler. So you don't need to sweat it as much. And then when you do mow, you should vary the direction you mow in. So like one week mow north to south, and then the next week mow east to west. Yeah, and I think, and a lot of experts think, you should

always leave your clippings on your lawn and not bag them and dump them. Because when you're doing that, when you leave in the clippings, it ends up becoming compost. And it just helps your soil. If you constantly are removing the clippings, that soil is going to compact and get hard. And yeah, so I'm a big proponent of getting a

mulching mower and just leaving the clippings. And those clippings do not equal thatch. Apparently, the clippings break down in a week. Thatch is actually build up of dead crown and combs and other stuff of the plant. It's not the cut blades. Yeah, it actually, if you remove your clippings, you're going to encourage thatch.

So don't do it. That is no good. No, it isn't good because it keeps air and water out of the soil, which are essential. Well, a little bit of thatch can be OK. Some, but not much. No, and if you do have a thatch problem, you can just rake it out.

And then your clippings will come back the next week. Exactly. Fertilizing is key. You want to add nutrients to the soil. Granular fertilizers once or twice a year is the way to go. The spray-on stuff, that's not a great thing because that just kind of gets on the blade of grass itself. The granular stuff soaks into the ground over the course of

weeks. And it's like slow releasing, right? Yeah, slow releasing. And a lot of these are chemical fertilizers. I'm not into it. There's a great brand called Ringer. And it's natural. And a lot of the chemical fertilizers are just salt.

And salt is no good for the ground. So it's really weird that it's made up of salt. I've never understood that. Then the Romans used to salt the earth of the lands they conquered, so people couldn't grow stuff. I mean, what about idiocracy? They accidentally salted the soil using Gatorade. Really?

Yeah. I don't remember. Aerating, something I've never done, which is one of my reasons why my lawn stinks. Well, that's basically like so over time, your soil becomes more and more compact. And as it becomes compact, there's less air movement, water trickles through less easily.

And there's aerobic, which means they need oxygen, bacteria that helps keep things nutrient-rich down there. And if they're not getting oxygen, they're not able to do their thing. That's right. So you want to aerate, depending on how high traffic you are, maybe once a year, where you use one of those. It looks like what's the drum barrel?

The drum roller thing, but with spikes, hollow spikes, and they just pull plugs out of the grass that you just leave in place, and bam, aerated. Yeah, and you can rent those too at a hardware store. Or they even have these. If you have a small yard, they have aerating shoes. No way. Yeah, you would just basically attach them to your

regular shoe and strap them on. And it's like just spikes that you walk around in your yard and aerate it. But you'd have to have a pretty small lawn to, you know. Or kids. Yeah, that's true. Putting them to work. Attach spikes on their shoes.

That's probably safe. You'd be like, go run around. Just don't run around in the same place. We've talked about detaching, and then there's weeding. Weeding is the bane of my existence. And I don't really know what else to say about it. It stinks. There you go.

I got a lot of weeds. Weeds aren't necessarily terrible for your yard if you have a few. No, and what are weeds besides plants that we decided we didn't like? Yeah. But certain types of weeds can indicate, like if you have a lot of dandelion, that means your soil is too alkaline or

too compact. Oh, yeah? Or if you have a lot of clover, it means it's too low in nitrogen. So it can be a sign of some amendments that you need to take care of. You can read the weeds. Yeah.

Read the weeds. And one thing, if you don't make the mistake I made, which is, hey, I'm going to put a bunch of weed killer on my yard and see what happens because you might be surprised of how much your yard is weed. And then you'll look out one day and it's all brown. Wow. Except for a couple of patches of green.

Well, then you just start over, right? With some seed. Yeah. I need to start from scratch back there anyway in the backyard. It's just it's time. And then do you have pests? Yeah, I've got all kinds of pests.

So there's this, I guess it's called biological pest control using this stuff called bacillus theragiensis. That is how you say it. And it's a gram positive bacteria. It's similar to the stuff that causes anthrax. Totally fine for humans. But for certain kinds of lawn pests like flies, mosquitoes, butterflies, beetles, moths, they eat this stuff.

And it creates a crystalline protein in their guts that turns their guts to mush. And so the things starve to death. Wow. And you can just put that stuff on your soil. Basically, you're putting bacteria on your soil and it will take care of pests. Nice.

Man, this is informative, I think. Yeah, it was. Like we don't do a lot of how-tos, but we just did. The mother of all how-tos. So you got anything else? I got nothing else. Man, so if you want to know more about grass, you can type that word into the search bar

at hostileforks.com. It will bring up that really helpful demonstrative picture too. Oh, yeah. And I said demonstrative, which means it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this fishbowl at the La Brea Tarpits. Hey, guys, huge fan of the show.

Gets me through my long commute. Just listen to the La Brea Tarpits. And the fishbowl at the Page Museum sounds similar to a setup that I've worked in before at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, which I've been to. It's pretty nice. Is there a fishbowl?

Isn't it all fishbowl there? Well, there's a fishbowl where they work. Oh, good. I interned at the veterinary department, which had glass walls so visitors could check out the procedures. Turns out the glass walls are really neat for the observer, but really annoying for the fish inside, meaning us.

I never saw anyone tap on the glass and yell, nerd. But we did have a regular onslaught of small children tapping and smashing their faces against the glass. One day in particular, we were doing surgery on a chuckwalla. A lot of people were outside the glass watching, and a little boy started tap, tap, tap, tap, tapping. Eventually, the veterinarian got fed up, slowly turned with a scalpel and glared and pointed

at the little boy. The vet shook his finger at him, and the little boy's eyes widened in fear, and he ran away crying. And that was my favorite day of my internship. That's awesome. Anyway, that story always makes me chuckle, so I wanted to share. Keep being awesome, and that is from Caitlyn with a K.

Nice. Thanks a lot, Caitlyn. Yeah, you've threatened a boy with a scalpel, and that was. No, Caitlyn was just witnessed that. And he cried, and that was Caitlyn's favorite day. Right. If you have a favorite date, ooh, that's a good one, Chuck. Tell us about your favorite day.

We want to hear about it from everybody. You can tweet it to us if it was a short day at S-Y-S-K podcast. You can post it on our Facebook page at facebook.com slash stuffyoushouldknow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcastatdiscovery.com. And as always, join us at our beautiful home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com.

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