Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Distraction Playlist: How Grass Works? Yes, How Grass Works

Episode Date: March 20, 2020

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 American 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.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles Dewey, Chuck Bryant.

We were just talking about Canada, so I said, did you? Yeah. And there's Jerry over there. So this is Stuff You Should Know. Hello, live from the Bowling Green, HowStuffWorks.com. It's what the site slogan is. You doing all right?

I'm doing great. Watch this. Chuck. Yeah. 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 being. Yeah, it's pretty bad. Yeah, okay. I mean, I will bemoan myself all throughout this one, so. 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, that's 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 gonna 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. Yeah. 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 grasses, 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. And he said, hey, man.

He said, when I'm done with you, they're going to need a compost mordom. Whoa. Wow. It was a deep cut. That was good. I think that was Treehouse of Horror, like. Oh, the one where he's ready.

Yeah. Yeah. Nice, man. You're going to need a compost mordom. 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 got to play some golf. Yeah. Kentucky bluegrass, friends of us 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 is to cut grass with a scythe. Yeah, a lot of people, I would imagine. Yeah. Because these lawns were not small. No. And like you said, they didn't have like garden hoses back then.

Nope. And buckets of water is not a great way to water a lawn. 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. Was ah. 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 lawnmower, mechanical mowing in the 19th century became a real thing when an Englishman named Edwin Budding, who's 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 lawnmowers are pretty bad offenders for emissions. They're internal combustion engines, which means they put out all sorts of greenhouse gases. Yeah, and they're not, you know, it's not like a car, you know, they don't have catalytic converters

and things like that. I mean, it's just straight up bad junk. So you can get a real mower if you're into it. It is, you've seen them. It's a series of blades around a cylinder and it is, it's geared, which is the key to making it work. If you just pushed it and it traveled like the wheel did, you wouldn't be cutting a lot of grass.

But there's a 16 to one gear ratio. Yeah. So when you're pushing it, your wheels are turning at this speed, but the blade is turning really fast. Oh yeah. Okay. And that's sort of the secret to how they work.

And apparently, Mr. Budding said, or he found another machine that was similar. Yeah. That was used to cut the nap on velvet. Yeah. Did 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. That guy was that you... 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, that doesn't even make sense. Yeah. That may be an English thing. So... 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, okay, 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. The front lawn specifically. Yeah. And there was this article. 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. I feel like 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? Lawn care. Okay. Yeah, I looked it up. It's just grass.

Lawn care. Not planting as ellias. No, I imagine like just the whole total of outdoor stuff is sends it through the roof of 30 billions 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 dollars on lawns. That's crazy. Yes. All right, let's get into grass. It is the name for the grandma, graminia 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. And bamboo is grass. Yeah, so building materials, plastics, room. Sugar. All this stuff is made from grasses.

Yeah. 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. Yeah. Because your lawn, although it looks like one large,

single organism, and technically you can make the argument that it is, really is a series of interconnected, related grass plants that form a lush patch of turf. Yeah, and if, like you said, if you get down and look at the little individual plants closely, it doesn't look so far off of a corn plant. Right, thank you for imparting 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. Okay. Because corn does have like a flowery top. Yeah, and I've heard, I don't know if this is true. I've heard that each corn stalk only grows one corn cob. Is that right?

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. And I have to say, you remember we just recorded sushi? Yeah. And it made me want sushi? Yeah. This is like, man, 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. Yeah.

I've got like a pretty nice little patio garden going. Oh, nice. But I am combating this one squirrel. Oh yeah. 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. Oh yeah. But I hung it in a way and cleared off branches around it. So this one squirrel would go die 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. Yeah. And so that's just that. He comes onto my patio, now it's war. Yeah. He just digs up stuff and it's like, stop digging in my plants.

But I'm really kind of like. You get a, 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. You want to kill a squirrel?

No, I don't, but man, this thing is pushing me. Yeah. I mean, if you look on like getting rid of squirrel websites. Yeah. That's pretty much number one. Yeah. I don't want to do that. No.

All right. You murderous thug. Let's talk about, you're a thuggy. I'm not, though, is the thing. I don't smoke hashish and I'm not, I don't, I'm not a bandit. Yeah. I just hate the squirrel. Let's talk about grass.

The grass plant itself, at the roots, they are little fibrous thread-like and they're going to reach down in 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. Yeah. 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, to the, 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. Okay, and from the comb, on the comb are nodes, which is, I guess, where new comb growth starts. For the most part, that stem's gonna 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. We're actually talking about the leaf, and we're not even talking about the whole leaf. We're talking about the blade. So anytime you hear some old timer called grass blades of 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 gonna 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 gonna 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 gonna get new grass plants. Yeah, this is how it spreads. Yeah. 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 gonna 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 individuals. 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 gonna take a message break first. On the podcast, Paydude the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the co-classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses

and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references

to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist?

So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called

on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips, with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road.

Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God.

Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. Oh, my husband, Michael. Hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander

each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say, bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Okay, we're back, and. That wasn't such a bad weight. No, I'm sure it was very helpful. That's good. So we're talking how to take a lawn

and make it into a world-class American Garden Association approved lawn. Yeah, they still had, a lot of neighborhoods still have that junk, you know, where they have the contest, and you're very much expected to keep it up. Well, it's part of your civic duty. For 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 gonna 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. So it's pretty important. Let's just come out and say it, all right? Yeah. And so with the soil, apparently for most turf grasses in America, you wanna have what's called loam.

And loam is a sand, clay, soil mixture. And ideally, loam would be 40% sand, 40% silt. Yeah. 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 gotta 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, yeah. If you are like that, then you should be charging people for that kind of thing. You also think you'd at least have

to stick your finger in it. Right. If you have like a wacky disco ghost that follows you around and is really the one that's telling you the pH of different soils, you'd better be making money from that. Yeah. 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 wanna make it more acidic, add sulfur.

If you wanna 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 gotta be a mixture. So I've seen you. I have like a hundred percent clay.

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? Yeah. 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 fixed 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 escape it. Oh yeah. Put some cacti out. Cacti and just mulch and plants and rocks. Yeah, we're gonna go that route, cause 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 real grass. All right, let's get back to it, cause 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, 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, cause 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, it is a depressing sight. 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, and it's 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. And 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 named for the leaves.

It is named 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 they schooled everybody. Jerry, did you know that? Everybody. Well, everyone Kentucky's going. No crap, buddy. Yeah. Man, did I just insult Kentucky? No, it does that 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 fishing auto 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. That'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, 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 front yard. No, which I'm glad you bring up zero escape because reading this, especially when we get to the watering part, it's like grass is not going to be around for many more decades. 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. It's a good point. Yeah. It's going to be zero escaping. Yeah. We're back to the old dirt, dirt dauber 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? What was 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, in aging. Do you want to be that old? On the podcast, Paydude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slipdresses and choker necklaces.

We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever.

Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper,

because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it, and popping it back in, as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?

If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man.

And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life.

Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to 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, like, cursed to walk the earth forever and, like, just me be that way. But I mean, I'm not talking about a science fiction movie. No, I'm talking about, like, you know,

advances in aging. Supposedly, if not our generation, then definitely the one right below us will see the triple digits for average life expectancy. And feel 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, like, 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. Well, we're talking about that.

That can combat all that, like, sarcopenia. Yeah, exactly. That's easy. But, like, getting into the brain stuff, that's a little trickier. But, I mean, we're there. And you and I may live to benefit from it. Yeah, I think keeping the mind active is huge.

Totally. Because, you know, Emily's grandmother's in her 90s, she's sharp as a tack. Yeah. Because she does puzzles all day long and reads and is on the internet. Balance your checkbook, all that jazz. All right, so let's talk about, if you want to start a new lawn,

as they call it, establishing a lawn. OK. 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 is, 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. Yeah. 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, you're going to, 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. Yeah. 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 like you've got great soil, and you're good to go. But in Georgia, like I said, there's so much freaking clay. It's a nightmare. 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 lawn mower. 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 walking 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 any of it. Because he's a ghost friend. That's right. And then you take a regular rake and you just kind of 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, the 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.

You know? 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 stolons and its rhizomes and whatnot. And there you go. Lawn six to eight weeks later, or months or years. Yeah, and 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 lawn care? Pretty much. That is a combination of weed and feed.

Herbicidal chemicals and fertilizer chemicals 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 you may not need an herbicide all over your lawn. You don't want to use it just as a matter of course. Like if you have a 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 plant 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 during 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 gonna 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, because you put a cup out there and... Or not. When it fills up in, well, how is she gonna tell

if it's an inch? I don't know, I guess you would take a little measuring stick and like 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 like put it in the grass until it hits ground. Hold on, what's the measuring stick?

A ruler. Okay, so I wanna 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. Okay. 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. I wanna 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 your yard, that's called a lake.

Dude, I'm telling you, that's what this article's saying. All right, I'm gonna leave it out there. Okay, this is what we're gonna 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 were 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.

Okay. Okay. 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. Okay, 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 gonna race to try and grow more blades

to make sugar. And it's gonna grow super fast and it's gonna use stored sugar. It's gonna weaken your plant. If you have tall grass and that stored sugar is gonna make new rhizomes. And so it'll just be thicker and more lush. Yeah, but if you let it grow too long,

then it's using up a lot of the nutrients from the root system and a lot of energy. So if you do something in between, I think for like a cold season grass, they say keep it at about three inches. Yeah. 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 gonna 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 your self a favor because you're not gonna 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. Right. 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't mow a little bit closer because your temperatures are cooler. Right. 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.

Right. 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's gonna compact and get hard. Right. 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 like 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 gonna encourage thatch. Yeah. So don't do it. Yeah.

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 okay. Some, but not much. No, and if you do have a thatch problem, you can just rake it out. Yeah.

And then your clippings will come back the next week. Exactly. Fertilizing is key. You wanna add nutrients to the soil. Granular fertilizers once or twice a year is the way to go. The spray on stuff, it, you know, that's not a great thing

because that just kind of gets on the blade of grass itself. The granular stuff soaks into the ground over the course of weeks. And it's like slow releasing, right? Yeah, slow releasing. And 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. Yeah. 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. Totally.

So people couldn't grow stuff. Yeah. I mean, what about idiocracy? They accidentally salted the soil using Gatorade. Really? 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 like keep things nutrient rich down there.

And if they're not getting oxygen, they're not able to do their thing. That's right. They're gonna aerate, depending on how high traffic you are, maybe once a year, where you use like one of those, it looks like what's the drum barrel,

the 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 that you buy.

No way. Yeah, you just basically attach them. You just attach them to your regular shoe and strap them on. And it's like just spikes that you walk around in your yard aerated. But you'd have to have a pretty small lawn to, you know. Or kids.

Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Putting them to work. Attach spikes on their shoes. Yeah. 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, but. 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, 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 gonna put a bunch of weed killer on my yard and see what happens. Because it's, 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. Yeah. It's just, it's time. And then do you have pests? Yeah, I 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. Yeah. 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 thing's starved to death. Wow. And you can just put that stuff on your soil. Basically you're putting bacteria on your soil and it'll take care of pests.

Nice. Man, that was, 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 House of the Forks.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 listened 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. Okay. 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 and sea. 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 witness to that. Well, 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 SYSK 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. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com.

And relive it. Listen to HeyDude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.