280 Shade Cloth Basics. Fall Lawn Care.

Garden Basics with Farmer Fred is brought to you by Smart Pots, the original lightweight, long-lasting fabric plant container. It's made in the USA. Visit smartpots.com slash Fred for more information and a special discount that smartpots.com slash Fred. Welcome to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred Podcast. If you're just a beginning gardener or you want good gardening information, well you've come to the right spot. Heat waves, they continue throughout the United States in late summer with more repercussions for your summer garden. Slow developing and cracked tomatoes, sunburned pepper plants, over ripening fruit, and browning leaves on thin-leafed plants such as Japanese maples. America's favorite retired college horticultural professor, Debbie Flower, discusses strategies to lessen the effects of triple digit heat on your garden, especially by adding extra shade to those long-suffering plants. But there are some tips and tricks before you start covering your plants, because those good efforts of yours just might lead to even more damage. And organic instructor Steve Zion talks about how to care for your lawn in the fall, using less toxic and more earth-friendly methods that will result in you having the greenest lawn on the block. It's episode number 280, shade cloth basics, and organic fall lawn care. We're podcasting from Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful Lebutalon jungle in suburban purgatory. It's the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred Podcast brought to you today by Smartpots, Dave Wilson Nursery, and heirloom roses. Let's go. Well, as you are probably aware, it's been hot lately. Wherever you may live, there have just been some rather long heat waves scattered around the country coast to coast, north to south, to Alaska to Canada. It's rather amazing. And so people who are growing a garden may need some protection from too much heat, maybe too much intense sun. And we get this question from Fred, the new social media service thread, and the Jeanette writes in and says, hi, my sister and I built this sun-shade structure located in Clarksburg, California, to protect our vegetables for the upcoming heat wave. Our question is, should we take the shade cloth down when temperatures lower to the 90s, or just leave it up? Shade. Heat protection. Oh, my. Debbie Flower is here. America's favorite retired college, hearticultural professor. You use shade cloth, Debbie? I do use shade cloth. I'm sitting here sweating right now. Probably the best place I ever put shade cloth was over my old greenhouse. Right. Down in Harold, because here in beautiful hot central California, greenhouses can reach temperatures up to 121.30. Yes. So they just sort of sit there with the doors and windows open. Yes, and the problem used in the central valley in a greenhouse is keeping it cool. Yeah. And mitigating heat can be a problem now. The shade cloth does lower that temperature in the greenhouse, 10 or 15 degrees, but not enough to really grow anything. But still, if you have an outdoor garden, and it's in full sun, and you're noticing problems with your crops, maybe sunburn on your tomatoes and peppers, for example, a shade cloth is a great idea. But can you leave shade cloth up the whole time? That's a really good question. Part of it depends on how you've put it up. Is it just over the top, or is it going all the way over the top and down the sides? So preventing, say, pollinators from getting into the plants, or also keeping pests out, which is a good thing. But you do need pollinators for many of our summer crops. We should point out the picture she's sent in of her shade cloth. It looks like it's suspended over the garden on some PVC pipe. The sides are open so that there's good air circulation there. Also, it's not going to stop the avids or the whiteflies, but it'll make them more comfortable by having that cloth on top. But yeah, that would be a hassle taking that up and down. So I could see why you'd want to leave it up there the year round, or not year round, but at least for the season while you're growing there. I guess it really depends on the quality of that shade cloth. Right. And how much shade is it actually providing? Plants still need that six to eight hours of full sun, unobstructed sun to do their best at producing something with seed in it. If it's just greens, lettuce, bok choy, arugula, you have leeway there with the sun. But if you're asking for a tomato and an eggplant and green beans and squash and pumpkins and all that good stuff, things with seeds in them, you need that all that sun. So you need to see, you need to go out and look at it and see how much is it getting in the morning when the sun is low in the east and how much is it getting in the afternoon when the sun is low in the west. And if that adds up to the six to eight hours, then you could leave it. I think Clarksburg gets pretty hot. And so my inclination would be to leave it during the hottest part of the summer because we are going to get another heat wave. It's just the way it is here. Yes, it is. Clarksburg is in the delta area of the Sacramento River an area that adjoined southern Sacramento County, San Joaquin County, Solano County, and parts of Contra Costa County. One thing that happens in the delta, the wind blows like sure. Yeah, that's so you better have that shade cloth on securely. Absolutely. Or it might not be there the next day. Yes. Getting back to the subject of the thickness of the shade cloth and how much shade it provides, you may not know that shade cloth comes in different availability as far as the light it can transmit through. Shade cloth comes in different densities. The less dense allows more light through and gets higher and higher and higher and more and more dense until you can prevent as much as 80% of the sun coming through. And that's the kind of according to Pistol Valley farm supply, a wonderful provider of gardening things here in California, but available mail order. That's the density you use to create shade on your patio for humans. Yeah, they point out too that you can buy the shade cloth anywhere from 30% to 80% as far as it's light reduction abilities. And they say that for lettuce, spinach and coal crops use 47% in hot areas, use the 30% thickness in northern or coastal climates. For shade loving plants, you want a 50 to 60% shade cloth. I'm not sure where you'd use 80% because that's maximum shades density. Well, that's for to cool people. Okay, that's where you have it over your patio. You have it over your patio, right? Yeah, I was driving up Highway 99, which goes right up through the Central Valley of California last week. And there are whole fields that are covered in shade cloth over hoop structures. And my 70 mile an hour plant ID from 100 feet is not really good. Were they citrus trees? But no, they were low. Okay, I can assume that their spinach, lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, those coal crops mentioned in the peaceful valley catalog that need that 47% shade in hot areas. Right, I know for citrus trees in the Central Valley, they will net the trees with shade cloth to keep the bees away because if you're selling a seedless mandarin, they want to make sure it's seedless. Right, I have seen that at other times of the year, not in July, because the fruit is either set or it's off the tree. But yes, I have seen that in the Central Valley. And know what you're growing and match the shade cloth to what you're growing. Again, 47% in hot areas for the lettuce, spinach, and coal crops, 50% 60% for shade loving plants, or just plant in the shade if you got shade. Right, yeah. And the temperature that is critical is 86 degrees. Above 86 degrees Fahrenheit plants are just keeping themselves cool. They're not setting fruit, they're not growing, they're just keeping themselves cool, which means they're pumping water. They use a water to cool themselves off. They're pumping water through their system to keep cells alive. So that's the temperature you're looking for. If it just reaches you know, 86 or 90 during the day and drops down at night, I wouldn't shade anything. It's when we get to the hundred degrees stuff. That is kind of critical. I have seen here in suburban purgatory walking around on hot afternoons because I'm crazy. Some of the ingeniousness, if there is such a word, of people protecting their shade loving plants from too much heat and too much sun. But I've also seen it backfire where people who are growing in a very hot area, especially maybe narrow side yards where you get reflected heat besides direct heat. If it's like a south facing side yard where you're going to get the direct hit of the sun, then reflected heat from a fence that might be behind it. And the concrete it might be sitting on, you've got heat from three different directions. And people who have tried to shade their plants to get them to survive longer sometimes end up creating up more heat because they're not using shade cloth. They're using something like an umbrella, which doesn't allow air to permeate through. Right. You can trap heat. Yes. That's why when I first looked at this picture from Jeanette in Clarksburg, the cloth is part of its green and part of its blue. And I wondered if it was a tarp. Tarps will stop the air from moving through, but we can see through it so we don't think it is a tarp unless you develop an x-ray vision. All of a sudden. Well, that would be cool. Well, I don't know. Yeah, it's definitely a shade cloth. And yeah, I would be tempted to leave it up. I would too until we get through. We can see that there's going to be some long long period where temperatures are not going to hit a hundred. Maybe October. Yeah. Let's maybe. I can remember riding my bicycle as a student at UC Davis and plant ID class. And we had to truck because we had to keep up with the instructor who was on a bicycle ahead of us. It was a hundred degrees and my allergies were horrible and my eyes were running. Obviously memorable because I haven't been in college in a long time. But yes, it was a hundred degrees in October. And I was my first year here. I couldn't believe it. 1990. All right, Jeanette. I hope that helps. I think the shade cloth is a good idea and can give your plants a few degrees of protection from from the heat. And I would probably suggest, you know, there's some other tips that we could offer too. And I think we probably should especially when it comes to tomatoes or peppers is try to maintain as much leaf structure as possible to provide for shade for the fruit. Yes. Don't be pruning your tomatoes. Yes. And there are special cultivars. If you read the fine print in a seed catalog, the one I'm thinking of is called shady lady. And it is not because it grows in the shade. It's because the tomato plant produces a lot of leaves to shade the plants. You can the potato type leaf tomatoes have bigger leaf area. And that's helpful for shading the fruit. But make sure you do regular watering. You use mulch on the soil to keep some of that moisture in. And maybe your heat is only coming from one direction. And if that's the case, you can erect a structure only on that on that side. So you still get good air movement. You still get lots of light like a window screen sitting on the ground but held up by a pole of some sort on a slant to just stop the sun that that's really doing the most damage. Now I'm thinking with climate change and all and more heat waves like everybody in the nation is going through at one point or another. Maybe potato leaf tomatoes are in our future. Yes. As protection from the heat. Some varieties that are examples of potato leaf tomatoes would be the brandy wine, prudence purple, brandy boy, lilyons, yellow, heirloom, stupiche, and something called Japanese black trifella. I never saw that one before. I have never seen that either. R-I-F-E-L-E. Yeah. And it says here that the potato leaf trait is recessive. What does that mean? It means that if you breed a potato leaf tomato with another potato leaf tomato, only a quarter of the offspring will have potato leafs. The other three quarters, even though they have inherited may have inherited a potato leaf gene, it is overpowered by the other type of leaf gene. Now we have found out from many sources that tomatoes generally once they're settled into what they want to be for life. They're not F1 hybrids, but maybe heirlooms or something that has been bred for a dozen years or so to have true traits. They will tend to come back true to form. Right. So if they form seed, you can grow them and you're typically going to get the same thing. But if it's a potato leaf variety, then only a quarter of the offspring will produce those potato leaves. So you can start a bunch of seed and containers, see what kind of leaves those are appear early in the life of the plant and decide whether you want to use the potato leaf varieties or the traditional tomato leaf varieties. Now I've grown brandy wine, prudence purple, and stupiche. I'm not sure about Lillian's yellow heirloom or brandy boy or the Japanese black trifella, but I think it's something we ought to consider more and more. In fact, it might be a good test for next year is to do potato leaf versus tomato leaf. Add a potato leaf tomato to your repertoire. When I got back from vacation, the irrigation timer on my tomatoes had died because it was a battery operated one attached to the spiket and the battery went bad. And I only have three tomato plants because my husband doesn't eat them. And one is doing fine. The other two dried up, lost their leaves, the fruit was burned in many places. And the one now that I'm thinking about it that is doing fine is a potato leaf variety. It is. And it was, I got it from something called native seed search, which is in Arizona. And it was a tomato that was touted as growing well in the Tucson area. You're not going to tell us the variety. I will have to get back to you on that. Well, after some research, we have discovered it is the dwarf desert star tomato. It's a light gold juicy cherry tomato. The desert star tomato is from a cross of the plucky family of dwarf tomatoes. And they'll hold up as you just heard to a lot of stress. And don't think of a dwarf plant when it comes to this particular dwarf cherry tomato. The plant itself can get up to four feet tall from determinant vines. Again, the desert star, it's a project of the dwarf tomato project. So, Jeanette, yeah, keep on up with the shade cloth and good luck with the garden this year Debbie flower. Thanks for your help. I pleasure, Fred. I've told you about smart pots, the original award winning fabric planters. They're sold worldwide. Smart pots are proudly made 100% right here in the USA. They're BPA free and lead free, making them safe for growing vegetables and other edibles. Well, the folks at smart pots have added a new product to their lineup. 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Use this code at checkout now through October 31st, 2023. It's time to experience growing roses the way nature intended on their own roots. Visit heirloom roses to find your next rose today. And be sure to take advantage of that 20% off at checkout with the code Fred20. That's Fred20. It's heirloom roses.com Fall is for planting. Fall is also the time for lawn renovation if you live in a warm winter area. If 40% or more of your lawn is in really bad shape, then you may want to consider a lawn renovation in September or October. But again, that's the mild winter areas, especially here in California. If you live in a cold climate, springtime is probably the best time to do it. What's involved in renovating your lawn? What can be done to perk it up? There's plenty. And it can be much safer for you and your family. Say for what do I mean by that? Well, let's bring in Sacramento's organic advocate, president of living resources companies. Steve Zion and Steve, let's talk about fall lawn care from an organic gardening perspective. There's a lot of products out on the market that are weed and feed products that people tend to put down in the fall and are suggested for some lawns in the fall. And frankly, weed and feed products scare the hell out of me just because that's stuff that you're putting down on that lawn. Yeah, it might kill weeds, but chances are you might just be killing other plants in your garden. And then those lawn clippings, that stuff hangs around for quite a while. Yeah, you know, depending upon the herbicide, they found that even when you compost it in a really good compost pile, sometimes those things do not break down. And so when you put that compost out, it can damage it and or kill your plants. It's pretty nasty stuff. Like for example, 24D is in a lot of these products. And when you're looking to see what's in the product, you look for where the printing is very, very small, it'll say active ingredients and it'll have all sorts of weird chemical names. And one of them is 24D. It's very, very commonly used. And these are typically broad, it's a broad leaf weed killer. So it kills not grass, which is, which has a very narrow leaf, broad leaf weeds like clover and things like that. And the problem is it does not select what kind of broad leaf plant that it kills. And so it, you know, a lot of your shrubs and trees in particular birch, elm, hackberry, maple, redbud, oak, and ash are very, very susceptible. And if you're using that 24D in the lawn, and you've got roots under there and realize that tree roots go well beyond the drip line two to three times beyond the drip line or more, which is the outermost branches. So if you've got an average size, not, and you've got that, you know, a tree in there, even though the lawn might be far away, the roots of that tree are probably there and they're taking up that 24D. And it will weaken them, make them more susceptible to pests. And canny, and has killed them. And so it's damaging to your landscape, potentially damaging to your landscape plants. We'll be back after a quick break. Hey, quick question for you. Are you someone who wants to be fit, healthy, and happy? And what if I told you you could get your dream body by simply just listening to a podcast? I'm Josh. And I'm KG, and we're the host of the Fit, Healthy, and Happy Podcasts. Listen, we get it. Fitness isn't easy, carbs, no carbs. Just stop. Okay, it doesn't have to be that complicated. And that's why we made this podcast. We get straight to the facts so you can become your best you. So the way to check us out is click the link in the show notes or search Fit, Healthy, and Happy Podcasts on any of the major podcast platforms. We'll see you soon. Talk a little bit about two words people may see on these weed and feed products that bear definitions. And those words are pre-emergent and post-emergent. A pre-emergent prevents the weeds from growing. And it's really important when you use a pre-emergent, especially in mild seasoned areas, where we don't have a lot of frost and very little, if any, snow, and things basically keep growing year round, although slowly, there are what are called winter weeds and summer weeds. And you need in the fall to make sure that you're pre-emergent weed killer if you choose to buy one. And I certainly don't recommend them. I recommend against using them. But if you insist on using one, make sure that it is for fall use. Because typically, broadly, weeds are annuals. They die every year at the end of their growth cycle. And there are summer weeds that germinate in spring and grow all through this summer. And then they die in fall. And then there are the winter weeds that germinate in fall and grow all winter in die in the spring. And there are different weeds. And the herbicides in many cases need to be different to kill those weeds. So make sure you're getting a pre-emergent this time of year that's going to deal with fall weeds. And it's important too to also, if you're applying pre-emergent or post-emergent weeds, which we'll get into to a second, that you also read on the label if it can be applied to the type of lawn you have. Because different products affect lawns differently. And there are just some, especially post-emergent products that you do not want to put on certain types of turf. Yeah. I always read and follow label direction. It's really important after you put the pre-emergent down, not to scratch or do anything to the surface of the soil. If you, for example, take a rake or you defatch or something, it will kind of eliminate the coating that these pre-emergence put over the soil surface. And it will allow the seeds to germinate. When you put down the pre-emergent and then you water it in a little bit, it basically puts a shield over the soil surface. And as the seeds germinate, they come up and they hit this barrier and it kills them. If you scratch the soil, you put cracks in that barrier and the weeds will come up. There is an organic pre-emergent, I will say this, that I do recommend and I know people who have had really good results with it. And it's a corn-glute meal. And there are some organic fertilizers that contain corn-glute meal as either one of the ingredient or the only ingredient. Corn-glute meal also has a firm out of nitrogen. If you look at the bags of fertilizers, nitrogen is that first number. And typically, if it has corn-glute meal, it might have 10% or 9% nitrogen. If it's only a corn-glute meal, weed and feed. And it's really not a weed and feed. It's a weed or it's a feed and weed pre-venture. Right, it's a pre-emergent. Now I have understood that corn-glute meal is more effective in areas that get summer rain like the Midwest. I've heard of great success with corn-glute meal as a pre-emergent in the Midwest. I haven't heard much success of it here on the West Coast. Yeah, it's interesting because University of California actually did some research. I don't know how extensive. And they found that it didn't work very well. Although I know of people who have used it, some in the professional agricultural industry, and have great success with it. If nothing else, you're feeding your lawn. Because it does have that nitrogen in there. Let's talk about post-emergent herbicides, those weed and feed products that contain a product that's going to kill existing weeds. And I know this is going to raise your blood pressure. But why do people want to control dandelions? I think after World War II, the chemical industry that was making bombs. There was no need for bombs anymore and explosives. And so they had to figure out what to do with with all of those chemicals. And they decided they could or they figured out that they can make weed killers out of them. And so there was this big, huge campaign that everybody should have that perfect lawn. And to achieve that perfect lawn is very, very easy. You just put down these chemicals on your lawn. And it will eliminate dandelions and it will eliminate clover. All of these things that used to be considered a regular part of a lawn, in particular clover. Before World War II, people used to add clover. And I actually recommend adding Dutch white clover to the lawn. It is more drought tolerant. It has deep roots. So it breaks up clay soils. If you have clay soils that don't drain very well. And it manufactures nitrogen years ago when the park districts had money. And there wasn't the objection of using herbicides on public parks. You could see where if they didn't use the herbicides, if you would look out where the lawn is. And if you could see green spots that were nice and green. You could walk over there. And every single time if you looked hard, you would see there's a lot of clover in that one spot because it's manufacturing the nitrogen and feeding the grass plants and making everything nice and green. And so it was really the chemical industry telling us after World War II, you can have that perfect lawn. And it's very, very easy to do. And everybody thought, wow, yeah, that's what we want. And so we were convinced that that's the way to go. And in the case of clover, we were eliminating what it was considered. And I still consider a very, very important part of a healthy lawn. If you've got a golf course and you've got a putting green, maybe you probably don't want the clover there. But in your average home lawn, it's a good thing. And if you're, if you're, you know, a lot of people say, well, clover's got the flowers and are direct species. And one of the things in maintaining a lawn properly is to mow it frequently. You never want to cut off more than one third of the blade of grass or you will stress the lawn, make it more susceptible to pests. And if you're mowing so that you never caught off more than one third, you will be mowing that lawn off and enough where the blooms of the clover will just beginning to be opening up. And then you'll mow them down. And so you really don't see very many blooms if you're mowing properly. You have a small yard and you think you don't have the room for fruit trees? Well, maybe you better think again, because Dave Wilson nursery wants to show you how to grow great tasting fruits like peaches, apples, pluots, and nut trees. Plus, they have potted fruits such as blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, boys and berries, figs, grapes, hops, kiwi, olives, and pomegranates. These are all plants that you can grow in small areas. You can even grow many of them in containers on patios as well. It's called backyard orchard culture. And you can get step-by-step information via the Dave Wilson YouTube videos. So where do you find those? Well, just go to DaveWilson.com, click on the home garden tab at the top of the page. Also in that home garden tab, you're going to find a link to their fruit and nut harvest chart. You can be picking delicious healthy fruits from your own yard from May to December here in USDA-09. And something else you're going to find in that home garden tab. You're going to find the closest nursery to you that carries Dave Wilson's quality fruit trees, and they're a nursery from coast to coast. So start the backyard orchard of your dreams at DaveWilson.com. Have you ever strolled through the drip irrigation aisle in the plumbing section of a home depot or lows? And you've seen all those people, they're just standing there, staring at the wide array of drip tubing, connectors, emitters, sprayers, filters, regulators tools and timers, specifically for the garden's drip irrigation system. Don't let drip irrigation become drip irritation. It's no wonder that episode 227 from September of 2022 is one of the most listened to podcasts in the garden basic series. It's called Understanding Drip Irrigation. Avoid spending your afternoon standing still pondering endlessly in the drip irrigation aisle at the hardware store. Give it a listen. It's number 227 Understanding Drip Irrigation. It's a chat with one of the foremost experts on drip irrigation. In fact, he wrote the book on it, Robert Curric. Find a link to it in today's show notes or at the podcast player of your choice. And you can find it at our homepage, gardenbasics.net. We'll have links in today's show notes about the proper mowing height for various types of turf. And it really pays to mow at the correct height. You're going to have a healthier lawn with a healthier root system. Most people tend to cut their lawns too short, or they have a mow and blow service that is cutting lawns too short. And if you do have a service that is cutting your lawn, make sure that their mower height matches your turf. Fescue, cool season fesuse, for example, need to be mowed tall. They need to be kept much taller than what you normally see on a cut lawn for the overall health of a lawn. And that's how you get a healthy lawn is by treating it right to begin with. Yeah, and also you're going to have fewer weeds. If you have a mowing properly, most of our lawns are cool season grasses that should be mowed at roughly three to three and a half inches high. And most people mow them much closer, like almost like golf greens. And by mowing high, like you said, you're going to have deeper roots. It also will shade the surface of the soil. And so when we seeds germinate, if you have a thick tall lawn, those seeds aren't going to get any sun and they'll die. That's part of your pre-emergent lead control system is having that tall lawn. Okay, this is all sort of a scenic bypass to why we're here in the first place, which is sort of a fall lawn renovation, especially if it's looking and you want a good looking lawn here in the west, September, October is the time to do it in the cool part in the mild winter portions of the west in the Midwest back east, maybe in spring, you would do this, but you're going to cut your lawn as short as possible. Then you're going to water the lawn thoroughly to soften the soil, wait a day or two, and then you're going to detach, aerate, fertilize, overseed, and add compost. And you're going to have the greenest lawn on the block. Yeah, and then I would also recommend in addition to the compost, throwing some warm castings. I love warm castings. Okay, fine. Alright, and the point of the fertilizer is it's a starter fertilizer. So it's going to have a different nitrogen phosphorus potassium content than others. And unlike what your local water agency may be advising, if you're starting a new lawn like that or a rehabbed lawn from seed, it's okay to water it every day lightly two or three or four times until it's up and growing after a few weeks. And then you can go back to a normal watering regimen or one that is legislated in your area. But for a new lawn, you do want to keep it evenly moist and it may take seven or 14 days for the seed to germinate. Yeah, also, you know, you would like the soil service to be almost dry at the end of the day, especially when the seeds are sprouting. Don't want those leaves wet when the sun goes down. So your last irrigation should be a couple hours before sunset. Because then if the blades of grass are wet all night long, you're kind of encouraging disease problem. We use the terms d-thatch and aerate and thatches the unseen enemy of your lawn. If you have a lawn that's looking poorly, there are brown spots. Here's something you could do. You could cut off a square of lawn. Go down about eight inches or so in a perfect small square, maybe eight inches or so square, and bring up that whole chunk. And you'll see the green grass on top. Then you might see an inch or two inches or three inches of dead lawn and then your soil. And that basically means that air, water, fertilizer, can't penetrate to the root zone of your healthy lawn because of that thick layer of dead material, also known as thatch. And that's when you bring in a detacher and it's amazing the amount of dead material you can bring up. It really is amazing how much you can have. And also, I will say that if you're using synthetic fertilizers and pesticides on that lawn, you are much more likely to have a thatch problem because you're killing the biology that normally keeps that thatch under control. You can go to your local nursery if you have a small lawn, they have what are called d-thatch rakes. And basically they're like a garden rake, but instead of having a thick time, the tines are knives. And it just cuts through the thatch. I will say that, hopefully you have a very small lawn if you're going to try and do it that way because it's a huge amount of work. It's really hard back breaking work. You can also go to your rental yards and they rent d-thatch rakes. It's like kind of like a lawn mower, but instead of having the blade go parallel to the lawn, it goes perpendicular to the lawn and they have lots of blades. And it just slices and dices your lawn while it doesn't dice, but it slices up your lawn and it brings the thatch to the surface, which you then have to rake off. And that's why it goes much quicker with two people. You have one person pushing that power d-thatch or also called a vertical mower. And then the person behind it, raking up all that thatch into a pile off the lawn. And it's not uncommon to pull up what could easily be a cubic yard of dead material from a lawn that maybe only a couple of thousand square feet. Yeah. I mean, I've seen pictures where a person had an average size lawn and the pile, you know, that he got was almost as high as he was and as wide as he was. Yeah. It was just a huge pile. And then you would aerate and aerate is not walking over your lawn in golf spikes. That is not aeration. That's compaction. Right. Well, how does an aerator work? Well, an aerator works by using a, what's called a spoon. It's a, it's a, it's a time, but it's hollow. It's basically a hollow tube. And depending upon what kind of aerator you have, it might have three or four tubes that work off of a crankshaft or it might have like a barrel with, you know, hundreds of, of these square, what are called spoons. They look like, you know, the, just imagine like a test tube that is got an open on both, opening on both ends. And when it is inserted into the soil, when your soil is moist, it fills up with that soil. And then it comes out of the soil and you put, when it goes into the soil, again, there's a hole on top and the soil that is being forced into the time, pushes the soil that was in the time before from the previous insertion out the, out the back end. And it's resting on top of your lawn and you can either break it up and just break it back in the lawn or, or break it off and put it someplace else. Or just leave it there and, and it'll, you know, it'll be there for, for a couple of moments. If you're gonna oversead and, you know, if you're, if you're doing a real renovation, you want to, you know, you can maybe just drag a piece of chain link fence. That's what golf courses do when they aerate. They just have a, a chain link fence dragged behind the, the aerator. And that'll break up most of those cores. Then you want to spread that starter fertilizer and a lawn seed that closely matches your existing grass over the area. And then you want to roll it. You want, you want to press that seed into the ground and usually the best thing for that is that back at the rental yard or are a local nurseries will sometimes lend them to you. They're water-filled rollers. Yeah. And while you're getting the water-filled roller, you might as well get one of those cages that spreads compost. Yeah. And, and I do want to say if you're using an organic fertilizer, which is to what I would recommend. If you get your typical, you know, most of your organic lawn fertilizers are, or you can use our organic starter fertilizer like Fred just talked about, or you can use an organic lawn fertilizer because they're, they're slow release. But you want to make sure that it has some phosphorus, which is that second number in the when it has three numbers. Because some of the lawn fertilizers don't have any of that second number because back east, in particular, it's a real pollution problem and it's damaging the lakes. And so the now, out of the national brand lawn fertilizers have removed the phosphorus. And so you'll see like a 905 for example. And that second number will be zero because of the restrictions, legal restrictions they have back east because of the pollution problem. Phosphorus is for root development now in organic lawn fertilizers. Can they have phosphorus in it? You know, the organic sources of phosphorus are not as subject to runoff, which is the real problem with this synthetic sources of phosphorus. In some states and some communities where they have these guidelines where they restrict phosphorus, some of them have differentiated between the organic sources and the synthetic sources and the organic sources are allowed in in some areas. If you're blocking at the price of paying for an organic lawn fertilizer, consider this. Usually on organic lawn fertilizers, you only have to apply it twice a year. With synthetic lawn fertilizers, they might suggest four or five times, maybe every six weeks. And if you compare the price in that regard, organic fertilizers is a much better buy and less work for you. It's less work. You're not having to go to the store to buy it as frequently. You get a much healthier soil with the organic fertilizers, synthetic fertilizers are high and salts and they kill the beneficial soil biology. The organic fertilizers stimulate the soil biology. Depending upon your organic fertilizer, they may even have beneficial biology in that bag with the fertilizer. And that beneficial soil biology extends the area that the roots can absorb water and nutrients. They provide pest protection. They make a much happier and healthier lawn that will resist pests, both diseases and insects. So you're saving your money in reference to pest management and you're going to have a better quality lawn. And again, the final step is to spread that thin layer of compost over the entire area and the cages, the rolling cages that you can get from either nurseries or rental yards, eases that process quite a bit. It doesn't have to be a thick layer. You're not bearing the seed with the compost. It's a very thin layer that will work its way into the soil in no time. And then you likely roll it. So after detaching, aerating and overseeding here in the west, you can do it either in the fall or in the spring, back east in the Midwest. You probably want to do it just in spring. After you do that to renovate your lawn, you're going to have the nicest looking lawn on the block. Yeah, and then you'll get that thick lawn, which will prevent the weeds, especially if you're mowing it high as appropriate for the type of lawn that you have. Treat it right, feed it right, and you will always have a great looking lawn. We got a lot of great fall lawn care tips about renovating a lawn and applying pre-emergent and post-emergent weed controls as well as fertilizers, courtesy of Steve Zion, Sacramento's organic advocate, living resources president. Steve, thanks for all the good lawn tips today. Yeah, it's been fun, as always, Fred. In the latest issue of the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter, we tackle another summertime disorder of tomatoes. Why are some of these tomatoes slow to ripen? Well, for that you can blame the heat spikes this summer, and who hasn't suffered through that this year. And in the podcast portion of The Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter, we start snipping away at another summertime tomato problem, tomato worms. And it's not just tomato horn worms. There are other worm-like critters munching away at your beautiful red orbs of August and September. Debbie Flower gets into the lifestyles of tomato horn worms, tomato fruit worms, and tomato pin worms. If you're already a Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter subscriber, it's probably in your email waiting for you right now, or you can start a subscription. It's free. Find the link to the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter and podcast in today's show notes or on the substack app, or you can sign up at the newsletter link at our homepage GardenBasics.net The Garden Basics with Farmer Fred Podcast comes out once a week on Fridays, plus the newsletter podcast that comes with The Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter continues, and that will also be released on Fridays. Both are free, and they're brought to you by Smart Pots and Dave Wilson Nursery. The Garden Basics podcast is available wherever podcasts are handed out, and that includes our homepage GardenBasics.net, and that's where you can also sign up for The Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter and podcast. That's GardenBasics.net, or you can use the links in today's show notes, and thank you so much for listening.