There are a lot of things you can do Around the House to make your yard a lot heathier and all while using less water than you might have last year. Technology is getting so much better and its leading to a better looking exterior. Here are my tricks to keeping that yard and garden looking good this spring. Check out the videos on our Around the House Facebook page this weekend to see more detailed information about how to use some of these brand new products.

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[00:00:39] Eric Goranson: The cool thing with this is instead of putting in that sprinkler timer, and then you've got your solenoid that goes out to those sprinklers. What you do is you run the pipe all the way out to the sprinkler heads and you run a wire when you do this. So this is why this is something that's hard to retrofit.

[00:01:15] Eric Goranson: Thought we'd talk about lawn care tips outside, trying to get that yard and garden all dialed in and ready for summertime. And there's so many things that you can do to make life a little bit easier. Before we get into that, if you have a home improvement question, feel free to give us a call at 8 3 3.

[00:01:57] Eric Goranson: com. We have all those segments. We've [00:02:00] got coming up on 400 YouTube segments. And if you head over to around the house, online. com, you can find over there. We talk about everything from new products. To great interviews to DIY projects and everything in between. So we have a lot of fun over there today. I wanted to talk about basically everything outside getting care of lawn, because here's one thing, a lot of my friends, because of the way the economy is out there and things getting super expensive for everybody, people have had to cut back in certain areas.

[00:02:49] Eric Goranson: More about lawn care stuff. We haven't covered it for a while since last year. So it's time to jump into that today. So let's talk about our grass. When most places in the [00:03:00] country, of course, we get into the Southern states like Arizona and Nevada and California over there, where water is such an issue. Of course, many governments are paying people to get rid of that, to put in artificial turf.

[00:03:32] Eric Goranson: You go home. Throw it across the grass and hope for the best. And maybe you even followed the directions on what to do. The problem with this formula is you might've gotten the timing wrong. You might've got the wrong fertilizer or you're not doing it enough or doing it too often. And that's really where the rub is that you need to be really careful with because if we get too much fertilizer on the lawns that can end up down into a storm [00:04:00] drain system when you over a lot of the wall over water the lawn and then it shows up indoor streams and then we have problems with our water quality in those rivers.

[00:04:35] Eric Goranson: And so what you can do is take a, get a sample and you can mail it off. You can go to your local extension agency. If you've got one close by, you can Google that. And a lot of times you can pay a small fee and they will do a test. Okay. And tell you what that sample looks like. And if you're going to do one, I would do a couple of different areas because you can have different soil tests, especially if somebody brought in soil at some point, you know, closer to the house could have [00:05:00] more filled dirt in it versus farther away from the house.

[00:05:23] Eric Goranson: It's a company called get lawn brights. com. And what they do is they basically send you a kit. And what you do is you actually send in your soil to them. And they will do a test for you. So you know what you're getting. And then they use organic ingredients in this. And what's cool with this is a subscription plan.

[00:06:09] Eric Goranson: They tell you when to do it. So they know your zip code. They know the area and their experts will tell you when to do it. And I tell you what it for the price of what you're looking at out there for people that are paying for fertilizer, not too bad price wise, but it's not too bad. If you think about what a bag of fertilizer costs, you, these guys are pretty in the ballpark, especially when you're talking about organic stuff.

[00:06:54] Eric Goranson: So they have an organic mosquito and tick control. They have pre emergent weed control for all of us, pet [00:07:00] owners out there, pet spot repair. They have a broadleaf weed control. They have a boost pack. They even have their own grass seed. They have a fall fortify pack and a starter fertilizer, the whole thing.

[00:07:34] Eric Goranson: But it's a super trick way to do it. And so it's all about testing that soil and fertilizing on those test results. Now, really the next thing to talk about here outside of fertilizer is another one of those big variables, and that's going to be the sunlight that hits this grass. Do you have the right grass seed for that area?

[00:08:14] Eric Goranson: And they warned me cause they had seen pictures of it. And they saw the segment that I did for my around the house, Northwest television show. But they saw it and went, don't be surprised if this spring you have a 50 percent die off of that sod because you just don't have full sun there, which is going to be a challenge.

[00:08:54] Eric Goranson: That's going to be better in the mixed sun. It will get sun, but it is not full sun all [00:09:00] day long. It's probably closer to full sun a half day long if at best. And it's depending on how crazy this is, how well my neighbors keep their trees trimmed up because I live in a forest. And so with these big, massive 300 year old fir trees, They do let some light in between them and around them and morning and evening because the sun is under the canopy.

[00:09:42] Eric Goranson: When we come back, we're going to talk about some of the better ways to water and how you can save money. We'll do that just as soon as around the house returns. Don't go away.[00:10:00]

[00:10:30] Eric Goranson: This is your next generation of home improvement. I'm Eric G. Thanks for tuning in today. It doesn't matter if you're catching us here on the podcast or on the talk media network on the national radio show, we are here to help you with your home improvement projects every single week. And thanks for joining us today.

[00:11:06] Eric Goranson: And the next thing I wanted to talk about right here was going to be really diving in and talking about. Smart watering for all you people out there that are paying for water. Now you've got a city municipality or County or water district, wherever you're getting your water from that they're charging you by the gallon.

[00:11:51] Eric Goranson: And if you have that old dial sprinkler timer that is out there or just one of those old ones that's been around for a number of years, [00:12:00] that's not smart. This is a way that will change how you water. And here's why this sprinkler timer, when you hook it up, you're basically going to remove your old one, hook the new wires up inside, and then you're going to hook it up into the web and you can put the app on your phone and don't get over intimidated by this because it actually goes in really easy, but here's what these new sprinkler timers do.

[00:12:41] Eric Goranson: And vice versa. If you've got a day that it's going to be 90, a hundred degrees, and it's going to be baking your lawn, it knows to maybe add a little bit more to keep that green. And then it goes farther from there. As you set it up and say, okay, zone one is grass, clay, soil [00:13:00] on a hill. It says, Hey, you have grass, clay, soil in a hill.

[00:13:30] Eric Goranson: So it will know that if you, when you program it, you can put in, Oh, it's landscaping, it's my vegetable garden. It's a grass on sandy soil. You can go through and figure this out as you set it up for each one of these. And then you can pretty much set it and forget it all season long, because like I said, it's watching it and you can make a couple adjustments to it whenever you need to, but you really don't.

[00:14:11] Eric Goranson: It will save you a ton of water because it's going to put the water in the right amount down and you can keep track of that. Once you get it set, you can just leave it alone and it will adjust for the temperature out there, which is really cool. Now, if you're going to be putting in a new system, now this is a little bit more expensive, but I tell you what, it saves you a ton of water.

[00:14:58] Eric Goranson: The cool thing with this [00:15:00] is instead of putting in that sprinkler timer, and then you've got your solenoid that goes out to those sprinklers. What you do is you run the pipe all the way out to the sprinkler heads and you run a wire when you do this. So this is why this is something that's hard to retrofit.

[00:15:39] Eric Goranson: So this sprinkler is not just a spray head. It is a computerized spray head. So when it shoots it out, you put all the points around the yard. So if you had a grass that was 12 point star that you said, okay, I got this crazy 12 point star in my backyard. That is my grass. I don't know why anybody would do that.

[00:16:20] Eric Goranson: Instead of that, you might have two. And it's really cool how this works. It is a brilliant way to do it. And it can save you a ton of money. It is an investment going in and you can spend a few thousand bucks on this system, but it is a system that will put water where you want it. And it saves a ton of water because you don't have to worry about all those little heads being adjusted.

[00:17:03] Eric Goranson: So I literally, I can do a square yard with a sprinkler head. And I can make sure that those corners get hit at the same rate as everything else. So it's a really brilliant system. Take a look at that. It is a great way to go and it's something that's really impressive and how it works. And so that's one of those things that take a look at it.

[00:17:41] Eric Goranson: And this is something that I want to make sure that you're thinking about irrigation and Mary in many areas, especially out here in the West coast, if you have it in your area, I'd love to hear from you over at around the house, online. com. But primarily in the West coast, these are open pits. The go down through the farmland and they run river [00:18:00] water, basically down through the divert via a dam.

[00:18:25] Eric Goranson: So I would do some tests every once in a while to see what the water quality is there, because here's what I'm worried about. I don't like to have kids out there playing in the grass. And you just dumped a bunch of unknown chemicals on top of it. All right, everybody. When we come back, we're going to be talking more about lawn care.

[00:19:00] Eric Goranson: Hey, this is Ron Keel, the metal cowboy from Keel, the Ron Keel Band and Steeler. We are rocking Around the House with Eric G. Welcome back to the Around the House show. This is the next generation of Home Improvement. Thanks for joining us. I'm Eric G, your host. If you have any questions for me, head over to around the house, online.

[00:19:43] Eric Goranson: We've been talking about exterior lawn care, garden care, trying to make that place beautiful. And livable for you. So we were talking about first segment about grass, making sure you get that dialed in and of course, smart watering last time in the last segment. But this one here, I [00:20:00] wanted to talk about weed care and prevention.

[00:20:22] Eric Goranson: For instance, I was been redoing my front yard when I initially cleaned all the brush garbage. Junk out of there. I had raw dirt and I knew I wasn't ready to put lawn in because I needed to do a lot of soil amendments and really get things dialed in. So I planted some wild clover out there to really get it in there and get it.

[00:21:00] Eric Goranson: So that is something that was cool, but I tell you what, it ended up getting over there and I had to fight that a little bit, but here's some of the things that people do. So a lot of people will jump out and myself, I've done it this way in the past. I get the weed and feed. I spread the fertilizer out and I let the weed and feed nuke everything.

[00:21:40] Eric Goranson: And that's not great for your grass. But if you get some of the stuff that's meant to kill the weeds out of there or the nauseous weeds. That's something that you can get in there and get after it and get after those weeds Without having to hit the whole thing with weed killer So that's a key right there to i've changed over to that [00:22:00] and it's worked really well I just keep a spray bottle of it right next to the lawnmower when i'm mowing And sometimes i'll even sit there and take that with me and I can just stop real quick And hit something as I go and over a few weeks You pretty much get them knocked out because that stuff works so well.

[00:22:33] Eric Goranson: It reduces the chemicals on my lawn and it's just one less thing out there. Now, of course, with any kind of the weed and feed stuff for any of these weed killers, make sure that you're careful in your waterways. And follow the directions on the bottle, because that's one of those things that can really get you in trouble by doing that, because we don't want to be polluting waterways or anything else or getting kids sick.

[00:23:17] Eric Goranson: So be really careful of how you do it. Put a mask on, glove up. And if you're just doing spot stuff, it's not that big a deal, but say, if you're going to be out there spraying a gravel lot or doing a bigger area, throw a Tyvek suit on, they're cheap. You can buy them at your paint store. You can buy them at home improvement store.

[00:24:01] Eric Goranson: So just be very careful out there my friends Want to see you around for a while. So just make sure that you're handling that To the directions and make sure that you're playing it safer than less safe with that. And I have changed my purchases on the chemicals and how I do it over the last probably five years after knowing people that have gone through this.

[00:24:44] Eric Goranson: And I used to have this canal that went behind my house at a previous house. I had a couple of two houses ago and I had a canal that came by that certain months of the year at work, it had great flowing water. Other times it was fairly stagnant because they used it from the [00:25:00] river to fill the lake to make sure it was even.

[00:25:19] Eric Goranson: But I needed to control them. And so there's a non toxic way to do this. And if you head down to your home improvement store, they have these little discs that are inch and a half around or so that you can throw into a body of water, whether it's a puddle or a pond or anything else, and they're not an insecticide, but what they do is they keep the mosquito larvae from hatching.

[00:26:05] Eric Goranson: And I didn't do it down the whole canal. I just did it in my area and it cut it down significantly around there. If I had to went down behind the neighbor's houses and did it along the way, or if we'd have got together, I bet you, I would have reduced those by 80 or 90%. So what didn't get killed was great bad food for them, but it made it manageable.

[00:26:46] Eric Goranson: But I tell you what, if I go out here an hour to the West, out to the coast and go like hiking through the grasses, yeah, they've got some big problems this year with it already. And so I would recommend making sure there's a lot of different [00:27:00] green ways to do it, but this might be one of those things that you spray the lawn a couple times a year with the tick killer.

[00:27:24] Eric Goranson: I was out, if you heard it on, I talked about it on the show last fall, but I was digging a post hole and didn't realize that the little. Fern in the natural landscape next to my house, a couple of feet away had a massive yellow jackets nest. So I got hit about 20 times at that. And that put me in the ER getting checked out and getting a bunch of shots and getting that under control.

[00:28:10] Eric Goranson: And they grab the flies that are flying around. And so this is a great non toxic way to get those flies and not using that nasty fly paper. This is actually something that'll work really well for you. So again, that's something that if you're trying to keep those flies down out there, this could be a great way to do it.

[00:29:02] Eric Goranson: the end of the show. Now drinkin down people, it's time to go. It's that time again. It's Last Call. Welcome back to the Around the House show, the next generation of home improvement. Thanks for joining us. If you're listening to us on the Talk Media Network, on the radio, or on the podcast, I'm here to help you.

[00:29:42] Eric Goranson: I'm here to help you with that. So we've been talking on spring lawn care tips today, and I wanted to talk a little bit about preventing weeds in landscaping. And this is one of those things that can be really tough. Depending on where you're located and what part of the country, because there are so many weeds out there that can come in, [00:30:00] especially if you're up against anything from a nature area to a neighbor that doesn't take control of their property.

[00:30:31] Eric Goranson: And then when you pull it out, it takes the weed fabric with it. Which is counterintuitive. I don't need another place for the weeds to grow. If you have a brand that you like out there, I'd love to hear it. Head over to around the house, online. com or hit one of the social media channels for around the house show and send me a message because so far I have not found one that works to my liking.

[00:31:14] Eric Goranson: So it's a preventative. It doesn't let them sprout and grow up into that. Preen has worked well for me. And it's something I'm putting in a bunch of new flower beds right now. And it's something after I get them all completed, I'm going to hit it with, because it does work. And that is something that follow the directions on it.

[00:31:53] Eric Goranson: And all of a sudden this stuff came in in the Pacific Northwest here. There's a Scotch broom or whatever [00:32:00] that comes in. I'm super allergic to it. And about this time of year, you start seeing it along the freeways that are yellow, beautiful, yellow, bright yellow blooms. And I tell you what, that stuff, when they brought it in here for weed, for control of dirt and keeping things growing and not letting hillsides fall down onto a highway or something.

[00:32:46] Eric Goranson: And that's the one thing with some of these things that you plant out there, they can take over an area like old growth strawberries. When they start getting more and more of those things, they just keep going and going. If you don't maintain them and bamboo can [00:33:00] be that same way. I love a cool looking bamboo hedge.

[00:33:34] Eric Goranson: But that's the tough part is getting into that. And then if you've got ticks or other things, they can be hiding off into that as well. So that is stuff that be very careful with planting bamboo because it can be absolutely beautiful, but it can absolutely get out of control and be a heck of a mess to keep trimmed out.

[00:34:11] Eric Goranson: And get it down there. Cause I don't want to have to put in a bunch of chemicals in that. I want to just make it go away without having to quite frankly, nuke the area. But those are things that I just want you to think about when you're planting these type of plants in there that maybe they're better in.

[00:34:47] Eric Goranson: Because it's got so much height to it that if it's a small container, it will blow over in a windstorm or just a mild wind, depending on how big it is. So those are things that aren't good, but that's [00:35:00] another one. And then some other things I want you to think about that are horrible for landscaping. And it's just because they're so toxic is railroad ties.

[00:35:33] Eric Goranson: But I know people that will go down to their lumber yard and get some old railroad ties that they've swatched out. And there's multiple problems with road ties. One, they got creosote. Two, who knows what got dripped onto there? Was it sewage from an Amtrak train or a passenger train? Was it chemicals that were dripping out of the bottom of a rail car?

[00:36:12] Eric Goranson: Make sure that you got that all dialed in and when in doubt with any of these toxic chemicals, like our old, you know, 15, 20 years ago, we had some of the same stuff that was in pressure treated woods. So you're better off just building something out of another material. And when in doubt, it's a good idea to get those road ties out of there.

[00:36:46] Eric Goranson: Now, if you want to make your own organic weed killer, this is something that does work. And it's a mixture of vinegar, salt, and soap. Something like Dawn. And it's [00:37:00] basically just a three ingredient homemade weed killer. Now, here's the thing. It will kill anything you put it on, basically. So not sure about things like they're tough Ivy or any of the blackberry bushes and stuff that are pretty hardy that way.

[00:37:37] Eric Goranson: So you need to be careful. Salt is not something that's going to help. So basically you're going to mix a gallon of vinegar, tablespoon of dish soap. And a cup of salt and I would be tempted to leave the salt out if it was me Just because i'm not a fan of that if you're trying to keep anything from coming back later That salt will do that.

[00:38:16] Eric Goranson: So no sense of limiting that in doing that. And so that's one of the issues there to make sure that you've got that. And then I would make sure as you're out there, you want to pair, want to be paired up with some good gloves. I want to see long pants. I want to see long sleeves. And keep that mixture away from your eyes and face.

[00:38:52] Eric Goranson: So be careful around the grasses and stuff. If you're trying to go out and do weeds, I would not do it for in lawn weed. But if you've got a walkway or [00:39:00] something like that, that you're trying to keep it on. That might be the good way. So it's not going to be your final solution, but it is a good green one to use.