LIVE with Dirt Farmer Jay and Maggie 5.02.2020

I think we're ready. All right, you guys. Hey, welcome to our first live stream. Thanks for being a part today. I'm Dirt Farmer Jay, and this is... Dirt Farmer Maggie. Right on. And behind the scenes, right across from us here, is our friend Rob Lambert. Rob, why don't you come around and get in the camera real quick and mug for the shot a little bit. There's Rob. Rob's gonna be running tech today and moderating the chat. He's the brains of the operation. Yeah, yeah. We're just the faces. Look it, we're just the cosmetic part of this operation. Gotta work on that, babe. I need some injections. So, guys, it is great to be with you today, especially during this time in history in the United States and in the world, right? Yeah. A lot of trials, you know, trying to figure this whole thing out with the coronavirus. And if there's anybody in the world that gets the value of hands-on living, self-reliance, resiliency, it's the Dirt Farmer Jay family. You guys value those kind of aptitudes and approaches in life of figuring out how to do things. Not so you can be the best consumer and be selfish, but so that you can provide well for yourself, those that you love around you, as well as in your community, your workplace and all sorts of things. So we love that approach. It's gonna be great to chat with you, to hear what's on your mind, and to see how you guys have all been doing. Maggie, it's kind of, here, the weather's changing. Boy, it gets active around here, doesn't it, this time of year? You can see some of our irises behind us there on the counter. Oh, there you go. This is, this time of year in the Mountain West, this is when they bloom. Yep. Yep, all over the place. And iris are kind of like, some people call them one-trick pony, because they do bloom, but boy, do they give you an incredible splash of color. And they smell really nice, too. Oh, my word. So yeah, we have a lot of them. A lot of them, those of you who follow us for a while, know that we originally came from Arizona many years ago. We now live in Northern Utah. And so some of those iris actually came up with us in 2001. Yep. And have since then grown all over the place. Hey, 110 Soldier, hello from Kentucky. It's good to have you with us. We actually have a son now that lives in Kentucky. In Lexington. Yeah, so we're not gonna tell you his full name, because he's kind of a private guy and all that, but he loves it. He and his family and our grandkids, and we're actually planning to do a trip back to see them later this year. So 110 Soldier, thanks for being a part of our viewer family and being a part of this event today. Our friend, Andy. Andy, it's great to talk to you. And she says, hey, friends. And we have a little disclosure. Who is Andy? Andy's Rob's beautiful wife. On the other side of the screen. They both married well, I can see. They did, they both married very well. And she is a great lady. And Andy, thanks for being a part of this today. Hey, Keith, it's good that you're here with us also from Ohio. You know, one of the great things, Keith, that we love about being YouTube creators is this broad community of people that are all over, not only just regional, local, national, but international. And so we get to interact with a lot of people. And Ohio is one of our favorite places. That's right. Many years ago, what did we get to go do? The whole, the whole idea of going to. We went to Amish country. Yeah, we actually hung out with some Amish people that invite us into their lives. It was really cool. So you probably can figure out that Jay talks a lot to anyone who will listen. And he got started talking to somebody on a plane years ago on a business trip, found out he was from Ohio, found out he knew some Amish people. And the next thing I knew, we were flying to Ohio to go on vacation with people that I had never even met for two weeks down to Amish country. And it turned out to be the very best vacation we ever, ever had. It was charm Ohio as much as I remember. Yeah, that's where we hung out. And we found the Amish people to actually have this marvelous sense of humor. They're kind of stereotypical as being very somber, but wow, great conversationalist and stuff. So again, thanks for joining us. Also that Fix It guy, hello from Washington. I like your moniker. Indeed, that says your hands on. And Monica Taylor, hello from Colorado as well. Thanks for being a part of this today. Hey guys, I wanna just pose something to you and ask your thoughts. And Rob is running as well, our friend also Shelby. Shelby, who is our social media person is on the team today. She is a part of the remote team and is one of the moderators on the chat. So between Shelby and Rob, they're gonna moderate the chat and respond and get things in front of us. But here's a question I wanna pose to you. Maggie and I have found during this time that you've had to learn some lessons. We've had to learn some lessons. We've also seen people in society, some learn some good lessons, some really struggle. It's interesting just seeing how people interact or react during times of trial or just tribulation, if you wanna call it that. You see the good, the bad, and the ugly in people. But we're gonna choose to really focus on the good of some really good things that people are doing. Here's the question I have for you that I hope you'll interact back through the chat because we're interested in hearing what you have to say. What are some of the lessons that you have learned during this time that you hope to make use of for the rest of your life? What are some durable things you took away from this, whether they're practices, beliefs, philosophy, the way you approach things, maybe context that's been given? We've found there's things we're very grateful for that perhaps we took for granted before. Hugging people. Yeah. I am a hugger. Rob's laughing because he gets hugged every time I see him, except now with coronavirus, I'm resisting the temptation to hug everyone, but I will never take that for granted again. Right. Being able to just walk up to someone I really care about and give them a big hug and tell them how much they mean to me. Yeah, it's been hard for me. Huggers are having a hard time right now. Right on. Another thing Maggie has mentioned to me that she has learned is she said, I've learned to become more immediate in expressing my sentiments, right? If something's on my mind about that you wanna tell somebody you care for them or you value them or just some kind of attribute you really enjoy about them, she says, you gotta say things when you have opportunity, the best time to express them is then, not hey, I'll sometime send them a note or something like that. That's cool. All right, so that will be one of the themes of the time we have together here is what are some cool things you've learned during this time that you hope to make use of the rest of your lives? Let's hear from you on that, okay? Now, it is firing up around here and this is one of the busiest times at what we affectionately call the farm. We live on a five acre hobby farm. It's really active about two and a half acres. The back two and a half acres of our area are just left naturally. Taking care of two and a half acres of landscape, food plot, shop, tractor barn, all those sort of things is I won't call it full-time endeavor, but it's pretty darn close. In the summer, it's pretty full-time. Yeah, yeah. We'll run pretty late working on stuff and all that. And so you know that we love to work in the shop. You've seen that on our channel. Maggie loves doing heritage cooking and Maggie's kitchen segments that we do. There's lots of product reviews. There's things related to the truck that we do in the truck life segment. So there's a lot happening and it really fires up. So it's really cool to kind of preface that season here with all of you, our viewer family. So again, thank you for being a part of our viewer family. It's personally gratifying to us and important to us to have this kind of interaction with you. Well, we have one of our first questions that has popped up. It's a question from Rob off of Facebook. It says, have you ever painted rocks with glow-in-the-dark paint for the yard? Well, the answer is no, not personally, I have not. However, I have read up on the subject a little bit and have some experience with this early. These types of paints are really cool. They do, they absorb sunlight energy, give it back after it goes dark. So, but here's the issue. These kinds of paints are very short-lived in full sunlight being baked out in the sun. So these are very good for an event that you're doing, something that's coming up. Let's suppose that you have an evening party and after the lights go off, you want this cool effect. It's kind of subtle. It's not like somebody put light bulbs inside the rocks and then boom, lit them up. It's kind of a subtle thing that is kind of whimsical. People might be, you know, you're enjoying an evening sitting out porch, enjoying a favorite beverage and perhaps a burrito or whatever it is you like, crab salad or whatever it might be. And you look over and you go, is that, are those glowing? It's kind of this cool, subtle effect. It won't last a long time and here's why. The sun's rays itself, UV rays are highly degrading and it'll knock down and break down the compounds that are in that paint. But for one-off or, you know, several nights in a row type of event, works very well. And of course, like anything else, if you pay for more premium product, you're gonna get better results than you are getting the cheapest product yet. So yeah, it's a cool thing to do. And certainly kind of, you get people that go, is that, what's going on there? So it's kind of clever too, so yeah. So we have a question from Andy and Andy says, does working on your yard help with home equity? Well, yes and no. I mean, it depends on when you go to sell your home. If the people who are looking for a home are looking for something that has an intensive landscaping that they can just take over and maintain and don't have to actually put it in. I mean, getting it put in, we bought this five acre plot. It was just scraped by the construction people. There wasn't a tree, not a bush, not anything on this whole property. And it was just a blank landscape. And you work and work and work, putting in all the underground water lines and then you cover them up and you don't have anything to show for it. Other than the step ups or something, doesn't look like much happened. We'd plant, you know, 20 trees and it would look like it's still bare, so. Because of the scale of the landscape. But for us, you know, someday when they carry us out feet first and our kids end up selling our house, it'll be the landscape I think that will cause people to either really want to buy it or really not want to buy it if they're not an outside landscape person. So Andy, let me, or Maggie, let me leverage a little bit on your answer too, to Andy. Indeed, it does depend if it's valued by people. However, I will tell you this, whenever you create curb, what's called curb appeal for a home, you will have higher demand for the home. Also, it's very difficult for most people to envision what a place may look like. You actually have to do it. And then they say, that's really cool. The other thing is, whenever you do landscape well, what you're actually doing is expanding your living space, essentially, virtually, right? You're creating outdoor rooms, outdoor spaces, outdoor, what might be recreational, rest place, respite. It might actually be habitat for birds and so forth. All of those things show up in the real estate price. And there is a variance of opinion on this. But my personal opinion is, and we've done this through gardening many years, that every dollar you put in landscaping, you get about two bucks back at the final payment out. So it's a good, and there's a twofold value. One, when it comes time to sell it, but also while you're living in it. It's a very tangible thing to create a great place and enjoy it ongoing. The fulfillment of completing it, and then the ongoing enjoyment in the environment you've created. Hope that helps. Hey, a couple other things real quick. Keith, thanks for weighing in here. Keith has an interesting commentary. Keith, it sounds like you have an opinion on a few things. He says, I've learned a lot of people, going back to the question about things that we've learned during this time, I've learned a lot of people on this earth still don't get it. Well, you can mean, there's all sorts of things you can apply that. It is interesting seeing how different people behave or respond. Some people respond in anger, or like, why is this happening to us? Or it's being done to us, and there's failure on all sorts of people's parts and all that sort of thing. We tend to focus on what we have direct control over, what's in our area of influence, what we can do. And that's the gist of this channel. And Keith, it sounds like you're kind of like that same gist, and that you're right. There is a never a dull moment on the farm around here. One of Jay's things that he says all the time around here is I can't wait to hear what this is, I say all the time. He says, you just don't realize how hard it is to have this much creativity in your head all the time. And I said, yeah, I do realize how hard it is to live with someone who has that much creativity. Creativity. It's hard. Just a couple days ago, I happened to walk by the TV room, and there was something laying on the floor, and he was in there, and I popped my head back in, and I said, oh, it's just a pen. It's just a pen laying on the floor, in the middle of the floor. And he said, oh, thank goodness there's not a bunch of them, because I just can't handle a pen-demic right now. And I'm like, goes that creativity again, and just, you know, comes vomiting right out of his mouth all the time. Vomiting's good. Yeah. Hey, listen, we're gonna go over to Shelby. Shelby's asking this. I'm way more experienced in the kitchen than I thought, and that's good. We happen to know Shelby. Shelby's on our team, and she is an excellent baker. Yes. She puts together these incredible things. Cakes, cookies. Her aptitudes in that area are wonderful. So Shelby, I can't wait to see what it's like 10 years from now. You probably have some incredible business going, and all this sort of thing. But anyway, so I'm more experienced in the kitchen than I thought. I've made homemade bread. I can never pronounce it. Beignets. All sorts of new recipes, and all the chocolate chip cookies, I can, and then I lost the rest of it. Or give away. She's making all she can. Oh, she's making all she can. I see. So during this time, you're actually sharpening your skills culinary. Is that what you're, and I believe that's what the gist is. So good for you. You are redeeming the time. You are taking the time, and instead of just sitting around doing nothing, you're actually sharpening your skills for something that you and others that know you. Yep. Rob across there. We'll enjoy the benefits of ongoing. So you keep going, girl. Our friend Larry said, during this quarantine, I discovered cooking on a griddle versus a grill. Interesting. So griddle, I assume you mean in on the stovetop, inside versus outside on the grill. Other than ribs, I'll never go back to a grill. It's amazing what all can be cooked on a griddle. Way to go. Larry, send us a couple more follow-up comments on that. Will you tell us what some of your favorite things to do on the griddle? And Maggie and I have started cooking using a cast iron, some cast iron heavy skillets. Because- With a grid on. With a grid, so you can get the grill marks. And then we do have a flat bottom one too, but here's one thing we really like about using cast iron in the griddle type of thing, is you can transfer it into the hot stove and continue to bake it or brown something or get a crisp on it, whatever, or warm it because you don't have to change dishes. It's just, it's transferable from stovetop to oven and back out. And we have one of those weights that you can- Yeah. Put on it. You can really cook chicken breasts in about 20 minutes because- We do a lot more chicken thighs than breasts. Yeah. It's really cool. Thanks, Larry. Very cool. Oh, he says, oh, it's an outside griddle, Blackstone. Huh. Breakfast. Larry, I'm going to have to look that up and see what we're talking about. Thanks for sharing that. So it is outside. I know you guys are RVers too, that you like to travel. So this would probably be more like a compact thing that allow you to be a little bit mobile with it. We definitely have to check that out. Yep. Anybody else have any experience with that also and have anything you want to weigh in at? Thanks, Larry, for that. There's a follow-on question to Andy's question, more landscaping. Kyle said, we laid sod last year and it seemed like it took hold, but after winter we discovered there were some pretty bad dead spots. Any tips to bring it back to life? Well, yes. When you're outside working in the yardscape, there are a lot of variables, but the first place always to look for sod, there's two. One is water, whether we like it or not, sod and turf and lawns are very water thirsty. And a lot of lawn problems are where it's not watering correctly, okay? And you may think it is, but you actually need to put some cups out there, just get some regular plastic cups, put a couple of rocks in them to stop them from blowing over little pebbles or something to make them bottom heavy, and then run a cycle and see if those cups actually get some significant water in them. Should get one to two inches, right? Yeah, depends on how long you're running, but yes, you want about that much in the bottom, above the rocks and all that, just to see that you're soaking them in, okay? That's the first thing. The second thing is, it is possible that you've got worms under it, sod worms or some kind of grub worm that is what they'll do is they love the roots. So they're shearing off the roots, which stresses the plants, the plants then start to die out. So the best thing you can do on this is number one, water it. If you have, if you want to just do sod worms, there are treatments that are available from your home improvement store, the big box stores or your local gardening supply. You sprinkle it on the top, it's granule form, and then you water it in and it goes down and it eliminates those worms and allows the roots to regenerate. So give those couple of things a shot. There's one thing you can do to see if it's worms and that is go out and just grab a hold of some of the grass and if it just comes right out of the ground and there's no roots on it, then you know you've got worms under there. Because they ate the anchorage to it, so it'll lift as Maggie just said. And you can know what you're going to treat. Hey Kyle, there's one other thing to think about also. Sometimes if you're in new areas, new construction, there's an amazing amount of construction debris that gets left under the surface of the soil. I'd like to think that all contractors and subdivision builders really would take their time on this, but remember time is money. And so a lot of times they're just blading things off or smoothing or contouring it right. And there can be chunks of concrete. In one case, I know a gardener that kept having a dead spot. They couldn't get it and they said, what is going on? It didn't seem to matter what they did. They dug it up and you know what they found under there? An old car battery. Somebody, you know, that runs a generator or uses something when it just ended up getting thrown and then they covered over. Well, it's leaking acid. It's very toxic. That's bad news. So he had to remediate the soil, dig it out, replace the soil and then it went away. So try the low key things, water, do the sod test Maggie just said, pull up on it. And then- Fertilizer. Fertilizer, give it some fertilizer, give it a snack and then see what happens. On the fertilizer bag, there's three numbers. So the first one is nitrogen and that's what feeds grass or anything that's a grassy type of plant. Correct, so you got your three numbers, go ahead. So the first number needs to be the highest. Right, so a good product for that is like ammonium sulfate. 21, right? 21, zero, zero. So NPK, potassium and phosphorus. Potassium is the second number. No, excuse me, phosphorus is, then potassium is the last one. Yep. Phosphorus is the middle number? Yeah, always get them, yeah. I got it mixed up too. Yep, potash is the last one. Yeah, NPK. So yeah, you need high nitrogen. Grasses are high nitrogen feeders. So try a little bit of that Kyle. Top dust it, water it in, see if you can blast it back to life. So if you've got some super dead spots, you'll probably need to either cut out that sod and replace it with some new sod. You need to look at the soil under the ground too. A lot of times people will just put sod over the top of really bad soil, like it doesn't have really any natural material in it. So if that's the case, you can sometimes sort of top feed just a little bit of potting soil, water it in, and then let it seep down through to get some nutrients. Nutrients and anchorage and all that. All right, we'll continue to work with that. All right, another question. In a hot, dry climate, something like what here we are in Utah, what are some of the best low maintenance plants? So those of you that do live in more arid areas, the desert Southwest, the Mountain West, there's even actual areas, we don't even think about it, that are dry inland in Washington State. Those of you have been in Eastern Washington and that sort of thing. So anything, here's just the basic idea to think of when you think, instead of giving you a list of plants, you can get a list of plants by going to your extension agency online. And in the case of Utah, it's Utah State University, so you're gonna go usu.edu. If you were in Kentucky State, it'd probably be ksu.edu. And then forward slash extension, because it's an extension agency. And then once it does that, you've got all sorts of publications. Do a search and say, drought resistant plants for, and then type in your area. And they're gonna have a whole list of recommended cultivars which is the word for cultivated varieties that are adapted well for your area. But let's go back to Shelby's question. Generally speaking, for arid areas, the smaller the leaf size and the lower, we're talking about shrubs, the lower the growth habit, the more well adapted it is for arid areas. This has to do with how much moisture is lost. These plants are well adapted, have smaller and sometimes waxier leaves that stop moisture from moving in and evaporating off so that the plant thrives in this very hot, bake in the sun type of environment. So low crawlers, if you're looking for bigger shrubs, one of our favorites around here that we work with a lot of butterfly bushes, as well as if you want a bigger one is cotoneaster. And cotoneaster looks like cotton yester with one T like C-O-T-O-N and then almost Easter, but it's pronounced cotoneaster. And we have two of them growing along our driveway that don't have a bit of irrigation on them. And these things are now- Probably five and a half foot tall. At least, and they're just green, they're important habitat plant, but you can keep them- They come back every year. Yeah, you can keep them pruned back. So that's the general idea. So go to your extension agent and come up with that. Hey, I want to give a shout out to weedy garden, right? I hope that's just a moniker, not a practice. Although I think all of us know- We have a weedy garden right now. Yeah, it's constant, isn't it? You don't weed once. No, we weed every day. Matter of fact, I got up early yesterday, went out, we have some rows of onions going in there. And onions are really bad competers with weeds. They're such shallow rooted plants. And where we are, we get a lot of the pigweed coming up. So I've got a big flush of pigweed. So I was out there with my Heron Hoe, which by the way, if you've ever seen the Heron Hoe, H-E-R-O-N, you can look it up online. We have a video about it. Yeah, well, there's a video, check it out. And we've got two different sides. I was using that yesterday morning. So weedy garden, we get it. And I'm sure that we've learned, as I'm sure you have, gardening is not a science. I mean, a perfect setting. Those beautiful pictures and all the gardening, those are highly stylized. That's not the way it really goes. So thank you. Our chickens really love it when Jay goes out and weeds because then they get all the weeds that he's hoed up and they get to eat them. And they love pigweed, which is this nasty plant. I don't know why they love it so much, but they eat that right up. Right on. Well, okay, wanna jump subject here. Again, if some of you have learned some lessons during this time of the coronavirus that you think you're gonna make use of the rest of your life, why don't you put it in your comments here and we'll get in front of us because we'd like to hear what you have to say. There's certainly been some lessons we've learned. Maggie, you hit earlier about just being more immediate and expressing affection to people or the thoughts, how you value them. As well as being able to hug people. Maggie's a hugger. So she just misses that. She said to somebody, you know, when I do get to see you again, it's gonna get really weird because I'm gonna hug you inappropriately long. So- He's usually the inappropriate one. So it feels weird that I'm gonna be inappropriate. I've handed my mantle to her. So Weedy Gardens, it's a nickname since I was seven years old. I tried to dig out five gallon bucket of weeds every day. That's a good way to do it. Just keep at it, dig it out. I've been doing the same thing. We have a weed around here called prickly lettuce. And when it's young, it's pretty succulent. The chickens love it. They love young pigweed too. So I get this kind of, I won't say guilty pleasure. It's like this really fulfilling pleasure of pulling the weeds out and then watch them go down the gullets of the chickens. And turn into eggs. And then turn into eggs, which we share with our production crew. Rob and his family get to enjoy those as well as their friends that we leave them on their front doorsteps. And that's a really prized gift. So I like your approach. Andy has said one of the things that she has learned during this time is cooking at home more. Right on. I think this has been a good reset. Don't you? It forces you to get back to, you know, our life was so frantic before the pandemic really. You know, we seemed like we had something every night that we had to do or that we were a part of. And most of it was in the big city that's 25 miles away from us. So we were constantly commuting back and forth. And just to have every day, we're pretty much at home and pitter around outside. And Jay's always got projects in the workshop going on. He's got 20 things going on in there right now. Yeah, we've actually put a production control system in, which we have. It's a tracking system. I have a tracking system, because otherwise carrying around your head and that helps you to gather materials. But you know, if you're working a similar project. It gives you an excuse to go to the hardwood store again. Yeah. Which we were just there yesterday. Just yesterday. Oh, there's nothing like the smell of it. Like, oh, here comes dirt farmer Jay again. Yep. Yeah. Yep. Yep, those guys are good friends. Anyway, sorry about that. So yeah, I like that approach. We have learned to cook more simply on things and boy, there's just some good eating. And you can get in the habit of just always running out to get something or highly prepared foods and learning the simple joy of putting something together and having a connection to what's on the plate. And if there's things you've grown, Maggie makes an incredible spring roll using the Thai rice paper, using basil and cucumber and carrot and stuff out of our garden and a little bit of- Some shrimp or some fried pork. Fried pork or whatever. It's just incredible. So that connection. So I like it, Andy. I think that's a great thing. One of the things that we just rediscovered, kind of. When I was growing up, my mom would cook chicken fried steak a lot. And we hadn't made that for years. And Jay came home with some of those, what do they call those? Cube steaks. Yeah. Little cubes of perforated cube steak. Like the meat marks on the outside of it. Inexpensive cut of meat. And it's really, really easy to make. I just dredge it in some milk and then flour both sides, salt and pepper it, put it in a- In our cast iron skillet. Cast iron skillet with just a little bit of oil. Olive oil. And cook it about five to seven minutes on each side. Oh, my word. It's good eating. And I love it with ketchup. So anyway, okay. Anyway. All right, so that's excellent. Hey, Weedy Garden, let's come back to your comment. You're asking about some of that wild lettuce. It depends on what wild lettuce it is. The weed that we have is called prickly lettuce. And in its young stages, it puts out these pretty elongated leaves. Almost looks like a arugula, a large leaf or that kind of thing. But it very quickly starts to grow a central spine that puts these, and the reason they call it prickly lettuce, it puts these little prickly things out that you only want to pull it when you're using gloves. But when you pull it at a young stage, the chickens love it. And I've actually tasted it. It's kind of mild at that stage. But to be honest with you, I haven't ingested a lot of it. I don't have a good answer to that. You know, I won't tell you, hey, why don't you try a bowl of it and let us know how it goes, because I don't want to be responsible for, you're on your own there. But I suspected at young age, especially because of the way the chickens ingest it. And I mean, they actually compete for it. When you throw it in there, a bucket of it, and they scratch it all and they go for it. So give it a shot. Hey, Ronaldo, it is great to have you be a part of our viewer family. You are, thanks for joining us. It says here, you've been learning more things on YouTube during this stay at home process. So it sounds like you're a lifelong learner, which is a trait that both you and I really value. There's so many cool things to learn and experience. So thanks for being a part of that process. What you've asked is if we do plant a garden, yes. We have a full food plot, but we also have raised beds and we use vegetables or some plants interspersed in our normal ornamental garden. So like, for instance, we use pumpkins to grow in a long lane, so big old leaves, and they fill in very quickly and grow very quickly. There'll be sunflowers out there. Sometimes we've got basil or those kinds of things that are planted in there, melon crops. So yes, we do all of that. And you have a question about tomatoes. You said, I have no problem with getting an abundance of sun gold tomatoes or cherry size, but have a problem with bigger tomatoes, such as Better Boy, Big Boy, et cetera. They seem to be few and small in size. I live north of Memphis, Tennessee, any suggestions? Yeah, a couple of things. Number one, let me comment. Love the Southeast, been to Memphis area. I know it's very humid there, but I love the greenery. So number one, kudos to you living in a cool place in the country. We did a vacation to Sevierville. Yeah. We learned how to say it, Sevierville. Yeah, so you're in Western Tennessee. We're in Eastern, but we've been in Memphis. And of course we went there, went to Graceland, Graceland and all that. So cool area, but here's the thing on tomatoes. The big thing on tomatoes, they're highly sensitive to nitrogen. So we have a tendency when we're growing tomatoes, here's what I'm suspect's happening in your situation, and you can respond back and tell me. If you're feeding the tomatoes and you're using something that has a significant amount of nitrogen, going back to Maggie's earlier comment, if the first number is the biggest number in those three numbers on your fertilizer, you're probably getting, you're essentially growing ornamental tomatoes because it puts all this energy into the leaves and the stems at the expense and discourages growth on fruit. So what you need is to make sure that you're either using something that's got a big number in the middle or using a general purpose like a 10, 10, 10 or a 16, 16, 16, but try to get something that's called a bloom buster or something like that, where it's got a higher number in the middle and that'll stimulate more blooms and then keep in more fruit. The second thing is consistent watering. Don't overwater tomatoes. They're very efficient in pulling water. You water deeply, but less often. Correct, and so give those two things, and if you're already doing those things, let us know and maybe we can think about some other things here. The other thing too is to, tomatoes have to be tended a lot, like every day, because every time a new little sprout of a leaf comes out, if you don't clip that off, it's gonna put its energy into growing that new branch and not into your tomatoes. And where you're gonna see those is right at the, you know, you got the main stem, you've got the main side branches right at the intersection of the main. You'll see this little thing growing out of the axle of that. And that sucker, I mean, if you're really an avid grower, you can actually cut that thing out when it's maybe four inches and transplant it and it'll start another one. But if, to Maggie's point, if you let all those keep growing, I just use a utility knife, a little razor knife, slice them out, drop them. That'll put energy into the main stem, the main scaffold branches, and in the fruit you're growing, okay? Give that a shot, you guys, see if that really helps. All right. Removing moss on your grass. Yeah. Well, moss comes as a result of two things. One, limited sunlight. Well, let me ask you, I'll put the question here. Any tips on removing moss in your grass? I have a lot in my backyard. So yeah, a couple of things. Let's just look at the causes of it so that if you can modify the causes or eliminate the causes, then you don't end up having to treat it. There's two things that happen to create moss. One, significant amount of darkness where it's in deep shadow, ongoing, limited amount of lice, it's very shady, okay? There's a thing called bright shade where it's not direct sunlight, but you're getting sunlight reflected off adjacent surfaces, a bright white wall, another building, a metal roof, a window that's reflecting light into the area. That all helps. But if you've got a very shady and it's in dark a lot, moss will tend to grow. The second thing is excess moisture. So if it's an area that collects moisture or you're watering pretty heavily, and it's protected where breezes don't move well across it, you're gonna have moss problem. If you can modify any of those, get less moisture, get air moving across or get light to it, you're gonna greatly reduce it. Yeah, the moisture for grass, I mean, the important part to get the moisture is the roots. Right, not the blades. Not the top. Right. So if your moisture's just laying on the grass, it's probably, you need to aerate your lawn and get those holes in there. It actually, aerators take a little clump out of the lawn and leave it open so that the water will run into those holes and really feed the roots the water that they need to keep the grass growing. Right. Keith, I hope that helps you. If the rest of it just gets where you can't control it and you're doing those other things, there are some topical treatments you can spray that are fungicides or there's different, copper-based compounds that'll knock the moss down. But let's try attacking the root cause, no pun intended, or maybe one, of why it's going on and then address that. But if not, then you end up out in the backside having to treat it. So Keith, hope that helps you, okay? Very good. A couple other things I wanted to just mention real quick. Here's something that we would really value. We try to, if you look at our channel, one of the reasons that Maggie and I got into this is the socialization. We very much enjoy interacting with people. We like having a diverse group of friends and just different viewpoints and insights and life experiences. And so that's been valuable to us. And if you look at the content that we put out, it falls in like five buckets. Maggie, what are some of the top ones that come to mind for you that we do? Well, we have the gardening side and you have the woodworking side and the culinary side. Right, Maggie's kitchen segments, yeah. And then we do a lot of product reviews. Yeah, and the product reviews we put out there, if you'll find, these are not paid endorsements. These are items, sometimes they're things that we've purchased. Sometimes they're things that have been sent to us that we felt really fit into our genre. In other words, they were real things that we would use, an accessory for the truck, something out in the garden, something that's a pruner, those kinds of things. Yes, carts. We have one coming up on Maggie's lawn tractor, which is a semi-commercial John Deere riding lawnmower. I love to mow the grass. That's one of her favorite things, boy. So those are the kinds of things we've put out there. So if you look at those buckets, but here's my question. That was a long ramp up the question. You as our friends, as our viewers, your family, what are the types of things that resonate with you that you find valuable, or you thought it'd be really cool if Dirt Farmer Maggie or Dirt Farmer Jay would take on this topic, or that there was an episode related to it? It can be technical. It can be related to gardening. It can be any of those kinds of things. And if you've got some ideas that you would think you'd like to send our way, and we'd really much enjoy that. We count on the insights of other people to give us some direction. So please let us know some things that you might feel might resonate with you, okay? Hey, Shimmy Bammy. What a name. Shimmy Bammy. From Alabama? Is that a birth name? No, anyway. Shimmy Bammy, how much water would you use daily for watermelon in a place in Arizona? Should I use wood chips to save moisture? You're on the right track. Okay, watermelon. Has the word water in it. Yeah, okay. So here's something to remember though. If you look and see where watermelon, these kinds of melons came from originally, where do you think they might've come from? Well, it might be surprising. Came from the Middle East. That's right. Iran, Iraq, Mesopotamia, that whole area. Okay, the Levant, that whole area where Israel, Jordan, all that, Syria, all that. And so these are arid plants that are very efficient at pulling up water. But no plant likes to be drowned and then droughted. Drowned and then droughted. So if you can help the plant by giving it moderate moisture over a period of time, then it's gonna help it, no matter what kind of melon it is. Now here's the balancing act with melon. If you overwater it, the plant is very efficient at pulling up water, just like tomatoes are, and it'll put that water somewhere. You know where it goes? Into the fruit. And if there's too much water in a tomato, it'll split it. In a watermelon, it'll do the same thing. It'll crack the melon. Now you've got, you've compromised the melon. And so whenever you see cracking of melons, it's from overwatering. That's a good thing to remember. Go ahead, you wanna add something? So also the soil that you're planting your garden in is super, super important. We have a big compost pile out the back. We have a neighbor who has longhorn cattle and we get all his manure. And it's been rotting out there now for three or four years. Yeah, multiple years. We just keep adding, keep amending soil. Add soil and it turns into this great, great compost. But the more organic material you can put into your soil, especially in your garden area, and it'll help hold the moisture where it needs to be at the root of the plant rather than repelling the moisture because super, super dry soil actually repels the moisture. Right, it's hard to penetrate, especially if there's a clay content in it. But if you have organic material, it's gonna seep in and stay there. And it holds nutrients differently. It accesses nutrients. So Maggie's on the right track. Now you've also asked and mentioned one other thing, mulching, chips. Anytime you can mulch around a plant, it's a good idea for multiple reasons. Number one, it suppresses weeds. Number two, it moderates the soil temperature. Less swing in temperature through the day and nighttime hours like putting a blanket on it. Number three, it keeps the moisture more even, right? The only thing I would make sure is I didn't pack the mulch right up against the stem because that can invite critters or bugs just chew away at that. So hopefully that helps you there, Shimmy Bammy. All right. Let's see, we're going back to Ronaldo. He's been, thanks for the suggestions that he was talking about tomatoes, getting better tomatoes. He says, I've been using Miracle-Gro in the soil for the tomatoes. They have another version of it that might be helpful to you. Try this other deal of seeing if you get a higher number, more phosphorus, a little bit more potash, less nitrogen and see if that helps you on that, okay? With that higher phosphorus content. All right. Here's an episode idea that Ronaldo's also brought up and that is showing our garden. That's a good idea. Once we get it into full bloom and stuff, no pun intended, but some of the rows in there, and we just did a episode two weeks ago showing our drip irrigation system that's made from PVC pipe and how that really works. It's very inexpensive and modular. So we do furrow rows as well as putting the raised beds. So Ronaldo, that's a great idea. We'll do a walkthrough. We are going to do a walkthrough here, a time-lapse that shows grapes because we have a little vineyard and they're all pruned and just budding out right now. So we're going to show a time-lapse of what it looks like from right now to at the end of the season of just showing the different things in the grape harvest. So that- And then we take our grapes and make raisins out of them. So we do a lot of grapes. And actually, I'll show you something here. This is a preview. This is going to be my next cooking video, which these are cooked raisin cookies. And you actually, it's raisins that we grew the grapes, dehydrated them into raisins. And- Solar dried, yeah. You boil down the raisins with sugar and water, and you get this gooey, with cornstarch, you get this gooey thing that goes in the middle between two doughs, and then you just crimp the edges and it's really yummy. So watch for that video. It'll be coming out pretty soon. Right on, right on. So that's kind of, all right, guys, we're kind of towards the end of our time, but I want to make sure that we hit a couple other things that have come up. So let me see. Hey, thanks for the compliment. We have Shell from California. Love your site, Jay and Maggie. Thank you, guys. Thank you for being a part and being jumping on today and participating actively like this. Really great ideas. Number one, I can't get avocados to produce fruit. We'll come to that in a moment. And two, I've been battling moles in my lawn. I've tried hoes, poison. Tell me hoes, I've tried hoes. Put a hose down the hole. Oh, put a hose down the hole, try to flood them out? Yeah. Gotcha, all right. We'll come to that, but no luck yet, ideas. Okay, so a couple of things. You're in California. Give us a follow-up message here that Rob can get in front of us. Are you in Southern California, Northern California? And are you at a higher altitude or lower in the more moderate areas? Avocados are not our wheelhouse because we're in Northern Utah. Avocados don't grow here, except as container plants, patio plants, which you'd have to do a lot of moving in and out and all that. I just find it more gratifying to go down and buy some good ones at our grocer. And we actually have... Go ahead. You wanna find out how to ripen avocados really fast. We have a video on that. Yeah, search that video on how to ripen them overnight. But I don't really have a good idea on that. Here's what I do know about avocados. They're very temperature sensitive. They have to have the right amount of daylight and temperature length of day. And even if you're in a zone that it says that particular variety you've got should grow in, all of us have microclimates. And we have microclimates for a variety of reasons. It might be there's a deep shady area, there's an area that's wind protected or more exposed than another, there's reflected heat and so forth. So you have to check and see if that plant is getting baked or too chilled, or if it is a container plant, if the root system, a lot of times one of the things that suffers is the root ball gets really warmed up because it's container sitting out in the sun. And notice that normally a way a tree grows is in a big soil mass. So it's root temperature keeps more even versus the spikes and falls during the nighttime. So you can look at those. Let's look at the second question. Sorry, I can't be more specific on that. The second thing, battling moles in the lawn. Hose generally will not work. And the reason it won't is that moles build a bunch of series of tunnels and kind of little dams and rises and falls. So water will only go so far and then it won't go into the rest of it. So they'll just keep going into the areas they've dug where they're gonna wait until the flood goes away. So it doesn't usually work too well. Okay. And you're in Northern California. So it's chillier where you are. So going back to your question about avocado. So check the variety of the avocado and then go to your extension service and online and find out what cultivars for your microclimate work well. And if there's any practices, it's generally has to do environmentally why your avocado is not producing well. Getting rid of the moles in the lawn. All right, now going back to the moles. Moles also, so forget the flooding thing. The second thing, poison. Poison will work. You have to place it in the runways. Here's the danger of poison. It is one of the control methods. If the animal is in an area where an other, once the animal dies of the poison, and it is available to another animal, if you have a dog or a cat or something and digs it up and eats it, then you get secondary poison. So that's something to think about, okay? I think trapping or smoking them is the best thing to do. And you can look up, we work with what's called pocket gophers. Different animals, similar habits. And you can look at the link that's in the chat that just appeared here. There is the gopher video that shows you how we approach that. That is using smoke, using gas cartridges, but you can also use what's called a box trap, which, what shall I say, capitalizes on the animal's curiosity and desire to make sure there's no direct outside contact. And that leaves us open at the end, which the animal either wants to go investigate or go and push soil to cover. And when it does, the trap takes them out. And at least at that point, you know. So check that out. Victor makes some of these. Maccabees is another brand. So check some of those things out. Guys, it's a war. They're like weeds. You're not gonna do a one-time thing. They're very prolific. They have lots of offspring. And if your neighbors aren't controlling them, they don't care about property lines. They're gonna come across. So just be persistent. And they also like to eat your sprinkler system. We've had that happen too, yeah. Eat the funny pipe under the ground. And then all of a sudden we turn our sprinkler on in the next spring and there we have gushers, you know, geysers. Or no pressure down line. Where's the water going? It's going in their burrows. So yeah, these are things that can be controlled. Passivity is not the response. So call out to Kara. She says, my grandma Elsie made raisin-filled cookies. They were the most delicious and warm with a slice of sharp cheddar cheese. Really? So we'll have to try that. I love cheddar cheese. Rob is shaking his head. He's my taste tester whenever I do a video. And he gets a grand lunch every time. Yeah, when we do a food, we have a great meal afterwards off camera. I really like that, Kara. That's a great idea. Maggie makes her own mozzarella cheese. I have bought the starter and some of the gear to learn how to do farmhouse cheddar. And that's something I aspire to learn. That might be going great. Now you got two heritage things that would make both. What a great idea. Thank you for that. So Kara, do you cut the cheese real, real thin and then like actually melt it on top of the cookie? Is that what you do? I'd like to have that answer before we get offline here. Right on. So hey, Ed Dana, I saw you in our comment section. Thank you. I remember your name because I had a childhood friend. His name was Dana. And we had another friend that was in the broadcasting business in Tucson. His name was Dana. And so that was a memorable name to me when it popped up. So I've seen your commentary. Thanks for being a part of this today. You're welcome on the board foot. And if I remember correctly, I think you were the one that talked about some of the shortcuts that you developed or that you learned like a one by six is always half a board foot per linear foot. And a two by six is one board foot. And a two by four is two thirds of a board foot and all that. You develop those shortcuts the more that you use the board foot concept and how to purchase lumber and quantify it, know how much you're gonna pay for a piece and what's the nearest finish thing so you have a minimal waste and all that. So thanks for being in. Are you an active woodworker yourself, Ed? Do you do that? Let us know. It'd be interesting. Are there any ideas that you have of further episodes you'd like out of the shop? If so, that'd be great. Also, thanks to James Carpenter, who says, I love your videos. Keep up the great content. Best home educational channel I know. Oh, gosh. Thank you so much, James. You know, Jay is a natural born teacher and I get educated every fricking day of my life. So he is always teaching me something. So I'm glad you appreciate his educational side. Somebody needs to around here. Right on. Renaldo, thanks for taking time as well to be with us and we do intend to stay well. We hope to interact again with you on the other side. All right, we are getting close to our time together. If there are any other lessons that you think of, send it our way. You can actually send it to my direct email. That is Jay, J-A-Y, at DirtFarmerJay.com. Or if you want to correspond with Maggie. And you have to say it like that, DirtFarmerJay.com. That's right. So hear us in your head. When you type it, you put Jay at DirtFarmerJay.com. Or you can do Maggie at DirtFarmerJay.com. You notice it's not at Dirt Farmer Maggie. That's another topic. Hey, that's just the way it is, sorry. You know, I am the captain of my ship. I can't help it that you married an admiral. There you go. That's right. All right. I'm gonna let him think he's the captain of the ship. That's right. All right, you guys, we want to be respectful of your time. Thank you for joining us today on this live remote. It's fun to interact with you, see what's on your mind. We'll post again when we're doing another one. We anticipate it'll probably be about 90 days out. And I, again, want to just say to you guys that understanding that the values you have because you're part of our, your family of self-reliance, hands-on living, being resilient, I believe serves you particularly well, the ones you love, your community specifically in this time of being able to think first, is this something I can do? Is this something I can take on? Is this a skill that I can acquire that I can make use of long-term for me personally, for the ones that I care about, or in my workplace? This is a great approach to life. And if there's anybody that gets it, it's you, our viewer family. So thank you again for being here with us. In about 90 days, we'll have another one of these. We'll get back together. I want to reach out and thank Rob Lambert behind the scenes around the corner right here again. Oh, stick your face in, Rob. Yeah, stick your face in here again. We've got more people. So there's our friend. My son from another mother. There's Rob. Rob's running things behind the scenes here. And when you see our videos, it is his work that does the editing and all of that takes the video and puts it together. Sometimes I say takes a sowsie or makes a purse out of it, makes it beautiful. So it's Rob that does that. Also want to thank Shelby. Shelby is behind the scenes, also has been on the chat here with us today. Shelby is our social media person. And those of you who have seen us through Instagram or the Facebook posts, that is due to Shelby's creativity, energy, and the way that she approaches and thinks about things and puts ideas out there. So Shelby, thanks for being a part of the team as well as me. She's the bomb. She is the bomb. So Dirt Farm and Maggie, I look forward to living life with you today, the things we get to do, be involved in. Thanks for being here yourself today. Well, thank you. Right on. I'm glad that, because I- Where else would I be? Is I'm in a pandemic. Not a pandemic, a pandemic. Yeah, no pandemics here at all. No. Okay. All right, you guys, we're gonna let you go. Thank you so much for being here today. Until the next time, this is Dirt Farmer. And Dirt Farmer Maggie. No. This is Dirt Farmer Maggie. And this is Dirt Farmer Jay. Hey, goodbye you all. We really enjoyed it. We'll see you soon.