EPISODE #3
EPISODE 3 TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to lawn care secrets with Romy Robinson. I’m your co-host, Kyle Kelin, and we’re here to provide you quick tips and hidden secrets so you can have the greenest lawn on your block.
Kyle: Hey, Romy! How you doin’?
Romy: I’m doing good. How about you, Kyle?
Kyle: Pretty good, good, good. So what’s been going on? What’s new?
Romy: Just working, trying to keep the lawns in good health before we get to winter time and makes my job easier from spring. If I can keep them healthy going into winter and begin a spring we’re ready to go.
Kyle: Yeah. So alright, should we get people on a water or less as well?
Romy: Yeah, keep the water down. Understand it you know, disease is in the yards right now or in the St. Augustine brown patch disease, you know understand it kind of educate yourself on that so you don’t panic think the whole yards are going die.
Kyle: Good deal! So you want a few questions?
Romy: Yeah, yeah! That will be great.
Kyle: So you guys remember if you have any questions for Romy, email those in at Askromy@gmail.com. So from Katey Roadim said, “Dear Romy, the guy that cuts my grass told me that I should plant winter rye. I don’t have an idea what that is. What’s winter rye?
Romy: Winter rye…it’s a grass seed and you plant it during the winter time and it grows all through the winter and dies off on its own when it becomes spring time. Okay when you got your model home during the winter time you will see a lot of model homes during the winter time and have it’s dark green grass. You’ll see it in St. Augustine Lawns and Bermuda, you will see it in.
Kyle: So it makes the lawns really green.
Romy: Yeah, you’re in the winter time on the St. Augustine and the Bermuda go dormant and hibernate during the winter, a lot of people like to plant a winter rye.
Kyle: Sounds so good you make it green during the winter time so hyper brown yard.
Romy: Well, it’s really not the best thing to do.
Kyle: Okay.
Romy: Let me explain to you why. On both your St. Augustine and your Bermuda, but more so on your St. Augustine, and I learned a lesson because I’m planting it cause my wife wanted me to plant it during winter.
Kyle: Hahaha… so you guys just self-experiment.
Romy: Yeah, yeah! About my first home, we moved in she liked the way the lawns looked the model homes during the winter had me go after and plant it. I was mole along the winter lawn of course suddenly like that I had like the thing about the winter rise on it’s a winter grass it takes a lot of water and a lot of nutrients way from the St. Augustine even the Bermuda during the winter months when it’s on the hibernate state, and during the winter time when the St. Augustine and Bermuda hibernates make vulnerable and you come in and you plant that seed that winter rise and it grows all through the winter. It grows fast and you got to water it you got to mold it all during the winter, so keep in mind all winter long you’re going to be still paying mowing guy. Okay while it’s growing and you’re watering it what’s happening is that rise is taking all the nutrients away from the St. Augustine and Bermuda. It’s competing with that grass and when the St. Augustine and Bermuda, it’s competing with that grass and when the St. Augustine and Bermuda is vulnerable during the winter that winter rye likes to grow during that time in the earth it’s going to take up all these nutrients and all the water from it and what happens also when you mow it during the winter time the thatch it’s going to break down really easier and drop from the bottom of the mowing in this big clumps. With them clumps due as they set there and undercover in the St. Augustine grass once you get to the spring time and it starts to warm up that winter rye die off on its own because it doesn’t like to grow when it starts to get in hot. That’s why they called it winter rye. It grows just dying the winter time and dies off of on its own during the winter spring but once you’d start dying off because it set there. The St. Augustine during the winter was vulnerable. It comes spring time once that rye dies off that St. Augustine is going to be much thinner than your Bermuda, because the Bermuda can handle that a little bit better dry, but I don’t recommend to plant it.
Kyle: It sounds like your kind of treating a little bit of a green lawn on the winter time for real to have a help to look at your lawn have a long term during spring.
Romy: What I do is, during the winter time your St. Augustine and Bermuda let it rest you know. Don’t come in and put stress on it during the winter if you have a freeze that’s enough stress on the grass already and you get a rye coming you know, they’re pulling all the nutrients and all water from it. This is the, you know, the double whammy on that grass but it’s best not to plant it. I don’t recommend it. You can do it but you know just the following spring expect me on the St. Augustine to be suffering and then the thing about it set seeds stays on the soil and say you plant it one year and you didn’t want it the next year while the following year it sets in that soil that you’re around the following year it was start coming up again even though you didn’t plant it that seeds still stays your dormant, last dormant in the soil so the following year it’s just keeps coming up, it’s a booger and it’s something you know, you really don’t want to put in your yard, I don’t recommend it.
Kyle: Only in South Texas that they want their yard green all your…
Romy: Yeah, you know Colorado staff like that the way up there and the pan handle where’s cold staff and you know, maybe get away in a little bit more there than staying here in this area.
Kyle: Alright, so the next question is from Katy Victoria. She wrote it here and said that her neighbor recommended that she dethatch her lawn and wanted to see if you taught it’s a good idea and or she taught her on that.
Romy: Well dethatching a lawn, what that is if you kind of back up. I told you how to leave your clip ends down during the spring and summer and in the fall, and when you dethatch a lawn what you’re doing is you’re pulling all that charity yard, and the best time of dethatching the lawn is about the end of February just before spring you don’t want to do it during the fall on the winter one around the corner. One of my neighbors has a Bermuda yard as she dethatched it what I mean on a Bermuda yard is like running and come through the grass like breaking all that dead thatch charity grass. It’s good to do that but do it about the end of February early March just before spring on the St. Augustine lawn. The way you dethatch that you just take your lawn more down and not too lower normal and bag your clip-ins you don’t want to do that now or during that the winter. You do that early spring and when we get that time I’ll talk to you about it but, labor time the road dethatched for Bermuda yards when out there and really good and just really torn up and pulls the runner up and you just, you know, just like running a cone through your grass. It’s really bad, after she dethatched it pulled up all that thatch out of there and messed the yard as she coming in and put out some top some stuff and it’s kind of choke head crashed from filling back in. So don’t go in there and dethatch right now. When we get to the spring time I’ll talk to you more about it, so but right now it’s not the time to dethatch the lawn.
Kyle: So you told me, yeah, a few months ago make sure I raise my motor hive so I’ve continued to do that or are you suggesting me to change that.
Romy: Okay, that’s a good point as you get closer to the fall a lot of people like the mowing long lawn. St. Augustine likes to be long mowing hive nor order to reach its maximum potential but actually starts getting down to the fall months and it gets cooler if you choose the model a little bit than normal because the temperature is going down. It’s okay to go down, a half a natural know your Bermuda not going to see a whole lot of stress because just the temperature gets colder this whole temperature gets colder and it takes a lot of stress on the lawn but right now you know, if you want to mow a little bit lower than normal, it is going to slow down from growing because the time that we get into, that’s up to you the way you the way I looked at it find take it a little bit lower and it’s slows down from growing that’s just less have to pay the mowing guy you know, you don’t have to come so frequently but that’s up to you.
Kyle: You get any tips to give the mowing guy to change the mowing height because I keep asking it’s always the same.
Romy: Well, it taught and I’ve get a lot of costumers they tell me, you know they can’t get to raise the mowing. If you have a guy mowing for eight to ten years and he’s doing a good job and can’t get it to mowing it at it’s a tough call but I’m not saying to fire the guy or anything but you’re the boss and you pay me and you pay other services to get it dark green and pretty much you got a guy to cut off the color staff no sense of having me out there, then nothing gets the mowing guy.
Kyle: It’s like your cutting your hair off right.
Romy: That happened two weeks ago. It’s $4.99 for haircut, and my wife tells me you pay $4.99 kind of all even, and it won’t grow up and cause I’m older now it doesn’t matter what I look like.
Kyle: Alright next question now, Bill from Sugarland. That is, why his house didn’t get any water from the flood but a few weeks back, the yard get quite a bit of water. Is there anything special since we had so much water in this standing in the yard for so long?
Romy: What I recommend right now is all that if you got a lot of flood water on your lawn you don’t need your top soil and all that stuff back home on it. Just keep the water off the lawn and all that moisture deep down on that and is it not need to be watered for a while. What can happen if you get that flood if can transfer from lawn to another, expect to maybe see more weeds than the normal this season once we get the fall and winter could start getting sob web and warms because I could transfer that stuff the babies from one lawn to another so grub worms are going to be deep down soils. You know you’re not going to really see them got transferred but sod web worms yeah, but really keep an eye on it. You don’t want to get you know anything kill sod web worms and most likely going to see a lot of weeds as fall out in this winter just because of that reason.
Kyle: Yes, yes really saying that not my special you can do just keep an eye on it and open the treatment on different things.
Romy: Yeah, nothings special. There’s nothing special you have to do because of flooded, nerve falls long it’s underwater it’s going to be alright.
Kyle: So guys that’s ask the questions today. Don’t forget to email your questions in askromy@gmail.com or get those qeued up for you. So Romy’s got a bunch of videos out on Youtube. If you search Youtube for askromy, these come up and there’s a lot of resources on greenerthanever.com. Romy’s got his blog past out there. He’s got videos and you can also find the show notes to this episode and the past one’s as well so follow. That being said, Romy any parting advice for our listeners?
Romy: Thanks for listening and keep the questions coming and anything I can do to help you with anytime. Just go to our website or call me anytime 7133019097.
Kyle: I forgot we can set the phone number anytime alright. Thank you, guys!
Romy: We can talk grass anytime. Thank you, guys. Thank you!
