Dad, how do I?
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Transcript by Youtube. Slightly edited with AI.
Lawn Mower
Hey kids! Today I’m going to actually walk you through a lawn mower, but first I have a dad joke for you: Did you hear that Tesla’s going to launch their own line of lawn mowers? Yeah, they’re going to call it “Elon.” So anyway, let’s get started.
Okay, so this is my battery-powered mower, and it just uses one of these. I’m going to show you where that goes. This thing is pretty slick. There are some pretty amazing things about it. I’ll walk you through a few things real quick. It comes with a [Music] where you walk behind it, and it just kind of keeps up with you. When you push on this, it just keeps pace with you; that’s how you go to work.
Okay, yeah, so you need to actually extend these arms and lock it in. There’s a button right here to start. I have to push that. Actually, I have to push one of these first, so I push that and I push that. I have to push either one of these, and I push [Music].
This is the battery. You just lift that up, and this battery goes right in here. Okay, that goes there. This thing actually has lights on it—pretty fancy! I don’t know that that’s necessary because, in my mind, my practical mind says, “Why would you want lights? Because then it’s drawing battery power, and you want your battery to last as long as possible,” right?
So here’s another thing about this too: If you buy a spare battery, it’s got a storage compartment right there. You put your battery in it. That way, if you’re out mowing and the battery dies, you just pop that one out, pop the new one in, and you’re still going; you don’t have to run back inside. It’s nice to have that spare battery.
The way you raise and lower this is with its spring loaded mechanism. All you’re doing is just pushing it up and down like that. See that? It’s moving all the wheels, so you just get it where you want it. You can actually see right here it says 1 inch to up to 4 inches. I can get a close-up of that for you, but then it just locks in wherever you want it.
The bag is really easy too, right? Pretty slick! You just pull it right off. That’s about it. I mean, there’s really not much to this thing, but it works really well. As long as those batteries are going to last, I would highly recommend this. That’s the only caveat I have for you; I just don’t know if those batteries are going to last for you.
Other than that, it’s great! I’ve been able to mow my whole backyard and then half of my front yard on one battery. If these batteries are charging in a couple of years, I would highly recommend this. Here’s the close-up of that dial that I was talking about, and then the spring-loaded mechanism, so you can just push that in and lift it up and down. Makes it pretty easy. When you get it close, make sure it locks in where you want it to be, right?
I think that’s about it other than this compartment here. That just slides right down in there—pretty easy. Now I’m going to go ahead and mow.
Okay, so what I normally do is the perimeter first, and then I go over it and work my way in a big circle. That’s how it works in my backyard. In my front yard, I do a big circle, and then I go back and forth because it’s long. Right? So I do a big circle, get the outside first, because you want to have a system. You want to work your way so that you don’t have bald spots sitting around in your yard; you want to have a method to it.
Okay, so I’m just going to go ahead and mow a little bit, and you’ll catch me coming back around a couple of times.
[Music]
All right, so it’s pretty full. I just need to empty the bag. Now, when you’re using the battery—either in the Craftsman that I have or that Heart—remember when you’re done, take it out and charge it so that it’s fresh when you need it next time, right? You have to make sure that you take it out when you’re done and charge it.
Also, you know that hose? Where you attach the hose at the end to clean it? If you don’t do that every time, it doesn’t work very well. You know, if you try to put that on there and there’s some grass that’s dried and kind of stuck up underneath there, it’s not going to work. But if you do it every time so that the grass is fresh and hasn’t had a chance to clump, it should work halfway decent. You just put that on, and I think you’re supposed to fire it up—that’s what I normally do.
[Music]
All right, so here’s another area in my yard. We used to have something here; I removed it, and now I want to get some grass growing here. I already kind of did a little bit, but we’re going to add topsoil. This is kind of a big area, so I’m probably going to have to go get another bag. Basically, we’re just going to spread that around. Here’s my other bag.
[Music]
Now we can go ahead and put our seed down, and I just like to do this by hand myself. I like to use plenty just to make sure, right? I want the grass to grow; it’s always worked for me to do that. We just kind of want it lightly covered like that, and then kind of tamp it down with your hand.
Looking pretty good! The last thing is that peat moss. We want to put peat moss over the top—that’s the final ingredient that my landscaper neighbor showed me because I didn’t always have good success with this. But if you cover it with the peat moss, it’ll keep that moisture in. Since we added this topsoil too, that helps to keep the moisture in because it’s kind of wet itself.
Now we’re just going to sprinkle that peat moss over the top, and I just do this by [Music] hand. I’m fighting a little bit of wind, so it’s wanting to blow that way. See that? Just real light! But this keeps the moisture in.
Back with my last little bit of peat moss to finish this up. In the area where I live in the Pacific Northwest, we get a lot of rain. You know, we do have like 2 months of summer, but April and May are a good time to do this, especially April. I think March and April are the best times because we get a lot of—you know, “April showers bring May flowers.” That’s very true in Washington.
So, yeah, I shouldn’t really have to water this just because of where I live; you know, you might want to, but just don’t overdo it. You just want to lightly water it so that the moisture stays in there. Yeah, so that peat moss will help hold that moisture in, so like I said, you don’t have to water it much. I’m probably not even going to actually water this because I think we’re going to get some rain today.
So that’s about it, and we’ll keep an eye on it. I’m going to put this little wire fence around it—just something to keep my dogs off. It doesn’t quite go all the way around, but hopefully that’s a deterrent to keep them from running in here. It’d be best, obviously, if it went all the way around, and even if it’s sitting on top a little bit, I guess it’s not that big a deal to just kind of put it like that.
Okay, so this has been about 2 weeks. I just wanted to show you what that looks like and see how the peat moss is kind of up a little bit. What I’m going to do—you’ve got to be really careful. Normally I just leave this alone, but if you want to, just remove that, but then just be very gentle with this, right? So that the grass can kind of peek through. You just don’t want to dig up those seeds, so be careful as you do this because that peat moss holds that moisture in for you.
We’ve got some good growth here, and we’ll be able to fill in too once we see where all the seeds sprout. Yeah, so it’s been about 2 weeks since I planted this. I just wanted to kind of monitor this for you so you can see what we’re looking at. Hopefully, in a couple more weeks, it’ll grow even taller, and we just leave it alone—don’t mess with it. Right? Mow the rest of your grass; just leave this alone because you don’t want to disturb those seeds.
Okay, so I just wanted to show you what this looks like now. This has been right about 3 weeks. You can see that the peat moss is kind of clumpy still, and you just kind of brush that in. You can see that there are still some bare spots.
What I would do now is sprinkle a little more seed. You can even see some of the seed is exposed; I think maybe you can see that. If not, there’s some seed that’s still exposed, so I’ll just put a little more peat moss over the top of that, and then hopefully, those will sprout. But like on these outside edges over here where it doesn’t look like things are sprouting, I’ll just kind of patch that in too with some more seed and then a little more peat moss on top.
So I live in a fairly mild climate. We haven’t had a whole lot of rain like we normally would this time of year; for some reason, we haven’t. If you can, that’d be the ideal situation where you kind of baby it a little bit, where you use that sprayer nice and easy, and then you come the next day and see that some of the seeds are exposed. Then you go ahead and put a little more peat moss on it.
Yeah, and you go from there. You know? If you get a hard rain, all you’ve got to do is just kind of come back out, and then just cover it back up with peat moss because if those seeds are exposed, they’re not going to grow.
It’s a multi-use sprayer. They’re really handy for certain things, but you can put different things inside it. I’m just going to use it for water because I’m actually planting some grass. These are really good because it puts out a nice fine mist and doesn’t disturb the grass too much. So, okay, all we want to do is we just want to add some water in here first. So you just pull that thing out, okay?
We’re just going to put some water in, and then all you do is just take this plunger here and you just put it right down inside. You turn it—just make sure it’s tight. You want a good seal because if you don’t have a good seal, then it won’t fill up with pressure. Then you just put it back here, right? So it’s kind of tightening, and then you just lift up on here, and you just pressurize it.
There’s actually a pressure release valve right here, so make sure that that’s closed. Once you get it where you want it, you just lock it back in, and then now this will just put out a nice fine mist of water. You can adjust it with the nozzle, just like a hose, but it works really well. See? It puts a nice fine mist out there.
Here’s a close-up of this. You can see on the top here there’s a slot right here where the handle fits down, and then you lock it like that. Okay, actually, I think this thing is turned right now, so you just have to turn it once. Okay, now it’ll start. I can feel the air pressure starting to build up.
Okay, and then we just lock it into the handle like that. What that’s for is I’m just going to go ahead and show you that it releases. So like you’re done and still have some pressure built up in here. All you do is just do that, and then the pressure is gone. Now I’ve got to pump it up again, but that’s what that’s for. This model is just to turn it once to the right every time you do it; it opens it or closes it.
Okay, so now it’s closed again. Okay? And then lock the handle, and now we can just go ahead and spray it. It’s got a—if you slide this handle forward, you close it, and then slide the handle forward. It actually just holds it, see? I don’t even need to hold that button down.
The nice thing about it is it puts a nice mist on. This puts a nice mist without really disturbing things, and then that peat moss will hold that water, so I’m not even holding it. You just get it nice and moist. I recommend doing this at night, and then it’ll hold it all the way through the night and then tomorrow too so that those grass seeds can germinate. You just coat it good, right?
Because if we had a thicker mist, it would disturb that peat moss because the peat moss is on there really light; it’s just a light coating on top of the seeds. You can even see some of the seeds peeking out. Hopefully, that’ll help you grow some grass.
So when transplanting a tree or planting a tree, it’s good to do it in early spring or late fall, like I’m doing now, before the first frost. That’s just a good time to do it. In this particular case, I have a tree that’s outgrown its pot—here it is. It’s outgrown this pot, and so I’m going to show you how we’re going to go ahead and transplant that.
The five keys that have always produced good results, I’ve boiled them down to five to try to keep it simple for you. You want to make your hole a little bigger than the root ball that you’re putting in, right? Then, you want to have some good quality potting soil—manure. What I use is potting soil and manure, and I kind of mix those together, and that works really well.
You want to add some sort of fertilizer. What I’m going to use today is a fish fertilizer—it comes in a bottle and you just squirt it in, and then you add water and kind of mix that up. I’m just going to water it with that. So, you want to make sure you gently loosen up that root ball at the bottom, right, and get those roots kind of moving. You don’t just throw it in the ground; you might have some success if you get a ton of water and it loosens up on its own, but you want to do that with your hands.
You want to have plenty of water. Let me walk you through the steps that I take to do this. One thing about my soil is that there used to be a creek running through back here, and so I have a lot of clay if you get down, probably about a foot or two. If you can get through that clay—because it’s usually, for me anyway, it’s about that thick, and then once you can get through that, you can get down to the water table.
If your plant (whatever you’re putting in there) is fighting to get through that clay and to get water, it makes it pretty difficult to grow. You know, if you go down a little bit (if you go down a foot) and run into some clay, try to break through that if you can to get to where the tree can get some water. I think that’s important.
I think we’re plenty good now. Okay, so this is just potting soil and manure mixed together. I just kind of get my hands in here and mix it up, kind of get rid of your clumps. This has always worked good for me, because if you know, everything’s dry down here and the soil isn’t great, this has good nutrients in it.
I want to start by putting some down at the bottom. We want to take our pot, and we’re going to go ahead—and you might have to fight this a little bit depending on how long it’s been sitting in there. So you want to just be gentle, though. We’re going to try to get it to come out.
Okay, good! It looks like it’s wanting to slide right out. So there we go! That’s what your root ball looks like. You probably could get away with just putting it in there like that, right? But we want to loosen this up, and you can—this is probably pretty good soil here—so we’re going to go ahead and use that. Just kind of loosen up the ball so that those roots can kind of be set free to grow in the new hole, right? You want to be gentle, though; you don’t want to rip them off. This one kind of came off, but that feels dry anyway—like it was kind of dead.
That’s pretty good, I think. So something like that. Okay, just put it down in there; see how we want to have it facing? Looks like it might be a little bit low. Let’s go ahead and throw a little bit of those leaves; they’re good—that’s fine. Okay, that looks pretty good right there.
Some of our mixture—there we go! Now it’s standing. Okay, okay, that’s looking pretty good. Might need a little bit more dirt. Make sure it’s seated good too.
[Music]
Right? But gently—a little bit of firm force, but gently. It’s about good! I’m going to go ahead and water it.
[Music]
Again, all right! So I hope this was helpful for you. Thanks for watching, and God bless you!
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This post was previously published on YouTube.
Transcript provided by YouTube then edited with AI
Link to my book: https://amzn.to/3idKKzq Official Website: https://www.dadhowdoiofficial.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dadhowdoi/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dadhowdoi
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