Have you been doing this all wrong?

you wouldn't go to a doctor that just prescribed you a pill and didn't tell you how to correct your health problem and you shouldn't have a lawn care expert working with you on your lawn that doesn't tell you how to heal your lawn versus how to throw a pill on it hey there folks this is josh stoneyridge farmer welcome back to another awesome day here on the stoney ridge farm it is absolutely gorgeous it's december we just don't get weather like this all the time and today we're going to talk about winter rising and winter lawn care now it's something that doesn't get touched on too awful much if you have a lawn guy and you pay him to do him or her to do whatever it is with your lawn to winterize it good for you great for you i'm going to talk to you about building soil not about mowing grass i'm going to talk to you about building an ecosystem in your yard so that you can reduce the bills you can reduce the expenditures on lime soil amendments and fertilizers out on your lawn and control weeds so guys come along as we talk a little bit about winter lawn care for an awesome spring and summer lawn that's drought tolerant we gotta beat the drought folks welcome to the stoney ridge farm all around us is 150 acres of biodiverse farmland here and we're building a first generation farm among many other things here on the stoney ridge so when i bought this property right here and on 150 acres again this was not here this is a mobile home that i'm living in temporarily until i can save up enough money to build my house i'm living below my means and by living below my means i want to spend less money on my lawn okay you see my lawn is green my lawn is luscious my lawn is the way it is without as many weeds as most lawns without any sprays without any chemicals and without fertilizers okay so what we're gonna do today is we're gonna teach you a little bit about winterizing your lawn so here's my flower bed i just cleaned out all sorts of dead debris and leaves and stuff from my flower bed all the way around the house and where did i put it not in a bucket and dump it in the woods i threw it out here in the yard and what we're going to do is we're going to run this toro titan max mower over top of all this what we need to think about as we mow as we grow as we build our lawn as we need to think about an ecosystem down in this soil something that's going to be drought tolerant what we have to think about is biomass so biomass meaning all of this dried up material is carbon that carbonaceous material forms a bed in your soil for worms and for all sorts of microbes to grow when those worms and microbes grow that makes your soil grow when your soil grows it becomes drought tolerant the weeds go away when you build an ecosystem for a lawn your weeds go away so what we're going to do out here in the front there's a lot of what looks like grass material this was all from day lilies that are planted right here okay all that material died we went through the flower bed we plucked it all out i took the rake and the toro leaf blower and i blew all this stuff out we're gonna walk around the other side of the house real quick because we've got different stuff on the other side of the house you can see let me just bend over this is almost like straw or hay okay it's no good for anything but most people would rake up the leaves and rake up this straw looking material and dump it over in the woods when it really is going to help your lawn so it's not hurting your lawn when you pay somebody or when you go out and you rake your leaves up you're cheating yourself out of biomass biomass for your soil when i moved here this was bare red dirt and now it's luscious grass it's covered with leaves right now but it won't be for long we're going to hop on the mower and we're going to get busy you can see all out through here this is where i clean the flower beds out they're leaves again we're going to chop those up we're going to pulverize them and by springtime when we start mowing again we are going to have a luscious awesome drought tolerant and weed free lawn now when i say weed free i'm talking about obnoxious weeds i'm not talking about clover because we do have some clover here in our lawn the reason this clover is flourishing is because the soil is devoid of nitrogen okay now we're not putting nitrogen on the soil with this brown stuff that's carbon we need nitrogen to make grass grow once the carbon and nitrogen finds its comfortable balance the grass will choke out the clover so if you've got a lot of clover in your lawn and when you walk through your lawn you should feel it smooshing okay you should feel it mush mush mush right now that's what i feel if your lawn is devoid of nitrogen clover is going to grow once your lawn clover fixes nitrogen once your lawn gets corrected by the clover so clover fixes nitrogen meaning clover has nodules on the roots that pull nitrogen from the air into the soil you don't need fertilizer no fertilizer no fertilizer no fertilizer for years guys years so let's get busy we're gonna hop on the toro and get busy mowing we'll show you this is gonna look totally different in just a minute guys you can see this toro titan max mower is kicking butt through here it's just plowing through all these leaves and all this mess that was here in my flower bed up until yesterday so every year this is what i do and anytime i have any weeds or any leaves or anything like that i'm always mowing them into my grass i'm integrating them into the soil instead of wasting them so you really have to think about this from a soil standpoint you're trying to build an ecosystem for lawn growth for grass growth and what you're doing by building that ecosystem and you rake up all the leaves and you take up all the biomass from the soil and then you spread fertilizer on there you're just sterilizing the soil every year year after year after year that's why your lawn gets worse year after year after year and requires more attention and thus more money from your lawn care guy or from you so if you integrate a program like this thinking about building soil versus throwing a pill at the land you will do better so hopefully this will serve as a reminder to you guys next year or this fall or even now if you haven't raked your leaves up in your yard go out there chop them up pulverize them and let them build that biomass because what you want is earthworms you want fungus you want everything in your yard think about your soil not just your grass it's your soil it's what's underneath the grass it's what's making everything grow lusciously and preventing those weeds so 15 minutes later all that mess is gone and does your lawn look that nice i'm telling you guys there's some science here that you really need to be thinking about you wouldn't go to a doctor that just prescribed you a pill and didn't tell you how to correct your health problem and you shouldn't have a lawn care expert working with you on your lawn that doesn't tell you how to heal your lawn versus how to throw a pill on it so you got to think about that guys it's not rocket science you need to stop learning language like fertilizer and pre-emergent and lime and you need to start learning words like biomass carbon and mycorrhizal fungi that's what builds soil that's what builds your lawn so hopefully this helped you guys a little bit hopefully you'll save some money next year on your lawn and hopefully you'll get out there working the flower beds get everything ready and have a beautiful lawn this year guys thanks a lot for joining me here on the stoney ridge farm please pound that like button jump in subscribe the channel got 150 acres out here we're doing the same thing that we're doing with our lawn on the entire farm with our cows awesome guys we'll see you next time hopefully this little tip helps save you some money all right come on down [Music] hey fall in the winter all right folks all right josh you're losing your voice because you've done too many videos today oh all that one breath so frustrated you laughed didn't you