 Well, thank you for coming. My name is Wayne Shadar with the engineering office at the town of Arlington, DPW. Bill Copperthorne works in my office at the system town engineer, and Emily Sullivan is our environmental planner. And the reason we're doing this presentation is the new EPA permit requires us to reach out to different stakeholders in the community to address stormwater and HEP people in the best way to approach the reduction of pollutants in stormwater. So I tasked this presentation to landscapers, landscaping professionals, and residential homeowners if they are so inclined, simply because when you put fertilizer down on your lawn, depending how it's put down, when it's put on the timing, the soil condition, whether it can do exactly what it's meant for it to run off into the local water bottles. So part of the requirements, like I said, from the permit is to reach out to certain stakeholders and this will be one of those stakeholder meetings for the year. So I'm going to try to do my best, explaining what I know about landscaping or more lawn maintenance. And by no means am I an expert. I was home till midday last night preparing this presentation. So I hope it will serve its purpose. So let me sit down if you don't mind. And please feel free to chime in with any questions, add any stories. The most important thing I hope to get out of this is that people ask questions and learn things, maybe learn better when everything's are difficult when everything's are new. And you can tell us how to get to more people. Here we go. The reason I chose this topic because I didn't know there were nutrient regulations in the state of Massachusetts, but there are. Since the law was in effect in 2012, I think we got enacted in 2015. And basically, for our area, we have water bodies that are repaired, beautiful manicured lawns. And how do we get here, why are we here? It's an outreach opportunity to landscape professionals as a requirement of our MS4 permit. And as we know, the American Dream, as I already grew up, I didn't have a lawn mower or a motor on it, but I pushed one of those lawn mowers in. And the reel wasn't self-propelled. It ran a really good cut. But the American Dream seems all about the front yard, the green grass. And what I picked up here was a collection of pictures. This is just a little fence, an American Dream. These three beautiful steaming yards are on here as well. These, I think, are kind of interesting. I Googled sod farm. And I got down using the street where you can Google, and you can just see that it's this farm and it's just sod, as far as the eye can see. And then I built a lawn upon another sod farm and I'm using the aerial image up here. And you can see this is just going to be 100 acres of grasses that people are going to be harvesting and putting on people's front yards. I just thought that was quite interesting. So how did the lawns come about? This is nothing to do with the necessarily the maintenance of the lawn, but I found it quite interesting. In the old days, the castles would be attacked by different other opposing enemies. And they learned that if you cut the trees around the castle, they couldn't sneak up on you. And the areas were typically right then, flowers and meadows and things like that, but something that would hide any opposing armies. And back then they came up with this word lawn came from the English word, so I said, heard from Google, I said it was a lawn. And that just has to do with that area of openness around the castles. So a lawn came from somewhere up to see its grass, but they called it the lawn. And it started, so they say, around the castle. And as time developed, it wasn't necessarily all about security and opposing armies. It became a status symbol. It started manning during the lawns and creating these fancy gardens. And I think this is Versailles right here. But what it meant was that it was a status symbol of the prestige that you could maintain this and how much effort and how much wealth you had in order to present such an amazing garden. But back then they didn't have lawn mowers, so they would have people out there with a site, which is those hand blades that they would use to cut some of the grasses. And again, I was really excited. I'm the lord of the state. They looked at all the people who worked for me. And this is kind of like my domain. So it was a status symbol. And it kind of carried forward in time into the 18th and 1900s where it wasn't necessarily the states or castles or things like that. But people had come across from Europe. And they brought some of the lawnmowers with them, which were croquet, antennas, and things like that. Golf eventually was another sport that developed with the Adventists to help utilize the grass. And it was really back then for wealthy people. Because you can see they're out there like a club or a tennis match or stuff into a big, big ordeal. And it was back then only the wealthy had the grass and the lawns. And then in the 1940s, Abraham Lovett was a great big developer and developed over 17,000 homes. But one of the big things he used to sell is he would build the host houses. And he would install the sod and the lawn and the grass and have it manicuricated completely before he would sell the houses. So it was like walking into an already established home. It wasn't grand new, it was a patch of dirt in front of it. And it was incredibly popular. It coincided with the end of World War II. And as you see, it turned into suburban sprawl. And this is what transgressed all across the country. We're a suburban community country now. And this is just a very large sprawl. But this is a little bit of a close-in to show you how much grass is involved and how we as a country and a society appreciate it. So it's the middle class person. He has no one in Rockwell Pictures. He's got the guy spending time on a weekend and not as long. It's a big deal. It's a lot of effort that goes into maintaining a lot of yards. I think it got too far. I think maybe it's an obsession. Is this what we're going for or is it an obsession? And you've got some, you've seen the fields at Red Sox where they can cut in the pictures of the logos. I thought this was kind of funny. We're not out there to talk about grass, obviously, but having gone too far, you know what I mean? And I think what you'll notice is a lot of people don't do that anymore. It's become a big business. It's a lot of work. So people are just tired of, I think, a lot of people taking care of their lawns. So maybe we're going back. It's not necessarily that status symbol of prestige anymore. These are some interesting facts that I learned during my research. 80% of the houses in the country have lawn. More water, grass is a bigger crop than the wheat and the corn that we grow across the whole country, especially when we irrigate more water on our lawns than we do developing the grains of corn and use it for food production. And a third, I guess, a third of our public water goes to water in the grass. And they did say 70% in the air. It's maybe like Las Vegas or Arizona. 70% of the water, depending on the season, can be applied to grass or to the landscaping and lawns, which is amazing. And we spent, for me, billion hours blowing the grass to take care of our houses. Like I said, a big industry, the $40 billion industry, the lawn maintenance, yard care, pesticide applications, horticulture, agricultural, all this other kind of stuff that's involved with our yards. So I think as you saw it, things, if people get frustrated, you probably, it's too much effort to take care of the yards. So it's time to hire a professional. If we're going to hire a professional, we hope that it's going to be someone who can understand how the grass is functioning, how you're going to take care of it, and hopefully how we can protect the environment at the same time. That's what I'm going to do now. So it's a lot more than just mowing the lawn. So it's a lot more mowing the lawn, and I hope you get into that a little bit again. Before we go further, any questions? Interesting facts, tidbits? All right. So, like I said earlier, I'm a land man, I don't know much about grass, so what you see here is what I've learned from the internet and articles in the last week or so. I'm kind of interested that you see a lawn that looks like a carpet, but someone who gets into the vegetation and the biology of it, there's a whole lot more involved with the piece of grass. And I think my bigger interest in lawns is the soil, because I have an interest in the soils that are underneath it, and we'll see over here that with a good soil, the LVD group growth just gives you a great grass product up top, and when it's not so good soil, then your roots just not hitting your plants just about as well. So I'm not going to read these things, I'm just going to go through it. If you have any questions, don't want to add anything to this, feel free. Well, basically, I've imagined there are resilient of these in every lawn, and they won't move along. So what does grass need? It needs sunlight, it needs air, it needs watering with soil. Those are the four things that are going to allow the plants to thrive. The sunlight is more of the black box, and if you learn about photosynthesis in school, basically it uses the sun energy and carbon dioxide and some chemical and biological activity to turn the sunlight energy to grow the plants. The energy is used to transfer and to take nutrients from the soil, turn it into carbohydrates, turn it into food for the plant, and use it and spread it out into the stem and root so that it's functioning plants. The air, obviously, they use CO2 and they discharge oxygen. Again, that can be taken in through the petals from the petals, the leaf of the grass itself as well as the roots. Obviously, the water concept is in the thirsty, but a lot of the nutrients are going to be coming in through that water, and obviously the plant that did the soil with soil is where all the nutrients are, and the water is just inside of it, going through the pores and things like that. So I'm going to just do a quick little slide on each of those four topics and see if there's any questions if you guys have anything quick as well. I think I'm going to be on this, it transforms the light and carbon dioxide and the minerals to create the food for itself. Yeah, I already said this. So you move along from the sunlight, go up to the air, take some carbon dioxide in water, it makes oxygen and there are plenty of growths. Interesting trivia fact that I found was a pair of grass can produce enough oxygen for 64 people for a day. That's great. So you're talking about the rainforest, or you know, rainforest probably does 1,000 people, but there is some benefit obviously to it, better than the thought of the tree, you know, helping with oxygen, but not grass, and it does. The water in the soil dissolves the minerals that are in the soil that the plant can use. More important thing is the vows of air and water in the soil. There are soil wars in there that are generated by the characteristics of the soil, the amount of clay, the amount of organic matter, the amount of sand and still, an impact on the type of soil. Too much soil or too much air in the soil and you know, I rough water it in thirsty, too much water has done up air and you know, suffering. So there's a balance in the soil for water and air that we need to meet. The soil does many things. It anchors the roots, keeps it sturdy, supplies the water to the roots, provides the air to the roots, furnishes the nutrients, and adds the nutrients to the water and the roots, it releases nutrients to them. Okay, I think the more we've already touched on this, the plant will be more effective if the soil powders its own right. You have a loose soil, the roots can spread out. You've heard a compacted soil, tight soil, the roots can't push themselves out into it, get into the other parts of the soil to absorb more nutrients. So a loose area in the soil is a good thing. Depending on the amount of clay in the organic matter, depending how absorbent it is, depending on how much water it has, depending on how that will allow the plant to absorb water. The soil needs to be rich enough to provide the plant nutrients, which is where I think we, or you as long care professionals will put in, will be feeding the soil with amendments to make sure that the grass has the appropriate amount of nutrients. And as I said, very recently compacted soil doesn't have enough air, it's stung to grow. These are the soil, two components, it's made of solid particles and a minute of force space. The solid particles is basically broken down into sand, silk, and clay, about say 95%. And then the organic matter is, they say anywhere from two to five percent, and that came down from a degree within the plant to any carbon or animals that may be broke or decayed within the soil, leaves in the forest and things like that. The organic matter in the lawn is going to be more of the lawn clippings, if you collect them, then they'll be less there. Show our hands here. When you guys get into the lawn maintenance part, but do you bag the clippings, do you let it go back onto the grass? Depends on what it says, you can go on one one one. What, why is that? If the grass, I don't want to spread it. The stem cells, grime, I don't mind spreading it, because it'll regenerate. Oh, okay. I don't want to regenerate grass. So now you're going to want herbicide down to the fall, and you can take the land. Okay, how about you? I'm never even thought of the grass which is taking real risk. That's interesting. Yeah. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. That's why I'm not going to listen to you guys. Now, the interesting part is the other void, the pores, the void space in the soil, I think it's just as critical as the soil itself and gives the ability for the roots to move, the water to migrate, the water to the nutrients that just fell off out of the soil. And it's really a balance of everything working together to get a perfect yard. My vision is probably not any healthier than ours. That's why I've been fighting my mom for 25 years and still don't have a fan. Some day we're going to hire somebody. Wait. Sorry if I make it. I had to. I couldn't get grass to grow. I couldn't do it. I was religious about it as a whole. I got a trip to Bagnes. It still wasn't working. It wasn't until I started putting the air holes into it in September. Air-raiding the soil. Because my soil had just so many years from the previous old and compacted and nothing was getting through. Water was running off and everything. Ever since I do that every September, now I get grass. I still get grass, which they treat. We're going to learn what else that air-raiding is doing besides un-compacting it. Pretty good picture for that. I learned that. So within the soil, you have different nutrients. I don't want to get into it. The big three are the macro nutrients that are in fertilizer standards. The NDK logo, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium. So those are the three I'm going to focus on. But these are all the different nutrients that are in soil or that the lawn, the grass needs. And it's a quite complex interaction of how the plant gets those nutrients to the air, to the ground. Time really seems to, you know, a synthetic versus organic. It's just so complicated. I just want to show the picture of everything that can go on. But it needs the nutrients. In the big three, we've got nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. I tried to kind of get a brief stop to sort of say that nitrogen does better than potassium. I'm really just going to read this now. So the nitrogen gets absorbed through the plant, where it's basically the important thing is putting it the right amount down and at the right time. So it depends on the season and the stage of the grass growth and the way that you should put it down. Because it's going to use the nitrogen, I believe, to make the shoots grow and the roots spread out. And the time is added. So the time is very important and they amount a bit to it. If you put too much down, it could just wash off. So the nitrogen stimulates the shoot growth. It helps the whole photosynthesis process that generates the energy and they're generated hopeful that makes the grass to more green. And obviously it helps it reproduce. I think if the plant is growing well and it's right besides growing tall and having to mow it, the roots are spreading out as well and giving you more coverage. It takes away the open space available for weeds and lets the grass grow more in lush clusters. When it's required, it's required in large quantities. I don't necessarily understand what that says, but it's not always available. It's in the minerals that make the soil the nutrients straight out of the minerals. So what it uses is bacteria and microbial activity of the root on the minerals. It uses water against the minerals and the chemical dissolving and stuff that actually takes the nutrients out of the sand particle, the clay particle, the silk particle. So that process is needed to make the seed germination make the lawn wash and establish a new growth. But it's just not always available in the lawn, in the soil. So that's when we put it down with the fertilizer application or soil and interest. Potassium, what would that say? Photosynthesis, better water absorption and respiration of the plant. It would seem like they all were working on some other benefits. It helps with the disease and drought resistance and the structure of the logs and the health of the plant itself. The nutrient uptake, the nutrients in the organic matter and it's in the mineral content of the soil. So actually we have to take that, the plant has to take those nutrients out of the minerals and does it to, like I just explained previously, chemically, bacteria, microbial-wise and then to dissolve them as the water flows through the soil sits in the soil, chemical, it has to dissolve any kind of chemical action within the water and the, I don't want to say the ingredients, but the material themselves, of the mineral, somehow transform the nutrients from out of the part of the mineral part so if there's not enough nutrients for the lawn and you use fertilizers to supplement the nutrients in the soil as you see, there's asterisks on both of these but you have to be careful not to put too much. So this is really the focus of this. We're going to talk about the application of fertilizers and what happens if there's too much and how it flows off the land into the water-wise. I'm looking at stormwater. So everybody know what stormwater is? Stormwater the ground, the rain is the ground, flows down the hill to make matters make worse when it hits a roof or along or a road, typically with development and all of these things get put out there and it doesn't get into the ground and it runs off into the river so it doesn't benefit us when we have impervious area because it just rushes off quickly but on those areas that is not impervious like lawns or farms or fields anything that's on that land can roll off if it's not bound to the soil so what we like in the soil for lawns is we like something bound to the minerals of the soil that the grass root through photosynthesis and all those little activities that are going down in the soil with the roots that are taking it out of the soil rather than just sitting there in that infernalized particle that may just wash away when the next rainstorm comes so there are different approaches to that we'll talk about that later and has to do with slow release and fast release and when these components these phosphorous nitrogen roll off and get into our water bodies it creates the bacteria algae within the water bodies and when the algae die they go to a chemical decomposition microbial decomposition and that's when the water starts getting cloudy and discolored and it's using up all the nutrients and it affects just the plant the normal everyday plant life of the lily pad and vegetation along the edges of the lake and it affects them all and if you've heard of the toxic cyanobacteria in the news lately you've heard about it it's on our arm and it's everywhere and that's what that is I believe that's what Mystic Berber is searching this I found an article talking about toxic algae from 2009 and here it is 2019 and I got two just in the month of June in the Army to patch so it's been going on for a long time which means we're still getting pollutants into the water bodies this was supposed to be a different page in the slide but I will say NPK, you guys are all aware NPK is the percent of the nitrogen phosphorus and potassium within the bag of fertilizers it can also come from you know, leaf debris let the leaves sit there and pile like I do when I was cleaning up corduroy, those break down and they are organic and they used to decay and create phosphorus as well so if you came, leaves pile or grass clippings can discharge phosphorus that can also run off we get organic and naturally it's still a potential contaminant source so what we say here is if you are best way to approach that is if you're making your applications you don't want to put your applications on the grass it would give you to tell me what procedures you follow when you're beginning to apply fertilizer on a tarp, on the driveway, on the grass how do you do that when you're taking the bags off the truck you've got to go put it onto the do it off the street so you do it in the street what happens if you jump a bunch along it's going to burn along so you do it off the street and you set the shred okay, I'm going to ask you next time to put a tarp on it or make sure you sweep it up after A, it costs money so you don't want to save it B, it now evens lotion to the catch basin so if there's any there it rains we have to see painters painting a house and then washing their brushes out in the street kind of the same thing the paint is visible for phosphorus so what can you do as a landscape professional obviously you're here to help the homeowners give them that lush green lawn and do all the work that they want so you've got to be maintaining their guards for them you just throw in two different types of sprayers up there brought a sprayer and a drop sprayer one of the things that helps the soil interact better with the plants is pH the pH of the soil the measure of the acidity or alkalinity of the soil and lawns they say ideally between 6.2 and 7 is the pH that you're looking for so if you can do that you're going to have a better microbial chemical interaction for the plants to get the nutrients if you're lower or higher then that plant isn't going to be able to be as efficient at getting the nutrients out of it and it will then be stunted or die or something it's just not going to be as efficient or as lush as it could be if it was given the best characteristics to grow in you just mentioned that your goal is to be between 6.8 and 7.2 the other slide said 6.2 6.2 and 7 the two conflicted sides let's go for 6.8 and 7.2 but that determines the basis for how easily the plant is going to be neutral now aeration this is interesting when I first saw this slide I didn't really get it I understood the whole compaction thing but what this is doing is also creating a junction with your fertilizer application or nutrient addition hence whatever you're mending the soil is not going to go into the hole going to go down into the soil now the roots are going to strive to get down into that soil to use those nutrients that's also going to put some oxygen in there and help the soil be more aerated the water will be able to get in I think by doing the aeration do either of you put sand out there put any other additions to a lawn because a sand depends if you have a lawn that doesn't drain well then you might have more silt and clay in it and if you were to put sand in it then it would create more pore space for water to go through so doing the aeration would be a perfect time to put sand out there as well because you get the sand on the surface you get the sand down into the bottom of the hole and one thing that I didn't mention here but I haven't talked about critters the nematodes, the worms the bugs, the ants I think it's called pedicurbation it's the way that animals and insects and critters and chipmunks and snakes actually turn the soil over and help mix it up over time it might be anecdotal but I think I've heard that in two years the soil is turned over by all the bugs and ants and worms and don't improve it but that helps generating a good soil for the plants to get the nutrients out but it also gives a big reason to not use harsh chemicals or you may be getting rid of the grubs but at the same time you might be killing the animals that are terminating the ground so be careful what you put down because it may have effects on other things so something to be aware of so I know that there are quick release and slow release fertilizers if you put the slow release on then you're going to have a bad magic it's a granule and the soil over time the nutrients and nutrients and phosphorus and calcium will probably migrate and dissolve into the ground but slowly so that application will provide food for the springtime and then it's going to stay there for a year but for a longer period of time some worms may need it more rapidly and you may have to use a quick release so there's a science to it that I'm not aware of the point would be to use quick release when necessary because if it's put down there and it's immediate and it rains out then that will wash down into the stormwater whereas a slow release it's going to be migrating out of the pellet just as slowly and more so and these mineral particles in the soil itself but do you guys have a feel for which you use more often or what's better or more preferred in our to use quick release or slow release I'm not sure if it's slow release I got advice from Lexington that it's a less go product so I'm not sure so it's not like the label that's quick or slow release we use at least that it depends on the line and when needs that when needs I think each situation is gathering in any way I'm asking a question so come on out to the Wicked Tab you do the spring clean up everybody's ready to hit the garden plant dead flowers and gardens stuff like that when you are in the contracted services that you provide for the weekly service with lawn care do you typically go up and do like a springtime assessment deal with it when that crew goes out there at that time of year. Yeah. So it's really kind of an off-site assessment, not, not, when you take the leaves up and you see what's on the leaves. Okay. All right. You can feed that, and if you're just like, you know, running on a week or a week or blowing this like water or whatever, he's out there, and you can get that, you know, for a year or a half on the scene. So we can tatter that word. Okay. Okay. I'll put it all on the ground. I'm telling you right now, if I'm going to be meant to be at home, when I'm driving through this years old, I, I had some bare spots and I planted some seed. But the same time the crab was destroyed. And I know I'm supposed to plant seed. But when I went down to the water, I'm getting more to get to eat, baby. And I just planted. I'm thinking, yeah, I'm thinking it might come back, but I, it's in it. So I planted more seed than I was, than that probably. That's a never-ending problem. I was hired professionally, I guess, so recommendation is having pesticide licensed myself. There are so many regulations now, that in my particular application, my man knows not to put anything but slow release down, because it takes his time, and he keeps it away from the water on my property. There's not 100 yards away. It's wetlands and conservation. Oh, there's no regulation. We'll get to those. You know. We'll see them. The difference between slow release, and he never uses quick release on my own, just because of my environment. We'll get into that a little later. But that's it. I appreciate that you brought that up. Because I'm the town's conservation agent, too. And I know the conservation question is, like, when we condition permits, when, you know, we get a new permit. And how it's for someone who wants to just build a porch in the backyard, we have certain conditioning properties that they can only use slow release fertilizer and limit the number of uses in the year. So it's nice to hear that as a homeowner, you're actually aware of that. But that's all because I got a license. Yeah. But I'm lucky enough to take my name just to about it, too. Yeah. We're going to get to that. That's really the point on this. With these new regulations that I mentioned in the beginning, we're going to wrap that up in the end. So I'm seeing the transfer here, but it's going back into the runoff parts here. And I think I believe in the application of the fertilizers, if you have that quick release, you can run off faster and cause more use of problems. And you'll see, like I said, they closed the beaches and the bonds for swimming, we threw bets and things like that. But we, as the town, we're committed and not uncommitted, but we're required to improve our water quality conditions in the water bodies in town. So what we're doing is, hey, we're trying to educate people. One thing's for residents and professionals. So as you go down, if you can, say, you make 30 applications a year and you do them in the street, there's 30 little bits of fertilizer in the, you just maybe have to cop the water down the storm drain. Well, next year, you're going to be more careful with this 30 less that's going to happen. And if we can do 30 less over here, and the homeowners don't know, do it on our, just put a 6x6 top on there. Easy to do, pour your fertilizer in, if anything spills over, it's on the top, you wrap it up, you put it back in the, in this river. Another thing I'll say, when you're applying it, obviously, it doesn't do you any good to overlap it onto the sidewalk or the, or the driveway. So either you blow or blow it back onto the grass to get any benefit of it. Otherwise, it's just going to end up in the storm drain. So the way we use the fertilizer and how we clean up and make a big difference. So in town, we put in some rain gardens, and this is going to be more of a long way into the landscaping portion of it. But this is a rain garden over at the Hardy School. You don't see it, but it's a slight depression in there. But it takes all the water from the parking lot of the Hardy School on a low storm, and all that goes in there. Migrates, water migrates slowly through the soils and plants outtake a lot of the water. Instead of running right into the storm drain, it's being filtered through the soil and the plants prior to that. Is that another one here over at the intersection of Hedgeson and Herbert? This one has a little more flowers and a little more pistachio peeling. And then one of the other things you do this year, there's nothing to do with the landscaping, but we're trying to cut some trenches into the street, and we put small infill-fishing benches connected to catch basins. So when the water comes in and we're diverting it, before it gets to the pipe that goes to the river, we put it on a smaller, slower pipe that takes the beginning of the water and puts it into the ground and it will drain slowly, and that will rush in straight along into the river. So that's going to recharge the aquifer, and it will help the health of the river. So we're trying to do things where we should require to do this as the first approaches that we took to try. Now, the loop-feed regulations, as I said earlier, came out in 2015, and it had a lot to do with how you use the fertilizer. It's all meant to be to reduce storm water pollution. So these are going to be some of the requirements that the regulations you require you to do, and I will get it in. So the regulations say, obviously, I think it's really a spell-selfage plan to reduce summer, January, February. I think the professionals know not to apply anything. Homeowners might not. You might think, oh, the grasses is clear. It's June, and it's January 10th. It's 40 degrees up. You know what? I've got to put fertilizer down in the fall. I'm going to get it down now, so we'll stay up for the springtime. Well, that's in the middle because the soil's frozen. It's going to run off. It's just bad day and bad time. So you shouldn't be putting it down in frozen soil. If it's going to rain within 24 hours, it shouldn't fertilize it either because it'll wash away. So the timing is important. Then the location. Here's where the overlap of the spray from the spray to go down in the driveway. Clean that up so it doesn't wash down down in the driveway. So I'm trying to clean it up, if you can, because it's not all the way in the grass on the pavement. This has to do with those regulations. You were talking about the nutrient regulations say that if you're using a targeted application, which I'm going to assume is the drop spreader, possibly maybe a liquid. After something targeted, where you have more control over, you can go up to 10 feet to a wetland in order to stay for regulations. Conservation commission, if you did something there, might have additional conditions. This is just what's in the regulations. And if you're using a broadcast spreader that swirls it out and that spiral approach, then they stay 20 feet away from wetlands. Water, bodies, stream, berks, place, things like that. The applicability of these regulations, I think is far from reaching. It's applied everywhere. Phosphorus goes down on every lawn. And what this new regulation says is that you should not be putting down phosphorus until you do a soil test. And the soil test will tell you whether you have enough phosphorus, whether you have enough nitrogen, and it'll make a recommendation on what the right fertilizer or components of fertilizer you need to put down. Just because it's a state university, UMass Extension offers soil testing to soil. And you're supposed to have a soil test before you apply fertilizer. So you are educated as to what you're trying to give the soil. The interesting thing about soil testing is you just don't go on one spot because things are random. So they recommend taking a little core or more in 12 random locations. And that's what they say in 12 by time locations. 6 or 17, I think. You'll be able to 6,000 square foot yard from Lorraine. 75,000 square foot of the state. I guess you want to make sure you're in the same area. It is all in the general same area. In addition to the same, you just spread out 12 random locations. It's in a small lot. And the reason for this testing is really to just apply what's needed as opposed to just randomly putting down something that you may buy off the shelf. And we'll say that if you look going to hardware stores or Home Depot's, they are supposed to keep their phosphorus and zero phosphorus fertilizers separate. I'm particularly to notice that Home Depot, that they're right next to each other. Other places have had a demo across the aisle from each other. But there's also a notice that there should be posted says that zero phosphorus is necessary. And the phosphorus that's included should only be used at certain times in certain locations. So let's describe the soil test a little bit. Take your 12 samples. It's a little broad. I'm actually going to get one. I'm going to test my soil for the first time. You can go grab about 4 to 6 inches. And then I watched a video on this. So you basically put them all into a bucket. Put the 12 in and you take out any roots, any stones, any leaves, and stir it all up. Mix it all up so you get a mixed representation of all those samples. And then measure up one cup. Put it in a bag. Use the application. Put it in an envelope. And you mail it off to UMass or if you have a place nearby that can do it. I don't know what places to provide the soil analysis. Mahoney stuff is great. That's good because you could probably do all the soil samples for your customers in a certain beacon ring there and not have to mail it out to UMass or some other extension program. So that's something that's good to do in the fall so you know what you're going to apply in the springtime. This is a set of results. It's a sample results of the soil analysis and it tells you all the macro-microbene nutrients in there. Pretty much on the bottom is a bar chart. It tells you where you stand. If you were to look at this one here, you'd say, I would say you can not eat the crosshairs because you're above optimum and the regulations actually say what that level is. Potassium, now you want to maybe use a nitrogen potassium fertilizer in seroprossures because you owe potassium, but they don't seem that good. They seem that good. Now, so there's a pH, right? Good value. So it's pointing that right in the middle. It's a little bit closer. Zoom in here. Optum memory. So they tell us the range. 4 to 14. They're at 26.4. Don't put it down to phosphorus. Now, you've got to pay more for a bag of fertilizer that has phosphorus in it. And it's just, it's not going to do anything because the plank can only take out as much of the phosphorus as it needs. Can't take no more. So what I would recommend is to check out the UMass extension program, church management guidelines. There's a lot of good information on there. It tells you just the 27 pages or something like that. Really, if you find things like this interesting, lots of good information. Now, as a professional, you do not need a license. As you can correct me, I don't really need your license to apply fertilizer. But you are required to take reference. There are no soil police. There's no fertilizer police. I'll be honest with you. The nutrient regulations are governed or the jurisdiction of the Department of Agricultural Resources. And let me tell you, I call them five or six times to try to get someone to give a presentation such as this. And if they're not getting anyone to do it, so that's why I'm doing it today. So I guess I'm tongue-in-cheek a little bit, saying there's no fertilizer police, but this happens. But if they could, if they come in and want to come out there or if they get pushed out, they could do that. If you want to promote yourself as an environmentally friendly service, you can promote that to your residents. And you probably get some people that wouldn't be aware of it and they might need you for that. And then you can say, you follow the nutrient regulations, you keep track of where you're using it, the amount you put down on the law, what the soil analysis says, and when you apply it. That's what the applicators are supposed to be doing according to the regulations. And if you don't, then it produces it. No. I don't know what would happen. But, you know, so I like it. This is a little bit tough on what I said. It's a verb at the hardware stores. After the soil test, and it says you have optimum or you have enough phosphorus, then you want to be looking for a bad that has zero in the NPK, where the P is zero. That's going to be my guess for the future. Nitrogen is an issue as well. But I think nitrogen is used up more quickly than phosphorus. So I don't know if there's going to be any way if you have enough nitrogen and you have enough phosphorus, but you eat potassium. That's a, I think, more advanced class on nutrients that I'm unable to figure out. But maybe it's not that complicated. And that's it. If you don't have questions, I have lots of questions for you guys, just how you work and how you approach it and what you do and what you think we should do to reach out to more landscapeers next time. We are videotaping this one. So what I would do is when it's available, I would send that link to everybody that we send the email up to. And we'll be able to tell the EPA that we, you know, we targeted 50 landscape professionals with a video and a presentation. So I guess my biggest question is, A, if you pay attention to the phosphorus and fertilize our patients, that's going to benefit our water bodies. So with that, I'll say thank you and we'll cut the video and call it a day.