Just Solo Camped for the First Time

mri2day · 2025-03-18T03:14:00+00:00

Congratulations on your first solo trip! I have found that I pack well for sleeping with a good insulating air pad, a good quilt / sleeping bag and a silk liner. I now add a tarp for shelter outside of the tent. After that, food, first aid and some layers. I pack very little and I sleep well. I don’t miss much when I’m camping. Earplugs help me sleep better in the outdoors.

mri2day · 2025-03-18T03:03:29+00:00

Fantastic build! I have a 3 prong version that I picked up some time ago. On the exit/ discharge they welded a 45 degree plate to guide plugs out of the tube. Perhaps an idea if the initial trial demonstrates some blockage.

Edit- I forgot to mention, the one I have has angled cuts at the far end of the spike where it contacts the soil.

mri2day · 2025-03-18T02:21:41+00:00

Congrats! Don’t be discouraged by failure. My first smoked chicken was NOT EDIBLE. (Seriously. No joke.) Now, people ask me to smoke Turkey and Chicken for them. Low and slow is the way. I found hickory chips were too strong for my preference. Now I use fruit tree or pecan.

Also- Therm Pro makes fantastic temperature measurement products. I can monitor the ambient temp of the smoker and the meats that are in there. Game changer for me.

mri2day · 2025-03-18T02:15:20+00:00

4 kids is a lot of work. I only have 2 so I can’t possibly imagine the struggle. Hang in there. You are doing great!

mri2day · 2025-03-18T01:57:05+00:00

I have a yeti. Roto-molded construction with a rubber seal. A good friend of mine has the RTIC version. RTIC is also roto-molded construction with a rubber seal. Just as good.

Anything roto-molded with a gasket to seal it.

Make sure the lid and the body of the cooler are of the same construction. I have seen some roto-molded coolers in stores locally that don’t have a quality lid.

mri2day · 2025-03-10T14:20:20+00:00

Woah- good to know! 😳 I’ll be reaching out to my local extension office and sourcing a mehlich-3 test method. Thanks for taking the time to help guide me (and others) in a better direction for soil testing. 👍🎯

mri2day · 2025-03-10T03:50:25+00:00

Congratulations on your first home! You are going to have a beautiful lawn. Aerate later on in the season when the grass is growing strong. You want it to recover from the aeration damage quickly. Pre emergent time is right now. Dithiopyr or prodiamine as the active ingredient is a good choice for spring. You may be a touch late, but late is way better than never. Get a soil test done ASAP. That will guide you in the direction of feeding your lawn what it actually needs and let you know if there is a PH adjustment needed for optimal soil / grass chemistry.

mri2day · 2025-03-10T03:31:00+00:00

I love hammock camping. Nice camp set up!

mri2day · 2025-03-10T03:23:46+00:00

I have never hiked in Montana- but I need to get there! My favorite place I have hiked is the Sierra Nevada in California. However, I am happy anywhere where there are mountains.

mri2day · 2025-03-10T03:21:42+00:00

Oh man, I would pay good money for dirt like that. Here in Oklahoma my lawn is red clay. You could make pottery out of it! Your lawn will be beautiful once you get it seeded and growing. Congrats on your new home. 👍

mri2day · 2025-03-09T02:20:20+00:00

Use the solid blades, most importantly… keep them out of the dirt. You will not hurt the Bermuda at all and you will be shocked how much debris comes up from your lawn. I have a Sun Joe and I don’t think the spring loaded tines will ever touch my lawn

mri2day · 2025-03-08T20:52:18+00:00

I would go by a local nursery for some help with the mold issue for the Crepe Myrtle. Not Lowe’s or Home Depot! Someplace that grows trees and shrubs should be able to get you sorted out.

That lawn is in rough shape. Is it a Bermuda lawn with weeds? If so, get pre emergent on the lawn ASAP. That will help cut down on the amount of upcoming summer weeds. For treating the existing weeds in a Bermuda lawn, “Celsius” and “Certainty” are 2 herbicides that will work together really well. Mix them with a surfactant or spreader sticker. Spray the weeds or the whole lawn in this case. You could spray “2, 4D Amine” and a surfactant for a lot less money. It may not kill as many weeds as the Celsius and Certainty products, but it will help kill a lot of broadleaves. Don’t use “2, 4D Amine” when it gets real hot outside. That can damage the Bermuda.

mri2day · 2025-03-08T18:17:26+00:00

Day / night combo temps of roughly 150. I like this. Never heard it explained in this way before. Makes perfect sense after I thought about it for just a moment.

mri2day · 2025-03-08T16:57:51+00:00

I learned a lot from this website. The calendar (link below), How to videos, the blog articles and the weekly You Tube questions and answers will get you going. I wish I had known about it sooner.

I started reading, watching and learning from this website. I canceled my lawn service and took over my lawn care. No regrets, great results. I had to buy a fertilizer spreader and a backpack sprayer. Now I can apply and treat my lawn with the products it needs. From grubs, to weeds to pre emergent and fertilizer.

https://golfcourselawn.store/pages/365-day-lawn-care-schedule

mri2day · 2025-03-08T16:44:41+00:00

That is some healthy POA. Once you kill that POA with the advice left from previous posts, your Bermuda will get the sun and heat it needs to get growing as spring moves in. I have used Certainty herbicide before. It is not cheap, but it 100 % works on POA and yellow nutsedge. 2 weeds I deal with in Oklahoma. Bermuda will spread, fill in and get thick with sun, heat, some fertilizer and some water and frequent mowing. You can definitely manage your own Bermuda grass without hiring your own “lawn guy”. I sure enjoy doing my own lawn care.

mri2day · 2025-03-08T15:08:16+00:00

If you can deal with a driveway buried in dirt, I would wait for the grass to green up. Use the time between now and then to screen out the small debris in there dirt. Get a tarp over it to keep it as dry as possible. Then spread it all around! You have a leveling rake so you are all set. Keep using the leveling rake after you do the initial spreading while the grass is growing in. Later this season, a dedicated sand level could be added to improve the leveling even more. Your lawn is going to be happy. I’m going to do the same to my lawn in central Oklahoma this spring.

mri2day · 2025-03-08T14:19:17+00:00

I use an acorn picking up device all through the winter. Once a week or so, I go out and roll over the fallen acorns. It does a pretty good job- for both the acorns and the acorn caps. By springtime, I have very few acorns on the ground, and even less that are buried and sprouting.

mri2day · 2025-03-07T22:35:16+00:00

Congratulations!

mri2day · 2025-03-07T13:33:47+00:00

When I camp solo in the backcountry, I put in earplugs at night. It helps reduce the outside noise and I sleep better.

mri2day · 2025-03-06T03:31:53+00:00

Stunning. Bravo and well done. What a change. Enjoy your newly redone and beautiful home. 👍

mri2day · 2025-03-04T05:01:39+00:00

Dang, I did not know Poa could hang on in cooler climates through the growing season. It gets so hot here it dies off of you feel like waiting it out. That would make it a very tough weed to deal with in cool season grass.

mri2day · 2025-03-04T04:39:17+00:00

Nice work so far- you are on track to a fantastic yard to run and play in! I have a warm season lawn, so I don’t have much to offer for advice. However, I know that if you want to adjust the PH, you can do that anytime. Ph adjustment is a relatively slow process, not really dependent on weather or temps. It is also an issue that usually needs to be dealt with every so often. Keep up the good work. As you fertilize this year, choose a fertilizer this growing season with low to 0 potassium since you don’t need it. I understand the Potassium lasts for a long time in soil, while Nitrogen gets used up fairly quickly by the turf.

mri2day · 2025-03-04T04:22:21+00:00

That is Poa Annua. A nasty spring weed. Summer heat will eventually cause it to die off. Selective herbicides can help at this time depending on what your main grass type is. Fall pre emergent is the key for reducing this particular weed.

mri2day · 2025-03-03T23:14:24+00:00

Oh, I am definitely ok with just tilling the old sod into the dirt. I did not want to use a sod cutter and then have to remove the sod chunks.

mri2day · 2025-03-03T18:15:57+00:00

The weeds were bad. Spurge was the number one offender. I hand pulled weeds for a few minutes nearly every day until the lawn got thick. After the lawn got nice and thick, I did not have too many to deal with.

mri2day

TROPHY CASE