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- [00:05]
Narrator
Welcome to Green side Up, the perfect podcast for small business entrepreneurs looking to cultivate success in the landscaping and tree care industry. Join Jason Lee, a seasoned landscaper, and Jordan Upkavage, a true tree whisperer, as they share their wealth of experience and insights to navigate the challenges of growing your business. Get ready to hear real life stories, practical solutions, and invaluable advice that will empower you to thrive amidst the chaos of entrepreneurship. And now, let's keep the Green side Up with your hosts, Jason Lee and Jordan Upkevage.
- [00:47]
Jordan Upkavage
Good morning, Jason. How are you, bro?
- [00:49]
Jason Lee
Good morning, Jordan.
- [00:50]
Jordan Upkavage
How you doing? Oh, tired.
- [00:55]
Jason Lee
I'm a little tired also.
- [00:57]
Jordan Upkavage
Why?
- [00:58]
Jason Lee
Huh? Because it's early.
- [01:01]
Jordan Upkavage
Did you not get enough sleep last night?
- [01:03]
Jason Lee
I got. I don't know, I probably got got up at like 4:15. Probably. It's 5:55 now. Yeah. Fell asleep trying to watch the Curse of Oak island at probably like 9:30. So.
- [01:17]
Jordan Upkavage
Do they ever find anything?
- [01:19]
Jason Lee
They don't find any treasure, but they find some pretty cool historic trinkets and different things.
- [01:28]
Jordan Upkavage
Do you think there's any treasure on that island?
- [01:30]
Jason Lee
I have no. I have no idea. I don't know. I think the cabbage farmer from way back in the story, if anyone follows the Curse of Oak Island, I think he found the treasure and became rich and. Yeah, anyway, there was a cabbage farmer that became one of the wealthiest people in Nova Scotia, supposedly per the TV show. And I think that said person found the treasure and.
- [01:56]
Jordan Upkavage
Well, wouldn't people know that he found the treasure or. How do you secretly find the treasure? You got to sell it to get rich. If you have treasure, you don't sell it.
- [02:04]
Jason Lee
I don't know. Or cabbage. Or cabbage was just the thing back then in Nova Scotia. I have no idea. But I don't know. But they're finding historic, you know, they're, they're, they're finding artifacts that are dating back to like 13 or 1400, which is interesting to me. So I don't know, I find the historical part of it pretty intriguing.
- [02:24]
Jordan Upkavage
Yeah, you and all your Nordic and your three doors or whatever weird things you're telling me about weeks ago.
- [02:31]
Jason Lee
Yeah, it's a Viking blood Jordan.
- [02:35]
Jordan Upkavage
Okay, enough. That, enough of that. I have an important meeting this morning, Jason. I'm going to Clearwater and I am meeting with a developer named Alan. Alan the. Irishman. Okay, Alan. Alan the Irishman with the cane. And we have mangroves to trim. Oh, so he does. Did we talk up. We've talked about mangroves. We talked about, man, we've Talked about mangroves.
- [03:11]
Jason Lee
Yeah.
- [03:11]
Jordan Upkavage
So this is Mangrove Allen and Alan must be doing another development of really nice buildings on Saltwater. I think I'm getting a theme of what Alan builds.
- [03:26]
Jason Lee
Oh, so this is. This is the same person. Last time you were talking about mangroves. Because last time we were talking about mangroves on the show you were talking about you could trim the white mangroves one way and the black mangroves one way and the yellow mangroves a different way and the purple mangroves a different way. I don't know anything about mangrove, so I'm trying to be funny. But the. But you were telling us at different heights and what you were trying to accomplish.
- [03:50]
Jordan Upkavage
That is totally wrong. But yes, go on. What you're. Yes, that is totally incorrect, but exactly what you said is true. Yes, that is the same Allen.
- [03:59]
Jason Lee
Okay.
- [03:59]
Jordan Upkavage
Is the truth. So I'm meeting Mangrove Allen because he must be building some really tall thing and it's on saltwater and there are mangroves there. So I will be meeting with Mangrove Allen here this morning.
- [04:13]
Jason Lee
Nice.
- [04:14]
Jordan Upkavage
It's kind of exciting. Do you have an exciting ting Tong on your day today, Jason?
- [04:20]
Jason Lee
Not really. Today we have a zoom call with some of the guys that used to be in the peer group. Pressed to catch up and do some shop talk later. But we, we're prepping to. I got to get materials ready for the guys. We're obviously the springtime here in Florida and we are picking up with all
- [04:40]
Jordan Upkavage
of our work
- [04:43]
Jason Lee
even though we're in a drought and the grass isn't growing. But install wise, we are installing hardscapes, softscapes, lighting, but we're going back to Cedar Key tomorrow. So whenever cool. Whenever we travel, we try to be a little more proactive with getting all of our things together and ducks in a row before we leave because once we get to Cedar Key, compared to if we were going to the east coast, there's nothing in Cedar Key. So you're stuck if you forget. If you forget something. There's one nursery in Chiefland which is, I don't know, 45 minutes to an hour away probably. So anyway, we try to make sure we have our stuff together, but we're combining a few different jobs. We're going back and we're doing a small install at a property management company that manages Airbnb over there. So we're doing a little, little renovation at their office and then we're going back at the Airbnb house that we landscaped about a month ago and we are installing more landscape lights. So I Went out a week or two ago. I can't remember if I talked about that. When we actually went out and met with the homeowner.
- [05:52]
Jordan Upkavage
Oh, is that where you needed some sprouts for shading a light in the canopy? Yeah, yeah.
- [06:00]
Jason Lee
So, yeah, I think we actually were talking about hot gluing the sprout on our episode last week with Aaron. So. Yeah, the sucker. The. We were gonna.
- [06:10]
Jordan Upkavage
Water sprout, dumbass.
- [06:11]
Jason Lee
Yes. So I was gonna glue the sucker to the water sprout. Oh, no, no. Jordan's trigger. Now just call water sprout suckers the. But no, the two down lights I'd put in, we had put in. And I love down lighting in general, but we had put the down lights in at the highest point that we could reach with the ladder. And even in this given tree and where they were shining, one of them was just a blaring spotlight. And so we removed it while we were there. There was another light that was heavily behind water sprouts, so it was giving some nice shadowing. But we. She has a tree service. Duron Williams Tree Service out of Bell, Florida has been servicing some of her oak trees. So the large oak tree from the live Switch video that I sent you, so he's done some work in that tree, and then she's got three other larger trees. She owns two houses across the street that are right next to each other. And so he's been doing some work on those trees. I actually referred him to M Gro, and he's been using M Gro here recently on those trees. So that's fantastic. One of them, they rebuilt the seawall and it's showing some struggles coming out in the springtime. So I saw him, he was working on her trees. I had him trimmed some palm trees on a another job since he was right down the road that we're going to be working on Friday. So we're going to be working on Cedar Key tomorrow and which will be today, if you're listening to this episode. But Thursday and Friday this week we're being Cedar Key both days. So. Yeah.
- [07:55]
Jordan Upkavage
So how. How is he? Does he have a tank, A chemical tank?
- [07:58]
Jason Lee
He does.
- [08:00]
Jordan Upkavage
Really?
- [08:00]
Jason Lee
Okay, cool. 100 gallons. So he's been doing some. And dirt anyway. Deep root injections. I was telling him about the tree I was selling.
- [08:09]
Jordan Upkavage
Does he have a license for that?
- [08:12]
Jason Lee
Yes.
- [08:14]
Jordan Upkavage
Really?
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Jason Lee
I don't know.
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Jordan Upkavage
Who cares? I don't.
- [08:17]
Jason Lee
It's not my job. I'm just worried about my license. Yeah.
- [08:19]
Jordan Upkavage
Anyway, so what rate did you tell him to do? The 0.64oz per gallon.
- [08:24]
Jason Lee
So I think he's just been following the. I mean, he took my recommendation and just went to my. To grow and, you know, ordered some and said he's been using it. But I showed him the pictures from your tree and at the University of Tampa and was telling them that, hey, like, I'll get with you and go over the rates. Like, I think that Tally's tree is struggling. I think you should do this and do it as a. A soil drench instead of an injection and follow, you know, follow the same booster rate that Jordan did here and let's see if it, you know, does anything to the tree. So I'll be getting with him next week because he's going to. We're going to remove the downlight that we had put in that we had left in the tree last week when we went out. We went out and added some lights in, kind of as a demo so that she could see. We put in a minimal amount of lights originally with fear that it might be too much lights or light it up too much. She didn't want it to be a beacon. Beacon. And Cedar Keys. And Cedar Keys. Kind of a small fishing town. But at the end of it, we're going to put way more lights in, and it's still not, you know, it's just accent lighting. So it's not like. It's not like it's spotlighting the neighborhood.
- [09:40]
Jordan Upkavage
It's not obnoxious.
- [09:41]
Jason Lee
Yeah. So we're going to add probably another 15 or 20 fixtures where we'd put in 10 originally, but when Duran comes back out, we're going to get him to put one alliance deal, 100. He's going to bring his lift. And this was my disclaimer to Tally. I said, once this tree. Once this light goes into this tree, it's no longer my light. So, yeah, it's. It's not.
- [10:04]
Jordan Upkavage
It is your light, Ms. Kent.
- [10:06]
Jason Lee
It is your system. I cannot service this light anymore. So it can be Duran's light. If there's a problem from the manufacturer, I can get you a new light. But it's the same thing. We ran into doing some lights anyway on some eaves and a roof for a homeowner. It's like, okay, it's like an electrician needs to install these. We're not going on your roof. We're not doing whatever. And these are no longer our lights. And we had a problem with the homeowner, and he ended up. We ended up parting ways because there were problems with the lights. Yeah, there was a Bluetooth issue and we got the lights. There was a Bluetooth issue. No problem. Alliance has, you know, a warranty for that. So we got the homeowner new lights and we dropped them off. And then he was very upset that we didn't install them. It's like, well, we didn't install the first lights on the roof. We're not going up on your roof. And anyway, that became a boat of contention. And then I said, we can hire someone to go on your roof and put these lights in or you can call the same electrician back. And anyway, we ended up parting ways after that. It's okay. But anyway. But Duron's going to go and put the light. And this should look pretty. Looking at. Looking at what the light is going to be shining down through. It should look pretty cool. And it's going to be probably 40ft in there, so. Moonlighting, George. Moonlighting.
- [11:25]
Jordan Upkavage
Cool. Well, should we talk about work or fun first? Because I just want to. There's two things I really want to tell you about, Jason. I want to tell you weekend fun and I want to tell you about yesterday. Work, fun plan. Healthcare seems to be all the buzz in the green industry right now. Are you like many business owners that don't know how or where to start, or are you looking to add a new tool to your PHC toolbox?
- [11:57]
Jason Lee
Mitigro is an innovative product that focuses on root and soil health. A different approach than loading up the ground with more npk. Mitigro is a blend of mycorrhizae, fungi, bacteria, vitamin B and iba, which is a rooting hormone.
- [12:09]
Jordan Upkavage
The concept is simple. More roots equals a healthier and more robust plant. This simple concept is exactly why both Jason and I have incorporated mitigro into our PhD programs. Deep Root applications on my end for mature or struggling trees, soil drenches and spray applications for when Jason installs trees and installs new sod.
- [12:30]
Jason Lee
Give Mitigro a shot for yourself. Their product is easy to apply and no special licenses are needed. Visit mitigrow pro.com to learn more. That's M I T O G R O W pro. Com.
- [12:42]
Jordan Upkavage
We'll do work and then we'll do fun. Because then that. That fun will then lead into lack of rain, which would then be back to you. Okay, so I got. I got the. I got the welcome to Green Setup podcast. This is Jordan Ibcavage. After 11 and a half minutes, I have gotten the flow of the show planned out in my head. So you mentioned Mitigro. So I'm gonna go talk about mitigro and I'm gonna talk about plant healthcare. So we. I have a plant healthcare mentor named Ken Miller. Ken Miller is a certified arborist and he has been a certified arborist for decades. He grew up in a family of fert and chem and used to own a tree farm and do ornamental and turf pest control. Fertin chem. Right. So he had a fertin chem business for a long time, had a tree farm for a long time, sold his fertin chem business, maintained his tree farm, growing cold tolerant palm trees, windmill palms, mule palms, what have you. And I think he's either still owns the land or is leasing the land or sold the farm or whatever. So he's kind of like halfway retired is. But he has the big boy CPO license, certified pest control operator license. And Ken is on my payroll and which is why I can operate a pest control business is because of Ken's big boy license. So Ken was instrumental in us starting plant healthcare legally by having that license. And we have purchased our trailer and spray rig from him. And that's what we've been using for a while. And Ken will come down to Tampa and hang out with the day, hang out for the day with us. And we do it as a Ken Miller training day. So we'll audit our systems and our fact sheets and our paperwork as if it's an FDACS inspection. He'll look at our SDS sheets. We'll go through the truck and look at our spill kit. All of the boxes that you need to check will, will audit. Right. And make sure that everything is, is current. And then we'll do some classroom training where we talk about, there's a, a spiral book which is applying pesticides correctly. That is the book. And we'll do some book training and then we'll just look at our operations and audit what we're doing and if it's the right thing for the tree. So out of our different chemicals, what our chemicals do, if we're, if we have the right fertilizer formulas, if we need to change them with seasonality, nitrogen bands, yak, yak, yak. We edit all of that. So in our editing process, I was, I purchased a fair amount of chemical from Plant food company and I purchased fertilizers from them, liquid fertilizers. I purchased Adam's earth, which is a liquid organic matter. And I purchase a polyphosphate, an O27. And what we have been doing historically was Every time we would deep root, let's say I have a client that's two times a year we would put fertilizer, Adam's earth polyphosphate in the tank. If we were doing a deep root four times a year, we do the same thing. Fertilizer atoms, earth polyphosphite. Except for the summer we would pull the fertilizer and we would put in mitigro during the nitrogen ban. And I was looking at this as like, man, I'm putting polyphosphate in the ground four times a year. Is that overkill? It'll like help boost some tree immune defenses. And then I'm thinking, do I need to continually boost the tree immune defenses? Constantly might be a little excessive. And as we were further reading the label, it can act as a fungicide and have some fungicidal properties. And per the label you can apply it as a root drench. So we're looking at our process of if we apply fungicides, we normally use subdue, that's expensive. But I have polyphosphite which has fungicidal properties and it's not as expensive. And we went through the one quart per thousand square feet math all the way down to how many square feet we would normally apply. Now let's say I'm root pruning a live oak for a swimming pool. It might be a 10 foot long trench, a 15 foot long trench, which is not very far. But we would take our gun and we would shoot the root prune trench with the fungicide, liquid fungicide to hit the exposed roots. And then we would hit on top of the soil surface between the trench and the tree trunk to get those roots protected. And we went through the math of the number of square feet we would actually be touching. And I should probably like, well, I don't even have my notes with me. Are going to be like 10 by 10 is 100 square feet. It would be anywhere from 100 to 250 square feet. So we did the math all the way down where we need one cup of polyphosphate to 12 and a half gallons. And that would be cheaper than doing a subdue application. And optically from a homeowner, if they were to watch us do it, it would look a hell of a lot more effective than applying subdue because applying subdue is stupid easy because it's a granular heap on top and then you irrigate in with a hose. So that was kind of a cool thing that we're pulling a chemical we're decreasing the amount of chemical that we're using. And we're going to use it some in deep root and as a fungicide, which was a fun audit. And we went through our liquids and then hitting on top with granulars, and we had a big conversation about ph. We've been taking a lot of soil samples and we've been submitting them to University of Florida soils lab. And we're getting a lot of soils that are coming back that are high. They're alkaline, which is kind of normal, you know, in Florida. So we're playing with elemental sulfur and applying sulfur to drop the soil ph by one unit. Right. So if I'm at a 7.9, I would apply enough sulfur to, in theory, drop it to the 6.9. So we're playing with that. Knowing that we're about to. This is classroom now.
- [20:21]
Jason Lee
Yeah.
- [20:21]
Jordan Upkavage
Knowing that we're about to go look at these properties where I have soil samples in my hand, we're looking at four properties. I have four soil samples. So we were playing with that, and then one of the soil samples we came back with Jason was low. It was like a 5.5, which I've never had an acidic soil come back from a client. And this was not a turfed yard. Zero turf in this yard. Old laurel oak. And I was like, well, this is very strange. We took two soil samples on this tree. So two different. Like you take six holes, mix it in a bucket, put a handful in a bag. Then you go over here, make six holes, put it in a bucket, put a handful in a bag. We sent two samples into University of Florida. That way they both came back very aesthetic. So it was like, wow, this is very strange. So we are going to play with lime and we are going to try and raise the phone. But I learned this. I did not know this. If you put sulfur in the soil to decrease the pH, that is temporary until the sulfur leaches out and your ph goes right back to where it was. If you put lime in the soil, it's going to stay there forever. And once you lime the soil, you cannot unlimb it. There is no antidote. There's no. It's leaching out and returning back. It's going to stay that way for a long time. I hope that's correct, because that is what I learned yesterday from Ken. So what we are going to do is per the lime, it says that we need to put 17 pounds per whatever. We are going to cut that in half and we are going to do Half of the rate that University of Florida said that we needed to use. And we're going to let that chill out for a year and then we'll reevaluate. And according to Ken, if I lime the property today, it takes about six months for it to soak and get to know each other until we're actually going to make a difference in the soil. From the day that I put the lime down, really not doing its job until about six months from application date until it hangs out and starts rubbing elbows with the soil particle friends. So I don't know. Jason, can you comment to that and tell me that I'm correct, I'm full of or I'm providing you information you didn't know.
- [22:47]
Jason Lee
So I'm not going to on the lime because I'm not a lime expert. Besides, I know I have limed things and I don't know it to be permanent because I know they're especially in agriculturally. When we bought the Fernry and we were revamping the Fernry, we pulled soil samples, right? This goes back to 2017, but we limed the whole property which had been limed before historically. So. And yeah, no, we lined. Yeah, we lied. Anyway, I'm going back through my memory bank. Yeah, we limed the whole property which had been done before. So I don't know that to be fact. I will ask some people and we'll have a follow up. We are looking at liming and for the most part where we're at in Florida. Yeah, we're always trying to raise the ph generally everywhere where I've worked, except for I think, I think in Oakmont, we've had some issues where we've tried where we've pulled some samples and we're trying to lower it. Like right now I'm like the pecan grove that we sprayed for moss. The forester that was working out there, he pulled soil samples, sent me the report. And so I think they've got, you know, three tons to the acre is what we're going to be applying or I'm pricing out for them. Um, so they got 5 acres, will be doing 15 tons of dolomatic lime if they approve the proposal. So that's.
- [24:12]
Jordan Upkavage
Well, here's what the Internet says. Because Google knows everything.
- [24:16]
Jason Lee
That's right.
- [24:16]
Jordan Upkavage
Google knows way more than we do. I just said Google. Does lime stay in the soil? Yes, lime stays in the soil, but it's not permanent. It works by slowly reacting with soil acids over months to years, typically lasting two to four years before reapplication is needed to maintain ph. While it doesn't immediately leach away, it gradually. It is gradually consumed by neutralizing acidity, nitrogen fertilization, and crop removal. So there you go.
- [24:47]
Jason Lee
Yeah.
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Jordan Upkavage
Maybe it just stays there for a while. Yeah, maybe that's the message.
- [24:52]
Jason Lee
I think that'd be accurate. All right, thank you, Google. Yeah.
- [24:57]
Jordan Upkavage
So that was cool. Our exercise yesterday. And we went after classroom was done. Oh, and when we audited our spill kit, our absorbent deal, we discovered was all gummed up and gunky and didn't function. And so we needed more absorbent stuff. Absorbent powder. So if we have a spill, we can then sprinkle the stuff out and sweep it up and contain it from spreading. So we did have a healthy audit and found it's like auditing a first aid kit. Like, oh, wow, I don't have any eyewash or whatever. And finding what is doesn't work. So it was cool. We found our like cat litter parallel was no longer good, so we needed to buy new stuff. Our first stop, Jason, we went to University of Tampa to look at the oak trees. And the other trees that did not receive mitre grow had hardened off and turned a little darker green. Now we did mitigro. All the trees, like brer went last week or two weeks ago and super soaked all the trees.
- [26:19]
Jason Lee
Yeah.
- [26:19]
Jordan Upkavage
200, 250 gallons, 300 gallons, whatever it was. So they're all blasted now. And the other trees started to green up and catch up with our manipulated variable experiment from a few months ago. So I don't know why our experiment tree greened up faster than the others, but it did. Maybe it was the Vitagro formula that made it green up faster. And we were looking at all the other trees that are starting to green up. Our one champion was still a little darker green, but it also had more fuzzies on it. So it had more fuzzy shoot growth at the ends of the branches. It had more fuzzy shoot growth on the inside. Epicormic sprouts. You stood define fuzzy. Like just more leaves, more stem elongation and pencil diameter sprouts. Pencil lead diameter sprouts. Woody shoot. New woody shoot growth. Okay, that's the fuzzies.
- [27:25]
Jason Lee
Okay.
- [27:26]
Jordan Upkavage
So if we had. So the stress. The more stressed trees had the same chunks of foliage on the branches and the same. Almost like you ever see a really stressed tree. It's like basketball clumps of foliage on the ends. And there's not a whole lot of fuzzies. Yes, right. It's just re repeating the Exact canopy it had last year in the same spot with not a lot of shoot growth going up. So the other trees that recently got Mitigro, two weeks ago, those started catching up with the greenness, but they had the similar. The leaves are in the same spot as they were last year. The one tree that we did earlier in January with Mitigro, from that onset of leaf canopy, there was some more vertical sprout growths growing up. Okay. And on the inside, it had more sprout growth, epicormic sprout growth, and maybe some dormant buds breaking dormancy and putting on a more dense interior canopy. So you would look at the ones that just got Mitigro, and there was more basketball type chunks of foliage where you could see more space between the canopy. And then the one that we did earlier in January, there was more visual blockage of foliage and you weren't seeing through the canopy as well. So we're looking like, there's me, Ken, Richie, Breer, there's four of us all looking at these and saying, yes, I see it too. We're not making it up. And then it was so funny, man, because we forgot about some of the basics of look at all of your surroundings. So these trees are in planters, and there are foxtail ferns planted under the trees. And Brear said, did you notice? The foxtail ferns said, no. So we went back to the tree we applied in January. And the foxtail ferns look fricking booming rate. You're like, you want to, like, roll around and take a nap in them. Lush, full to where you're not seeing tons of mulch in between the clumps, you know, because they're so full. And then we looked. There's six. Wait, there's seven other planters or five other. No, there's. There's six planters, eight trees total. So we looked at the five other planters, and the foxtail ferns look like crap.
- [30:06]
Jason Lee
Did you take pictures of the foxtail ferns?
- [30:09]
Jordan Upkavage
I will send them to you.
- [30:10]
Jason Lee
Okay, Because. Because I like, I care more about the foxtail ferns than the trees in my line of business, dude.
- [30:17]
Jordan Upkavage
So we were looking, we were talking to ourselves. Is this an anomaly or is this Mitigro, which is the only manipulated variable? And we're trying. We are trying to convince ourselves it's mitigro, right? And we can visually see there's something different in the tree. And this is more time since we talked about it last. And then if we look at the foxtail ferns, there is no, no hiding that, like something is different with the foxtail ferns and this one planter and all the other five planters suck ass. So there's definitely something different happening here. So we checked out that. I'll send you the pictures, Jason. And that was a 7.8, 7.9 ph in those. So because they are in restricted elevated planters, we are going to go very, very easy on the sulfur and we're going to pile a little bit of elemental sulfur to see if we can drop that a tick and play with it. And what's happening is our plant healthcare program is getting more and more dialed in where it's less of. And this is what I don't want it to be of. Here's one tank of sauce applies to all trees. I. I don't want to have that business model approach. I want it to be very knowledge based and very. It sounds crap. This sounds corny, but intimate. Where each individual tree is getting us a formula specifically for that individual tree.
- [31:53]
Jason Lee
Well, that makes, that makes sense. It's like each person's different when you go to the doctor. Each site's different, each tree is different, each soil is different. Right. And that makes sense.
- [32:02]
Jordan Upkavage
But I tell you, it's not easy to sell and, and it's a lot of education. So these training days really hone in our education and our theory and it checks that. Hey, experiments. I want to try make sure it's not something stupid. With Ken having decades of wisdom behind it, he's able to. I can soundboard ideas off of him. So, yeah, man, that's. That is the plant healthcare update. So from yesterday.
- [32:28]
Jason Lee
So do you remember, I don't know, three or four episodes when we were talking about mitigro? I'd mentioned a yard that we did with take all root rot.
- [32:35]
Jordan Upkavage
Yes.
- [32:36]
Jason Lee
Mitigro does not cure take all root rot. The homeowner had called in saying how great her grass was looking and wanted to know what we had put on it. Because we had made a miter grow application after our fungicides weren't working. We pulled a tissue sample, we got it checked with the University of Florida. It is take all root rot. What she was calling and complimenting were the patches of zoysia that were in her yard that even though we are in a drought, not guessing, the mighty girl helped make these patches great. And she also has some zoysia infiltration from the neighbor's yard that looked wonderful. The St. Augustine, not so much. So she called back complaining about the grass. And then this is, like I told Ben was. Hold on, I said she just called last week like raving about the grass and he's like, oh. He's like. Well I talked to her and he explained the scenario to me and I said he's like, what should we do? I said let's recommend removing all the St. Augustine grass and planting zoysia. I said, that sounds great. So we're doing that.
- [33:37]
Jordan Upkavage
Does zoysia get take all root rot?
- [33:39]
Jason Lee
No. Oh yeah. So anyway, so we had put the zoysia patches in her yard on steroids while we were trying to recover the St. Augustine. That's probably unrecoverable and yeah, so there we are with that.
- [33:54]
Jordan Upkavage
Do you want your office phone to ring more and increase service requests to your inbox? Want to push the gas pedal on your lead volume?
- [34:02]
Jason Lee
Looking for a marketing company is daunting. And who knows how to select a marketing company that really works? No business owner wants to spend their hard earned money on empty promises.
- [34:11]
Jordan Upkavage
Intrigue Media is your solution. Both Jason and I have partnered with Intrigue to help grow our businesses by simply making our phone ring more. Intrigue will build you an up to date website in record time. They had my website live on the Internet start to finish in under seven days. Intrigue will crank up SEO for your business, increase your organic Google ranking and even handle your paid Google Ads.
- [34:34]
Jason Lee
Intrigue Media is fast tracking lead volume for both sky frog landscape and independent tree service. You should give them a try for your business. Visit intriguemedia.com if you want to make more money and crush your competitors online. That's intriguemedia.com so I need to learn for when I become a server certified arborist again. So suckers are for the ground, shoots coming from the ground, sprouts are coming from the trees and now fuzzies is a new one for me. So fuzzies when I see it and the eye is on the ISA exam is going to be pencil lead size, stems stem. What do you stem elongation.
- [35:09]
Jordan Upkavage
Yes. That is a bold term. It's going to be a true or false question. So in the exam that you take Jordan, it will answer the term coined by Jordan Upcavage fuzzies ref new root hairs or new shoot growth at the apical meristem of the branches. True or false or that's an A B and A and B. I've messed up. What I was. You got the joke.
- [35:40]
Jason Lee
I got it. I got it.
- [35:40]
Jordan Upkavage
You got the joke. Yes. Yeah, I like this. I like the made up terms. Yeah, I do that a lot. I when we were talking about Soils. I referred to the soils because there was a patch of clay in one of the clients yards, and I refer to it as a developmental schmear of clay in the. In the soil. And Ken made fun of me. He's like a developmental smear. Am I going to find that in the book? I said, of course you are, Ken. It's in the glossary.
- [36:09]
Jason Lee
I like it.
- [36:11]
Jordan Upkavage
So, okay, well,
- [36:16]
Jason Lee
what was the other one you were going to talk about? You had the flow in your head.
- [36:20]
Jordan Upkavage
Yeah. Okay, so it is. Have you ever been to a music festival, Jason?
- [36:29]
Jason Lee
Why have we went to the CMA Fest? Not your type of music festival. We went to the CMA Fest in
- [36:34]
Jordan Upkavage
Nashville, done a bunch of drugs and danced around in a field in the middle of the day and listened to loud music. No. Yeah, me neither. Well, the lake behind my house is really low. It's so low, Jason, you can walk across it to the other side and not. You'll get your feet muddy. But there's no standing water. It's that low. There's land all the way across. And there is a entire football field, a rectangle on the north side of the lake, which is my side, that is bone dry. The guy, one of the neighbors, drove his riding lawnmower across it the other week and mowed it. Okay. Bone dry. So I was up in the tree house, and I was looking at this, and I was like, man, let's go exploring. So me, Axley, and Sawyer, we go walking around what is normally the lake, you know, because it's normally under four feet of water. So we're walking around and we're picking up trash, and we're finding golf balls. We found, like, 45 golf balls in. In the lake, and we picked them all up. And as I'm, like, hanging out here, it has just been mowed. The sun was shining. I was like, look at all this potential that we have. Look at all these golf balls that we have. It's like, we could have a music festival party back here. I said, this is Coachella. And so I called my neighbors and I said, hey, we're having a Coachella party in the lake. And we're cooking out, and we're having meats, and we're going to play desert games. Come on. So on Saturday, drag my charcoal grill through the mucky muck out to what I've called Coachella. And I got burgers and dogs and all. All of it.
- [38:37]
Jason Lee
And.
- [38:38]
Jordan Upkavage
And it's my family. It's our neighbors, the Williams with their son. It's our Neighbors, the furlongs. And there's three kids. It's our neighbor, the Hensels and their two or three kids. I forgot how many kids they have. Two or three. So there are three, four, five, six, seven, eight. There's nine children running around Coachella. And we have all these golf balls. And so we have a. I think it's a 68 degree. It's like a lob, right? So it's. It's a step down from a pitching wedge, which means it. It'll hit a shorter distance than a pitching wedge. Okay. Because we don't want to, like, knock out a window. All right. We wanted to go high and skull plat. So we're going. Kids look at us, and they would stop, and they look at us. And then us parents are hitting golf balls at our children as they're watching us, right? So they can see the golf ball coming in, and then it's plops into the mud. And then the kids are fighting over the golf balls, and we're hitting golf balls at the kids. And then the kids are gathering the golf balls and bringing them back. I have coastal source audio at a hundred blasting. And it sounds so good out there. And we're cooking out and grilling. We're playing football. And then I was like, let's have a fire. So I had an old Christmas tree. I had a bunch of branches. I had some pallets. I had a wooden ladder that I made for the. The original wooden ladder from the treehouse. So we starting to make a fire, and we're using dead cat tails to start it. I was like, well, how can we make this more fun, Jason? I said, I know what we can do. I'm going to start the fire on these dry cattails. But then how can we make it a game and really accelerate the fire? Because we thought about, like, hitting a flaming tennis ball soaked in gasoline at it. And that just sounded a little dangerous. So I took an empty beer can and I filled it up with gasoline, and I hung on the tab of the beer can, I. I jammed a stick right in the middle of the fire before I lit it. That's five feet tall. Five foot tall stick. And then on one of the little branches on the tab, I went the branch through the tab. So I'm hanging a beer can full of gasoline over a fire that's not lit yet. Okay. And the beer can is hanging right over where I'm going to start the fire. Okay. So I was like, we're gonna shoot this with a BB gun. That's gonna Be fun. We'll make it a game. So I start the fire, we step back, and I hand the BB gun, Little Red Rider to my neighbor Spencer, and he hits the damn beer can. The first shot. Damn. Because it was going to be a game. Yeah, you can hit the beer, the gasoline. So he shot it, starts leaking gasoline down. Everything goes up. And it's like, we're having it now. Coachella turned into Burning man, and then we had Burning man, and then it changed the country music, so now we're at Stagecoach. And so we just renamed the Lake Bed a new music festival every however often. But Betty, we had a dandy of a time. We hung out there till about 11pm and then we took everybody up to the house and we went night swimming and rinsed the mud off of each other. And everyone's jumping in the pool and having a time. And that was Coachella Music Festival. And it was a blast in Lake Bed. And so since then, me and the kids have cleaned up all of our mess. We have picked up every single nail that was in the pallets from the pallets that we burnt. So no one steps on a rusty nail so that we are nail free out there. We spent 45 minutes yesterday doing that. And I tell you, Jay, Jason, when you are past midnight, having another beer with your buddies, and your buddies say, hey, Jordan, Sunday morning we're going to take our boys to wrestling practice at Jesuit High School for the Little Tigers wrestling program. Would you like to come? You can't say no to that. When it's past midnight and it's just going to be me and Sawyer and Callan. And because Axley had a date with his mom on Sunday, I'm like, yeah, I'll go to wrestling practice at 10:30 on a Sunday.
- [43:06]
Jason Lee
Dude, I bet Sawyer would be a spider monkey of a wrestler.
- [43:10]
Jordan Upkavage
Ah, Jason. So I am at Jesuit high school at 10:15, and I'm thinking I'm gonna sit down here in the bleachers and I'm gonna have my Celsius. I'm gonna watch my daughter in wrestling practice, and I'm gonna do a little recovery. And is what I thought was going to happen because I'm in a. I'm wearing a button down shirt here. And wrestling coach says, okay, every kid needs a parent on the mat. Oh, no, I got to get on the mat. So I get on the mat and I am now doing all of the wrestling drills with the kids. It's Kid Dad, Kid Dad. So I'm doing the, you know, like the Roman lunges where your knee like scrapes the ground. And then we're doing high knees and butt kicks and wall walks and then push ups. And then Callan wants to hang out, so Ken's on my back. So I'm doing push ups with a two year old on my back. And then I'm grappling with my daughter. It was Jason. It was a freaking 90 minute practice where dad gets murdered. And I thought I was going to go nurse a hangover in the stands, but no, I'm getting drenched. Full blown. My whole shirt. You could wring it out wet. Full wrestling practice for an hour and a half on Sunday. And it was not. It was fun. It was painful.
- [44:35]
Jason Lee
It was painful. It seems like that was a choice
- [44:37]
Jordan Upkavage
that was made and I can't not do it right. I made the choice. Oh, and guess who the two people, two people in this gym climbed the rope all the way to the rafters in the gym. Who are those two people?
- [44:53]
Jason Lee
Even Sawyer.
- [44:54]
Jordan Upkavage
Me and Sawyer. Sawyer's the only kid that climbed the rope all the way to the top. And I am the only dad that climbed the rope all the way to the top because Chris tried and failed. Furlong tried and failed. Other kids tried and failed. Old old Soybean and daddy were team climbed the rope to the top.
- [45:13]
Jason Lee
Nice.
- [45:13]
Jordan Upkavage
So I sweat. I sweat the devil of Burning man out of my body Sunday morning. And when wrestling practice was over, because it was 10:30, so it would have been 11:12, wrestling practice was over at noon. We all went to Wing House and had chicken wings and pitchers of Miller Lite. And that was our Sunday.
- [45:36]
Jason Lee
Got to rehydrate. How is your. How is your. My computer is going to die soon. So we're going to fast track wrapping this up.
- [45:43]
Jordan Upkavage
The.
- [45:43]
Jason Lee
How is the cypress tree on Gullah. Gullah Island? Is it still alive? Nice.
- [45:49]
Jordan Upkavage
Oh, yeah. Fully woken up and yeah, it's not swimming in water. It's. It's just very dry.
- [45:57]
Jason Lee
Okay.
- [45:57]
Jordan Upkavage
Yep, that's doing well. Okay, well, We're. We're at 43 minutes. Your computer battery is going to die. Yachty.
- [46:05]
Jason Lee
The only other thing that we had to cover was the massive drought that we're in. And as you're.
- [46:09]
Jordan Upkavage
Oh, yes, that's what this was supposed to lead into.
- [46:11]
Jason Lee
You're having Burning Man. And we had one wildfire get within a mile of the shop. It stayed on the east side of 121. But we had some concerns. So we went and moved all of our trucks last Sunday. And because even though we have no woods on Our property, our property line is wooded and the pine trees are 60 ish tall, 80 ish tall. So if they become burning matchsticks. We've had enough fires in our sky frog career that we don't need anymore. I did not want burning matchsticks falling on my trucks. So we went and moved all our trucks as a precaution. Luckily that was just a precaution so they contained that fire. But I think we've got like three, three fires on the north side of Gainesville. Like one's out in Hatchet Creek. It's like 300 acres. There's one one off of Main street behind Carmax. It was like a hundred, 100 acres. And the one on 121 was like 30. So we, we. And hopefully there is rain on the forecast this weekend and hopefully we get a little bit of rain or a lot of rain.
- [47:14]
Jordan Upkavage
Who were your ride or die guys that came in on Sunday to help you move vehicles?
- [47:18]
Jason Lee
Keith. Keith. Keith and his son in law and his kid. Yeah, Bryce. We also brought. We also got Bryce's fire cannon and hooked it up to the fire hydrant. And that's a very impressive sprinkler. It shoots 250ft.
- [47:35]
Jordan Upkavage
That's almost a football field.
- [47:36]
Jason Lee
Yeah, it's massive.
- [47:39]
Jordan Upkavage
You don't hold it.
- [47:40]
Jason Lee
No, it's on a tripod. It moves around on wheels. It's highly. I mean he uses it for irrigating, you know, unirrigated. For establishing unirrigated Bahia is his purpose. But yeah, he brought it up. He doesn't live far away. And he's called, calls me up, he's like, man, I don't know. The fire's getting close, is very worried about us, which is very great.
- [48:00]
Jordan Upkavage
And it's great purpose is if the fire comes. Here's a fire cannon for you to be your own firefighter. To hook up to the hydrant and fight it.
- [48:08]
Jason Lee
Yeah. Or soak everything down before, like if it crossed the road, like, I mean we hooked it up. I had to see like we couldn't. He couldn't bring it over and not. We not hook it up. Like.
- [48:16]
Jordan Upkavage
Yeah.
- [48:17]
Jason Lee
He's like, oh, you've seen it before. I was like, no, I haven't. Like I want to. So we hooked it up and it covers a massive amount of property.
- [48:26]
Jordan Upkavage
Do you need a key for a fire hydrant or just giant wrench?
- [48:29]
Jason Lee
I'm not answering that question. It's okay.
- [48:31]
Jordan Upkavage
I was asking an incriminating question. I won't ask that.
- [48:35]
Jason Lee
Why not? That Mr. Producer bleep that out? Not really. That's fine.
- [48:38]
Jordan Upkavage
Well, you never answered. Yeah, it's just like I told you, like doing drugs in the desert. I was referring to caffeine, which is a drug. Yes. I mean, or nicotine. That's another drug here. Alcohol's a drug. I guess life's a drug.
- [48:54]
Jason Lee
Yeah.
- [48:56]
Jordan Upkavage
I'm gonna change the subject.
- [48:57]
Jason Lee
All right, so we need. We. We should do some. We should do a small amount of housekeeping. If this is your first episode, you can follow us on social media, green sideup, podcasts on Instagram and Facebook. I don't think we have a TikTok anymore.
- [49:09]
Jordan Upkavage
You can email jordan@reinsideup podcastmail.com.
- [49:16]
Jason Lee
yep. And if you have any thoughts or topics you'd like us to cover, feel free to reach out to us, ask us questions. We can do a Q and A episode in the future. I did you remember when I texted you Tony Rudolph's text about equip?
- [49:31]
Jordan Upkavage
Yes.
- [49:31]
Jason Lee
So I called Tony the other day. I forgot to text him back after you and I had talked. So I called him the other day, and he's helping nail her set up pod row. So when we're at equip, start figuring out our schedule, we'll coordinate with Tony and probably spend a little bit of time on pod row. Half a day, full day, a couple half days, whatever. Whatever the schedule works out. So thank you, Tony, for anyway reaching out to us on that and we look forward to seeing. Seeing you guys again in Kentucky. So that's in the. It's coming up quick, though. I mean, it's October. We're already in. Already in May. Coming up on May here. So October's not too far away.
- [50:12]
Jordan Upkavage
Yeah. So, yeah, that'll be a fun business trip. Go to Kentucky again. Well, I didn't get much time to talk about. And I gave two lectures last week. This is boring. I can't believe I'm ending it with this. But I gave a lecture on supplementary support on Tuesday of last week and I gave another lecture on Thursday of last week of lightning protection. And it was for an ISA certified Arbor first prep class that I was asked to give. Well, asked to teach those two segments. So it's super cool because I really enjoy those two avenues of arbor culture and I nerd out on them. And it was super fun, Jason, for me to show some Frankenstein stuff, for me to show giant props with 2 inch nuts and washers. I talked about that. My USAA tree that has 18 brace rods in it and a full lightning protection system. And then the firework tree that has nine rods and full lightning protection. And then I got to talk about coupling nuts. That was really fun. So anyways, that was a highlight of last week was giving those webinars and I have a lightning protection recording. I don't know how well it would do if it were aired as an episode because it's audio and not the PowerPoint and video and earliness. But I'll send it to you if you want to flip through it and learn about it.
- [51:42]
Jason Lee
Yeah, or maybe we can put it out as a bonus episode. Or if we ever make a YouTube.
- [51:48]
Jordan Upkavage
If there's any nerd that really wants a 90 minute deep dive into lightning protection, I'm your guy.
- [51:53]
Jason Lee
Yeah, I like it. Send it to me. I'll check it out.
- [51:58]
Jordan Upkavage
Okay. And then I. What I can do is, you'll see in the last slides I. I get to my Frankenstein stuff. And that's just. That's just the shredding the gnar right there. Okay. Are we done? I gotta go meet a guy about a mangrove.
- [52:12]
Jason Lee
We're done.
- [52:14]
Jordan Upkavage
All right, well, smell you later, dude.
- [52:16]
Jason Lee
Goodbye.
- [52:18]
Narrator
As you continue your journey toward entrepreneurial success, let Jason and Jordan be your trusted companions on this uphill climb. Don't miss out on future episodes of the Green side Up podcast. Make sure to hit that follow button to stay updated. For more ways to connect with the guys, check out the podcast description. Thank you for tuning in. And remember, keep working hard so you can play even harder and keep the green side up.
- [52:59]
Jordan Upkavage
Sam.