"Program Outline: March 13: Applied Halts preEm. Did not contain fertilizer" There are other preemergents that are cheaper and longer acting than Halts. Dimension is one, Barricade, and Stonewall are others. While it might be a bit early for a preemergent, this has been an atypical winter, and weeds are going to be early this year. "Mid April: Put down one application of liquid weed killer." How do you plan on doing this, just a blanket spray of Weed-B-Gone? If weed pressure is low I would just spot spray weeds as necessary. "Late April: Apply weed/feed." Terrible idea. Weed and Feed products have one purpose, higher profits for Scotts. If you want to fertilize, that's fine, but kill weeds separately, and generally a week or two after fertilizing. "Late May: Apply one application of Milorganite Late June: Apply one application of Milorganite" Fine, you can do it any time. "Late June: Apply GrubX" Not sure of the timing on GrubX, but do a little research on when it's best to do so. "Late August: Core Aerate: Irrigate Immediatley following core aeration(1" of water)" Core aeration is generally not necessary unless your soil is compacted (rare), or very heavy clay (also rare but some areas do have it). I've done it, but many people feel that you bring up a lot of weed seeds with core aeration. "Early Sept: Verti-cut overseed with same TTTF/KBG mix. Apply starter fertilizer." If you have a healthy lawn, overseeding will probably not be necessary as the KBG will fill in bare areas. If you loose some grass to drought or disease then sure, but you should determine this in late summer. Early Oct:(4 weeks after seeding) apply PreEmerge with fertilizer. Im under the impression that the PreEmerge now will help control henbit in the early spring.... "If you overseed this can stunt new growth, and besides, you will have probably missed the poa annua window, as well as other winter annuals. You want to get the preemergent down earlier as soil temps fall below 70 degrees. "Late November: Apply nitrogen rich fert...Possibly urea." Yes, apply when topgrowth has stopped, but the ground isn't frozen. It should be a quick release source of nitrogen: urea, ammonium nitrate or ammonium sulphate. Few Questions: 1. Does the program make sense. Any recommneded tweeks? 2. Is it unwise to overseed a TTTF lawn every year? Already answered. 3. Does my preEmerg timing in the fall make sense...Long enough wait time to allow new seed to sprout. But put it down soon enough to provide henbit/poa control. Already answered. 4. I've thought about putting down a baby shampoo solution in May to help soften my soil...Does this make sense? It does, it can't ever hurt, but I think you should do a soil structure test (jar test). It's free and you can do it yourself. It will give you a pretty good idea of your true soil's composition.

Just moved into house this year in Maryland. I'm working on bringing the lawn back to good health. It's very nice already but needs attention. I put myself on the Scotts annual plan since it seemed easy enough to follow. I am not a die-hard, but I do want control of it. That program seemed like a good starting point for the first year to achieve that goal. I am mowing high, it's becoming more dense, but the thin spots have clover/broadleaf/weeds of course. I had planned to follow the simple Scotts program and also aerate/overseed at the end of the year (all done at the right times, weather permitting of course). Thought it was a solid plan to have solid control of the lawn by early spring 2012 at which point I would dump Scotts plan and get on an "as needed" plan like you and the other die-hards do. What would you recommend for a schedule instead of what I had planned for this year?

I saw on a couple forums that people had mentioned being able cultivate PNSBs from worm castings. I don't know if that applies to the majority of PNSBs or just a few. In any case, the one I'm most interested in for harvesting and culturing to inoculate a more em-1-like serum would be Rhodopseudomonas palustris, whose versatility allows it to be found in aerobic and anaerobic conditions. "The presence of photosynthetic bacteria along with the heterotrophic bacteria have been reported in various aquatic environments like Indian tropical waters (Vasavi et al., 2007), salt marshes (Bergstein et al., 1993), industrial effluents (Ramasamy et al., 1990; Merugu et al., 2008), sea water (Kobayashi,1982), sewage (Kobayashi et al., 1995), waste water (Sunita and Mitra, 1993 and Vasavi et al., 2007), hot water springs (Demchick et al., 1990), earthworm casts (Vasavi et al., 2007), paddy fields (Sasikala et al., 2004), ocean waters and aquaculture (Kappler et al.,2005), brackish lagoon (Anthony et al., 2006), and black sea (Overmann and Manske, 2006)." (PDF of Biotechnological Applications Of Purple Non Sulphur Phototrophic Bacteria: A Minireview) Maybe I won't be able to find it in a worm bin with Eisenia fetida, though... I'd just hit up a swamp, but all the swamps 'round here are frozen at the moment. Well, I don't know too much about this stuff right now anyway, so maybe I'll just do more reading and just use commercial EM-1 or LAB to compost my bokashi to feed to my worms (or freeze) for now. By the time springs rolls round, maybe I'll know enough to culture and add a few PNSBs. Btw, any good studies out there comparing the efficacy of EM-1 vs LAB for bokashi? (Only thing I seem to remember is that the PNSBs in the EM-1 consume the CO2 the LAB creates so maybe that's something significant...)

I agree that there is no 1 way of growing tomatoes. I do what gives me the best tasting & largest maters and the most of them at the same time. I'm not saying my way is better than anybody else's. I was happy growing tomatoes that were decent size and fairly productive before I switched to my current methods, but then got to thinking, why not try to increase size & production and get the most from my limited space? So I changed my thinking and methods a bit and that worked the best for me, and haven't gone back. I've replaced, by method changes, 8oz fruits, maybe 15-20 per plant, with 12oz fruits, 40-50 per plant--not by changing the variety but by changing the methods. Even moreso, I've increased lbs per square yard by over 1200%, so I won't go back to the old ways. For those those that think a plant is different than a person, that is true, but both are living things that reproduce, and require nutrition to do so; what happen's when a pregnant mother doesn't eat during pregnancy? I think putting genetics aside, it will affect the size of the baby, just as I feel it would affect the size of tomatoes. Isn't this logical? I don't think I could have made the point any other way. Sometimes, you gotta think outside the box too. Oregon_veg, I wasn't knocking your methods or trying to be offensive or rude. You tried using a vehicle as a comparison, which may be worse than my example. You also said you do all your maintainance beforehand and not on the road... but said "Then it's gas and oil for the rest of the trip." Gas to a vehicle is FOOD. It wouldn't do a thing without it. Please see my original post, about 3 down from Trudi's pics, which was on topic. Four month old plants loaded with fruits and almost looking as nice as day #1 are not normal here. They would have been decimated by disease by now, at least here with all the humidity, or starved by now. And I'm not talking 4-5'' Aunt Gertie's Golds at the end of the season, but 6''. While I'm one of the biggest proponents of "Nitrogen for leaves and shoots. Phosphorus for roots and fruits" I think that there is more to learn about mid-season feedings--how they may affect production as well as plant longevity with indeterminate plants. Maybe I'm on to something.... maybe not... so DON'T try it! DON'T change your current methods! DON'T maximize your production! Notice I also didn't say the word Nitrogen... it would open up a whole 'nother debate regarding NPK #'s, so I'll leave it at just ''feedings'' though the last fertilizer I used here was 15-0-0 (calcium nitrate.) Maybe Fusion will post something on mid-season or season-long feeding, I think here or another forum he said something similar like many people don't fertilize long enough into the season or something. I guess in all 3 of my posts, I gave "just my opinion" however it came out or was interpretted. Mark