christine, follow this advice given here by a very smart member - ... and David's TOO, he's pretty smart also!!! "Always deep, infrequent watering. Your lawn needs one inch of water per week including rainfall. Using tuna cans placed in various places, run the sprinkler to obtain one inch of water in the tuna cans and time it. Run the sprinklers each week for that amount of time in every section to achieve one inch of irrigation all over. One inch will moisten the soil to a depth of 6-8 inches. This encourages the roots grow deeply. The soil will pull the water downward. The roots will grow down looking for water and nutrients. Each week, be sure to take rainfall into consideration. Always mow high at 3 inches or higher on a regular basis. Mowing high permits proper photosynthesis. That means the grass needs sunlight to grow. The shorter the blades of grass, the more you impede the photosynthesis process. It is also very important to remember never to cut more than one third of the grass blade at a time. You may wish to mow once a week or 2-3 times a week depending on how fast the grass grows, just so long as no more than one third is cut off at once. Infrequent deep watering and frequently mowing high are the two crucial points of lawn care. Anything else you do is secondary to these cultural practices. Proper watering and proper mowing are what encourage a healthy growing environment for a lush green lawn that is able to crowd out weeds. I wouldn't worry about the condition of your lawn right now. Once you begin soil amendment, deep watering, mowing high, and de-weeding, it's going to look fantastic this summer. "

trust me, I have had poa grass for the last 3 years. Have no idea where it came from. I have tried every thing to get rid of it. We have actually, this spring, filled up 4 -30 gallon garbage cans of the stuff. It is from Hell. My husband got the bright idea to use 20 Mule Team Borax on it. We used it up north to kill creeping charlie in our Kentucky blue grass. It did the trick. The poa turned a ghastly shade of yellow, seeds and all. now we just take a spade and slice it off.

The following statement was made in this thread on April 29, 2009: "It has been demonstrated by natural root grafting at UC Davis, but then only on rootstock plants just a few inches from each other, in the nursery row, and then only on mutiflora." In 2007 Golino et.al. at U.C. Davis published a paper on this subject. The abstract is at: http://www.actahort.org/books/751/751_26.htm In the full paper, the following is stated (page 29-30): "Field Spread in Scion Cultivars To test further for the occurrence of virus spread trials were conducted on over 300 plants each of three scion cultivars, Double Delight, Iceberg, and Queen Elizabeth. Rooted cuttings were planted approximately 30 cm apart in rows in the field, grown for one year and alternate plants were graft-inoculated as described above with one of three virus accessions: 1) ROS98.36, 2) ROS98.27, and 3) ROS70.7, which were 1) a source of PNRSV that caused bright yellow chlorosis in the spring; 2) a source of ApMV, and 3) a source of a naturally-occurring mixed infection of ApMV and PNRSV, respectively. Plants were pruned yearly using shears that were cleaned between each plant by dipping in 10% bleach solution. Bushes were observed for symptoms periodically and ELISA tested for PNRSV and ApMV in the spring for two years. All non-inoculated plants that tested positive were re-sampled and tested to confirm the result." In the conclusion section (page 221) the following was stated: "In scion varieties, transmission rates two years postinoculation ranged from 0 to 25% depending on virus and cultivar. Queen Elizabeth had the lowest percent infection of all the varieties at an average 5% for all three viruses; Iceberg had the highest for a scion cultivar at 13% average for the viruses (Table 4). These differences correlate with the cultivars relative root vigor. It is possible that a larger, more vigorous root system would increase the chance of forming a root graft with an adjacent plant. R. multiflora has a more vigorous root system than all three scion cultivars tested and within the scions, Iceberg is more vigorous than Queen Elizabeth and Double Delight." -------------------------------- I do not understand why someone would make the April 29 statement. Especially since on April 30, 2009 the same writer states: "If one actually looks up Golino's paper in Acta Horticulturae......." ----------------------------------- Please also note that not all types of mechanical transmission were ruled out in the 2007 paper since the observed rate of spread was higher in the unpruned bushes than in the pruned bushes. In another PNRSV infected plant, hops, this is attributed, in part, to the branches of neighboring plants rubbing against each other. Golino et.al. acknowledge this as they state (page 220-221): "The possibility remains that spread occurred by mechanical transmission due to contact between the leaves of the closely spaced plants and experiments are underway to test that putative mechanism of spread."

There were roses everywhere when we bought this house, and we have been removing them one by one and giving them to friends. One friend lives on a street called Rose Circle, or something like that, and she has been good about taking the unwanted roses off our hands. I have been replacing the roses with drought tolerant plants, such as succulents and cacti, which I much prefer. Still, some roses still come back from roots that we were unable to remove, and so it is an ongoing process to get rid of them. We have kept one rose bush in the front yard that makes white flowers, and it seems to bloom all year, which is why we kept it. Also, the white flowers go better with our color schemes than the pink ones. We are trying to get rid of the pink that we inherited with the house. The first thing to go was an ornamental peach tree that attracted possums. We have replaced that with banana and heliconia - not drought tolerant plants, but they work with our existing watering system. I have a hard time throwing out orchid cuttings, but we have too many epidendrum in the back yard and no place to put all of them. I also have a bit of a hard time throwing out bromeliad cuttings, but I have no trouble at all throwing out roses, as the thorns are quite nasty. Some of the bromeliads are nasty also, and so I do not feel bad about throwing those out. If it pricks you, do not feel bad about throwing it out is my philosophy. It's nice when you can find homes for unwanted plants, but it is not nice to keep something that is getting in your way.