I've completed two applications of the baby shampoo (with a week of no treatment in between). It has definitely helped in some areas, while other areas seem to still be hard soil. I've noticed that after a couple of inches of penetration with a screwdriver, I can feel gravel in the soil. I dug up a spot and it's not pure gravel by any means, but a few inches down there are a considerable amount of small rocks/stones. Do you think this is negatively affecting my lawn? I've done the tuna can test and adjusted my sprinklers accordingly, but after 4 days of not watering the grass had gotten a bit wilted, so it seems like despite my shampoo treatments the water is still not penetrating deeply enough....? Thoughts? Should I just keep doing the shampoo treatment a few more times? And water slightly more frequently (every 3 days?) until the soil really softens up throughout the yard? There are a lot of brownish spots now (see image below). Mowing once a week about 1.25-1.5" high.

Venture, each one of the flowers are fruits,when the flowers buds fall you'll see tiny rock hard round fruits.They come generally in clusters.And some of the fruits will fall off by themselves at an early and tiny stage...this is nature aborting one to many in a cluster.Don't be alarmed by this just gather the ones that have fallen and throw them away. The ones that stay on your tree will only be stronger and bigger because of this. Meyers are good producers,and will fruit twice a year for you.I just picked around 20 ripe fruit off mine last week,and still theres at least 20 more.This is the same with thing to look for with all your other citris in way of fruiting.You should be enjoying the scent of the flower buds also.Citris are wonderful in many ways to grow.....Good growing to you.***Suzanne

Some ponds are never cleaned and the ponds and its occupants survive very well. However, a large number of ponds are created with high fish densities or are built in locations were the pond receives a great deal of debris over the year. Even if you start out with just a few fish initially, in a healthy pond they will breed to the point that the number of fish will push the environmental limits of your pond and biofilter. The debris may be the result of leaves blowing into the pond, the die-back of vegetative pond plants as well as fish wastes. It is these latter types of conditions that will necessitate you cleaning the pond eventually. The two most likely time points for cleaning are in the fall, to reduce the amount of accumulated muck on the bottom of the pond as you head into winter, or in the spring to remove material accumulated over the winter from leaves blowing into the pond, accumulated fish waste or catkins and similar materials shed by trees as they leaf out. Cleaning in the fall reduces wastes in the bottom of the pond which may turn anaerobic if sufficient oxygen is not available, creating a breeding ground for harmful bacteria, or which may decompose, releasing ammonia and other dangerous chemicals that can be trapped under the ice. The build-up of these pollutants can lead to fish kills over the winter months. While keeping a hole in the ice over winter will help alleviate the accumulation of gases, cleaning the pond before winter sets in will reduce the overall potential for problems. Cleaning the pond in the spring may help reduce diseases and parasites that often occur as the pond and its biology warms up for the summer, as well as reduce the overall availability of nutrients that stimulate algae growth. The following are a few approaches that have been successfully used to clean the pond. 1. If the pond has a bottom drain periodic changes of water (typically 10% per week) have been used to evacuate the accumulated debris from the bottom of the pond. This simple approach minimizes the amount of material that is removed at any one time as well as adds water to the pond on a periodic basis. Care must be taken when adding water to be sure that you have minimized the addition of chlorine and chloramines typically present in many municipal water supplies. This can be done either by pre-treating the water with dechlorination agents or by using a whole-house water filter with an activated carbon cartridge. 2. Using a net such as used in swimming pools is helpful for cleaning out large materials that have settled to the bottom of the pond. However, if there is a very large amount of debris in the pond you should be careful to either remove the fish or use supplemental aeration to avoid creating significant oxygen deprivation due to stirring up anaerobic or large amounts of oxygen-consuming muck. If you notice a rotten egg smell this indicates the presence of hydrogen sulfide. You should immediately stop stirring up the bottom and get the fish out of the water as soon as possible before continuing with the cleaning. 3. You can use a variety of devices for vacuuming the bottom of the pond. Some of these use a garden hose to create a suction through a venturi device. The potential problem with these devices is that the pond may fill up with too much water during a prolonged vacuuming and you may have a potential problem of adding chlorine and chloramines to your pond if you do not pretreat the water. Wet/dry shop vacs, specially those with an attachment for a garden hose to provide a continuous drain, have also been used. These devices may drain a large amount of water from the pond in a short time and therefore it is necessary to either replace the water or use the garden hose to add the water back into the pond through the biofilter. Care must be exercised in reintroducing water taken from the bottom of the pond in that it may be depleted of oxygen as well as have very high suspended sediment levels that may create problems for the fish. A third approach is to use a pump capable of handling a moderate level of solids (such as a sump pump) to pull water from the bottom of the pond and pass it through a device to strain out the majority of the solids and then recirculate the water back into the pond. Filtering materials such as old sweaters, panty hose, etc. have all been used with some success in this approach. In any of these approaches, if using an electrically powered device running on house voltage make sure that you have it plugged into a GFI protected circuit for your own safety. Ronaye, Steve and David

For the mentioned trees in your post, with the exception of the redbud, you cannot start them from seed and expect them to look like the parent tree. The trees you listed are cultivars and as such need to be propagated through grafting, cuttings, or other asexual methods in order to get a tree identical to the parents. You can start seeds from an 'Autumn Blaze' maple but the seedlings will not be 'Autumn Blaze'. Some will be similar to the parents and others will be similar ro the straight species that the variety was selected from. The same thing holds true with the copper beech and 'Crimson King' Norway maple. Seedlings from a named variety of copper beech will come up anywhere from completely green to purple-ish. If you want one of these named selections you will have to find a grafted plant or one started from a cutting for sale. There are a whole bunch of mail order nurseries that sell smaller grafts or cutting grown size plants if buying a larger plant is cost prohibitive. A smaller tree will also establish quicker and often out perform larger transplants that require longer to establish themselves post-planting. The redbud, if you do not want a selected variety/cultivar, can be started from seed. I actually have seed pods still hanging on my trees and can send you some if you'd like. When I have purchased seed, I have bought from both F.W. Schumacher and Scheffields with great germination results. Depending on which species you start from seed, you will have to treat the seed differently to allow germination. Some species require a couple months cold stratification (damp and cold but not frozen), some require warm followed by cold stratification, some require scarification where the seed coat needs to be weakened, and some can be sown without pretreatment. Schumacher's online catalog has species specific germination requirements listed on the details page for almost all the seeds they sell. Hope this helps!