I think when the seeds grow like grass, with no space between them, then it is too much. with larger seeds it is easy to control but with very small tiny ones is another story. I have a method to cope with this problem. I take some fine dry potting, or garden, soil and mix my tiny seeds in it. I really mix it with my hand , on a piece of newspaper or container. Now I have about 3 or more fistfull of the mix. I take some and broadcast it over the entire area little bit at a time untill run out. Take another fistfull, another. This way I have traced the area maybe ten times. Statistically the seeds are going to be evenly spaced and close to the average space between them. probability of having seeds clumped up or having wide gaps will be very small. Now, If I wanted to plant in trays for indoor, I will use the same method but with smaller amout of mixture. Poor a little bit of mix in each compartment. Do this two or tree times, or untill run out of mixture. Then cover your seeding and water them. This is goof proof seed planting. This way separating and tranplantin the grown seeds is possible, as most of them are not attached to each other. Or just pinch off the excess ones, if you have already plenty of them. Also, lets say that you have 50% germination success rate. Still the ones that germinated will be more evenly distributed.

abies balsamea "tyler blue": is it as beautiful as pictures suggest ==>> i dont know.. what pix have you seen??? .. balsamea does not grow everywhere.. where are you in z5???? abies concolor "blue cloak": does anybody have a picture of a mature specimen? is it really a weeper? ==>> mine does not weep [or if it does.. its not very impressive] .. it has the same growth rate as any other blue concolor.. such as candicans .. how old is mature??? 4. picea orientalis "atrovirens": does anybody have a source? ==>> a real bane of mine.. shopping for names is nice.. but not a reality.. in the sense of actually getting the plants ... whats available.. is available.. what isnt.. isnt.... the problem.. for me was.. with no WWW .. books.. which are out of date.. the day they are printed.. that darn van hoey book.. i had a TO DIE FOR LIST an arm long.. and never found a single one for sale ... gee tree has the oldest BLace.. i have been watching it for near 10 years.. if its 15 feet tall ... i would be surprised.... and that is near consistent with its claimed growth rate .... what is 50 feet divided by 1.5 .... ??? ===>>> 33 years to 50 feet ... how old are you ... lol .... just buy whats available.... you may be hanging on to this wish list.. for a decade or so ... you would be better off.. using the descriptors for something like tsuga canadensis "golden splendor" ... and asking for the names of plants that fit the words ... instead of demanding that specific plant .. good luck ken

I can assume that the organic fertilizers (CGM etc) are not harmful in any way to dogs?? Has anyone had experience with dogs in their yard while the fertilizer is on?? They seem fine. I have three Bichon Frise all in the nine to fourteen pound range (Nikki, the little girl, is 9 lbs, the other two are larger bruisers). They have no attraction to soybean meal or Milorganite. I wouldn't allow them to eat rotting organics, however. One side effect is they seem to eat more grass and get sick from it a lot less often. Your breed may differ, of course, or your individual dogs may have specific issues. That seems unlikely, however. Best way to kill grass in a small area? I'm trying to save my pregnant self the extra work of actually digging out the grass. Congratulations! I can understand not wishing to dig with a separate burden to carry. You can use Round Up. Then, once the rainproof time is past (usually an hour, some are two), rinse it off thoroughly with the hose and *try* to keep the dogs out until it dries. Fortunately, Round Up has very low toxicity. You could smother it with a thick coat of soil, or kill it with a covering of plastic (tacked down) as well. Give it a week or three during summer and a good plastic cover will fry it out. If the lilac is really big and shadowing that too much it won't work well or quickly, though. I am attributing this to the wrong amount of watering, but perhaps I needed to apply the fertilizer better or something? It could be either, or too low a level of fertilization. Grass wants to be well-fed in May, August, September, and October, a pound to a pound and a half of actual nitrogen per thousand square feet at a time. Now that I've given the rule, I can tell you that I break it and apply a pound to 1.5 lbs a month, every month during the growing season from April through November. My soil is poor, so if yours is as well you'll probably want to increase that. Like you noted, water 1" at a time as rarely as possible. Can I hope reasonably that with the aerating alone that will encourage good microbes?? Unless your soil was drowned or severely poisoned (doubtful), they were there before the aeration. It will help the thatch decay by injecting microbes and soil right into the thatch layer. Organic feeding also helps, and seems to decrease the amount of thatch produced. You can consider compost, but given your current condition I wouldn't recommend it. It's rather back-breaking to get it down at 1/4" or so across the whole lawn. Unless the soil has been heavily poisoned or under water for a good clip, it's probably unnecessary anyway. It's available from your local garden shop, and big-box stores carry it bagged (I wouldn't dream of trusting that stuff, though, as who knows how long it's been there?) A lot of landscaping companies will deliver it (at a price), and perhaps some would even spread it (at a much greater price). have previously used Pro-Rich fertilizer by Richlawn. Is this concidered a chemical base?? Or an organic one? Define organic. :-) I'd definitely call this an organic fertilizer, given the poultry manure base, even though the poultry may not have had a purely organic diet (they almost certainly didn't, actually). Purists would say that the poultry need to be certified. I don't agree and happily use genetically modified soybean on my lawn. A protein is a protein, and any non-organic components diluted and decayed during composting to the point that I doubt there's any reason to worry. Particularly not if you eat chicken on a regular basis, or items containing GM soybean. Which I do. but maybe I should be sticking to something else that would be better for the lawn? If it's working for you, that's great. Name brands tend to be more expensive than the basic stuff, but are easier to find. Soybean meal, alfalfa meal, cracked corn, cottonseed meal, etc. all make excellent organic fertilizers. Finding them can be a nightmare depending on where you live--I have to drive nearly an hour to get mine, so I load myself down and only go twice a year. I'm presuming you're using the 10-5-5 plus iron lawn food. Using that, you should be applying about 10 pounds of lawn food per thousand square feet to get 1 pound of nitrogen per thousand square feet. You're also getting 0.5 lbs of phosphorous (kind of high) and 0.5 lbs of potassium (just about right) per application. Er, kind of high doesn't mean killing your lawn or anything, just that it's more than you need, really. If you have a 5,000 square foot lawn or so (I'm guessing as I didn't see any sizes above), that would mean using 50 lbs per feeding, four times a year (or more), for a total of 200 lbs. You'd actually need more soybean meal (the one that tends to be the best, overall, in my opinion) as it's 7-1-2. That requires 14 pounds per thousand square feet, times 4 apps per year, times 5,000 square feet, equals 280 lbs. The price runs around $13 for 50 lbs or so.

Hi Charlene, It really depends on exactly which plants youre talking about! Two of the basils I have now I started last year (too late), and when we got to fall and they were finally starting to grow up I didnÂt want them to freeze, so I put them back in pots and brought them inside again. They bloomed all winter! Every time the dying flowers started falling all over the place and making a mess, I cut them back SEVERELY and fed them well to get them growing again, and when I planted my tomatoes, I planted them back outsideÂwhere theyÂre still constantly blooming, and IÂm constantly cutting them WAY back and feeding them heavily. They didnÂt look very good over winterÂmostly because I donÂt have any really good windows to grow stuff inside. IÂve started a couple new ones for the gardenÂtoo late againÂand will probably do the same thing with them this winter. The two that are now two years old will be left to freeze this time. The parsley IÂve been growing at this house I brought with me from the last houseÂthree years ago. Parsley is a biennial, so itÂs supposed to grow the first year, produce seed the second year, and die. For the last couple years, every time itÂs started to bloom, I cut the flower stems way down into the crown, and fed it REALLY heavilyÂwater soluble 20-20-20 at 3-4 times the normal strength. That gets it growing fast again, which prevents some plants from blooming. I learned that back when my parents sold mums, and when they had varieties they were trying to keep from blooming prematurely, theyÂd pinch them way back and feed them heavily, which would produce new tender growth and delay blooming. This year I couldnÂt keep the parsley from blooming no matter what I didÂTheyÂre 4 years old and getting desperate!Âso IÂve started a couple new ones. Dill is going to bloom at some point pretty much no matter what you do to it as far as I know. Perennial herbs it doesnÂt really matter when they bloomÂtho they do often get leggy and not very useable when theyÂre bloomingÂbut they can be cut back before, during, or after blooming to get them producing useable foliage again. Some things will get bitter by the time theyÂre blooming/producing seed, and some things wonÂt. Lettuce obviously gets bitterÂspinach isnÂt as good and gets bitter eventually. I donÂt think thereÂs any difference with basil. And with dill, since you use the flowers anyway if youÂre making pickles, blooming is what you want. If you want to use whatÂs now called dill weed, you probably should get that before they actually go to seed. And some things, like dill, lettuce, and spinach are affected by the heat, and thereÂs not much you can do to keep them going when it gets hot. I canÂt help you with arugula! I think the stuff is too bitterÂall the timeÂto eat, so IÂve never grown it. If you want to try to get it going again, cut it WAY back (leave the bottom couple sets of leaves on), and give it a big, big dose of fertilizer. Be sure itÂs watered in well so it doesnÂt burn anythingÂbut thatÂs why I like the water soluble ones, because theyÂre not very likely to damage anything. I donÂt know if heat affects arugula or not. Since most plantÂs "purpose in life" is to produce seed, you can keep them growing longer by preventing them from doing it, and, with perennials, you can keep many of them blooming longer by deadheading them so they keep trying to produce seed by blooming more. Some, obviously, only bloom once whether they produce seed or notÂtho often those are the kinds of things that spread underground or have some other way of perpetuating themselves. If you have some specific things youÂre wondering about, let us know. If I donÂt know, maybe somebody else will. IÂm amazed at all youÂve accomplished down there in so short a time, Skybird