The Gurilla method is just go ahead and sprinkle lightly some all purpose ferilizer (10-10-10; 15-15-15- etc). Other method is to have your soil tested. Yet the other method comes from your observation and experienc. How other plants are doing, or have been doing? About NPK N= nitrogen will manifest itself in plants color and vigour. Too much "N" can burn and/or may prevent plants from flowering and bearing fruits. "N" - cannot attach itself to soil, as it is water-soluable and excess of it will leach down. Therefore the "N" should be supplied and appied continually, gradually as needed. P= Phosphorus, attaches itself to soil and stays there. So then it is not necessar to apply more of it if your soil is already rich in "P". But fortunately, there is no TOO MUCH phosphorus. Since it has no bad side effect. K = Potasium/potash: It is semi-durant. That means, it can go down with water little by little but not as fast as N. So then you have to replenish it more often than P. Like P, K does not have bad side effects either(generally). Your plants will use P and K as needed. But watch out for N; It can be deadly (grin)since it is force-fed into plants.

There should be some extreme punishment for those who still harbor privets in their yards -- like being required to come weed out every last one of the hundreds of seedlings appearing under my trees each year, deposited by birds. I cut out the 12 or so large ones growing here within 6 months of moving in and have noticed, over the past decade, that most of the neighbors have followed suit (except one right next door, whose privets are also infested with oak root fungus and as a result are not only a menace but look dreadful -- grrrr! He also has some highly mildewed specimens of Dorothy Perkins hanging over the fence. I keep hoping these two problems will cancel each other out...). On the other hand, Geranium pyrenaicum "Bill Wallis" seeds itself around with wild abandon and I do not mind -- it blooms wonderfully all winter and spring, then is easily pulled out when it starts to look ratty. It is especially good at inserting itself in vertical rock crevices. "Bowle's Black" viola is also great -- once you've had it, there it is, no effort required. I also like what I think is Freesia alba x leichtlinii which was here when we arrived and gets spread around when plants get moved -- ubiquitous but not obnoxious. As long as the guest stays small, looks reasonably nice, and doesn't bully, I usually don't mind. Free ground cover.

Ditas, You have really opened a "sticky wicket" with the topic of invasive plants. There are opinions all over the board on this topic. I will offer mine even though Im sure not everyone will concur. Let me preface this by saying we should all be compelled to assume personal responsibility for our actions. Flittering through life with nary a care for downstream consequences is not only irresponsible, it is intellectually lazy. My pet gardening peeve is some nimrod authoritatively proclaiming, "In gardening, as long as you like it, that is all that matters." What a self-righteous load of hog hooey! Typhoid Mary used essentially the same argument to "justify" her actions. I am certainly in favor of retaining all the rights of citizenship. I am dead set against the politically correct crowd. I do not want a proliferation of plant police. However, with rights come responsibilities. My personal approach to the invasive plant problem is to become informed, inform others and error on the side of caution. Invasiveness is a regional thing. What is invasive here may be quite well-behaved in other areas and vice versa. In the case of Dames Rocket (and many others), if you cant easy find a better plant to replace it, it speaks loudly to ones lack of gardening skills. We all have made errors in judgment. It behooves us to amend those errors. Before we jump on the home gardener too harshly, it should be pointed out that an estimated 80% of the really problematic, invasive thugs have been introduced by the various departments of natural resources and conservation! The list is long: Kudzu, Multiflora Rose, Russian Olive, Crown Vetch, etc., etc. The stuff that the "experts" once encouraged us to plant has become some of our biggest scourges. However, after their goof became apparent, they did assume responsibility for some particularly difficult eradication tasks. The problem is that "the cat" is darn difficult to put back in the bag once you have let him out Need I point out the problems with purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria), an ornamental that escaped the home garden? I believe in leading by example. I no longer grow things like Dames Rocket, Barberry bushes and Burning Bush (Euonymus alata). I destroyed the ones that I used to grow long ago. If you were to visit my gardens, I dont think you would notice their absence. Responsibility is a choice. IronBelly

So yeah, you can't just broadcast seed for some of the wildflowers and expect them to grow thru the turf. Especially when the clovers and bird's foot trefoil are supplying the lawn with lots of nitrogen, (and shade in the drought times) and keeping the turf lush! So I have transplanted quite a few tumble mustard, high knapweed, chicory, fleabane, smartweed, mouse-ear hawkweed, autumn hawkbit, etc. this fall. I transplanted some during the summer months with varying degrees of success - I hope these fall plantings work better. The problem with transplanting them during the hot sunny months: they don't take as well; I'm putting them in bare spots and disturbing the soil which leads to a lot of unwanted weeds; and of course they need to be watered which leads to a huge number of sprouting unwanted weeds! Next summer, I have a different plan. I will cover any bare spots with corn gluten meal which acts as a pre-emergent herbicide for several weeks and then decomposes to a fertilizer by the time the weather turns cooler and I'm ready to plant stuff without just getting undesirable weeds like plantain, knotweed, and crabgrass. My plan was initially to not have to water this lawn anyway and now I see that watering in times of drought really leads to unwanted weeds. The lawn is thin topsoil on top of pure sand so it has always died every few years when a bad enough drought hit. I have mulched endless leaves into the lawn for 3 years and with the great number of earthworms that brings, my soil is getting better. Also the shade and nitrogen provided by the clovers, vetch, and bird's foot helps the actual grass stay green. Some plants simply do NOT like to be transplanted - bird's foot is one of those. Fortunately, you can collect seed from the pods somewhere where it is growing and broadcast them over the lawn and it will eventually take hold. It is very small the first year (I haven't even been able to determine when it is sprouting), noticeable the second year if you know what to look for, and healthy and flowering by the third year. There is a saying: "the first year it sleeps, the second year it creeps, and the third year it leaps!" White and red clover and violets and of course dandelions will all grow easily if seed is spread over the turf, especially if it is mown very short first. The next thing I'm working on is which weeds help or kill other grasses and weeds. Obviously wide leaves like dandelion, plantain, and violets deny grass beneath them water and sun and can choke it out. But I'm more interested in chemicals that plants produce to fight or help competition. There is a lot of info available on companion planting for vegetables but for weeds - not much. So I'm just watching and watching. I had one patch of a lush green prostrate knotweed that killed everything beneath it. Another patch of lush pinkish knotweed that did the same. But regular knotweed is not as bad. Autumn hawkbit (like delicate dandelions) inhibits sprouting near it, even of its own seed! But it doesn't bother growing grass. Mouse-ear hawkweed does the same and so sends runners like strawberries to propagate itself into dense mats which will then smother grass. The first line of defense against unwanted weeds is to mow the grass very short, but this tactic is NOT available when the goal is to have lots of wanted weeds. Next summer I plan to try spraying leaves of dandelions, plantain, and violets with vinegar and a tsp. of dish soap on a hot, sunny day. This is said to kill the leaves but not the root. That's O.K. with me if it works. I just want to hold back these aggressive weeds from taking over.