By 'gravel'...do you mean typical native New England gravel...sand / stone/ mineral soil mix? Or do you mean crushed stone or traprock? The typical 'gravel' drive here in New England, at least for all my years, is really nothing more than the native subsoil, a sand, stone, and mineral soil mix, graded smooth to travel on, and sloped enough to drain. Many of us, like me, have the other drive...the crushed stone or traprock (depending on just what the provider calls his material). Like plant material, the 'local' name can be different depending on where you go. If you're looking to restore the look of a crushed stone drive (I wouldn't recommend peastone...to rounded...won't compact well at all) then you'll likely have to hire a contractor to machine grade what you have down to a good compact base, some inches below where it sits now, in order to allow for the addition of 3-4 inches of crushed stone. Make the stone too much deeper and you'll need the services of a large vibratory roller to really compact it. Keeping it 3-4 inches will allow for sufficient compaction by serveral passes of a vibratory plate compactor, a walk behind compactor about the size of a big lawn mower. Noisy, but useful and efficient. In Massachusetts you should be able to find a decent selection of color ranges by visiting various suppliers in your area. Understand that this type of driveway surface is constantly in need of homeowner maintenance, from raking the stone periodically, to spraying for weeds (or laboriously picking them out by hand). And then there's winter.... The look of this stone driveway is quite nice...in the late spring, summer, and early fall. Winter brings along an assortment of 'issues', not the least of which is keeping the stone in place when making any kind of attempt at snow removal...and then retrieving the stone in the early spring to put back in the driveway. But...it's the look.... Good luck...

A thought about the pH of tap water: it doesn't matter much. Most people's water will test between (say) 7.3 and 7.8 because, if the water is naturally acidic, the supplier will treat it to protect the pipes. What matters is the total alkalinity (a quantity) rather than the pH (a ratio). In most of the East and other areas where water is naturally soft, the total alkalinity is low even if the pH is 7.5 or whatever. There is just not enough stuff in the water to have much effect on soil chemistry. But hard water from limestone springs or wells will have higher total alkalinity that could impact the soil chemistry. Also, out west, the raw young mountains are still leaching lots of solubles into the runoff. This means that western rivers like the Colorado have high total alkalinity plus a load of salts that can build up in the soil with long-term irrigation. So there's probably no value in running out to check the pH of tap water. It will be alkaline, but the test doesn't tell you how the water will affect your soil.

Wow, Janet...you're gonna be a one stop shopping place it seems...will just have to get me a cold beverage, and I'll be all set. About how big is this thing? How many booths about? How much time should I plan to spend to see it all? I'm really hoping to get there as early as I can, after going out to breakfast. You will be set up with or near the Master Gardeners? I've never been to the Fairgrounds (or even Shelbyville for that matter). I'm not into a lot of the 'crafty' stuff so much, but do really enjoy 'art'...like the art found at some of the local juried art shows. I'm always on the lookout for some art, made by (and maybe even signed) by a local artist....besides getting to meet them and discuss their art. Sue...now really getting all excited all over again!

Tree, I'm sorry to hear that you had such a bad year. I know that it is very discouraging to work so hard and to have everything turn out badly, but some years are just that way. With the garden soil, unless you do a soil test you are just blindly guessing what might have gone wrong. The basic Routine Soil Test from OSU is inexpensive ($10.00) and would be the place that I'd start. It will at least tell you your soil pH, and your N-P-K levels. It is a whole lot easier (and smarter) to start with the soil test to see what it tells you than to just start all over with a new garden plot in a different area. In the spring, since you had so much rainfall, I think it likely that your soil stayed too wet and the assumption I'd make is that the soil wasn't draining quickly enough during that rainy period. That's only an assumption, though. If your soil has a high clay component, the odds are higher that the soil stayed too wet and the plant roots rotted. Also, when soil stays that wet for a prolonged period of time, lots of plant diseases rear their ugly head. The word you used that made me nervous was manure, and I'll explain why. Since about 2000 or 2001, we have had a continued problem with a particular class of herbicide that doesn't break down quickly enough and that leaves residues in manure (and compost as well) at a high enough level that garden plants die when their roots take up enough of that residue. The class of herbicides that cause this to occur are used to control broadleaf weeds in pastures and fields where grains are grown, including golf courses and city parks where they are used to keep broadleaved weeds out of the grassy areas. The herbicides that have these residues which are slow to break down include picloram, aminopyralid and clopyralid. These herbicide residues have been found in hay, they have been found in the manure of animals that ate hay treated with these herbicides, and they've been found in compost made either from the hay or other plant residue from areas where the herbicides were used. The herbicide residues have been found in compost purchased (or obtained free of charge) from municipal composting facilities, as well as purchased bagged compost and purchased bagged manure. Even more worrisome, a couple of years ago these residues were found in bagged compost and, following that incident, the composting company's investigation discovered that they used contaminated manure from animals who had been fed a purchased, bagged, name-brand animal feed. The actual original source of the herbicide contamination was one of the components of the bagged feed, which apparently was raised in fields where these herbicides were used. That means that the herbicide residue survived being processed into feed, and then it survived the animals' digestive tracts, and then it survived the composting process at a high enough level that plants grown in beds enriched by that compost were killed by the herbicide residues. To me, what this tells us is that any time we bring in compost or manure from a source other than our own property where we have 100% control over how it is grown, we may be bringing in herbicide residues along with that compost or manure or hay/straw that we use as mulch. I used to use a lot of manure, and I used to use a lot of hay as mulch. As the herbicide residue contamination of gardens has become more and more common, I've almost completely stopped using manure. I don't even use the manure from our own chicken coops on the compost pile I maintain for the garden because I use purchased feed for the chickens. Nowadays all the chicken manure/bedding just gets dumped on a cold compost pile I am using to fill in a eroded gully on our land. There is no way I'm going to use any of that compost in the garden because of the risk of herbicide residue contamination from components in the purchased Chicken Scratch. The only compost I use nowadays is compost from my own pile and none of the materials I put on that pile have been treated with herbicides because I don't use them. If I want to use manure at all (and I rarely do), I only use the Black Kow brand. That is a long-standing policy of mine because this brand always has been 100% manure whereas other purchased manures may contain only 10% manure with the rest being filler (usually black clay). It frustrates me that the government allows products that are only 10% manure to be sold as manure, so I stick with Black Kow. I've never had herbicide residue contamination from Black Kow so I feel like they've obviously taken measures to keep herbicide residues out of their products, and I'll keep using Black Kow for as long as it stays free of herbicide residue contamination. When garden soils become contaminated with herbicide residues of this type, it can take from 1 to 4 years for the herbicide residues to degrade to the point that plants can be grown there again without risk of plant death from the herbicide residues.\ So, since you use manure and compost, unless you have 100% control over everything that goes into the manure and compost, you may be inadvertently bringing in herbicide residues that kill your plants. I know several people, one of whom lives right here in my neighborhood, who have had their veggie gardens killed by herbicide residue in either manure they added to their soil or hay they used as mulch. The last time someone gave me hay for my garden was 2011 and I let those bales sit and break down for 2 years before I used them as mulch in the garden. By then, I'd seen enough broadleaved weeds growing right beside the bales to know that the hay was clean and free of herbicide residue. I doubt I'll ever use hay again, though, because the risk is too great. Even if the folks raising the hay do not use any herbicides at all, there's always the slim chance that those herbicides are used by the electric company underneath power lines, by the county along the roadside or by an adjacent rancher, and herbicide drift could contaminate the "clean" field if that is the case. Whenever somebody tells me that their garden plants are mysteriously dying in a garden area where they've long gardened with success, my first thought always is that maybe their soil has become contaminated with one of these persistent herbicides. If you want to read more about this, just Google "killer compost" or "herbicide carryover" and you'll find lots of info. The plants in flats are a different case altogether, unless you're using garden soil or compost in the flats. I always start seeds in flats in a sterile, soil-less mix because that is the best way to ensure healthy seedlings. When you start with a sterile, soil-less, seed-starting mix, you greatly lessen the chance that disease will kill your young seedlings, as long as you avoid overwatering them. I hope you'll be able to figure out why your garden soil has given you trouble this year, and I hope you can just fix the soil you have and not have to start all over again with a new garden plot. And, if you are in an agricultural area where the adjacent fields are sprayed with lots of chemicals of various kinds, then that would be a whole separate issue. Keep us posted on what you figure out. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Soil Test Lab---Oklahoma State University