I'm thinking that it isn't flea-beetles bothering your potatoes. Much more likely CPB's, the foliage is withering due to them and the natural cycle. Flea-beetles don't typically bother potato plants, they tend to focus on very young seedlings in dryish conditions. Nor have I ever seen "thick bunches" of them, they are quick-moving (hence the name) and one rarely sees them. CPB is sluggish and is easily found in bunches.

Well I guess I'm contributing to the hijack - sorry scraplolly! I used to live in a house with a driveway just like dtownjbrown and I hated it. So I was kind of interested in contributing to his story. You could think about mixing some evergreens in there. Microbiota, dwarf chamaecyapris, pencil holly, rug or pencil junipers, etc. But they are kind of dull in a row... Another way to go about this is to plant annuals for a few years to see what responds to the lighting. I would think you could grow coleus, petunias, maybe even an indeterminate tomato - cherry tomatoes, the italian plum tomatoes. I grow them in less than optimal sun in containers. My favorite is San Marzano - good for salsa. This year I'm growing calladiums in full sun planters so go try some new things - you never know what will work. Sometimes the repeated annual amendment helps also. Your soil looks good in the picture but who knows how old it is? You say it drains quickly- its possible that somewhere along the way somebody re-waterproofed and improved the drainage down deeper. When we had our back wall re-waterproofed they dug down 11 ft and then filled the space with limestone to about 2 ft from the top - then backfilled my topsoil on top of that. The space right up against my house is very dry as a result. A good resource for you would be the Botanical Gardens in the area - just do a search. Another good resource is the Plant Search function at MOBOT - Missouri Botanical Gardens. For ex. I just searched on Full sun to part shade, Dry to medium, 6-12 inches spread, Zone 3 for scraplolly and got a list of plants back - http://www.mobot.org/gardeninghelp/plantfinder/Results.asp I don't know if you want anything to hang out over the line of the bed into your driveway but I'd think about that as you select plants.(daylilies)Whacking the flower heads every time you drive in has a tendency to look kind of ugly. The above was in case you don't like my idea: Given the narrow space and lighting my personal recommendation would be to plant a unifying ground cover like pachysandra which is evergreen, make space intermittently to have a few clumps of daffodils/tulips and alliums in spring and then have a nice white lattice structure just covered in green ivy to cover the wall. I would have parts of the lattice go up 6-8 ft and parts down at the level your siding begins. - sort of like the silhouette of a town. I would use horizontal and vertical crossbars rather than the cheaper looking diamond shaped criss cross pattern. You need to fasten it so that it is out from the siding about 1.5-2 inches for long term home care. You don't want ivy putting tendrils into your siding or cement. Where you live you might succeed with Boston Ivy which is very colorful in the fall. An alternate might be grapes or hydrangea petiolaris which I doubt would be watered at all after established. I could see having round blue ceramic planters filled with colorful coleus and impatiens set right down into the pachysandra with the wall of green ivy behind them. To give more space you could have cutouts in the latticework to center the planter in the space. You could have a small water fountain on the wall among the vines - or frame it with the lattice. Another planter idea is pruned boxwood with annuals/trailing vines around them for summer - and you can do something with them for the holidays. You should be able to have Korean, Vardar Valley, Green Mountain, etc live in a container if you keep pruned. The Blue Girl holly also does well in low light/bright sun but you'd really have to stay on the pruning to keep a holly in bounds. I would also try some unobtrusive stick in the ground solar lights to create a soft glow after dark along the drive or you can wire lighting in. I get container combination ideas every yr from the White Flower Farms catalog - gorgeous stuff altho this yr they were too in love with bronze and orange combos. Shrubs that I have kept pruned for yrs to 12 to 18" wide are taxus, boxwood and believe it or not - euonymous - burning bush. I have a 3 ft deep bed along my house and its underplanted with pachysandra and the burning bush are at least 20 yrs old - you just have to keep up with the pruning to keep them to the size you want.

I need something that is about 4' wide, and DH and I have absolutely NO woodworking skills to join 2 pieces of butcher block together, as well as to make a nice finish cut and edge. I would really go with Ikea butcher block for now if we could join them, but it requires skills way over our heads. I thought about temp laminate, but again-the width issue. I'm not bothered by being careful with the tabletop. Even when I eventually order the walnut, the island will be more used as a table than a work surface. I'm going to go with a furniture finish on it, and definitely won't be cutting on it or using it as direct food prep. It's actually going in my breakfast area, which lies between the family room and the kitchen cabinet area, and I am doing the island/table really for the benefit of having additional convenient cabinetry to store the rotisserie, mixer, deep fryer, and any large appliances I dont use much, as well as allowing it to function as an extra "work" surface and buffet area. It looks like the walnut top will cost at least $1500, so I'm not totally adverse to spending a hundred or 2 on a temp top. Are there other reasons I should steer away from the plywood temp (maybe for a year or more) or does anyone have ideas?

I would always cut off the stems in fall. Some growers do, some don't, BUT when I ordered from some growers, I only had trouble with tubers that had left overs of the stem. The idea is that the old stems rotts anyway, question is whether it gets into the tuber or stops before. The first pic is from a tuber I got this May. I trinmed the old stem off, found that it was completely soft, started worrying when I dicovered that it reached down, so I cut it lengthwise to see it clearly. Got an replacement by now, and one bit of the tuber started growing, not sure yet whether it makes it The yellow label is at the end of the tuber. Swan Island always ship completely trimmed fingers (neatly separated tubers) And after a while the old clump gets overcrowded and flowers less The next two are before/after pics A clump grown from a finger After dividing And that was another clump grown from a finger sadly some wrongly labeled NoID, not a pretty flower but a prolofic tuber maker, I just pulled it into two parts try to divide them this fall, bye, Lin