Hi crayphish, I'm always a bit concerned when people talk about spraying with soap or botanical sprays like garlic or capsicum 'just in case'. The thing is, insecticidal soap and most botanical sprays don't distinguish between pests and the 'good' insects that control them. Even more unfortunately, in a lot of cases the 'good' insects are MORE susceptible to pesticides than the pests. I know there are some parasitic wasps (tiny wasps that lay their eggs in other insects, often the ones we consider pests, like aphids, whiteflies etc) - Aphidius and Encarsia species spring to mind - that are affected by insecticidal soap. The soap spray won't affect the leafminers, that's for sure, unless it has some extra property because of the mintiness, because the adult leafminer flies are long gone and the leafminer larvae are snug in their little burrow. I wonder if the leafminers even requires any action. It looks like a Liriomyza species, probably L. trifolii, which is considered a pest in commercial flower and celery crops, but fruiting crops like beans, tomatoes, cukes etc are rarely bothered. If you leave well enough alone the native parasitic wasps, Diglyphus species and the like, will probably come along and provide reasonable control for you. A bit of leaf damage won't hurt your plants and unless it's severe, it shouldn't affect yields either. Tracey

I couldn't make out the images very clearly. the damaged leaf, shown, was due to leaf miners. I'd remove that leaf, so that they don't get to multiply. Spraying won't help much with leaf miners. With the others, if you observe no damage, they probably aren't hurting anything. Could you get a better picture up on the skinny bugs? I know it can be hard. My camera will only focus to a point for close ups. George Tahlequah, OK

Susan: Yes, that's exactly what I do....cut the 'X', plant and then mulch. Did it in about 80% of my vegetable garden last year. It was a good investment in dollars because it saved me tons of hours that I used to spend weeding. I even put fabric down and mulched the paths. In the past, I used cardboard or newspaper but the fabric is failproof as long as you use the woven kind. If you have the cheap kind that is perforated "to let water through", be advised that everything in the world grows through those holes, especially grasses. And I learned that the hard way!!! :) If you have that kind, just lay down newspaper or cardboard underneath it and that solves the problem. I agree that Round-up is the only way to go to get rid of that bermuda grass to start your new bed. You know that I always try to be as organic as possible, just like you, but there are some situations where the only real solution is a chemical....and getting rid of bermuda grass demands round-up. I have spent years of my life trying to get rid of bermuda by digging it up, etc. and it just doesn't work. If you leave even the tiniest piece of a stolon, that bermuda will be back. So I say just spray the round-up once it is warm enough and be done with it. :) And studies show that Round-up breaks down quickly in the soil so I see no harm in using it. Wolflover, Is it 'fun' to start over with a new landscape or is it too stressful at this stage to be considered fun??? When I moved here in 1999 and started from scratch with a former cow pasture, I put a lot of pressure on myself to try to get everything done 'now'. Oops! That didn't work. But, a few years later I can say that I have made a lot of progress. Of course, those darned summer droughts have made it hard at times. Give your Jane magnolia time. Mine was severely freeze-damaged several years ago and I thought it was a goner. It finally came to life fairly late in the spring and I pruned off all the dead stuff and it rebounded fairly quickly after that. Mine has been a little slow this year too. I usually have blooms by now. I don't know how much of the slowness is from freeze-damage and how much of the slowness is because the deer keep eating the buds. How far back are you going to prune the trees when you move them? I know the "experts" always say 50%, but I find it so hard to abide by that rule! I usually cut them back about 30% and then try to be extra vigilant about watering them that first year after they've been moved. And, I bet you already know this....but Jane has at least six brothers and sisters (mostly sisters) and I've been toying with the idea of trying to find and plant all of them. I remember that one is "Ann" but that's the only name in my memory bank. I'll have to google to find the others. I think they came out of the U.S. Arboretum breeding program in the late 80s or early 90s. I didn't get a lot accomplished today. The weather was gorgeous but there were huge fires almost everywhere (but not in our fire district!) and our air quality was just awful. Tomorrow, though, I'll be in the garden all day long. :)

Hi SLOW, thanks for the kudos. It's a labor of love :) And we do everything kind of Learn As You Go! Well, DH has done some construction work, so not entirely going in blind, but we do do a lot of head scratching and figuring out how to work with what we've got. This part of the Barnhouse however we're using all new materials, which more expensive, but SO much easier than using scrounged stuff like we did on the rest of the house. There IS a lot of satisfaction in looking at what we've done with what we had though also. The GOG WAS a coffee table top, but it just LONGED to be displayed where the sun could shine through it, and that is a south wall so gets lots of sun. Think I'll go take a pic of it now with the sun through it so you can see... OK, here tis: It's partly cloudy out, but there's a snowy roof ten feet away that's reflecting a lot anyway. Those lines in the closeup are the cables that raise and lower the curtains on the outside, which we haven't cut back beyond this room yet. (The barn has/had one long window down each side with a big long curtain that was raised or lowered for ventilation.) I really should post pics of the whole Barnhouse project one of these days...