LOL, zeedman. Probably as loud as I ever have while at the computer. Lots of people (maybe most) haven't a clue how veggies grow. Even my kids and DH who have lived around my gardening for years surprise me with their "ignorance". DH figured I could plant asparagus seeds and harvest asparagus a couple of months later, much like lettuce and broccoli. He gets his homegrown asparagus now....but it took a few years. My daughter thought marigolds were perennials "because every year they grow right here by the garage". Every year I planted them there because it was about the only thing that survives the harsh conditions next to the concrete. I've tried to be more creative after her observation, but nothing has done as well as the marigolds there. Of course, I regularly surprise my family with my ignorance in their areas of expertise, also. While working with urban youth in a garden setting, a friend of mine was talking through how food gets to your table. He was trying to get the high schoolers to figure out how far most veggies are shipped. No one had a clue where any of their veggies were grown...except for one young man who volunteered that he thought they grew all the veggies behind the store (one of our local superstores along a major road) Turned out he had glimpsed the garden center and somehow thought that provided all the produce sold at the store! Kinda made us step back and reevaluate where to start in our teaching. And yet these same students amazed me with their vast knowledge about many other subjects.

Some people get a feeling of superiority, "I will decide to take or leave you!" Maybe it's time to analyze why this bothers you. Things that have hurt us in the past have a way of rearing their ugly head many, many years later. We had a neighbor while my kids were growing up, that basically made our lives miserable. I did one thing to slight her, that I learned years later, and that set the tone for how she treated us while she lived on the block. She had frequent parties and we were not included. She once had a party for her daughter and did not invite mine. Mind you, many of their mutual friends were invited. Luckily I was tipped off and we went up to our weekend house. This would have been very, very hurtful for my daughter to look over two houses away and see all her friends at this party. So for me, although I did not even want this woman as a friend, it brought up my past feeling of being excluded. Once I figured this out, I was able to get past it. Fortunately for us, she moved off the street. To this day, when I see her I am polite, but I do cringe. It shows you that some adults don't do the right thing and can be petty, vindictive and immature. You, for example, would never think to treat her in anything but a respectful way. Just shows you how different people are.

People who need to know a particular tree wants to grow over 60 ft. tall where conditions permit are those wanting to plant the same kind where there is room for one about 15 ft. tall. Something that happens a lot, particularly when many appear to think "big tree" = 15 ft. The physical demonstration of genetic programming recorded by those measuring fully developed examples illustrates the inherent character of trees being considered. Doesn't matter if they don't all grow 100 ft. tall everywhere, when even half that would overwhelm the planting site. Or that it might take 50 years for them to get big. It costs thousands of dollars to hire a qualified tree service to remove one big tree in a developed setting, where it can't just be sawed through at the base and allowed to fall where it may. And left to rot. Why ever choose a tree for an inadequate space, when a smaller kind could have been planted instead? Denial that a particular kind does often loom large does not prevent this problem from developing down the road. Plants that burn - or worse - every time there is a sharp winter may not really qualify as landscape staples. Certainly not as the ironclad, fail-proof unchanging purchases probably nearly all non-hobbyists are visualizing at the time they bring landscape plants home and install them. Hence the value of pointing out specific items aren't, in fact totally hardy - as in never damaged by cold. This is why there are hardiness rating systems and hardiness categories like fully hardy, half hardy and so on - people want to know where each plant falls on the spectrum, what to expect.

This year I converted a lawn to my garden. I fenced off more than I can use in one year. But it gives me room to rotate crops, but requires me to mow some of my garden. I dug in 4 inches of horse manure in clay last fall and planted 48 potato plants into a 5x16 foot bed this year. I also dug in 4 inches of mushroom manure into what was my lawn this spring and in a matter of a few days set out tomato plants. The lawn was an inch of sod on clay. I dug the sod in. I'd recommend using only 3 inches of manure or mushroom compost along with some mulch or peat. The point I'm making is that you don't need to add anything to the soil you have except some organic matter and maybe some lime and wood ash which I did use. The horse manure I used was from a stable in my area that I knew of. It was horse manure with minimum straw, probably wasted hay, not bedding. It was maybe a couple years old. Some of it was even older, from the looks of my potatoes the older manure grew larger plants. I also passed up manure from a huge pile that would have been easier but was mostly wood chips used for bedding. You can find horse manure by googling horse boarding with the name of your town and state. From my experience horse boarders don't use the manure and are happy to give it to you for free. I rented a pickup truck for $19.95 which became $43 with the mileage charge etc. That was an 8 foot bed which allows you to easily haul two cubic yards with a wheel barrow and shovel. Tie the wheel barrow down, they can and do fly. When you find a source visit it first. Some sites are inaccessible or possibly impossible to get back out of, and there is manure and then there is manure. You want horse manure that is black,. Brown horse manure is fresh, if its grey it'll also be smoking hot. Find the black stuff, it's there somewhere.'If it's for next spring then it doesn't need to "well composted". If you leave it in a pile it'll be ready next spring. As I said I passed up horse manure with wood chips in it. The other possibilities are manure with no bedding and straw used for bedding. That with straw is excellent but it is harder to dig into. If you're looking for fresh manure for a hot frame, fresh manure with straw will keep your frame the warmest. So I'm saying that you can dig manure into a lawn and plant the same day. No other preparations are necessary. My lawn had no rocks, there was more rocks in the mushroom manure than in my lawn. I did have lots of tree roots which presented a problem for me at my age and health. I used nothing but a spade and a hatchet to cut the roots.