Hmm, had never heard of any reason to not plant dahlias near glads. But the thrips idea might be a reason. In California I would suspect a dahlia can stay in the ground year round. As pointed out, up here in the north zones, dahlia has to be removed AFTER a hard frost and overwintered in a COOL place...after letting them dry for a day or so in the warm sunshine. For that reason, I avoid purposely wetting the clump further. The soil can be flicked off with fingers and put somehwere to dry. Further washing wont hurt the clump....just prolongs the drying. For that reason then, I would suggest NOT using artificial means of drying. Let the sun do it by placing them in a place where the sun maybe is not beating down on them...let them dry more naturally. The 'eyes' will be more obvious tho as the plant is cleaned...but I still woundn't heavy wash them. Dampness breeds mildew; so that is cause enough to avoid it.

I am acquiring a new home w/ covenants that requires that at least 50% of the "yard" be grass - it doesn't specify KBG so I am going w/ BG & foregoing the $5K sprinkler system associated w/ KBG. Any ideas where I can get BG sod in CO? Thanks in advance, billgr Gawd. My complaint about Colo is the prevalence of covenants. You may want to examine the wording and ensure that brown grass for 7 months is OK with the rules. The natives like crested wheatgrass likely won't work here, as the intent likely is for 'well-manicured'. I second the general shout-out Reveille or some of the other "low-water" turfs out there, but these won't work if you don't install an irrigation system. As we don't know where you live, we can't give you specific advice for suppliers, but I'd call one of these and ask them, shouldn't take long... Dan

I had a much better harvest this year by planting a 20 foot row- and grew them up the garden fencing. At most the depth/width they took up was 6 inches. I planted pole beans about a month after they (the peas) had sprouted and were climbing- so when I pulled them last week (due to dwindling production) the pole beans were already up and ready to climb, sporting baby beans, and took their place on the fence. I'm going to try and seed peas again right behind the pole beans in late August for a Fall crop and see how this works. I don't adhere to a strict square foot gardening plan because for *some* things (like peas, cukes and pole beans)it pays to think outside the box to get a big harvest. -Nan

Dadoes ---- shhhhh I was afraid of that! It was sort of something I didn't really want to know. ;) (not really; thanks). Weissman: Goood Boy!!!! ;) [even if there's no stink, there's still decomposition going on and them bug's got poop too you know]. fori and Sean -- so you agree the frankenstein-argument to the enzymes is silly? I got roundly corrected about this last time. I wasn't really convinced by the convincers, but it wasn't worth arguing about. And I did try to make an effort to leave more grime on dishes before they get washed and truthfully, the whole load does seem to come out a little cleaner. Not sure how controlled that test is. So Sean - I am still super confused about this stuff. Dishwasher detergent consists of detergent or soap, and enzymes, right? The soap, I learned in school, essentially solubilizes fat molecules; it busts open cell membranes. You're saying then (?) that the enzymes make that reaction happen with less energy, or earlier. (As I recall, enzymes are proteins that bind to a substrate and in so doing lower the activation energy of a reaction with that substrate). What would any of this have to do with etching of glassware? There aren't any cell membranes to bust apart in glassware, right? So the image that's getting put out there, or at least that I took away, is that every, say, unit of detergent has a certain amount of energy available for degradation. And if it doesn't encounter, say, a food 'unit', it will instead degrade a 'glassware' unit worth of material. This is just such nonsense....well, or at least it seems so to me. What am I missing?