@sunnibel: Apologies! I think of the east as so crowded, I forget there ARE rural areas :). Re: Cardboard: I have had no quackgrass come up through it at all, for 5 years after cardboard + 4" compost was put down. At that point, I let my tenants have the bed and they allowed the quackgrass to come in from the side. Quackgrass is incredibly invasive, and I have found its runners in a dense layer 24" down. But it is very sensitive to shading. I have a bed, just north of my neighbors' two story house, which gets full sun at midsummer but only a couple hours the rest of the year. The amount of quackgrass it has, if it was in a sunny bed and let go, would take over and kill everything else in the bed within a month or two. But that bed, I don't even pull it. It's been at a steady state for 5 or 6 years, and it doesn't bother the potatoes. There is spearmint and bindweed in that bed, too -- same deal, though I do pull the aboveground growth off the bindweed. That bed is isolated from the rest of the garden by a driveway. If it wasn't, the quackgrass would use it as a base of operations to invade the rest of the garden (and the world!). Re: Water: Sunnibel asked about summer rain. We don't haz it. Lawns here are brown in summer and green in winter. Controlling water is a significant part of how I control weeds. I water the garden deeply once a month in summer, for established plants. Newer plants and water-lovers like beans and raspberries, every two weeks. This helps a lot :). If the plants I want have deep roots and the weeds don't get a chance to develop them, there is not much competition. Is this water thing related to why tilling doesn't seem to do much good, here?

Crimson Clover seems to be doing well actually. Rye is another story. It looks like it DEFINITELY prefers to be covered. All the seed that is sitting on top has roots growing out of it but appears rarely to be actually taking root. That being said, there is some germination going on (little brown twiggy looking things) but it is no where near the amount as the clover. I'm wondering if the rye seed might be pulling itself in somehow.... seems unlikely with all the seed sitting on top, but when I walk out daily, there just doesn't seem to be as much seed sitting on the surface. Will just keep checking. Eddie

Wow!! What a list it will take forever to look at it all nice for a cold day!! Thanks again

Hi Gwen and Caroline. I'm usually haunting the Garden Party, but decided I should branch out into other forums. I'm very sporadic about visiting any of the forums, but when I'm here, I'm here a LOT! I seem to scrap for gifts a lot. When my niece got married (4, count 'em FOUR years ago tomorrow), she asked for a photo album like I did for my mom. I gave her the album (book) -- empty. She never asked for photos. I offered her the photos in photo page protectors, but she'd seen ONE page I did for another scrapbook, and she wants me to scrapbook her entire wedding. You have to understand, I took something like 15 rolls of film!!! I've been half-heartedly working on it, hoping to finish for Christmas, but it won't happen. So I'm shooting for their 5th anniversary instead. BTW, it was a 'normal' wedding with a great Halloween reception and dance. My current major project is a calendar for my mom for Christmas. Our LSS has a contest every month where they offer 10 pkgs of 4-5 pieces of paper and a theme. You pick up the pkg on the 1st, add anything except more paper, and return it on the 10th. It hangs in their store all month, customers vote for their favorites, and the most votes gets a $20 gift certificate to the store. I've entered five months, and won twice, and of course October isn't over yet! =) I've designed the pages to fit the store's theme, with a picture of the people in our family who have a birthday or anniversary in that month. On the calendar pages, I'm going to fill in everybody's birthdays and anniversaries. I know she'll love it. Can't wait to get them all done.