I don't want to fight the lawn for eight years, I have that much time at least and am in no real rush otherwise. As for turning it over in a perfect state, that's more a factor of selling a home than anything else. I want to please any prospective buyers when the time comes to sell this home. I'm happy with green stuff out front, but in this day and age most people want something more than a random assortment of grasses. I can play along with that thought process as long as I can do so safely with regards to my own interest. I have a fairly large tree that shades most of the yard, so direct sun is out of the question. Would this pretty much kill the clear plastic method? Also do yo think weeding regularly will improve the final outcome. My understanding is that it helps the soil. Maurice Pudlo

B.O.G. I am a little confused. Are you making a compost pile, doing lasagna type beds, raised beds, or spreading this stuff on the ground to garden in? If you are building a compost pile, you have a good start on the necessary ingredients. Actually most anything will decompose given enough time. I would not use wood chips if I had any other options. Chips from green trees and trimmings are probably greens instead of browns, but either way, they take quite a long time to break down to the point to where I would want them in my garden. I much prefer shredded oak leaves, followed by hay for the browns that I use. The fresh stuff from the stalls is great for making compost, and even for spreading on a garden IF you are not planning on planting in it till it has had time to decompose. For the first question, personally, no I don't think so. Second question. Yes, and it should look something like which originally included thin wood shavings and bits of alfalfa hay, which of course also became urine soaked and was tromped in with the manure in the stalls. There should be no objectionable odor, should have a pleasant earthy smell, but not strong. If I were making compost tea, I would probably go ahead and use some. There are several schools of thought on "teas" aerated, non aerated etc. but I think that most will probably benefit your garden if the soil is lacking in nutrients and in need of something. Just through my own experiences and observations, I have become a firm believer in that feed the soil to feed your plants thing. It is not an instant gratification thing, and takes some years to get your soil to where you want it. I have been amending heavily with oak leaves, home made compost and horse manure and growing a fall / winter crop of mustard, turnips and rutabaggas to mow, mulch and turn under after the first of the year. It has paid off for me and enables me to achieve results like . Now, I only very sparingly use any fertilizers at all, basically just an occasional light application of 21-0-0 Ammonium Sulfate in mid winter after I have put on a good layer of shredded oak leaves along with the other amendments. Mostly because our soil here leans slightly to the alkaline and the sulfur is to adjust the pH and the nitrogen can probably be used to help break down the leaves. I also have not used anything in the way of pesticides last year or so far this year except for some soapy water in a little hand spray bottle. That may soon have to change because of the extremely wet spring and now the danged stink bugs have showed up early. They do not usually hit till hot dry weather arrives. I understand your comments and sentiments about the grand kids. I enjoy teaching one of my (shown here helping me spread shredded leaves as mulch around the plants) who shows a real interest and knack for gardening. I even occasionally get some help from one of my who enjoyed playing with the tractor with the front end loader when we went to get that trailer load of aged horse manure. Good luck to you with your rebuilding with your garden. I am sure that others will have their ideas and suggestions. Bill P.

Purlisa: I no longer post for the pubic, but I make exceptions when people ask for me specifically. I respect & learn from honest folks like you who share about their garden. I learn more from honest folks who talk about problems in their garden, than gorgeous pics. of roses (with zero details as to type of soil & pH-level & climate & annual rainfall). That's my pet-peeve in HMF, folks just post pics, without specifying if it's own-root or grafted, zero info. on planting zone & type of soil & climate. If you click on my Houzz profile-picture , I updated to include tips on how to tell which own-roots are appropriate for which soil pH, type of soil & climate, just by looking at the leaves. https://www.houzz.com/user/strawchicago I received 8 roses yesterday 6/15 from RU summer sale, they are BIG, and some are over 2 feet tall & with buds & blooms .. very healthy. These roses are bigger & more blooms that the 7 roses I bought full-price early May. My last house was acidic clay: soft & easy to dig, with blue hydrangeas & deep-colors roses. My current house is alkaline clay: rock-hard, need a pick-ax to dig, pink hydrangeas, and roses have faded colors. Roses are much healthier in alkaline clay. My purpose of posting is to help foiks NOT to make the same mistakes like I did in my 30+ years of growing roses, and 110 own-root varieties. My B.S. is in Computer Science, minor in Chemistry, so I want to use my background to help folks. If you have sticky & dense clay, skip the Epsom salt (magnesium sulfate), since it hardens clay further. MAGNESIUM DEFICIENCY IS RARE, EXCEPT IN SANDY SOIL (this is from the booklet when I got my soil tested by EarthCo.) My sticky clay soil was tested exceedingly high in magnesium. Skip the molasses, I tested for many years and it attracts rose-slugs, plus sugarly stuff LOWERS soil pH, sugar sours things fast. Azomite is similar to dolomitic lime (both have pH 9), but Azomite works faster. Digging deep, and remove the dense & icky clay & rocks at bottom helps with drainage, so acidic rain water don't sit at the bottom to rot roots. If your clay soil is acidic, COARSE sand (paver's sand) is good on top. BAGGED SAND AT STORES IS VERY ALKALINE, so it will neutralize the acidity of rain. Niels in Denmark, with hundreds of roses, put sand on top of his acidic clay. Skip the alfalfa, it becomes VERY ACIDIC like Kimchi if decays in acidic rain water. Many folks report roses breaking out in blackspots after "sour alfalfa tea", it's like watering roses with sauerkraut or Kimchi-water. At least Kimchi or sauerkraut has salt to control the acidity, but I already tested acidic-alfalfa-tea and it made leaves thinner, thanks to its acidity. Since my clay is rock-hard alkaline at pH near 8, I use acidic pine bark (pH 4) to fix my clay. People root roses in sand. I read a book by a CA rose-grower on the coast (mild temperate climate), he bought a land filled with sand and converted into a rose nursery, to sell cut-flowers !! Here's an excerpt from Houzz when I googled on clay .. folks in CA have heavy abode clay, while I have dolomitic clay. But both are mineral-rich clay. Kittymoonbeam have over 100+ roses in Southern CA, wrote this in Houzz .. from my experience I agree with her 100% .. I killed plenty of roses with acidic organic matter in the planting hole. And Roses Unlimited's tip of 1 cup of alfalfa meal mix-in WORKS ONLY FOR THEIR ALKALINE-TAP WATER inside nursery, but NOT FOR OUTDOOR ACIDIC RAIN, with pH 4.5 in my Chicagoland, and even more acidic rain on the East Coast. Kittymoonbeam - "I just came from a soils class by a local nurseryman. He said DON'T add organic amendment into the soil. The plants only tolerate it, not prosper in it. The short of it is that eventually it breaks down and rots causing oxygen problems in the root zone. A NASA guy said NO terrestrial plant wants to live in ground up dead tree. So most potting soils are only good for maybe 5 months, then they start harming plants. The growers know the plants can only survive a short period before they decline in that mix. Potting up in non amended soil causes no harm. You can grow in 100 percent sand as long as you water and feed often enough. Strawberry leaves from plants grown in sand were twice the size of those in the premium potting mix! There are no overwatering issues. Why the change from propagation in soil to wood products is a long story. However, we've all been taught to do it. But no one ever used to in the old days. Disneyland removed their riverbed soil and replaced with amended soil. After a few years, they took it all out and purchased new riverbed sandy loam and now they only mulch on top. This is all new to me but that's the way it was for millions of years. The organic stuff stays on top where it breaks down and travels to the roots below. Roots want a purely mineral soil with as much oxygen as they can get and still be moist." Kittymoonbeam. Lauren (Los Angeles, 10a, Sunset Zone 19) - kittymoonbeam, that does seem to make sense. Limited personal experience has also showed me that top dressing compost with shredded leaves/mulch produced better results than than simply mixing some compost into the surrounding soil" Lauren

The mats are fused on with heat and possibly pressure; they are not removable. To say that no LD dishwarshers contain bitumen is absolutely untrue. I purchased LG LDTH7972D. It differs from the S model only in having black stainless exterior finish. We ended up getting a plastic tub/plastic inner door lining dishwasher, and it contains no bitumen (Whirlpool WDF341PAPM, via Home Depot). There was an initial offgassing ("curing") of the epoxy-based insulation on the motor windings - almost gone after seven run cycles, and nowhere near as persistent and as toxic for us as bitumen. It is an inexpensive basic model and does the job pretty well. Doesn't dry things quite a well as our previous dishwasher, but not a deal breaker. A little louder, not excessively. I added some foil-encased foam sound insulation, brought it down by 5 dB.