I understand your frustrations. Before you give up, I would suggest the following: 1.) Not all soils are conducive to gardening. Based on research you need to decide if this is your case. If you consider this to be fact then go to raised beds or containers, or find a more suitable location for your garden. 2.) If you decide that your soil is suitable for gardening then I suggest that you reduce the size of your garden to an area that you can manage fairly easily. Better to have something than nothing at all. As you succeed you can add back a little bit of gardening space each year if you so desire. 3.) Till or spade in compost, rotted leaves, grass clippings, etc. in fall. Organic matter in the soil helps to keep it loose and friable. Till or spade again in spring before planting when soil is fairly dry. Minimize walking on the soil after tilling and throughout the season to reduce compaction - have paths and stick to them as much as possible. 4.) Mulch the garden with weed seed-free mulch or a man-made product. Find something that works for you - there are lots of ideas and methods discussed in the GW forums. If you do not know how to do a site search on GW then check out the FAQ or ask. Do your research - knowledge is your best weapon against gardening issues and problems. 5.) Weeds are a fact of life and they will always be in your garden. Get them when they are young and small. Give your garden the constant attention it deserves to control weeds but also to spot disease or pest problems. Gardening is a commitment. A gardener can not "take time off" and ignore the garden for a week. Get into this habit and it will surely fail and all the work will prove to be a waste of time and effort. 6.) Purchase a few vegetable plants rather than trying to start them yourself. Starting plants is another big step in gardening and requires knowledge and equipment. This seems to be part of your frustration so put it aside for now. If budget is tight, set aside a coin jar to save up for purchasing or barter with a neighbor gardener for starter plants if possible. Just get a few plants of the common varieties in the cheaper multi-packs - again, better to have something than nothing. 7.) Common vegetable varieties available as seeds or plants are common for many good reasons. They are usually some of the easiest to grow. Stick to them for now and experiment later on with more unique or rare varieties. 8.) Post questions in the forums on GW and provide pictures if possible. You are among helpful gardening friends here. I am the first to admit that I do not know everything about gardening. When I have a gardening problem or concern I have always found answers here or at least leads to be able to do some further internet research. Success will bring back the excitement and joy of gardening in you. Give it another try. Good Luck! -Tom

Rollie, nice pics! Very lovely shots of wild A. tuberosa. I will 2nd or 3rd or 4th what everyone else has said. If you broadcast the seed into already existing, dense vegetation I don't think you'll get much for results. It would be difficult for a seed to germinate and grow under those conditions. A tuberosa is very easy to start from seed, as long as the seeds are viable. 2 years ago, I sowed some in April, and it did not even require much (or any) cold stratification. I would start the seeds next Spring (March-April) in pots, or winter sowing containers, grow them on in small pots for the summer, and then transplant early next fall. If you can mow the wild area first, it would probably help with the transplanting. Also, clearing a little planting spot as Rollie suggested, would be helpful.

An amazingly stuffed full priority mail bubble envelope arrived yesterday, so after dinner I sat down to dig in & giggled with delight as I pulled out so many fun things that Vina had creatively packed up & sent. She must know my mind or something because everything was perfect! _Butterfly card lavishly decorated in gold, 3 dimensions, & colorful along with friendly sentiments and a happy face! _2 recent Garden Gate magazines that make flower gardening looks so lovely & easy. I flipped through & will definitely use that tip to scarify seeds by putting them in a jar with sandpaper & shake, shake, shake! Perfect for those Sweet Peas. _an entire package of Godiva dark chocolates in an assortment of flavors. I won't tell how many I've eaten already. There's still some left. He, he. _Grow Ums Herb Garden that contained 8 coco pellets & labels along with 4 types of seeds (basil, cilantro, oregano, & parsley). Looks like fun to start them this way & I have lots of pots to make a nice display. There are 20 seeds in each packet, so there will have plenty for several pots and I can share with my daughter because she also loves the fresh herbs. _12 packets of seeds from her garden all labeled & sealed in tiny ziplocks. Not one stray seed! She sent me just what we'd love to try here. My hubby loves all the daisy type flowers like blanket flower or especially coneflowers that are big, bright or bicolored. The generous 12 she sent me were: 1. bee balm Marshall's Delight 2. Clematis Jackmani (I have several empty trellis here & just received two cedar ones from a friend who is moving in 3 weeks.) 3. Clematis Arctic Queen 4. Coreopsis Jethro Tull 5. Coneflower Ruby Giant 6. Coneflower Milkshake 7. Dianthus Siberian Blues 8. Nigella Love in a Mist all blue (I want to plant these along the row of raspberries provided they survived the storm as the trellis is down & there are tree tops & limbs on them.) 9. Gaillardia Fanfare 10. Rudbeckia Indian summer 11. Sweet Pea, everlasting (by the way someone told me these are great for improving the soil like other legumes, so plant away in new garden spaces to make way for vegetables or other perennials) 12. Yarrow Cerise Queen If all of this germinates & grows I'll have lots of plants to fill in the holes left by the storm! Thank YOU Vina for welcoming me in to the group & sending such a generous package that definitely brought me some winter cheer! Here's one of my favorite shasta daisy pics from a few years ago. Grandma gave this chicken on a stick to our daughter when she was young & she liked to surprise me with it by moving it around. She had said she tried to make the chicken look like it was standing on the daisy flower. Corrine

I think redwormcomposting dot Com did an experiment like that. I kinda did also. I got tired of screwing around with worms, and dumped them into a 5x10 x 2 feet deep bed I dug. Did the whole filling it with cardboard, leaves, horse manure and whatever else I could find before adding the worms over a 2x5 foot section on one end. These were EF and european nightcrawlers. They have taken over the whole bed, as are a variety of squash and melon that grew from the worm bins. I don't know how to precisely quantify "better" than anything else, but there are a lot more worms than I had before and a lot of crops in that same bed.