Daisy, Thanks for the link; that's good info. To all: Well, I might have barbequed crow soon! I'll be eating crow, or taking my foot out of my mouth, or whatever the proper expression should be! While asking around here about cement types I came to realize that I have had them backwards. We use type 2 most commonly and type 5 is used for special requests, usually desert type areas overseas, i.e., Middle East. So, I'll admit my mistake and take the consequences but I couldn't leave you all with the wrong info. (Its not likely that you are terribly concerned about pipe linings. It is the use of cement types and their purposes and curing them that got us into this discussion.) You all have been so generous to give information and tips to everyone who asks. I couldn't bear the thought of leaving bad info in this forum that might one day mislead someone.

To address paulns original propostion, I don't think it's a question that has a definitive answer without clarification.....what is "old-time gardening"? How far back does one go? And there are MANY definitions of organic gardening depending on one's philosophy, so which one are we going to agree to use? A lot of the previous comments are valid in a generalized form. The use of manufactured synthetic or chemically derived fertilizers has a pretty recent history when compared to how long man has been farming or growing crops for food. They are really only a by-product of the Industrial Revolution and the "hundreds of years" can actually be reduced to about 200, with the predominance of these fertilizers being widely accepted and used immediately after WWII, when they became cheaply and widely available, as greenwood85 notes. Same with synthetic, manufacture pesticides. And their introduction to the farming or gardening scene was considered at that time to be an enormous boon - a fast-acting, lightweight, easy to apply and easily accessible material that improved and increased harvests. Naturally - without the greater understanding we have now of soil science and the health implications of chemical residues and these products effects on pollution and ecology - they were widely accepted and utilized. It would be pretty hard to go back 50 or 60 years and not find a gardener or farmer that didn't use some form of manufactured fertilizer or pesticide. But even given these considerations, a good many of those gardeners/farmers from previous generations still incorporated what might be best termed "natural gardening" practices - composting, using animal manures, companion plantings, rotational cropping, home remedies for insect and disease controls - along with the manufactured products that at the time seemed like such a great improvement on what they had been doing. And affluence and location played a role as well - poorer farmers in more remote locations tended to use more what they had on hand - the natural methods and products rather than the newer, costly and more difficult to obtain manufactured ones. So I believe it is difficult to make a direct correlation between "old time gardening" and the organic or natural way unless you are going back more than just a 100 years or so.

You science guys are making me feel like the laziest gardener ever born. It sounds like the problem ( from only what is written) is just the PH of the soil. Evidence includes not only the story but the type of plants. Clematis prefer a more alkaline sail.. thus it is the plant not affected. Roses prefer a more acid sail, thus my home, Portland Oregon is known as The Rose City. It's the one suffering the most. Nepeta is more forgiving but it does very well here in ore acidic soil. Over the years gardening here with our acidic clay-ish soil, I welcome the rare opportunity of NEW cement on a garden border. I have the chance to grow more alkaline loving plants next to the concrete and watch them thrive for some time because it seems like the concrete leaches out for a couple years..or it just takes that long for mother nature to change the soil back to acidic... not sure which but it happens. I would leave the clem there, get the rose out as soon as possible.. their tough and should be able to rebound, and either dump the nepeta or move it to an out of the way spot as a science experiment. Nepeta is cheap and comes up from seed easily so not having it on display would be my priority. One plant I love and only does okay in our acid soil is dianthis, which is what I chose for a similar situation when I had the end of my driveway replaced. Best dianthis I've had and it was exceptional for several years, when it slowly started to just look normal again. Work smarter not harder and have some fun with this moment in time, it's not going to last forever. The new plants should adjust to your normal soil since it will change so slowly assuming of course you don't pick some weird, rare thing we never hear about that only grows in alkaline soil. You do have many beautiful choices. Trip to the garden store is always a good day. :) How about this search ? Here is a link that might be useful: plants that like alkaline soil

Like animals, trees grown from seed must pass through several phases of development before they become sexually mature and capable of producing reproductive parts (blooms/ seeds/ fruit). The plant phases of seed - seedling - juvenile - sexually mature are roughly mirrored in human developmental stages of embryonic - infantile - juvenile - adult/ sexually mature. A freshly sprouted seedling is no more capable of producing reproductive parts (blooms/ seeds/ fruit) than an infant. Too, a plant's aging process is different than an animal's. Where animals age chronologically, plants age ontogenetically. Ontogenetic aging can be thought of in terms of how many cell divisions have occurred to move the plant to its current phase of development. One might reason that the most recent new growth would be the youngest part of the plant, but ontogenetically, it is the the oldest part of the plant because it has taken many more cell divisions to produce the newest parts. Ontogenetically, the youngest part of a tree grown from seed will always be the root to shoot transition area at the base of the trunk, no matter how old the tree is chronologically. Pruning a tree back hard can easily remove all existing mature growth and return it to a juvenile phase that would require a considerable amount of new growth before the wood again becomes mature. All factors that influence growth rate have an impact on how long (chronologically) it takes a plant to become sexually mature, so thinking that a change in nutrition alone will cause a plant to bloom is misguided. The fastest seedlings to mature within any given species will depend on how proficient Mother Nature or the plant's grower is at providing ideal cultural conditions. Ideal cultural conditions = most rapid growth rate and shortest period of time to reach maturity; this, simply because ideal conditions are most conducive to cell divisions and therefore a fruitful tree at a younger chronological age. It should be noted that applying nutrients or other products in willy nilly fashion with no knowledge of whether or not there is an actual deficiency of those nutrients or no good reason to apply them is highly likely to be limiting in terms of both growth and rate of maturation. Whenever we discuss what is or isn't an appropriate part of the methodology we use to make certain our plants get all the nutrients essential to growth and good health, we would probably first want to be sure our objectives are on target. It's difficult to argue with the idea that our focus in supplying supplemental nutrition to our plants should be on ensuring all the nutrients plants normally assimilate from the soil are A) IN the soil and available for uptake at all times, B) in the soil in a favorable ratio - that is to say in a ratio that mimics the ratio at which the plant actually uses the nutrient, C) at a concentration high enough to ensure no nutritional deficiencies, yet still low enough to ensure the plant's ability to take up water efficiently, and the nutrients dissolved in that water won't be impeded (by a high concentration of solubles in the soil solution). The part in bold is where growers often run afoul of sound husbandry. By adding unnecessary nutrients we A) skew the ratio of nutrients, each to the others, such that an excess of one nutrient causes a deficiency of one or more other nutrients, and B) make it more difficult for the plant to assimilate water and nutrients. So, for plants in containers, best results can be had by choosing 1 fertilizer with an appropriate nutrient ratio and all the nutrients essential to normal growth. Forget the snake oil products and claims made on product packaging by sellers whose only goal is separating you from your money. For plants in the landscape, a soil test is ESSENTIAL for any grower aiming at providing the best cultural conditions possible. "A little extra" is almost always going to be limiting rather than beneficial; otherwise, it wouldn't be "extra". Al