I think you will be OK. You could rake up any thick accumulation of clippings, otherwise you should be able to slit seed right into the soil. Good luck and keep em wet. Bill Hill

In regards to Brickeyes comments on technology, I could not agree more. I think Brickeye and I are about the same age (59) and thinking back I am amazed at what was science fiction when i was a kid but what is commonplace today. Just a few examples" When we were in school a word processor was a manual device made of wood and graphite with an eraser on the opposite end..LOL. When they landed men on the moon complex math was still being done on slide rules, now I have a wristwatch with a built in calculator that can perform functions that were unheard of on mainframe computers in the early to mid 60's. In Jr.High school every kid dreamed of owning a 6 transistor pocket AM radio receiver. (I actually acquired one by caddying at the local golf course for the whole summer to earn the necessary $36 to buy it.) minimum wage was $1.55 and top union scale was $5/hr. Color TV was still in its infancy and most stations did not broadcast color until the early 60's. FM radio was solely classical and elevator music and of very little interest to young people. When I entered the Air Force in 1966 I worked with a Univac 1066-II mainframe computer system that had a hard drive which was 10 feet long and weighed over 3 tons, yet it only had 66megs of memory, by contrast I have 80 gigs on this desktop and 60gigs in my laptop, both of which are obsolete by state of the art standards. While on the subject of laptops, the only laptops devices we had then was a TV tray for dinner....LOL Cordless tools were totally unheard of. State of the art automotive safety was a padded dashoard and a seat belt. I remember when they came out with a digital clock that had rotating flip cards with the numbers on them and we thought that was the rage. For all you Star Trek fans,,go back and look closely at the first generation scenes, even the spaceship Enterprise did not have LED or Quart Crystal displays. When we were in school the interstate highways system was still a future dream being discussed in Popular Mechanics Magazine. A virus made you sick and spam was that cheap nasty canned meat that you mother made you eat whether you liked it or not, suprisingly I acquired a taste for it and still enjoy it occassionally...LOL. A conferance call was listening in on someone elses phone call on a party line, but don't get caught. Rich people had a garage door opener, the rest of us were lucky to have a garage and if we did it was doubtful if the old doors would swing properly. Gas water heaters were not vented to the outside and many had open steel vessels with no insulation. The house I lived in there was no thermocouple on the gas control. I couldn't begin to count how many times we came home to find the pilot had gone out and the house was full of gas. I am with Brickeye,,I embrace technology.

The number of coats is completely irrelevant. It depends on the product. It depends on the method of application. The important thing is to read and follow the directions provided by the manufacturer. For water base finishes, there are a couple of rules that you MUST follow: 1. Do not apply water base finishes at temperatures below 65 F. That is the most important rule to follow! Many things will go wrong if the temperatures are too cold. A white or cloudy appearance is from the cold. Be sure everything is at the proper temperature: the work piece, the finish, and the air. 2. Allow each coat to dry properly before recoating. If you can't sand the previous coat of finish and produce powder, it is not dry enough. Do not attempt to put on all the coats the same day, even if the can says one hour recoat. Two coats per day is the max! 3. Choose the application method based on how thick of a coating you desire. Wiping on a finish leaves the thinnest coat. More coats are necessary to build a durable film. Brushes lay on a thicker coating that levels out as it dries. If you brush too thin, it leaves brush marks; brush too heavy and you get runs. I doubt you'll be using spray equipment, so I won't go there. I'd say that 3 wet coats applied with a brush would be ideal. With a rag, you may need 5 or more coats to achieve a durable film.

@party_music50, I only started trying to compost my leaves this year, the woods around my house had a VERY thick layer of leaves from 20+ years of being left alone! Not even joking, they were knee deep. I have about 4 acres of undeveloped woods, mostly field pine, red and white oak, beech, and maple. And greenbrier... tons and tons of greenbrier :'-( I took the catcher bag off of my electric leaf vacuum, and then spent some time walking around with it, letting it suck up the leaves, chop them up, and then shoot them out the bottom. It was time consuming, but at least now I can walk through it. This is the area that I plan to cut back this winter, and hopefully I can chop the leaves up again and end up with a layer that's thin enough to not choke out the trees and flowers that I want to plant there. I'm guessing that using soda or juice would attract all of the fire ants in my area, though, and I recently discovered that I'm super allergic! Like, emergency-room-allergic :-( So I'm afraid that I might have to skip that idea. I have plenty of homemade urine that I can use, though! LOL