Use the coir to mulch your tomatoes as it does not encourage the growth of and prevents various types of fungus from splashing up on tomato foliage. Pile it on around the tomatoes after removing any bottom branches which touch the ground. Really helps to discourage many tomato fungus problems. Use paper mulch on rest of garden covering it with a mulch after it is in place as kimm says.

My late arrivals were astilbes and columbine. I had given up on the astilbes. I considered them failures, but I hadn't gotten around to dumping the dirt out of their tubs yet. (A good thing, too.) The columbines came up a little while ago, about the time everyone else noted it had turned up in their pots. Today, I all but finished planting out the last of my tubs. It's a good feeling. I'm tired and looking forward to a nice supper. This winter sowing has been a blast! Thank you Trudi and RBrady!

Shelley, You're welcome. I usually see almond trees in big box stores like Home Depot or Lowe's in spring at the same time they have fruit trees. I have native pecan trees, which produce pecans with great flavor but the nuts are smaller than commercially available, grafted and named varieties. Scott would be the person to recommend a good pecan variety for your yard. He maintains a large pecan grove. I like Kanza, but haven't grown it here. I have friends who have it and like it. Pecan trees can be nice shade trees, but I wouldn't put one too terribly close to a house and certainly not near a sitting area or patio that does not have a covered roof. They drop lots of messy stuff at various times of the year, including all kinds of limbs. They drop limbs right and left for any occasion at all, which is what I like least about them. Every now and then they get aphids that leave everything under the tree a sicky, honeydew-coated mess. We have a large pecan tree in our front yard, but it is at least 40' from the house. We have some closer to the house on the north side, but not terribly close--maybe 25' from the house. The north side of the house is the least used side of the house. It is the quiet side of the house because the front of the house faces east, the back faces west and that's where the detached garage and patio are, and the driveway is on the south/southwest side....so the north side sort of gets ignored, which is why the pecan trees are there. They are decent enough shade trees, but messy ones, and I am not sure I'd deliberately plant one in a yard, especially in a smaller urban yard. We have one because it was here when we bought the property. It was big and we knew it would provide shade, so we saved it and worked around it when building. I've never heard of a semi-dwarf pecan tree. They become huge monster trees, and I wouldn't attempt to keep one a smallish size. You can, to a certain extent, manage their size with pruning. Would I try to keep one yard-sized via pruning? No. I'd select a tree that would be lower-maintenance for the front yard. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: OSU: Recommended Pecan Varieties for OK

That's great! One of these two lilacs developed blackened leaves ALL over, I'm talking pitch black, even the little buds that had started to open had black leaves starting to emerge. It looked awful. Like it was dying right before my eyes. I have no idea what was going on with it, because i have a good success rate with these shrubs, but thankfully the other lilac is doing fantastic. The leaves are huge and a luscious green. I pulled the awful looking $8 lilac, and am replacing it with a declaration lilac, my favorite of all the lilacs. I bought 3 lilacs at Walmart a couple years ago, and they are doing incredibly well, and growing so fast, too. I wish you success with yours.