On St. Patty's day I planted peas, lettuce, spinach, swiss chard, beets and radishes direct from seed in my NEW! raised beds. Most have popped all ready (except beets and lettuce?) and survived last night under a quilt. Indoors in early March I started tomatoes (5 varieties), peppers (2), eggplant, cauliflower and cabbage. They are really picking up too! This past Sunday my Walla Walla onion sets arrived and I set those in the raised beds as well. I had too many for my small area so I decided to use some as "spring onions" or scallions and planted them 16 to a square (sqft gardening spacing). Hope everyone covered up last night with that cold snap! At least I know my homemade pea trellis is strong since it survived all the wind we had here!

I wonder...how did your lawn turn out? It seems from the picture that more than one thing is wrong. Obviously pH, but also it could be your watering schedule, amount of fertilizer, and mowing. The cheap lime is ok but you might not get great success with it. I live about 60 miles from you and have compact clay as well. I use the fast acting lime every 4-6 weeks (1/2 the recommended values to avoid rain runoff). But it seems because your pH is so low that you aren't watering your grass (usually city water is hard). For watering if you have compacted clay soil, you should make sure to water in the AM (before 9) because it looks like your soil easily dries out. This way you'll give roots access to water in the mid-afternoon during "respiration" which is when most water in the blade is lost. Plus you'll dry out the top surface of the ground to discourage weeds and disease/fungus. Plus the high humidity/dew in the AM lets more of the water get into the ground. Water every 2-3 days during the hot summer months...if you water and your grass is beginning to turn brown, you should have watered the previous day - but never water the lawn everyday. You'll need to water long enough to get down to the root zone (water in the AM and in the PM dig a small hole and see how deep the water went - if it didn't go 2-3" deep, try watering longer until it gets this deep. if you look at the soil after a nice soaking rain, 3-6"+ of soil will be damp). For those bare spots, it's best to use a water-absorbing coated seed - those seeds tend to grow much faster than regular seeds covered in peat moss. You can use these in the middle of summer as long as you water the spots everyday for the first 2-3 weeks. I've seen these seeds germinate in 4 days (Scotts brand). For fertilizer, a balanced fertilizer is best, i.e. 20/20/20. You might have to go to a specialty store for this. Fertilize a little below the recommend settings every 4-6 weeks. Finally, for mowing make sure you set your mower as high as possible. That will help keep the top 1" of soil from drying out so soon and help new seedlings grow.

Cleveland select pear - Noooo o o o o . . . For many reasons it really isn't a great tree. It's invasive in native woodlands in much of the country (something you said wanted to avoid), the blossoms smell dreadful, and the wood is prone to winter damage. Here are some pears near me after a wet autumn snow. I had a few broken lilac branches, but none of my trees other than some of the scrappier white pines had broken branches, and I saw no other trees that were severely enough damaged to need to be removed as these needed to be. If you search these trees on the tree forum you will only get a very few positives vs. many many negative comments. The dogwoods I mentioned in the post yesterday would be much better choices. My Kousa dogwoods have color that rivals the pear and mine has been healthy until last winter's -22 (at least) killed the buds, though it is still working on leafing out now. That shouldn't be an issue for you. If you do go for the crabapple, do a web search to be sure it is a disease resistant variety. As far as the holly - I much prefer holly over yew. I can't grow it here without winter damage, but at least some varieties are hardy in your area. Be sure you get an appropriate boy holly to pollenate your females to get berries. China Boy is supposed to be appropriate for China Doll, but I couldn't find specific hardiness info on China Doll. I think the combination of holly and Hydrangea will be handsome, with the Hydrangea providing summer bloom and the holly providing winter green along with berries for the first part of the winter (before the birds eat them.) I don't know what you mean by barn stone, so I can't answer that part. Where ever you plant the hedges, be sure they are set back far enough so you can see oncoming traffic as you pull out of your driveway.

Update: most of my roses are here and ready to go in (hopefully next week). I ended up with: MAC ZD (for porch front and side) GT (for the side of the house, next to ZD) JtheO Comtes de Champagne Peace Sharifa Asma Stanwell Perpetual New Dawn (to train into a tree in the yard) Anne Hathaway Paul Shirville Apothecary's Rose and Alba Semiplena for the herb garden I'm still waiting to find Bolero, which sounds very promising, and Evelyn, which I might keep in a pot to see how it does. Most of the others will be planted in a circle around a small fountain at the front of the house. I'm planning to put MAC at the back; my vision is to have it growing fairly tall to screen our bay window, and to fan out on the sides (assuming i can convince it to do so) to achieve the look of an arching fountain of blooms. Here's my question: I ordered two MACs. Would I be crazy to plant them next to each other to get a more "fountainy" look? I don't know if they will achieve the monstrous proportions here in NJ that I see in pics from CA. Am I better off putting the second one on the other side of the tree with New Dawn, or somewhere else altogether?