I have not had any problem with the sqruells. They don't bother with vegetables. But if you have fruit trees, that is another thing. Instead I have problem with rats. They chew up the plants stems, dig out the seeds, eat melons. I have several methods to deal with them, because just one single way is not enough. I almost wiped them out last year. 1- live trap 2- rat trap 3-water bucket trap 3-Baits: commecially sold,OR: plaster of Paris+flour+sugar; substitute baking soda and or add some; Add ground aspirin to any combination. KEEP EDIBLE ITEMS AWAY FROM GARDEN AREA. OTHERWISE THEY WILL KEEP COMING BACK FOR MOR AND WHEN THEY DO NOT FIND FOOD, WILL CHEW ON YOUR PLANTS. To kepp rabitts away: 1- when you see them, chase them, throw things at them, yell at them. SCARETHEM OFF 2- sprinkle hot ground chili peppers around things they eat. They seem to have a very sensative nose and do not like smell of hot peppers. I follow these tactics and have no problems with rabitts and there are plenty of them around. but they just try to stay away, for their own safty(hehe), as they are very shy and get scared.

"Scott's does not have the label for your grass seed online (404 error), so it's hard to know what you might have." I got a copy of the label and this is what was in the mix that I used: 9.76% Wendy Jean Creeping Red Fescue 9.75% Shademaster III Creeping Red Fescue 8.77% Citation Fore Perennial Ryegrass 8.28% Silver Dollar Perennial Ryegrass 6.34% Gaelic Kentucky Bluegrass 2.92% Abbey Kentucky Bluegrass 2.92% Right Kentucky Bluegrass 50.00% Water Smart Plus Fertilizer Coating 1.00% Inert From Seed .25% Other Crop Seed .01% Weed Seed ------------------------- "1. Why do I have such an ugly color lawn? Is it the seed I used? Could be but it's more likely the fertilizer you forgot to use. You didn't mention that you used any so I'm making an assumption. If you did fertilize, what did you use and when?" You are correct, I did not use any. I listened to the guy at Home Depot (maybe a mistake?) that told me I should not fertilize a new lawn, it could kill the grass coming in. ----------------------- "2. What is the grass that almost feels and looks like hay? Need the label off the Scott's bag to know the Guaranteed Analysis of the seed. That is not completely likely to help because what you probably have is a weed that's giving you that effect. Does that grass ever go to seed? If so, can you let it go to seed and take a picture. Grass is much easier to ID if there's a seed head or flower." I’m not sure to be honest. When I pull a piece out, it comes from the same stem that has 3 or 4 other grass-like blades (that are still green). ----------------------- "3. What, if anything can I do to fix this and make it a nice, green lawn (other than starting over which is last resort)? Fertilize if you have not already done so. This time of year you should not use chemical fertilizers, but you may use all the organic fertilizer your budget allows. Rather than using commercially bagged organic fertilizer, I prefer to use the ingredients of those same fertilizers. You can buy them at any feed store under the name of alfalfa, corn, wheat, soybean meal, etc. It's a little secret that organic fertilizer is made from animal feed. The application rate for any of them is 20 pounds per 1,000 square feet. Again, you can use it any day of the year, or every day of the year, with no fear of hurting the grass. It takes 3 full weeks before you see results with these grain type fertilizers." I can definitely try that. With that, I’m sure I wouldn’t have to worry about my puppy ingesting any of it. If you have been fertilizing, then there is likely a problem with your soil. Send a sample to Logan Labs in Ohio for testing. You are undoubtedly strongly inclined to send your sample to Penn State, but you'll get a lot more test for the money at Logan Labs. To be honest, I wouldn’t have any idea where to send it, but now I have an idea. ----------------------- "*Note - I have small mounds, maybe golfball size that appear and when I knock them over, there are holes about the diameter of a pen or sharpie. I have no idea what is creating these. There are no holes protruding from the "ball" except the one that enters down into the soil. These are likely earth worm mounds. Sometimes they indicate that you have a hard layer of soil under the softer layer of soil. This can happen when you rototill. A much better way to soften your soil is to use any clear shampoo, like baby shampoo, to increase water penetration and soften the soil deeper down." I tilled last year because the yard was probably 4-6 inches too high. When It would rain, the patio would end up under water. I took out about that much dirt, and loosened up the soil even under that, then added topsoil. Baby shampoo wont kill the grass? How would I apply it? How have you been watering (when you water)? How often and how long when you do water? Here is probably my first issue. I planted the grass last October, threw the hay down, then 3 days later got married and went on a honeymoon, so… for the first 2 weeks, it never got watered, then the weather took a down turn and I was only able to start “caring” for it this spring. ----------------------- "How high/low are you mowing the grass?" If asking in inches, I’m not sure, I have not measured, but I have the mower set on the next to last highest setting (almost cutting it as high as possible).

Hi leafwatcher, and welcome to the forum. Warning: it's as addictive as the hostas! I live about 100 miles due east of you with similar conditions, and Great Expectations is my favorite of the 800 or so varieties I grow. This is a hosta that, unlike most, has some very specific requirements to grow well. And if grown well, it will be truly spectacular--my largest measures 32 inches tall, 5 1/2 feet across, and looks good all season. First and most importantly, GE must be planted shallowly. Too many people plant this one too deep, since it's going to be a large plant at maturity. When planted this way, GE will, over the course of a few years, dwindle in size and then simply disappear. You want the crown of the plant right at the top of the soil, with only a very thin layer of dirt covering it. Secondly, GE need plenty of sun in order to thrive. If planted in heavy shade, it will grow at a glacially slow pace, taking years to throw a new division. It needs at least half sun to do really well, and it will take absolutely full sun. Most of mine are planted in half to three quarter sun. The third requirement is lots of water, which this year just isn't a problem! But in a dry summer, make sure you water GE quite deeply and regularly. If give these three things, GE will be the most beautiful hosta in your garden. The same growing conditions apply to Thunderbolt, Dream Weaver, and Dream Queen, as these are all selections from GE. Your hosta list looks very nice indeed, not a bum plant in the lot. You do, however, need to add a Montana Aureomarginata to your garden as soon as possible, unless the one you have listed as Aureo Marginata is a montana rather than a fortunei or a ventricosa. If you can't find MA at a good price locally, email me privately--I have about 20 of these that I'm growing out. And then of course, you will want to get a few minis and small hostas--everything you currently have is medium to large. And then you will want to start digging up your lawn to plant more hostas, and raiding the kid's college fund to buy more hostas, and, well, you get the idea--these plants are majorly addictive. Enjoy!

Hi Ilene, Welcome to the Oklahoma Gardening Forum. Thanks for sharing your ideas. I think you will find us to be a friendly, congenial group. :) SOIL, PH, ORGANIC MATERIAL: With regards to your question about soil pH, have you ever had your soil tested? If you have had a soil test and know the pH of your soil, then working to raise the pH is a fairly simple thing. If you haven't had a soil test, you might be wasting your time and money adding amendments that are not precisely what you need. For example, the soil in my county averages out at a pH of 5.9, but my soil stays closer to 7.0. So, I base my soil amendments on what I know is going on with my soil. If I had tried to amend my soil based on the average for my county, though, I could have created additional problems for myself. When you have a soil test done, they will tell what amendments to add and at what rate to apply them. For a home gardener, they usually tell you how much to add for how many square feet of garden or lawn space. For a commercial grower, they will express it in how many pounds (or whatever) to add per acre. If your tomato crop was fine 2 years ago but did not do all that well last year, it is probably more related to the drought than to your soil. On the other hand, if your tomato crop yield has been less and less each year for a few years, then you probably have some sort of deficiency in your soil. Last year was a very hard year for home vegetable gardeners and their tomatoes, not just in Oklahoma, but in many parts of the country. I have the hard, red clay soil that dries and cracks badly in the heat and then turns into sticky, mucky stuff when it rains. I have been working to improve this soil since moving here in 1999. Over the course of the years, I have added the following at various times: compost (every year), greensand and lava sand, composted cow manure (both from local cows and from bags purchased at Lowe's), lime, fireplace ashes, shredded leaves, grass clippings (added as mulch to top of beds where it eventually decomposes and enriches the soil), old half-decomposed hay and/or straw, composted chicken manure from my own chickens, peat moss, rabbit manure (both purchased commercially in bags and our own rabbit manure composted here in our pile), leaf mold, bone meal, blood meal and finely shredded bark mulch. Yes, I have seen great improvement in the soil and in the yield of my garden crops. It is a long, continuing process that will never end. Having said that, I don't have to do nearly as much amending as I used to. The absolute most important thing you can do for your soil is to give it lots and lots of organic material. Soil that has a good amount of organic material usually doesn't have pH problems. Many of the Oklahoma soils that have pH problems are commercially farmed soils that have been farmed for years and years. Every year, the crop that is planted removes some of the cations (nutrients) from the soil. Every year the amount of organic material in the soil will decrease naturally as those cations are used up. Soil that is plowed or tilled repeatedly will lose organic material at a quicker rate than soil that is not plowed/tilled. The combination of using up the cations quickly, not adding much if any organic material back to the soil, and continual plowing/tilling are part of the reasons that agricultural soil tests at a lower and lower pH over time. When the state does the soil tests for each county that they use to track soil fertility, including pH, I believe they do NOT include samples taken from residential lawns and gardens in the county-wide and state-wide averages that they prepare. The reason is that residential lawns and gardens are maintained differently from the commercially cropped areas, and the main goal of the county-wide and state-wide averages is to let commercial growers know what they need to do to their county's soil to keep it in good shape for commercial crops. ANTS: Ants can be annoying, but I try to tolerate them as I think every insect has a role to fulfill in the food chain. One method of getting the ants to go away is to spray the ground with a mixture of water and peppermint soap or peppermint essential oils. I use Dr. Bronner's pepppermint castille soap which I buy at a health food store. I add a tablespoon or two to a sprayer full of water, mix it up, and spray the ground where the ants are. The ants don't like the scent of the peppermint so they pack up and move away. I especially like to use this to change the path they follow as they travel around the yard. For example, for a while the big red ants liked to follow a path that led them right by the outside water faucet. If I happed to stop near that faucer to turn the water on or off or to hook up a hose, the red ants were pretty quick to climb up on me and sting me. One spraying of the soap solution made them change their path. TOMATOES: Sometime, when you are't too busy, post us your list of tomato varieties that you are growing this year. I grow mostly heirloom, open-pollinated ones too, and raise my own from seed. This year I have 95 varieties. Of those, about 80 different varieties and 120 plants are already in the ground. We were just talking about Darrell Merrell, the tomato man, the other day. It is our understanding that he is ill and that his daughters are now running the business. I don't know of a specific list that details which kinds of plants prefer acidic soil over alkaline or neutral soil or vice versa, although I suspect such lists could be found by googling. Dawn