Hi najoba, Burlap beats nothing, for sure, but a mulch would be better, and a cover crop of winter rye even better than that. A bed on hold all winter will leach out available mitrogen with the rains, and burlap won't stop that or prevent some erosion of fine particles. A cover crop holds on to those nutrients for you, while sending an immense web of roots to stabilize the soil. Rye grass would be a pesky weed, I'm talking cereal grain rye. I say winter rye for a daylily bed because the root system suppresses nematodes and weeds. Daylilies (per Gary recently) like soil with three times the usual amount of fungi. We were discussing compost specifically, where cereal grain waste of any kind would feed the fungi. In my own head, it seems like a a cereal grain crop would provide some ungerminated seed to feed the soil fungi over winter. In spring, when you terminate the cover crop by whatever method, the roots decay leaving organic matter, worm food, and macropores in the soil for improved aeration and water penetration. I guess farmer's kill it off with Roundup and leave the plants there for a mulch, but for something less that 2000 acres of cotton you could just mow it down a few weeks before planting. We all talk about newspaper mulch, but I got rolls of brown paper from Lowe's paint department, 4' X 54' It's thick paper for protecting wooden floors from paint. I plan to set down that paper and have my son kick it along for it's 54 feet of mulch base over my mown cover. This is my seedling bed I'm doing, and in a big back yard with property addition up to a small pond in a subdivision so I went with easy, but also I think the brown solid paper won't blow during it's layout , and will look nicer for my neighbors. I don't plan to till anymore in the spring, just mulch. I know you have much bigger beds/operation than me, but I was happy to see you here and wanted to share my plans as I also have some slope on this bed heading down to a small stream. It's more work now, but pays off later.

Hi. I'm growing my first seedlings of this species now as well. I planted several seeds and about 7 or 8 germinated. Of those, many didn't make it. A big thing to remember, is not to disturb their roots. I had figured that a tiny, tiny seedling would be fine and I did transplant a few of those with a large chunk of dirt around them. Dead. Maybe I did something else wrong, but I'm not risking it now. I put a pot with 2 or 3 seedlings in a tank under lights and transferred another pot with one seedling from a tank to an east facing windowsill. So far, the ones in the tank are largely ok. One seems to have taken a bad turn and the windowsill one just started looking questionable. In "The Savage Garden", Peter mentions that they can be great bog garden candidates so I'm assuming that they really are tougher than some people make them out to be but I'm not going to mess with my existing ones anymore. I do know that everyone seems to suggest a peat/sand mix and not constantly waterlogged. If they germinated that quickly, you must have pretty good conditions. Maybe you shouldn't do anything unless you have to. Are there enough that you can experiment with conditions?

We're finishing up a house on heavily wooded land with a well and septic. We are in Minnesota and things may be different in NJ, but it would have been fine for us to clear land before getting a building permit. Weirdly, our builder might have gotten in trouble for clearing our land before getting the permit-- I think the logic is that as the owner, you can cut down your trees, but a licensed builder who is planning to build a house can't start the building process, including clearing the trees, before getting the permit. So, if you know where you want to put the house, odds are you can go ahead and start clearing. However, it might be good to at least talk to an architect first, so you know where you are likely to need to put the septic, or whatever, and you don't have to pay for the tree guys to come out again later. In our area, the septic has to be designed for the house and the septic plans are approved along with the rest of the house plans in the building permit process. If you were to install a septic system before finalizing your house plans, it could be either very limiting or something you have to pay to fix. Our septic went in before we were connected to electricity, and our well went in after, but I don't think it mattered either way. The pump for the well needs power to bring water into the house, but they don't need electric to dig either septic or well. I would recommend spending your time coming up with a plan with an architect, and possibly improving the land-- planting screening trees if necessary, clearing scrub and weeds, that kind of thing.

I love the tile. And since I don't trust the colors on my computer, I can't tell if the tile "works", but I really like the pattern. I wonder if part of the challenge is that all of the finishing touches aren't done yet, so the backsplash is more prominent than it will be. Looks like you haven't installed your hood yet (what style is it? How much space will it take up?), light switch covers aren't on, window treatment isn't done, plus other decorative touches. I think once you have those items in it will all come together beautifully.