Good answers, thanks. I'm sometimes hesitant to get into detail before I know if there are any special circumstances to be aware of. Here is some general lawn care advice I've learned after reading here and other forums over 12 years. This was not what I believed when I first got here. This is the accumulated advice of hundreds or thousands of peoples' experience. Watering Water deeply and infrequently. Deeply means one inch all at one time. Infrequently means no more than once a week when temps are in the 90s and once every 2 weeks when temps are in the 80s. This seems to work in Phoenix and in New Orleans. Of course in New Orleans they can count on rain for all their watering. YOUR grass might need to be weaned into deep and infrequent watering. Start by figuring out how long it takes your sprinkler to put out an inch of water. My oscillator sprinkler with my water pressure takes 8 full hours to get an inch. My neighbor's high flow, in ground system takes 20 minutes. You'll have to figure it out for your set of hoses, sprinklers, and water pressure. Put some tuna or cat food cans out in the yard and turn on the sprinkler. Time how long it takes to fill the cans. That is your target watering time from now on. Every time you water, use that time. Once you do that, start your calendar. Watch the grass (not the weeds) for signs of wilting. When you see the grass turn color to a darker green or the blades folding together, then water for your target time. Restart your calendar. When you water like this several things happen. One is the grass roots will extend and grow deeper into the soil to get the water deeper down. Two is the surface of the soil will dry out completely before you water again. That means new weed seeds will not germinate (they need continual surface moisture). Three is that certain weeds which require continual surface moisture will die out. Mowing Mulch mow at your mower's highest setting or one notch lower. Sounds like you're doing that. But mow once a week. Grass will become stressed if you mow more than 1/3 of the length of the blade off, so weekly mowing is recommended if the grass is growing. Sometimes in summer, if you get a hot spell, you can let the grass go for several weeks. Longer grass needs less water. But when you mow it back, watch for that stress from mowing more than 1/3 off. Fertilizer In your area you should fertilize once in the late spring. Memorial Day is an easy day to remember. If you fertilize when the Scott's commercials come on in March, you will over stimulate the grass resulting in a crash as the grass uses up all the sugar reserves in the roots. The grass will naturally come in at high speed in the spring, so you don't need to do anything until after that fast growth stops. Then the grass needs two more doses of fertilizer in the fall. Labor Day and Thanksgiving are easy days to remember for those. The last app should go down after the grass stops growing in the late fall. Thanksgiving is just a guideline, not a rule. Seeding For northern lawns the best time to seed new grass is in the early fall. Your early fall is August. That gives you time to evaluate the new grass and reseed if you get some thin spots. Fescue grasses will grow down in your little glen in the shade. Both fescue and Kentucky bluegrass will grow in full sun. Many people like the fescue for remaining green all winter, but fescue tends to thin out over the year(s) allowing weeds in. Kentucky bluegrass will turn brown in the winter, but it grows a dense carpet of grass and does not require annual reseeding. You can mix the two grasses if you like. I can't give you specific seed selection advice other than to say you get what you pay for in seed. More expensive seed will have much less of a weed problem. If you look on the label at the guaranteed analysis, you'll see Weed Seed and Other Crop numbers. Those should be zero or close to. Expensive seed will be zero. Hardware store seed will never be zero. This gets down to how much you want to spend. Is lawn care a hobby or a chore? If it is a chore, then go with the hardware store seed. If you want the nicest lawn on the block, then this is a hobby and you could justify spending more up front. Other stuff Aeration is generally not needed. It is very commonly done, but not needed. There are better ways to soften hard soil. Top dressing with soil or sand is NEVER needed unless you need to change your drainage. These materials can be a serious problem if you don't need them. Top dressing with compost is usually only needed if you have chemically poisoned your soil. Organic fertilizer I have been organic since 2002. It really works. Furthermore it seems to have solved other issues I was having with my lawn. The way it works is biological rather than chemical, so it is completely different. You can apply organics any day of the week, or every day of the week, rain or shine, summer or winter, and not have any problems. The only issue people seem to have is the "slow release" feature. It takes 3 full weeks to see the greening and improved density. My current favorite organic fertilizer is alfalfa pellets (rabbit chow) applied at a rate of 20 pounds per 1,000 square feet. You can find it in 50-pound bags at your local feed store (call first). I like them because rabbits are everywhere and they are fairly cheap this year. I scatter them by hand but the should go through a broadcast type spreader. If you can find alfalfa meal, that would be better and would go through a drop spreader. -icides Generally you should not need insecticide or herbicide. A few grubs are acceptable. When you get more than a dozen grubs per square feet, then you have a problem. Usually grubs are a late summer problem. June bugs or Japanese beetles swarm your porch lights in May, lay their eggs at that time, the eggs hatch and the damage begins. By late summer the accumulated damage finally becomes apparent. If you don't see swarms of beetles in late spring, then you likely won't have any issues. If you do, then wait a month and dig a few test holes looking for more than a dozen per square foot. Where you get into needing herbicide is when you put grass seed down in the spring and start watering 3x per day to germinate that seed. Summer weed seeds are germinating at the same time, but only when they get water 3x per day every day. If the soil dries out for days (or weeks) at a time, then you won't get those weeds. Of course Mother Nature has different ideas about when you get water.

Congratulation,for such good results so early. I agree Magnolia is not giving good results only in the best fig climates. I would like to know your location,so I will reaserch,your posting,to find out. H

Will do, Karen. If anyone else would like a plain text version of the Composite List e-mailed to him/her, just let me know. If your computer can handle it, you may also download a copy of the Composite List in a variety of formats, including plain text. I was hoping the early start and longer period to sign up and post/revise a list would take stress out of something that is supposed to be fun. There's still a week left to sign up and post or make changes to "seeds wanted" lists!

I think that persistent wet and cool weather usually results in a smaller grasshopper population, mostly because that sort of weather encourages the spread of a disease (Nosema locuste) that kills grassshoppers. However, what I've noticed over the years is that the weather needs to be persistently wet and cool over a long period of time in March, April and May so that the disease gets them shortly after they hatch out. If March and April are warmer and drier, and then May turns significantly cooler and wetter, more grasshoppers survive. So, I think in various areas it may depend on whether you were dry until the May deluge or if you were cooler and wetter for a longer period of time. We have been persistently wet here since rain started falling last June, and I did not see nearly as many grasshoppers hatching out in March and April as in previous years. In most of May I didn't see many. Now? Little ones are hatching out all over the place. They are the worst in the unmowed pastures, and I've seen the fewest in the garden. That's probably because I spread Semaspore (the active ingredient is Nosema locuste) in the garden every year. Ants, ticks, and flies are horrible here, and there's tons and tons of caterpillars of all kinds. I like the caterpillars that turn into beautiful butterflies and moths, but don't care for the ones that destroy vegetable crops. I selectively kill the cutworms, corn ear worms, imported cabbage worms, cabbage loopers, Eastern tent caterpillars, etc. and leave the rest to morph into butterflies and moths. It is a great swallowtail year---my fennel, dill and parsley are disappearing at an astonishing rate. Normally, wetter weather encourages larger pest populations, so I wouldn't be pinning a lot of hope on there being fewer pests this year because there likely will be more. My garden is out of balance in an odd way, though. Usually the pest population builds up really big and then the beneficial insects show up to eat the pests. This year it seems like there's a lot of beneficials all over the garden actively searching for something to eat. It might be that the huge population of frogs, toads and turtles are eating a good share of the pest insects, leaving fewer for the ladybugs, assassin bugs, green lacewings and predatory flies and wasps to eat. About the only pest insects I've noticed in the garden, other than all the caterpillers, are a few squash bugs (though not very many), two harlequin bugs, a few leafhoppers and cucumber beetles. It isn't a very bad pest year yet, but I probably feel that way because I just stand and watch the beneficial insects devour the pest insects. A person whose garden is lacking in beneficial insects might feel like it is a really bad pest year. The fire ants are horrible here. We've caught them carrying dirt to the roof of the house to, presumably, build a mound on top of the roof, and they were doing the same with the wooden arbor that is the entry to the veggie garden. They climb all over the exterior of the house and try to find their way in. Needless to say, they are in every raised bed in the garden. I've got some Come And Get It, but haven't used it on them yet. The mosquitoes are bad at night, but I try to make it indoors before sunset so I can largely avoid them. This year, Brood IV of the 17-year cicadas are supposed to emerge. The last time that Brood IV emerged, they were found in some parts of OK, but not in all. So, I guess there is some chance that at least some of us will see (and hear) them this year. I'll link a recent news story about them. Brood IV, 17 Year Periodical Cicadas In Oklahoma