bsntech wrote: "I cannot see how anyone can keep up a 12,000 square-foot garden - or even what you would do with all of the produce!" The key to it, IMO, is to use as many labor and time saving devices and tricks as possible. I do things a lot differently than I used to, and it all works out pretty well, if I do say so myself, other than the ravishes of weather, disease, and animals, which will always be with us. I cover all of my main garden beds with black plastic. This really helps to keep the weeds at bay. In my perennial borders, mixed borders, and shrub rows, almost all of them now have black plastic or carpet under thick layers of organic mulch. This reduces the weeding to an absolute minimum. I also use Preen in some areas to help assist the mulch in those places that black plastic is not appropriate, such as certain beds where I have large drifts of spring bulbs naturalized. I do use Roundup and Ortho Grass-B-Gone to help keep edges tidy, etc. Weeds are the # 1 issue, as far as I am concerned -- keep the weeds out, and it goes a long way to keeping things neat and tidy looking. Now, my problem here is -- what is a weed -- a lot of 'volunteers' of various things pop up where they don't belong, but I tend to leave them because they're either pretty or useful, when by rights, I really don't need amaranth in the middle of the tomato rows or self-sown cosmos or celosia in my corn! As far as what to do with the produce, well, I can and freeze a lot for myself and family members, give some away to friends, neighbors, and coworkers, feed excess to my chickens and ducks, who process it back into fertilizer. But, there is always extra that goes bad, and I don't feel one bit sorry about it -- it is a great source of green manure and rots into high quality compost that enriches my soil.

Hi Natasha! I am WAY FAR from an expert, but... MULCH MULCH MULCH and AMEND AMEND AMEND! (Got that advice a few years ago from one of the regulars here... can't remember who at the moment!) My soil still isn't great, but I started by adding bags of topsoil and mushroom compost and mixing it up into my beds. I hear leaf mold mulch is great, but I haven't tried it yet. I have lots of deciduous trees in my yard, and I use the raked leaves to make my own mulch. Six years later, and I've turned what was nothing but a sand pile into something I can be proud of. Nothing like what the REAL experts and pros here have going on, but we plant and learn! ;-)) Plant acid-loving plants if your soil is acid (it probably is, but you may want to test it). My azaleas grow like crazy and they're beautiful every year. Crape Myrtle loves it here. Purple Heart grows well, as does lantana. If you've got shade and large containers or raised beds, impatiens will give you breathtaking color from April to November. My mom loves to say, "stick a dollar plant into a five-dollar hole." I do that whenever I plant a new shrub, tree or perennial! I've also discovered the joys of container gardening... I love to use huge to small sized containers of everything from annuals to evergreens. (There's a container gardening forum on GW, too.) In the winter I can move the evergreens around so there's always something going on in the garden. Containers can also be almost anything! I love to haunt thrift stores and yard sales for "finds". I've got some that I love and paid way too much for, and I have other that I love just as much and got - or made - for free. I work at USC in Columbia, and the campus has beautiful landscaping. If you have a chance, talk a stroll around it and take your camera. If you don't know what you're looking at, visit the Name that Plant forum here on GW and post a picture or link to a photo-sharing website. (I use PhotoBucket.) I don't know what those guys over there do, but I've never failed to get an answer almost immediately on anything I've posted... once someone in Australia identified my Cabbage Tree! Best advice of all - visit this forum often! There's are folks here who can answer any question you can possible dream up... even though I'm not one of them! Welcome to SC - smiles and hugs to you! Claudia

We just call it "soil conditioner" here, too, rootdigger. And I've ALSO bought Timberline brand before (I believe that brand is actually made in S.C.)... For a year or so, for some reason, the Nature's Helper brand simply wasn't available for some strange reason... I don't know if their plant went down, or they had a strike, or what... The main reason I actually PUSH Nature's Helper is because when it WASN'T available and I used bulk soil conditioners and other brands, and then when it became available again, I went from THE BEST, to the other stuff, back to THE BEST, and for this RARE OCCASION I actually DID see THE DIFFERENCE. It's VERY RARE that I will push a NAME BRAND over a GENERIC. I'm a MAJOR FAN of generics. Nature's Helper is, so far, one of those exceptions. When I open one of their bags (and they HAVE disappointed by reducing the bag size to 1.5 cubic feet down from 2 cubic feet, while keeping the price the same, but it appears all the other brands have done similar)... anyway, when I open the bag, I get a rich, sweet aroma, a bright color, and a fine, warm texture that just seems higher quality than what I've seen from the other bagged brands and DEFINITELY better than what I got when I bought it by the scoop. Trust me. I WILL be VERY VOCAL when and if Nature's Helper starts to disappoint me, because I don't recommend a brand this much and then have them let me down without doing a FIRM 180! I'll start a thread titled something like "Nature's Helper No Longer Any Good!" And the next time I buy soil conditioner, just out of curiosity, I'm going to buy at least one bag of every brand I can find, just to see how much difference I see when I have them to compare directly, NOT from memory. Now... NUFFADAT! nannerbelle, sounds like you have a nice little collection... and gonebananas, you actually grow EDIBLE bananas in ZONE 7 in ONE SEASON?!?!? Can you give us more details on that? Seems incredible -- especially given that you're replanting them FRESH every year! By the way, at its fall plant sale in October, Hatcher Garden in Spartanburg had 5-foot Musa basjoos for $10... And then in the afternoon, when they were trying to clear things out, everything was cut to half price, so were you there, you could have gotten a 5-foot Musa basjoo for $5!!! And they STILL didn't sell out! I think I paid $25 for one about half that size at Plant Delights a few falls ago! I'm pretty sure the leftover stock will still be for sale in the spring. Jeff

This is such an interesting thread. I come from the Canadian prairies where there were no disposal facilities at all until recently, and what there is remains limited. So disposing of all manner of garbage on your property was the norm. Maybe that mentality developed because of the seemingly endless space out there (as opposed to dense urban areas where they can't find landfill space to save their lives). Everyone burned their garbage in a burning barrel (and still do) or created their own little dumps. I doubt people thought much about how their actions might affect ground water, air quality, etc. Some of these things we just did not know then. We used to carry water to our livestock in "rinsed out" 5 gallon pails that used to contain herbicides and pesticides. ARGH!! I live in Eastern Canada now. People in my area burn garbage in barrels. Recently our municipality regulated burning. At first, I was annoyed ("what are they going to regulate next?!"). Now "they" are saying that backyard burning is one of the worst forms of pollution. Don't know if I buy that but I stopped. I felt a bit shocked, like I should have known better, but I'd just never really thought about it. I just did what others did. I'm a bit obsessed with reducing and recycling, and try to be informed about the environment yet there I was burning garbage. People here still "bury" old barns. I haven't seen it but it involves burning it to the ground and covering the foundation with soil - poof, gone! I have 2 such foundations on my property and have to work around them (broke a shovel "discovering" one of them). We have to take our stuff to the landfill and dispose of it for a fee. We can recycle lots of stuff for free. But when I drop my garbage, it seems very few people are recylcing. All around on the garbage heap is paper, cardboard, bags of cans, etc. You wouldn't believe how fast the landfill is filling up. You can't fail to notice it but it doesn't seem to be affecting people's behaviour. Yet folks sure complain about having to pay $1.25 per bag! Very disheartening. I wonder if it will take a crisis for us to change how we think about the materials we consume and dispose of? Interesting how many people have commented on how lazy those people who bury their junk are. But when you think about it, digging holes by hand to bury those mountains of stuff must have been hard work! Seems almost ironic. My mom reused and recycled long before it was in vogue. She came from poor, hardy pioneer stock who didn't waste stuff. So the stories about using carpet to keep weeds down strike me as an example of "not wasting" more than ignorance or laziness (altho there's always room for those!). As alyrics noted, if it's not bad for the environment, maybe it's not such a bad idea. Having said that, I don't envy those of you who have to clean up those awful messes. I'm amazed and grateful for the time, money, and effort you have put into properly disposing of garbage that's not yours. There's a little back road near here that I take in summer. Every year, some clown dumps a dryer or stove in the ditch. Drives me nuts. I wonder what's going through those people's minds that they can behave like that. I always try to use that to remind myself to watch for my own behaviours where I do "stupid" things without thinking (like burning garbage). cnid