This is an excellent topic, and one that we need to keep in mind if we want to see a robust future of gardening, much less rose gardening. I agree that we seem to be growing into a much more "indoor" culture, which to me transcends the concerns about too much device time in the younger generation (as I sit here typing this into a device...). It seems like outdoor time is compartmentalized into particular uses, mostly sports or commuting, and spending time in the yard for fun isn't usually a consideration. Goal oriented sorts may indeed get hooked with vegetable gardens, and that's a great hook for economic benefits as well. I think the key reminder for us here is the word "plants" rather than necessarily "roses" as an entry into the love of gardening, and to take to heart Josh's other post about enabling people he runs into casually. Every time I see someone new move into the neighborhood at large, I make a point of bringing them fresh produce and inviting them to stop by my yard and browse for free divisions of the many perennials I have to share. I figure it's a multiple benefit - getting something free means that there's no loss to trying, seeing something work in someone else's yard makes it more likely in yours, it makes people think that they COULD do something more than boring with their own yards, and I'm offering my help as a fellow gardener for advice. We ran into a new neighbor this weekend as my daughter and I were selling girl scout cookies up the street, and even though I didn't have any produce to offer at the time (duh - back to zero this week again), the new neighbor did look grateful at the prospect of being able to do "something" with her yard. The other thing we can do is literally as well as figuratively plant seeds with our own contacts in the next generation. My own kids are firmly convinced of the benefits of gardening in at least the tangible sense of food and smell and visual impact, though they're variable in wanting to help very directly. Regardless though, I keep throwing out information on basic garden problem solving when the opportunity comes up, and I know from my own experience how well some of that can stick in later years. I mostly learned gardening from the vegetable plots with my father, and didn't have my own yard till nearly 20 years later, but I could still hear his voice coaching me in techniques that have held through the test of time. I make sure to pass these along to the neighbor children, some of whom have parents who appreciate yards but are self-proclaimed "non-gardeners" (they even broke down and sold a beautiful greenhouse when they bought the place that I would have given my eyeteeth for). One of these days, those kids may grow up to want their own vegetables and flowers, and I haven't given up on passing along extra plants (including roses) to those neighbors yet either. I've basely corrupted every other neighbor on every side of me with roses and other plants, so I'm watching for my opportunities to share the love of plants when they're ready. Like every other aspect of gardening, encouraging others to love plants takes patience, but I'm never willing to give up on the challenge. Cynthia

OMG! Stop IT! STOPIT! Slow down!! Relax. Chill. Take this weekend off from the lawn and go to Schlitterbahn or something. You are waaaaay over thinking this. And you're, well, let's just leave it at that. I have a lot of questions about how and why you did what you did, but I'm not going to ask - I assume someone you trust told you to do all that stuff. For the most part they were misinformed about what works in Austin and other places, too. Here's how you do a lawn in Round Rock. First look around you and notice that nobody has a zoysia lawn. There must be a reason for that. The first thing to know about gardening is to select plants that are well adapted to your climate and soil. That's the reason about 80% of the lawns are St Augustine and 15% are one form of bermuda or another. The rest are either xeriscaped or some form of zoysia, but those can be hard to find. The reason everyone has St Augustine is that it is dead simple to grow. The reason they don't have zoysia boils down to disease. Once it gets a spot of fungus, it goes dormant for the rest of the season. It will come back next April, but most people choose to replant with St Aug or bermuda. People will tell you that St Augustine requires too much water, but all grass needs to be watered once a week to look good. You've done something that you will be reminded of over the course of the next 3 years. You rototilled. I realize the Seedland website suggests rototilling. I'm not sure where that comes from but it is universally a bad idea. Scott's website also tells you to rototill in preparation for new grass. That's dead wrong. What is going to happen is your fluffy rototilled soil will settle back and form a new structure over the next 3 years. As that happens it settles unevenly leaving holes and hills for you and your mower to run over. It you try to level it now or next year it will continue to settle and recreate new hills and holes until the soil structure is finally finalized. The new structure will be formed by soil microbes, chemistry, soil mechanics, and gravity. You should have ignored the hard soil and rocks under the top layer of soil. That can be addressed from the surface without damaging the existing soil structure. I did not see any zoysia in the pictures. The first close up pic might be crabgrass but is more likely dallisgrass. Crabgrass would be much preferred because it will all die in about November with the first frost. Dallisgrass is perennial and will come back if it freezes out or not. Your second picture shows nutgrass. Nutgrass is a sedge (more formally it is called nut sedge). As a sedge it needs a sedge killer to affect it even slightly. Nutgrass is a swamp type grass that much prefers continually moist soil to even occasionally moist soil. But if it gets continual moisture it will take off and not look back. There is another sedge called green kyllinga that looks a lot like nut grass. Green kyllinga is not nearly as aggressive as nut grass, but it also will survive in deeply dried out soil. Either one needs a sedge killer to kill it. Sedgehammer is one and Image is the other one. If that is nutgrass and you get yourself on a deep and infrequent watering program, the nutgrass has a good chance of going away permanently. In step 6 you sorta wasted the bags of fertilizer. There were no roots for the fertilizer to fertilize. By the time the grass would have come in the fertilizer would have been washed through. At step 8 the thing to do would have been to roll the seed down. Rollers are not used to level the soil. They are used to press the seed down into the surface of the soil. Leveling is done with a drag which picks up soil/sand from the high spots and drags it to the low spots. Then the soil is wet down and soil added to the low spots that appear when it was wet down. But I digress. Step 9!! You're using my favorite sprinkler. I have six or seven of those (several houses with large yards). Step 10. Yes you could have done something else to the soil, but you didn't need to. And you did not need more soil. More soil too often leads to new drainage issues. The worst case is the soil backs up rainwater causing it to flood the house. You did not need the 20 bags. Step 13. Are you going to leave the hoses buried or, sometime in the future, dig them up? I have hose splitters on top of the ground to cover all the grass at once. Sears hoses, by the way, have a lifetime guarantee and you don't need to keep the receipt. Step 14. Hmmm. Those oscillators barely put out any water. 15 minutes 4x per day is probably fine even running through the night. I can't imagine that would be too much water. Step 15. The bastard weeds sprouted in 9 days which too often leads the home owner to stop watering frequently enough to sprout the real grass seed. What you should have done was water exactly like you did immediately after applying the RoundUp. That would have sprouted all those weed seeds that you now have. Then you could have reapplied RU to kill the newly sprouted weeds. THEN you put down the grass seed after all the weeds are outta there. Step 17. Don't use any more starter fertilizer until you have your soil tested ($25) at Logan Labs and you post the results here for feedback. With Texas soil you have to worry about P and K levels. No other test labs will give you the quality of results that Logan Labs will. TAMU, in particular, has a terrible reputation for their soil testing problems. Step 19. The new grass coming in might be the zoysia. The problem now is the weeds are up and shading out the new seedlings. Zenith needs sunlight to take root. But at this point you have a mostly dallisgrass lawn. Dallisgrass can be killed with atrazine. If I remember correctly zoysia is safe with atrazine. But is NEW zoysia seedlings safe from atrazine? I'm not sure of that. At this point you're going to have a weed lawn. What do you want to do? I would suggest rethinking the logic behind zoysia. Let's discuss that with respect to how to proceed. If you're working with a tight budget let us know. Some lawns are a lot more work over the long haul. What are you looking for? Do you want the nicest lawn on the block or just something to keep the mud out of the house? Or something in between? To have a really nice bermuda lawn is a lot of work with mowing 3x per week and monthly feeding. To have a really nice St Augustine is dead simple with mowing every week or two and feeding 3 to 5 times a year. I'm not mentioning watering because all lawns need to be watered once a week in the summer heat, so that's just the way it is. There are some non traditional grasses that can be used for low water usage if you want to go that direction. Even prairie grass is preferable to zoysia. So what do you want?

I think it's a balance thing, as with most aspects of gardening. The more sun you give your citrus while also taking care of its water, temperature, and fertilization needs the more fruit and flowers and growth it will give you. Honestly, I think this is why I hate fabric pots - I can only grow on my roof deck and I couldn't keep the trees cool / watered in those pots. Instead I grow my outdoor-year-round citrus in cedar containers to keep the soil cool and my indoor-outdoor citrus in terracotta colored plastic pots so I can heft them in and out (and check if they need water based on weight).

Hi everyone Emily - When I first started growing bromeliads (Tillandsias are also bromeliads despite what some people say). I was told by an elderly grower that if I looked at my plant's leaves, they would tell me what they required in the way of water. If the leaves were curling up at the edges, this meant that they needed more water. This was the plant's natural response and by doing this, the leaves were turned up so they were able to catch and hold more more water from rain or dew. If on the other hand the outside of the leaves were turned down, it prevented them trapping water and allowed it to run off immediately, thus preventing overwatering. In summary, if the leaves are turned down at the edges the plant has sufficient or too much water and if they are turned up they are too dry and require more water. I have always followed this rule when deciding when to water and it works well for me as an indicator. Finally, it's always worth remembering that more plants (of any type) are killed by too much water rather then too little; if you can't decide if the plant needs watering or not, put it off for another day or two rather than risk overwatering.. All the best, Nev.