"I'm not sure I agree with the idea that the lawn MUST be re-seeded, unless the OP has decided he wants a KBG lawn. The Perennial Rye that was in the original mixture will eventually predominate over the KBG, so he will end up with a mostly PRG lawn. Some people do go that route. Not sure what the recommendation is for upstate NY." The perennial rye cultivars in that mix do not spread. Any bare areas now will be bare in the fall unless some of the KBG made it and starts to spread. I said anything that survives into the fall should do well, but how much grass is left at the end of August is anyone's guess. There is nothing wrong with a PR lawn, they look great, and are easy to overseed if need be. Upstate NY is KBG country, and if it gets too cold PR can die off due to cold kill, but I have read this isn't as much as an issue as once believed. I happen to think monospecies lawns are easier to start and take care of regardless of what type you pick. My whole point is this; 2500 square feet isn't a lot of area to seed again. Most of the work has been done. Instead of having a weed filled patchy lawn, kill everything and do it over. The grass will do much better, the weed pressure will be minimal, and the lawn will be very consistent and thick into the winter.

As I said, some will claim you are a tree killer for planting a sugar maple in unholy clay no matter the evidence your present them, they just ignore it. Like growing by the thousands in the local heavy clay to a very large size. The the mound is only to help get them established, so they don't sit in a basically a bucket of water, while the roots then find the right level for their roots to grow in, same as if it is loam. The mound is 8-10 inches tall, and the tree trunk will end up a couple feet across and will far surpass the size of the mound. The roots will grow naturally at the proper level. They will find the same level in the soil no matter how they are planted to begin with. IF the right depth is one foot, then they will grow to one foot depth. If they start 6 inches above that, then they will grow down to one foot. They will not grow at 6 inches instead of 12 inches. If you look closely at many larger established trees, there will be evidence of them being planted on a mound, but the scale of the mound is such a small fraction in comparison to the overall size of the tree, it's not noticed unless you look for it. As far as whether it really is heavy clay or something similar to clay but not really clay. Take a look here. ftp://ftp-fc.sc.egov.usda.gov/NSSC/Soil_Taxonomy/maps.pdf for a nation wide soils map. The local soils are of the order Ultisol which are ancient heavy clays. This also includes far Northeast Oklahoma which katrina1 has said in other posts is the area of her location. For information of Ultisols look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultisol And more specifically at my location the specific Ultisols that the thousands of large mature natural and planted sugar maples which are no evidence that sugar maples can be planted in clay and do well in real clay are "Ck-7" and "Jo-4". But alas, to some it matter not. Some soils/environments sugar maples will not survive, or at least not prosper. Some will require some special attention at the start, as transplanting is not a natural process, and is akin of having open heart surgery, therefore special care is only reasonable. Some clays may not be suitable. However to imply that your site is unsuitable simply because it is clay is ridiculous and unfounded. All the thousands I see around me must simply be a dream. What a beautiful dream it is. katrina1 do whatever you want. I was simply trying to make you aware of what has been successful for me and it a recommended method (BTW this method originated from the Minnesota extension service I think, it's been too long since looking it up). Just google "planting trees in clay soils" to find similar instructions. It works, and is recommended, and that's all the evidence I need.

iliketoast: Be careful as you can overwater in soil, too. Overwatering in hydro only happens depending on the type of hydro system you have. Willard uses aeroponics so it would be dangerous for him to cut off the water supply, but if you use rockwool then too much watering can be bad. It all depends. But soil all depends too on the environment and the water retention rate of the soil. Whether soil or hydro, you should water and then wait until just until everything is nearly dried out about an inch down or so. That's what I've heard and have tried to practice so far and seems ok. Also it sounds like your experiment will be interesting to see, dirt vs. hydro. To make it a really level playing field, you should use the hydro nutrients on both the hydro and the soil plants. You should also make sure that you are starting with a soil mixture that is as deplete of nutrients as possible. In this way, you will be testing only the ability of soil to grow plants, and not the ability of different fertilizers. I would also PH adjust the water even for the soil plant so basically as much as possible is the same between hydro and dirt. The only big difference is you may or may not have the microbial action in the soil, and also consider the myriads of different soil types there are. Haha, gardening in Florida sand could arguably be hydroponics in some ways. Every soil is different so again it depends I guess. Hydro takes away those variables so that's nice. Also again your experiment will be worthwhile I'm sure but keep in mind the many many different types of dirt gardening and hydro gardening. There is in ground gardening, double digging gardening, lasagna gardening, wal-mart bag of potting soil gardening, raised beds... the list goes on. On the hydro side there is ebb/flow, aeroponics, drip, passive, deep water culture, fogoponics, etc.... I just want to lay a lot of variables out there to give an appreciation for what all could go wrong or unseen in my or anyone's adventures. But that's part of the lure of all this, is to discover and learn and have fun with it. Just be sure to post a detailed account of what you do so that we can critique it and tear it apart and figure out how to do it even better next time around :)

You've given this 12ft maple enought time to show itself; it's no longer a seedling in a 3" pot. It's time for some tough love, time for some intervention note: this process will initially make your tree look really hideous, but next year it will look great. I would - chop the 1/3 of the leader - trim back all the new growth to one segment (node) and remove dead branches. - if the upward pointing branches is movable wire it down to a desirable angle - if not movable chop back to the nearest segment (node) before it started growing upwards. When the sap starts emerges from it's winter hibernation, it will realize it has no where to go and just get fat and spread it's papery bark. Like blowing a latex glove. This might cause some sucker growth from it's normal two buds per node, so leave one or two and rub off the rest. regards, Cesar Ramos