I believe that problems with Triazide reported by some members here may be related to the shelf life of the product. I had purchased some early last season and it was completely ineffective when applied this spring at the appropriate strength to a beetle infestation on some plants. Had to use something else from my commercial supply. It had worked fine last year, but there is no freshness code on the containers so it may have been in storage for a long period before its sale. I mention this because the permethrin label mentioned restricts its use after petal fall on apples, legally requiring that you use a different product for the most important sprays for this species. I do not understand this restriction because the same label allows the spray of peaches up until 7 days before harvest. I'm wondering if it isn't related to its harmful affect on beneficial insects, but this is a problem with all pyrethroids.

It's hard to say because there are various attacks people make against CAFO's (confined animal feeding operations). Additionally large livestock operations are regulated mostly by the states, therefore there is some variability b/t regulations. When I was farming, I was very familiar w/ the regulations of AR & MO, which were rigorous. But even then livestock operations came under attack from people w/ an agenda. Since there were no regulations regarding air quality (people didn't want livestock farms close to their house) and no animal rights regulations, the point of their attack frequently was ground water contamination, since that was their only avenue. In those cases I found it hard to swallow that farms like mine were responsible for polluting ground water when we applied less N/acre than row crop farmers. The P that was applied was taken up by the row crops when they were harvested. In the states I'm familiar with, no permits for livestock operations allow discharge of effluent into streams or rivers. I'll also add our lagoon never ran over. This is very different from city sewage. I have a relative that worked at the main sewage "treatment" plant for Kansas City & Blue Springs (I've toured the plant). They have a discharge permit that allows them to discharge effluent back into the MO river. Someone may respond, "But it's treated." Their treatment essentially consists of allowing the solids to settle in a huge tank and sprinkling the remaining effluent over rocks to get the BOD rate up, then discharging it back into the river. However, during really heavy rains, the plant couldn't handle all the sewage (due to the old practice of hooking up storm drains to sewer systems) so the plant would turn "raw" sewage into the river because they couldn't handle the volume. Despite this, in all the attacks against CAFO's contaminating the water supply I never heard sewage from cities mentioned. In my opinion, it was easier on the conscience to blame agriculture than the flushing of millions of toilets.

Hi Steffie! Your experience with bermuda grass reminds me why I HATE bermuda grass. :) My brother put down black plastic (plain old black plastic like trash bags are made of, not the fabric mulch type) on a newly tilled flower bed and planted perennials right through it. When he removed that plastic FIVE YEARS LATER, there were still those long bermuda runners everywhere. I never try to make a new lasagna bed without removing the sod first, having learned the hard way. I found it interesting that your grandmother raised her crops in stages. I do the same thing, and have never met anyone here who does it in the precise, regimented way that I do. I'll use tomatoes as an example since they are the crop I grow the most of. I start my earliest seedlings, about 70% of my main season tomato crop, on Super Bowl weekend. Then, six weeks later I start the other 30%. I plant out in cycles, beginning in mid to late March most years, and get the late ones from the second planting into the ground by late April. Then, in mid to late-May I start seeds for fall tomatoes, or take and root cuttings in mid-June. I get the fall tomatoes in the ground in late June to early July. In late August I start seeds for a few winter tomatoes in containers, generally small-sized ones like Window Box Roma, Red Robin, Yellow Canary, etc. These tomatoes in pots can go into the garage or house during cold spells and extend the fresh tomato season quite a bit. I do similar succession plantings of most veggies, including beans (every three weeks), corn (every 5 weeks), melons (generally an early planting in mid-April and a late planting in late May), summer and winter squash, peppers, okra and black-eyed peas. I do the same thing with flowers. Take sunflowers. I plant different ones for each season. So, my spring sunflowers which will begin blooming in May most years, are some of the ones lightest in color like Italian White and Moonshadow and any of the ones with the lemon-yellow petals. The summer-blooming ones, which usually begin blooming in July, are the really golden-colored ones, of which there are many varieties. The late-summer to fall blooming ones are those in tawny fall-type colors like Autumn Beauty, Earthwalker, and any of the red-flowered ones like Chianti or Prado Red. So, I always have flats of replacement plants started and it is easy to put them in the ground and plug them into holes in my garden at any time. It can get rather complicated to keep track of what needs to go where and at what time, but by staggering plantings, I have found I can have a wonderful garden each and every week of the summer. Right now, I am starting flower seeds in small paper cups. These plants will go into the ground in mid-May. The first week in May, I start flower seeds that will go into the ground in June for blooms beginning in July. And so it goes, on and on and on. With all the stages of planting, I always have something new coming along and that pleases me. Dawn

Jeff: I didn't mean to criticize you for deleting the post, I meant to complain about how the Houz version of the site is different from the old Garden Web. In answer to your question about what happens next, it takes about 6-8 weeks from the time a flower forms until it becomes a ripe fruit under ideal garden conditions. It's not unusual for the first flowers that form to fall off without forming fruits. Early girls can ripen a little sooner than beefsteak type tomatoes. Also, I would encourage you to stop worrying about a few bugs. Ants and grasshoppers won't hurt your plants, but too much hot sauce or dish liquid might hurt them. As someone said earlier, you're more likely to have problems with diseases than insects, and home made insecticides can make your plants more likely to get diseases by damaging the leaves.