I buy about 6 or 8 new pair of gloves every year. I might wear 3 different pair in a day, because they get wet with rain and dew, and I can't stand putting on a pair of wet gloves after having a break. With regular use, they only last about a year. I also buy mulch and aged manure by the pickup truck load. Last year was a record for me - probably about 10 pickups worth. (I lose track.) I mulch all season, whenever I can get around to it. There is always somewhere in the garden that needs mulching. I consider it the secret to my success, it feeds the soil and keeps the plants happy. I never buy topsoil. You can take any old crappy soil and if you generously apply aged manure it will improve any soil enough to keep plants healthy. Of course, you have to keep applying it every year though. And plants, of course, blow my budget every year on them . . .

I just bought my first Hoya Carnosa plant last week, which looks like 3 plants in this 6“ pot. The ends of 4 of the 6 stems were dried out or cut by the garden shop. To promote growth by crowding roots(?), can I separate them into smaller pots and put the smaller pots back into original 6” pot with potting mix around them? I live in a cooler, cloudy climate— currently 55-60 degrees high. Will they do okay in east-facing sunroom? Brand new to caring for plants— any advice appreciated!

Be very careful of Roundup around your lilies, even if they didn't get enough drift on the foliage to kill them, the Roundup can cause damage that will spoil their appeal. I think you're on the right track with your weeding, then follow it with mulch. There are all kinds of weed supressing mulches available, I choose to mulch with compost or composted steer manure to slowly feed and condition soil while covering weed seeds. You can also use a pre-emergent like Preen with the mulch if you wish to do that. The biggest step you can take in controlling weeds is never, ever let one go to seed. Eventually, if you stay on top the weeding and don't let any disperse seed back into your beds, you'll have the payoff of much less weeding in the future. If you haven't had time to weed, at least grab that flowering part and break it off...

You, too, and good luck with your project. I've certainly thought about soil testing, and have always been stymied by not knowing who could do it. And the answer is idiotically simple: go to our local nursery and ask. Instead I'd rather do it the hard way (and it is hard). I never claimed to be a smart gardener. About my soil amending and fertilizing practices: I was much influenced by a book, 'Teaming with Microbes', that was recommended to me by my horticulturalist sister. Basically it talked about the importance of establishing a thriving soil microlife that then nourishes the garden plants. The gardener establishes a virtuous (as opposed to vicious) cycle in which the microlife supplies nutrients to the plants, which grow, die, and the detritus of which feeds the soil microorganisms which recycle the nutrients. Getting the process started is the hard part, in land like ours which is poor in organic matter--hence all the holes and amending--but which, once the cycle gets going well, can pretty much be left to itself. We have so much land to turn into garden that the work is enormous. But I look out my living room window right now at the garden outside (it used to be the farm courtyard), and I think, this works. I don't fertilize my two-story tall 'Jaune Desprez', the substantial shrubs of pittosporum, sarcococca, myrtle, the hardy palms and Tea roses. The bed gets pruning clippings and plant debris, and everything grows fine. Of course we have our clay soil. But if you look at Florida, for example, much of it has very poor sandy soil. And yet jungles grow there. The nutrition isn't coming from the mineral-rich soil, and not from any added fertilizer. It's due to the recycling of nutrients.