Someone used this place as an auto salvage yard years ago and I found at least 50 old tires laying around. The rims I sold with other scrap metal. A few uses to recycle old tires: They can be used to stabilize an eroding slope by burying them step-fashion in the slope, with each layer alternating, stacked like bricks. You fill each layer as you build them up and they'll hold enough gravel and soil to grow ground cover and further stabilize the soil. They can be used to build more vertical retaining walls the same way, but should always be slightly tilted into the weight they're holding if they're not going to be stabilized with posts or concrete. I used them to stabilize deep river-gravel fill where I wanted to build a livestock shed on a gentle slope with the floor raised a foot above the surrounding soil at one end and over two feet on the other. They worked out great as a solid foundation filled with the gravel, and as a form to hold the concrete for the posts, but I pity the person who ever tries to remove that shed without heavy equipment. They're completely buried and not visible. There were plans in Mother Earth News years ago on how to build a house or shed out of them, but something resembling a cold frame, to take advantage of the thermal mass of the earth they can hold, is more practical. Old tires are the perfect thing to use as a pallet for storing big round bales of hay; it keeps them up off the ground so they don't rot on the bottom as much. Setting an old tire just under the front edge of a bale you're trying to get off a spike stops it from skidding. If you don't plan on using big bales, maybe someone in the area who does could use the tires. They can be used as stands for feed and water buckets, but I don't care to create hiding places for snakes or breeding places for mosquitos by leaving them around like that. They can also be used as weights to hold down the edges of hay covers or tarps. The phone poles make good gate posts or corner posts for fences. If they're in good shape and not rotted or riddled by insects, you might be able to sell them or use them yourself.

Good for you harmony--removing diseased roses. It's really way beyond time that those selling diseased/defective roses got in trouble for it. If they had long ago, perhaps we'd have very little RMV now in commerce. In California, and probably other states as well, it is quite likely illegal to be knowingly selling diseased roses. Why? Because California is a state with implied warranty of merchantability statutes on the books. Products are supposed to be reasonably fit/function as intended. Roses are assumed to be garden plants, to live and grow as expected. Diseased roses, certainly those with RMV, often do not--they aren't as vigorous, bloom less, and may even die, in ordinary garden conditions that sellers could expect buyers to have. Those sellers know, or should know, that their plants are diseased and thus defective. And they are not disclosing that information. Under the law they should be. Have you seen ads for products sold "as is"? Well that is the implied warranty of merchantabilty in effect, obligating the seller to disclose that a product has defects. In the rose world, growers/nurseries have long practiced selling defective products without warning the consumer of that fact. Few even mention RMV on their websites or catalogs. But it strains credulity to the limits that a larger number of them are unaware of the problem of RMV, and in their own roses too. They've made a conscious decision to stay silent. Some will object and say but the rose industry is in such bad shape, sellers can't afford to disclose RMV status. Well, they didn't do so even when times were booming for roses and the state of the industry doesn't exempt them under the law. Perhaps this non-disclosure contributed to the decline in rose sales as diseased roses are harder to grow, require more care, and thus are also more expensive to keep (alive) than would be expected. Tricking consumers repeatedly by the thousands over time likely didn't help the reputation of roses. Consumers may have just given up and decided roses were simply too hard to grow, when it was really *diseased roses* that were too hard to grow, but the poor consumer didn't know they'd been sold something that was unhealthy from the start. In addition, too many that knew better looked the other way for too long. And now growers/chains/nurseries feel entitled to sell their defective plants to unwitting consumers with absolutely no consequences. Some rose lovers like you harmony may be aware of RMV, but how many people have no idea of the existence of RMV nor what symptoms to look for? The shoddy business practices that allow companies to market unhealthy roses without warning the consumer needs to stop. At the very least harmony, you should get your money refunded for the RMV-infected plants. Melissa

ooh, I know what the lily pad plant is! It's a Ligularia! A very good hosta companion plant and depending on the variety are medium to large plants. All have really nice yellow flowers in the summer. Keep 'em mulched, tho, as they tend to be my first plant to wilt if things are drying out. For that reason, they really like hosta beds and can tolerate shade quite well.

I've been holding off on adding to this discussion and I'm still afraid I might be premature. The whole "boiling" the plants doesn't make a lot of sense to me. It seems like cutting off someone's head because they have a sore throat. Nematodes do harm the looks and the "catching" part is disturbing but for most of the year they are fine. I decided on trying the less extreme suggestion of using the soap and mouthwash. I think this was suggested by Donna? It was a few years ago anyway. I only had a hand full of plants with the nematodes so I picked the leaves off as they showed up and sprayed the plants with a pint sized spray bottle of the mixture. The next year I started earlier when the plants came up and tried to do it more often but I realized at the end of last year that I'd used only 2 to 3 of the small spray bottles over the summer to repeat treat the dozen or so plants that showed the nematodes. While none of them got worse and some slightly better, it dawned on me that this was likely not enough. This year I started out early in the spring, as soon as the eyes were up a few inches. I mixed the stuff in a 4 litter (half gallon?? I hate metric) plastic milk jug - 2 at a time. I DRENCHED the soil all around the emerging plants. I was good about doing the treatment every 2 or 3 weeks for quite a while. I think I did it at the beginning of July and should have done another treatment part way through the month but ran out of the soap. I got some soap the other day and treated them again yesterday. I've been checking daily for any sign of nematodes. What I found was nematodes on a wild Solomon's Seal that is showing right now. There is also evidence on a couple other hostas that I did not treat this year because I either forgot they had it or didn't notice it last year. I have an Albo Marg. directly below the infected Solomon's Seal. It is one I've treated and it is showing no signs so far. I doubt I even looked at the Solomon's Seal and realized that was probably where it came from originally since the Hosta had been in place for years. So far, and it is a bit early, none of last years infected plants are showing ANY signs. The fact that it is showing up in other, untreated plants makes me hope that I'm making progress. I had a hard time finding a picture of an infected plant from last year to see the date it was visible but the Grand Tiara definitely showed it on Aug 8. As of today the rest are all still clear. I guess I'll know in the next few weeks. Solomon's Seal he next two Albo Marg. are not the one I was talking about above. They are two different, untreated this year, plants.