Easy to answer, not so easy to accomplish. ORGANIC MATERIAL (OM). Mulch all your leaves into your grass. Topdress your lawn with compost. Make your own compost. Recylcle all your paper, kitchen scraps, Old k-mart stock certificates. Use organic fertilizers. Feed your soil microbes. Condition your lawn for summer's drought. Stop (or at least minimize )using chemicals on your lawn. Since you are re-seeding every year, use top quality elite cultivars of seed. With a good organic rich soil, you will not have to dethatch, aerate or re-seed a quality KBG lawn EVER. A good soil retains water thus reducing the need for irrigation. Check out the organic lawn forum and the soil and compost forum. If you can change your mindset, you can have a beautiful lawn by September and next spring will blow you away. Good luck with your lawn, Razzy from Nebraska.

Looking good! I finally had the time to figure out the photo uploading here. Here's our first cereus bloom of the year - I slept in a little, so it's on the verge of closing, but it's still one of my favorite things about Tucson summers! Here's our lantana, cape honeysuckle, bouganvilla and texas ranger. All but the ranger was frozen to the ground and cut back to the base in March. So great to see them back! Hopefully the grass will look much better (or like grass) by July! Not terribly impressive yet, but these next shots are all newly planted from late March, when we installed drip and many plants I'd been dreaming about for years! Butterfly mist - first blooms Pink rain lily - first bloom ever! Mexican bird of Paradise and Red Bird of Paradise were volunteers prior to our planting, but now they are on drip and much happier. Here's the Mexican Bird of Paradise with tecoma stans gold star, orange jubilee, mexican petunia and a few others in the background. Here's another night blooming cactus - Also the first of the season. I forget the name of the cactus! Notice the family of doves who have taken over the old cactus wren's nest. This is the third family this year! I think the babies just hatched within the last couple of days. Okay, two more! I've wanted to post pictures for a few months now so I hope you don't mind me posting a ton this time:) Newly planted fig tree - Planted it on Mother's Day to celebrate my first year as a mom. This last one is another dream finally realized - well, the start of it at least! Our Father's Day weekend project was building a garden bed. We'll finally have some veggies growing this fall! Thanks:) By the way, love the plumeria. I had one on my balcony in my apartment a few years back. I might have to look into planting one here in my yard!

planted my last load of neem seeds, and a few are showing radicals :) so with any luck i'm sorted. (germ notes..) i received them from india last autumn.. some germed then but didn't survive the winter. had slow germs and issues with fungus gnats in early spring. 24 hour soak, husked them.. i like to germinate in a tupperware with a 1/2" of perlite on the bottom and a 1/4" of water, occasionally dropping some h2o2 if there's a fungus outbreak. they go in soil when they've got a nice radical.

It is a small area. I have an area like that by the driveway and because you will shovel snow and salt a lot of things will not survive. I would go with a small flowering bush, and my favorite Geranium like Rozanne as suggested. Maybe another early blooming geranium. Rozanne blooms for me from July until snow fall. The small bush could be one of the Knockout rose. If you like yellow there I have a yellow knockout rose "Sunny Knockout" It is fragrant and with the Rozanne you would have a yellow and blue garden. My Sunny knockout blooms from June until snow fall. It takes the snow and salt events with no problem. If you want more flowers throw some annual seeds in Spring and you can have loads of flowers all summer. Plant some Spring bulbs for early color and some Asiatic lilies and oriental lilies. Shopping list for you... Lowes has the Sunny knockout rose for 10.98. They have some Asiatic and Oriental bulbs now for 6.98 with bags of 6 bulbs per bag. I have not seen the Gerainums at the big box stores or my local nurseries. You might have to order those. I like Santa Rosa Gardens they always have coupon sales. I think they are offering 25% off now. If you start now you could have that area covered and pretty this summer.