The success I saw with trap crops for FB was in a commercial broccoli field of about 45 acres, the grower had a problem with the transplants getting badly infested with the little buggers soon after planting. It wasn't that the grower couldn't control them with insecticides, he was simply looking for a more economical way to do it. as a crop consultant I suggested he try a field with a border strip of radishes that he could easily spray with the pesticide he chose that he knew would work to kill the FBs. Just outside the field was cover for the FBs to overwinter in and as expected, they first emerge on the south face of the north end of the field. He sprayed the radishes, which were up before the broccoli was planted at very little cost to him, and had very little FB pressure on the transplants for about 6 weeks. Ordinarily, those 6 weeks would have absolutely required spraying in his way of dealing with the situation to keep the FBs from seriously damaging the crop. A partial success in that the project kept him from doing 2 sprays over the entire field and pointed him into a different way of looking at pest control which he was willing to do.

Yes, I do find spot composing can sort of help one plant at a time. You want the soil to have water go right in it. Even if you only dig down a five inches and put compost there, it helps because otherwise the water could just sits or worse yet runs off before it reaches the roots. The compost acts like a big sponge and sucks up all the water and makes the water stay right where it should be which is near the plant roots. If it seems too much work, just go it in one small area and you will like the result I hope enough to continue one small area at a time. Like maybe do one small part per month and with in a few years it will all be done, but of then you have keep topping off the compost, but the first time is the hardest. The ground is the hardest to dig in the beginning and it needs the most compost the first time. If the ground is very hard, apply the compost and water then wait a day and then it will be easier to dig. Also its best to make your own compost in bin but you can also buy compost. Peat is not that great, it helps a bit, someone was mentioning peat. It would be great if you could find some company to bring you a truck load of organic compost with no sand, silt, clay, since you got a lot of that already. I found a company that called it vegetable growing mix. Peat is too expensive anyway, when you need a lot, I like bagged wood, mixed with free starbucks coffee grounds which you can get for free. That mixture can be used as a matrix to add your own kitchen scraps or you can dig it right in now. The coffee has lots of nitrogen so there is no problem with the wood causing nitrogen tie up. If you want to do some moderate feeding, I say good ahead. I use less then they say to use, because less is more and they want to use a lot and buy more from them. I use maybe half of what they say in feeding.

I found some pictures of the yard when I first moved in, and had to elaborate on my previous post. The yard was insanely overgrown with wild trees. Maybe fine for a new woodlot, but not okay for a safe stable place to live. I knew there would be a lot of landscaping work to do, but I had to get the tree situation taken care of first. After that I didnt really have a plan or any knowledge of plants or landscaping. I thought about consulting a landscape designer the first spring but really had no budget for it and thought I could do it on my own. A lot of the work I did the first spring (2016) involved removing undesirable vegetation and trying to plant some structural plants. 8 trees came down, 4 large, 4 small, all either extensively rotted or within unsafe proximity to the house. A huge garlic mustard invasion was identified and attacked in the back. I learned a little about plants, then I planted 12 tiny shrubs to hopefully, eventually form the basis of a privacy screen along the road. 3 of the shrubs ended up being a water hungry species that need to be moved to a wetter area and replaced with something that can handle dry summer soil. 3 of the other shrubs are a summer deer forage species and need to be replaced or fenced. I planted a ton of creeping phlox in the front bed which still survives, and some foxglove, delphinium, and lupines which mostly didnt survive. Last year (2017) 2 trees fell and I had 3 ugly, weedy, improperly pruned white mulberry trees growing around my powerlines that I had cut down to the stump in late autumn. I am going to allow those 3 to resprout and prune them to a manageable multistem shape as screening until my other privacy screen plantings mature and evolve. I used the woodchips from the mulberries to mulch over and smother the entire area of turf around the privacy shrub planting instead of just a small mulch ring around each plant. I learned more about plants and in my front bed I planted 16 long-lived structural plants- baptisia australis, amorpha canescens, ilex glabra "densa compacta", and rhododendron roseum elegans. The roseum elegans and leadplant look really sad (plants in the wrong place, sun exposure and soil texture respectively). Ill be watching to see if they need to be replaced or moved. This year Ive learned more about design and putting all the plants together. Its going to be all about filling in the front bed and establishing the planting, fixing mistakes, and starting desireable plant colonies in the backyard. So far Ive seeded 500 deep plugs in a DIY cold frame to provide myself with cheap plant material. I have even more to seed out when it warms up a little and I have identified plants that I would be better off buying. I could have saved a lot of time and effort by consulting a designer or landscape architect, have them clear out areas, and order and install the plants, but I do not want anything cookie cutter, I didnt want to have them make decisions for me as an uninformed party, and I dont have any kind of budget for a big project like that. The research Ive done and experience Ive gained so far has sharpened my vision to something I can now see clearly in my mind. I wont lie, some of the stuff I did is ugly, but I think long term when it matures it will be beautiful. I believe educating myself will help me manage the property in the future and provide personal satisfaction in a way paying to get it all done at once would not. Each year I move on to a new set of goals, take on unexpected challenges, and move onto the next phase of the landscape. There is no rush for me and it is fun to see the way it all unfolds.

With only a few exceptions, the tap root of any tree that might produce them tend to disappear with age. It is the lateral roots that really anchor the tree to the ground. As long as the trees were harvested B&B at a relatively young age, severing or removal of the tap root is NBD. And same with containers........I'd be more concerned about any circling or contorted lateral roots on a containerized tree.