Hi Bart: Thank you for asking for simple terms, then I don't have to spend hours pulling up U. of. Extension research. If your soil sticks to your shoes, then it's clay and high in salt. Magnesium is what makes clay sticky, thus no need to add Epsom salt (magnesium sulfate). Clay soil is fertile and high in salt, no need for chemical fertilizer. What clay soil needs is buffering agent, or organic matter to neutralize the soil pH, and create space between the tight particles. Clay soil can be acidic like my last house, or alkaline like my present house. Organic matter like leaves buffer extremes in pH. Peatmoss, pH 4, glues up with clay because it's a fine particle. I get better result with large chunk organic matter, leaves (acidic at first, but buffers later), pine park (pH 4.5, acidifies longer, since it decomposes very slow). Sandy soil, and loose/loamy soil benefit from manures and chemical fertilizer... salt is not a problem since it can be leached out when the soil is loose with good drainage. I already tested muriate of potash (potassium chloride) ... My husband bought that by mistake instead of sulfate of potash. 3 roses haven't recuperate from the salt-damage and wilting, despite tons of watering. I will never use that stuff, except to de-ice in zone 5a winter. I put that muriate of potash on the new bed of tomatoes ... blossom end rots, had to throw 3/4 tomatoes away. High potassium drives down calcium, resulting in black-fungal on the bottom half of the tomatoes. I prefer unsulfured, blackstrap molasses as soluble fertilizer for clay soil, since it's cheap & low-salt, with NPK 3-1-5, 20% potassium, 17% calcium, 20% iron, and trace elements. That's better than cocoa mulch with NPK 3-1-4, and way-better than horse manure/bedding at NPK 0.7 / 0.3 / 0.6. Bart, your green manures and alfalfa hay are great for clay. Here's an excerpt from the link below "At the end of that first growing season we moved some roots of mint into the bed with the roses. The thinking there was that mint brings a substantial amount of minerals and other nutrients from the sub soil to the top soil because of the it’s deep roots. During the year as the mint grew to around a foot tall we’d cut it back and mulch around the roses with the cut mint. We’re still doing that now, so the roses get fed and we’ve got lots of mint for tea. The routine now is that during the year when the roses are in flower they’re constantly mulched and fed with cut mint, in the winter they’re pruned hard back and mulched with layers of hay." *** From Straw: I think it's clever to use plants like mint to fertilize roses, plus to keep deer away. Nutritional analysis of mint: 9% vitamin A, 2% vitamin C, 2% calcium, 7% iron, and 6% manganese ... the last 2 are much needed in alkaline soil to fix chlorosis. The picture of Summer Samba rose I posted in the other thread with very dark green leaves ... that has tons of clover growing in the pot. Roots of plants secret acid, so the soil where there was decomposed grass, tested less alkaline in red-cabbage juice. The soil with nothing growing on it, is rock-hard and very alkaline. Thank you, Bart, for that great idea about clover, I'm going to order clover seeds, they make a nice carpet around roses. Below is another shot of Summer Samba, bought from RU end of June, you can see the clover growing inside the pot, which I foolishly killed most of them: Here is a link that might be useful: Growing roses without manure This post was edited by Strawberryhill on Mon, Aug 12, 13 at 18:05

hee-hee, and Boxofrox, you should see the firing of rockets between HP-PC users and Mac-Apple users! hahaha! Another pretty hilarious topic! But speaking of landscaped gardens, I always argue with the rose organics people that it is your landscaped gardens which hold the ideal because you have beautiful varieties of plants which bring eco-balance and protection for the roses and supports wildlife like the birds. Whenever a garden only consists of roses, disease attacks uniformity. Again, your point that so many opinions to field, even color, LOL! Just as you say the lavenders to make our faces turn purple, hee-hee! or blackspot confusion to make us slip! Man, all those debates about blackspot that exist, heh-heh! Harold, bless! LOL! so funny! and bless every one of you! Boxofrox, Jim, Harold! Today I think I better stay with subjects like Adele's delicious Lemon pie and your Basil Pesto, Boxofrox's lovely Lyda-honey and bee-loved Sedum, and both Jim and I have chocolate stories of naughty dogs. Boxofrox, I bet your Fluffy Pom-poms are quite the angels and not the naughty Border Collie pup-type when growing up. Last night I wrote Jim this. We were actually originally talking about coconut husks and cocoa shells which are used as potting soil substitutes and the conversation gravitated to the dangers of chocolate/cocoa. Here is what I wrote: "(Eluane) was only 7-1/2 weeks old and at the carport at my apartment (when I used to live in apartments). Suddenly she ran a few yards away from me! I chased after her (amazing how fast a little puppy can run) and saw her mash her entire little face into this giant chocolate cupcake that was even bigger than the biggest Hostess Ho-Ho! I yelled in panic to James to grab her. But as soon as he let go of her to put into my car, that little puppy ran straight back to the giant chocolate cupcake and screeched with puppy frustration and anger when James chased after her and grabbed her before she could get to the cupcake. She was one mad puppy, wriggling and screeching away; she really wanted to eat that chocolate cupcake! ItÂs strange that dogs just instinctually know that chocolate is a very tasty treat. They can smell its yummy chocolate smell a few yards away even though theyÂve never tasted it. They just know that it is something that tastes good." To which Jim replied, "Candy ate over half of a chocolate cake with chocolate icing. it was on the table cooling and she climbed on to a chair and helped herself." All we have to do is throw in a few lemons and pesto noodles into our thread, LOL! Yum,yum, yum! Harold, I truly believe Candy would have helped herself to Adele's delicious Lemon pie too had she the chance. Instead of Chocolate Candy she would have been the ultimate Lemon "Candy". LOL! LOL! oooo, a Photobucket Pie, how about it? LOL!

I have no experience with Mr. Handyman, but have used Handyman Connection (also a franchise) as well as two local contractor services. I consider them a great boon to couples like my husband and I, who both work and are not terribly handy. They all charge at least $75/hr, which is quite a bit less than our auto mechanics charge. We have had work done by several different contractors, and like most customers, have our "favorites" that we ask for as our first preference. The only disappointment we have had was a plumbing connection that has (still has, in fact) a slow leak that I need to have redone. The contractor tried his best, came back twice afterwards. Then tragically he was in a horrendous auto crash and is now permanently disabled. But his other work was fine; we were, and are, quite happy with it. I'd already realized we need to find a "real" plumber to deal with this issue anyway, there is some other evidence that we may need that specialised skill set. We've been fortunate that we have had no bad experiences, although there is one contractor that we prefer not to use -- his skills are fine, we just don't get a solid feeling about his ethics. Nothing truly bad, but I wouldn't be surprised if he pads his time a bit here and there, and we did not like at all how he treats his helpers. One of those "nice upstream, bad downstream" types, and that doesn't fly well with us. I frankly don't think workmen were any better "in the old days" then they are now. However, there are a lot FEWER people in blue-collar work now, then before. The majority of us work in white-collar jobs, and there's still just as many mistakes being made now as before, it's just that these days they're on paper, not carved into wood or stone. We live in a house built in 1940 and it was shoddy to begin with. It has nothing to do with quality of workmanship; the developer who built this house was famous for slipshod, cheap work. My sister-in-law now lives in the developer's house about two miles away from ours, and it's amazing they haven't had some sort of catastrophic accident in the last 10 yrs, that place is built so poorly. The old guy didn't care, he died rich and that's ALL he cared about.

Fish sticks. The 'hot dog' from the sea. What's in those things anyway? Fish heads and fins - all held together with salt and grease as glue. Oh how I remember having to force those things down every Friday when I was a kid. I could never understand the rule having to be punished by eating fish sticks on Fridays. Then when I was older I learned that the rule was to eat fish on Friday not fish sticks. My mother thought fish was too expensive to serve. I think fish sticks were a dollar for ten pounds back then. They stunk like fish but tasted like putting a penney in your mouth. They always had freezer burn. My mother only ever bought canned veggies so the fish sticks really brought out the metallic taste of the canned stuff served with them too, so the whole meal was ruined.