Lawn & Garden

Providing homemade compost tea each week to boost plant performance and immune systems .

. This is an easy but essential task that often has us running out in a moment of clarity and saving a tray of teeny lavender plants before they fry in the midday sun .

Because March was both cold and dry , I ' ve had a devil of a time getting peas and fava beans to germinate , and the same can be said for lettuce , Swiss chard , mesclun and beets .

In a properly managed pile , moist , organic , nitrogen-rich materials such as food waste , green weeds , grass clippings and animal manure are alternated with dry , brown , carbon-rich materials such as straw , hay , and dried-up bean vines .

Do you eat dandelion greens ?

You think of spraying or trying to pull the entire tap root of the dandelion out ever so carefully .

Our abundant rains made removal with a small trowel easy , but digging individual specimens is no way to tackle a serious dandelion infestation .

And after all these years , you would think basil plants would have learned to branch out on their own .

All too soon , the spinach and lettuce will begin experiencing regular afternoon fainting spells .

Growing Spinach .

After all , what business is it of mine if your mother or wife is named after a flower , right ?

Flower gardens , shade gardens , container gardens and even water gardens will be considered , but they must be designed and tended by amateurs .

This fervor to accomplish a complete garden in one season can lead to a common garden mistake , planting shrubs and flowers too close together in the ground .

Carolyn Hax The Navigator : Fee-happy airlines raise the bar again .

Providing homemade compost tea each week to boost plant performance and immune systems .

But no one is going to start a tomato from seed if there 's no chance of getting a tomato before the plant is killed by frost .

Two rows of corn will take up precious garden space for three months .

Pull the plants before the seed ripens , put down crab grass preventer ( corn gluten is an organic treatment ) and plan to renovate your lawn in September .

Learn about what 's good and what 's not , and whether you should supplement with grit , oyster shell , or cracked corn .

Furniture : Abbott Place dresser ( $ 1,498 ) and bench ( $ 498 ) in Warm Cherry , from www .

One of the last students to speak , as we finished up the homemade blueberry muffins they had brought , looked a little bit different from the rest , although he led in the condemnation of such factory farm practices as overcrowding poultry barns and feeding corn instead of grass to cattle .

This tree does so well in warm climates that it can be invasive .

You think of spraying or trying to pull the entire tap root of the dandelion out ever so carefully .

Weed Identification .

When it comes to weed control there are many different ways to go about dealing with the problem .

As Anne notes in her article on weeding strategies , " Weed control is not only a matter of pulling , but also of strategy .

The differences within the genus Phlox are also noteworthy , although not quite as spectacular.... The foliage of creeping phlox and garden phlox are so dissimilar to each other that one would be hard-pressed to identify them as related species in the absence of their blooms .

My idea of the perfect outdoor party is dining with good friends at a candlelit table under a twinkling , bug-free sky as the grill sizzles .