Here's a neat little trick: Make a single plant hot box from CD cases

Hat tip: Make Magazine

We recently had someone totally clean up our yard. It was a birthday present from my mother, and it was a good one. Our yard was completely re-done after the city of Atlanta came through our property to replace a storm sewer. (Short version: Tragic loss of plant life, great reduction in flooding), but it had gradually went to pot as trees died due to root damage, weeds sprang up, and new plants went un-pruned due to our ignorance of when and how to care for them (thus spurring creation of this site).

So the landscaper pruned, weeded, loaded up a dumpster and left. One thing we did which I seriously debated was putting down weed barrier in some of the beds. My initial reaction was "that is so un-organic". I was won over though, for the following reasons:

• The weeds were absolutely taking over these beds
• Because some of our trees died, the shade-loving vinca we planted was not doing well at all
• The landscaper pointed out that using weed-barrier was probably better for the environment than using Round-up or napalm, which I was considering
• Weed barrier these days is water-permeable. We got brown and covered it will wood chips, you can't even see it.
• If it means one less task on an ongoing basis, then great.

So, it's been a few weeks and so far, so good. I'll give an update next summer.

In the past, I have let the vegetable garden go to weeds during the winter. The result is typically a big mess by spring time. So this year, I have put down a pretty thick layer of newspaper down and then put straw over top of that.

I have done rows for the cold-weather plants in the garden (the Sugar Snap Peas are doing well). It worked out very well as the newspaper is about two feet wide when spread out. It makes the rows very clear for my young garden helpers who often have trouble with straight lines. We then went back over and covered the newspaper with hay and now you can't see the newspaper.

By next spring, the newspaper should be mosly rotten and ready to be plowed under along with the hay. I'll let you know how it goes

I guess that there are worse gardeners than me. I don't kill plants, by any means. And I have been pretty good at growing vegetables. Where we have been lacking is really in the rest of the yard. The grass does moderately ok but certainly could do better. The real problem has been plants that we don't know how to manage. Our foster eye holley is a big mess because it was never pruned. My lavender is leggier than Uma Thurman - and that isn't good on an herb

This site was really my wife's idea. She wanted a site that would tell her exactly what to do in the yard/garden exactly when she was supposed to do it and only for our plants. This site is essentially that. The only thing that is missing is the plant information! I've started adding plants and I don't intend to stop, but the best source of information is and has always been other gardeners. So, while it is great (IMHO) to be able to have a place to store all the plant-related tasks you can google up, I hope that other, better gardeners will chime in as well!

Enjoy!