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I'm surprised y'all are describing it as hard to find -- I even see it at our Walmarts sometimes. Probably it's a regional thing? Yes, it's not reliably very perennial but self-seeds well if it likes the soil and there isn't too much mulch. There are also white and light-pink cultivars --...

I have what was my great-grandmother's old wooden cabbage slicer (she would have used it for sauerkraut; I use it for coleslaw :P). It's vastly faster and neater than using a knife. (Also it is cool to be using a tool that's a hundred years old). However you could easily lose the end of a finger...

I know there have been a coupla threads on this site where people were asking for more information on these, and at least at the time and from what I remember, some of us had planted them but few if any had actually EATEN any yet. So I am posting this as an update sort of thing. I planted two...

If they are dark purple flowers it can likely take full sun as long as you give it sufficient water and it isn't too hot i.e. not right against the hot front of a building. BUT it will do a lot better if you put a large rock, or big paver with mulch on top, over its roots (on the S or S+W...

If you're pretty confident about the acidity of the salsa, personally I'd just eat the jars now or real soonish and call it good :P For jars you're not going to get eaten before you start to feel worried about eating them, or if the acidity may be a bit on-the-fence, either reprocess...

You know what, between the fact that that really IS a nice looking specimen and the fact that if someone asks about it you can honestly say "the landscaper says it will grow 10' tall", I bet you will be fine :) I think this is just a semantics problem? It seems as if you are perhaps using...

My lawn doesn't brown off all that much in drought, compared to most other peoples' around here -- because it has a very large component of birdsfoot trefoil, bugle, dandelion, wild lettuce, hawkweed, etc that stay green MUCH better than grass does ;) Pat

Again, there are no naturally tree form lilacs except S. reticulata which is white-flowered and smells funny. I've never seen topgrafted "normal" lilacs, I'm not sure they exist. And if you want a single-trunked tree you need topgrafted. (It is *possible* to prune up a lilac into a single trunk...

This is a tough time of year for planting trees. You will have to keep an eagle eye on their watering needs, right through til they drop their leaves in the fall. Best thing when planting into heavy clay is to break the clay up so their roots can easily penetrate it. Rough up the sides of the...

Hokey doke -- from what you say, it sounds like it'd be worth the disturbance to the tomato roots to go prospecting for small potatoes. Will do! Thanks! :) Pat

This is only my second year of growing potatoes so I am still on the steep learning curve. Apparently I missed a few small fingerling potatoes last fall. They did not sprout until after I'd planted tomatoes in that space. Being congenitally incapable of killing a perfectly good plant unless it...

Also not many mosquitos. Also no mud!! Also if you have leaky gutters on your house, lack of rain lets you fall into a blissful state of forgetfulness and not-worrying-about-it. :P We're not near as dry as you are but last night had the first half-inch of rain we've gotten for probably...

It is hard to be 100% certain without seeing one of the leaves flat-on to see the exact shape, but I am pretty sure that is one of the littleleaf lilac tribe. (It is for *sure* a lilac). Also it is pretty common to see things like that, with a littleleaf lilac grafted onto another Syringa...

Well, all bugs (hemipterans) have a proboscis... the issue with coreids vs assassin bugs (reduviids) is what SHAPE and SIZE the proboscis is. That is definitely a coreid of some sort. Assassin bug proboscises (is that the correct plural?) are several times larger and thicker and curved rather...

Ah. Well, how tragic it would be if the plant fell victim to a cutworm with jaws the size of loppers that happened to reach under the fence ;) Pat

Steve, before you go wasting Roundup on burdock, remember that it is biennial. Once it flowers reasonably-successfully it is dead done gone over and out. So it is easier to wait til the burrs are just starting to form but not yet falling off the plant or dangerously velcro-ey, and then remove...

At least in North America, the only wild TRUE rhubarb you're going to find is just feral escapees of cultivated rhubarb, or descendants thereof. It may potentially have higher concentrations of oxalic acid than cultivated strains, so you may want to treat it a little cautiously (taste before...

There is a so called chinese lilac, I believe it is S. reticulata, that is pretty much a legitimate tree... it flowers later than normal lilacs and has white (never any other color) flowers that smell, um, very un-lilac-y... to me they smell *nasty*. Otherwise, there is no lilac "tree" as...

Yup, IME the yellow ones usually have poorer production. (It's nice to see them being called wax beans. Up here -- I don't know whether it is just the Toronto area or all of Canada -- people seem to have no idea what you mean when you say wax beans. They call them "yellow beans". <shrug>) Good...

It is almost certainly in the family Coreidae, which includes both squash bugs (harmful) *and* a buncha assorted other leaf-footed bugs (harmless). It is narrower-bodied than what I'm used to calling a squash bug, but I have no idea, there may be other kinds that feed on squashes too, so I'm...