Soil

Inside Westminster Abbey, eight 20-foot-tall live trees lined the center aisle during the wedding of Kate Middleton and Prince William. The trees transformed the space, doing what even the most elaborate floral arrangement could not — providing a natural, living sense of permanence and an air of drama. The move was unexpected, unpretentious and bold. A potted tree on your patio or deck can have the same effect. While not every tree is well-suited for a container, there are a surprising number of options, ranging from crape myrtles to hollies.

The Maryland State Soil Conservation Committee is accepting nominations for appointment to the Harford Soil Conservation District Board of Supervisors. The appointment will be to fill the unexpired term of Michael S. Birch on Oct. 17, 2016. Nominations should be sent to: State Soil Conservation Committee, Department of Agriculture, 50 Harry S. Truman Parkway, Room 306, Annapolis, MD 21401. Any interested individual or organization may submit a recommendation. Nomination forms are available at the Harford County Extension Office, P.O. Box 663, 2335 Rock Spring Road, Forest Hill, MD 21050.

For many folks headed to Preakness, the focus of the afternoon isn't the race. It's the fashion — and we don't just mean hats. If you're in the grandstands, the Jockey Club area or Corporate Village, you'll want to dress the part. Betsy Dugan, owner of Bettina Collections in Cross Keys and former co-owner of Octavia in Pikesville, has been dressing women for Preakness for years. "This is the time ... to dress up," she said. If there's one rule of thumb, it's that ladies and gentlemen at Preakness should look like ...well, ladies and gentlemen.

Stiltgrass has taken over a 20-by-10-foot area of my woods and now it's getting into my lawn. I will use crabgrass pre-emergent for it on the lawn, but should I rake away the leaves and apply it in the woods? Invasive stiltgrass spreads like lightning by tiny seeds. The seeds stay alive in soil for many years able to germinate. Kill it before it makes seeds, which it does in August. In spring and summer, it is easy to pull stiltgrass - it has very little root. (Once it has formed seeds, pulled stiltgrass must be sealed in a plastic bag.)

I'd like to grow carrots, but I hear it's tricky. Any tips? Because carrots are roots that need to push through soil, having light loose soil is a big determiner of success. For carrots, a depth of 12 inches is ideal. Add compost to your soil structure. It is the Year of the Root Crop on Grow It Eat It, our all-vegetables. all-the-time site. Find us at our new url: extension.umd.edu/hgic. Our online newsletter starts off the year with a great article providing many tips for growing root crops in Maryland.

The problem: Soil has been eroding from an abandoned construction site in Cherry Hill for years. The backstory: Gary Peters loves fishing in the Middle Branch. He's been fishing for 50 years all over North America, but his best trips have been on the Middle Branch, he said, catching rockfish and striped bass and releasing them back into the water. The Catonsville resident worries, however, that soil washing down a hill off an abandoned construction site on Waterview Avenue will harm the ecosystem.

Question: Please send me a soil test kit. I want to test my vegetable garden and lawn. Do I need two kits? Are they complicated? I want to get this done right away, but I've never done it before. Answer: The soil test "kit" we offer consists of instructions on how to choose a soil test laboratory, a chart of labs in our region, and a sturdy bag to mail your soil sample to the lab. The information is all on our Web site, and you do not need a special bag to mail a soil sample - a sandwich baggie works just fine.

One lane of I-83 southbound was closed Tuesday afternoon when a tractor trailer lost some of its 78,000 pounds of potting soil, according to officials. A state police spokesman said the right shoulder and right lane on I-83 south, near Mt.Carmel Road is expected to reopen by about 7 p.m. The spokesman said no one was injured. He could not say how much soil was deposited on the road, but by 6:30 p.m., the truck had been righted.

Creating a new garden requires careful planning. For instance, it helps to have the right supplies. Here is my checklist:(1) Seeds.(2) Spade.(3) Sun.That's all I need to start a garden. The soil, I take for granted. Who doesn't?Soil adds stability to a gardener's life. Think about it. You may lose those flower seeds and that favorite shovel, but not the soil. Never the soil. How can you misplace something that is always underfoot?Soil is one thing gardeners can count on. The sun may disappear for days, but not the soil.

I want to improve my vegetable garden soil this fall. A co-worker has offered me some horse manure. Is this going to be safe for my garden? I'm a little worried about E. coli and other diseases.Horse manure and other farmyard manures are excellent for supplying nutrients to soil and improving soil structure. Yes, there are risks, but they can be minimized. First, select manure that has been composted and aged for three to four months (harmful microbes are killed by the composting process)

I'd like to grow carrots, but I hear it's tricky. Any tips? Because carrots are roots that need to push through soil, having light loose soil is a big determiner of success. For carrots, a depth of 12 inches is ideal. Add compost to your soil structure. It is the Year of the Root Crop on Grow It Eat It, our all-vegetables. all-the-time site. Find us at our new url: extension.umd.edu/hgic. Our online newsletter starts off the year with a great article providing many tips for growing root crops in Maryland.

The soil test on my garden says the pH is 6.7. I need to find out what plants grow in that pH. Congratulations. Your soil pH is in the ideal range that most plants like — slightly acid. The pH scale ranges from 0 to 14, with 7 as neutral. Numbers above 7 are alkaline, and numbers below 7 are acid. Each number increases exponentially to the 10th power. Thus, a 6 pH is 10 times more acidic than 7 pH; and 5 pH is 100 times more acidic than 7 pH. Soil pH determines the availability of nutrients to plant roots.

In wine, there is always a story. It's a product of the earth and therefore subject to both the vagaries of Mother Nature and the winds of fate. In many instances, the grapevine thrives on barren soil in combat conditions. Yet somehow, it manages to distill a magical elixir out of pure rock and stone. And in that struggle, it crafts a liquid that possesses both heart and soul. Many years ago, when I worked in the wine wholesale industry, I had the privilege of selling both the Banfi portfolio, and the Seagram Chateau and Estates portfolio.

As more people occupy the same amount of land, things change. A generation or two ago, it was perfectly OK in Harford County to burn garbage and maintain a residential dumping pit on a rural property. It isn't all that long ago that the sewage system and stormwater system in Havre de Grace were one in the same, both emptying into the Susquehanna River largely untreated. Indeed, the city continues to deal with issues of separating the storm drains from sewerage lines under the roadways.

Mums are bee and butterfly magnets Just when I thought the bees and butterflies had disappeared from our garden until spring, I found more visiting our "chrysanthemums" (mums) than I could count. And, during one Indian-summer afternoon, I saw more bees and butterflies on our mums than I'd seen in our garden all summer. Guaranteed to enliven a fall landscape, mums are as popular with people as they are with bees and butterflies. Yet mums were popular with people more than 3,000 years ago, too, when they were first cultivated by the ancient Chinese.

Decades after first discovering the problem, state officials have settled on a $27 million plan to keep a cancer-causing chemical in the ground at the Dundalk Marine Terminal from seeping into the Patapsco River and blowing into nearby residential areas. Under the plan, Honeywell International Inc. and the Maryland Port Administration jointly pledged to re-line leaky storm drains beneath the state-owned shipping facility, which have run yellow at times with chromium-tainted water. They also vowed to see that pavement covering the contaminated soil remains intact so it can't become airborne.

Question: : My irises haven't bloomed for three years. Leaves come up, but no flowers. Answer: : Your irises may be planted too deeply. This is a classic reason why they fail to bloom, even when foliage is present. The top of the rhizome should be showing at the soil's surface. Irises also require at least six hours of sun a day to bloom, and cannot be allowed to dry out, especially in the critical spring months when buds are set. At the same time, if they are over-watered then you may get some rot, so watering should be done carefully.

I am preparing soil to plant a perennial border and would like to till in some composted leaves. How much should I add, and do I need to add anything else? Most local soils are poorly balanced. They have very high clay content, but are short on organic matter. Adding composted leaves to your bed is a very easy and practical way to correct this imbalance. If that were the case, I would till a 2- to 3-inch layer of composted leaves into the bed. The leaves will improve your soil structure and soil drainage.

Under some of my cabbage and broccoli plants there are ant hills. The stems look weak on those plants compared to others. Are the ants eating the plants? Ants don't eat garden plants, but a large colony can interfere with a root system and thus stunt a plant. While ants are helpful when they aerate the soil or churn the soil, bringing up nutrients from deep soil, you may have a case of too much of a good thing. Sprinkle diatomaceous earth on the ant hills. The sharp edges on this powder of fossilized diatoms should penetrate and kill enough ants to reduce the population.

I plan to plant 20 low-bush blueberries. I've prepared the beds with leaf mulch, compost and sulfur. How do you recommend planting to maximize survival? We hope you have not purchased these plants yet, as we suggest that you plant Northern or Southern high-bush blueberries instead. Low-bush blueberries are essentially wild, woodland plants that are not cultivated so much as maintained by growers in New England. One reason it's difficult to grow low-bush berries in our area is that we have different mycorrhizae (beneficial soil fungi)