Weeds

How should I mulch a vegetable garden? Do I need to mulch all of it? Anywhere you don't want weeds will require mulch. Mulch helps retain moisture and moderate soil temperatures, but weed suppression is the No. 1 goal because weeds steal water, nutrients and sunlight from vegetables. Organic mulches of mowed leaves or straw with three to four layers of newspaper underneath make an impenetrable barrier to weeds while allowing rain to soak through. These will last the growing season and decompose over the winter, feeding the soil.

How should I mulch a vegetable garden? Do I need to mulch all of it? Anywhere you don't want weeds will require mulch. Mulch helps retain moisture and moderate soil temperatures, but weed suppression is the No. 1 goal because weeds steal water, nutrients and sunlight from vegetables. Organic mulches of mowed leaves or straw with three to four layers of newspaper underneath make an impenetrable barrier to weeds while allowing rain to soak through. These will last the growing season and decompose over the winter, feeding the soil.

Little Boxes on the hillside, little boxes filled with sticky weed. Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes will get you high. When Nancy looks for work, she remembers to leave brick dancer, soccer mom drug dealer, arsonist, and most hardcore MILF off her resume. Meanwhile, her sister Jill is pregnant. Hopefully not with Doug's baby, and when I say "hopefully," I am quoting her. Andy has been parenting Nancy's children, then Jill's creepy twins, and even Nancy and Jill themselves.

The last couple of years my lilac hasn't bloomed. It's always been a favorite. What can I do? There could be several causes. Because we've gotten many calls about this in recent years, it may be related to climate change. Our common lilac will technically grow in areas as warm as zone 7, but it needs a winter chilling period in order to form flower buds successfully. Other things to consider are pH (if it gets too acid, lime will raise it closer to 6.5-7), too much shade encroaching on this sun-loving plant or European hornets stripping bark and girdling branches (remove the oldest canes, which they prefer)

On a nice winter day, I took a stroll and found my garden covered with weeds. This garden was bare soil last fall when I put it to bed. Not a weed in sight. Now it's a blanket of bright green flourishing weeds! How can that be? Those are winter annual weeds. Their seeds sprout in fall or early winter. They're inconspicuous at first, and in a bitter winter they don't really do much until spring. But with all our warm days this winter, they've been growing like gangbusters. Chickweed is a common one. You can pull them out. Or, since they don't have extensive root systems, most can be cut to the ground and will not regrow.

Weeds are like obnoxious relatives. They pop in unannounced. They take over your bed. They mooch your food. And they won't leave unless threatened with a garden hoe. While that might work on cousin Frank, I have my doubts about dandelions.Excuse my sarcasm. I just spent two hours digging weeds from '' the garden. Most of that time I spent on my hands and knees, ripping up fistfuls of chickweed and purslane and God knows what other bothersome plants in the vegetable patch.Why did he make weeds, anyway?

Question: What can I use to kill invasive weeds along my stream? I hear that the most common weed killer also kills aquatic life. Answer: Use a weed killer formulated for use near water. We think the weed killer you are referring to is one containing glyphosate, a systemic herbicide which is very effective on difficult weeds because it goes down and kills the roots. The problem is not the glyphosate itself, but the "inert" ingredients that are added to it. So, when you need to apply a glyphosate herbicide near water, find a product specially formulated to be aquatic safe: such as Erasure or Rodeo.

My vegetable garden has produced more than 200 pounds of greens this year, including 20 pounds of spinach and 10 pounds of lettuce.Alas, the rest is weeds.It has been a banner year for burdock, and the chickweed just won't quit. I've been digging up chickweed for nearly six months. I've harvested six wheelbarrows of the stuff. Why can't vegetables grow with such gusto?I've gathered enough ground ivy to fill two garbage cans, and enough purslane to fill Imelda Marcos' purse. Still, the weeds keep coming.

FREDERICK -- Researcher Rick Bennett is spending four months this year traveling Europe looking for sick weeds.The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) plant pathologist is looking for diseases to kill Mediterranean and Eastern European weeds brought over by immigrants over the past 500 years.Many of this nation's worst weeds were brought unwittingly more than 100 years ago by settlers bringing seeds to grow crops here, but the weeds' natural enemies were left at home, said Mr. Bennett, who is based at USDA laboratories at Fort Detrick.

In the summer kitchen at the Carroll County Farm Museum yesterday, a savory soup made from lamb's quarter, goosefoot and fat hen simmered in a cast-iron kettle on the open-hearth fire. Those meaty-sounding ingredients were actually weeds, freshly plucked from the museum's flower and vegetable beds. Their names may be unfamiliar, but the pesky plants are probably growing in most gardens. Yesterday's workshop, titled "Best-Dressed Weeds," included a foray onto the museum grounds in Westminster in search of ingredients, a class on cooking the typically discarded harvest and finally, lunch under a shady grape arbor.

This morning, Baltimore young'uns with their eyes all aglow are hoping for a snow day. Republican Senator Rand Paul, meanwhile is charitably hoping that if the glow happens to come from the burning of an illicit substance, the kids' lives won't be ruined forever. Welcome to your post-weekend trends report for Monday, March 25, 2013. Paul is teaming up with Democrat Patrick Leahy to push for relaxation of mandatory minimum sentences for marijuana offenders, saying Sunday that either of the last two presidents could have had vastly different lives had they not been lucky with their own drug experiences.

On a nice winter day, I took a stroll and found my garden covered with weeds. This garden was bare soil last fall when I put it to bed. Not a weed in sight. Now it's a blanket of bright green flourishing weeds! How can that be? Those are winter annual weeds. Their seeds sprout in fall or early winter. They're inconspicuous at first, and in a bitter winter they don't really do much until spring. But with all our warm days this winter, they've been growing like gangbusters. Chickweed is a common one. You can pull them out. Or, since they don't have extensive root systems, most can be cut to the ground and will not regrow.

The Baltimore City school system stands out in Maryland for its willingness to try new approaches to education. With 33 public charter schools, 14 transformation campuses and several other contractor-operated schools, the system leads the state in embracing innovation. The city school system has recently reviewed and made recommendations for 25 charter and contract schools, a process that clearly demonstrated that innovation can create better outcomes for children. But innovative models must also demonstrate that they are getting results.

City officials said Friday that they no longer have complete confidence in the accuracy of their speed cameras' radar systems and have instituted a new "reasonableness" test on two cameras known to have issued erroneous tickets. "We now know we can't just rely on radar being 100 percent accurate," said Frank Murphy, the city's deputy transportation director for operations. "It is incumbent upon us as the operator to make sure what's being issued is accurate. " Murphy's comments came after a Baltimore Sun investigation showed that a series of vehicles received speed camera tickets at two cameras along Cold Spring Lane even though the cameras' own pictures proved the vehicles were traveling too slowly to warrant the tickets.

It's been two years since some descendants began agitating for recognition and reverence for their ancestors' resting place in an unmarked, abandoned 7-acre cemetery surrounded by the Clifton Park golf course. The group, the Friends of St. Vincent Cemetery, gave me its approximate location - on a small rise overlooking downtown Baltimore near the Belair Road side of the Northeast Baltimore park. When I initially explored the place two years ago, I found nothing but weeds and was about to give up and leave, when I spotted a few scattered granite headstones under a tangle of sumac.

Nancy is getting a promotion at work, so she is offered a better car and more New England territory. She also manages to pick up Adderall to sell. Silas is happy about getting to grow everyday at work, while Shane is having trouble dealing with tapeworm-infested homeless people at the police impound. Luckily his girlfriend Angela saves him. Jill is going through menopause and decides to drown her sorrows in foie gras and wine. This means she is not pregnant with Andy's baby, and that she has been withholding this information from him. Jill fears losing Andy, the only cork plugging the hole that is her life.

When I was planning my vegetable garden last spring, I envisioned neat rows of gorgeous green plants laden with succulent vegetables just waiting for my family and neighbors to pick and enjoy. I knew a vegetable garden would be a lot of work, but my boys all promised to help me tend it.So we browsed through seed catalogs, made lists of our favorite vegetables and drew planting diagrams. We were all excited about our first garden.That excitement lasted until I announced that it was time to weed the garden.

For the possibly the first time in the history of Weeds, someone points out that Nancy dresses like a call girl. A pricey call girl, admittedly, but it still eludes me why none of her children have drawn attention to this in the past. Despite her $100-an-hour hooker outfit, Nancy is getting sent out on her first day to make sales calls without her mandatory three-week training. Silas' chill California attitude rubs up against the lab growers for Maritor, in particular one obsessive-compulsive nerd who insists on talking on the same wavelength as the plants.