Hi Bart: Thank you for asking for simple terms, then I don't have to spend hours pulling up U. of. Extension research. If your soil sticks to your shoes, then it's clay and high in salt. Magnesium is what makes clay sticky, thus no need to add Epsom salt (magnesium sulfate). Clay soil is fertile and high in salt, no need for chemical fertilizer. What clay soil needs is buffering agent, or organic matter to neutralize the soil pH, and create space between the tight particles. Clay soil can be acidic like my last house, or alkaline like my present house. Organic matter like leaves buffer extremes in pH. Peatmoss, pH 4, glues up with clay because it's a fine particle. I get better result with large chunk organic matter, leaves (acidic at first, but buffers later), pine park (pH 4.5, acidifies longer, since it decomposes very slow). Sandy soil, and loose/loamy soil benefit from manures and chemical fertilizer... salt is not a problem since it can be leached out when the soil is loose with good drainage. I already tested muriate of potash (potassium chloride) ... My husband bought that by mistake instead of sulfate of potash. 3 roses haven't recuperate from the salt-damage and wilting, despite tons of watering. I will never use that stuff, except to de-ice in zone 5a winter. I put that muriate of potash on the new bed of tomatoes ... blossom end rots, had to throw 3/4 tomatoes away. High potassium drives down calcium, resulting in black-fungal on the bottom half of the tomatoes. I prefer unsulfured, blackstrap molasses as soluble fertilizer for clay soil, since it's cheap & low-salt, with NPK 3-1-5, 20% potassium, 17% calcium, 20% iron, and trace elements. That's better than cocoa mulch with NPK 3-1-4, and way-better than horse manure/bedding at NPK 0.7 / 0.3 / 0.6. Bart, your green manures and alfalfa hay are great for clay. Here's an excerpt from the link below "At the end of that first growing season we moved some roots of mint into the bed with the roses. The thinking there was that mint brings a substantial amount of minerals and other nutrients from the sub soil to the top soil because of the it’s deep roots. During the year as the mint grew to around a foot tall we’d cut it back and mulch around the roses with the cut mint. We’re still doing that now, so the roses get fed and we’ve got lots of mint for tea. The routine now is that during the year when the roses are in flower they’re constantly mulched and fed with cut mint, in the winter they’re pruned hard back and mulched with layers of hay." *** From Straw: I think it's clever to use plants like mint to fertilize roses, plus to keep deer away. Nutritional analysis of mint: 9% vitamin A, 2% vitamin C, 2% calcium, 7% iron, and 6% manganese ... the last 2 are much needed in alkaline soil to fix chlorosis. The picture of Summer Samba rose I posted in the other thread with very dark green leaves ... that has tons of clover growing in the pot. Roots of plants secret acid, so the soil where there was decomposed grass, tested less alkaline in red-cabbage juice. The soil with nothing growing on it, is rock-hard and very alkaline. Thank you, Bart, for that great idea about clover, I'm going to order clover seeds, they make a nice carpet around roses. Below is another shot of Summer Samba, bought from RU end of June, you can see the clover growing inside the pot, which I foolishly killed most of them: Here is a link that might be useful: Growing roses without manure This post was edited by Strawberryhill on Mon, Aug 12, 13 at 18:05

Posted by skybird ... Tue, Nov 4, 14 ... . Does anybody else think it seems very strange to have people from "all over the place" posting here now that they have their little "most recent posts" section on the main Gardening Forums page????? Did I do that? . . No, I guess I showed up before they started that "recent posts" thing ... I'm not sure if it doesn't lend some help. Maybe there could be a "taking over" but that would be a personality thing rather than jumping in with a line or two. Self-promoting spam will always be a possibility, no matter what, I'm afraid. Lending help is something different. And look, I can only just see the Rockies! They are on the east side of the valley here and the Selkirks are on the west. This gravel I have to garden in is nearly all from the Rockies, much of it from Montana. So, I turned up here. I'm also the one with the idea that a gardening forum should have more to do with climate and local flora than with political boundaries. It has long seemed to me that Sunset zones do a pretty good job of showing what makes sense and state lines do not. Steve, from the home scratching ground of Marty the Marmot

rrs626- Your choices are beautiful! I love your granite and backsplash. What a difference from what you first were considering. I love the new backsplash vs the cream that you were thinking about. I can't wait to see it up. As for me, we are moving slow. I have all our walls patched and sanded and the old backsplash is down. I am going to start painting in the next week. We are waiting on countertops for now due to some uncertainty with the economy. Once my husband is a little busier with work, we'll move forward. I'll post some pics of the new paint job because even that little change will help. Hopefully, we'll have the new countertops in the near future. Sorry, I didn't catch your posts earlier. You made some great choices!

As everyone knows I love to travel and especially around our own country. In March we went to Fredericksburg, TX for a week along with our friends who have a toy hauler 5th wheel. We had our motorcycles with us and rode all over the countryside. We also went to the LBJ National Historic Park, which is so interesting. In the middle of June we headed to the Pacific Northwest and toured around Oregon, Washington, Idaho. I also got to meet up with 6 members of the KT. We saw several National Parks along the way. We ended up at Teton National Park in Wyoming. In October I flew to Cincinnati and did a driving tour with Murraysmom. We were on the road for 10 days and drove over 2,200 miles. We got to meet with 10 KTer's. Murraysmom and I had never met before and had a wonderful time. Just last month we went to Galveston to see MarilynC and also the surrounding area. I had a get together in my motor home and enjoyed the company of 5 KTer's while we were in the Galveston area. We also got to visit with RuthieG on our way to Galveston and hopefully will see her again in late January. We will be heading out again mid January heading to Florida to see my folks and other relatives I have there. Hopefully I will get to see some more KT friends that I have also seen over the past few years. There are many places I still haven't been to but hopefully will have a good 10 years to venture out and enjoy our great country and all it has to offer. Being retired we don't have to wait for a holiday to enjoy our motor home. I just wish I could keep him on the road longer. He is a homing pigeon and says he needs to go home after a month to six weeks on the road. My ideal way to travel is to go 400 miles and set up, then take day trips to see everything of interest in a 150 mile radius. Then move another 400 miles and do it over again. It also saves on gas to do this since you are not returning home so often and then having to go back to where you were and start over. With diesel prices being anywhere from $3.69 to 4.29 a gallon and only getting 7-8 miles to a gallon it cost about $288.00 a day on the road figuring a 400 mile day. I tell my husband it is only money and we can't take it with us. We earned it and we want to enjoy it and spend it during our lifetime. If there is anything left over the kids are welcome to it. I hope all of you that want to travel get to do so. We live life only once so enjoy it to the fullest.