Nett is exactly right. It changes the acidity of your soil and won't burn like fertilizer so you can be heavy handed without bad side effects. Acidity can make it hard for plants to absorb the calcium and nitrogen naturally existed or supplemented in the soil. I mulch in a lot of leaves and that leaf breakdown causes acidity. I think heavy clay soil tends to be acidic too. I used a whole 40lb bag.... About a third on my garden and the rest on the patchier grass areas. It is filling in and the grass looks heathier but limr isn't the only tool used on that project. If you spread a thick layer and water it will form a layer of lime on the surface so make sure you spread evenly or mix in. Not harmful if it cakes up, just mix it in by hand. You can be pretty free and loose with lime. If you are not sure, get a ph test kit or contact your local county extension or similar service and have them test it. Ours does a full panel lab to include ph and nutrients and other pertinent info for $13. Not bad. It is great for your grass, especially if you're doing everything right and not seeing great results.
An alfalfa spread on the hottest week of the year could thicken your lawn and prevent weeds from growing in. Of course, thicker lawns have issues too. If overseeding is your requirement, I always put soil down as well as seed. Weeds can grow in anything, grass grows in decent soil. If your natural soil has issues like clay, the seeds will have trouble getting rained in and growing. With fresh black earth, it will of course look like muddy assflesh a couple weeks then it will start curing well. As Nett and I agreed earlier, nothing gets rid of yard weeds like good old fashioned American Can-O-Poison. "Weed B Gone" and the like is magic. The lawn stays, the weed dies. Hit the base of each weed with a direct stream shot, it withers in a week, composts in three to four. Just keep your dog and/or kids off the lawn for two hours, do it in the sun, make sure it won't rain for the next while and Bob's your uncle. It isn't harmful at all as long as your simply do it as instructed.
What is the most tight-assed person you've known with their lawn? My grandparents had a hilarious neighbour that would run from the porch and grab leaves when they fell on the lawn. Perfect baseball outfield shading, he dragged a loaded water roller behind his mower for that effect. Graceland's lawn looked like a polluted marsh compared to this place.
It depends on where in the country you're located, but for many parts of the world, it's already too hot to put down any kind of weed and feed without nuking your grass in the process. But, there are things that you can do to promote healthy grass through the summer and help ensure a healthy lawn next year. The two biggest needs are going to be water and nutrients. Make sure your grass is watered and use a turf fertilizer sparingly to promote good growth. Assess your soil to make sure you aren't dealing with compacted dirt that won't take new plants. By doing this, your lawn will be ready to grow in next year and you'll be able to get a little more assertive with a weed and feed. Over the summer, you can put down grass seed to start filling in bare spots and such. Check with a local garden center to see what they'd recommend for your region. I have put down seed with really good success by scraping up the dirt with a hard rake, spreading seed, and watering it in. New grass needs a shitload of water, so be prepared to run a sprinkler daily as you mend different sections of your lawn. Finally, don't get sucked in to the newest latest greatest turf that needs NO maintenance NO water heat and shade tolerant and never grows over two inches. Rarely are they as good as the advertisers say they are. Stick with classic varieties in your area and if possible, go with the most hardy. For example, my folks in Florida never had this amazing St. Augustine lawn. It would get close and then nematodes or fungus would kill it to the dirt. Bermuda and Bahia, while completely unruly in growth, always produced a thick, lush, low maintenance lawn. You just have to mow it more often.
I also grab a very loamy potting soil and put it on top. Basically I grab one of these: and scrape up the soil so it's nice and loose. Then I put a whole bunch of grass seed on it, then sprinkle in a healthy amount of lawn food (it's hard to put too much on there because lawn food is formulated to be much milder these days so people won't burn out their grass as much, unlike using straight up fertilizer). Then cover it with a loamy potting soil (2-3" usually), tamp it down a bit, and then water the hell out of it. The loamy potting soil does a great job of protecting the seeds from getting eaten by birds, blown away by the wind, and burned out by the sun. It also maintains moisture really well so keeps the grass seed damp much longer than straight watering it. I usually don't cut it until the new grass goes to seed.
I should also mention that the soil I use has a bunch of pre-added vermiculite to help with aeration and moisture/nutrient retention.
Not really related to the grass talk above, but I keep a bag each of vermiculite, perlite, sand, basic potting soil, and flowering plant granulated fertilizer (I did start a compost bin but it is too new to use at this point). Plants have different needs in terms of moisture, drainage, and nutrients, and I find it better and cheaper to make my own blend. If you have the space to store the bags and intend on having more than one or two "gardening projects" over the year, this is the way to go. For instance, my mother in law visited a couple months back and brought a ton of succulent and cactus cuttings. We only found one brand available off the shelf for "cactus soil" and it was like $8 for a small bag. I find that the better I understand soil and nutrient needs of my plants, the better gardener I am. Plants aren't typically difficult--you just need to know what they need and be consistent. Though honestly the consistency part is the difficult part for a lot of people. It's like having a pet in the house. There are daily and weekly needs.
This is like 80% of all you really need to know about plants. As far as succulent and soiless mixes, the infamous "Al's" mixes are the internet standard. Ive tried the 5:1:1 mix for my potted peppers and the "gritty" mix for succulents and had great results for each. Both are supper light which makes moving pots around a breeze. Ive tossed the 5:1:1 on my garden after and let it decompose into it with fantastic results in conditioning the shitty clay soil we have around here. The only real issues is sourcing the materials* and keeping up with the added nutrients, since they are soil less they need supplemental nutrients. Ill usually add a part of top soil or regular potting mix so you don't have to worry about watering/feeding as much. * perlite, vermiculite and a lot of good fertz can be found at your local "organic/hydroponic" weed growing store.
What variety of eggplant are you growing? I bought a 3 pack for $1.75 on a whim and they look different than the ones I usually see people growing. Long and skinny and one is more yellow streaked with purple. Maybe a Japanese eggplant, it looks something like this: http://www.rareseeds.com/fengyuan-purple/.
Yeah, it sounds like you have Japenese eggplants as those are the only ones I know of that grow skinny like that. Or if it has whitesh streaks in it, it could be a Graffiti eggplant. I have the Black Beauty type of eggplant, which is what you usually see people growing. Only had one plant last year as it was my first time growing it and it did great so I have five plants this year. My neighbor grows the White eggplants but I prefer the ones I have.
They look healthy and put on some great growth since the last pic! I love your dog keeping watch in all the pictures. Here is an update on mine. It took me a couple weeks to put in all the plants so the age is 10-11 weeks or so. Right now on a weekly basis I am bringing in around 1.25lb of tomatoes (a few traditional slicing tomatoes and several bunches of the Juliets), 10oz of green beans, plenty of herbs, and some jalapenos here and there. The peppers, okra, and eggplant haven't got a lot going on right now. I fertilized this weekend because I think the peppers are lacking, and that's why they aren't producing (they kept dropping tiny baby peppers and then the leaves started to yellow on the back peppers). The okra are working on putting on height at the moment but appear very healthy. The okra and eggplant are very hot/humid weather lovers so I think they produce midsummer and later. I have 5 baby eggplant on there so I'll have a decent supply once they start ripening. There are a ton of blossoms. Spoiler
Here's my backyard today. Yeah I need to mow. Also if anyone needs something to feel better about their tomatoes, here ya go. I need to find my pics of what the backyard looked like when we first moved in a couple years ago after it hadn't been maintained for three years. Spoiler: pics Tomatoes on the right, peppers on the left, beans and stuff in the back. I lined the boxes with marigolds that will show up soon. I'm kind of at a loss here, I think my brandywines were twice as tall at this point last year. Been adding new soil around the base, mulching, feeding with Miracle Gro, and they have yet to really take off. Again the story from my neighbors (who I got my compost from again) is that the landscaping vendor they bought it from made a bad batch and there's lots of people in the Twin Cities in a similar situation. Blah. There's some carrots poking up in the foreground, at least those are coming up now. Here's my peppers and some of the herbs, kinda similar story as the tomatoes. Bad soil this year. I don't know if this was stupid or not yet but I also snuck some pumpkin seeds into the edge of the pepper box with the intent for the vines to grow below the ledge where they have space, you can see them in the foreground of that pic just coming up and I have three sprouts in that pot there too. The pumpkins are a 100+ pound variety. Yeah we'll see about that, I'm just having fun. Here's beans in the front, cucumbers in the back, beets on the far side and carrots coming up on the close side. The little flower bed is new and planted with peppermint stick zinnias, cosmos, and nasturium seeds given to me. The little planter is bursting with zinnias. The bricks came from another neighbor. This box makes me feel better about the tomatoes since its my first time growing those veggies and a goal for the summer was more color in the backyard so that bed should deliver. I have zucchini, squash, and more tomatoes along this little retaining wall with zinnias and sunflowers planted inbetween. The vines cascade over the wall really nicely and it is a great use for otherwise wasted space. Another view. That wood fence in the background will be covered by morning glories soon and I can't wait. You can see my rhubarb and grape vines too. That little brick spot is where I intend the pumpkins to go, we'll see. The whole area in front of Buck used to be paved with bricks and I moved them to make a patio.
Here are some pics of my vegetables from today. Next to the Connecticut shore so planted a lot later then some of you. First pic is mostly tomatoes, except for the two bell pepper plants in the front. Second has my Cayenne bush right in the front, with cucumbers in the first two big pots. Three eggplants, a ghost pepper(Home Depot bucket), and jalapeno's in others. Third is just another eggplant and couple tomato plants.
Holy crap! Seeds are amazing. I know logically they are meant to last a long time. They are nature's little time capsules to make sure they keep persisting through the bad times. However, this being said, when I checked online to verify normal "lifespans" of seeds, I was getting anything from 1-5 years, max. I have been an avid gardener since I was a middle schooler. It was a shared interest with my aunt and a way to get me out of the house. A couple weeks ago, my mom gave me a big bag full of old gardening stuff I had from middle school that had been crammed in the back of a closet in the house for years. In this bag there were 2 old yogurt cups with seeds from my aunt's frisbee hibiscus that she used to always have lining her front sidewalk. LOOK WHAT HAPPENED. This is after less than 48 hours on the damp napkin. Seeds are amazing!! I am giving her some of these plants when they get some size on them. She hasn't had them at her sidewalk in years and I am not sure why. They used to be her pride and joy...such beauty, for such a short period of time. Spoiler
Weekly update: Im really hoping these turn out to be the green zebras I ordered. I used the same company that I did last year, and last year they even had the zebra like stripings at this point, but ripened into some random roma style tomato. Its one of the highest regarded seed supplier but even they are prone to mistakes.
Nice. My two tomato plants are not doing well. I think it's because of shit soil and low nitrogen, based on some Googling I've done. I'm replanting them with better topsoil and fertilizer tomorrow. That being said, the herb garden I started is going full speed... almost doubled in size since it was originally planted.