For years, the local deer have fattened themselves on our fruit trees. And the plum tree still gave bountifully. The peach tree was a sad, little specimen that never seemed to thrive.

We had the fence repaired last year, and (while I wasn't watching), the plum tree grew in every direction.

The blooms were nice to look at, but I'm busy, and I didn't look at the tree to carefully.

It got huge, and when the fruit formed and started to ripen, I had a bottleneck of processing. I picked plums steadily, almost every day for two weeks, filling a pasta pot and a large mixing bowl, at least, every day.

And this was after the collapse of one branch under the weight of plums. Here's the wasted branch, fruit included, in my ancient wheelbarrow.

I stored the plums on the kitchen counter, washed and dried, in colanders, covered by kitchen towels. This allowed them to ripen nicely. We gave a bucket away at our jobs, each, and to some neighbors and family. And then there was only a ton left.

I went to epicurious.com and got a jam recipe, but I ended up using the ones in the pectin boxes. The jam is great, and I get to give away something handmade to friends, family and coworkers. (One of my coworkers just requested some to take home today. I think I've got a jar or two around here, still... OK, twelve.)

I'm going to have to study pruning soon. It's been about two weeks since the harvest. The tree is unmanageably large, and I want to make sure I can keep it healthy. Anyone want to leave a pointer in the comments section below? I'd appreciate hearing from you.

Just this past weekend (early May), in my mild climate, we got a burst of summer weather just as I set aside time for gardening. My task was weeding, which involves pulling, stooping, carrying and a bit of hill-climbing. This is tiring, sweaty work for a desk jockey / weekend warrior like myself.

And I also have serious hayfever.

So I dosed up (the only antihistamine that works for me is brompheniramine maleate, in Drixoral and Chlor-Trimeton), put on my gloves, workboots and sunscreen, and started working.

Now, I had woken up with a headache, and it got no better during my couple hours outside. By the end, I had sneezing fits, itchy arms, watery eyes, and a pounding migraine. I came inside, washed up, and took an aspirin. No good.

That night, I was exhausted and bleary, and at dinner, I drank several glasses of water.

A few hours later, in the cool of the evening, I started to feel better. So, did I immediately drink more water? No. Because I'm stupid, that's why not.

What I learned (MUST I learn this EVERY year, all over again?) is to drink plenty of fluids before gardening, during if possible, and definitely after. Antihistamines and decongestants may exascerbate dehydration, and unaccustomed exercise and heat are no friends to the dehydrated either.

Also, if you're a hayfever sufferer, wear long sleeves (old button down office shirts are good for this), and always long pants and boots (or hi-tops - just keep the grass seeds out of your socks!), in addition to hat, sunscreen and whatever eye protection you need. Take your strongest medicine at least half an hour before going outside, and drink two more glasses of water than you would otherwise. Three if it's hotter than usual.

I've also found that washing my entire head in cold water is really effective if I'm having sneezing fits or watery eyes. Or a headache. Of if I just want to be dramatic about my allergies. Go soak your head!

The dandelions aren't really the problem, here. Neither are the bees. It's just a gratuitous Wizard of Oz reference.

To your health!

Are you tired of stuffing smelly kitchen waste into your garbage can? Feeling guilty about the loss of topsoil? Want to save money on mulch or potting soil? You can answer all of these concerns by composting kitchen waste.

WHAT CAN I COMPOST?
The best advice is to stick to vegetable matter, and experiment a little at a time, if at all, with other materials. Plants compost in predictable ways, and attract a certain range of guests (beetles, flies, etc.)

If you include any dairy, you should expect a stronger smell and potentially some larger visitors. Meat and fat do not compost well, but a mature pile (see below) I had really burned up some fish bones and scales. I made sure to tighten the lid to keep out the raccoons.

HOW DO I GET STARTED?
You'll need a container, some outdoor space that's yours, and starter material. You may also need worms.

First, where are you going to put the compost? If you have a yard, pick somewhere a bit out of the way, but easy to get to from your kitchen. Do not put the bin under a window or right next to a building. Sunny spots encourage "hot" composting, which can handle woodier material like yard clippings. Worms live in "cold" piles.

There are a lot of commercially available containers. I've broken two of them. The metal drums with stirring handles (they spin the drum on a support to stir the compost) are pretty well liked. I grew up with a stakes and chicken wire arrangement. I've used old plywood and cast off wood (avoid painted or pressure/cyanide treated wood for this) to good effect. Larger, plastic bins tend to bend and break in short order. If you've got only a little bit, a milk-crate sized bin might really do the trick. It's often called a worm bin.

Starter material for cold piles (worm bins) are shredded newsprint (no color photos) or other cellulose like dry leaves, bark, or sawdust and worms. Put food scraps and worms in first, then add cellulose on top to keep in the rotting smell. You'll need to replenish the cellulose at each addition of food.

For a hot pile, toss in some green clippings from your yard every now and then, and if the compost just won't heat up (i.e. if a corncob stays wet and solid for 2-3 weeks), try adding a bit of nitrogen. Soil amendments like blood meal and chicken manure are effective.

[continued below]

WORMS
Actually, worms are great at making good soil for growing things. And if you have a yard that is not too polluted for worms to live in, and isn't too water-logged or recently flooded, a little digging should turn some up right away.

I read that special worms are needed for compost. I have had great results with the earthworms in my yard. Oh, and they love coffee grounds! (Use unbleached filters for your health, and to keep PCBs out of the compost.)

HOW WILL I KNOW WHEN IT'S DONE?
Everything takes a different amount of time to compost. In warm weather, if your pile is not too dry or too wet (the composting matter should feel as wet as a wrung-out cloth) you should be transforming kitchen scraps into excellent topsoil i about 2 weeks.

You'll have to work out a harvesting routine. With a worm bin, you can add stuff only at one end and squish it toward the other, where you harvest it.

With a chicken-wire pile, just toss stuff on until winter, and then pull out the rich dirt when it's time to plant again.

A friend who is a great gardener uses two drums, and adds to one for a couple of weeks (remember to turn often), then adds only to the other, leaving the first to turn completely into soil. These are hot piles, in the rotating drums.

When you're done, you'll have excellent soil for growing, and less trash to haul away.

A couple additional notes:

A hot pile that's hot enough should generally smell earthy, not stinky. Stinky piles are wet, and should be turned more often, given nitrogen (blood meal, green clippings, chicken manure), and/or relocated to promote warmth and drying.

Worm bins allow seeds to survive. Hot piles, once they get going, consume seeds. (Don't put noxious weeds in, though, just in case. YOu don't want to plant dandelions in this stuff!)

Oh, and turning compost is good exercise. Just don't throw out your back.

I distinctly remember my dad telling me to get outside on nice days, and then offering me a nickel for an hour's work (no, I am not that old - he was just being cheap for laughs).

Now I have a garden and kids, and the two year old (2 1/2!) loves to climb and dig and basically follow me around, shoes or no, hat or no, etc.

And there are cats.

And so, there is the inevitable "don't pick that up" moment. (I had one when I was a child.)

I try not to freak out about my kids and normal dangers, but cat feces have cryptosporidium, or they can, which is really, really unhealthy for humans. It's potentially lethal for fetuses and nursing infants (guys - change the cat litter!).

So what to do? There are of course spray products that help. See some links just below this section - unless I forget and move them somewhere else. Scroll around.

You can also spend your time in the backyard, keeping it clean, unlike me (I commute too much), or you can stop worrying, and just teach your kids the difference between 5h17 and shinola. That's a good idea, in general.

That idea extends to weeding, as well. 2-4 year olds are good concentrators, if appropriately stimulated (and not desensitized by tv and computers). My 2 1/2 year old gets weeding. He sometimes weeds the wrong tihng, but he gets it. It's satisfying, repeatable, variable, and a good way to spend time together.

Also, I got stung by a bee while weeding, which was a good educational opportunity. The boys saw that it didn't hurt (it did itch, though), and saw me weeding again in a few minnutes, so I think that the more exposure they get to the plants etc., the better.

We don't have much dangerous stuff in our yard, and that's a factor. There are a couple of potential falls, and there's a shed with sharp tools, but that's no harder to police than the hot stovetop.

And the look of accomplishment the kids get when something they plant grows is worth all the worry, discomfort or hassle. We're going to try to grow our own pumpkins this year. Got the seeds into the ground in Feb, and we've got 30+ sprouts. I have to thin them, actually. We water them and inspect them together. I'm hopeful we'll also have at least a few pumpkins to show for it. That would be a nice way to conclude the summer/early fall gardening.

Oh, and another learning experience: wipe your feet together when you come back inside.

I inherited a weed trimmer a couple of years back. I'm on my second now. I struggled for awhile with the standard gauge of line (nylon cable that cuts the weeds), which always seemed to break at the lightest resistence.

And I was cutting tough, mature, 3' weeds.

So I did what the instruction manual said NOT to do. I bought and spooled up some .90 line (they're color coded - .90 is safety orange). It's very resistant to coiling, so get your swear-words ready. However, with a little practice, it's not too tough.

And the payoff is huge - take down woody, thick weeds without always snapping the line.

Mow through grasses and low weeds like a hot knife through butter. OK, that's a mixed metaphor, but you get the idea.

And I can cut basic weeds for over half an hour without having to advance the line.

I use a Toro, electric, mid-range model. (HP? I have no freaking idea - I'm an amateur!) It cost about $22, just to give you an idea of what kind of line weed trimmer I'm working with.

And this might be important - a weaker motor might burn out with the heavier line, or a stronger one might draw blood. So be careful, and realize that the manuals DO say to use only the gauge specified for the particular trimmer.

OK, I behave like an amateur in the garden, fine. I am one. One of my amateurish gardening behaviors is following others' advice avidly, but incompletely, without scoping out the optiosn, hoping that, this time, I'll have stumbled across the right way to do something.

Furthermore, I'm usually wrong AND I always do it again.

So in those occasions where I have had some success, I think it only fair to share my sad, little wealth of knowledge. People say the poorest among us are the most generous! Let me give you, then, the figurative shirt off my back.

I killed the ornamental lawn in the front of the house. This was intentional. I like few things less than ornamental lawns, and I don't like high water bills much more.

However, killing the lawn did not eradicate the weed population. We've got burclover, pink clover, dandelions, bermuda grass, and a half dozen other undesirables fighting for water, dirt, and light.

I tried spraying, spreading wildflower seeds, constant cultivation of the soil (it's very well aerated, now, and the weeds love that). Nothing worked well.

We already had mulch in the back yard, hiding black plastic sheeting the dolts who lived here before had used. Ugh. To give you a sense of their landscaping wisdom, they buried part of a broken down car in the yard to try to hide it. And a toilet. Seriously - don't use black plastic sheeting to keep the weeds down. The weeds break through it fairly easily, and then you weeds AND black plastic sheeting tearing off in shreds.

My father suggested I try newspaper (only pages without color ink!), topped by a fine mulch (like redwood bark or shredded cedar bark). This was fun to try on a windy day. Wanna have a good YouTube post? Get that on film.

I used about a 2-cubic foot bag of mulch for every 16 square foot area, and it was not enough. Get more. And the stuff is heavy, about 20 pounds for a 2-cubic foot bag.

Spread the newsprint out carefully, a little at a time, and spread the mulch over it (but not over the edge where you're going to add more newsprint later). It should really be about 2-3 inches thick. Try to keep local cats and dogs off. As the newsprint breaks down, more weeds will come up, but periodic (alternate weeks) light weeding should keep the area clear of weeds.

Mine's lasted over a year, and I know it works because I only finished half of the lawn area. The other half is currently a successful dandelion farm.

California burclover is a fast-growing, fast-proliferating, woody-stemmed, ground-covering weed. It sprouts after the frost has cleared (February in coastal Northern CA), and takes off, choking out desired plants and cutting into hardy natives like poppies. It grows in marginal soil and without much water, and seeds in about three weeks. Once it seeds, you're toast for the year.

I used to think this was leafy spurge, but this website proved me wrong: http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn7490.html

I've struggled with it for two years at our new house. I sprayed one year with Spectracide, and it did okay, but the burclover required a lot of attention, and a few surviving plants could do a lot of damage. Also, those metal-based pesticides are really harmful to other plants and to the soil in general.

The burclover rebounded in a few weeks. I think it may have seeded despite the Spectracide.

This year, I hit it on emergence, as widely as I could, with Roundup. Now, I don't care for Monsanto, but this has been the best product for burclover. I use it sparingly.

It doesn't introduce poisonous metals to my yard, either.

The affected plants (I also spray some of the wild sweet pea, which I rather like, but which makes a fire hazard later in the year and is hard to clear when mature) turn brown in a day or two.

I follow up the spraying in under a week (I'm very busy, but this is worth doing) by uprooting all survivors and scouting for new or previously missed burclover plants.

I spray using the ready to use Roundup 2 gallon sprayer, which works okay. Watch out if you have carpal tunnel or can't carry 17 pounds in one hand comfortably (a gallon of water weighs about 8 1/2 pounds).

Don't get the spray on you, if you can avoud it, and do change clothes and wash off afterward, as with all herbicides.

Also, to pull the California burclover, you want to pinch the stems where they meet at a Y (2-4 come together), which is how you find the root. The root gets about 3 inches deep in our dense, clay soil. Try to get the root, and check for seed pods.

The flower is small and yellow, and the seed pod is sea-urchin shaped and rides with pets very well.

* Update, April 2, 2007: I think I've almost won. I still find burclover here and there, but so much less, and there are NO seed pods. You cross your fingers, and I'll keep scouring for burclover.

One Gardner's Best Compost
Great Orchids for Complete Beginners
Grow GRAPES for fun and {hic} profit!