To keep the area around my plants weed free, I use a coffee filter or newspaper scrap with the center punched out to reduce weeds at the main stalk. A little wormcast under the paper mulch and you have the fertilizer covered.

-- Jay Blair in N. AL (jayblair678@yahoo.com), May 17, 2002

Answers

Jay, the gardner, can he grow it? ( sung to the tune of "Bob the builder", my little g-daughter sings all the time!

Jay, question. Last summer I stuck two pieces of a blue potato in the garden along the edge. Plants came up but I never did anything to them or with them.

Well, now they have really come up this year! Big and bushy and about a foot tall. So the question, is there a chance I'm going to have potatoes growing, and if so, should I mound dirt around the growing plant to make a potato hill?

-- Granny Hen (cluckin along@cs.com), May 17, 2002.

Jay, I take your idea just one step further - I stack my used coffee filters (including some brought home from work - shhhh); then take them out to the garden and use them with grounds intact as a weed barrier and acid mulch for my stawberries.

-- Polly (tigger@moultrie.com), May 18, 2002.

Some friends of mine raid dumpsters at carpet stores. Their vegetable garden is entirely carpeted except where the plants poke through it, and it rules!

They also have a very very limited water supply.

I'm a bit envious...

-- joj (jump@off.c), May 18, 2002.