Dandelions and Clover Terrorizing Lawns Nationwide!

Through a chain of gardening blogs, I found Garden Rant's rant about the inability of Scotts Chemicals to comprehend that diversity in lawns is a good thing. To Scotts, the only good clover is dead clover, the only good dandelion is a dead dandelion, and the only good lawn is one that soaks up several hundred dollars of their product every year.

Dandelion For Sale In Seoul, Korea

Does this cute yellow flower look like it should be hunted down and poisoned to make a sterile monoculture that covers half of my property? Let's bring back the lawns of granny's time, when they were a vibrant mix of grasses, clover and a few volunteer wildflowers. Bees loved those lawns, birds loved them, children loved them, and they were easier to take care of.

Dandelion In October, White Mountains, AZ

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Growing Lettuce at 110° F

This is my experimental lettuce patch, in a photo taken early this morning. It was planted about 2 months ago in an old compost heap that was planted with tomatoes last summer.  The location under a mesquite tree was too shady for tomatoes, so I tried lettuce, mizuna and Swiss chard. It's leggy and pale from being in the shade, but if it were in the sun it would be dead.



It's surprisingly not bitter and despite the high temperatures, it hasn't bolted. All I did was add a bit more dirt to the top of the heap, soak the seeds a few hours and plant them. It has a drip line, and is being watered 3 times a day for a few minutes each time.

Lettuce Varieties: Rubin and Tango Read more!