Gotta Get Outa Bed
& Get a Hammer & A Nail

I’m absolutely astounded!

Now I believe we’ve gone over this before, but let’s think about it for a moment. If you needed information on say, quilting, would you run out and pick up this month’s copy of "Jane’s Fighting Ships"? Would you turn to "Martha Stewart Living" for the latest Doom cheat codes? I don’t think so! Yet it appears that certain people (I won’t mention any names), when looking for information on toilet repair, for some inexplicable reason, turned to the Tower Bell as their guide. What on earth were they thinking?

The specific complaint I’ve received concerns the fact that in a recent column I indicated that fixing one’s toilet was "easy." Some among us have taken issue with the choice of this term. In my defense, I’d have to say that "easy" is a relative term. I suppose it’s "easier" to use one’s toilet than it is to fix it. On the other hand, it’s probably "easier" to fix a toilet than it is for a senior attorney to meet the new PAP’s production requirement. See? It’s all relative. Let’s go out to the garden.

Gee! A garden column written on the first day of spring. How creative!

First, it must be understood that I am cheap. Once that is clear, all else will fall into place. Now you can use pricey fertilizers, insecticides, herbicides and what have you, and dump them on your lawn and gardens several times a year and in all likelihood, you’ll have a pretty good looking lawn or garden. But to my mind, that’s a bit like throwing money all over the dirt, except that actual money will probably do less damage to the ground than will the chemicals you buy with it. And that’s the point: you’re just buying chemicals, and chemicals are cheap, unless you buy them prepackaged for the purpose of improving your lawn or garden. Then they suddenly become ridiculously expensive. What follows are several recipes for lawn and garden preparations which work very well, and have the added advantage of being prepared from various things you probably already have around the house.

Here's a recipe that does many good things:
· 1 can beer
· 1C children’s shampoo or liquid soap,
· 1C fish fertilizer or liquid lawn food,
· 1 oz liquid seaweed,
· 1 can Sprite^®, Coke^®, or whatever (not diet), or 1 cup molasses
· household ammonia

You need one of those hose-end sprayers which have the little jar connected to them. They come in various sizes referred to as 10 gallon, 20 gallon, etc. Some are adjustable. A 20 gallon hose end sprayer will mix 20 gallons of water from the hose with the solution in the jar.

Put all the ingredients above into a 20 gallon hose end sprayer, fill remainder with ammonia to fill up jar. Use this mess on trees, flowers, grass, shrubs, every 3 weeks. The soap helps the soil to release nutrients and helps nutrients get into the foliage of the plants. Soap is also a bug deterrent and antisurfactant, that is, it breaks the surface tension of liquids and lets them better get into soil, roots, foilage, etc. As if that weren’t enough, soap (as opposed to detergent) also coats the outside of many nasty bugs with fat and kills them.

The sugar develops beneficial bacterial action, ammonia is released into the air immediately and absorbed by plants as nitrogen gas (a fertilizer), and beer starts beneficial enzyme activity in the soil, just as it does in humans. This will help break down thatch. The seaweed provides trace elements, and the lawn food is, well, lawn food. You can leave any of the ingredients out and quantities are not critical. Use this stuff every 3 weeks or so. Covers 2500 sq. ft.

Wash your gardens once a week late in the evening with:
· 1/2 oz liquid dish soap
· 1/2 oz. brown mouthwash like Listerine^®
Which has been added to a gallon of water and spray it on the garden. This will discourage insects and disease.

You say your toilet was broken and you couldn’t fix it because it wasn’t “easy”? And now you’ve got urine spots and mushrooms growing in the grass? Well, this will get rid of them. Using a hand held whirly spreader set on #1, spread powdered Tide^® or All^® laundry detergent on the area where problems are, then lightly mist with a hose and leave it alone. Keep the dog, kids, or yourself off the lawn till the next day when grass is dry; you don’t want soap being tracked in the house. Do this once in the spring and again in the fall. The detergent interrupts the ability of the mushroom spores to reproduce, and both of these products contain a preparation called Urease^® which neutralizes the urine and eliminates the urine burn spots.

This one is another fertilizer/bug deterrent for your vegetable garden.
· 1 cup Fel’s Naphtha^® soap solution
· 1 can beer
· 4 ounces liquid dish soap
· household ammonia
To make the Fels soap solution, shave 1/2 bar of Fel’s Naphtha^® soap into a quart of very hot water and dissolve. Add 4 ounces of liquid dish soap as an emulsifier. Store until needed and shake well before use. You can find Fel’s Naphtha^® soap by the laundry detergents in the grocery store. It costs less than a dollar a bar. Using a 20 gallon hose end sprayer, mix the beer and the soap solution and fill the remainder of space in the jar with ammonia. Covers 2500 sq. ft.

I could go on and on with these recipes, but like you, I’ve lost interest. The Internet, I mean the global computer information network (sorry Jessie), is full of recipes like this. Most are fertilizers and insecticides, but there are several herbicides and some which defy categorization. There’s also a Saturday afternoon garden show on PBS called "Garden Magic" starring the astonishingly odd Jerry Baker who talks endlessly about this kind of thing.

So, if you’re like me, and you just don’t like the idea of putting Tri-clor-D-4, or agent orange, or some other known carcinogen on the lawn where your dogs roll or your kids run (or is it the other way around?), or worse, you don’t like paying big bucks for these things, then you might want to try some of these “easy” garden recipes.