For cornmeal 20lbs per 1,000 square feet is the recommended application rate however you can apply it as often as you want providing you don't completely cover the grass. At 20lbs per K you would only need 280 lbs assuming .33 acres (roughly 14k square feet) to do an application. I would imagine $20k worth of corn meal would cover your lawn several inches deep. I wouldn't worry near as much about the plantains as I would those violets. The violets will continue to spread and only get much worse if you don't kill them completely. Round Up is not expensive if you use the off brand version. Look for 41% Glyphosate. Tractor supply has their brand and is usually about $50 to $60 for a 2.5 gallon jug which is enough to spray several acres. WalMart also carries Eliminator brand for about $15 per quart. Glyphosate is going to be your best option to kill the violets but will kill anything green you spray it on.

I'm in Zone 6 and I do not cover the base with soil/mulch. Of course, my neighbors on two sides have hugh oak trees near the property line--oak leaves blow over to my yard all winter long, so I guess you could say I let nature give my roses a bit of protection, but even that is very little on many of the roses. That said, I do have 3-4 HTS that are a bit iffy in Zone 6. I may throw some extra mulch around them, or make sure the oak leaves surround (and stay around) them, but the others get to fight it out on their own. Occasionally I do that for a new rose that hasn't been very vigorous its first season in my garden, but that is it. I've never lost a rose due to unprotected winters, and the only time my roses suffered was two years ago when a very late, very hard freeze damaged a number that had to be cut back to a few inches from the ground. But winter-protecting them would not have helped. They had been in active growth for 3-4 weeks when that big late freeze occurred. As to autumn-pruning back an extra long cane, I always heard that you should not do that unless it is so long that the winter winds may whip it around and break it off. Kate

I very much like both Asian and native persimmons, but I think they are very different. I wouldn't expect them to be very similar except in appearance of the fruit. If I were looking particularly for late persimmons, Rosseyanka and Tecumseh come to mind. Check out the link below for a ripening order list of Edible Landscaping's persimmons. Edited to add: it seems to me there's more of a difference between the native persimmons and rosseyanka in terms of the fresh eating season than EL's list suggests. My impression is that the rosseyanka season extends well beyond any of the natives. I know I got to eat Rosseyanka's off EL's tree (i.e. at EL) in mid-December. Perhaps it's just that they ripen earlier than December but hold on the tree better than the natives. Here is a link that might be useful: scroll down about mid-way for ripening order chart This post was edited by cousinfloyd on Sat, Jan 3, 15 at 18:11

Some ideas; .