We just de-lawned our front yard by sheet mulching it with clean brown cardboard all year. We now have a big squishy, dirty pile of former mulch. We're planning to build some 2 ft deep garden boxes soon. Can we use the old mulch to fill the first foot or so of the raised beds? Is there anything we could mix in to make it more suitable?

A few years ago, I brought in some soil samples to the OSU Extension Office in Eugene and got the pH tested. Are there any events like that planned for the next few months. Alternately, is there another soil pH testing service you recommend?

I’m looking to put in a hand pump in my back yard and was hoping I would be able to put in a drive point well since they’re easy to install though I know they require porous soils. Would you be able to tell me if the soil in my area would be compatible with a drive point hand pump well?

Hello Ok to plant in 56069 zip code? Thank you Tim

Do you test pressure canners? If so how and where do we get that done?

Would like to introduce Clover in my backyard have sparse grass and would like to utilize clover. Can you direct me to some information?

We are hoping you can help us identify the plant that grows in open grassy area of our property. It seems to be taking over. Once we know what it is we can determine how to get rid of.

We have planted over a dozen different fruit and nut trees over the years. We have protected them from deer and other animals when they are very small with wire cages. We thought some of them could successfully exist without the cages so we removed the cages. Well, it seems that we have suffered some damage we didn't expect. On a couple of our trees, we think that the deer used them to scrape the velvet off of their antlers and have really damaged the small trunks and many branches. Please see the pictures for one example. We hope that the tree will survive but we wanted to know if there was anything we could do to help the tree recover from the damage. We are pretty sure that there is no hope of the bark "healing" and growing back -- we assume the bark will be damaged and scarred for the rest of the tree's life. We plan on waiting to see what happens in the spring to see if the trees recover and continue to live. However we are anticipating that some might not. We would appreciate any info and/or suggestions that you can give. Thank you.

I’m trying to help a friend who lives in a low-income high rise apartment building in St. Paul whose management won’t help her. She has small flying insects that bite. A lot of them. They are larger than fruit flies but still very small. Her apartment is sparkling clean. She does have a few house plants but it’s not apparent that the bugs come from the plants.

Do you know of a squirrel proof bird feeder that works?