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Driveway potholes are dangerous and unattractive but easy to fi x.


One of winter’s least desir- able remnants, potholes are enough of a pain on streets and highways. T e last place you need one is your own


ASPHALT 1


Remove any loose asphalt pieces or gravel from the hole with a shovel and then a broom.


2 3


Use asphalt cold patch to fi ll the hole half an inch above the surface of the driveway.


Tamp the patch material down with a 4x4 post or a tamper. Then cover the hole with a piece of plywood and drive over it with your car.


4


Throw sand or dust over the patch material to keep it from sticking to shoes or tires.


GRAVEL 1 2 3 4


Remove any loose stones or debris from the hole.


Fill the hole with coarse gravel up to three inches below the surface.


As in step 3 above, compact the gravel with a 4x4 post or tamper, as for an asphalt driveway.


Fill the rest of the hole with gravel matching the driveway. Add extra gravel on top and rake to blend in.


CONCRETE


1 Safely remove loose or crumbling concrete from hole. Rinse hole with water. Allow to dry.


2 3


Prepare premixed concrete according to manufacturer directions.


Coat hole with liquid concrete bonding agent according to manufacturer directions.


4


Before bond dries, shovel prepared premixed concrete into hole. Let it set for about an hour. Trowel to remove excess and smooth surface.


5


Mist fi lled pothole with water, then cover with a plastic sheet. Let it dry for several days before walking or driving on it.


4 goodneighbor


driveway, which hosts all sorts of family activities. Follow these easy tips for repairing potholes in asphalt, gravel and cement driveways for a smooth surface that suits everyone and everything . . . especially your car.


CONDENSED VEGETABLES


Is this a more economical and practical approach to gardening?


Growing your own food is all the rage. It’s healthier. It’s good exercise. It’s wasteful. Wait . . . wasteful?


Yes, it’s true. Gardening can be wasteful because people fall into the trap of overdoing it, says Mel Bartholomew, author of All New Square Foot Gardening, which promotes the time- and money- saving benefi ts of growing veggies on a small scale. T ink of it this way: If you only bought four eggplants last year, why plant and tend a garden that’s going to give you 20?


T anks no doubt to his approach to gardening, Bartholomew had time to answer a few questions from goodneighbor®


magazine.


Aren’t gardens supposed to be big, bountiful things? Why promote small ones?


Because you really don’t need a huge one. A square-foot garden requires only 20 percent of the space, 10 percent of the water, 5 percent of the seeds and 2 percent of the work of a traditional row garden.


It’s the exact opposite of traditional single-row gardening. It eliminates wasted space and reduces the harvest to what you usually eat. You plant your garden in 4’ by 4’ boxes above ground, lay a weed mat down and then fi ll the boxes with a perfect soil mix. Use a grid to divide the surface into 12” by 12” squares—16 squares in all—and plant each with a different crop.


It sounds shockingly manageable. All you need is the desire for


a garden. You can build the box by yourself. Then you just have to decide where you want your garden and what to plant. Our website explains the method step-by-step. When people who’ve never gardened before see what it takes, they say, “I can do that!”


It’s very possible to have a garden and spend less than an hour a week working on it.


So what should you grow in a square-foot garden? What vegetables give you the most fi nancial and nutritional payoff?


Think of the salad crop— radishes, onions, a couple of kinds of lettuce, a few herbs, carrots. All these grow very easily. When those are fi nished, you can replant the squares with summer crops— peppers, eggplants, tomatoes, squash. A big advantage to this system is that you’re harvesting and eating your vegetables right away, which is very nutritious.


Does the simplicity of your gardening philosophy spill into your most recent book, All New Square Foot Gardening Cookbook?


A lot of cookbooks have very complicated recipes, but the easiest thing to do is harvest from what’s ready in your garden and then combine those vegetables into a simple, easy recipe.


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