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Home & Garden readers might also want to read Keep it Green, a gardening column by Michael Womack.

Saturday, August 18, 2001
Garden Q&A

Q. Some leaves are curling inward on the tomatoes I am growing in my raised beds. Other than that they seem fine. What should I do about it?
   A. Your tomatoes are probably curling up in self-defense.
   Faced with uneven watering, from dry spells or busy gardeners who just wave a hose around instead of adequately watering every plant, tomatoes will curl their leaves to conserve water.
   Exposing less leaf surface to the sun reduces the amount of moisture lost through transpiration. Temperatures between 85 and 90 seem to trigger this genetic response, and it usually affects the oldest leaves first.
   Plum/paste tomatoes are especially prone to leaf curling. Once the problem is eliminated, usually when panic induces the gardener to find the time to water thoroughly and regularly, the leaves uncurl.
   Q. I recently had a landscaper plant several shrubs. He finished off the planting with some black mulch. Now, I'm getting a profusion of small weeds; I suspect the mulch. What can I do? I'm afraid to use weed killer for fear of killing my bushes.
   A. The solution is old-fashioned but reliable: weeding.
   First step in weeding: Water the site well. Many, if not most, weeds must be completely removed; for some species, even a part of the root can regenerate. Damp soil makes getting the whole thing a lot more likely.
   Second step: Get on your hands and knees and start pulling, or give the neglected hoe a try.
   Q. Our 16-year-old painted redwood house has a terrible mildew problem, even during periods of bright sunshine. The inside of the house seems to sweat and the inside surfaces of the window frames are peeling. We would eventually like to have aluminum siding, but first we must solve the mildew problem.
   A. You have probably checked the obvious sources of moisture such as a lack of kitchen and bath fans, and poor exterior landscaping that may allow rainwater to run into your basement and crawl space. Moisture rising from these areas is a common source of this problem.
   If you do not know the source of excessive moisture in the house, you should introduce some dry air from the outside. There are a number of air exchangers on the market that are designed for do-it-yourself installation and are reasonably priced. These units usually have a fan that moves fresh air in, over or through ducts that are heated by heated air from the interior of the house moving out through the same unit.
   Q. The ceiling in our living room is in pretty bad shape. Are there any guidelines as to ceiling height?
   A. The height of a new ceiling should be no less than 7 feet-6 inches. In some cases 6 feet-6 inches is acceptable under beams or bay windows. You can construct a slightly lower ceiling in a kitchen, provided at least half of it is at least 7 feet-6 inches.
   In a roof space the ceiling height should be a minimum of 7 feet-6 inches for at least half the area of the room. However, this area might not represent the whole floor. Mark all the sloping ceilings to the desirable minimum height above the floor, then use a plumb line to mark the floor directly below. The area of the floor within the marked lines represents the actual area used to calculate the ceiling height.


- Caller-Times wire services

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