Around your house 2/20/08

GARDEN

Sow seeds of broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts and cabbage indoors now for transplanting into the garden later this spring. If soil conditions allow, take a chance sowing peas, lettuce, spinach and radish. If the weather obliges, you will be rewarded with extra early harvests. Grapes and bramble fruits may be pruned now. Begin pruning fruit trees. Start with apples and pears first. Peaches and nectarines should be pruned just before they bloom. When pruning diseased branches, sterilize tools with a one part bleach, nine parts water solution in between cuts. Dry your tools at day's end and rub them lightly with oil to prevent rusting.

-- mobot.org

HOME

Q: I tore out and replaced the concrete on my patio and sidewalk with pavers over crushed rock. Joints are filled with sand. Should I use a sealer on this, and if so how often?

A: No -- crushed rock covered with pavers is not a solid mass and therefore does not require sealing. Sealers are used to keep a surface clean and to shed water. With a paver system, water is designed to pass through so a sealer is not needed. For the cleaning part, simply use a degreaser, such as an automotive type degreaser, for your next cleaning project. Pressure washing is still an option even though the joints are filled with soft material. Just be careful.

-- AP

KITCHEN

It's getting easier to know where your food comes from, one chicken at a time. Murray's Chickens, a New City, N.Y.-based producer of antibiotic-free poultry, is giving consumers more information about the chickens they buy, right down to where they were raised. The company this year began labelling its products with codes that can be used on Murray's Web site, farm.murrayschicken.com, to track the bird back to the farm where it was raised. Steve Gold, the company's vice president of sales and marketing, said consumers can read about the farmer who raised the chicken, even zoom in on the farm using Google Earth. Murray's, which gets its chickens from about 45 farms in Pennsylvania, plans to expand the labeling later this year to include other products, including chicken burgers, pot pies and chicken nuggets. Murray's Chickens are available at grocers throughout the East Coast and South, and soon will be sold online. The company also plans to offer the tracking feature for Web-enabled cell phones.

-- AP