Looks like you got a couple of good answers already in your same posts over on the Organic forum, the Tomato forum, and the Soil and Compost forum so it sounds like you are set. dave

Bon, I'm going to go start a poppy thread in order to answer your question because, otherwise, one of these days we'll want to refer back to the poppy info and we likely won't be able to find it via a Search because we'll have forgotten it was in an 8-year-old thread on bermuda grass removal. When we moved here, I had everything you have, and more, including monster ragweed and greenbrier with vines as thick as your thumb. With persistent soil improvement and the constant removal of unwanted vegetation, we don't have to deal with any of that stuff nearly so much any more. I dug nut sedge out for years though because in the beginning, our red clay soil was so dense and compacted that it broke every tool used by humans for digging. As the soil got better year after year, I was able to dig deeper and deeper every winter and spring and eventually get out all the nutlets. Jessaka, We aren't even trying to have a nice lawn since nice green carpets of lawn grass are sterile and don't feed all the little creatures that share this land with us. We just try to keep everything around the house and outbuildings mowed down low enough that we can see the venomous snakes before we step on them (which hopefully then prevents us from stepping on them). In the pastures, we leave them tall as much as we can and then just cut wide pathways through them so we can walk through them safely. However, once they are dry enough that they are a fire hazard, Tim starts cutting (he can't help it, it is the firefighter in him....). We are careful to let the desirable plants go to seed before we mow though. I don't mind the dandelions. Ours have been blooming since December. The little bees and other flying insects come out on warm winter days looking for something to eat, so any flower that is in bloom is a bonus for them. We're rural, though, and far back from the road so there are no disapproving neighbors looking at the dandelions in our lawn and glaring at us. Our nearest neighbors' homes are hundreds of feet away with woodland and pasture land between us, so there is no peer pressure to have a lawn of a certain kind, for which I am grateful. Fescue dies back because it is a cool-season grass, and there just isn't any way around that. I wish we stayed cool enough in summer that it didn't die back, but in our state, that's not going to happen for most folks. It is sad that Bermuda grass isn't a bit less aggressive because it thrives in our heat, although it often browns out in the summer (I refuse to water bermuda grass because I want for it all to die and go away) when we have drought. Sadly, it only goes dormant, and it doesn't die. Over the years, I've removed a lot of bermuda grass by digging it out away from flower beds and by shading it out as trees and shrubs got bigger every year. As you shade it out over the years, though, you do have to replace it with a shade-tolerant ground cover. We'll likely never be completely bermuda grass free because it fills the fields around here and seeds blow in, but we are keeping it manageable. When we moved here in 1999, I didn't think it ever would be manageable, so feel like we've made some progress. When you leave the pastures alone and let the prairie grasses and forbs get tall, the bermuda almost disappears, but if you mow the prairie grasses and wildflowers regularly, the bermuda takes over. So, even though Tim is a mowing maniac, he only mows the actual lawn area and the bar ditch area along the roadside regularly. Everywhere else we try to keep the prairie plants tall enough to minimize the bermuda grass. Usually, once it is so incredibly hot and dry that Tim feels compelled to mow everything down short to minimize fire danger, it also is so hot and insanely dry that the bermuda grass in the pastures cannot rebound and take over after he cuts the prairie grasses merely because there's not enough moisture. If mowing allowed bermuda grass to invade our pastures and take over, we'd never, ever mow them.

Ilene, When I have used DE, I have had mixed results. It works better for me when the weather is really, really hot and dry--which makes perfect sense when you consider that they way it kills them is that it cuts their exoskeleton and they dehydrate, thus dying of dehydration. It can take multiple applications for a mound, especially if you have an area where a mound pops up in the same exact spot year after year after year, indicating that in that area, the ants have tunneled deeply underground. (They can build extensive underground networks that go as deeply as 10' beneath the surface of the soil.) It never works as well in an area where I have really healthy soil with lots of organic material that holds moisture. It works much better out in the pastures with poor soil that have poor moisture retention. It also doesn't work as well in areas like the garden and lawn that receive regular irrigation. In well-hydrated or moisture-retentive areas, it kills a few but not as many as it kills in drier areas. Research studies have found it kills some ants by contact, but that the ants don't carry the DE back to the mound, so it only kills the ants who make physical contact with it. Some scientific studies have indicated that DE (as used within the parameters of their study) does not kill many fire ants, but anecdotal evidence by respected organic "experts" have shown that DE does kill some, though perhaps not all, the ants in a mound. I don't like using DE in the veggie garden because it can kill beneficial ground-dwelling insects, and I count on those insects to help keep the pest insects under control. I use plain old food grade DE that I buy in 5 or 10 lb. bags once every few years. I used to be able to buy it in a large bucket (same shape and size as a kitty litter bucket) at Marshall Grain in Ft. Worth when we lived there, but I don't make it down to Marshall Grain much any more, so I just order online. It is shipped in a clear plastic bag, but I store it in a kitty litter bucket. Some of the commercial DE Fire Ant Products are not 100% organic. Many of them contain pyrethrins and contain PBO which is toxic and not allowed in commercial, certified-organic operations. I hope you'll let us know how DE works for you long-term. It seems to work very well to prevent flea infestations in our dog yard, especially when alternated.....spraying the dog yard with orange oil one week and dusting it with DE the following week. For fire ants, though, it seems more hit-and-miss. To be fair to the DE, though, any organic product I've used for fire ants seems hit and miss as well. My dad's ant bed solution that he used decades ago is no longer environmentally correct.....he used to pour gasoline down the hole in the center of a mound and then dropped a match on it. It's a wonder he never burnt himself doing that! I wouldn't recommend it either--it is dangerous and, of course, the gasoline can get into ground water. In general, you "can't" drown fire ants because they form solid balls of ants (the ones I've seen have been about golf ball sized) and float in the water. However, one very old organic method of drowning them, commonly referred to as 'bucketing' the ants, has worked for some people. To bucket them, you partially fill a 5-gallon bucket with water to which you've added a few tablespoons of dishwashing liquid. Then, using a long-handled shovel, you scoop up as much of the mound as you can, dropping the ants, dirt, etc. into the soapy water in the bucket. Once you have all the mound in the bucket, you stir the dirt and soapy water together and add more water if needed to completely cover the mound. If your bucket has a lid, that's even better--place the lid on the bucket. Using this method, most if not all the ants in the bucket die within 24 hours. However, the ants that were below ground survive although you can come back and get them after they build a new mound. Bucketing is great if you just have a couple of mounds. Dawn

The two organic fire ant killers that I use probably are labeled for use around dogs, but you'll have to Google and read their labels and see. I don't use them in the dog yard because we don't have ants in the dog yard. I use them in the veggie garden. The organic fire ant killers are derived from natural organisms that target ants, and I do know people who've used them in yards where both dogs and children play. Conserve and Come And Get It both have Spinosad as their active ingredient. Spinosad also is used in some pet products, like heartworm pills, for example. Most dog breeds can take those heartworm pills, but in the back of my mind I am thinking there are some breeds that can't. Regardless, property used Spinosad products would be broadcast over a wide area and watered in so they wouldn't be lying around on the ground for a pet to lick up anyhow. I use another ant bait sometimes whose active ingredient is Avermectin. Here is some info on Conserve: Conserve Fire Ant Baits Here is some info on Avermectin, which is the active ingredient in Advance ant killer. In the Q&A section, they answer a question about using it around pets. Advance Ant Bait with Avermectin Both of the above ant baits are biocontrols derived from natural sources and biologically they target ants, not pets, but research carefully to your own satisfaction. I use them in gardens, not in dog yards, so I've never researched them for pet use. When used in my garden, which my dogs and cats both are allowed to enter and roam around in, neither the dogs nor cats ever have shown any interest in the ant baits used in the beds.