Corn is often ground up into a meal consistency called corn meal. If they grind it up more it is called corn flour. If they grind it up less, it is called cracked corn. All ground or cracked corn materials work the same and are applied at the same rate of 10-20 pounds per 1,000 square feet. I have been using corn meal since 2001 and have not seen any ants in my yard. If you have fire ants, they seem to hate sweets, so if you dissolve 3 tablespoons of table sugar or molasses in a gallon of water and drench their mound with it, they should go away. The theory is that the sugar breeds bacteria on their underground food supply that makes the food inedible for them, so they go away. You might also spray a 10 foot circle around the mound so they don't just move a few feet and set up a new camp. Some people have fortified the sugar mix by adding a few ounces per gallon of orange oil. Orange oil softens the exoskeleton on the ants which seems to hasten their demise.

When last I looked, this was the "Soil, Compost, and Mulch" forum. As with each forum on GardenWeb the purpose of this forum is as follows: "This forum is for the discussion of all aspects of soil--including topics like creating a healthy, balanced soil, methods of composting and using mulches effectively." There is no mention of organics or anything related to organic gardening. Thus, those who choose to use synthetic fertilizers, GM seed, or any other form of synthetic chemicals are welcomed to post on this forum. While I may not agree with their gardening/farming practices, their techniques work just as well if not better when combined with soil, compost, or mulch. Those who use synthetics have offered many a good, informative, and if one has an open mind, different direction that could be taken to a given conversation on this forum. Their knowledge has always been much welcomed within the community, for their solutions can be "converted" into organic solutions if dogma is kept out of the conversation. Living in a farming community, I have no choice but to learn how to deal with people/farmers who use synthetics. Each year my compost tea brewer has to be cranked up to counteract some synthetic spray that has invaded my "airspace". Yet, each year more and more of these synthetic inclined neighbors make their way to my home to get a "lil-bit of that good smellin dirt that grows such good maters". Toleration of differences and insight into how to deal with those things that cant be controlled can and does allow for a very productive organic garden I create each year. Perfect it may not be, but satisfying to ones spirit it is to do ones best Blutranes

Here's another advantage of whole-grain corn meal: ants and insects can't digest that stuff, thus decline. I buy 10 lbs. bag of cracked corn for $2.69 from the feed store, and grind them with a Nutri-mill flour-grinder. Awesome as a fertilizer, buds everywhere, fast result like alfalfa tea, but with more buds. NPK of whole-grain corn meal is 1.65/ 0.65 / 0.4 ... that's much better than horse manure with bedding, at NPK of 0.7 / 0.3 / 0.6, plus salt. pH of cracked corn is VERY ACIDIC at 3.5, thus neutralize my alkaline tap water at 8.3. I checked on fish bone meal, that stuff is so stinky that a person reported the neighbor couldn't sleep with its application. Both fish meal and fish bone meal attract huge black flies. I tested the refined corn-meal from Walmart ... it was worthless, no nutritious fatty germ layer, just junk-food that attracted flies, and didn't work as fertilizer nor fungicide. Some feed store grind the cracked corn into meal for a surcharge. Grubs are the larvae that hatch into Japanese Beetles. Here's an excerpt from Soil Forum â¢Posted by digdirt 6 -7 AR on Sat, Mar 15, 08 at 13:18 Corn meal also an effective control for grubs and cutworms - they love it but can't digest it, so they eat and die. I'd add it straight to the garden as well assuming we aren't talking a tiny little garden for that 25 lbs. ;) Dave This post was edited by Strawberryhill on Mon, Jul 21, 14 at 14:50

Hi Steve, I did find this site through your post on the Cedar Hills forum (you may know me as grbpwr on that site). I did try the Scotts last year in Spring and Fall but it didn't seem to help. I also sprayed weed killer on all the weeds every week without any noticeable difference. I changed all my cleaning supplies to organic over the past year and love it, it is so much more effective than chemical cleaners (baking soda, vinegar and Dr. Bonner's are my life) so I thought I would do the same for my yard, especially since chemicals didn't seem to get the job done last year. I have TONS of weeds. The yard on one side of my driveway (luckily this is the smaller area of front yard) is nothing but weeds and bare spots and my backyard isn't much better. I was actually planning to get one of those claw things for my dandelion problem because digging them up by hand like I tried last year was a flop due to the super long roots. I will try that on my existing crabgrass. Skoob, I hadn't heard about using plastic to kill existing crabgrass, but I had heard that a VERY light dusting of baking soda on existing crabgrass would kill it in about 5 hours without damaging the soil or grass around it. However, this has only been tested in warmer climates (FL, TX, etc.) so I was hesitant to use it, I think I will try both methods and see which is more effective. At this point nothing short of setting the grass on fire and starting over will make most of my lawn look any worse (although I do have a really nice section directly in the front which I want to encourage to spread).