Kimmsr's knowledge of kitty litter is incomplete, lol! Some brands are made of diatomaceous earth, which is what the poster is referring to. It makes an excellent potting soil amendment, but pretty useless as something that will improve your outdoor soil. There are also some calcined clay cat litters, pretty much as hard as Turface, that make very good additives to a potting medium. Those are very different from the soft clay litter familiar to most. Still not practical for use in situ, in the garden. As suggested, the regular addition of a combination of brown or green ingredients is what will help any kind of soil over time. Wood chips, pine bark, municipal compost, fall leaves, etc., can be added. Even the simple act of using a mulch composed of these and other organic components will find its way into the soil where it can do a great deal of good. I have a couple of loads of fresh wood chips delivered to me each year, at no cost. I have very dense red clay soil that somehow supports a healthy population of hardworking earthworms. They do all of the work of pulling the chips into the clay.

1) If you are using synthetic, you can be pretty sure that your grass is getting enough N,P,K. I think thatÂs a true statement. The P and the K requirements are dictated by accurate soil analysis. And you control the amounts of NPK applied. 2) If you are going organic, I am wondering if I will need tests to make sure that I get the right amount of the three. And if I were only putting something like soy bean meal down, won't I run into a major P and K deficit at some point? I have heard and believe that soil testing is far less important with an organic lawn care program. I like to diversify the organics by using corn meal, soybean meal and alfalfa pellets. All the autumn leaves get mulched into the lawn and piled onto the beds. Homemade compost gets spread across most of the lawn throughout the summer and fall as it becomes available. I donÂt worry about NPK at all. My KBG lawn is very dark and thick. Now the fine fescue in the shady areas is a still a challenge but is much better than when chemical fertilizers were used exclusively and the leaves went to the landfill (or to my horror, burned). Bill Hill

I've never posted in this forum, and I don't want to spend a lot of time introducing myself, but since 2002 I have moderated three organic lawn care forums around the Internet. I live in San Antonio and have noticed the mention of Malcolm Beck in another post by strawberryhill. That made me feel a little at home here. I have met Beck on many occasions as he had a monthly organic gardening community meeting running for a year or so in the early 2000s. Malcolm is considered the father of organic gardening in our part of Texas and has a huge following, so it is nice to see his mention in this forum. I have an observation or two (or a lot more) on this forum, but in the context of this thread, I'd like to hold my keyboard back somewhat. All my focus has been in lawns for these years, but in the course of many meetings and keeping my ear to the ground, I have learned a little about how the community cares for roses. First of all, to answer a question asked way up on this, the application rate for molasses over an area is 1 gallon per acre which equates to 3 ounces per 1,000 square feet. For spraying roses, the San Antonio organic community typically uses 3 ounces of molasses along with 3 ounces of liquid seaweed per gallon of water. Spray the undersides of the leaves and all surfaces of the plant. What this apparently does is feed the microbes living on the outside of the plant and those microbes help ward off sucking pests. If you add 3 ounces of garlic juice to the mix, it helps keep thrips off the roses. If you have not already discovered it, check your local farm and ranch co-op to see if they sell bulk molasses. Bulk molasses is sold by the pound. I think the current price is around $0.15 per pound which equates to about a $1.50 per gallon. This stuff is feed grade molasses, not food grade. Also I'd like to respond to somethings strawberryhill said above. This might be long so get comfortable. I have the same good results breaking up my rock hard dolomitic/limestone clay here with gypsum. I was digging a hole and stopped at rock-hard limestone at the bottom. I sprinkled gypsum, poured some water, and took a few hours break. I came back, and the bottom was softened enough to fish out more stones. I would highly suggest you get a soil test done before adding anything like gypsum to your soil. The best soil test lab in the country seems to be Logan Labs in Ohio. By best I mean bang for the buck as well as reliability in their test results. For $20 you get testing done that would cost up to $100 at most university soil test facilities. At LL that is their normal test so they are very experienced to doing it. At a university these would be considered "extra" and they'd have to order chemicals and relearn how to do the test. And in general, adding gypsum type calcium to a soil that is already calcareous seems like the wrong approach. In the past I dumped peat moss (pH 4), or alfalfa meal (pH 5.7) at the bottom of the hole. BIG MISTAKE ! Those fine particles glued up with my sticky clay ... and became concrete. University of California Extension listed 1 ton of gypsum as equivalent to 5.38 ton of sulfur. The only thing I would put in the bottom of the hole would be micorrhizal fungi and possibly rock phosphate. I also tested how sulfur soften my clay ... takes way longer than gypsum. It took at least one month for the sulfur to have an effect. A bit of gypsum is 5 times more effective than sulfur to soften clay, also to de-salt saline soil. First of all I would disagree with making this sound like a blanket statement. Gypsum does not soften soil except in special circumstances. Sulfur is a fungicide which kills the beneficial fungi which normally soften soil. So sulfur would be a bad idea for softening the soil. In the lawn community there are commercial surfactants sold to soften soil for professional sports complexes and golf courses. The cost roughly $70 per gallon which is out of reach for most home owners, but not out of reach for one of the moderators I worked with for several years. He also happens to be a soap hobbyist and junior chemist. Basically he tried the various surfactant materials and found they worked fantastic. Then he reverse engineered them and examined the ingredients. Then he bought those ingredients on eBay and started experimenting. As his basic tool he uses a screwdriver. Stab the screwdriver into the ground and measure how deep it goes. Then soften the soil and measure the penetration. Then along I came and simplified his approach. I have been recommending the use of baby shampoo at the rate of 3 ounces per 1,000 square feet. Apply to the soil and immediately follow up with 1 inch of water. A week later give another inch of water. A week after that reapply the shampoo and inch of water. That should set up the soil environment to favor the beneficial fungi which normally keep the soil soft. In the typical lawn this has worked across the country. In my yard after watering my soil is almost too soft to walk on without turning an ankle. That moderator experimented with increasing amounts of his surfactant to see how deep his soil would soften. He got up to about 50 ounces of surfactant per 1,000 square feet every week for months. There was no problem to the lawn (but I would redo this for roses to be sure). As far as softness, basically he ran out of screwdriver and had to resort to other measuring devices. I believe he was at a comfortable 20 inches or so of pretty soft soil (he's north of Philly). Another mod had a tree limb bury itself 27 inches deep in his lawn. So I would highly recommend trying this. Molasses & gypsum & sulfate of potash to lower alkaline water: It works better than vinegar, I wilted a few roses by watering plus vinegar in high heat. I tried used lemons last year, didn't green up. Molasses is thick so I dilute molasses with water, before adding the other 2 powders and shake the bottle. Then I use 1 teaspoon of that pre-mixed solution per 2 gallons water. Here's the basics if used from concentrated. Again making the blanket statement that gypsum is good for the soil is not going to work for many people. Certainly it won't work in Texas where most of the soil is limestone with a pH of 8.0. Normally we use vinegar instead of RoundUp to kill plants. Spraying it on plants is one thing (non selective herbicide), but using it on the soil is another (carbohydrate bacteria food). And I'm also interested in the mention and use of potassium sulfate (sulfate of potash). That is not an organic material. That is salt. I realize it is used in every commercially branded organic fertilizer, but that is why I never use those. So I'm curious why it is so prominent in an organic forum and what it does to enhance rose health or production. One teaspoon of thick molasses per 2 gallons of water, beyond that will turn the edge of leaves brownish (I did that to Gina's rose, most likely from the 20% iron of molasses). Wholesome Organics (zero salt) and Plantation brand (low-salt) also has 15% calcium and 20% potassium. I have not heard of any problems using 3 ounces of molasses per gallon. I'll check into this further. The purpose of adding sulfate of potash and calcium sulfate (gypsum) is to utilize the sulfur part to green up roses, and neutralize the lime in tap water. Again this only applies to calcarious soils, but I believe there is a much better material to use. Sulfur is a fungicide surpassed only in potency by most sulfates. If you want to harden your soil, the first thing you should use to kill the beneficial fungi is sulfates. If you have calcarious soil, you'll be better off using greensand (if you can find it) and mulching with a shredded tree mulch. As the mulch decomposes the organic humic acids from that process will do more to acidify your soil than sulfur. Any tree trimmer has the material you need. One teaspoon of gypsum powder per gallon of water, beyond that will make plants more prone to fungal diseases (rust and black spots). Too much calcium drives down potassium, necessary for disease-prevention. Instead scatter whole ground corn meal (the kind you cook with or animal feed) around the base of your roses. Cornmeal attracts the trichoderma (try koh DER mah) fungus. Trichoderma is a predatory fungus which feeds on the cell walls of other fungi. This research was done on peanuts at Texas A&M in Stephenville. They have suppressed the research and recently took it off the web. Basically what they found was that peanuts, which normally develop a fungal disease over the course of a season, had to be rotated with a non-fungal crop every year. By using ordinary corn meal on the ground (20 pounds per 1,000 square feet), they were able to use the same soil to grow peanuts year after year. I tried it on my roses and the PM and black spot disappeared in a 3 weeks. Corn meal is also a weak organic fertilizer so there is certainly no harm to try this approach. There was a lot more about the use of potassium sulfate and gypsum, so while I believe those are not good for an organic garden, I am interested to know why y'all thing they are.

Thanks everyone. My plants, no doubt, have some diseases. Still have lots of green tomatoes growing in the upper half of each plant but have some dead withered leaves near the base. Squash are still producing although some leaves have what looks like a fine white powder on them. Cukes are a mixed bag. The ones I planted in mid-May are really starting to slow down ... lots of leaves withering. But the pickling cukes planted in mid-June are a disaster ... more blossoms than I could have imagined but few produced. A good third of the leaves seemed to have simply withered away... still a good green color but totally limp. We've had an abnormally large amount of rain this summer, if that might be a factor. Don't use (and don't plan to) pesticides and I use organic fertilizer. Given your responses, it sounds as if I'd be better off to not take the chance of distributing diseased plant matter. I'm assuming that it would be equally unwise to use this material in areas where I grow shrubs and perennial flowers, right. Common sense says "right" but I still must ask. Thanks again.