Hi (first my posting btw). I specialize in these little microbes and their networks. Neem oil will harm some of the beneficial microbes in the soil and some that even live on the foliage as well. Others however, can benifit from it given the concentration of the active ingingredient in the oil and the emulsifier that is blended to help it mix with water. The majority of neem are faty acids omega 3, 6,&9; many benificial microbes eat these. And unless you are Spryaing the neem oil directly on or below the soil, small ammounts should barely drip on the ground. It never hurts to replenish the microbial population with compost tea or a little molasses and fish emulsion. Hope this helped. This post was edited by ExteriorCareService on Tue, Aug 6, 13 at 13:28

Being in the pond business I have asked around a lot about this myself and really was shocked at what I found. Pretty much all the pond bacteria is grown by the same three chemical companies in the USA and none of them are in the pond business! What you want to look for is the bacteria count. In the dry the count should be at least 1 billion per gram and it goes as high as 5 billion per gram. Lately we have been using the American Pond brand, their Reg. dry is 1.5 per billion and the Super Dry is 5.1 per billion. Dry gives you more for your money. Place it in your falls on bio media for two hours do not run you pond but keep water in the falls area by blocking the tube so the water does not drain out. If you do not have a falls just spread it around the edge of the pond and let it set up house on the rocks. Good luck on your new pond. Here is a link that might be useful: NC Pond

Clarification of the Rutgers Education info. about horse manure, regarding the high iron of 3614, that's ppm dry weight, and different from % dry wt. ratio of NPK, calcium, and magnesium. The equal measurement is to the far right of the table. Here's in % lb/ton: N of 2.8, P of 1.4, K of 2.4, calcium of 1.2, magnesium of 0.4, sulfur of 0.2, and iron of 0.5. Now it looks much better, and the iron is not out of whack. Adding lime to deodorize the stall varies with stables, so aged horse manure varies from 7 to 10 in pH (someone reported a 10 pH in a soil forum). The most accurate test done on the effect of different growing medium is found in this website: http://www.uky.edu/Ag/HLA/anderson/orgfert3.pdf The above experiment is to learn about the efficiency of organic fertilizers and composts: fish emulsion, Omega 6-6-6, horse manure, cow manure, and worm castings. Highlights of this study: "Pepper plants treated with Peter's are normal. Plants treated with cow manure are somewhat better. Plants with horse manure are smaller. In tomato: plants grown in the worm casting, the horse manure, and no fertilizer control are stunt. This demonstrates that the worm and horse manure were probably NOT fully composted and they stole nutrients from the mix. The composted worm castings had a high pH, and very high nutrient levels. The composted cow manure had a very low pH and low phosphorus, and high levels of nitrogen, calcium, and magnesium. The composted horse manure had a very high pH and high phosphorus and potassium, with typical levels of nitrogen, calcium, and magnesium. But the plants performed poorly in horse manure, probably because this was INCOMPLETELY composted. Their conclusion: Omega and fish emulsion fertilizer can be used to grow vegetable transplants. A 20% to 30% of composted cow manure may be effective for transplants ... but worm castings and horse manure were NOT effective. My conclusion: it's always good to measure the pH of any manure before using. Someone reported a pH of 4.5 in their cow manure, while others reported a pH of 8 in a composted horse manure (it depends how much lime the stable uses to deodorize the stall). In the UK garden forum, someone reported a low pH in the horse manure - so it all depends if lime is used in a particular stall.

the 2 recipes are almost identical. 2 qts chopped peeled cored tomatoes 1 1/2 cups chopped seeded hot red peppers 1 qt vinegar divided is the same as 8 cups (64 ounces) canned, diced tomatoes, undrained 1½ cups seeded, chopped Serrano peppers 4 cups distilled white vinegar (5 percent) the rest is minor. But I like the recipe or both recipes. but I still have a question for Zakker. How do you grind up the peppers. blender or food processor or something else. *****using 1:2 vinegar. That a lot vinegar purchase!! I take it you mean 1 part mash to 2 parts vinegar. I suspect this is a common ratio that commercial people use. I suspect some of the cayenne people use more vinegar to dilute the salt. but lousiana hot sauce is cayenne mash with vinegar and it is kind of salty. Might be able to figure the dilution from the final salt and a good guess on the starting salt. Of course all mfg will rave about their process of making hot sauce. Tabasco sure does. But it seems to me that if you add 2 units of vinegar to the 1 unit of mash then why bother fermenting. You have so much vinegar that you may as well just use the pure vinegar method. Just putting the question to you to see what you might say. I really wonder if you can taste a difference. I would say that any fermentation taste is gone from tabasco. It tastes like flavored vinegar to me. And aging the tabasco sure is a waste of time and energy. I can not imagine that doing it with say a couple of weeks aging would be just as good as the 3 years of aging they claim. and the oak barrel might be ok for wine but I doubt it does anything for hot sauce. and what do you think of lamalu's 2 quick easy recipes. no fermentation. nice tomato taste. John do you know if you can ferment the tomato juice. Can we mix tomato juice and hot peppers and ferment them. The problem I see is that the tomato juice is already pretty low acid so it might not ferment properly. by the way pretty cool that you could purchase 100 pounds of hot peppers. I assume at a good price. Bye the way I have never been a cayenne fan. To me they always seemed hot without much flavor. just blind heat. well at 50,000 SHU they are hot and I dont find much flavor. For example I like habanero at say 350,000 SHU with good flavor. for some reason they do not have that same heat that cayenne has. However, It is interesting they have a new hybrid cayenne type with low heat. that has possibilities because the cayenne has nice high yield. so in a small garden maybe I can get more pepper for my hot sauce. then heat it up with other stuff. but zakker you seem to talk about the flavor of cayenne. so i find that interesting. what do you think of other pepper flavors. or maybe you like to get the flavor from the food and add the heat using cayenne. Bye the way ship 100 bottles to me pronto.