Hi unsulphured molasses is horticultural grade. I read on here that it has to be brewed in a particular way to be used in horticultural applications but some people I have talked to use Blackstrap. I don't think people use the powdered kind - I don't know about that one. I only use it to brew compost tea and it is very small amount. I use a ratio of molasses to compost as 1:8 and aerate for at least 24 hours. It does feed the micro organisms so that they multiply. It does provide natural sugar as energy for my soiless medium and it does make it rich, earthy, and sweet. Otherwise I tried it alone during the seedling stage for one of my young tomato plants and it almost killed it. The straight molasses made the medium sticky and non-porous so I do not use it as a straight feed. I only use it to brew compost tea.

Hi Jolj: This may be obvious and forgive me, but can you identify where the red ants are coming from or are they under the compost pile. I think you must identify their source, then take very aggressive action. Here in the High Mojave Desert our Vector Control District wants to be notified immediately so they can chart the little monsters movement and they also say they will give you help which may mean just a pest control sight or ? You may need to move the pile a bit to observe their behavior. Horrid, nasty little monsters. That and killer bees make me very careful to keep looking around for anything unusual. Would you be willing to set up your worms in their own condo in the basement or laundry room for now and add as you feel confident you've eliminated the RA's? Out of the blue we suddenly had two hills show up in our lawn and it was practically instantaneous, weren't there one day and were the next. I got to discover them as I was out in the backyard with the dogs after dark one evening and apparently stumbled over one of the piles. I could clearly feel the bite, ouch!, and spent the remaining evening into the morning with my foot in an ice bath to kill the pain. I also take antihistamines due to really bad allegies so it wasn't just an allergic reaction, it hurt just like a severe burn from cooking. IT HURT for many hours. That was back in 2004. The next day I went out with the gasoline jug for the lawn mower, pour gasoline down each hill. I didn't light the hills on fire as we were in summertime and the heat generated down and inside the soil I'm sure did away with them. This past summer, I found them running around my yard on one side in a garden bed. No hills this time so watched their movement to see where they were moving back and forth from. I put down the Amdro granuals and that took care of them in my yard but I will be on the look out when soil warms up and ants begin to appear on surface. I don't care what's bad for the soil, the issues about dogs or cats or kids coming in contact with red ants is non-negotiable, I will do whatever to get RID of them And I agree burning the pile is likely the best bet. Immediate attention is absolutely necessary.

The other thing I have found is the fire ants become smart about the ant baits such as Come And Get It and Amdro. After a while the new mounds in the area won't touch it. Mounds way out on the property that hadn't been treated with the baits before will eat it. I'm not sure if this means some of the fire ants survive and are communicating with other ants, and warning them to not to eat the stuff, but it sure seems that way. When we first purchased our property we had a real problem with fire ants. I could not walk out to hang up laundry and not get bitten badly. They destroyed more trees that I planted than I care to think about. I was ready to give up ever being able to grow any fruit trees. In fact, I was pretty bummed out about not being able to garden in general. I was sick and tired of being bitten. My husband was ready to hire a blanket treatment of our entire acreage, but I did not want to poison everything. I decided to wage war on these guys. For the past year I have been treating every mound I find. It has greatly reduced the problem. However, I have to be constantly vigilant or the numbers start getting out of control again. I don't always get out on our whole property to check, but I keep a good watch over the whole area that surrounds our house and barn, and where I want to garden. Sometimes I use Amdro or Over And Out. They are less toxic near fruit trees or vegetable gardens. Sometimes I use a product that has Bifenthrin in it (I think that's what it's called). It is pretty effective and I don't see a lot of mound moving with it. Acephate just seems to make them move, so I don't use that anymore. I've noticed that once the mounds have been eliminated, the little Florida ants appear soon after. These are good guys and mind their own business. It's very discouraging to me that we have to deal with fire ants with this kind of magnitude. I can't set a potted plant directly on the ground for very long without the fire ants underground somehow knowing it's there and infesting it. Same thing with bags of potting soil. However, with vigilance I've been able to make a controlled area much more comfortable for gardening and hopefully with time won't be as much of a problem. We also set up a bug zapper light. I worry about killing beneficials with it, but an acquaintance I know who raises sheep swears it cut down on the mounds she has. Her poor sheep were getting bitten badly. When the ants swarm at night to mate a good share of them may likely get zapped. We had our zapper off for a couple of months and this past week I have had to kill many, many mounds again. So maybe the zapper helps.

Jill, You're welcome. Dried molasses is one of those things that sounds "odd" until you understand how it works to improve microbial life in the soil, isn't it? I think the molasses sold as a cattle supplement could work as long as you know they haven't addded anything to it that would be bad for your soil or for stuff grown in that soil. From what I understand, when sugar beets or sugar cane are processed to make sugar, sugar is the primary product they're after. So, after they've made the sugar, the leftover syrupy stuff is made into molasses for human consumption and for use in the garden. Then, the lower quality stuff that is left over from that process is turned into cattle feed. Unless something peculiar is added to it for the cattle, I don't know why it wouldn't work to stimulate microbial activity in the soil too. I'm less certain about the corn meal sold as cattle feed. Do you know if it is labeled as "corn meal" or as corn gluten meal" because I think it makes a difference. Corn gluten meal is the one used on the soil. How wonderful that you getting some ripe tomatoes! That is when it really feels like summer! And your daughter sounds like she's on the road to becoming a gardener herself! One funny thing about SunGold is that a lot of people who grow it the first time will complain that it doesn't taste that great, and then all of us who grow it every year are saying "What????" After a while, we figured out that a lot of newbies were harvesting it too early....as soon as it went from green to gold and weren't waiting for it to turn that distinctive golden-orange. So, clearly your daughter knew to wait for the Sungolds to get to the "yummy" stage which makes her a pretty smart cookie! I have tons of tomatoes on the plants, and it is a good thing, because "cool and rainy" are a distant memory here. Since our temps are in the danger zone, and are cranking up even higher this week, I probably won't get much additional fruit set on the plants that produce large tomatoes. If I can keep the cherry, currant, grape and paste types healthy, though, they'll set fruit for months yet. I did a walk-through of every row last night, and I have a handful of plants that look really bad. One of them is Wapisipicon Peach, which has never looked very good--just stayed wispy and wimpy and off-colored the whole time, literally from the day it was transplanted into the garden. It wilted and died over a 3 to 4 day period, so I'll take it out today. Two others that just look really bad and have had early blight for weeks are Caspian Pink and Valena Pink. Both of them are about 5' tall and the early blight has just traveled from bottom to top of the plant very rapidly. I've been trying to baby them along, but think I'll take them out today as they are getting worse and not better. The Valena Pink has two huge tomatoes that must weigh a pound-and-a-half or two. They are some of the largest tomatoes I've ever had on a plant. Those two are far enough along that I can pick them now and I think they will ripen. There are about a half-dozen smaller ones that won't though. Caspian Pink often looks really bad but outgrows the blight most years, but I don't think it will this year. Considering I have 140 plants, taking out a couple is no big deal. I do everything I can to avoid foliar diseases, except I don't spray with a fungicide as a preventive measure, and this is actually the best year ever. Usually I have blight on quite a few of them, so only having a bad case of it on three of them is not too bad. Long ago, I had to give up on the idea of having "beautiful" plants and settle for plants that produce ripe tomatoes! However, this year a lot of them do look pretty beautiful. I guess it is hard for early blight to grow and spread when there is no moisture. : ) Keep looking on the bright side.....because the weather has been wicked this year and you can't let it get you down. I am sorry you aren't going to have a good spring corn crop. Mine went in so late due to the late freezes that I don't know if I am going to get good ears or not. The corn itself looks great and has just tasseled, but with these high temperatures, the pollen may be sterile. I guess time will tell. Sorry about your pumpkins and okra too.....thank God for the fall garden! For fall corn, I think I am going to grow shoepeg corn ("Country Gentleman") because it is DH's and DS's favorite corn. I have "Seredipity" for spring corn and will just keep my fingers crossed that it pollinates before the heat gets too bad. M okra is making a slow recovery from being nibbled to the ground by the deer. About 8 plants came back although the others died. I should get okra from those 8, but have replanted more to replace the ones that didn't survive. One thing about fall gardening that I love (other than the fact that we get a "second chance" with crops that underperformed) is that a lot of the pests' life cycles are geared towards spring and summer crops. I never have as much of a pest problem on fall crops as on spring ones. And, now that I have a fence that truly seems to be deer-proof, I can grow more cool-season crops in the fall. Our deer have always preferred all the cool-season crops to the warm-season ones, especially cabbage and broccoli. Sweet potatoes love heat, so maybe it has been too cool for them to grow and maybe they will kick into gear now that more summer heat has arrived. With all the rain some of you have had, especially in your part of the state, I am amazed you have any garden left at all. I remember last year when my garden stayed wet for weeks and weeks, and even in the raised beds the moisture levels stayed incredibly high, and everything suffered greatly. To think y'all are having that kind of mositure again is mind-boggling. It is hard (but not impossible) to give peppers too much moisure (or soil that is too rich). Are your peppers off-color and dropping leaves? That probably would be too much moisture OR a nitrogen deficiency because the water-clogged roots can't take up nutrients because they are so full of water. If your tomatoes and peppers are in beds with identical drainage, the peppers "ought to" thrive if the tomatoes are thriving. Of course, your tomato plants probably are much larger than the pepper plants, so they can and do use more moisture. So, thinking about it in those terms, I can see why the peppers might be suffering. Last year I just kept my peppers in containers all summer and had a really good harvest and I don't think they would have done well here in last year's moisture. Too hot and dry....too cool and wet....too much this, and too little that. I'd like to have one year, just one year, with AVERAGE temperatures and AVERAGE rainfall. Instead, we seem to swing from one extreme to another, which IS (unfortunately) normal for us. At least we aren't in poor, flooded Iowa or in the San Francisco area where they are having temps in the 100s to 110s instead of their usual 70s and low 80s. A lot of California gardeners on the Tomato Forum have been begging for "hot weather plant tips" and, as you know from living here, there's not a lot you can do about the heat except hope it cools off. Our weather may be odd, but it still is pretty much what we and our gardens are used to having. Dawn