Greenlight has come out with another series of organic product to cope with fire ants, chigger, mosquitos and such and it is made with 2% cedar oil impregnated into clay particles to give it residual power. It is a repellant not a killer. Cedarcide yardsafe comes in 10 pound bags and covers 5000 square feet. I began offering this at my garden center here in Central Texas so I could give my customers an organic safe option than is affordable and safe for use in veggies and around the kiddos and areas near water. I am in a lake area and hate to know how many thousands of pounds of toxic pesticides end up in our drinking water. Just makes sense to look for the least toxic approach to a pest problem and that includes FIRE ANTS. If you use this product and it works or not for your situation talk about it share your info and experiences so we all can work toward a safer world. If we demand safe solutions and support the solutions that work we can make a difference and help guide others toward that direction one person at a time. Happy Growing David

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.

I successfully rid my yard of them by using the following: 2 oz of Garrett Juice (sold in Dallas, it's mostly molasses from the smell) and 2 oz of orange oil to 1 gallon of water. Pour it on the mound, kind of slowly so that it doesn't run off but seeps into the holes of the colony. Use the water to keep the keep the ants from coming to you. Within a few hours you can tell if there's activity on the mound. Slow, dying ants aren't a problem, but vigorous activity is. Drench it again. Big mounds might take a third application. Caveats: orange oil will kill plant roots, so don't use more than 2 oz on any one spot. Change the mixture to only 1 oz of orange oil if you think you will need more than 1 application. Also, big colonies will start other mounds quickly, so watch for them and treat sooner rather later. Eventually, you will get control--I did and haven't had a problem for 3 years. There is usually 1 attempt to start a colony each spring, but after treating it, nothing else. I used boiling water a couple of times and it does work, but it is hard to carry boiling water and it kills the plant roots. Diatomeceous earth (not for swimming pool use but for garden use) will kill them (and other bugs, too, good or bad), but it takes a really long time to get the whole colony. You can shovel the colony into a bucket and then kill them however you like. Dust the shovel handle and the bucket rim with baby powder--the ants can't crawl through it. Hope this helps!!

Darn it. You figured it out before I got on the computet his morning, so I didn't have a chance to hoot and holler and say "No-o-o-o! Don't fall for this garbage." This hoax has been around for several years. For the record, anytime someone posts something about a "new miracle solution" for anything in gardening, there is a 99.99% chance it is a hoax or is something that is just flat-out ridiculous. Most of these so-called solutions have floated around for years and have been debunked. When I come across a new one I haven't heard before, I go to Snopes.com to see if they address it on their website, and they often do. As far as fire ants, I've been dealing with them since they first appeared in our part of Texas in the late 1970s or early 1980s. While we have better methods of managing them now, there still are few organic solutions that really seem to work. The one that works best for me is anything with Spinosad. It doesn't take out all the fire ants, but it greatly reduces their numbers. I don't even worry much about fire ants any more because, like cockroaches and rats and snakes, they are here to stay. I just try to keep their mounds out of my veggie garden and out of the areas where we commonly walk. The big ant worry now for all of us now in this part of the country is Rasberry Crazy Ants. They are real, they do exist, and the scientists and researchers in Texas (and probably elsewhere) are just beginning to study them. I hope they figure out a way to manage them before these ants make it this far north. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Crazy Rasberry Ants Wiki