Solarizing won't work unless you have 80 percent of available sunshine. Along the eastern Lake Michigan shoreline it is a useless practice because normally not enough sunshive is available.

Hi reptile girl: Let me say that I understand your feelings of being critizied and your question ignored. I read your original post then everyone thereafter, then back to yours. I'm hoping I can help you feel less attacked and perhaps give you a better understanding of how this site works. I also had an experience of feeling attacked and I barked back, then several people jumped on me etc. This is what I hear in your original posting: you are very proud of the hard work you have put into your garden of choice, SYG. You continue to give info about your efforts to provide the best growing mixture and fertilizers that have worked for you. You were not looking for any additional information about soil structure, how you should change the way you garden, etc. you are a happy camper with what you have accomplished and should be. The one question that you asked was what organic fertilizer could you add to your garden to insure the best possible crops. Instead you got bombarded with advice, corrections, suggestions, critisims etc. These are my thoughts that I hope help you; first it is helpful to understand that the people who hang out on the Garden Web are extremely knowledgable gardening people either through university or years of experience or both. These people can help you with virtually any question or problem that you may have. Also just by reading in several different areas you will learn so much more than you can imagine. Now all these experts are great resources but just like a professor, they are quite willing to share their ideas, thoughts, tried experiments and so on. And just as professors in the same subject area, they do not all agree with each others view point or practices. Often many of the postings are the experts discussing between themselves the positive & negatives of what has been written. One thing can be said about this site, there are many generous people who are willing to share their views and that's great. What you probably should do in the future is ask your question, that's it. By putting down so much info, everyone got on board with their ideas, stuff went back and forth and you ultimately felt attacked. They really are not attacking, they are very eager to share their knowledge to be a benefit to you. If you visit again and have a concern or question, I'd suggest giving only pertainent info that would help the other readers to give you exactly what your looking for, no more, no less. Those of us who reply to a post should probably take an extra minute to understand exactly what info is needed and offer only that unless the poster comes back to ask for more info. Efforts to help all who post are truly generous with their time and talent but I can see the flip side, so much response with so much advice and/or critiques can be overwhelming to the newbies. I hate to see & read the sniping back and forth that escalates to a point where some really nasty things are said. I think that before we offer so much advice, we may need to realize that not everyone wants or needs all of the knowledge that we are so eager to share and are then offended "after all we've done" when the writer says "enough." I hope reptile girl that you can see this site in a new positive way. My one big piece of advice comes from a Russian grandma that lived next door years ago. She had several potted rose bushes that produced gorgeous roses and all she did was throw left over vegetables, fruit skins, virtually anything into a pot, covered it with water and left it heat for many hours. What was left she poured on the roses. It sure worked. Last year I had quite a science experiment in my frig. plus stuff to go out to the compost pile. I gathered it all together and decided to put some of the scraps into my blender w/some water and spin for awhile. When I was done I had two big bowls of gunk that I poured on my two Deodor cedars. Within days those trees were sprouting all kinds of new growth on all the branches and both trees became substantially fuller and taller. I thought it was hilarious. Maybe I should repeat that routine and try it diluted much more in several other areas of the garden. I may be on to something. Good luck with your crops, it is fun and rewarding when you can actually feed yourself from your own garden, plus I'm sure the nutrition levels are so much greater than the average found in stores.

Orange oil, horticultural molasses and coffee ground work here too. Grasses and small bird sized berries have kept birds off my fruit. If you think about it a grape or a tomatoe is HUGE to a bird. In my garden birds prefer pokeberries,pigeon berries,sunflowers and grasses to the larger fruits. PJ

Hi Steve-I am in Upstate NY and have had great success with 1. various Johnathan Green organic products & following a specific application schedule provided by the regional sales rep 2. Cornmeal and molasses 3. Gardens Alive Iron X for spot week control 4. Garden's Alive Moss Aside for moss and mildew. 5. Gabriel Labs Burnout when necessary 6. Vinegar when necessary. It took me a while (around 5 years) to get things under control from the previous owner as the lawn was forced via chemical treatments vs naturally supported via organic products. I am happy to report that my lawn is now thick and lush but I still handle weeds with spot spraying with Iron X or Burn Out or straight vinegar, especially on these vine like weeds that come out from the forever wild on the back of my property. When I first moved in and started this program, doing manual spot weed control was a must even above and beyond the JGreen weed & fert , and now my weeds are fairly minimal. But it was the schedule provided by JGreen that gave me a starting point put me on the path of an effective, targeted program for my specific geography.