As long as your soil-free planting medium does not have synthetic slow release fertilizer mixed in you can use a soil soak of black strap molasses in water solution. I did research last year on the web and that is the conclusion I came to. According to the articles that I was able to find black strap molasses is great for contianer plants as well as plants in the ground. Most of the articles I read advised against using chlorinated water. If you are using municipal water on your lawn and notice good results with the BSM mixed in I say go for it in the containers. Most cities now add chloramine to water and it will not 'evaporate' out like chlorine did. Only filtration can remove chloramine. DL

Loretta: I was glad to see your posting on the vaccinum ovatum. I recently bought four of the evergreen type to replace four berberis thunbergii, that non-native, invasive "bad boy." I thought that the burgundy cast to the new-growth leaves coupled with the fact that it is evergreen could make it a promising substitute for the berberis. Since blueberries have done fairly well on my property, I remain hopeful about the huckleberries. Keep me posted.

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

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.