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

Melony, Ask away and no one is counting how many questions per thread. The only reason to post a separate thread on different topics would be to ensure that the GardenWeb search function could find them later. With molasses, I use it on an as-needed basis when adding organic matter or fertilizers to garden areas. Sometimes I put it on the compost pile where it works as a great compost activator by stimulating biological activity. There's really no rule about when to use. I just add it when I think an area needs a little more soil improvement. With drip irrigation, I use T-tape from DripWorks that has emitters/slits every 8", but my soil is heavier than Jay's. Even my sandy/silty soil has had some clay added to it in the veggie garden in an effort to make it hold water longer. In a new gardening area with very sandy soil which has not been improved very much yet, keeping it well-watered this year was difficult, so next year I'll run more drip lines through that area in an effort to keep it moist. I also hope to amend that soil quite a bit during the gardening off-season. I use soaker hoses for some things and most of mine last several years. I like to put them underneath the mulch because that protects them from the sun's UV rays to some degree. Really though, as time goes by, I'm switching more and more to drip irrigation than soaker hoses. They don't make soaker hoses as well as they used to and they do not seem to last long here. However, we have some soaker hoses that are 13 years old and completely encircle the house's foundation area. They stay there year-round and we use them to keep the clay soil around the foundation moist so it won't crack and cause the foundation to crack. Because we have a Victoria style house with wraparound raised porches, most of the soaker hoses are underneath the porches and are not exposed to direct sunlight which may be prolonging their lives. Either that or they are the best soaker hoses every made. I lift up the drip tape lines from the garden and let them dry out at the end of the season, then roll them up and store them in a big Rubbermaid tote indoors over the winter where they are not subjected to freezing temperatures. That prolongs their life somewhat. I've also used the black distribution lines where you punch holes where desired to insert emitters, drippers or sprayers at the intervals you choose in order to customize the spacing to suit your plantings. They work just fine, but if you rotate crops every year, you have to remember to rotate the driplines too with the correct spacing for the crop spacing. If you use customized lines with emitters at different spacing for each crop, you don't want to turn on your system and discover the bean beds have the driplines with tomato plant spacing and vice versa. Like Jay, I mix and match watering systems as needed. The way I do things in a very dry year is different from a very wet year or even an average year. I just try to go with the flow and alter things if I am not happy with how the system is working. Sometimes I'll even turn on the sprinkler and water with it for a while during a prolonged period of very hot weather just because the plants look so dry and dusty. Dawn

Oh dear. Details :) It's been over three years since we did them--I honestly don't remember exactly what kind of concrete we used. I know it wasn't anything terribly fancy. We had a local concrete supply store, and the dye was just their version of "black." It was scooped out of a barrel and presented in a paper lunch bag. I think the whole kitchen came out to about $700, but I don't know the sf of counter space (we don't live there now). You could guesstimate from the pictures. It took a while. Probably 10 total hours for the forms, and maybe 5 hours for the pours. We mixed by hand. One thing we did that I wish we hadn't was make the concrete for the main stretch too stiff. It may be stronger that way, but the island, which we made wetter, came out better--less holes to backfill, and an overall smoother surface. I believe it had to cure for a week or 10 days, then we did the buffing, which took probably 15 hours total for all of it. We did not grind it to expose aggregate, which would have increased the labor quite a bit. I liked the uniform, stone-like look. Something we did differently than Cheng recommends was to use that concrete mesh stuff instead of creating a rebar form. Much easier. We did put some rebar in the island because of the overhang, and ended up regretting that when it made a shadow in the finished top. If you decide to go with rebar, get it as close to the bottom of your finished counters as possible. What else...they were heavy, but not so heavy that 4 people couldn't handle the island. They never cracked while we were there. We used the wax and sealer that Cheng sells, and were very happy with it. It was enough that it seemed like it would last years. They needed to be re-waxed every couple of months, which took maybe 20 minutes. You might want to look at this "instructables" page: http://www.instructables.com/id/Concrete-Countertops-for-the-Kitchen---Solid-Surfa/ Good luck, and you're welcome to e-mail me if you'd like.

Here ya go. Chewy Molasses Cookies (Annie CF) 1 1/2 cups of shortening (I use half and half with butter, but all butter makes them too crispy for my taste) 1 cups granulated sugar 1 cup dark brown sugar 2 eggs 3/4 cup of dark molasses 4 1/2 cups flour 1 teaspoon salt 4 teaspoons baking soda 2 teaspoons cinnamon 2 teaspoons ginger 1 teaspoon ground cloves Chopped crystalized ginger, optional, to taste. I used about half a cup, finely chopped and wish I'd have used more but I love ginger Coarse sugar or turbinado sugar for rolling Cream the shortening and sugars. Add the molasses and eggs and mix until well blended. Sift the flour (yeah right, I don't, LOL) and measure 4 1/2 cups into a separate bowl. Add the spices, salt, and baking soda and whisk to combine. Turn the mixer to low or stir, and add the flour slowly until well mixed. Stir in the chopped ginger and chill the dough for at least an hour. After the dough has chilled for an hour, roll tablespoonfuls of the dough into balls and roll the balls in the coarse sugar to completely coat. Place the dough balls about an inch apart on a greased or parchment-lined cookie sheet and bake for 12 to 15 minutes in a 350 degree oven. The cookies will puff up and crack. When the cookies are done the cracks should still look a little wet, but the outside should look dry. They'll "fall" a little as they cool, let them sit a couple of minutes on the sheet before you try to move them to cooling racks.