I think I may have OVER sulfured my blueberries this Weekend, but I am not even sure I obtained the right Product When I stopped by my AG Supply store on my way to my plantings this weekend and asked for sulfur the provided a 50 LB bag of sulfer as a wettable powder, when I asked how much to use on my bushes most of which are about 3 foot and fairly well bushed, He stated about 4 cups spread around each bush, My plantings are not at my residence, and I had no manner to check here to elsewhere and I applied that amount to each this weekend, that was followed by a pretty heavy rain. It spoke of above on "burn" Is it like a nitrogen burn, and is sulfur a N value, as I know blueberries do not like heavy N , I will not be able to check on them for 2 weeks should I expect damage from 4 cups of this product listed below, I really have concern this morning on reading this and other posts. http://www.georgiagulfsulfur.com/images/ISIEM70.pdf SECTION 1 CHEMICAL IDENTITY Trade Name & Synonyms: Yellow Jacket Flowable Sulphur, EM 70 Chemical Name: Sulfur Family Name: Element - Sulfur Chemical Formula: S8 Appearance: Creamy pale yellow liquid CAS Number: 7704-34-9 Hazardous Ingredient: Sulphur % by Weight: Flowable Sulfur 53%, Fluid Sulfur 70% SECTION 2 PHYSICAL DATA Appearance: Creamy pale yellow liquid Odor: Sulphur odor, or faint odor of rotten eggs Purity: 52%, 70% Formula: S8 (Rhombic or monoclinic) Vapor Pressure: Solid: 0.0001 atm Liquid: 0.0014 atm Solubility In Water: Disperses to form an emulsion Specific Gravity: 1.30, 1.5 Boiling Point: Not available Freezing/Melting Point: Not applicable Bulk Density: 11.4 lbs. / gallon, 12.9 / gallon

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

Chandra, I ended up with at least 350' of garlic planted. Maybe a little more. Not sure on clove count. I planted most 8 inches apart. I planted different than I have in the past. 3 rows together 8-10 inches apart and the cloves on all varieties but the elephant approx. 8 inches apart. The elephant garlic is 10 inches apart in all directions. Several of the bulbs of it were medium to large undivided bulbs. All of the elephant bulbs stored well and appear very healthy. I culled alot of the other varieties. I attribute it too the way I stored them. Will change next year. If I have poor emergence on any variety I will just buy elephant garlic from the grocery store and fill in the blanks. I will use it as I can readily tell it apart from anything else I grow. I planted more varieties this year than last year as I was able to obtain some varieties that I wanted to grow. I'm concentrating on varieties with 4 cloves but no more than 8. I did plant 2 that has more than eight. I planted the following varieties. Elephant, Rosewood, Zemo, Brown Saxon(Hot), Keeper(Hot), Khabar, Old Homestead(OK heirloom.2nd chance),Musica(2nd chance), Bogatyr, Elmer's Topset, Nesenkeag, Colorado Purple(hint of sweetness), Chamisal Wild(rich flavor,NM heirloom), Metechi(heat), Red Estonian, Ayacucho, German Hardneck, Penasco Blue, Santa Fe Rocambole, K's Backyard Pskem, Nesenkeag, Elmer's Topset, Korean Mountain(heat and full flavor)

Jay, I don't understand the scale they're using for OM, but if yours has been over 20 in the past, that's outstanding (in my mind) even if they say it is too high. It wouldn't surprise me if your OM goes higher than 20 this year because I don't think you had enough moisture this year to break down everything you've added in the last year. (When we first started here, our OM was ZERO...nothing but clay...no sand...no silt.....you could make clay pots from the soil I started with). I dream of an OM in the 15-20 range, but I do try to keep mine in the 10-15 range, although a really wet year makes it drop.....I guess in a really wet year, OM might break down too quickly or maybe the small particles of OM leach out of the soil when we get 9" or 12" of rain in one day, which happens about every other year. You need one of our heavy rain storms to leach some stuff out of your soil. Do you mean that he wants you to apply an innoculant to your entire garden? I've only used innoculants in terms of coating beans or peas before planting them, so I don't know a lot about innoculant use on a larger scale. Do you buy innoculant for that purpose in a big bag at a farm store? I'm so confused on this point. Your high pH doesn't surprise me, except....with your OM being so high, I would have thought the pH would be in the low 7s. On the other hand, my water tests at 8.2 and my soil (especially the unimproved soil) is all over the place in the high 7s and low to mid-8s depending on where you dig it up from, so I understand having high pH. In the veggie garden, I try to keep it close to neutral, but that is really even harder than it sounds because it just inches its way back up constantly. What would we do without sulphur? LOL I'm guessing the total soluable salts wouldn't be as high if you averaged rainfall in the 30-35" range (sounds like a dream, doesn't it?) and had some leaching help in that area. I wish we could send you one of our toad strangler rains. Our second or third year here, we had a big Tstorm dump 5" of rain in about 2 hours and flash flooding ensued. At the time, I was astonished and couldn't imagine a heavier rainfall....until we subsequently recorded 7", 9" and 12.4" in a single day in various years. However, having one big rainfall doesn't make up for going 3 or 4 months with virtually no rain, but on the other hand it does help clean the soil of soluable salts. I think your soil test results are really, really wonderful and they show that you've worked really hard to get your OM levels up and have a great CEC, great drainage and great water-holding capacity (when there is water to hold). When that many things are right, it is harder to be worried about high nutrient levels because they are fairly easy to fix. I think your garden produced so well because you watch your plant foliage careully for signs of nutrient deficiencies and feed them accordingly. Even though your N tested high, you got great fruiting so I wonder if high N is not as much of a problem if P and K are also high? That would be my best guess, that high N-P-K in unison allow a garden to produce well whereas high N but low P and K might give you too much foliage and not enough flowers or fruit. I still think if I had your soil test results, I'd be feeling pretty good....you know what your soil's imbalances are now and you know what to do to counter that. Your soil is in great shape overall, and I can't help thinking your high OM offsets the high calcium and high soluable salts to a certain extent. You know how I love OM---I think that when your soil's OM is high it can counteract all kinds of other issues. I suppose lowering your calcium will be the toughest challenge if the soil and water in your corner of SW Kansas tend to run high in terms of pH and calcium in general. I know that the things I do to lower pH are 'temporary' and if I slack off even one year, my pH inches back up. You are unique in that you are 'loving your plants to death' with nutrition (and I use the term 'to death' loosely because your plants mostly lived and produced just fine)....whereas most people 'love their plants to death' with water. LOL Congrats on the great soil test results....even the things that seem like issues are easy to fix with his recommendations. You already have the important things right.....great drainage....great cation exchange capacity....great OM (if, hee hee, a bit high)....even great nutrient loads even though they are testing high. I can't help thinking all your nutrient numbers are high merely because of low rainfall these last few years. If you'd had 49" of rain there this year there like we've had here (the highest annual rainfall we've had since moving here in '99), I bet your N-P-K would be significantly lower and so would your soluable salts. So, looking at it that way, you didn't add too much of anything to your soil....Mother Nature just forgot to come along and pour down a good hard rain on it once or twice a month. You can always use your manure and grass clippings on newly broken ground since you can't put them into the existing garden....or you can use them in a compost pile. I'm not crazy about straw mulch...it doesn't pack down enough here and it blows around a lot unless we're having oodles of rain. I am wondering if you'll have that problem with straw mulch next year since you have such wild winds there? One more thing, in much of Texas in recent years, literally everyone is testing high in P and K and lots of folks are only applying nitrogen year in and year out, so it doesn't surprise me that your P & K are high too...I think that high P & K tends to be more common in our part of the country than previously believed. Dawn