Question
Hi Charlotte,
  We put zoysia sod down about a month ago. We live in north Arkansas and have mostly clay and rocks, so we removed about 4" off the top (it was full of weeds), tilled it, and picked out rocks for hours! The sod is doing well, but the weeds, are trying to take over... too many to pull out. We were going to use Scott's Weed and Feed, but after reading up on it, I discovered your website and have totally been convinced to use organic measures. I'd like to know how we can prevent the weeds, and if we use sugar to feed the sod, will that attract ants? Do you have any additional suggestions? Thanks!

Answer
Hi Linda;
You water the sugar in, so it doesn't attract ants, besides, if you do get ants when you have a healthy enviornment for toads etc, they will get fat and sassy on the ants.
Chopped orange peels scattered over your yard, will keep fire ants out of your yard.
scatter them all over when fire ants are ready to swarm, and they won't come into your yard.
I have so many lizards, grass snakes and toads, that if any come in after i scatter the orange peels, those critters are eating them. i only scatter the peels in the spring when they are ready to swarm, but any lemon or orange peels i get after that, I chop and toss them out. I keep a mental grid so I scatter them in a different area each time.
Chopped lemon peekls will keep the neighborhood kitties from using your flwer beds for a litterbox.
the sugar nourishes the beneficial microbes that enrich the soil.
When your soil gets good and rich, weeds won't grow.
Weeds love poor soil, and will not thrive in rich soil, so any that come up, die out and disappear in a couple of mowings.
All I have put down for the last 8 years is sugar in the fall and spring, but this year i learned about lava sand and alfalfa meal, so I got some and put that all over.
You can also make alfalfa tea.
Put 1 cup of alfalfa meal in 5 gallons of water, and that is good to water houseplants about every two weeks or once a month, or to put in a sprayer and foliar feed, or you can just water plants with it.
It helps flowering plants put out more and larger blooms.
I watered a florabunda rose bush in the front yard with the tea, and a couple of weeks, when i was scattering the alfalfa meal, some was also scattered on the soil around that rose bush, and it is so full of new leaves you can't see the canes, and the new leavea are twice the size of the old ones. It should bloom again in a week or so, can't wait to see the blooms.
Lava sand, alfalfa meal, sugar, all those things will condition that clay further down.
Earthworms and cockroaches tunneling through the soil and leaving their droppings will help condition it further down.
If you can get some granulated gypsum, and put about 1 inch of that down, as it waters in and works through the soil, it really loosens that clay up. It loosened mine about 1 inch further down a year.
I put it on a couple of times, a few months apart.
What I used was snow white. It looked a little like perlite.
I got some a few years ago that was peleted gypsum, and it was grey. It didn't do diddly.
Write anytime you have question about organics.
I need to find out if I can write a long letter about what to use organically, and add it to my profile, so people can read it when they look at my profile. I think that would help you all a lot, right away, and you wouldn't have to wait as long for an answer, and it might also prompt some questions.
Gonna try that.

Charlotte