Question
Thank you so much for the information.  I've told almost everyone I know about you and the sugar advise.  I'm going to follow the organic program, and from what it sounds like is that all that needs to be done is the sugar and everything else seems to fall in place from there.  I had also watch Jerry Baker's program and have found online his receipes for cleaning the lawn and natural lawn food, etc.  Most of his recipes call for beer, coke, lemon dishsoap, lemon ammonia.  Is that type of maint. going to ruin whatever progress I make using the sugar process or will it assist?  Also, my backyard was not fully sodded when I bought my house, will spraying lawn seed or lawn food ruin this process also?


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Followup To
Question -
Hello, I live in Austin TX on an old corn field and am having a problem with my lawn.  I have dollar weeds (I think) and dandelion weeds growing (which I tried pulling, but most broke at the bottom where i couldn't pull by the root).  Please help with advice on how to liven and thicken up my grass and kill the weeds.  I read about laying out the sugar on the lawn...will that not cause ants or other insects to be attracted to my lot?  Also, how would I lay it out?  And would I need to water after I lay it out as I would with fertilizer?
Answer -
Hi Sue;
I broadcast the sugar by hand, like feeding chickens in a big chicken yard. Just get a handful and scatter it by waving your arm in a wide swath.
Yes, you water it in well.
It doesn't attract ants because you water it in and it disolves and goes into the ground.
When you make a safe envirrnment for lizards, toads, grass snakes and beneficial insects, all the insects you don't want are eaten by the beneficial critters.
I don't see ants of any kind, or grubs ( so we don't have the June bug problem), none of the bad bugs i used to work myself into the ground trying to battle.
For every harmful insect, there are hundreds of beneficial insects that eat the harmful ones.
Let the natural predators God created for us, and we don't need chemicals.
The beneficial critters and insects do a much better job than the chemicals do anyway.
Watering properly is one of the most important things in gardening.
I always water to a depth of at least 6 inches to encourage a deep root system.
deep roots rotect grass from heat, cold and drought damage.
watering shallow and every couple iof days keeps the top couple of inches damp, and the roots have to come to the surface to get water.
they sometimes come above ground, and die. Then they trap other lawn clippings and other debris, and that causes a thatch buildup.
With deep watering, when our Texas summers heat up, there is still moisture down where the roots are, so your grass better stands our summers. No thatch buildup, and you don't have to do that hard job of dethatching.
I haven't had to dethatch or aerate in the 40 years we have lived in this house.
It had thatch when we bought it, and it was impossible to get water to soak in, so my husband tilled it all up, tilled the thatch in so it could compost and add to the nutrients in the soil.
We tilled in some bark mulch, humus and peat moss to loosen up this clay soil we have up here ( i live in Irving), and the grass has done well since, except for the constant battle of the weeds.
Since I got my organic program established, and the soil is nice and rich, I don't see weeds coming up.
Such an easy solution, but it took me so long to find out about it.
Go to howard Garrett's site and check out his books.
He is the Texas' resident organic guru, and he has a ton of books out on orgnic gardening.
i watch his Tv show when I can catch it. It is on early Saturday morning, I think.
Here it is opart on one of the dallas broadcasts, but I just got his book a couple of weeks ago. I have read his column in the dallas Morning News for years.
You can get his books at Calloways' nurseries, and at feed stores, or go to
  www.dirtdoctor.com
He says dry molasses. when I first read that, he said sugar would work if you couldn't find dry molasses, and the nurseries here didn't carry it then.
I used sugar for a couple of years,and the weeds were gone, and everything was gorgeaou.
then they had dry molasses at the nursery so I tried it.
I liked the results with sugar better, and the bags of sugar are easier for me to handle than the 40 lb. bag of dry sugar. Also, I can just pick that up when I shop for groceries.
If I go to the nursery, I always come home with a car load of plants.LOl
If you want to get out those roots right away, and don'w want to wait the few weeks for the rich soil to chase them, get an asparagus cutter.
It is a tool on a rod about 12-16 inches long, and a forked blade on the end, kind of like this =============<<<. A shaft with a solid tool, forked at the end. I couldn't make an end properly on here.
LOL, can't draw well with a keyboard very well, anyway You kind of get the idea. You shove that forked end in the ground at a slant and cut the root off under the ground.
Write anytime you have a question I can help with.
Charlotte


Answer
Hi sue;
I am leery of the lemon dishsoap and lemon amonia and many of the other "kitchen lawn care remedies"
dish soaps are toxic to people if you ingest them, so I am not sure they would not harm my lawn critters.
The dish soap sprays are supposed to get bugs off things. Let the lawn critters do it. If they don't have a food supply, they will leave your yard. My dogs sure don't like the scent of amonia, and when I open a bottle of it they scat, so i am hinking the lizards might flee at the smell of it too.
You can get amonia sulfate in bags, and it does spur root production, but I haven't felt the need to use it in over 30 years.
The beer and coke, it's because of the sugar in them. diet coke won't work.
I tell the grandkids if they have left over soft drink, don't pour it down the sink, dump it on the ground for the microbes.
If you have a chemical lawn company spray grass seed or lawn food, it will kill your microbes, and harm your lawn critters.
If there are no chemical root starters or anything like that in the seed spraying, it might not be bad. Those chemical companies are just so afraid of not using enough poison.
They may put insecticide in the spray with the seed.
I don't know what they have in there.
If you have a grass that spreads by runners like, St. augustine or Burmuda, those runners will spread quickly with proper watering etc. Also, set your mower settings as low as they will go. NEVER scalp a lawn, but setting the mower blades to 1-1/2 or 2 inches, and mow when the blades have grown an inch. This will keep the nutrients from going to blade production and produce more roots instead. Each little root it produces, will spread the grass further.
It is a bit too early to seed or put in plugs. You need warmer weather for Burmuda seeds, and the St. Augustine plugs aren't in the nurseries yet, are they?
I think the st. Aug, sods come out earlier than you can seed with Burmuda.
I plug in st. augustine. I remember from about 30 years ago, I asked at the nursery about Burmuda seed, and it was early spring. He tole me it was too cool to seed. I think he told me to sow Burmuda seed in May.
If you have an area where st. Augustine is realy thinc, dig up some plugs from there and put them where it is thin. Keep it really well watered till the roots take hold.
When I plug in some st. augustine, I make it almost like a swamp for a wek or more.
I dig a hole that will fit the plug, then water it well and get it really wet, almost soupy, put in the piece of grass plug, and step on it to sqwish it into the mud so the roots are well in there, and the soil comes up over the blades. Just leave some blades sticking out to catch the sun.
Putting about an inch of top soil will boost the spreading too.
After I got my St. augustine growing , I let it grow to about 3 inches high, and put top soil on so that after i watered it well, there was about an inch of blade sticking out. I let it grow to about 3 inches high, and put more soil. That helped to establish the roots deeper.
You can even grab a shoot of st. augustine and pull it up. Get hold of the part running along the ground or just under that the blades come up from, pull up the whole runner, and put a bunch of these where it is thin, water like heck and sqwish in into the ground so that runner is buried some, and keep the wet. It will take hold and grow like the dickens. i put a whold handful of runners down in one place,  ( I usually dig a sort of trench to lay it in. cover with a litle soil, water and sqwish.
When you are planting hanging baskets,with something that trails ( a vine), you can fill 3/4th full of soil, plop a bunch of the vine in, put more soil on top f it and water, and it will grow like crazy.
Same principle putting in runners of grass.
Does that help, or confuse you?
Write if you need me to clarify.
Charlotte
As for the ome feedings etc.
Howard Garrett's book has all kinds of booster things to use.
I watched his show a couple weeks ago, and he said make alfalfa tea to water your blooming plants to make more blooms. so I went to the feed store and got a bag of alfalfa meal, went to Walmart and got a 5 gallon gas can.
You put 1 cup afalfa meal in 5 galons of water, let it set over night and water your blooming plants, indoors and out with it.
got by tea brewing as we speak. LOl
He has just about everything you want to know about organic gardening in his books, and you can get them at Calloways. I picked up one at the feed store. they may even carry them at Walmart.
The use what you have in your kitchen fad has ben catching on for some time.
I bought a couple of the book advertised on the informercials, and they are mostly just a handful of tips repeated over and over.
Those books are mostly to sell to make money, not to buy for useful information.
It is true though, that we don't have to run out and buy products to do everything. what we have at home is mostly multi-purpose.
Baking soda is used for so manny things, and white vinegar. Nothing better for killing the grass that comes up in sidewalk cracks and such places, especially if you use it on a hot day. Pour white vinegar on it, and it kills it right away. Don't pour it where you want something to grow though, because it kills the roots of everything you pour it on.
Howard Garrett has all kinds of uses for vinegar.
A teaspoon of sider vinegar in a gallon of water you water your houseplants with helps them a lot.
The secret is in which kind of vinegar you uase, and how much you use.
there is nothing wizerdly about the orange peels for fire ants. Orange oil is the basic ingredient for fire ant controls. So, I guess Amdro and all those fire ant killer companies, just put a bunch more junk in with some orange oil, and sell it to us for a big bunch.

Organics is more about what you DON'T do that what you do.
And yep, if we just do it the way God planned it in the first place, it will pretty much fall right into place.
Some of the things we call weeds, other people in other places call them flowers.
Clover is a pest in our yard, but little lambs and calves love it.
I personally like a variety of grasses in a lwan.
I paint, so I like differnet textures and shades of color.
Johnson grass just does not fit in anywhere though. LOl
Write anytime.
Charlotte