I remembered and found past messages of the captain where he mentioned using grain meal cattlefeeds for cheap cover crops. I thought at one time he also mentioned that corn gluten meal is a main ingredient in some other animal feeds and can be used as a weeder & feeder much like the expensive packaged corn gluten meal products sold by companies like gardens alive and blueseal.
Captain, if you know of a specific (and cheap) feed that's good for this, let us know. Thanks.
I can buy 50 lb bags of cracked corn for about $5.00 here. Most of my oat, wheat, corn cattle/horse feeds cost under $10.00 per 50 lb bag.
Corn gluten meal is used as an ingredient in many dog feeds. That can be expensive!
If you need the protein fertilizing powers or fungicide powers of corn, just use cheap plain corn meal products.
If you need the potential weed seed suppressing powers of CGM, you can either buy it, or just use more sprinkled compost in your lawn, in order to choke out new weeds, as your established lawn grows thicker. CGM only works on new weed seeds in the lawn.
You can also use cheap homemade vinegar sprays, as a powerful weed killer on established weeds. NOTE: Use sparingly, as needed! Acetic acid will kill any plant.
Thanks Captain. After looking into prices a little more I don't think I'll be using CGM on my own lawn, just continue to mow high and get rid of weeds before they seed. I'm not a lawn fanatic by any means; I'd rather spend time & money in the garden.
But here's some good news and a plug for corn gluten meal for anyone wanting to try it - I'm a high school teacher and they tried CGM on some of the athletic fields last year. They're very happy with the results and will be using it on more fields this year. It's great because they don't have the health concerns they did before when they were using the chemical weed killers.
Thank heaven someone has some sense. Our children should play ONLY on organic fields.
I agree with CC. He and I hang out on another list together with a guy who is doing his own personal research on corn meal (not corn GLUTEN meal). One thing he found in his research was that when he used ordinary corn meal on a new seed bed, the new seeds did not develop into plants like they did on the control seed bed. In other words, the ordinary corn meal suppressed the germination of the seeds similar to the way corn GLUTEN meal does. So while this research was not performed to scientific standards and the full power of statistical analysis has not been thrown at it, I'm no longer fertilizing new seed beds with corn products. I use alfalfa for that now.
