Natural Green Lawn

If you have spent any time here, then you know this site is all about natural lawn care. Being that as it may, we are not totally against traditional synthetic fertilization, but what we are against is the over-use of pesticides found in traditional 1-step weed-n-feed products found on the shelves of all your local big box retailers. Enter: Corn Gluten Meal For Lawns

What Is Corn Gluten Meal?

Corn gluten meal is a by-product of processing corn to make corn starch and corn syrup. It comes in a couple different forms, but mainly, for homeowners like you and me, you’ll find it in dry granular form. The pellets or granules are usually a yellow or tan/brown color. Corn gluten also contains about ten percent nitrogen, making it an excellent lawn fertilizer… a natural lawn fertilizer!

How Does Corn Gluten Meal Work to Kill Weeds?

Corn gluten meal prevents sprouting seeds from developing normal roots. It doesn’t directly destroy or kill off young weeds, but makes them susceptible to dehydration if the soil gets dry. Established plants are not affected.

When they are young, these plants/weedy lawn invaders are inhibited by the use of corn gluten in the lawn: crabgrass, creeping bentgrass, smart weed, dandelions, redroot bigweed, purslane, lambsquarter, foxtail, barnyard grass, and Bermuda grass. The biggest of these is the crab grass preventative nature of corn gluten.

Corn gluten meal has been classified by EPA as a “minimum risk pesticide” that is exempt from registration requirements. This means that corn gluten meal products can be sold without going through EPA’s registration process. The EPA also has registered one corn gluten meal product as a biological pesticide. Corn gluten should be a major part of your natural lawn care program.

How And When To Apply Corn Gluten Lawn Fertilizer

The product you buy will give you specific instructions, but as a general rule, you need to get your first corn gluten lawn treatment down in early spring, as soon as the snow melts (if you live in such an area). You can apply a second application in later spring just before summer.

I have always recommended around 10 pounds of corn gluten be laid to each 1,000 square feet of lawn space, but many pros will tell you to got as high as 12-15 lbs of corn gluten per 1,000 sq feet of turf. I think that is fine too. Just remember, as a homeowner, when you are applying this fertilizer, it is gonna seem like you are dumping bucketloads of the stuff on your lawn. Remember, natural and organic fertilizers must be applied in much higher application rates than traditional synthetic fertilizers. The other good news is that corn gluten will not burn your lawn.

here are some corn gluten products that you can get for your home:

Many of you are getting the idea that natural lawn care is really the way to go, and that is pretty exciting to me. I don’t mean to beat the dead horse here, but natural lawns look better and last longer when cared for and handled properly: and I will continue to say that!

But there are always going to be problems that crop up in our lawns and we need to be mindful of how to work through them in a responsible way. One of those issues is CrabGrass! Crab grass is an annual weedy grass that invades lawns from seeds deposited in the soil by previous years plants. Since crab grass is an annual, a single plant lives one year and just before winter, it drops seeds, which grow the following spring.

So How Do We Control CrabGrass Naturally?

Most hardware and big box home improvement stores carry lawn products that contain pre-emergent herbicides that basically stop grabgrass seeds from germinating in the later spring. For lack of a better term, these crab grass pre-emergents form a barrier at the soil line that keeps the young seedlings from every seeing the light of day. These herbicides are very effective, but they are not natural.

Natural Organic Crab Grass Control

The only natural crab grass control that I recommend is Corn Gluten Meal. Corn gluten meal has been used since the early 1980s as safe, natural lawn fertilizer and crab grass preventative. It is one of those “wonder” products that provides many benefits to lawns. It is a source of very slow releasing, no burning nitrogen, inhibits mold and fungal growth in soil, deters some types of lawn invading insects, and most importantly, inhibits the growth of your crabgrass and weeds.

There are just a couple things to keep in mind if you plant to use corn gluten meal as your chosen crabgrass preventor.

1) because it is organic/natural, corn gluten meal must be spread at a very heavy rate. Natural and organic products require very large doses to be effective. I recommend you spread corn gluten (the one I recommend below) at a rate of 10 lbs or product per 1,000 square feet of lawn area. This means that a 5,000 sq foot lawn would require a 50 pound bag for a single application.

2) timing is everything with corn gluten meal. As a fertilizer, you can use it anytime during the year, but to get the benefits of its crabgrass inhibiting properties, you need to apply it pretty much as soon as the snow is gone in early spring. This way, as temps rise, the stuff will get into the lawn where we want it.

The final thing to remember about corn gluten meal as a crab grass preventer is that time is a factor. What I mean is that the more times you use it, the more its inhibiting properties will build up in the soil and you will get better and better control each year. natural lawn care takes patience!