Which harmful fungus are you trying to treat for?
This best method of control for harmful fingi is to make your soil into a good, healthy soil so the Soil Food Web will naturally control those kinds of problems.
Constantly having to apply any artificial control, whether corn meal or anything else, is an indication that work needs to be done on the soil to make it healthy.

You don't say where you live but corn meal should be under $10 for 50 pounds. You might be looking at corn GLUTEN meal, which is more like $30-$60 for 50 pounds.

Actinovate is helpful in certain situation. Are you sure you're looking at corn meal, not corn GLUTEN meal? Are you looking for them at the animal feed store instead of nursery? It's much cheaper at animal feed stores compared to nurseries. I can understand if anyone wants to use Actinovate instead of corn meal. On windy days, corn meal is a mess.

I live in Tampa, FL and have scoured the feed stores all around and the only place that will order the horticultural corn meal charges me thirty dollars for a 50lb bag plus I have to travel twenty miles. They ordered two bags and when I went to pick up the second bag later last year, some rodents had eaten part of the bag at the feed store so he gave me a "deal" of eighteen dollars for the damaged bag. I can purchase Corn Gluten meal for less than the corn meal. The two oz. of Actinovate is only about twenty dollars.
I appreciate all the help the people on this site can give!

I've heard that about Florida grains prices before. Too bad. You should be able to get all the horse manure compost you want though ;-)

With all that in mind, calculate the cost per 1,000 square feet to apply corn meal and Actinovate. If Actinovate comes out the winner, please write back to let us know how it works for you. I really don't know anything about the use of Actinovate above the ground.

dchall,

2oz of Acinovate covers 5,000 sqft. One place sells it for 20 dollars. I haven't bought corn meal in years since the price skyrocketed and I much prefer soybean meal because of relatively low cost and MUCH easier to use with rotary spreader. On windy days when trying to beat the rain storms, corn meal just flies around and hits in my face so no more of that. I think corn meal is around 10-12 dollars a 50lbs bag for corn meal and it calls for 20lbs per 1000 sqft. so for the bag, it's 2500 sqft. Pretty much same price as actinovate based on 1,000 sqft.

So in lawnboy's case, he's much better off with actinovate and just simply go with cheapest feed he can find to feed ordinary soil microbes.

There's a product called Root Shield which is pretty much a super strain of trichodermia. Much stronger than ordinary trichodermia. So imagine, you get Root Shield and you'd have much stronger protection and you just keep them alive by feeding them cheap corn meal for the rest of your life.

Actinovate is a benefical microorganism called Steptomyces lyidcus strain WYEC 108 which is obviously much more powerful than ordinary ones. It works on brown patch, take all patch, dollar spot downy mildew, powdery mildrew, grey mold root rot, damping off (biggest reason I bought it to prevent damping off on tree seedlings), crown rot, blackspot, leaf spots, rusts & more.

Just going off what I read on the package that I bought. How do you keep them alive in the long run like you do with trichodermia and corn meal? I don't know...

I'll be looking for Root Shield this spring. Maybe I'll try Actinovate, too. What the heck!

Some questions for Lou. Are the packets of Actinovate dated so that you know you are receiving a fresh pack? Do you know if Actinovate controls Take-All fungus?

Nandina,

It says it controls take all patch (Gaeumannoymces graminis).

Actinovate has a stamp saying to be used before the date. Mine shows 07-01-10 so I have less than 5 months to use them all of them.