If you have the milk, or can get it really cheap, that might be something to consider, but for most of us that would be prohibitively expensive and since for most people a good source of organic matter that is often free and available about the same time every year is a better choice.

Hi, I just want to post an interesting observation I saw after applying regular milk.

There were a part outside of my lawn fence that I wanted to grow some grass and get rid of thatch. Even though I planted the seeds approximately two weeks ago, I only saw a few sprouts after a week. To be honest, I wasn't keeping it moist. So, I decided to try some milk on it. I used 8oz of milk diluted to 2gallon watering can and went to business yesterday at around 4pm. The temp was in the mid-80s.

Now when I checked the same area at around 1pm(temp in the low 80s), to my surprise, I saw A LOT of new sprouts. And they look healthy too. Not only that, the 'bare' soil seems moist!!! Bare in mind that I haven't watered it in like a week and honestly when I 'milked' it yesterday, all I saw was dry, sandy soil.

It was curious that the soil was still moist because in the link I provided in my first post, the farmer's land also had a similar experience.

[i]"Sometime in the winter of 2002 they had arranged to have some soil samples taken by a fertilizer company and on the day company employees arrived to do the sampling, it was 15 below zero. To their astonishment they discovered the probe went right into the soil in the fields where raw milk had been applied. In other fields the probe would not penetrate at all."[/i]

The thing that bothers me is the smell. It isn't striking but it does exist! I hope it doesn't become very seizing.

Will it get rid of the thatch? I will update in a week or two.

P.S. Not stating the sprouts came from the milk alone but that the milk had some play in keeping the soil moist longer than water.

...or maybe the moisture softened the soil right at the surface and allowed the sprouts that were already there to break free. Hard to tell.

kimmsr the discussion on the other forum was about the possibilities of enzymes from the raw milk. Enzymes catalyze biological reactions and are not used up in the process. Of course they degrade over time, but the point is a little enzyme can go a long way. We were thinking maybe the enzymes were responsible for any dramatic makeover when an obviously insufficient amount of bacteria and protein was applied.