What is CGM?

Yeah it might have corn gluten meal in it.. but it also has a lot of other stuff that you might not want so much like salts and whole seeds that may well sprout in your lawn. And other supplement stuff you don't really need either. And it might be cost prohibitive if you make comparisons between horse feed and stuff meant for lawns. Are you not finding the lawn stuff around you? It might still be a bit early for the stores to be stocking it depending on where you live.

Corn Gluten Meal, I imagine.

Yes CGM is Corn Gluten Meal :) and "supposed" to prevent crab-grass.

beesneeds - Yes it is expensive but it is part of my regular lawn regime. I use the regular lawn fertilizers to help my P-K but always try to get some organic dose for the lawn.

I was just browsing through but plan to put it on the lawn around April-May after an aeration.

"plan to put it on the lawn around April-May after an aeration."

Probably too late in the season to be very effective as a preemergent for crabgrass. To that end, it needs to be applied in early spring or 3-5 weeks prior to the crabgrass germination. If you just want it as an organic fertilizer, any other seed meal will work equally as effectively........soybean meal, cottonseed meal, neem seed meal, canola meal, etc.

Good point gardengal but aren't organics supposed to work more effectively when temps are warmer? Then probably I will have to put an app now and another later as well. Aeration is most likely going to disturb the barrier but not too concerned about it. So if Corn gluten meal is not there in the horse feed, where can I find it? So far called Tractor Supply, Southern States and both dont have it.

Have you no feed stores around as opposed to farm supply stores?

tj

I thought farm supply was the same as a feed store. Will be looking for one.

dchall - So CGM sounds like a sinking ship to me. My wife is the opposite and not bothered about the weeds but I am. While Prodiamine has done a great job with keeping crabgrass away, I think it has prevented birds from coming to our yard..so this is the reason I am on this rabbit trail for CGM just for the backyard. Sounds like I should just look at one of the 2 approaches -

1. Take care of the P-K of the soil (with regular fertilizer) and help the grass grow and hopefully take over the lawn against the weeds. (Kind of organic without any pre-emergent)

2. Do step 1 + get on a granular per-emergent instead of my Prodmaine jug :).

If you want to bring birds to the yard, here's my thoughts.

• Stop using all insecticides. Birds don't want to eat dying insects.
• I would severely limit herbicide use to once per year (mid April) and live with what you get for the rest of the year.
• Only fertilize with organic fertilizer. It is extremely easy to overthink fertilizers. There are probably hundreds of lawn gurus on YouTube recommending fertilizers. I don't listen to any of them. Corn meal and alfalfa pellets have worked wonders for my lawns. I stopped worrying about NPK completely about 20 years ago. Now all I care about is protein content of the animal feed I use for fertilizer. CGM has about the highest protein content of all the organic grain materials. You have to go to animal byproducts to get higher protein content. Ordinary corn meal is at or near the bottom of the protein list, but it still works.
• Use ordinary whole ground corn meal as a fertilizer. Birds seem to love that stuff. Cost at the feed store should be under $10 for 50 pounds. Apply at 15-20 pounds per 1,000 square feet starting in late May.
• Put up a bird feeder.
• Put up a bird bath.

Thank you dchall for the recommendation.

Will whole ground corn meal attract pests like mice/rat? :)

I don't use insecticides on my lawn. I did use alfalfa like you mentioned long back and lawn looked good but the greenup was for a brief period and the birds seemed happy as well with the alfalfa pellets. (Purina - Rabbit Food)

I will need to see where I can get whole ground corn.

Plan is to put down Soybean meal for 1 app and then Alfafa pellets for another app.

https://www.southernstates.com/catalog/product/p-19283-southern-states-hi-pro-soybean-meal-50-lb

SOUTHERN STATES HI-PRO SOYBEAN MEAL 50 LB - $20

CRUDE PROTEIN (MIN)

47.50%

CRUDE FAT (MIN)

0.50%

CRUDE FIBER (MAX)

4.00%

You would think that scattering food around would attract critters. Except for birds, I've never noticed any changes to the wild life. We lived in a rat infested neighborhood in town, but they did not seem attracted to my fertilizers. People ask if you use rabbit chow will the rabbits come running? No, they don't. We lived in a rural part of Texas for several years where people throw deer corn out for the deer. But when I put corn meal out we never saw any more deer than normal. The corn starts to decompose quickly. Maybe once the fungus hits it the critters stay away.

Soybean meal is great fertilizer due to that high protein content. Tractor Supply sells a very high protein fish food.

Called a feed store and they do have Soybean meal and Alfalfa pellets but same price as any other farm store in town. They were very hesitant to sell "Corn meal" in small quantities, sounded like they wanted to sell it only in larger quantities. Anyway back to Southern States or Tractor Supply. Agreed - Alfalfa didn't attract rodents or rabbits either.

ralph, if they don't already have it in bags, they might not want to bag it for you.