Re: Corn gluten meal

Cyndi
To get a handle on weeds before they germinate it's best to start with corn gluten in early spring. It will also kill grass weed as far as I know.
Godi zone 7
Mt. Vernon, VA
----- Original Message ----- From: "Johnson Cyndi D Civ 95 CG/SCSRT" <cyndi.johnson@edwards.af.mil>
To: <gardenchat@hort.net>
Sent: Wednesday, May 10, 2006 12:43 PM
Subject: [CHAT] Corn gluten meal


I bought a couple bags of corn gluten meal from Gardens Alive!, figured I
would see if it really does keep the weeds down. Since I let it go so bad
last summer I knew the weeds would be awful this year. So far I've only used
the gluten meal in my onion bed and in the perennial herb bed.
I planted four rows of onions and spread the gluten meal on two rows so I
could compare what happened. It had pretty mixed results. On the untreated
rows, I had a huge crop of weeds - grass, horseweed, and lambsquarters. On
the treated rows, I had a lot of grass weeds and nothing else. Some of it
didn't look so healthy, but a lot of it germinated. After I weeded all that
out, I applied more gluten meal.
When I did the onions I also did the perennial herb bed, I spread the gluten
meal a lot more thickly and worked a bit of it into the soil. That worked
much better - for a while. However, it's been about six weeks I think and
grass is starting to germinate now. I am not sure how that works - does it
kill some of the seeds and I just had too many for it to be effective? Or
does it inhibit germination only for a while, while leaving the seed embryo
to wait for better conditions?
Anyway it's worth having around, I will probably use it again, but it isn't
a cure-all.

Cyndi

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