Michelle, I tried it a couple of years ago. It is kind of a fickle product wanting to go down at just the right time to prevent anything from coming up. Don't worry about the dogs it is in most dry dog food anyway. My dog's white paws were yellow for a couple of months tho. :)

Sure doesn't hurt anything and it is a good high nitrogen organic fert, but I never really saw any substantial pre-emergent qualities in my yard.

I had success with it; I sure hope you do too. I put it down heavily twice (early and late spring) out where nothing but ever-seeding pigweed and bare dirt had existed during the drought. I was hoping to just slow down the weeds but no pigweed came up at all. I've now reestablished the lawn there, still use it, and pull maybe 10 pigweed plants a year. From what I have heard you get better results with heavy applications and it is indeed time-sensitive, so I try to catch both the early and late spring sprouting times.

My dogs eat it - they go after all my organic stuff.

Michelle- How did the corn gluten work for you? I would also love to know where you bought yours at.
Does anyone else have any experience with corn gluten?

I still have two bags of it! I was going to apply it this spring when the Forsythia blooms (that was the best recommendation for when to apply it that I could find). My forsyth is finally going at it, and all the weeds have been up for a month! So I think I missed the boat on applying it. It's going to be spread out on the lawn.

I found it at a po-dunk feed dealership in Cortez. The guy there is really enthusiastic about it.

Haven't used the Preen either, so I guess I will just armor up and battle the weeds hand to hand.

Cheers,
Michelle

You're right, Tunny! Earlier I was looking up stuff about corn gluten meal, and when I went to a site that said it had a list of places you could buy it, the Preen site was one of them! I went there and checked out the regular Preen, and that DEFINITELY has a toxic ingredient, and I didn't look any further. But I just went back and checked out the veggie garden stuff, and that's exactly what it is---100%! Betcha you can buy corn gluten meal a whole lot cheaper if the package doesn't say Preen on it!

Skybird

Here is a link that might be useful: Preen label - pdf

"Betcha you can buy corn gluten meal a whole lot cheaper if the package doesn't say Preen on it!"

Actually, the way to get it the cheapest is to buy it at a feed store. If the label says anything about weed prevention, they pay a royalty to Iowa State University, because that's where the research was done on using it as a pre emergent.

I looked all over for CGM last year, since I was trying to avoid chemicals on the lawn. No one had it here, but the local feed store said they would order it for me. It was approx. $25 per 50 lb. bag, but that was last fall, the price has probably gone up since then. Using it in the veggie garden is probably not a good idea though, since it will suppress germination of ALL seeds, not just the weeds. I guess if you're not direct seeding anything it would be fine. The other thing is it only suppresses ANNUAL weeds, since the perennial weeds come back from the roots (ex. bindweed).

As far as using it for lawn fertilizer, it's a LOT more expensive than soybean meal, and this is my first year to try it, so I don't know if it is worth the extra money or not.

Bonnie

Corn gluten is considerable more expensive than preen, and if corn gluten is a strong ingredient in Preen, it has some odd differences.
Corn gluten does not merely stop existing weeds: it KILLS them over several applications. Preen must be applied every year. On my back lawn, I had 3 applications of corn gluten: when I first discovered it in October 2006, bought it and put it down (notice it is past the seasonal point in New England for stopping germination of fall seeds). Then again Spring 2007, autumn 2007. Spring 2007, I put it down in time, and autumn as well. Come Spring 2008, the dandelion population had decreased -- at the least -- by 50%. Could have been a little more, but I'll be conservative. I could actually walk around the yard and apply Weed-B-Gon to the dandelions that remained, and my lawn is 150 x 100 (half an acre). The other half acre is wild. It works, BUT: it doesn't seem to work if not put down EARLY spring (I agree with the other poster about the forsythias: I'd put it down around March 20th or so, given how mild the last winter was, and it just wasn't all that cold, even in March, in contrast to March 2007, when it was 10 degrees when I had a landscaper use his bobcat on the back half of the acre to kill those thorny bushes that were very invasive). So, with global warming, one might want to put down corn gluten earlier than suggested, since the weeds seem to come to life earlier. I might even put it down mid-March, then again around mid-April, and even again late May.
However, the stuff is stratospherically priced. While easily enough managed in gardens, to do a lawn my size, I would need 10 bags (20 if you use a 20lb bag/1000 sq ft., which is maximum effectiveness). That would be around $400.0.
So, somehow, I don't think Preen has the same ingredient, OR else it doesn't have the same permanent elimination effect.