Hi
I am new to this board also but I am a longtime organic gardener. Still I am not familiar with corn gluten. I would not recommend using anything but a waste product of corn. Because it raises feed stock prices for farmers. Cedar hills is built on a sandbar if I remember correctly. So the first thing you'll want on your lawn is bio matter to help hold water and attract worms. I have used alfalfa pellets on my lawn for five years with great result. You should also mulch your lawn. Remove the bag from your mower so that the lawn feeds itself. Raising the height setting of your mower will reduce your water needs. If you have a lot of sand under your lawn no amount of water will keep it green. That's where alfalfa really helps. Alfalfa has ready nutrients it can release to your lawn. It adds bio mass easily because it is a favorite of microbes and bacteria, the main builders of soil. As alfalfa decomposes it will attract and build your population of worms. I have regular soil in my yard and I scatter the pellets by hand every spring and fall. The rate should be around ten to fifteen pellets per square foot. But use your own judgment. If your lawn is on sand I would recommend applying it every 2 or 3 weeks the first year to really build up the organics in your soil. Fifty pound bags are about 7 dollars at IFA. Of course they are also added to my veg garden every year as well. Coffee ground work great on the lawn. And if you have worm castings that works good as well.

People on the lawn forum and the organic lawn forum haven't had a lot of success with it.

If you read the research on it, it would take a lot for it to be effective, and most of the people who have posted saying that it doesn't work are applying at rates far below the ones suggested by the research.

Having said that, I've never applied pre emergents of any kind and have never seen a need to do so. I mow high and water infrequently. That encourages a lawn that doesn't allow crabgrass to get started.

We started out last year mowing our lawn too short but raised it up to about 2.5" in late June. Unfortunately, we have bare spots, thin spots, dry spots, and tons of already established crab grass. The lawn is a mess and was when we bought the house (our mistake in mowing last year didn't help either). We do mulch the lawn. We have a mulching mower and allowed the clippings to remain on the lawn after every other cutting all last year but it didn't seem to help.

I know the CGM is supposed to be applied at 20 lbs per 1000 sq ft, which shouldn't be too hard since our lot is only .13 acres. My goal is to stop the spread of the crabgrass so I can get a lawn that is naturally resistant to crabgrass infestation.

Is the alfalfa a pre-emergent as well? That was what I liked about the corn gluten meal, that it would stop the new weeds from growing while I worked on taking care of the existing weeds and encouraging the grass.

I don't think alfalfa will kill the crabgrass. If the spots are small try a clear peace of plastic in full sun. It will kill it in half of a warm day. Then seed after you're sure the crabgrass is dead.

Hey, ltlangel74, welcome to the Utah Gardening Forum! Did you see my posts on the Cedar Hills city forum urging people to join GardenWeb? I hope you like it -- besides the Utah forum, there are lots of helpful people in the Rocky Mountain forum as well.

I haven't tried CGM. I may not be much help if you want to be organic, because I'm a chemical user. Sounds like a confession, doesn't it? "Hi, I'm Steve, and I'm chemically dependent!" :-)

I find that Scott's Turfbuilder with Halts Crabgrass Preventer works well. I don't fertilize my lawn as much as some people do, because like you, I also use a mulching mower. The mulcher returns a lot of the nutrients to the soil and extends the fertilizer's effectiveness.

I don't know how much crabgrass you have, but for me, I get some good use out of one of those "claw" tools that you push into the lawn and then turn, and it digs out a weed clump pretty well. I don't get a lot of crabgrass, because my turf is pretty thick and healthy.

I do get some bindweed in the lawn once in a while, and I use Weed-B-Gon to kill it.

I think I will try alfalfa pellets this year, because I've heard great things about them as rose fertilizer, too. Sounds like a good all-around product. Thanks for the tip, skoob!

Hi Steve,

I did find this site through your post on the Cedar Hills forum (you may know me as grbpwr on that site).

I did try the Scotts last year in Spring and Fall but it didn't seem to help. I also sprayed weed killer on all the weeds every week without any noticeable difference. I changed all my cleaning supplies to organic over the past year and love it, it is so much more effective than chemical cleaners (baking soda, vinegar and Dr. Bonner's are my life) so I thought I would do the same for my yard, especially since chemicals didn't seem to get the job done last year.

I have TONS of weeds. The yard on one side of my driveway (luckily this is the smaller area of front yard) is nothing but weeds and bare spots and my backyard isn't much better. I was actually planning to get one of those claw things for my dandelion problem because digging them up by hand like I tried last year was a flop due to the super long roots. I will try that on my existing crabgrass.

Skoob, I hadn't heard about using plastic to kill existing crabgrass, but I had heard that a VERY light dusting of baking soda on existing crabgrass would kill it in about 5 hours without damaging the soil or grass around it. However, this has only been tested in warmer climates (FL, TX, etc.) so I was hesitant to use it, I think I will try both methods and see which is more effective.

At this point nothing short of setting the grass on fire and starting over will make most of my lawn look any worse (although I do have a really nice section directly in the front which I want to encourage to spread).

Hey, nice to "see" you here on the forum. I think you moved here from Virginia, right? I hope living here is working out well for you.

The Scott's fertilizer I mentioned only helps with preventing crabgrass, not killing it once it's growing. As for killing it, I just read that crabgrass is an annual, so all of last year's plants should be dead now, and the best way to kill it is the preemergent stuff, which will stop its seeds from sprouting. I'll post a link below that has some excellent info on the timing of applying the preemergent. Note what he says about aerating -- do that before applying a preemergent, or you ruin the effectiveness of the preemergent.

Here is a link that might be useful: Killing crabgrass

Where can I buy Corn Gluten Meal and Soya bean meal in Davis or Weber county? Could you let me know of any animal feed stores or garden stores that stock these?