corn meal

[flowergirl]

Being relatively new to organics I have to ask a "dumb" question of you guys. It was recommended to me to use cornmeal in my soil. I just read another posting from a different forum where the writer said that corn gluten meal would prevent seed germination. What is the difference between corn meal and corn gluten meal? And, will just plain cornmeal prevent germination as well? :? Thanks!

[dcluck]

No one here is going to classify this as a "dumb" question by any means. Basically you need to understand that gorn meal and gorn gluten meal are in fact to seperate products that each have their own benefits and uses in the organic program.

Horticultural corn meal acts as an anti-fungal agent and also serves as food for the naturally ocurring microbes in healthy soil. It also serves as a mild organic fertilizer. Being one of the cheaper amendments it's very popular and can be used any time you like. Corn meal does not, however, prevent seed germination.

Corn Gluten Meal is used to primarily as a pre-emergent for weeds but is also a powerful nitrogen based fertilizer as well. There are specific time tables for the use of CGM as an effective pre-emergent. Here in Texas it's best to put it down in late-February for control of spring/summer weeds, early June for continued weed prevention through the summer and again in mid September for control of fall and winter control. It's perhaps a little late for an effective fall treatment, but others have stated that it might still prevent some of the weed population from germinating. It's much more expensive than horticultural corn meal and it comes in two forms; granulated and powdered. Both are messy when applying them, but generally people prefer the powdered form since it's absorbed quicker.

~Dave

[Dchall_San_Antonio]

I have a friend on another forum who was a corn meal skeptic at first. He has been testing it for over a year against various fungi in his garden and collecting information from around the Internet. Among his testing he was trying it on new seeds to see if it would prevent damping off. What he found was that ordinary corn meal prevented significant seed growth and should not be used with new seeds. So ordinary corn meal works enough like corn GLUTEN meal against seeds that substitutes should be found to fertilize with. So I am suggesting people use alfalfa meal or pellets in conjunction with new seeds.

[Robert D Bard]

David is correct about other fertilizers for seeds and in addition to this i have found that sea water as fertilizer is wonderfull for seeds. It is the only complete fertilizer and totally organic. The wheat seed I am growing is wonderful with Ocean Nutrition - the only total nutrition available.
Robert D Bard

[Kathe Kitchens]

I'm curious...is the sea water desalinated? I would think that it would have too much salt and kill the plants otherwise. Maybe a silly question, but I'd like to know.

Not to be argumentative, but I do know of instances where horticultural cornmeal has had some preemergent effects. The gluten isn't completely removed from it and so there is a much lower percentage effect but it's still there. Once the seedlings are up 2-3" it shouldn't affect them.
Kathe

[Robert D Bard]

The salt in the sea water is the most important part of sea nutrition. If it were not for salt - NaCl - the other trace mineraqls would never be as absorbed into the plant as it is with the salt. This product is made by taking sea water from the ocean - from 40 miles off the east coast of FL to get out away from the pollution - and making a concentrate out of it. In other words if they take 10 gal out of ocean they remove 9 gal of water and bring 1 gal of concentrate back to the shore. When we use it we use 1 gal of concentrat to 100 gals of water. The amount of saline in this dilution is exactly the same as out blood. It happens to be just right for plants and then when we consume the plants it is just right for us and other animals. The orginial work was done by Dr. Murray and his book has been reprinted and can purchased at www.acresusa.com
They can't use the water out of the Gulf of Mexico because it is so polluted from the mid west farms and communities.
Robert D. Bard

[Dchall_San_Antonio]

For being an engineer, I was always horrible with dilutions and solutions. Does that mean that 1 gallon of seawater diluted with 10 gallons of freshwater is about what you use?

[Enzyme11]

Dchall_San_Antonio wrote: For being an engineer, I was always horrible with dilutions and solutions. Does that mean that 1 gallon of seawater diluted with 10 gallons of freshwater is about what you use?

Yup. By the way, that's a lot more dilute than the mixture that Thor Heyerdahl found the Kon Tiki crew could tolerate for drinking water.

[khwoz]

This may be dumb, but wouldn't the salts build up over time? What about using in potted plants? Does Seaweed Extract or Fish Emulsion come close to the values of Sea Water?