gman1001 – posted 03 March 2004 08:32
Last summer I planted about 500Sq. feet of mostly p. rye on my new topsoil lawn. The mix had a little bit of Kentucky blue see mixed in. The seed came from a good outfit called LESCO which supplies products to the golf courses around here in Connecticut.
The grass sprung up, then the rains came, and so did the Grease spot. I applied some fungicide and it maybe helped a tiny bit. Then winter came, snow covered the lawn all winter. The snow melted this week, and now it looks like I have Gray Snowmold!!! It’s rapidly spreading and Im panicking!
What do you guys recomend???? I have small kids and don’t want to use harsh chemicals. I see alot of talk about cornmeal… Could this help?
Thanks in advance!
ted – posted 03 March 2004 13:23
lesco is a good company- ask them what you can buy to help this situation. make sure of what you have first, take pics, etc. the products that will work you probably can’t buy, so you may need to call a professional. forget the corn meal!
Dchall_San_Antonio – posted 04 March 2004 01:52
So Ted, how many times have you used corn meal on fungus problems? If you ever had, you would not be talking like that. Why don’t you give it a try? It absolutely works 100% of the time. It was tested at Texas A&M University at Stephenville where they demonstrated that peanut farmers no longer need to rotate their crops due to fungal disease. It really works! In addition it makes a perfectly good organic fertilizer.
The only time corn meal does not work against a turf fungus is when a synthetic fungicide has been used before the corn meal.
ted – posted 04 March 2004 11:57
peanuts are a long way from turfgrass. are you licensed to spray lawns?
jr – posted 04 March 2004 18:55
It is an absurdity to say that the one organism that corn meal allegedly attracts kills every single turf fungus every time. I am sure that it has not been tested against every problem fungus, in every type of turf, in every climate. It is irresponsible of you to claim it does when the people who post to this board are relying on us to dispense sound advice.
ted – posted 05 March 2004 16:19
i think there actually was a pre-em made from corn gluten at some point. maybe someone can shed some light on this one. i’m just not sure how you’re going to spread or spray corn on a lawn. there’s just too many other issues out there on lawns that have to be addressed. don’t really have anything against organics, and also i think someday more products will be made from plants we currently have. but for now, with some of these expensive lawns and landscpaes that are installed, i think it’s much better advice to stick with profesional methods. i’ve had as consultants 2 of the texas a & m turfgrass professors at college station, and i don’t remember any discussion about spreading corn. maybe someday, but not now!
gman1001 – posted 08 March 2004 09:11
Thanks for all the replys! Since i’ve got too many pets and two young kids, I think I’ll hold off on Fungicides and wait to see what the drier warmer weather brings me.
Who knows, this funges think is new to me. Grubs — old hat. Slime and dead grass??? WHAT THE HECK.
Thanks again.
Dchall_San_Antonio – posted 15 March 2004 10:15
quote:Originally posted by jr:It is an absurdity to say that the one organism that corn meal allegedly attracts kills every single turf fungus every time. I am sure that it has not been tested against every problem fungus, in every type of turf, in every climate. It is irresponsible of you to claim it does when the people who post to this board are relying on us to dispense sound advice.
I see that jr has never tried corn meal, either. Corn meal is the most sound advice you can find. It really does work every time under all conditions. Thousands of homeowners from Mexico to Canada prove it every summer, so I’m less likely to belive it is absurd. You can choose to ignore them and listen to your licensed friends, but I’m telling you it works. I’m just reporting, but my findings are similar in use against fungus disease in turf, roses and other ornamentals.
However, jr is probably right in one respect. Apparently corn meal attracts more than one microbe to do the killing. However, Trichoderma fungus species are very well known in the literature for killing a wide variety of fungus species. There is a patent on a product called T-22 that you can pay big money to get, or you can spread corn meal and grow your own in 3 weeks.
No I’m not licensed to spray pesticide. If I was in the inudstry I would pride myself on that fact. There is no need for chemical fungicides so why get a license.
The original research on corn meal was done at Texas A&M University at Stephenville. You can read about it here.
http://stephenville.tamu.edu/~clee/pdncr/index.html
Note that the fungi in question are the same ones that grow in the garden. So while peanuts are different, the diseases are not.
Corn meal is considered the biggest “discovery” in organic gardening since the discovery of composting.
jr – posted 16 March 2004 05:51
Long before any of us gets licensed, we get extensive education. Then upon being licensed, we practice turf management as our profession. Your whimsical backyard knowledge can not compare to that. If our customers could wait three weeks for cornmeal to work while some fungus is attacking their yard, I am sure they would love to save money, as fungicides are expensive. Meanwhile, by the time the Trichoderma shows up, there isn’t anything left to save.
gman1001 – posted 16 March 2004 06:18
Lets change the course here.
True it seems that the fungus kills turf overnight!
1. How dangerous is fungicide to human/pet health?
2. Does fungus only attack immature lawns?
cohiba – posted 16 March 2004 15:18
I spray because I have to keep my course looking its best while 300+ people a day walk all over my “lawn”. I also practice IPM. I am intrigued by corn meal and will look into this further. However, my advise to you is to get the all the info you can on the fungicides you choose. The manufactures are eager to give out labels, MSDS sheets and the like. See if you can re enter a lawn after its been treated. Remember the chemicals of today are not the “agent orange” of yesterday.As far as turf is concerned, any age turf can get disease at any time. You need three things to have a disease problem: A Host Plant, The disease organism, and favorable weather conditions for its developement. This is called the disease triangle.As far as saying what you have and being able to recommend a treatment: I would hesitate to tell anyone over the phone or computer what disease they have. I would have to see it before I would recommend any treatment. To be 100% sure of what you have I sugggest you call Rutgers Plant Pathology Lab and get a sample to them for anaysis.Good Luck, and remember: Its natural to have brown spots and blemishes, A perfect lawn is not natural.
Dchall_San_Antonio – posted 18 March 2004 00:57
One of the most interesting aspects of organic gardening is that all the things you thought you knew about gardening are not necessarily true. So while I appreciate your education, there are some things you have to unlearn if you want to be comfortable with the organic program.
I attended a huge California agriculture university and studied ornamental horticulture among other things. While we studied together, my wife got two agriculture degrees, one of which was a BS in ornamental horticulture. I would call the education we both got as extensive, although additional training was required for licensing as an applicator. The education we got was all chemical based. Back then the field of organic gardening was very hocus-pocus. This is where most readers probably are with respect to organic methods and why some may find my suggestions to be funny. What I have learned since graduating is that while the extensive education in the chemical program is great, it can be cut quickly to shreds after you begin your organic orientation. The chemistry-based education we all have received has taken several hundred years to compile, so I am absolutely not belittling it. I’m just saying that IF one chooses to use organic methods and materials, you will HAVE to recognize the differences and learn to stifle many (not all) of your long held beliefs. Getting over the history of mistaken research observations and conclusions built up over the past couple hundred years is often the biggest obstacle.
Heres the problem with the past 200 years of soil and agricultural science. The problem is that the scientists looked only at the chemistry of the soil and not the biology of the soil. It was not until the DNA analysis of soil microbes began 10 years ago that the huge strides in organic gardening began to take place. So the traditional (chemistry based) educators have 200 years of research to draw from and the biology oriented researchers have only 10.
I agree that professionals have to fix their customers problems fast because they are paying for a neat, green lawn all the time. The people writing in here are not generally anyones customers or they wouldn’t be writing in. Chances are they have spent too much time trying to identify the problem already and it may be too late. Part of the beauty of using corn meal is you don’t have to spend even 10 minutes trying to identify which specific fungus you have and selecting from many chemicals and waiting for just the right application temperature, sun, and moisture conditions. I can recognize a possible fungus problem, put corn meal down in the middle of the rain at night, and get excellent results. For paying customers, go ahead and use what you normally use for them – they want you to be there the day the fungus attacks and kill it before you would have normally returned for your weekly visit.
Now as for targeting my posts as inferior: I don’t see a need to belittle the suggestions anyone makes on this list. That is not the kind of forum they’ve got going here. Even though I do not agree with suggestions to use chemicals, I do not ridicule them or deny that they work. Debate is not what this list is for. All I offer is an alternative to using chemicals to cure everything. If someone asks a question about chemicals, I don’t answer it because I don’t have any good experience with them. Similarly, when someone asks a question about corn meal, I would not expect someone with no experience using them to provide an answer one way or the other. If you have a problem with that, take it up with the list owner. If he wants to boot me from the list, thats fine. There are plenty of places where the polite presentation of organic alternatives is welcome.