Tried searching but I didn't come up with anything definitive. How the ^&%* heck do you spread cornmeal? I tried a drop spreader; clogged up. I tried a rotary spreader; clogged up. I had to get my wife to walk beside the spreader and rod the meal to keep it flowing. talk about a PITA.

Are you guys telling the feed mills to make the meal as coarse as possible to keep from clogging or am I just unlucky?

Would cracked corn work just as well as a fungicide?

By hand on the corn meal if finely ground. You might be able to mix it with something grainier (like Milorganite) and get it to spread that way.

Cracked corn works just as well, and it's what I use. That flows through the spreader beautifully.

that's what I'll use from now on.
I have some brown patch should I retreat in a month to help control what's damaged now and help prevent future outbreaks?

It wouldn't hurt. Corn's not a strong preventative, and not great at curing existing problems, but if you keep up with it, it works quite well.

so maybe put down about 10lbs/1000 every other month all growing season to keep the good fungi active? I was planning on putting down a dose about the middle of august to prepare for disease this fall but the brown patch showed up overnight. Maybe because we had a record low of 80 degrees the other night and a dew point in the mid 60's.

Sure, I think it'll help--a bit, at least. I'd be quite careful to keep an eye on it and don't hesitate to pull out the fungicide if the problem shows again, though. Corn meal's great, but it's not perfect by any means.

If you haven't been organic for long, you should find that problems get more rare and less severe as time goes on. My (annoying, never dangerously bad) rust, red thread, and powdery mildew have all disappeared, and I'm glad to see the dumb things go away.

I thought cornmeal was highly respected for it's disease control; now you have me second guessing. Still a healthy dose won't hurt anything through the growing season and I can break out the fungicide if the situation warrants.

Don't second guess . We love the stuff. It's wonderful. It's a great preventative and will tend to help out a lot. But if you already have brown patch, it's not going to cure it fast enough to be much help.

Things, even preventative fungi, take time to build. Corn's fast, and usually starts preventing future disease very quickly, but I've noticed it definitely works better in a soil that's already used to organics.

It's completely unable to harm anything at normal levels (burying the grass would prob'ly be a bad idea, but other than that...) It's a nice, gentle feed for the lawn (very gentle), and good for the soil (very good).

I just don't want you to expect something it can't do, or at least not quickly.

I scatter corn meal by hand like I was feeding chickens. Gave up on the spreader after about five tries. Corn meal likes to suck up humidity. If you can get it dry enough it will flow through a spreader. Once it starts to absorb moisture, it clumps together.

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