Thanks for the link, Gary. I started down that road a while back, trying to find someone who would do a test for me. Some of the places I found online wouldn't do it because I was not in their zip code. I was like, "Huh???" It didn't make sense to me. I don't know if it was a regional funding thing or what, but geeze, no one would take my dirt. :( I found one place on that list you sent that's at least in my area code, so that's the first place I'll call. Thanks.

bheron..........Two things: 1) To answer your question directed to me, it wasn't part of an official study. Rather, being the lawn obsessed person I am, I took a few containers and did my own experiment. I came away from it not that impressed with corn gluten meal as a pre-emergent but very impressed with it as a fertilizer. 2) As for when it goes down, the forsythia comment is the rule, but I don't think that anyone here has enough experience - or success - with it to say whether or not you can get away with doing it later. One additional point to add is that all of the official studies say that it takes several years to see the full benefit. In other words, in year #1, you will notice a bit less crabgrass, with the situation improving year-by-year. That is what led some of us to believe that the improvement could have been just as attributable to the fact that a well-fed organic lawn will eventually crowd out weeds. That brings us back to a common refrain on this board --- The best way to ensure limited weeds is to feed your soil yummy organic fertilizers, mow high, water deeply and infrequently, and don't be afraid to pull the occasional weed on your own. If the grass is super thick and healthy, then weeds don't stand a chance.

Great post, Egghead. You are, as usual, exactly correct. Lawn season did not start two weeks ago, when the temps first hit sixty. Lawn season may start, and it may not, this weekend, now that the temps have hit sixty for two weeks running (and I have to add "more or less"). Those of us who mowed, or who drove those tractors over the lawn, may have been (again, I have to add 'more or less') losing more to friction damage than we gained from the scouting around. We have been temporarily blessed, here in mid-Michigan, by a full week w/o rain, and with increasing temps and plenty of sunshine. Because of that, but only because of that, the season is starting, or about to start. More cloudy, or more rain, would have dictated that no, it hasn't started yet. Yet I confess that I am as guilty as the rest. I am, like you, just like a seven year old, who now fully appreciates Christmas, far more than a five or six year old ever could. And there it is: Christmas advertising, the day after Thanksgiving. Why can't Christmas get here sooner? It just doesn't seem fair...... And, as you know, it will get here. We just have to wait. We have to appreciate the delay, and recognize that it isn't actually something that we've done 'wrong' and that there's nothing for us, at present, to be doing. We have to be more like fishermen (I'm not one) or poker players (I am one) and let the situation develop, while we are watching, and be ready to toss the bait, yet patient enough not to toss the bait too early.....while knowing, the whole time, that the right opportunity would be here in just a bit. Let's do that.

I am looking for a wholesale source for cotton seed meal. I already offer 50 lb bags of alfalfa pellets and want to add CSM for my gardeners around Canyon Lake (between San Antonio and Austin). I am a garden center manager and try to encourage less toxic approaches to my customers. Being in an area that is alkaline by nature, CSM would be a natural. I do have a source and already offer cotton boll compost. Thanks for any thoughts and ideas. I need to figure out some feed store wholesale sources that make economical sense for me to offer a product. My owners give me a lot of leeway as long as I can make them a profit they don't care how, but I do. I want to continue to be a part of the solution not a cause of the problems that continue to plague the home gardener. Thanks and Happy Growing David