The time to start is the moment you first see a plant blooming. Except in the warmer part of the south, that plant is usually forsythia.

I would put the corn meal down before the tea or the compost. Actually I would skip both the tea and the compost but since it's all free for you, do what you want. If you apply the corn meal first, then the microbes that wash off of the compost (or out of the tea) will have food there immediately when they hit the ground. If you wait to apply the corn meal, the microbes might sit there hungry and not really go much for you. Compost is not fertilizer; it is a source of microbes.

dschall- that all makes sense. Thanks for that. So would you wait to spread any compost then? How long? Would I be better off doing various grains throughout the growing season, then maybe spread compost the following year? '09 will be my first year for organic.

Since compost is a very stable source of nutrients for your soil bacteria, the nutrients will not go away unless soil bacteria work on them and make those nutrients available to your plants, there is no real good time to not spread compost on your lawn although I would not spread it when that lawn is covered with snow. If you are using Corn Gluten Meal as a "weed" pre emergent that would need to be spread about 6 weeks before the "weeds" you want to control would start growing, but if that is to be simply a source of N for the soil bacteria then they should be active when you spread it, ie. when soil temperatures are above the mid 40's range. Since compost tea needs a good, active Soil Food Web to do much of anything you need to be sure you do have that before applying it and if you have a good, active Soil Food Web the compost tea will do little to change anything and is therefore a waste of your time and energy in applying it.

I would not be putting down corn gluten meal, just corn meal. Do you think I should wait between the corn meal and the compost? I guess I am just looking for the best way to start a program. I have read alot of the threads, and came up with this on my own- so I am open to suggestions. Thanks for any helpful suggestions you can give. I have various and differing qualities of "lawn" throughout my yard. I was looking to just make the soil healthy throughout as a first step.

You can apply compost or compost tea any time. They both do the same thing by providing Soil Foodweb microbes to the soil.

Making the soil healthy is not a step. It's a process. As soon as you stop using chemical fertilizer, insecticide, and herbicide, the soil will start to improve. When you start to feed real food to the microbes, the soil will improve. When grass grows, over time it sheds and replaces its roots. Those shed roots become "organic" matter in the soil. Of course the microbes in the soil are organic, too.

How does this translate to us in Florida with practically pure sand as a soil? What type of Food Soil Web exists in sandy soils and what is the net effect of compost of said sandy soil?

I can help with that. I used pure sand to cover my washed out limestone soil when we moved in in 1992. After many years of being on an organic program my sand has enough dark matter in it to trick you into thinking it is dark soil. I know the sand is still pure white because I tested it during a remodeling job a couple years ago. The contractor dug up an old walk way through the back yard and I was surprised to see the very dark brown color of the soil under the St Augustine. I scooped some up and dropped it into a glass of water. The white sand dropped to the bottom of the glass immediately. Most of the brown stuff floated and there was some brown discoloration of the water.

I used compost once on this yard in the late 90s. The sand came to me originally as a 50:50 mix with "compost" which was extremely hot at the time. It was basically sand and horse manure. Since 2002 I've used corn meal, alfalfa pellets, and corn gluten meal. That's all. The soil looks pretty rich but it really is only sand and the composted remains of roots, leaves, grass clippings, and whatever I've applied.

Does that help?

Yes that helps quite a bit. I see you are in Texas but I thought only Florida had high limstone soil content. Did you used to live in Florida too?

Never lived in Florida. My house in San Antonio is three streets away from a limestone quarry. Our limestone aquifer extends 100 miles to the west and is 50 miles wide. Other limestone formations run north and south. There are at least a dozen limestone quarries in the area and touristy caverns nearby. The non touristy caverns nearby are home to 40,000,000 Mexican free tailed bats every summer. It's not that the soil has limestone content, its more like we have to pulverize the limestone to make our soil. Check out the post from Lou on Dec 19th on this thread for a picture of our white soil.