Jentiller I am sorry but I don't have any advice for you, but was wondering if you could tell me where your getting your corn meal and gluten from and what your paying for it? I live about 45 minutes north of austin but im down there all the time. Thanks and good luck with the lawn

Again, no help for jentiller, but it sounds like it's a bit early for your sod to be well rooted or established.

bryantom, I recently bought corn meal at Georgetown Farm Supply on SH 29 just West of IH 35. I think I paid about $20 / 50 lbs bag. Local suppliers in Leander carry CGM, but it's always priced very high (>$40 / bag).

Hopefully that price for corn meal is a mistake. It should be less than half that amount.

I'm not sure how you could lose a lawn in Austin in May of this year unless it got flooded and diseased. The St Aug at my new house in Bandera grew from about 10 square feet to around 300 square feet since I moved in (summer 2014). The rain was amazingly helpful.

There might be someone, somewhere who advocates using compost every holiday, but I've never seen that. I do advocate using organic fertilizer every holiday, but please don't confuse compost with organic fertilizer. Compost is comprised of depleted fertilizers. 99% of the nutritional value of the ingredients is long gone in compost. So I'm not a fan of compost as a fertilizer.

Similarly I am not a big fan of corn gluten meal as a preemergent weed controller. It is the best organic fertilizer you can get, but really is poor as a weed control. As for your future fertilizer schedule, if you want to follow generally what I do, apply on Thanksgiving, Washington's Birthday, Memorial Day, 4th of July, and Labor Day. I use these because they are easy to remember. The application rate is 15-20 pounds per 1,000 square feet. If you've been using that along with corn meal, you're good to go. Put something down in November and forget about it until late winter. I would not use any chemical fertilizer in the spring, but it sounds like you'll never use them anyway.

St Augustine practically establishes itself. All you have to do is water deeply and infrequently, mow at the mower's highest setting, and fertilize 3-? times per year. For this new sod I would be watering lightly 2x per week, not deeply twice a week. With the cooler evening temps I have backed off on watering to once every 2-3 weeks. You'll get there, but with new grass you need to baby it a little at first.

Soil activator is sort of a key-word term in South Texas. You're likely referring to Medina Soil Activator. What did your soil test say about your magnesium levels? Medina Soil Activator is magnesium chloride and should only be used where the magnesium is deficient. Since you characterize your soil as clay, and there is almost no clay in Texas (with a few exceptions), you likely already have too much magnesium in the soil.

So keep backing off on your watering as the temps fall, mow high every week or two/three, and fertilize with corn gluten meal as often as you can afford. Your lawn will thrive on that care. You don't need top dressing, compost, aeration, or anything else. If you're listening to John Dromgoole, Bob Webster, or Howard Garrett on the weekend radio shows, just turn down the commercials. Those guys are selling Medina liquids and compost products that I firmly believe are unnecessary and lead you to buying still more stuff you don't need. I've seen many MANY a lawn killed by too much compost, and Bob Webster, for example, advocates too much compost. The Medina dry lawn fertilizer is excellent; however, so I can't just make a blanket statement about their products. Dromgoole's Lady Bug brand dry products are also excellent. They're just too expensive for me.

Since this is a new lawn, did you happen to rototill the soil before putting the sod down either this time or previous?

Bryantom: we get our corn meal from HEB :) 5 lb bag is $2-3 :). You'll want to be sure what you get is pure corn meal with no baking soda added, if you choose to get it at the store. I'm sure you can get it less expensively elsewhere in bulk. We just throw it by hand. I got a 40-lb bag of corn gluten at Buck Moore's on N Lamar (just north of 51st St) for $35 + tax. They're nice folks.

dc_hall: we did not rototill with this installation nor the last. The first lawn was installed 2 weeks before Memorial Day...and since you live in this part of Texas, you know the rest of that story. We nursed it through the summer but ended up replacing most of it. I was concerned about take-all disease, but we have large sections that remained healthy and, to this day, still look robust.

Thanks for the compost vs.organic fertilizer discussion. I'm fairly certain I read that schedule in one of your other threads and carelessly interchanged the terms. :) A primary goal would be to help get this gunky soil broken down and more "nutritious". It is disgusting -- sticky and glue-y and, when dry, hard like nothing I've ever seen before - and I'm a native Texan. My use of "soil activator" does refer to the Medina product.

SoIl analysis showed pH 8.0 and mag 281 ppm. The only item below critical level was nitrate.

If you want to get more grit into the soil & balance out the sludge, look into expanded shale, "turface" or "field & fairway". They're a natural water absorbent particle mix that's used to dry out wet sports fields & once it works down into the soil it breaks it up a lot. Less gooey mess & more air circulation to the root zone.

Jen just an FYI, I was at my local feed store today and asked about corn meal and the guy said it would be $9 for a 50 lb bag. I'm sure you can find the same thing around austin.

From what you've said I guess I still don't see how you could lose it. All I got was more and more dense grass powering right through the weeds. How were you watering over the summer? How often and for how long?

Also note that there are two Logan Labs soil tests from our area posted here in the past week. You might look at those and note the similarities. If you want to act based on those two tests you could, but if you want to know what your soil is, you'll need to have yours tested. I'm getting mine done as soon as I stop procrastinating.