Forsythia Starting to Bloom!

Apply Corn Gluten Meal to Suppress Crabgrass Now

April 25th, 2003

Kingston, Ont. - If you are locked in an annual struggle with crabgrass, believe it or not, your struggle started this week. Currently, the Forsythia (Yellowbell) buds are starting to emerge. Forsythia is a short shrub common to Kingston, bearing a yellow blossom. This signals that the soil temperature is about 15 C (60 F) and that annual weed seeds, like crabgrass, are starting to germinate.

For those of you who don't want to use synthetic pesticides, Corn Gluten Meal (CGM) can be purchased at Pyke Farms or Loblaws' Garden Centers. This fertilizer is a by-product of corn-starch production and is an excellent fertilizer containing 10% Nitrogen. In addition, when this product is applied at a rate of 20-30 lbs/1000 ft2, and watered in, it releases a protein that inhibits annual weed germination.

The product is best applied twice at 6 week intervals followed by watering or rain. CGM provides a fertilizer boost to existing grass while inhibiting annual weed development. The best opportunity for applying CGM will be between now and May 14th.

Now some of you may have heard that CGM is now registered with Health Canada as a "pest control product" or "pesticide". In the past, vendors could not make the commercial claim that CGM controlled weeds because it was only registered as a fertilizer. However last September a frustrated vendor in Oshawa went ahead and obtained a temporary registration showing data that proved CGM's efficacy at controlling broad-leafed weeds.

It's important to also remember that Health Canada also exempted CGM from any toxicology testing because it is also registered by the US-FDA as a food additive in human foods as well as the US-DA for use as cattle feed! CGM is safe and natural and the only reason it was registered as a pest control product was to have the freedom as a vendor to make weed-control claims.

We would like to thank our readers for supporting this public education initiative. For more information, please visit www.prkingston.org.