[John S]

Hi everybody,

I want to use corn gluten meal as an organic nitrogen fertilizer for my strawberries and vegetables. When I read about it, I always find that it also works as a herbicide. Can anyone tell me how long (weeks, months) it lasts as an herbicide? If I apply it on my strawberries in May and afterwords in July I sow broccoli I don’t want to have any germination problems.

Thanks

[BIG MURPH]

I have used corn gluten meal as a pre-emergent herbacide on my lawn, it works pretty well, but you need to apply it again in a couple of weeks for it to be effective. If you work it into the soil as a nitrogen source you should be OK, but I would wait a couple of weeks for it to break down before planting anything.

[Eric Vinje]

Hi John –

You are correct that corn gluten meal is a great nitrogen fertilizer, containing about 9%N. However, you must be careful when using it in your vegetable garden. Corn gluten acts as a pre-emergent herbicide and is often spread over lawns to prevent weed seeds from germinating. But, it is not specific to weeds and will discourage most seeds from germinating — including garden seeds — if the timing of its application coincides with germination. One application will last 5-6 weeks so time your planting accordingly.

Note: Corn gluten does absolutely nothing to weeds that have already germinated and will not harm transplants/ seedlings that may be going into the garden.

https://www.planetnatural.com/product/corn-gluten-meal-50-lb/

Hope this helps!

[Author]

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