Does Corn Meal Work on Fungus?

'Tis the season, another Dear Reader question.  I just finished throwing the tarp over the plants (the temperature, which wasn't expected to drop, is currently dropping like a rock), so fortunately I have a moment to answer this.

Corn meal has plenty of advantages for your lawn (and gardens), although I do tend to put down cracked corn instead of corn meal.  The cracked corn flows more like a commercial fertilizer, although it takes longer to work.  In either case, it's a great soil conditioner and wonderful way of adding organic matter.  It's not such a great feeding at 1.65-0.65-0.40 and I'd use soybean meal instead if feeding the lawn is your goal.

But to the question:  does corn meal work on fungus?

In one word:  yes.

In four words:  yes, but not quickly.

Corn adds trichoderma fungi to your lawn, which love to hunt down and eat other fungi (they're more or less the helpful little vampires of the fungal world).  Like any other biological agent, they take time to reproduce enough to gain an advantage over the disease fungi.  And like any predator, their reproductive cycle is slower than the fungi they hunt.

As a curative, corn meal will work, but additional damage may be done while you're waiting.  If you're simply trying to make certain that your summer patch problem isn't quite so bad, adding it now will help.  If it's July and you have summer patch running rampant and destroying your lawn, choosing a chemical control is certainly going to be faster, more effective, and leave you more lawn.

More or less, I consider corn meal a preventative, but not a particularly good curative.  While you can use it as a curative (and it is completely organic), it's not going to be fast.