Question
Hi, I just found your forum today and it is wonderful.  I want to put to use your advise on organic lawn care.  I think our new bermuda sod might need iron, but how do I go about finding chelated iron?  Are alfalfa PELLETS ok if I can't find the meal?  I haven't located the corn gluten meal either.  I did go out today and spread sugar - if I did it right, it really doesn't take much does it.  I think I may have used more than necessary, because it slides through the fingers so easily.  Do you find this to be the case when you use it?  I may have more questions later.  Thank! Ann

Answer
Hi Ann;
I can't find corn meal gluten here either. I have found it for sale on a few websites, but I am thinking that the amount you need would be prohibitive with shipping costs.
I have never used it.
I used nothing but the sugar for about 9 or 10 years, and found out about the alfalfa meal last year.
It is just ground up alfalfa and it is soooo full of nutrients.
I have to go to a feed store to get it.
I don't know about the pellets, because I don't know how tightly they are packed, so don't know how long they would have to soak to make a tea, or how long it would take for them to get the chemicals into the soil if you added them to soil and tilled or worked it in, or top dressed with it.
I just throw down a handful of the meal on a rosebush or shrub, broadcast it thinly by hand around the yard, or make a tea to foliar feed or to water houseplants with.

I can't see that gluten meal would be that much of an advantage.
It is the whole kernel of corn, so you get starch ( sugar ) and the fungus treatment, I would think, because the horticultural corn meal is just the hisks of the corn kernel.
I think if you used sugar or dry molasses, and horticultural corn meal, you would do the same as using the corn gluten meal.
If feed stores in your area don't carry alfalfa meal, I would get the smallest bag of pellets I could get and experiment with them.
They are probably just pellets made out of the ground up alfalfa ( alfalfa meal).
Drop a few in a bucket of water and see how long it takes them to disolve or break up into the meal.
You may have to soak them oner a coule of nights, rather than just one, but seems to me they would be the same thing, just one form a hard little pellet.
If they are to feed to stock, then I am sure that formMUST break down in the animal's system.
Alfalfa hay is very dusty, and gives horses etc sinus problems. I'll bet the pellets are a way of getting the alfalfa nutrition without the dust.
The meal is dusty too.
Charlotte