Aminopyralid contaminated manure 2012

[realfood]

Doxstar is used for the treatment of dockens, but you could do a google search to see if there is any literature on the effects of the chemicals involved. Try writing to Dow to see if the effects are similar to aminopyralid.

[alan refail]

All the documentation on Doxstar is available here


http://www.dowagro.com/uk/products/prod/doxstar.htm

[Ricard with an H]

In the one bed that I used cow-much from the farm I had a batch of withered french beans though other reasons may have been responsible for that withering, as you people keep pointing out, "It's been a poor year".

Also, shortly after planting that first batch I had strong south-westerly winds for nearly a week, then rain, then more wind and rain.

Right now that bed is producing beans from a second batch of plants and a third batch of plants look happy, have flowers, but I fear it may be a little too late for them to produce beans.

Other beds not treated with the cow-muck have produced failures so i'm hoping I can allocate Aminopyralid-hysteria to this situation and that Doxstar isn't/wont be responsible for any future failings.

I'm now piling cow-muck into two of my three beds but will leave it to over-winter. The third will be treated with the stuff from my compost bin when it is ready, together with comfrey.

[Johnboy]

Hi Richard,
Please log onto below website

http://msdssearch.dow.com/PublishedLite ... age=GetDoc

This give you the information to Doxstor from the manufacturers.
JB.

[alan refail]

Hi Johnboy

SNAP!

[Johnboy]

Hi Alan,
Sorry to have doubled-up on the information but I was in a hurry and only read Richards posting and missed yours. I suppose my only saving grace is that it is better to have the info twice rather than not at all!
What a pathetically weak excuse!
JB.

[Ricard with an H]

Thanks both anyway, it's been a help.

I had a strange conversation with the farmer who uses Doxstar, he's welcoming me to use as much from the old muck pile as I want and encourages me. He maintains his cow muck is regularly spread onto pasture and other crops though when I tried to get him to more specific about the other crops his helpfulness withered.

I'm doing one more batch test with a bean plant, I took a shovel full of muck and steeped it into a few gallons of water so I got a slurry. I'll feed this loan bean plant with the slurry but I probably need another different plant for the test. Perhaps a courgette plant that I can afford to loose.

The reason i'm being so careful is that this muck is over five years old so the question that remains unanswered (Or not completely answered) is, was he using Doxstar five years ago.

If it's innocent it would be a shame to loose the benefit of this massive muck pile.

[alan refail]

Ricard

This may be going a bit further off topic, but I wonder if your problems do not stem simply from using too much manure. You use phrases such as "I'm now piling cow-muck into two of my three beds" and "I took a shovel full of muck and steeped it into a few gallons of water so I got a slurry. I'll feed this loan bean plant with the slurry".

I only use my own compost which contains a lot of chicken and duck muck, and use it sparingly at that. I had always been led to believe that you can over use manure, but perhaps a manure user will be able to enlighten us.

[Ricard with an H]

It's entirely possible Alan, probable even.

Just to illustrate, the barrow load of muck has gone into a bed to be mixed with soil and sand that I just had delivered. I had considered two barrow loads into that bed with lots of sand but i'm not going to use that bed until next spring.

The shovel full of muck that went into water will be further watered down but I have no experience to work with and assume plants need feeding.

Don't mind me crying, make me have it.

[peter]

Squash/marrow/courgette will thrive on neat muck.

[Ricard with an H]

Squash/marrow/courgette will thrive on neat muck.

Thanks Peter, thats interesting, I just learnt that my new comfrey crop will also handle strong nutrients.

At home I have quite a lot of reading material and I do read the forum-archive but it isn't quite the same as getting a live solution.

Before this strays too-far from Aminopyralid contamination i'm not sure if I added that I had bought some Clover farm manure earlier in the year. I mixed into two beds, one bed containing the courgette, the other containing comfrey. Both are looking healthy though both are under merciless-attack from super-slugs. So, the AP didn't kill-off the courgette and comfrey, is that because the growth from the muck has been so persistent that it's kept up with the slug-diet.

Is it going to be easier for me buying from the Co-op ?

[John Walker]

Hello Ricard with an H.

Two of the active ingredients in Doxstar (fluroxypyr and triclopyr) are from from the same group of synthetic pyridine chemicals as aminopyralid and clopyralid. These polluting chemicals are extremely persistent in the environment and even minute traces can damage garden plants. These chemicals are absorbed by plants and lock onto their tougher fibres. Damage occurs when these fibres decay and release the chemical, which some crops then take up. These chemicals can persist for years in heaps of manure, where relatively little breakdown can occur, but once the polluted manure is mixed in the soil and is broken down by soil life, the residues are released.

I researched this topic recently for an article (link below). As far as I can see, no one really knows how long they can persist for (certainly several years) but it's certain that their persistence must have been known about before they were licensed.

http://www.hartley-botanic.co.uk/garden ... -own-goal/

The RHS lists the lawn weedkillers containing clopyralid and fluroxypyr, and also those containing triclopyr, another of the pyridine group.

clopyralid/2,4-D/MCPA - LawnClear 2
clopyralid/2,4-D/MCPA - LawnClear 2 Ready to Use
fluroxypyr/MCPA/clopyralid - Verdone Extra
fluroxypyr/MCPA/clopyralid - Verdone Extra Ready to Use

'Rough grassland weedkillers'

triclopyr - SBK Brushwood Killer
triclopyr - SBK Brushwood Killer Ready to Use

Link: http://www.rhs.org.uk/media/PDFs/Advice ... rGardeners

Tiny traces of these pyridine garden chemicals have the potential to pollute the 'composting stream'. If you put treated mowings out for collection, then you are potentially passing on problems for other gardeners down the line, especially those choosing to use peat-free composts. That said, most composts are now peat-reduced, and that might be achieved by adding quality green waste compost to them. So this is a problem for all gardeners.

The advice for treated clippings isn't going to win any environmental applause: send them to landfill. One example: http://www.lovethegarden.com/files/ve-label.pdf

It's important to remember that this is a problem that gardeners are responsible for if they don't follow the instructions on lawn weedkillers. It's a problem that's down to garden-generated pollution of the raw ingredients that go into making some peat-free/peat-reduced composts - not the fact that some composts are peat-free.

Chemical companies and regulators ultimately carry the can for allowing persistent chemicals to cause widespread environmental pollution. American gardeners were hit by clopyralid over a decade ago. It was withdrawn from garden use there in 2002.

[Ricard with an H]

Thanks John. I wouldn't have known that the chemicals, fluroxypyr and triclopyr are in the same family as aminopyralid and I doubt my local farmer would know, however, presumably they may not act in the same way. In the case of my grasses I have occasionally used a selective herbicide that I assume will be persistent but I don't pick-up the cut grasses. Otherwise my invasive control is with glyphosate.

Our local-authority has recently offered to pick up garden waste, from pick-up points in our case, from outside houses in the towns and the local tip takes garden waste. There are no warnings about the collection of contaminated garden waste and I guess a lot of gardeners would either ignore any warnings or never realise the implications of sending weed-and-feed contaminated cuttings to the tip.

Regarding my use of possibly-contaminated cow-muck, i'm desperate to improve my claggy soil structure so i'm hoping the inclusion of the muck now will mean any contaminants will have been dealt with by natural means by next April.

I don't remember if I mentioned this, I have recently used Clover farm manure on a bed with comfrey growing in it and a bed with courgette. In both cases the planting is healthy, in fact the comfrey is going crazy. Also, the Clover manure is blended in such a way that it's easier to mix with soil than the muck from the farm muck-pile. Sadly it's all down to costs, i've spent a lot of money this year to create about 30 square metres of raised bed to grow vegetables.

[peter]

One VERY important point here.

GLAllotments mentioned that DOW used the tern "half-life" when describing the persistence of these chemicals in the environment. This seems to have escaped most peoples notice.

Half-Life is more usually encountered in reference to nuclear materials such as plutonium, where, in thousands of years, it refers to the time taken for half of the plutonium to cease being radioactive.

In the chemical context it refers to the time taken for half of the contaminant to be rendered inert. Given that (from memory) a figure of three years was mentioned, this means that;
If 32g of active ingredient was present in 10 tons of muck or compost. - (1 ton = approx 1 cubic metre.)

After three years there will still be 16g of active ingredient in the soil those ten tons were applied to.

Every three years the remaining active ingredient halves, at twelve years 2g remains.

I don't have a clue what the application rates specified for use of the product mean in terms of how much active ingredient would be sprayed per square metre grassland, nor what that would translets into as to how much would be in a bale of hay or silage made from grassland sprayed that growing season. Even less clue on how much remains in the muck coming out of the cow or horses rear after consuming said hay/silage, but those are the rates at which it then becomes inactive in the manure heap or your garden soil. Although these rates vary, GLAllotments advice thread (above as a sticky) refers to frequent cultivation, ideally using a rotovator, as a means of speeding up the inertion rate.

Perhaps John Walker might have those figures as a result of his research, he says hopefully, together with the plant-affecting dose?
i.e. How much active ingredient in how much muck, added to how much soil, will do your crops in. Difficult figure to work out and, from what GLAllotments says it varies by plant species, grasses obviously being immune.

Such figures would be a great help to gardeners trying to deal with inadvertant contamination of their growing area.

John Walker is spot on about the stupidity of these chemicals being licenced for use, if they worked and then broke down into (relatively) harmless substances there would be no problem.
It is this persistence that is both; the reason it is marketable (long shelf-life) and the gardeners issue,

......These chemicals can persist for years in heaps of manure, where relatively little breakdown can occur, but once the polluted manure is mixed in the soil and is broken down by soil life, the residues are released.

because they are released ready to kill broad-leaved plants.

Another negative point, someone (was it Felix Leiter) mentioned the tendancy for farmers to over-dose when applying products. "If 1L per acre gets rid of most weeds in five weeks then 10L per acre will get rid of the lot in two weeks."

[Ricard with an H]

Blxxxxdy-hell Peter, good point.

I have something to share with you that hadn't until now realised might be significant.

At the end of May I sowed a few chilli plant seeds in a pot of NH compost, they germinated fairly quickly but sulked for ages. Even though I fed the seedlings with store-bought balanced feed these seedlings are still seedlings.

Whilst they didn't die, they do look contorted and of-course, they are stunted. I just re-potted in peat though I don't really see any point. They've obviously been disabled by something in the NH material that shouldn't be sold sold as a growing medium.