Kitchen Garden Forum

Got a email saying "Aminopyralid contamination of home gardens and allotments is back."

First learned of this on Charles Dowding "No Dig" forum and and see from links for others this was a problem as far back as 2008.

Has anybody on here had first hand experience of this?

Thank you for posting that Colin, will give people a chance to check where their manure is coming from and to ask questions.
Thought we had seen the back of that, it was glallottments that did a lot of homework on this subject, for all on this forum...

We had some contaminated manure a few years ago (and, as OH says above, the subject was much discussed on this forum - see the archives?). We kept turning the affected manure over and then dug it into the soil. The only crop suffering were the potatoes but even they recovered eventually. The local farmer from whom we got the manure then assured us that he was no longer using the herbicide on his pastures.

It's definitely back as a problem. My brother-in-law breeds and shows dahlias and he lost most of his stock last year because he mulched them with contaminated straw. Apparently the offending chemical was being used to combat black grass that has become a real problem for cereal growers though I don't know why they bother spraying as much of it is now herbicide resistant.

I think the penny has just dropped , I've never done well with potatoes up two 2 years ago I would use manure were I grow potatoes ,three years ago I said to one of my neighbors down the plot that I was fed up with weeds it was a constant battle keeping them down we decided between the two of us that it must be the manure we were using so both of us stopped using it , last year my spuds were not great but better than previous years this year they are looking great I think I've five no shows from 112 planted previous years I've has 50% no shows

Colin, if you search for 'aminopyralid' in this forum, you will find a lot of information from years back - might be useful.

Seems to have been a major problem in the past and still is and getting worse with it getting into general compost

I thought farmers were not allowed to use this on any crops that leaves their farm.

I am fortunate I only use horse manurer from one source and so far seems ok.

I bought some ‘Country Natural Organic Stable Manure’ last year, and introduced it to my raised beds earlier this year. I started planting as usual, and all seemed fine at first. I then noticed my broad beans just didn’t look right. They looked whippy/spindly/distorted. I did a bit of googling and it was soon apparent that Aminopyralid was the culprit. I ended up pulling out the broad beans. My potatoes didn’t look too happy either, but I still had a crop. This year I bought some Levingtons composted manure, and have carried out a ‘bean test’. All seems well.