Kitchen Garden Forum

The aminopyralid problem is still with us I see. I spotted a post on another forum today reporting the problem in well rotted horse manure.
Remember to do the bean test before adding any manure to your ground.

There's still lots of hits on the manure pages of my website too so people are still looking for information about the problem

The post that I saw referred to horse manure from the Hertford area.

Just an update to let you know that there are still cases of suspected aminopyralid contamination of manure.

This month I have had two reports to my website of people being hit by this problem - one being a small market garden. The authorities have been contacted but seem convinced that the problem is related to old stacks of manure being distributed but both reports claim that the manure was freshly produced this year.

If this is true it is very worrying. If you want to read more details of the reports including photos sent to my website you can access them here http://glallotments.co.uk/Manure2011.aspx

If you are a recent victim and would like your experiences to be added then contact me.

Our allotments were badly affected two years ago. This year I planted potatoes on a bed that had the aminopyralid contaminated manure two years ago and has been well dug over several times since. There was no sign of the curly leaves this year, but it is now obvious that there is still a residual effect. The shaws are much smaller and stunted than on an adjacent bed which had none of the contaminated manure. The yield will be well down.
Checked with another plotter who has noticed the same effect. The moral is it can take up to three years cultivation to hopefully eliminate the aminopyralid.

Hi Realfood,
Showing my total ignorance but what are 'Shaws?'
JB.

Thank you Alan.
JB.

Sorry, I did not realize that it was a Scottish word!

Hi Realfood,
No reason for you to be sorry and now we all know what it is we should be thanking you. I have added it to my list of gardening terms.
JB.

Bit late

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/g ... -pesticide

Nice to see that one of most usefully community minded members of our forum, GLAllotments is recommended as a source of information on the comments under the article.

Strange and rather concerning that someone with such a high green profile as Monbiot has only just discovered this, perhaps he should get out a bit more.

Very much liked his description of gardening as emotional and its rationale.

The woman mentioned in the article first contacted me asking for advice.
One bit of advice I gave her was to contact local media - even if it is a bit late then it raises the profile again.

Interestingly this has been reported in the Guardian before http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jul/28/food.ethicalliving.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jun/29/food.agriculture

They must have forgotten!

GL, I noticed in the comments reference to "half-life" of aminopyralid being three years.

Is this term used in reference to how long the stuff takes to degrade once we've dug the manure containing it into our veg patches?

If so that changes the game, making it far far worse than I understood it to be.

Half-life means the time taken for half the item being measured to decay. So after three years half of what was introduced in manure has gone, six years three.quarters gone, nine years seven eighths and so on.....

peter wrote:GL, I noticed in the comments reference to "half-life" of aminopyralid being three years.
Is this term used in reference to how long the stuff takes to degrade once we've dug the manure containing it into our veg patches?

I did have this explained to me by the guy that I met with who was writing the new stewardship.

Now I may be totally wrong so maybe a scientist can explain or put me right.

From what I understood half life means after three years that stuff is half as active. Then after another three years half active again (a quarter as active as the original). After another three years half as active again ( an eighth of the original activity) and so on.

I'm not sure whether this relates directly to what happens in the soil or whether it is just what would happen if it was left in the bottle! I was presuming it just meant if the stuff was stored.