Kitchen Garden Forum

Hi Peter,

Squash/marrow/courgette will thrive on neat muck.

I would suggest that those plants in the quote will thrive on neat well composted manure.
I say this before people get the wrong impression. Fresh manure will burn the roots off just about everything.
JB.

Thanks JB, i'm not sure-now that a five year old pile of muck is the same as five year old muck in a compost pile.

I picked on a courgette plant at the end of a row of four and tipped half a bucket of water-down cow-muck slurry suspected of AP contamination. This plant deserves more respect, it's been continuously attacked by slugs to the point of disappearing into the ground. Then made a come-back and produced more courgettes than the other three plants.

I had to pick a strong one.

I took eight photos of bean plants to illustrate what i'm trying to describe but only two are illustrative enough. First is from a second sowing, all these plants showed signs of AP or maybe nutrient deficiency ? Right now this batch of ten are producing plenty of beans, most are bent. Second photo is of the next sowing but it's the same bed with the suspect cow-poo. Third photo is of the same sowing but in a bed not treated with the cow-poo.

Sorry (knitted-eyebrows from Peter) the photos are the other way around, the sad boy described at the end is at the beginning.

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.

peter,
I honestly don't see the merit for gardeners of going into this amount of complexity and detail (you can dig it out for yourself online if you want to, or refer to the excellent sources of further information on glallotments' website). The bottom line is that these synthetic chemical weedkillers are polluting our environment. Once the damage is done it's hard to put right. We need to stop this problem at source by removing clopyralid from weedkillers. Making composts which use contaminated green waste compost the whipping boy for ignorant/indifferent use of garden chemicals is wrong.

Ricard with an H,
Your French beans haven't been hit by residues - I've never known a year when some of the pods don't tend to curl like this. The leaves are just showing a bit of wind damage, and other scars of a bum growing season. If you go to my article (link above) you'll see some classic weedkiller-affected French bean leaves.

It would be useful if you could post some pictures of the chilli plants to look at. I don't think you can automatically assume the compost is to blame (and even if it is, the problem isn't the compost, but the garden-derived pollution of the raw materials that go into it). This hasn't been a good year for peppers in many areas - not enough light.

Thanks for the helpful comments John, particularly on the beans. Whilst I admit that a little hysteria was to blame in the case of my local farmer muck-pile I would rather the hysteria and having some-sort of an idea of what could be wrong than fumbling in the dark.

I'm also quite happy to accept that a number of other things could be responsible for my very failures, as Alan pointed-out i'm just as likely to be over-feeding.

Just to point out my open-mindedness I have just bought some bags of new Horizon, but as a mix with peat for my winter plants under cover.

I'll take a photo of the chilli plant in the morning and i've invested in more clay pots in order to deal with the peat-free difference. It works better in clay pots, most of my plants died through saturation but the surface was dry.

Sorry I've been away and so didn't spot this discussion.

I don't think the photos show the same damage as that caused by aminopyralid. There isn't the thickening of the leaves, prominent parallel veining or spoon shaped leaves that you would expect to see in ap contaminated beans. I have photos on this page http://glallotments.co.uk/acmanure.html if you scroll through the photo album you will come to photos taken of our runner beans.

glallotments wrote:I don't think the photos show the same damage as that caused by aminopyralid. There isn't the thickening of the leaves, prominent parallel veining or spoon shaped leaves that you would expect to see in ap contaminated beans.

That bean sowing is now producing enough for two people every other day and the next batch are looking really good.

John, sorry I haven't produced a photo today as promised. I've been so encouraged to get those cold frames ready and sown I've been out half the day just sourcing seed. Last job of the afternoon was to take a photo then it started raining.

I'll bring the plant in and when i'm out of my scruffs and tidy i'll produce a photo, really looking forward to any comments.

Best I can with the camera I have. These plants are four inches tall from seed sown end of May/June. I suppose the brown stalk say it's been over-watered.

From the photos it doesn't look like herbicide damage to me - not from ap anyway.