To manure or not to manure

[peter]

Follow the links on our KG forum "sticky thread" in Weeds Pests & Diseases" GLAllotments has spent a lot of time and effort on behalf of gardeners everywhere collating the information.

Indicator plant - one easily affected by the chemical, thus showing its presence. Hence "the bean test".

[Ricard with an H]

Thank you Peter, and I don't want you to think I haven't been searching and reading. Just didn't hit the spot this time.

I've been doing a lot of reading, eyes-sagging type of reading.

[glallotments]

Try visiting this thread Ricard http://www.kitchengarden.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=7863

I've posted links to information sources here.

The most commonly used product containing aminopyralid is Forefront.
What Geoff means by indicator crop is that beans are a crop that is very susceptible to aminopyralid damage so is one of the first plants to suffer in the event of any contamination. Potatoes are another.

Generally it depends on the type of bean. Broad bean leaves tend to curl or fold upwards whereas runner/french beans leaves tend to become cup shaped - the leaves become very thick and leathery in texture and the veins are prominent and tend to run parallel to one another.

There are photos here http://glallotments.co.uk/acmanure.html scroll down to the photo album and work thrpough the photos to find the bean photos.

Another ingredient called chlopyralid can also cause the same problem and this is found in lawn weedkillers such as Verdone+ which is why you should never compost clippings from lawns that have been treated or put them in any green waste bins. This is one possible way that contamination can find its way into commercial compost.

[Ricard with an H]

And thanks again.

I just hate the idea that you good people that have learnt so much think i'm sitting here and being to lazy to do any research.

I seem to have spent all my life learning and quite frankly being middle-of-the road-to-poor at most things and now i'm doing it again.

Before Peter posted I had already started to get up to speed on Google not even realising you had already done a lot of work for the forum. Another senior moment i'm afraid.

A phone call today resulted in me being told that the local farmers won't always be honest about what they use on the land even if they are prepared to discuss it. I can guess the reasons.

[glallotments]

Sorry Peter I didn't notice that you had posted a reply before I did - I can't have turned the page!

Ricard don't apologise there's no point in reinventing the wheel - the reason I created the pages of information was so that all this was in one place for ease of access.

You are right in that people may not admit to having used a pesticide that may cause a problem but then again it could be that the farmer has had his field sprayed by a contractor who hasn't given him the necessary information or it may even be that despite the publicity at the time he may be unaware of the problem so I'd still contact him to see what he says.

Have you taken photos of your beans?

[peter]

Or even worse the sprayer driver, like one of my acquaintance might "not do reading", which presents certain difficulties in understanding the directions for use and appropriate places to use the product.

[Ricard with an H]

.

Have you taken photos of your beans?

I will do at the first opportunity, today, as yesterday we had a thick mist with miserly rain.

I just noticed that some sage that is doing fine in another bed isn't happy in the bed with the beans I treated with cow-poo. Not sure how the beetroot is doing yet, it's very small but not yet withering.

I will take some photos shortly.

[Ricard with an H]

Ok, I think this may call for a huge sigh of relief just at a time i'm getting close to hysterical. (For want of a better description)

I'm now thinking my plants are suffering a combination of first being raised in soggy material then placed in ground that could do with improvement during a year when temperatures have been low and the plants did get hammered by the wind.

First photo is a new planting case, the second photo is of a first planting planting. Both seem to have improved during the last two days of warm/damp weather. What do you think ? Also added a sage plant that looks very poorly compared to one in another bed.

Sorry, photos are still to big, just can't get this right Peter.

[peter]

Ricard, please if you don't have some photo manipulation software on your pc that came with your camera (such as Photoshop or Elements) register on photobucket.com picassa or similar website, they have tools that let you re_size photos.
If you do have software then you need to use re_sizing to reduce the displayed size to VGA or 640 x 480 pixels in size.

I'm downloading your pictures to an Android based HTC Desire phone and using an freeware application called Reduce Photo Size to cit them down before editing tour posts by deleting your pictures and reattaching the ones I've modified. All on a phone,.hence random fullstops and odd spelling mistakes, touchscreen keyboard has small keys & predictive text
Regards Peter.

[Ricard with an H]

Try another photo.

[Nature's Babe]

Well I take great care to feed my soil - usually make three big bays of compost a year veg waste,card and paper, comfrey nettles and other non seeding weeds, duck and chicken manure is included and carefully layered into the compost. I only use organic so would not use manure that could contain amilopyrald. The chicken manure plus some seaweed and rock dust for minerals is incorporated into the compost and keeps my soil really fertile with a good structure.

[Ricard with an H]

I need to put this year down to a serious learning stage, I had almost ordered some 6X and do have comfrey for next year together with a nettle plantation to go at.

If you look at the photo that Peter kindly edited for you can see how poor the soil is and that is why i've wanted to use the cow-poo.

To be honest, the cost and work involved in creating the raised beds has meant i'm nervous about spending any more. I do have an annual compost harvest but it isn't much and won't be until the comfrey grows. Do I need to collect sea weed of the shore ?

New-news.

I spoke to the farmer, well, I spoke with his wife who is very-much a hands-on farmers wife. She didn't think they had sprayed any herbicide, just nutrient. I just looked at the fields and there are lots of dock growing. Dock was one of the main targets of aminopyralid. She has taken the list of names I gave her so she can discuss it with her husband just in case the left-hand doesn't know what the right-hand is doing.

I've had two JCB bucket-loads of this cow-poo dug in all over the place and whilst i have had the odd failure I haven't until this year grown any food.

[Geoff]

It looks like you mow quite a lot of grass, like I do. I consider the mowings a resource not to be wasted and use quite a bit of time and effort to try and change them into compost. I mix it with everything I cut down from the flower garden, all the weeds, vegetable waste, shredded/torn paper and cardboard, comfrey and straw. I have six bins of over a cubic metre each. It doesn't always make the finest stuff so I can rarely think about sieving it as a growing medium like others do but I am a digger so it gets buried a spade down. With hand weeding into two buckets (one for weeds one for stones) over the years it makes a fine deep soil.

[Ricard with an H]

Fantastic, Geoff ? I cut grass yesterday and blew it around, it dried. presumably dry grass can go in the compost bin. With some wood shavings ?

I've been my newspaper to re-cycling, didn't realise I could use it

I was going to collect nettle this evening but i'm tired now and have to cook my dinner. If I don't cook, I eat rubbish. Home alone five days a week you see.

I'm on mission now, compost everything.

[Nature's Babe]

Ricard if you live hear the sea - Jersey farmers harvest seaweed after the high spring tides, they stack it to let the rain leach out the salt then spread it on the land in autumn it's an excellent organic source of nutrients and especially minerals which are depleted in most soils now.