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nafex - Re: [NAFEX] herbicide residues?

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  • From: "Kieran &/or Donna" <holycow@frontiernet.net>
  • To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] herbicide residues?
  • Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2009 22:39:47 -0500

I've been wondering who to ask about this.  We got a nice load of horse manure this spring and I made sure to give the peppers plenty of it.  When the pepper plants began growing twisty and stunted, I looked for more on the herbicide that devastated gardens across Britain a couple years back.  The stuff is being sprayed on pastures and hayfields to control broad leaved weeds like thistles.  Turns out that the plants most bothered by it are:
  • Potatoes, manure applied, plants were fine
  • Tomatoes, used very little on them, plants fine
  • Peas, no manure used
  • Beans, ditto
  • Carrots, we don't grow
  • Lettuce planted well before we got the stuff
There are some photos of affected potato plants here, look like our peppers but different. 
The trouble is that we have had so much trouble with boron deficiency that this could simply be more of the same.  To complicate things, the bedding was wood chips that appeared to be painted.  My son says this is from a sawmill that applied primer before cutting the wood to length.  He said it was nothing to worry about, probably just titanium but that it might raise the pH.  Great, that's all we need to make boron less available.  The potatoes were grown on soil that probably has a lower pH.  Plus, part of boron deficiency is that B is used to transport Calcium, so it looks like calcium deficiency, and if the pH has been raised by something other than Ca, then Ca might become less available. 
    Anyway, has anyone had any trouble with this herbicide in manure or compost applied to gardens?  I decided this was the final reason to get some fainting goats to control brush plus supply safe manure.  I went to to farm supply stores looking for hay, and both places told me there was not weed one in their hay.  I looked, it was pure grass.  Around here, the usual hayfield has lots of broad leaved plants in it.  So I figured the stuff was sprayed.  Fortunately a client volunteered to bring some hay with weeds in it.  It's like picking up bags of grass clippings.  If the lawn doesn't have weeds in it, I skip it.  I've seen tomato plants wilt within 2 hours when herbicide contaminated grass clippings were spread around them.    Donna  



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