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horseshitHerbicide carryover in hay, manure, compost and grass clippings Many farmers and home gardeners have reported damage to vegetable and flower crops after applying horse or livestock manure, compost, hay or grass clippings to the soil. The symptoms include poor seed germination; death of young plants; twisted, cupped and elongated leaves; misshapen fruit; and reduced yields.
Many factors can cause these symptoms, including diseases, insects and herbicide drift. Another possibility: the presence of herbicides in the manure, compost, hay, or grass clippings applied to the soil. I am often tempted to harvest some of the neighbors yard waste for my compost piles. I have a shortage of green material for composting because I mulch grass clippings, and I no longer have any weeds because they are only weeds if I dont want them growing in a particular place. I have plenty of brown material for the piles, but it's hard to get the fungal and bacterial cooperation going without a salad course. Resurrecting brown only piles is a subject for another time. Anyway, I dont take neighbor's yard waste because of possible herbicide contamination. I used to harvest grass clippings from the little old Italian lady across the street who didnt even know about using fertilizers, and certainly knew nothing about weed killers!  The authors describe a doo it yourself home method for testing purchased or even the previously trusted composted manure from herd animal farms. It is a simple bioassay using sprouting seeds to detect herbicide activity. They also suggest that we get our manures to compost from non-herd animal like chickens and rabbits, but I burned too many plants with incompletely composed chicken poop! It would take a lot of rabbits! TAT
There's nothing wrong with thinking
Except that it's lonesome work
sevil regit
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Joined: Apr 2010
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Apr 2010
Posts: 12,004 Likes: 133 |
horseshitHerbicide carryover in hay, manure, compost and grass clippings Many farmers and home gardeners have reported damage to vegetable and flower crops after applying horse or livestock manure, compost, hay or grass clippings to the soil. The symptoms include poor seed germination; death of young plants; twisted, cupped and elongated leaves; misshapen fruit; and reduced yields.
Many factors can cause these symptoms, including diseases, insects and herbicide drift. Another possibility: the presence of herbicides in the manure, compost, hay, or grass clippings applied to the soil. … They also suggest that we get our manures to compost from non-herd animal like chickens and rabbits, but I burned too many plants with incompletely composed chicken poop! It would take a lot of rabbits! TAT Hmmmm… I wonder if biochar would help with these situations?
You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete.
R. Buckminster Fuller
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Joined: Apr 2010
Posts: 12,004 Likes: 133
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Apr 2010
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Hmmmm… I wonder if biochar would help with these situations? The first time I heard of this, a local permacuturist gardener came to me for some biochar for what she described as this exact problem - she had used horse biscuit fertilizer as a top dressing on her tomatoes, beans, and squash beds and the plants were sickly. She bought a quantity of biochar and applied it - fortunately she had not tilled in the harshit so it was easy to scuffle in the biochar. In several weeks her plants were looking healthy. Majick? Or Science... You be da judge (just not one like Bruce!). Could be that biochar's known ability to adsorb nasty chemicals is not a drawback as "We" said it was! If nothing else, she sequestered about 72 pounds of formerly atmospheric CO2 with her 20 pounds of biochar.
You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete.
R. Buckminster Fuller
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