Topic: Lest we forget - re contaminated manure

[chriscross1966]

Update on mine...

THe livery I get my manure from doesn't spray, they hand-pick ragwort, ditto the other livery they share the farm with. THe farm doesn't spray and the next thing over on one side is a busy road followed by a town, the other way is a chunk of natural-ish woodland.... All the contaminated manure is limited to one batch I picked up late winter, having pretty much cleared them out a couple of weeks previously I managed to do it again a week or so later.... It's all pointing to winter feed hay, a single batch of winter feed hay as being the culprit.... I'm going to bean test the whole area next spring, it'll be easy enough to avoid putting my shelling benas in a bad bit next year, but it's a PITA righ t now.... thanfully my lack of shelling bean harvest is made up for by the epic broad-bean one from an uncontaminated bit....

[Digeroo]

if you can continue to trace it back it would be nice to know where the problem comes from.  You may need to be very tactful about it.  I feel it is more important to find how this stuff gets into the chain than point fingers at people.   

It is said to come on hay, but I am convinced it also comes on feed nuts. 

I am fairly convinced now that if you water plants with rainwater rather than tap water that the effects are lessened.   

I am sorry to say that the effects can be quite persistant.   

Do also be very careful with the remains of plants grown on the contaminated ground, even plants which do not seem to have a problem such as corn and brassicas may then contaminate ground the followng year.  The guy on the next lottie to me has a row og very sick looking runner beans which have had no manure only compost from remains of last years contaminated plants.  Not only that but it is worse than the orginal effect -seems to have concentrated it. 

[chriscross1966]

WEell I reckon broad beas backwards down the plot all is OK, I'll be burning all my onion stalks anyway cos of the wihite rot issues, I'll just have to add the corn halms and the bean stalks to the burn pile.... not that there'll be a lot of bena stalks.... I'm guessing the seeds from them would have problems too .... will try though..... going to have to put out a scream to foils that had seeds from me this year to see if I can restock in case of complete failure adn next year test everythign with broadies first....

chrisc

[Digeroo]

I have not idea about the seeds, I have some Broad Beans which are struggling big time, so I hope to save some of the seeds and see what happens.

http://www.dowagro.com/uk/grass_bites/faq/

Seems they are suggesting you can sow wheat after only a month.  The wheat will grow but does it pick up AP.  Will it therefore get into animal feed and bread?

You may find if it rains tomorrow as promised that some of the plants will begin to pick up.

[sunloving]

Sorry to hear that you are having problems. Its the gift that keeps on giving.

Just shows that its still important to do the test.
It took three summers to stop seeing effects when we had contaminated manure.
Since then we been paranoid but never caught out again but we still havent got back to the variety of dahlias in our collection we had pre contamination. Thats going to take a few more years yet.

Good luck
x sunloving

[Digeroo]

Our problems 2009 were minor and cleared by 2010.  But the problems in 2010 were much worse and do not seem to be going away as quickly.  I think that the effects are worse in drier weather and the effect of bactieria breaking it down seems to be less. 

I just have this nasty feeling we have not seen the last of problems with AP.