manure

[fieldsport]

i am wondering if anyone could tell me is manure with straw in rotted enough or do i leave it

[fieldsport]

[manicscousers]

Hiya, fieldsport, welcome to a4a  ;D
we only use strawy manure for hot beds early in the season, the rest is left tp break down until it's nice and crumbly  :)

[Trevor_D]

If it's still got straw in, don't use it. Do a search on here for "aminopyralid" or "hormone weedkiller" and you'll find out. We're all still having problems.

Dig it in and rotovate.

[realfood]

Straw should not be contaminated with aminopyralid as it is not licensed for use on cereal crops in the UK.

[Trevor_D]

Depends on the time-scale. Read the other thread in Pests & Diseases.

[Unwashed]

I think the best test for whether dung is rotted enough is what it smells like.  If it pongs then it needs to stand a while and rot down, but if it's basically odourless then it's good to go.  Dung will often have straw and other bedding in it and the only problem with that is that it robs the dung of nitrogen when it breaks down, particularly when it's wood shavings, and less so when it's straw, so it's possible that you'll need to feed the bed at some point.

[chriscross1966]

Straw should not be contaminated with aminopyralid as it is not licensed for use on cereal crops in the UK.

And we all know that if you hand a farmer a briiliant broadleaf weedkiller and tell him not to use it on cereals that he'll do what you say....... plenty of conmtamination stories on the web where the smoking gun is the straw......

chrisc

[Trevor_D]

Aminopyralid is no longer licenced for use on pasture grazed by horses. (It can be used on pasture used by sheep or cattle, or for use on railway or motorway verges.)

But the advice given to farmers by Defra was to spread contaminated manure on fields, rather than pass it on to gardeners. Horses then graze on those fields; the grass is cut and used for animal feed throughout the winter. It is an established fact that the chemical passes intact & still active through any animal - ourselves included, I assume. So is there any surprise that - although its use is "controlled" - we are still having huge problems with it?

At the risk of being boring: don't believe all you are told by government & big business; use all manure - and especially where you can still see the unrotted lignum - with caution.

[gwynnethmary]

what does unrotted lignum look like ?(for novices like me)

[Unwashed]

Lignin is the woody non-cellulose polymer in straw and aminopyralid binds to it.

The straw that you'll see in dung is not what the animal was eating, it's the bedding it was stabled on.  Whether or not that straw is identifiable in the dung depends on how long and how well the dung has been composted, and also how much and what kind of bedding the animal was stabled on.  None of that has any relation to whether or not the animal's fodder has been treated with aminopyralid, and that's likely to be the main route of contamination.