I have been reading the posts but am not sure I fully understand it but my question is related.
John and I didn't use out lotties this year, they are under plastic mulch,won't bore you with the reason.
Anyway, I have 6 huge compost boxes of manure at the back of the plots containing manure that was delivered to me last April, as we haven't used the lotties it hasn't been spread, would have been these Autumn or the coming Spring I think .
I might have been lucky by not spreading it.
If it is bad stuff would it be OK by next Spring, there far too much to dispose of as there was two trucks loads or could I just leave it in the boxes and for how long, does anyone know?
Thank you
XX Jeannine
Jeannine,
I think someone will corect me if I'm wrong but the general rule seems to be that older the muck the better, horse muck is better if it is twelve months old, when a farmer spreads his muck from any winter by the time it is on the land it will be twelve months old, personally I don't think you have a problem :)
plant something in it and see what it does. squashes seemed to be immune so try something else
Thank you both, it is from cows actually but it can sit there another winter if need be. It probably would have gone on my squash lottie actually.
XX Jeannine
Hi Jeannine
Unfortunately stacking contaminated manure slows down the process of breaking down the herbicide. Aminopyralid binds very tightly to the lignin in the grass/hay/silage. Until every last vestige of plant material has rotted down, it is still there and active. Once the plant material has completely rotted away, the aminopyralid is released into the soil where it is broken down by soil-borne organisms into harmless compounds in 3-4 weeks. In a stack, there aren't any of the necessary organisms for breaking it down. I've read a suggestion that stacking may actually concentrate the weedkiller as it gets released from the slowly rotting plant material and contaminates the other material in the manure because there is nothing to neutralise it.
I don't know how many years it would take to get rid of the weedkiller in a stack but it's more than one or two. The RHS/Dow/DEFRA advice on the quickest method of getting rid of it is to dig it into the soil (presumably where you aren't going to plant anything for some years - we all have that kind of land sitting around idle don't we!?). Going on Trevor_D's experience being hit last year, they had extensive damage last year and damage on a lesser scale this year. So even when it's dug in as recommended, it's two years and counting.
With a smaller quantity, it might have been worth taking a punt and growing some test plants to check for damage. But with a huge load, it's possible that some of it could be contaminated, some not and you couldn't mix it well enough to get a representative sample.
Is it stable or farmyard? If it's farmyard you might be able to find out if the farmer grows all his own feed and if so to find out if he sprays and what with. If it's stable, there is very little chance of checking.
I think you lost your lotties to floods? In your shoes, I'd play safe and get rid of it (unless you enjoy living on the edge, of course!).
Thank you, it is farmyard, I don't personally know the farmer though.
Impossible to get rid of it, there is just too much, I think I will just forget it is there for a while.
Yes we did lose everything to the floods, then this year due to illness we covered over, we were hoping for good things next year.
As we haven't been to the lottie much i don't know if the problem is there although I did hear about two people who said they had lost their spuds due to some sort of contamination and were asking around to see if anyone had been spraying. I don't know after that if there was more.
As our land has not had manure on since the autumn of 2006 and that was stuff 2 years old we might be safe at the moment.
Thank you again, I can see it has been a devastating problem for many people, my heart really goes out to them, and more thanks to you for all the work you have done.
I don't think it will push it. It can just sit a bit longer.
There was a lot of straw in it I think when it was originally delivered fresh and warm.
Thank you again.
XX Jeannine
Jeannine may I suggest that you quickly germinate a few tomato plants and grow them on in smallish pots lined with manure at the bottom. The leaves of these seedlings will distort badly the moment they hit the manure if it is contaminated.
Current thinking seems to be that you spread it on top of the soil & rotovate it in at frequent intervals.
On our site several of us used masses of manure, left it on the top and just dug or rotovated it in during the spring. None of us had problems, whereas those who had dug it in during the autumn did. (I don't use a rotovator - I'm not that sort of build, and slightly too old, but just digging it in appeared to work.)
And Jeannine, when you say "straw" do you mean straw (or hay?)? Because aminopyralid has never been licenced for use on straw, so you might be OK. Are your tomatoes still producing side-shoots? If so, pull them off & push them into it, as Eristic has just suggested. You'll soon find out.
"Jeannine may I suggest that you quickly germinate a few tomato plants and grow them on in smallish pots lined with manure at the bottom. The leaves of these seedlings will distort badly the moment they hit the manure if it is contaminated."
That will only tell you if the manure you put in the pots is contaminated. It tells you nothing about the status of the manure in the 6 large boxes.
Straw is what the animals are often bedded on which is why it is mixed in with the manure. It's what they eat (grass/hay/silage)that gets sprayed and if it is sprayed then eaten, it's in the manure.
I mulched and dug the manure in. The damage to the mulched areas appeared in the last month, the damage to the dug in areas appeared within a few weeks of planting out.
I have known many farmers that have grown their own oats and barley to put through their own mill to make animal feeds to feed their own stock, at the same time if you look at farming in any one area farmers are in general doing the same thing at the same time because of the weather and such like and they also have their own grapevine knowing what the other one is doing, so for arguments sake when it comes to putting manure on the land and using the example of a farmer making his own animal feed is this self sufficiency put it to jeopardy when he sprays his crops of oats and barley which in turn is fed to his animals and then their muck is put on to an heap and at the back end put back onto the land :)
Quote from: Mr Smith on August 29, 2008, 22:06:24
so for arguments sake when it comes to putting manure on the land and using the example of a farmer making his own animal feed is this self sufficiency put it to jeopardy when he sprays his crops of oats and barley which in turn is fed to his animals and then their muck is put on to an heap and at the back end put back onto the land :)
Oats and barley are cereal crops and the weedkiller that has caused this particular problem can't be used on cereal crops. The weedkiller is sprayed on pasture (grass) and hay (which can then be made into silage) so these are the only feeds implicated. Farmers who spread manure containing sprayed material onto their pasture/fields used for non-sensitive crops are doing us and themselves a favour. It keeps the contaminated manure out of our gardens/plots and, in their fields, it carries on keeping the weeds down.
Ceres,
I'm having a load of sheep muck delivered in the next couple of weeks I hope this sheep muck is out of the farmers sheep pens rather than going round a field picking it all up, last year year he delivered several loads to the other allotment holders and they have had good results :)
I wouldn't think many farmers go round the fields licking up sheep turds!