Allotments 4 All

A question for my learned plotters.

Simply ......... is this chemical included in any pesticides available to the public?

This questions arises as the conservation group members are using this term as a cover-all term for the use of pesticides and weedkillers on site, although I think the worst any of us do is the occasional squirt of glyposate at a persistant patch of bindweed.

I have googled the term and have discovered it is used on a quarter of the UK's available arable land but it makes no mention of brand names.  I know that it is linked to declining bee populations but I want to know if plotters are inadvertantly using the stuff.

TIA

'Neonicotinoid' is a generic term covering a range of substances. You'd have to look under the specific compound; I believe imidacloprid is used in garden insecticides, for one.

I think it is sometimes included in potting type composts, which is something to be aware of as presumably any plant grown will be inherently lethal to any insect, including pollinating ones such as bees

This is a link to the  Wiki page

And this is a link to the history of  - the company who makes it Bayer

All the best
Sue

To quote the Soil Association...

"Neonicotinoid pesticides have been linked to the dramatic collapse in bee numbers over the last decade, which is why we'd like to see them banned in the UK. However, they are not only found on farms. Many domestic gardening products on sale in hardware stores and garden centres also contain these chemicals.

If you're buying any kind of pest control check the ingredients – anything that contains acetamiprid, imidacloprid, thiacloprid or thiamethoxam should be avoided"

More information is available on their website (here), including a listing of some of the commonest products containing these pesticides.

John

I knew some of you would know ;D

Thanks for the Soil Association link.  I did go there but obviously didn't scroll down the page far enough - lesson is read more and scan less

Thanks for your help

Of course this bee problem never happened with old-fashioned nicotine - the problem with the neo-nicotinoids is persistence.

It also meant that nicotine the next day was safer on your food than neo-nicotinoids are a month after you sprayed.

It's a pity that old-fashioned nicotine is about 40x more instantly toxic than the new versions - but I don't think there were many occasions of amateur misuse - possibly it was more toxic to bugs too - certainly the standard concentrations were harmless unless you took all your clothes off and 'splashed it all over' like a deodorant advert.

The concentrate was deadly - but that's Darwin-award stuff. If you want to kill yourself there are a million ways (concentrated roundup has no antidote if you drink it).

I'd be much happier going back to old-fashioned nicotine - but while f*g butts are free nobody would make any money out of it. So it won't happen.

It's a joyless, clenched, bourgeois thing to require the elimination of all risk - people who know how to live accept tiny risks and just live... (the classic test is anything safer than catching a peanut in your mouth - you'd be surprised that 90% of media scares are actually safer than that).

Cheers.

You can easily roll your own nicotine solution, but if you do, be sure to keep the concentration down. I think that was probably how accidents happened. Or use either rhubarb leaves, or oxalic acid out of a packet. It's less poisonous, and very effective.