Check out my latest post over at The Grow Network:
I received this heartbreaking comment on one of my blog posts about Grazon contamination in manure:
“We have about 80 acres in pasture. Four years ago, our co-op started a spraying program. Having horses, Grazon was recommended. I was told it was safe for the horses to stay in the pasture while it was sprayed and even ok for the horses to eat while still wet. I was never told not to compost the manure. Two years ago, I started composting manure out of the pasture. This year, I started giving it to friends. What a ***** mess. I spent a lot of time with a shovel collecting the manure, turning it, and delivering it to friends. I’ve had two contact me about their gardens and problems they’re having. One of them asked if we were using Grazon. This is going to cost me a great deal of time and money to fix. Some are small raised gardens, and I’m going to go in and remove and replace the soil. Some are larger, up to an acre, and I don’t know what we’re going to do. I’m open to all suggestions. Thanks.”
Aminopyralids are bad news, yet a lot of people don’t know how bad they are yet. People need to recognize the problem.
Recognize Grazon Is a Serious Problem
People are still disbelieving on this topic. Look at some of the comments on this video:
No, it’s NOT that the manure is too hot or not composted enough. Stop blaming the gardener. A lot of farmers and gardeners have been growing with manure for years and never had anything like this happen. I know what too much nitrogen looks like, as does pretty much every person I’ve met who has been hit with a Grazon kill in their beds.
It’s a serious, persistent, long-term herbicide that is taken up in plant material and can be consumed by animals, passed through in their manure, then still be toxic to gardens even after months or possibly years of composting.
It is evil. It is nasty. It is here, and if you put manure on your gardens without knowing 100% that it’s not contaminated with this crap, you are running a very high risk of losing your plants.
(Keep reading here and learn what to do if your garden has been hit.)
3 comments
Greetings David,
I put in two new raised beds and filled them with commercial soils from the local mega home center, including a bagged compost/ topsoil mix. I planted stringbeans and they grew 6″ tall, then the leaves curled up and they all died. I have some San Marzano tomatoes in the same bed and they are really stunted. It would seem that the commercial soil stream is contaminated now as well. This can’t be good for potting soils containing compost either. Bad stuff!! Oh, this is in FL.
We just tore out the entire garden we put in this spring. We purchased Miracle-Gro raised bed soil because we wanted to avoid potentially contaminated compost.
Yikes.