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aminopyralids


By charles - Posted on 24 June 2011

 Sorry to bring bad news but I just heard this from a lifelong, highly experienced grower:

"We have a small market garden in Mid West Wales, near Aberystwyth and have fallen foul of a batch of aminopyralid contaminated manure. This was not old manure or the result of old hay, like the CRD and Dow would like to make out, but manure produced over the last winter by horses fed on hay that was harvested during the summer of 2010. D ow have now agreed to come and take the contaminated manure, compost and soil away. This incident however, shows that the new regulations under which this product was re-licensed are not effective. We have lost a large part of our livelyhood, food and wasted a lot of work as a result of this. Please warn your members to be careful and not trust the assurances of neither Dow or the CRD, that this "shouldn't happen", as clearly, it does."

Do any gardeners have experience of this? I am fortunate here that the dairy farmer I buy manure from is straightforwardly old fashioned, and does not like to waste money either. We all need to be more suspicious of 'scientists' offering panaceas (at a price).

I wonder if you could clear up a couple of queries please - I'm a bit ignorant of some of the terminology. First, how does one know about the contamination? Was the manure subjected to some sort of test or was it to do with growing results (or the lack of them)? Also, what is 'Dow' and 'CRD'? And what are aminopyralids anyway?
thank you

 You know because leaves curl up at the edges and growth is minimal, if at all.

You know.

DOW is the corporation who make this lethal herbicide, CRD is a British government department, not sure which one.