Good suggestion ... We have found our tomatoes to be most sensitive (their leaves curl up as if someone had run a thread about the margin and then cinched the thread). We have a bit of problem in pole beans but not much. Leaf lettuce and loose head lettuce grown on the same contaminated bed as the tomatoes showed no sign of contamination. So different crops respond differently to different herbicides. Also our extension office determined that soil testing is often not effective given the trace amounts. Instead they recommend that you submit the diseased plant which concentrate the herbicide. Contact your extension office for details if you plan on testing. Catherine's suggestion is the most practical solution for small gardeners. Finally any time the horse feed changes then the horse owner should find out if the new hay has been sprayed. Just because it is free of herbicides one month doesn't mean a new supply of hay the next month is okay. This is the hard education we must push bac k to horse owners and hay sellers, that manure disposal will get more difficult if the feed has herbicides. There are a lot of herbicides that don't cause problems so be sure to google "herbicide carryover" for complete lists. -----Original Message----- From: greenbe...@comcast.net Date: Sat, 8 Mar 2014 00:56:17 To: <j...@frontier.net> Cc: John Hintz<johnhi...@gmail.com>; community garden<community_garden@list.communitygarden.org> Subject: Re: [Community_garden] composting manure, spread thin or pile it high?
Hi, John, We wondered if the moderately aged stable sweepings, which we were getting from a nearby horse owner, was coming to us contaminated with herbicides, so we did an an experiment with the manure. One of our members, Marcia, grew beans and lettuce in two pots: one with potting soil and some aged manure that we knew was not contaminated, and the other pot had soil from a plot in our garden that had not had compost or manure added to it. Marcia did the growth project twice last fall. Our Extension agent said he felt confident, after seeing the photos of the first experiment and visiting our garden to see the second planting, that we were not getting broad leafed herbicide residue in the manure from from the nearby stable. We are not "certified organic." We are confident that the manure from our nearby stable owner is OK to put in our compost piles. Our members do not use the horse manure as a top dressing. We only use it in our compost piles. Catherine Dente Culverhouse Community Garden Sarasota FL ----- Original Message ----- From: j...@frontier.net To: "John Hintz" <johnhi...@gmail.com> Cc: "community garden" <community_garden@list.communitygarden.org> Sent: Monday, March 3, 2014 12:48:52 PM Subject: Re: [Community_garden] composting manure, spread thin or pile it high? Hi John There are a few considerations, and the first is whether the manure is aged (more than 100 days old). The second is how the horses were fed. If the manure is less than 100 days old, it may still have active e.coli and should not be placed on ANY bed you expect to harvest soon (such as spring greens, carrots, beets, Asian greens, etc). If your individual members decide what will be planted (as in household plots) then I think you cannot spread a new manure at all this spring as you may not be able to control what they plant. In the case of a new manure, it should go into a pile and compost for at least 100 days and be applied this fall. The new food safety (as well as the former organic) guidelines take this even further. You are not supposed to apply manure to any bed that will be harvested within 120 days. Research on e.coli shows it doesn't survive 100 days but there is a measure of precaution in the new legislation. In short, keep all "fresh" manure out of an active garden. If it was just scraped up from a horse stall, it is fresh, even if it is a winter accumulation of old and new. Fully aged manure is fine to use but should always be turned into the soil, not placed on top. If you apply the aged manure in the fall you can wait to turn it into the soil in the spring. If left on top you will have poor germination of seeds and may burn transplants. Finally, horse feed is notoriously problematic for persistent broadleaf herbicides. Please google "herbicide carryover." Many people raising horse hay only want to grow grass with no "weeds" including alfalfa. This grassy hay sells for a higher price and many horse owners only want this type of hay for their animals. The hay farmers often apply persistent broad leaf herbicides on their fields. It is a challenge, but you must work backward through the food chain to find out if the horses were fed hay treated with broadleaf herbicides, and find out the name of the chemicals. Many of the Dow Chemical products (Redeem, Milestone) contain the problematic chemicals but there are over 20 brands. Again google that herbicide carryover to get a complete list of problem chemicals. If you do not take this precaution you are likely to run into a problem visiting tens of thousands of U.S. gardens - contaminated soil that won't raise tomatoes, beans, peppers, and other vegetables sensitive to trace amounts (even 1 part per billion) of the herbicide which survives the gut of the horse. The horse owner is responsible for finding out the chemical burden in the manure before disposing of it at your organic garden site. In the organic commercial world, a contamination of this sort would cause the organic farmer to lose his/her organic status for 3 years. It has become a widespread problem and deserves effort to investigate, and to educate both the farmer and the horse owner about the downstream effect of herbicides when manure is disposed of. Hope this helps. We've been thru the contamination problem and had to scrape out and remove 8" of rich top soil. The problem will persist for 6 or more years without soil removal. Jama Crawford Shared Harvest Garden Durango CO Quoting John Hintz <johnhi...@gmail.com>: > Hi Folks, > We have someone dropping off a pickup-bed-load of horse manure to our > community garden. We want to get it to compost this spring as quickly as > possible. Is it better to pile it high, like in one section of a > pallet-compost-bin, or to spread it thin over a 20x24 plot in the garden? > Thanks > John > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: > <http://list.communitygarden.org/pipermail/community_garden_list.communitygarden.org/attachments/20140303/ad3bb019/attachment.html> > > _______________________________________________ > The American Community Gardening Association listserve is only one > of ACGA's services to community gardeners. To learn more about the > ACGA and to find out how to join, please go to > http://www.communitygarden.org > > To post an e-mail to the list: community_garden@list.communitygarden.org > > To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your subscription: > http://list.communitygarden.org/mailman/listinfo/community_garden_list.communitygarden.org > > _______________________________________________ The American Community Gardening Association listserve is only one of ACGA's services to community gardeners. To learn more about the ACGA and to find out how to join, please go to http://www.communitygarden.org To post an e-mail to the list: community_garden@list.communitygarden.org To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your subscription: http://list.communitygarden.org/mailman/listinfo/community_garden_list.communitygarden.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... 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