Home-grown veg ruined by toxic fertiliser

Thank you Pelle for the great OP! Nothing these bloodsuckers do surprises me anymore.

Does anybody know if freshwater lake seaweed could be dried and used as a plant fertilizer?

reply to post by yankeerose


I will repeat myself....see if you can follow the logic.

This is an analogy to make my point. This case would be like.....someone shoots somebody with a gun. The legal system goes after the company who made the bullets. Does that make sense?

The product was/is labeled, and is a registered pesticide.

Farmer buys legal effective pesticide. Label states that chemical is persistent in manure and urine. Livestock should feed on untreated hay for 3 days before manure is "ok" to use. Farmer/producer of manure does not follow label directions. Sells manure that now has residue from the pesticide, because he/she did not follow label directions (against the law in The USA). End user suffers plant loss due to pesticide residue. Is the producer of the chemical liable?

In the USA, a chemical goes through years of testing by the EPA, running ALL these scenarios...before they are released. This case would be tossed in NO time in a United States courtroom.

As an aside...there are numerous examples of pesticides being pulled from the market....in The Unites States.......because residues were showing up in home compost piles from grass clippings off lawns. Composting is becoming ever more common in the USA, hence the new restrictions. Better safe than sorry.

This is also then, an example where strict US environmental laws would be implemented.

I will investigate further how this chemical in particular has effected, if at all, the US agricultural climate.

Originally posted by BASSPLYR

acidic soil you say, you must be from the tropics. I bet if you got a cool spot with some decent indirect light you could grow some real colorful hydrangeas. the flowrrs colors change based on the acidity of the soil.

We live on one of the smaller islands in the Cayman Islands BASSPLYR. We have several different varieties of croton growing around the place.

Yep, hammock an' a brew, it's hard to beat when you can arrange it.

Wish I had a good place to grow frangipani. It grows in LA. but everywhere I have lived just didn't have a place where i could make the right microclimate for it's roots. Weird I can grow anything but that plant. then I'll go over to a friends house who knows nothing about growing, and he'll have a 8 foot tall tree covered in plumeria flowers. Grrrrrrrr!!!!! life is not fair!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We have frangipani growing wild on top of the bluff. Beautiful, and right about the time the Booby birds are raising their fledglings, the frangipani become overrun with bright orange, red, yellow and green 6" sphinx moth caterpillars. I suspect most of them become Booby MREs.

[edit to FINally learn how to quote]

[edit on 16-7-2008 by argentus]

reply to post by BASSPLYR


........and you'll never burn roots with seaweed, the way a person might with commercial fertilizer, or too much manure. and.....

I can't prove this, but I believe that seaweed meal releases more slowly than commercial fertilizers as well. oooooo! Maybe we'll have an agricultural debunking!

reply to post by yankeerose


Good question. I don't know if freshwater growies would be as rich in nutrient as seaweed..... I wonder if they wouldn't have to be composted first. No clue.

Originally posted by starcraft
reply to post by yankeerose

 

In the USA, a chemical goes through years of testing by the EPA, running ALL these scenarios...before they are released. This case would be tossed in NO time in a United States courtroom.

I am afraid that saying that a lawsuit against a multi-national corp. would be thrown out of a U.S. court is a no-brainer. The mutli-national corps. own the USA and its courts, and I like millions around the world would expect nothing less than lies from the EPA (like Christie T. Whitman saying it was safe to breathe and work at Ground Zero in New York City) and we certainly don't expect justice from the U.S. legal system. The more money you've got, the more due process you can buy. And for the extremely rich corporations the sky is the limit to what can be achieved against the People.

Good thread......my little manure factory ( see my avatar ) grazes on pasture that has no herbicides ( maybe you can tell....) so we should be ok there.

But we buy winter hay, God only knows what has been put on that! Maybe this fall I'll look for hay with weeds in the bale??







[edit on 16-7-2008 by frayed1]

I am also now wondering about freshwater seaweeds. Lake Michigan is less than 50yds from my front door so.... I guess I'll collect up at least 10 or 20 different types, dry them, and see what grows in what.

Plant or crops dont need chemical fertilisers they are there purely to make people money-they make said plant/crop produce more product a lot quicker hence more money/profit for the sellers and chemical companys.
when large yields and faster turnaround are NOT required and quality not quantity IS required then any with an ounce of sense would go fully organic -anything grown organic will taste ten times better than its chemically fertilised twin.
people, again its all about the money at the expense of us and the planet

aka "buisness as usual then"

seaweed commonly used by organic growers. has high content of trace elements, hormones of vegetable origin, amino acids and vitamins. Applied as either a root feed or foliar spray, treated plants are healthier and more resiliant.

This is really bad news, there was no mention of Scotland being affected but i'll not be using any of the free manure delivered to our allotment site just in case. We have worked so very hard since Feb this year to get our new plot into a half decent state, it would be soul destroying to discover it was all for nothing.

Great tips from you guys, i'm new to growing veggies so i'll definately be taking a trip to the coast to get some seaweed to try out. It just seems to make sense that mother earth would manufacture the best fertilizer available.

Does anyone know if Dow, the company who manufactured this herbicide, is related in any way to Monsanto? I seem to unconsciously link the two names together, not that I know much about either of them mind you.

Here is what some affected growers have been saying ...

www.chat.allotment.org.uk...

There is no doubt that if you consider using chemical compounds to fertilize soil for growing then you are adding to the problem of soil degredation. Stick with natures own fertilizer of manure or compost and change the world for the better. END THE CORPORATE POISONING!

reply to post by FreeForAll


It's obvious that most on this thread are ignorant to real world, mass produced LARGE acreage agriculture. I'm talking the multi-thousand acre (hectare) systems.

Yes, farmers routinely will ad manure to their fields...but the main reason is to simply get rid of it from their feedlots. There's nowhere else to put it.

The backyard garden? Sure, all your home remedies and old wive tale concoctions work great. This is not practical in modern agri-business.

Your minds are closed. You hate chemicals, of any kind, and you certainly hate any large corporation. Socialists is what most of you sound like actually.

Did you know a plant root has no idea the ammonium or urea it is sucking up came from manure or from synthetic urea? Nitrogen is nitrogen, wether it comes from a fertilizer factory, or from a cows butt. Your arguments are ludicrous.

Do you even know what the term "organic" means? It simply means the product contains carbon. No more, no less. It cracks me up when I see a product is organically grown. I can spray nicotine sulphate( a very dangerous, but effective insecticide). It's organic, right? It comes from tobacco leaves. That stuff would kill you in a second at the right dose.

Educate yourselves, deny ignorance, the sky is not falling.

Originally posted by starcraft



Yes, companies are in business to make money. This is termed "capitalism".

Only their shareholders are in it for the money. In corporate operations, capital gains take a whiney small-shareholder back seat to market share and takeover war chests (loans, equity) – minimizing tax liabilities - for the purpose of making them more attractive to financiers/banks so that they can improve their credit rating and make themselves a less attractive target for other companies to takeover. Makes sense, don't you think?


I

Originally posted by starcraft

It just so happens that these companies sell products to consumers (farmers, the demand side)...

No, they don't.

They are by far more involved in purchasing, value-adding and bulk-distributing to other manufacturing companies lower in the food chain, materials designed to reduce the number of manufacturing steps which that company must take in order to create their product. If the net has allowed them to sell herbicides directly to the farmer in the last few years, it makes no difference. Their main game isn't selling, it's about getting bigger by takeover and corporate legalism.



They are separate and disconnected in many ways from the end user, the consumer and general public: as reflected in their “tactical” approach when objections are raised about their environmental cowboyism.


[edit on 17-7-2008 by undermind]

[edit on 17-7-2008 by undermind]

Originally posted by starcraft


Your minds are closed. You hate chemicals, of any kind, and you certainly hate any large corporation. Socialists is what most of you sound like actually.

I beg your pardon, some of us have not 'attacked' the corporate folks at all, and some posters that have 'attacked' us manure users have been quite vehement......

I 'farm' much like I saw my Grandfather do it, and my Dad as well.......They and those before them used manure. In my Grandad's day that was about all there was. His cows and pigs were fed very little bought feed, and he grew his own hay.....No herbicides, no pesticides, and until the 40's or 50's he didn't have access to commercial fertilizer. Even when he did buy the commercial 'gue-anner' ( guano?) he still cleaned the barn and put it on the field.

My Dad had a chicken house, ( '50's and '60's) and still bought some commercial fertilizer though the part of the garden that got the chicken litter, literally stopped traffic! ( the spot it lay on all winter grew corn so tall it looked practically alien! ) Lots of nitrogen in that stuff......and yes it will burn the dickens out of anything if you put it on too fresh ( far worse than cow or horse manure)....hence it lay all winter and was spread in the spring.

I have a slight 'chemical' background.....a BS in old school Home Economics, heavy in diet and nutrition with a bit of horticulture thrown in.....so I do understand that plants use the nutrients in the soil whether they get it from a natural source or an artificial one.......but I still would rather use a natural source when I can get it.....I think the soil is 'happier' with that method, I know the worms are.

It has worked for me for the 25 years that I've 'farmed' my garden and pasture.....I don't try to feed the world, but I do have a waiting list to take my overflow....






I do think that Dow had to realize that their herbicide would get into manure via grazed pasture or hay.......and therefore get into vegetable gardens. They are not in a vacuum, they know people use stable manure for fertilizer.....

Perhaps they did not 'conspire' to hurt or discourage the backyard gardener that had 'organic' intentions (even if those gardeners might misunderstand the term 'organic')......But I suspect some of their chemists might have had a good laugh about " the pore old guy that was going to kill his veggies when he thought he was was putting 'clean' manure on them for fertilizer".....( This is after all, a conspiracy website, and I'm allowed to suspect there is a conspiracy to discourage the 'grow your own' movement....)

They do put that warning on the original herbicide, so it's not like they didn't see it coming. ( and then all they say there is 'sensitive broad leaf crops').....they could have said 'vegetable gardens' and it would have been more obvious to those without a horticulture degree......and even then, the vegetable gardener that used the herbicidal manure was not very likely to see that labeling....

Do not transfer grazing animals (including horses) from areas treated with Milestone™ herbicide to areas where sensitive broadleaf crops grow without first allowing 3 days of grazing on an untreated pasture. Otherwise, urine and manure may contain enough active ingredient to cause injury to sensitive broadleaf plants.

source
www.dowagro.com...

reply to post by frayed1


Good post frayed, I agree with everything you said. I'm sorry if I may have lumped everyone into the same category. My mistake.

Man, that garden looks gorgeous, I'm jealous!

Composted chicken poop is awesome. Some say it has fungicidal properties as well. There's lots of "things"..."critters"...in natural organics that have yet to be discovered/synthesised. It's an exciting area of research for the future.

The strobularin class fungicides(example azoxystrobin, tradename Heritage)) are a REAL neat story. Researchers noticed that NO other mushrooms or fungus would grow under or around a certain type of mushroom. As it turns out, they discovered the mycelia of this mushroom was producing a toxin, that all the other fungi died when coming into contact. They've synthesized this toxin, and now make it artificially. It's expensive, but, man it works awesome. the use rates are phenomenally low...(example, 1 ounce per ACRE!) No more anthracnose or powdery mildew on peppers, no more septoria and all the other blights that affect tomatoes. Bordeaux worked great too, but it takes so much and you have to reapply after a rain.

Better living through Chemistry....this is just one of thousands of examples.

reply to post by starcraft

Question
What else is HAY grown for, if not for livestock consumption???