Things you dont use anymore.

Found these in the shed.
Cant see any use by date, so they must still be ok to use

 

I know some council waste/recycling sites do take old garden chemicals.
The club root treatment contains a mercury compound.
This site might be of use Garden Chemical Disposal

 

If you turn up some Benlate or Dithane, @pete, guard it with your life! I'm still using my Dad's 20-year old stash to combat (systemically) a horrible oleander fungal disease. It works a treat!

 

Meh...
I wouldn't touch that old stuff without gloves. And even then only to bring it to the communal collection center for special waste.

I have a background in chemistry and they put a lot of dubious stuff in there a fee decades ago. Mercury being one of them. Where I grew up, a few old farmers swore on using that and even continued to use it after it was banned ("no government is telling me what to do and they better not be taking my stuff!!!!").
Until one day one of the cans sprung a leak and he was exposed to a lethal dose. His son found him, tried to help and was subsequently poisoned himself, dying a few days later in the hospital.

Sorry, but I don't want that stuff anywhere near my family, pets or edibles (which includes more than half my garden).

 

I used it for years, and I'm still around, or at least I was last time I looked.
The point I usually make at this point is that these older chemicals are always condemned but bear in mind when they were being used the insect life, in those days, was definitely in much better shape than it is now.

They were also more effective, so one spraying often did the job.
Unlike the ones we are sold these days which either have no real effect or require repeated doses.

I'm not a person who uses chemicals indecriminently, but when I do find the need,I want something that works.

 

The benlate ban crept up on me, I did have a few sachets of dithane up until a while ago.
I often get ants in pot plants and used to find malathion to work well as a drench.
Got a small amount left.

 

The older chemicals were effective, mainly because they were so toxic. There was a report that the RHS had issues with copper and arsenic in the soil of the walled garden at their new site Bridgewater nr Manchester and they had to have a layer of soil taken away as toxic waste.
As a teenager I had a couple of reactions to organo phosphorus insecticides after exposure; flu like symptoms for a few days afterwards; I admit this biased me against systemic insecticides and a degree in chemistry did nothing to reassure me.

 

I still find it baffling as to why insects are in such a decline with all these safer chemicals we are using as opposed to the older ones.

I noticed on the TV a while back that some farmers are actually giving up growing certain crops due to pests that they can't control any more due to banned chemicals.
I assume we will just move to importing those foodstuffs from abroad, where they do use the chemicals.

 

Good question and no simple answers. Changes in cropping practices so: larger fields, monocultures, autumn/winter sown crops rather than spring sown crops, more drainage.
Greater use of all types of chemicals, not just agricultural ones, more air pollution. Street lights and outdoor lighting are disruptive to night flying insects.
I went hiking in Romania in June 2007 and in the meadows just below the snowline there was a mass of spring flowers and the insect buzzing and humming was so loud and unexpected it took a minute or so to realise the source. I do wonder if that sound still occurs.

 

Mmm, yeah lots of things to be taken into account I suppose .
Remember years ago having to clean squashed insects off the car at certain times of the year, but no more.
Maybe that's because we can't go fast enough to squash them these days.

 

Late 80s harvest time always had to clean windscreen of bugs, these days hardly ever.

 

The problem mostly is, that even after a ban, there is a lot of the old stuff still circulating. And even more people ignore the ban and do their best to stockpile the old stuff from dubious sources "because it works". Yes of course it works. A lot of things "work" like using liquid mercury against constipation. But they accumulate and keep lingering around "working" a long way even after use and reducing the number of offspring from insects for example.

And the reasoning "I have used it my whole life and I'm still kicking" doesn't say much either. It's like saying "look there is an old war veteran sitting an that bench - seems like the world wars weren't that bad"
You always see those surviving ALTHOUGH they did something dangerous, but never those who did something wrong and died on the way (just google "survivor bias", works also well for old washing machines, smoking and using cheap second hand bungee ropes)

 

No, I've never used a second hand bungee rope.