Petition to ban herbicide

Thanks for that Paul. I hadn't realised that Verdone and other products like Spear Head had this stuff in it. Not everyone is as careful as you, it's got me thinking about the council green waste collections. Should people put Verdone treated grass clippings in their green bin I'm not sure if the composting process will destroy it. So I wonder if the council produced compost is safe?

 

I never properly read labels on things. I wonder how many people have unwittingly used their Verdone treated grass clippings as a mulch?

I'm not sure if I would trust a home compost heap to get hot enough to break down this group of herbicides, even after 9 months. I still have one of the dodgy bags of contaminated compost from last year, and as an experiment I potted on a tomato plant a few weeks ago, it soon started to show symptoms of hormone weedkiller damage. It proves to me that aminopyralid is very persistant and still toxic to some plants even after storage in a bag of compost over 12 months.

 

Clueless1; its a good point, I'm unsure what aminopyralid does in water, I suspect in a flowing stream it would get too diluted to have any effect but I'm only guessing.

All I do know is that it is very selective, on my veg patch last year it devasted my tomatoes, beans and potatoes. Strangely the very weeds it is designed to kill were unaffected! So I still had creeping thistle, nettles, dandelions and buttercups as per normal :( It goes to show how unpredictable these chemicals are.

One of the real eye openers for me was that the govt agency responsible for this product was asleep on watch. It worries me that future weedkillers/pesticides could be licenced without any proper testing that would bring about your scenario.

 

Don't get me started :thmb:

 

I've just had some feedback from the petition organizer regarding clopryalid:

"A sister product chlopyralid is used in amenity horticulture and this has the potential to enter the green waste stream. It is threatening the green waste composting Industry and causing loss of confidence in peat free seed and potting composts."

This was why clopyralid was added just as an additional piece of information but the petition itself is aimed at aminopyralid.

 

I've found some more information about how to deal with this herbicide, if you have some compost or manure even with tiny trace residues it can be deadly to some plants.

Keeping manure in a heap (even a very hot one) or compost in a bag will not break down the residue. The residue will be released as the material rots but then needs to be in contact with soil bacteria in order for it to break down into harmless components. So no contact with soil means that the residue persists.

Re the selectiveness - the herbicide will kill broad leaved plants but it is dose dependent. This means that some plants e.g. tomatoes are most sensitive even to tiny doses. However, even plants considered non-sensitive may be affected if the dose is high enough. People often see weeds growing on manure heaps and assume this means no herbicide is present - it doesn't, weeds just need a higher dose to kill them or affect them.

 

I'm with Kristen on this, all the farmers I know care for and respect their environment.