How to test your straw and hay mulch for herbicide that could harm your garden
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- čas přidán 21. 08. 2024
- If you're planning to use straw mulch in your garden, you need to know about potential herbicides that could damage your plants! This simple at-home test can save you a lot of headache and give you some peace of mind as you apply your mulch.
Scott Head's video: • WARNING! Herbicide Dan...
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The same rules apply to composted manure where the animal ate the bad straw. It's apparently safe for animals but the chemical shows up in the compost.
Yep yep!
I’m not buying that it is safe for animals to eat. Sorry, I just don’t trust these sleazy corps anymore.
Thanks for spreading the word on this ever-increasing danger! Please note sample size is important when doing an assay. Dow Agroscience recommends 3 +3 for this test. I find that 6 + 6 gives much more meaningful data.
Aminopyralids (e.g. Grazon) are persistent - even through the digestive tract of animals. Its big selling point is that grazing animals will basically reapply the herbicide in the field every time they poop. My point being that if someone is using contaminated straw as bedding, and then uses it to make compost that is either spread in a vegetable garden or is used to grow food for animals - and then *their* manure is used in a vegetable garden - well, you get the picture.
Thanks for this, I use wheat Straw for bedding for my chickens and I compost it and their poop. I haven’t recently thank goodness so now that I known will definitely do this test.
I’m gonna try this. Sadly, I already put some straw on one of my garden beds & im hoping and praying it’ll be ok 👍🏻
Glad you addressed this subject, it's really not common knowledge I'm finding when talking to other gardener's but it's a serious issue. I stopped buying anything mass produced for the garden except for seeds and use Poplar leaves from the yard for mulch no heavy metal fertilizer only compost made with no store bought veggie scraps. Your test was smart but I hope those beans weren't modified to grow in herbicide. I also hope your garden turns out awesome!
I did some searching and I couldn't find evidence of any hybrid bean that could grow in aminopyralids so I think I'm safe!
Really thankful my dad still bales his own hay--we just had to get three round bales off his truck...lol. Been an amazing free resource for my gardens though. Definitely worth the risk if you test it; seen Charles Dowding do something similar to this I believe.
Very lucky!
@@AuxhartGardening Eyeballing the change in earthworm activity its absurd and the ground is just thawed here.
This is exactly what I was thinking of doing. I wasn't sure if my experiment would be good, but you have convinced me. Thank you. I am trying to buy all the straw I will need now for next year's garden for Core gardening, but Wilco couldn't tell me if their straw had been sprayed or not. I still purchased 1 bale to test like you did here. I'm now confident in trying this experiment for myself. Thank you!
Awesome! I hope it works out for you!
Tks. I bought a bale of hay to use as a mulch come May. Zone 5 here. I'm going to use your test prior to using.
Very smart lady. well done!
Thanks!
thank you for the excellent advice. we watched Mr Scotts video as well.
You're welcome!
That’s great it gives me hope bc the people I bought the straw from said they did not spray anything on their straw
Good news! It's nice to be able to talk to the growers.
Great video! I've had a garden ruined by trying the Ruth Stout method with hay that had been sprayed. It also kills onions, peas, and some other things. I moved the garden to a new spot, the old one is 7 years old, I should try the bean test on it now.
It might be okay! Worth checking.
I did the same thing. I had a few bales of spoiled hay, figured no harm in mulching my maters. Goodbye maters.
Thanks for this video, very informative! Will definitely be trying this when spring hits Vermont.
You're welcome!
smart! TY!
Another thing that bit me was getting municipal compost from the city dump. I never thought about it but all those grass clippings that they use to make the compost comes from those "nice" city lawns that are without weeds... hmmmm, yes weed killers which persist in the compost and then affected my garden plants.
Yeah that can be a huge issue :/
Thank you for doing this experiment.
You're welcome, I hope it helps!
I'm going to try this
Good information! Thanks 😊
Thank you very helpful
Glad it helped!
So would I be able to test this with rabbit poop? My friend has a rabbit and said I can have either the rabbit or all the poop. He feeds it Timothy hay and I thought about getting a already growing tomato plant from the store and doing this same idea but didn't know if maybe you'd see anything different I should do.
Call the seller and send it back. Get your money back. If this doesn't happen they will keep using the spray. And it's too new to know if it causes illness with animals or not. Or wrecks water supplies.
Smart.
I wouldn't put herbicided, insecticided, chemo nuked hay on anything. How would that killer chemical effect the microbiome of the soil? You know, Elaine Ingham stuff? No way.
👍
This crap should be illegal. But thank you because I wanted to get some but have held back until now.
If not illegal, then at least well-documented and communicated at point of sale.
I just learned about the possible dangers of straw herbicides today. My veg garden has had straw for 2 - 3 weeks and looks great still. Should I assume it’s safe?
It's probably okay if it's been a few weeks already.
Would applying the Straw tea neat have any side effects.
Should it be diluted.
You’re looking for the side effects, so I apply neat.
Apparently the half-life of this herbicide is 35 days? So theoretically you could leave it out and use it next year instead? Just a thought as i'm learning about this from multiple videos
I've seen evidence from others' gardens that it doesn't get down to low enough levels to be safe that quickly without intervention of some sort. There's plenty of reports that if a cow eats sprayed hay, that manure will still be able to contaminate any compost it's added to, and that compost can cause gardens to show contamination for over a year.
@@AuxhartGardening Wow, nasty stuff.
If I am able to use the straw as cover for grass seed and the grass comes up fine, then the straw should be okay, yes? Straw, made of wheat or rice, wouldn't have grazon or something like that on it. Just roundup?
Aminopyralids don't affect grass crops. That's why they're often sprayed on hay and straw, because those crops are unaffected. Aminopyralids are particularly dangerous to nightshades and will tend to kill tomatoes, peppers, and beans.
This is why I use pine shavings ment for animal bedding
That's a great option! I used to use that as well, but it's not as economical on the scale of my garden these days.
Be careful with pine. I don't know about wood shavings, but the needles have something that inhibits plant growth. I've heard horror stories of gardens being sterile for more than a year no matter what was done to correct it.
I think no matter what we use there is always a risk. For me pine shavings make the most sense, especially since I am already grabbing pine shavings for my chickens. I am hoping to grow my own mulch this year. I am gonna try growing grains ( wheat, rice, buckwheat, flax, barley). It will double as chicken feed also. Fingers crossed 😁.
I'm worried about glyphosate. Does this work to test for that?
Glyphosate kills everything
@@appl3jax498 So I would not use wheat straw. I think rice straw is better. That's what we use in our garden.
Glyphosate also breaks down faster than these long term herbicides.
Glyphosate breaks down faster, sure, but what about the cumulative effects on the microbiome in your soil? I'm seeing a lot of evidence firsthand that the vast majority of wheat is being sprayed with glyphosate to dessicate it for a quicker harvest. That puts it directly into our food supply, not just into our soil...
@@appl3jax498 Everything but GMO engineered to resist glyphosate.
It wont break down through the digestion of cows or horses either. So watch out on what kind of manure you get.
Good tip!
Nice informative video, good work! Maybe trade the house pest (cat) in for a dog. HaHaHa...
Oh yeah, dogs are soooo much less destructive hahaha