I want to share a problem we experienced this spring so that others won’t have to go through what we went through.

My husband and I have been organic gardeners for over 30 years. We have worked on keeping our soil healthy by alternating cover crops and soil amendments like manure, grass clippings and leaves and compost, but this year, something went terribly wrong with that plan: the cow manure that we had brought in from a local farm turned out to be contaminated with an herbicide (at least this is the conclusion that we came to after doing a lot of research on the internet).

What seems to be happening is that the grass or hay that is being fed to the animals has been sprayed with Aminopyralid or commonly known as Grazon. The manure from these animals is then contaminated because the Grazon passes right through and does not break down. One of the first indications that we had to point out this problem was our tomatoes in our greenhouse, the soil of which we had heavily “enriched” with this manure. All the leaves on the tomato plants curled up and the plants just didn’t grow right.

At first, we thought that we might not have watered enough or had done something wrong. We pulled those plants out and replanted — the same thing happened. That’s when we began searching and found many other gardeners here and in different countries experiencing the same problems. Luckily for us, we didn’t put this manure on our entire garden, so we still have areas that we can safely plant, but we had to throw out all of our cucumbers, greenhouse tomatoes and corn as well as this year’s crop of medicinal hemp (CBD and CBG).

So, the moral of the story is: gardeners beware! Do your research before you buy manure, straw or hay — make sure it is not contaminated with Aminopyralid. We are now starting the process of removing this contaminant from the soil and we feel confident that we will be able to do so, but it might take a year or two to accomplish.

Hannah Boehm

Olga