Strange twisted leaves on your plants? You may be dealing with Grazon contamination. Here’s how to save your garden from this herbicide.
Image Source Giannino Nalin from focus on
How to save a garden damaged by Grazon pollution
I got this heartbreaking comment one of my blog posts Regarding Grazon contamination in manure:
“We have about 80 acres of pasture. Our co-op started a spraying program four years ago. With horses, Grasson is recommended. I’ve been told it’s safe for horses to stay on the pasture while being sprayed, and it’s even possible to have horses in Eating while still wet. Never told me not to compost manure. I started pasture composting two years ago. This year, I started giving it to friends. What a mess. I spend a lot of time collecting manure with a shovel, Turn it around and give it to a friend. I’ve had two contact me about their gardens and the problems they’re having. One of them asked if we were using Grazon. It’s going to cost me a lot of time and money to fix. Some are small raised gardens and I’m going in and clearing and changing the soil. Some are bigger, up to an acre, and I don’t know what we’re going to do. I’m open to all suggestions. Thank you.”
Aminopyridines are bad news, but many people don’t yet know how bad they are. People need to recognize the problem.
Recognize that Grazon is a serious problem
People still don’t believe in the topic. Check out some comments on this video:
No, it’s not that the manure is too hot or not composted enough. Stop blaming the gardener. Many farmers and gardeners have been growing with fertilizers for years and nothing like this has ever happened. I know what too much nitrogen looks like, almost everyone I’ve met who has been killed by Grazon in bed.
It is a severe, long-lasting, long-term herbicide that is absorbed by plants, can be eaten by animals, passed in manure, and remains toxic to gardens even after months or years of composting.
This is evil. It’s annoying. It’s here, and if you’re fertilizing your garden without knowing it’s 100% not contaminated with this trash, you’re at high risk of losing your plants.
You can also enjoy:
“The hidden dangers of bale gardening”
“Compost horrible things – meat, dairy, bones and human waste!”
(Incidentally, Marjory recommends a simple test to help you determine if manure (or straw or hay) is contaminated:
- Plant a slice of beans.
- Mix manure, straw or hay with water in a 5 gallon bucket and stir frequently for a day or two.
- Then, use water on the beans.
- Keep an eye on the beans to see how they respond. If the second and third sets of leaves look normal, Marjory says straw, hay or fertilizer may be safe to use. )
What does Grazon pollution look like?
If you think you’ve been hit by Grazon, check out the leaves. If they look oddly twisted and curled, and you’ve used fertilizer, straw, or hay at some point, it’s probably Grazon.
Grazon corruption looks like this:
It looks like this:
The plant is usually still green and trying to grow, but it never produces anything. As the cell stacking function is inhibited by the toxin, all new growth twists and thickens, resulting in strange, terrifying growth, and smaller and smaller leaves.
read Karen Rand’s Story. This is another heartbreaker, but you can see what happens when a really good gardener gets hit with these things.
Fix Grazon pollution
So what do you do once you know you’ve been hit?
First, remove as much feces as possible. Get it out of your garden bed. Scrape it off and throw it on the edge of your home or a clearing that won’t hurt anything else.
Take out the affected plants and throw them away. Don’t compost them as that will only add toxins to the compost. Throw them out or toss where you throw the poop.
You can also enjoy:
“Table Mulch: Builds Soil, Stops Weeds, and Makes Your Garden Fertile”
“The special challenges of managing NPK in an organic garden”
After you’ve done all the cleanup, try adding some crushed charcoal to the bed. Activated charcoal powder is really good. Add compost — not compost with aminopyridines — and when you do that, you know that the charcoal will suck a lot of nutrients out of the soil along with the herbicide. A friend of mine kept some of her tomatoes alive in grazon-contaminated manure thanks to the ash and charcoal she grows. Those dung without charcoal were destroyed.
Another option is to plant members of the grass family for several seasons. They are not affected by the toxin because it targets broadleaf plants, not grasses. You can grow corn and grain and they will produce. Again, though, don’t compost the straw.
The last thing I want to say is: Complain! Tell everyone about this rubbish. This should be illegal because it has caused immeasurable damage to gardens and farms across the country. There is no responsible way to use this poison. It needs to be cancelled.Vermont has The trigger has been pulled. Other countries should follow suit.
I have more on Grazon and avoid it in my book Composting Everything: A Good Guide to Extreme Composting. Don’t get hit!
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This is an updated version of an article originally published on January 31, 2019. Authors may not be able to respond to comments at this time, but we encourage our community members to get involved, share their experiences and answer questions!
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