Dave I'll try to opine on a few of the things in your note. Regarding the existing manures perhaps you can do two things. The first is apply it to soil that will be used to grow cole family plants rotated with corn, and perhaps melons for 3-4 years. The other option is to bury it and forget about it in some part of the pasture. Grapes are are quite susceptible but I don't know at what parts per million/billion. Early next spring you could put suspect soil in pots and try the grapes for a few weeks and see if they show reactive signs of contamination. Anecdotal information indicates that frequent turning of soil and compost with exposure to sunlight hastens breakdown time. Also good soil and compost moisture and aeration will help, as Picloram is primarily degraded through biologic activity. Since there are many factors which affect the decontamination of these herbicides, including future temperatures and rainfall, nobody can really answer the question of how long. Beans and tomatoes react at three parts per billion, so you are probably looking at 1-5 years. Anecdotal information indicates that activated charcoal applied at 5lbs per 100 square feet worked into the root zone is helpful as well. These are sickening, unnecessary chemicals putting all hay,straw, and manure from unknown sources in an extreme high risk for vegetable and fruit production. To the best of my knowledge Dow is the primary producer.

If you haven't read this info re clopyralid from WSU, please do. It will answer many of your questions.

http://www.puyallup.wsu.edu/soilmgmt/clopyralid.htm

This site also has good info
http://www.the-compost-gardener.com/picloram.html#axzz1zaBBTkjK

Here is a link that might be useful: contaminated manures, etc (WSU)

Thanks for the replies. Yes, I have read everything I can. But to be honest there is a lot of misinformation from Dow on how long before you can plant sensitive crops. I think their times (18 months) is way to short for field rotations using Tordon.

I have read all of the WSU information. Very good information and that is what I am using for my bioassays on a small number of samples. I really need to get a tractor so I can properly till the pasture.

I was hoping there would be newer information on bioremediation. We desperately need to develop some bugs that will break this stuff down as I see it becoming a larger and larger problem for gardeners all over.

I can't dump my manure out in the south pasture because it is next to a waterway and the picloram would leach into it. I think I may just leave it where fit is and keep tilling it for a few years.

That sucks Greg. The only thing I can think of doing is to work up the land and plant crops that are not susceptible to that herbicide for a year or two.

I always worry when I see people advertising horse manure (composted or otherwise) for sale. Most people will not think to ask about herbicide application to feed and/or straw. They get this stuff, run into problems and then blame "compost" for their problems.

Lloyd

I feel your pain because I placed clopyralid contaminated manure in many of my vegetable beds.

I second the advice of growing what will grow. Plant a cover crop, till it in. Plant another cover crop, till it in. I would also till in some good compost if you can get it. The beds that have we have made sure to water extensively. I have also placed worms from my worm bins in the hopes of breaking it down further. We considered activated charcoal but the quantities needed were beyond our budget.

If you can, I would probably just move the vegetable garden to a better/less sensitive location. Depending on the cost of grapes, you could try just 1 and see how it does but I would not invest a lot of money until you have a better idea of how they will be affected.

A study done in Brazil in a greenhouse determined that Picloram could be phytoremediated from soils in about 12 months, however that seems to use a lot of water as well as other energy and probably is not a viable method for most people. Bioremediation can work, even though there is very little information available on the process and more then likely Dow Chemicals assessment of cleaning up contaminated soil in 18 months is not very accurate. Since Picloram is potent enough to kill plants growing in contaminated soils at 1 ppm and the USEPA has found this stuff contaminating ground water the best means of cleaning it from soils is to build up the amount of organic matter in the soil which will create an environment that the Soil Food Web likes enough to grow and become busy and in that way bioremediation will occur. I would think it will take 4 to 5 years, however.

One of the Brazilian tests seems to indicate that with Picloram applied at 80g per hectare; Panicum maximum cultivar Tanzania (It seems to be a type of Millet) was sown and grown for 60 days. The tests seemed to indicate significant increase in tomato growth afterward. They also experimented with Eleusine Coracana (a millet) at plant populations of 172 per square meter for 100 days. The summary states successful remediation. Thanks for tracking this down Kimmsr.

pick your position, pick your supporting information.

for instance, i have a feed trough mounted on a trailer to feedblivestock. this moves around the pastured areas. where the trailer sits for a while, no weeds grow for up to two years. contaminated feed?

since i raise my own feed, i know that is not so.

i also have a hard time buying mostly anecdotal evidence from anyone over the mountain if data used in registering a label. if you do not know what it takes to register, look into it. it's easier to buy a handgun in chicago.

as far as remediation procedures, nope, no luck. the quick results are removal and replacement. charcoal seems difficult to use in field situations. intersting research using willows poplars in leaching noxious stuff, but it seems to be mostly used in waste water/grey water targeting heavy metals.

best bet seems to be a couple quick turn cover crops.

or given the fact that you have a bit of land, don't use the areas you know to be a problem for a while...cuz regardless of how you view the problem, everyone agrees it goes away in time. it's just a question of how quickly.

Great post strobiculate. You are right about the massive amount of controlled studies required for registration.

I am curious though, whether tests are required that would detect this persistent effect on non-target plants? I worked in this field for awhile but I was doing soil and aquatic degradation studies on the chemistry side, to determine degradation half-life and degradation products. I didn't do bioassay type of work at all so I'm not familiar with that side. It seems like that is what this would require. Does the FIFRA registration package include that?

Thanks everyone. While I have established a potential link to picloram from ditch hay I wonder if this could be clopyralid instead. I know that the county sprayed Tordon not clopyralid in 2010. But the beets in my garden are growing fantastically. Beets are sensitive to picloram but I think can tolerate clopyralid. Makes me wonder if there is another source for the contamination.

Unfortunately my east pasture is the optimal place for grape vines. The other spots have potential for flooding and/or not suitable sun exposure. Fortunately my limited bioassay so far shows that much of the pasture may be ok with some "hot" spots. I will till the entire 3/4 acre field and plant a legume cover crop to get a better idea of how much is out there. Then I'll till it again in the fall. Hopefully I can still plant most of it next spring with grapes.

I'm starting to wonder if my mysterious grape vine death this spring has anything to do with my Lawn Guy neighbor whose lawn covers half the root zone. I may have to ask him what he put on this spring.

Lawn products typically contain 2,4-D and/or dicamba. Grapes are very sensitive to them. Here are some pictures of grape leaves with damage from these herbicides:

2,4-D damage:
{{gwi:297463}}

Here is a link that might be useful: MSU phenoxy herbicide damage to grapes

Thanks greginnd. Mine didn't look quite like that. The vine sprouted late, then the leaves looked stunted and weak, then they had mosaics of brown patches, and finally all turned brown and died. Funny thing is the vine's been there for 15 years and never had a problem. These neighbors have been there for about 4, and the previous neighbors were Lawn People too.

Activated Charcoal (Carbon) is the only thing that I have found to work. The best I've used is Biogize-SD which is available on Amazon under 'soil detox'. They have an easy mix and apply bottle which I just run through my hose-end-sprayer. But they also sell it in bulk (40lb box). I'm convinced my tomato plants were suffering from herbicides big-time until I treated them with the AC. They revived nicely.

Dupont who rec

... Dupont, who recalled "Imprelis" after it killed thousands of trees (and still is) recommends Activated Charcoal as the treatment to use during replanting.

Here is a link that might be useful: Dupont guidelines for herbicide contamination

AC will be impractical for me. DuPont recommends removing the soil, backfilling with clean soil treated with AC. I just can't do this for an entire acre.

DNewton, how many lbs of AC did you use per 100 square feet of garden? Did it take days or weeks to see the affect of the AC? Thanks

The mix ratio is one pound of AC to one gallon of water. This mix will cover 150 s/f. I started to see improvement in my tomatoes in 3-4 days, and full recovery in about 10. (I had drenched the soil around the tomatoes vs spraying. However, I have since sprayed the entire garden.)

To treat an acre, it would take about 290 pounds of AC. The cost for 290 pounds (40lbs per bag) on the multavita site is around $590 plus shipping. That seems cheap to me compared to the alternatives.

Thanks DNewton. DuPont's instructions call for removing the contaminated soil, amending NEW soil with activated charcoal at 7 to 14 pounds per 1000 cubic feet. An acre has approximately 22,000 cubic feet if you go 6 inches deep. It's not so much the charcoal that would be infeasible, I just can't remove my topsoil and replace it with clean soil.

Anyway, I think it is moot as I have determined that the highest concentration of contamination is in the areas where the hay was dumped and piled up. There is a large pile of composted hay and manure that is probably 30x30 feet and 10-12 inches or more deep. I can see the pattern in my garden on the edge of this pile where the herbicide has leached in as the plants get increasingly more damaged the closer they are to the pile. It looks like contamination out in the field is more spotty and much less concentrated. I'm hoping a good tilling regimen to expose the soil to the sun and another year will be enough to reduce the amount to nontoxic levels. I plan to till my acre and put in a cover crop of beans or peas to do a full bioassay of the field.

Sorry to digress, but it does not make sense to me that DuPont recomments REMOVING soil and then TREATING the REPLACEMENT soil. ????

My guess would be that is because of possible leaching. Again this is only a guess, but could it be treating the replacement soil with activated charcoal would tie up/deal with the contaminant that leached into the surrounding areas?

In the following link from Dupont, they talk about using "new soil" for backfilling the planting hole, but I do not see anything about soil removal for cleaning-up the sight. Dupont does however recommend using activated charcoal "To address potential effects of Imprelis remaining in the soil..." What I'm seeing in my research, is that AC is being used to adsorb various types of contamination, so expensive soil removal can be avoided.

Here is a link that might be useful: Dupont guidelines for herbicide contamination

Keep in mind that manufacturers of products that require FDA approval have been known to fudge that data to get that approval. Since the FDA does not have the staff to redo those studies they rely on the manufacturers to provide them and it can take years before problens with those products appear and the FDA becomes aware and then it takes many months before any stop selling order can take affect.
What the seller of many products will tell you may not be what you need to know.

Give me a choice between a label and info from the internet...i'll take the label each and every time.

Speaking of which...unless I am mistaken...and I have not read a label for these herbicides in some time...does not the label say certain crops are not to be grown until a bioassay test comes back clean?

You're doing the cover crop rotation...in north dakota...that means three years?

It wasn't really the point of the post, but it's actually EPA that has control over pesticide registration, under FIFRA. Not to split hairs. ;-]

The tordon was sprayed in ditches not crop land. Then the hay was eaten and excreted by horses. I'm not sure the label directions will be useful if I coud get the actual product label that was used. How in the world can I know how much was sprayed, how much was in the hay and how concentrated it is on my land now? These products are never intended for use in vineyards or vegetable gardens. Crop rotation times are pretty meaningless I think.

The problem with labels is that the information is valid for proper use and location of the herbicides. But they are ending up in places they were never meant to be.

I will plow my vineyard in a few weeks and plant some peas to do a more complete bioassay.

"Ditch hay" generally is hay taken from public right of ways that often have been managed by government entities responsible for the maintenance of these lands. Different herbicides have different appropriate uses. Using one from the pyridine carboxylic acid class for a hay crop especially one that has such random and blind distribution is an inappropriate use of that type of herbicide.

It is easy for most of you to say this chemical or that chemical is bad. Most of you manage your backyards. For those of us that manage quite a bit more than that for agricultural purposes life is not so simple!

Perhaps the problem here isn't so much that evil chemical company, but your local public works dept or DOT that is using the wrong tool to get a job done. This problem has been around long enough for them to know better. Instead of moaning about Dow or DuPont why don't you pick up your phone and research if someone is making bad decisions managing your local public lands?

Find out what your own community/county/state's policy are about using this type of herbicide on public lands at the beginning of what is so often a blind chain of distribution. Just consider that the problem here might not be the chemical as much as it is some government entity's poor agricultural management.

Subk, right! Don't blame the chemical or the county who appropriately sprayed the road side. I put fault in the guy who harvested hay from there and the ignorance of the guy who fed it to his horses. That roadside should not have been harvested for hay.

So you think it is "appropriate" for the county to use any chemical they want as long as it gets the immediate job done? What if the county sprayed straight gasoline to kill vegetation? That work for you?

Pyridine carboxylic acids do what they do it really isn't an unknown anymore. As someone who actually manages grazing land and livestock, I assure you I spend a great deal of effort choosing the right chemical and the right strategy for a job. If I'm going to use something like picloram I know I have a responsibilty to manage that use until the chemical is innate. If I don't want that responsibilty (or expense) then I don't use that product. Why should you expect any different from the county or whatever other government agency is managing the land?

It doesn't mean they don't spray and it doesn't mean the ditch isn't hayed. It means different strategies are used that are appropriate for maintaining the hay and it's harvesting, keeping in mind it's final destination.

Subk, I didn't say that or imply that it is appropriate for the county to use picloram for areas that will be mowed for hay. In this case I don't think they expected this area to be used for hay. And the county is very responsible. In my case I fault the guy who harvested the hay and his lack of communication with the guy who bought it.

This year I successfully remediated 2 cubic meters of aminopyralid-contaminated 9 year old manure that was delivered spring of 2011. Aminopyralid and chlopyralid is similar to picloram.

In the fall of 2011, I spread the manure over the 15' x 20' area of lawn/quack grass. Spring 2012, I pulled the quack grass which was easy as roots had entered the loose manure. This exposed the underlying soil and incorporated some of it with the manure. I build a sheet mulch bed around the perimeter. Next I drenched the contaminated soil with active aerated compost tea made with high nutrient compost and well spiked with activated effective microorganisms (EM - brand used ProBio Balance Plus, manufactured by SCD). I did this twice, deeply raking the surface to oxygenate the soil micro-organisms without destroying them. Then I planted the manure area with corn and the sheet mulch area with various squashes, both of which produce much biomass and are the least susceptible to pyralids. I also did a weed survey, finding less than 10 misshapen and malformed weeds of three species along the margins. Three weeks after planting, I did another soil drench with AACT and EM. I also ensured adequate watering (mostly rainfall with a bit of irrigation

By mid July the corn was waist high and the squash were rampant enough that drivers heading up the street would brake suddenly for a better look. I harvested 40 ears of mid-quality corn and more than 120 pounds of high-quality squashes. The best was the weed survey completed at the end of August. Fourteen different species in robust health. The biomass will stand over winter, collecting snow and moisture, then in the spring, I'll chop it and add it back to the soil and do another AACT and EM soil drench.

I'm wondering if perhaps AACT and EM along with biomass accumulators and ensuring soil moisture might help remediate your contaminated soil?

Gorgeous stand of veggies! I am curious, how did you know the manure was affected in the first place?