Spreading Aged Manure May Harm Your Veggies!

I had a little mini emotional "break down" in the car the other day after hearing a story on NPR about cow and horse manure that has been tainted with broad leaf chemicals. These chemicals will hinder growth of new or existing plants if spread or top dressed in the garden.

"Aminopyralid, clopyralid, fluroxypry, picloram, and triclopyr are in a class of herbicides known as pyridinecarboxylic acids. They are registered for application to pasture, grain crops, lawns, certain vegetables and fruits,and roadsides. They are used to control a wide variety of broadleaf weeds."

~North Carolina State University Article

So I went out to read more about it and I think I'm done using cow and horse manure as compost material or top dressing. Read the article above - which should give you some good information as a starting point.

Essentially - people spread this herbicide wherever they feel like it. The cows and horses eat it in some way and it perpetuates in their poop, causing anything that comes into contact with it to suffer.

Of which bummed me out enough, but then I started thinking that if it perpetuates this long and we can see the damage in this way, what is it doing to our bodies? Hello cancer! What sucks is that we can't control where these herbicides are sprayed. For instance, a dude comes around once a month or so to spray around my office building - literally right outside my window. I'll be sitting in session and he'll come around with his giant sprayer. It's totally unprofessional for my hackles to go up like they do and I try to squelch the urge to wrinkle my nose and sigh dramatically. I approached him once and asked him not to spray by my window but he blew me off. I offered to pull the weeds myself and he just shook his head at me.

See? No control. Plus, now he thinks I'm psychotic. Oh, well. I've been called worse.*

So it's something to think about.

Which makes me even MORE EXCITED to have rabbits! Not only are they supplying me with yummy meat, but their poop is building up quite an impressive manure pile in once chamber of my outside compost system. Between the chicken turds, rabbit turds and worm turds, I feel my compost needs are being met pretty well at this time.

I'd like to point out that DOW CHEMICAL is one of the biggest generators of this crappy broad leaf herbicide. I'm sure there are others but I'm gonna pick on Dow because they are almost as EVIL as Montsanto. Both of them should be stopped immediately. Between RoundUp and Grazon, we are being poisoned without our consent. Who's the brain eater now?!?

Anyways, back to how awesome my rabbits are. Easy to breed, great poop (what's known as cool poop - it can go straight into the garden without being composted first. Wheeee!!!) quiet, non-smelly, easy to care for, yummy nutritious meat....I can't think of any negatives. I like that.

So what can you do, save raising chickens and rabbits, to supply your yard with good, clean, manure? Check with every farmer that you get poop from if they use herbicides in their pastureland or adjacent fields. Ask them if they use organic feed for their livestock. If they can't tell you the origin of their feed or whether they have sprayed their fields, it's probably best to not get the manure.

One more irritating thing we have to do as conscientious people to keep pesticides and chemicals out of our organic gardens. Chemical Company Monster Capitalists want us to not know these things while they line their pocket books with billions. Well, too bad, Capitalist Pigs! We are smart little gardeners and we have a tendency to READ about things (annoying, I know.)

I posted this on FB - but want everyone to have access to it.

Thanks OccupyMontsanto and Organicconsumer.org

HERE is a List of Corporations that spent money to defeat the labeling of GMO products in California. Not exactly Herbicides but I wanted to get that list out to everyone.

Okay. Sporadic post - chemicals to rabbits to GMO's. Sorry. Next one will be more fluid, I promise!


* Mexican pole dancer. Motherfuckinbraineater (all one word...), evil succubus bitch - so on and so forth. Did I mention I spent some time working in the adolescent wing of our state mental health inpatient hospital? Ever the fertile breeding ground for catastrophically hilarious insults. Besides I haven't been a succubus for, like, 8 years. So whatever.