I sure didn’t want to be writing this post…
But part of being a blogger is allowing you, my wonderful readers, a glimpse into my life– and that includes both the good and the bad.
I’ve alluded several times in my newsletter, and here on the blog, that I’ve had a rather bizarre, and quite unproductive gardening year.
At first I just thought it was coincidence and that I simply lost the gamble this year… (Because we all know that homesteading, and especially gardening, is a bit of a gamble. Or maybe a game of Russian Roulette rather…)
But as I started to do more research and dig deeper into my strange garden problems, my heart sunk.
I think I poisoned my garden.
I’ll get to WHY I think that in a minute, but first, allow me to share how I came to this conclusion.
My Garden Detective Work…
The year started out super promising… More promising than normal, actually.
I started my heirloom seeds in February, and they were happy and thriving. I was especially excited because, since our home remodel is complete, we finally had seed-starting space in the basement for the first time.
Mid-May, I hauled my trays of seedlings out of the basement, and started hardening them off and preparing them for transplanting.
Everything looked fine when I first put them in the garden. I planted my tomatoes (Amish Paste) in a new spot this year– normally they are along my fence, but this year, I had more plants so I stuck them in the area I usually plant my onions. I mulched them and watered them, and sat back to watch them grow.
As I tended to them, I felt they were growing a little slower than I thought they should… But sometimes it’s hard to tell. But then I noticed the tomato leaves began to look strange. Very, very strange.
They were curling… But not like curling from being too dry or too wet… They were twisting in the strangest of ways.
The plants were NOT dying or yellowing either. They were maintaining their color and were most definitely still alive. However, they weren’t getting larger or putting on fruit.
What the heck was going on? I started to do some research and these are some of the possible reasons for tomato leaf curling issues. I suggest looking through the top reasons for tomato leaf curl that I mention in that article so you can figure out why YOU are dealing with tomato leaf curl issues.
Why Are MY Tomato Leaves Curling?
After researching the reasons for tomato leaf curl (and gathering them into this article), I finally figured out why MY tomato leaves are curling…
Herbicide Residue/Contamination.
*ding ding ding* We have a winner folks… Or least this is the direction I’m currently leaning. And of all the options, I most certainly did NOT WANT IT TO BE THIS ONE.
In the years I’ve been advocating for the deep mulch method of gardening, I’ve had a couple people ask if I’ve ever had problems using non-organic hay. We get our hay from a variety of sources, and looking back, I’m almost certain some of it had to be sprayed at some point. However, as I always had thriving gardens by using our compost and hay mulch, I figured people who were concerned about non-organic hay or non-organic animal manure were worrying unnecessarily. I was wrong.
I was playing that game of Russian Roulette, and I didn’t even know it.
A couple of readers sent me links to articles about contaminated compost, and I read them with fascination. Upon closer inspection, I realized my tomato leaves looked identical to the photos I found of aminopyralid poisoning.
Aminopyralids are a classification of herbicides which kill broadleaf plants, while leaving grasses unaffected. Therefore, they are a wonderful option if you are growing hay and do not want weeds in your hay crop. The problem? Aminopyralids can go through an animal’s digestive tract, sit in the compost pile, and still affect your crop for several years after they are sprayed. They will eventually break down when exposed to soil organisms, but it takes a while.
Why I think Herbicide/Aminopyralid Contamination is likely my issue:
- The type of curling and twisting I’m seeing in my tomato plants is identical to the pictures I’ve studied in aminopyralid-damaged crops.
- Tomatoes are some of the most aminopyralid-sensitive veggies, and often one of the first plants to exhibit symptoms. Bingo.
- I had a super hard time getting other things to grow in my garden as well. After replanting my bean, kolhrabi, and beet seeds multiple times, I finally gave up because they just wouldn’t take off or even sprout. I know my seeds were good, although it’s a possibility that a critter was eating them down, too. But the fact I had such a hard time with them makes me wonder if it is somehow related.
Other Interesting Little Tidbits
- I planted four of the same tomato plants in a new garden I have up by my house. I only added a small amount of composted manure to the soil there (no hay mulch). They seem to be doing fine.
- The garlic, onions, cabbage, brussel sprouts, peppers, and potatoes in the garden seem to be doing OK– they show no signs of leaf rolling or curling, although none of my yields are spectacular (other than the garlic). But that might not be connected.
What I’m Doing Next:
- I need more proof before I can draw a conclusion, so I’m going to conduct a bioassay test here at home to attempt to pinpoint the issue– is it my compost or the hay?
- I would like to send soil/compost/hay samples to a laboratory, but I’m not sure if such a thing even exists. Working on finding out.
- I want to figure out WHY this issue started almost four years into me using loads of hay and compost. Did the herbicide residue finally build up enough? Did I get hay with a different sort of herbicide sprayed on it? Why didn’t I see these issues showing up sooner?
- I will NOT be adding any more compost or hay to my garden, which quite honestly makes me want to cry, as I can think of nothing better to build soil and organic matter. I do not know what I will use instead at this point.
- We were planning on building raised beds anyway this next year, which will be an absolute necessity now, since my soil is likely contaminated for at least the next several years until the residue breaks down.
- I will be ripping out all my tomato plants and burning them… I do not want to add them to my compost pile or till them back into the garden.
If You’ve Been Using Deep Mulch…
As much as it pains me to say this, I would NOT use any more hay on your garden until you can absolutely, 100% verify the hay or field it came from has not been sprayed with any sort of herbicide.
Although I’m not entirely certain the hay is my problem (I’m also leaning towards the compost…), I am going to be extremely cautious until I know for sure.
If you are currently deep-mulching and having great results, you don’t really have anything to worry about, although I wouldn’t recommend adding any more hay to your garden until you are sure of its history. I have people emailing me CONSTANTLY with glowing reports of their deep hay mulch, and I’ve had beautiful results as well, so I don’t think *all* hay is a problem, and if you can verify your hay/straw is clean, I would absolutely still use it.
(I have updated all of my old deep mulch posts with these new warnings.)
Going Forward…
Stayed tuned for more posts on this topic [UPDATE: Read more about Tomato Leaf Curl here)— I will be keeping y’all updated on this as I gain findings and more concrete conclusions.
To be honest, this whole issue bothers me very, very deeply. Composted manure is cheap, it’s natural (most of the time), and is readily available. If we can no longer use it on our gardens, what then? The same goes for hay mulch… I can hardly stand the thought of being stripped of these options due to herbicides. I’m still ruminating on these thoughts… I’ll share more in an upcoming post.
Interesting Reading in the Mean Time:
- Information page from Dow AgroSciences regarding Aminopyralid contamination
- Another home gardener’s experience with contaminated compost
- A story of aminopyralid contamination in commercial compost in Vermont
- Aminopyralid FAQ page from Dow AgroSciences
If you have experience with aminopyralid contamination, or have any other ideas as to what could be damaging my tomatoes, PLEASE SHARE!
I was informed of such a possibility two years ago when I tried to straw bale garden and it was an epic flop. I was told to use alfalfa hay only as that is obviously not sprayed with a broadleaf herbicide. Try that!
Hmm… that is a very good point! I will definitely look into that.
Forgot to mention that the University of Wyoming also does soil tests.
http://www.uwyo.edu/uwexpstn/soil_test.html
Awesome.
I have done a couple episodes of Farm to Fork Wyoming (watch any time at http://www.wyomingpbs.org/farmtofork) where aminopyralid contamination has come up for producers (and a composter for Teton County Solid Waste) it is a real problem and Tomatoes are perhaps THE most sensitive to it – down to 3 parts per billion. Teton Counties Composter Dane Buk uses one of only 2 labs in the country able to detect such a low level in compost samples. Your bio assay is the most effective means for determining contamination that i have heard of. One of the best resources I have run across is Washinton State’s Whatcom County Ag Extention website on composting and aminopyralid. That county got hit hard with the problem early on and had to tackle it apparently…. If you are in a corner and believe Dows suggestion that humans are not effected by injesting trace amounts of these pyralids taken up by plants, the Whatcom County site has some studies on vegetables that tolerate this class of chemicals… In the episode ‘Restoration Farming’ farmer Scott Richard shows some of his very cleaver meathods for drowning out his unfortunate contamination while ratcheting up the biological life in his soil in hope to eccellerate its breakdown. You can find that episode online at the WyomingPBS link if you are interested. Best of luck with this ever growing hazard – so sorry to anyone with that misfortune…. It happened to me as well, and as fate would have it, we unknowingly sprayed our own hay fields with it (active ingredient in Milestone) to combat an invasion of Russian Knapweed… I have since witnessed the remarkable effectiveness of having sheep and goats to control both knapweed and leafy spurge, but they need to be tended to really outpace these agressive invaders…
You might try the Health Ranger.He tests all kinds of stuff.
Mine curled like that and I did not use ANYTHING that you have mentioned!
Is this Bev Wallace from Amarillo?
Hmmm… I wonder if you have a virus or something along those lines?
Had the same very weird thing happen to my tomato plants this year. I had no idea. I’d never seen anything so strange. Finally connected it to the Weed b gone that my landlords spray with…chemical drift. All other plants are fine in my very small garden…but the 2 different varieties of tomato I planted are affected.
J had that happen to tomato plants last year. My 89 year old long time gardener named it “leaf curl” and advised me to spray them with copper solution. The leaves that had curled stayed curled, but green and the rest of the plant grew and produced beautifully.
I only sprayed them once.
Dollars to donuts that is broad mite damage. You need a jewelers loupe to see them. The leaves are curling like that to expose the mites to sunlight which kills them.
Me too!!
I am not an organic gardener, the only thing I have done differently is use granulated Miracle Grow. I put it in the soil 3 weeks or so before planting and reapplied about 1 1/2 months after planting. I have also used liquid Seven in a spray bottle occasionally. I have 8 plants and only 3 of them on one end of the patch is having this issue so far.
A few years ago I had this issue with my asparagus. It was asparagus mites. Tiny black bugs almost like aphids. I washed them with soapy water, as recommended, every time I watered the garden and scratched the year for harvesting. I may try this with the tomatoes but I do not see any insects or leaf spots just deformed leaf formation and kinking.
We put some hay around our tomatoes this year and had the same problem with the curling and twisting leaves. Later found out that the field had been sprayed for weeds before harvesting. However, the tomatoes plants did produce some fruits but now I’m afraid it might not be safe to eat the fruit. Does anyone know if it’s safe or not?
Thanks!
We put some hay around our tomatoes this year and had the same problem with the curling and twisting leaves. Later found out that the field had been sprayed for weeds before harvesting. However, the tomatoes plants did produce some fruits but now I’m afraid it might not be safe to eat the fruit. Does anyone know if it’s safe or not?
Thanks!
@bigred @andrew I would not eat the produce from plants that are chemically damaged. The plant had taken up enough chemical to change the cellular structure of the plant and even though the chemical manufacturers claim it is safe, I personally don’t trust them to determine that for our family.
Also, my tomatoes this year. In East Idaho. The pepper plants seem to be doing okay, although one was knocked over onto the ground and its pot broke. I didn’t have another pot so I just buried it straight into the ground. After 2 weeks it was adjusting and beginning to grow and now has huge Anaheims on it. I’m thinking that the potting soil that I used was contaminated. There are a few tomatoes on the plants but not like there ordinarily are. I will be dumping out the soil from the pots at the end of the year, right into the trash bin and they can take it to the dumpster. Going to use something entirely different next year. Gardening is not cheap, it’s the allure of the fresh vegetables and how they taste. It’s really sad that soil would be contaminated that you buy, when they state that it is organic and obviously is not. I have a number of different kinds of arthritis and it’s not really easy to garden although I still do it. This year was a ripoff.
My wife’s family grows alfalfa and I have been using hay from their barn floors for the last few years to deep mulch my garden. Been loving it and my garden grows great……….however…..I have been worried about this issue as they recently planted a field of “Round Up Ready Alfalfa.” You can no longer assume that alfalfa isn’t sprayed with herbicides. They have been using grass killers in alfalfa fields for years. Most garden plants aren’t grasses so maybe that’s why it’s been a bit of a non issue……but the effect of round up residues may potentially bring about different concerns. Thanks for sharing Jill. I’ll be keeping a close eye on things as I have been hoping this wouldn’t be an issue.
Thanks for chiming in, Zach!
This is true of Alfalfa as well I’m afraid. My tomatoes did this last year and I had mulched with Alfalfa. It’s such a distinct looking curl….almost like an unfurling fern leaf. I just planted my plants and used some of the leftover alfalfa. I’m going to have to get rid of it and pray it isn’t in the soil.
Just be sure it is not the new Roundup Ready glyphosate resistant alfalfa, or you’ll end up with the same problem. 🙁
No — you won’t end up with the same results with RR alfalfa. It DOES NOT have the same residual at the chemical damage suspected. Not any where close.
You wouldn’t want Roundup Ready alfalfa anyway if your trying to have a clean healthy garden. I remember reading somewhere that Roundup was found in lettuce sample a year after it was sprayed on a field. There may not be enough to harm the plants but why take the risk?
Because scientific facts tell us it’s not a problem. I’m sorry but whatever you read is false — this isn’t a mechanism to allow glyphosate to bioaccumulate like that. Its soil half life is less than 100 days. It has never been found to accumulate in plants. It’s not possible for lettuce to carry the residue because it would in fact damage and/or kill the plant – lettuce isn’t resistant. There are zero reasons to be concerned with RR alfalfa hay in your garden.
Here’s a brief document about glyphosate …
http://www.cdpr.ca.gov/docs/emon/pubs/fatememo/glyphos.pdf
So we have a shill from the biotech industry “Michelle Jones”??
The whole point to growing your own garden is to have CLEAN healthy food. This blog pointed out that chemicals persist through compost and manure. The whole point of GMO Roundup Ready hay is to be able to spray it with Roundup(glyphosate) and/or not have newly seeded alfalfa die from previous applications of Roundup. The science you reference studies glyphosate alone. It does not include the inert ingredients in Roundup or the surfactants that are normally mixed in and sprayed with Roundup (glyphosate). This makes make it impossible to know what the hazards really are: http://www.1hope.org/glyphos8
The truth about Roundup half life and Roundup persisting in the soil for years:
http://darwin.bio.uci.edu/sustain/global/sensem/burry298.html
Let’s not forget the lettuce that had glyphosate in it a year after it was applied https://www.foe.co.uk/sites/default/files/downloads/impacts_glyphosate.pdf
Totally agree with you Marcy, for those of us who have studied good old Roundup…so dangerous for the whole planet. Thx.
Can you find out whether the alfalfa is GMO or not?
Do you have round-up ready alfalfa in your Country?
I also had some problems with straw bale gardening. At least with manure you test a sample before you put it on the garden. Just water some bean or tomato seedlings with some compost tea made from your manure.
I would like to pose this question. Did you have tree mulch in your compost? If you had ANY wood chips in your mulch or compost that were less than 3yrs old it would have done this. The tannins in the wood are too acidic and will burn up almost everything it touches as they leach out in the rain. Only blueberry bushes can with stand this much acid.
This year, 2020, it happened to my tomatoes and I narrowed it down to the same poisoning. I planted my tomatoes in the same large tubs that I always do, I emptied out one half of the dirt that was in there and put in new garden potting dirt, and new brown mulch. So the culprit had to be one of those two. My peppers got the same treatment and seem to be unaffected, They are yielding generously, the tomatoes have got a couple of fruits on them, some are just now setting blooms almost in September, but I went to the farmers market and bought a box of tomatoes to make my salsa from, and free some for use during the winter. I will also be ripping these out and throwing them away and doing the same with the dirt and cleaning out the pots so I can reuse them next year. I’ll be getting my dirt from a different source and figuring out something different for mulch. This was heartbreaking and expensive.
I built a new garden last year 2020 and used the dirt from a old manure pile. Lost the whole garden to this contaminated dirt. Must of been the hay and straw I had been buyer ?
Does anyone have any ideas on how to fix the dirt do I can plant in it this year?
I am struggling to grow my own good, its been great and easy for years but the last two seasons have been bad. The plants are mutated worse than curling its like the nitrogen never exists. I see they have been chemtrailing over our area almost 8 times a month for nearly 3 years, even the grass is slowing down, we have been high production chemical.free, foliage fed pasture . Everything is getting paler green than normal.
Soil samples and ph are good so its got to be what is landing on it all!
A treasonous plot by the New World Order and bill gates, he wants us to eat his genetically modified food Monsanto! Honest to god they are winning!
And now there is RoundUp ready alfalfa.
Last year our garden was ruined after fertilization with composted goat manure. They had been fed with alfalfa.
I came across your article, and the light bulb went off..
This is the first time I ever used hay in my vegetable garden, and what you described happening to your tomato plants is the same thing happening to mine. I’ve been racking my brain wondering what is happening to my plants! Every year I have a bumper crop, and since I used hay this year, there’s no growth and curling.
I didn’t even finish reading your article and was out there removing all visible hay surrounding my plants.
Thank you so much for shedding light on this matter.
NEVER AGAIN NO HAY!!!!!!
Sorry you’re having this issue as well! It’s frustrating, but at least you know what’s causing it now and how to help your soil heal!
Most Alfalfa these days is sprayed with glyphosate. It’s a round up ready crop. Just like corn in the United States.
Tough break. But you’re a homesteader – you’re resilient, you’re a problem-solver, you’re a hard-worker – you’ll find a way to bounce back.
I don’t want herbicides (or any cides, for that matter) on my property, but I’ve become very cautious about bringing any foreign materials including mulch, compost, manure, and plants onto our property for another reason. Our small ecosystem was free of potato bugs until we got some straw from friends (for mulch – I was so happy until I saw the potato bugs – here-to-fore non-existent on our property – boo hoo). I was also thrilled to get raspberry canes from friends until I realized that I brought wild portulaca with the canes (here-to-fore non-existent . . . boo hoo again). I’ve been pickin’ and pickin’ those potato bugs and wild portulaca ’cause me and my little ecosystem gotta overcome!
Oh yes- it would take more than this to knock me down– I’m crazy-stubborn. 😉 And UGH about the potato bugs…
Did you ever solve this? Having the same issue with some tomatoes I just planted and mulched with some hay I had from our horses. I turned composted horse manure in as well, but it sat for a long time so I’m leaning toward it being the hay. I have some other tomatoes planted in another part of the yard without the mulch and they look just fine. Are the plants salvageable or are they done for?
Courtney, I’m having the same problem after planting my tomatoes in my new raised garden beds. I got off to a late start and had to transplant my seedlings into 1 gal pots while awaiting the installation of the beds. Until they were in the beds they looked awesome. Now, too much curling. I’m going to call the supplier on Monday regarding the use of herbicides. (I’m in OK, BTW).
Laurie I’m also in OK and have this same issue. I found an infestation of whiteflies. I have two boxes of tomatoes and only one box is curling. It’s the box that gets the most sun and had weed netting in the bottom. It’s also the only box with fruit. I purchased soil from a supplier and with all the rain have really been battling the clay content…..
Oh no, Chris! I had tons of mites and all stages of fungus gnats too. Removed all the alfalfa hay and discarded. Sprayed lots of Neem oil at the highest recommended concentration and now don’t see any. I’m going to HD today to see if they have any more Cherokee purple to use to replace my heirloom ones that are curled and stunted. I’m in Tulsa and we had a week of rain and cloudy weather. Not sure if that contributed…
I am also in OK. Bought over 20 yards of compost and topsoil from two separate suppliers and painstakingly moved all of it one wheelbarrow at a time to build lush garden beds. I had dozens of beautiful, healthy plants that I started from seeds and planted them into my carefully constructed beds. And now…?…they are all contaminated. I am just sick about it. All of my tomatoes and beans and peppers…ruined. The only things that seem to be okay are the corn and cucurbits.
I contacted the Oklahoma County extension office and will bring soil sampling them, and have composed an email to their master Gardner, but have no idea what to do.
I purchased this from two separate suppliers. It was in separate beds, but all are showing extreme signs of herbicide damage.
I’m curious if you made a similar purchase and if any recourse could be pursued since this was sold specifically for gardens.
I just came across this post because I am having the same issues. I’m also in Oklahoma County and just emailed the OSU extension office and asked what they could do as far as soil testing. I’ve never seen this before and it’s the first year I have bought bagged compost to add to my raised bed. I’m curious as to what compost you bought and if we might have that in common. All of my tomato plants have some degree of leaf curling, three are especially bad while the others seem to be doing okay. However, they are all producing fruit. I have other things planted in the bed (peppers, basil, parsley, lettuce) that all seem to be fine. I’m just distraught about the issue and want to get to the bottom of it.
This was exactly my problem this year in my new raised beds! I’m in Manitoba, Canada, and used a variety of chopped leaves from my own yard, well aged sheep manure, bagged peat moss, and local topsoil and locally made compost. I narrowed it down to the bagged compost or the town compost, both of which I’m told by a soil expert would have these aminopyralids in them. Probably didn’t help that my neighbour Across the road to the west sprayed dandelions with roundup in a gale force west wind. Those two things decimated my peppers, all tomatoes (even ones I replanted) but NOT carrots and parsnips (which I didn’t use the bagged local compost with. Hmmmmm). Now I don’t know whether to haul it all out and start again or let it break down……so disheartening!
Hi Caroline, thanks so much for mentioning that your curburbits are doing ok. I live in New Zealand, and sadly we have unknowingly contaminated our entire vegetable garden with aminopyralid poison. Our tomatoes, potatoes and peas are all distorted and we are discarding them. I noticed my zucchini plants looked ok, so was thinking maybe cucurbits are not affected. Corn is not affected because it is part of the grass family and the herbicide is designed to kill broad leaf weeds such as thistles and dock in the grass field, to make ‘pure’ grass hay. We spread horse manure and the straw that was in their stables all over our vegetable garden to break down over our winter. My husband also used it when making compost. We have used stable manure from the same source for several years and until now it has been great for our garden. The horses eat the sprayed hay, and then it passes via their urine and pooh to the straw in the stables. This year, a big problem. Heartbreaking and infuriating!
This happened to my garden as well. I would like to know if anyone has found a way to get the soil back to normal?
THere are some you tube videos showing that planting corn very closely spaced pulls the chemical out of the ground and they could plant the next season.
Oh my gosh I’m so sorry this happened to you! How discouraging. I hope you are able to enjoy at least some produce from your small garden by your house. And I certainly hope next year is much, much better!
Yes, we have been enjoying our garlic harvest, as well as some herbs, etc. Thankful for every little bit we get this year!
Really appreciate your sharing this with us! So good to know and be aware of…we do want natural soil and gardens. I’m sorry about your own!
Wow. I live in the Triad, and the tomatoes I tried to grow in hay bales have been an epic flop. No curling, just very little flowering and virtually zero fruit production.
Also, could your local agricultural extension office not do soil testing for you?
The Triad of NC, that is.
Yes– I checked with our extension office and she gave me some links to try. Sorry to hear about your tomatoes. 🙁
We’ve never tried the deep mulch method of gardening, but we do use cover crops like winter rye and medium red clover to build up the organic matter in our soil. This year we planted the clover in between rows and hills in the garden with great results. I never would have thought of herbicides or pesticides on hay. How disappointing if that’s what it turns out to be…
I’d never thought of this possibility before, I mulch my garlic and strawberries with straw before winter and then compost the excess or till into the soil. I’m curious now, I’ll definitely be asking the question this fall! I hope you’re able to get some answers and can remedy it for next year, how disappointed you must be. Keep us posted!
I will for sure!
Thank you for the article. Hay with herbicide on it is something I didn’t think about. Just an FYI. In your second sentence, the word you meant was alluded. Elude means to avoid or evade.
Yes, fixing that now. I know better on that one, too. 😉
Thank you for sharing this! I have the exact same problem with my tomatoes this year, and I couldn’t figure out what the problem was. Now I’m pretty sure it’s the straw that I’ve been using as mulch.
Wow, thank you for sharing your experience! Our garden was a flop this year, which is a real bummer. However, take this break has renewed our zeal for next year, and I’m already looking forward to some fresh delicious produce next year.
Sorry you had a flop this year, too! Here’s to next year!
I have had a similar problem in my garden. I started a small area as a deep mulch bed, and NOTHING would sprout. Thinking that it was the chickens (they have only this year been let into the garden to free rang and have been eating any sprouts they can get there beaks on), I started some seeds and transplanted them. They grew for a few days, then just died. It was very strange. I hope its not this!
I hope it’s not either, for your sake!
Me either! 😉
I had four tomato plants this year, all planted in the same location. I had laid down old straw bales a year and a half before that had been decomposing all along. One of the plants did a leaf curl just like your photo, the others did not. It was a phase. It didn’t do it, then it did, then it stopped.
I don’t personally think that the mulch had anything to do with it, though I would not stake my life on it. I don’t, however, have a different explanation.
Yes, it’s so strange… Since all of mine are very consistently curled in that spot, I’m thinking it’s definitely mulch on my end. But hope I figure out for sure.
I think you are correct in your conclusion of poisoning. I have had similar sstrange-looking plants in my garden over the years when I used the local fair’s compost in my garden area. This year I had whole plantings never germinate. (BTW: the word is ‘allude’).
Yes, fixing my typo now. 🙂
If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t notice your typo until people keep pointing it out over and over again. I’m more concerned over our failed crops this year. This stinks, but we’ll recover :). I think I’d like to do the raised beds next year.
Does this mean any veggies it does produce is not safe to eat?
Definately contact your local extension office. In NJ, Rutgers has a soil & plant testing lab. Most land grant schools do. The extension office should be able to give you the info you need for making submissions.
I was struggling with the exact same issue, and originally thought neighbors spraying, bad mulch, too much rain…none of them fit. And there are multiple reports in our area of the same problem. Here is what I noticed and am going to moniter….solar flares….the plant that helped me narrow it down were my pepper plants. It does get hot here and we are in a bit of a drought. But I could have beautiful pepper plants in the morning, and by 2 pm on occasional days, I would go out and pepper plants were completely wilted with good, not too wet, moist soil.check their condition about 2 or 3 in the afternoon to see if they are a little shocked.
Hmmm… very interesting!
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/georgemonbiot/2011/jul/15/vegetables-disease-aminopyralid-pesticide
Hi Jill, I’m so sorry about your garden. I’m a hydroponic/ soil gardener, but I’m 100% organic so I haven’t had that issue. Chalk it up to being hyper-attentive to what goes into our garden, courtesy of extreme food allergies and sensitivities. Something you might want to look into as a way to put nutrients back in your soil (in the event you can’t find organic fertilizers) is rotating your crops and beds. Alfalfa and soy are often used as a reconditioning crop every 3rd year, as they are very rich in nitrogen and other nutrients. You may want to consider having a few different planting areas and while two have crops, the third has alfalfa or soy. At the end of the season, till it in and let it compost over the winter. It was the old way of controlling weeds and restoring nutrients before herbicides and liquid fertilizers took over the mainstream.
Here’s a link to get you started on research: http://extension.psu.edu/plants/crops/soil-management/conservation-tillage/crop-rotations-and-conservation-tillage
A Google search of simply “crop rotation” will yield some great information. You may also find a host of companion planting guides online that not only tell which plants to plant together for greater yields and pest control, but which to rotate around. I hope this helps, and that your next season is a much more productive one!
~ Barbra
Thanks for sharing your wisdom Barbra!
Auburn University in Alabama does soil testing. I have sent samples from my yard thru our local Ag office in the past.
I will look into them!
My heirloom tomatoes looked just like this in my garden this year! Unfortunately, I agree with your “detective work” and conclusions. I don’t know if the source of the toxicity was from my mulch, straw/hay mulch, or drift from surrounding farm crop fields. My overall garden was pretty much a failure this year, despite good weather conditions, multiple plantings, and good care. I’m obviously going to have to do something different next year…not sure what! Thanks for sharing your experiences, please keep us posted!
So sorry to hear you’ve had a bad year as well. 🙁 I really hope I can narrow it down to figure out which aspect is causing the issue.
Don’t rule out worming residue in the horse manure as a culprit either. If you worm your horses with chemical wormers, these exact symptoms are reflected in the tomatoes. Ask me how I know. Great info-blog. I hope it helps others. I stumbled for years trying to determine what happened to my tomatoes. 🙁
Hmmm… Yes, I do worm my horses. This is very possible!
Hi Jill, what we can do re: horse wormer, is to worm them, and then keep them in a small enclosed area for several days. Clean up this manure, and compost it separately.
My sympathies! I had similiar problems in 2008. At that time there was little information about persistent herbicides. After 30 years of careful organic gardening, I almost gave up gardening. Fortunately, my whole garden wasn’t involved! I no longer use manure. For the last 3 years I have used barley straw from a nearby farmer who doesn’t use persistent herbicides. Yes, barley comes up but it is easy to pull.
Soil tests for the presence of persistent herbicides are very expensive, but you can do bioassay tests yourself. Google “persistent herbicides and bioassays for persistent herbicides”. The herbicides don’t breakdown in composting, but are broken down by soil micro-organisms so keep them happy. The herbicides act on dicot plants so you can plant monocots like corn, onions, and garlic. The herbicides pass through mammals without harm. I grew a great crop of oats in the one bed that was contaminated–I then put it on the burn pile.
There might be more current information than I have. Good luck. Don’t give up. Sooo frustrating!
Thank you Margaret! I appreciate the info– going to try a bioassay for sure.
Hello, just wanted to let you know I saw that Mike Adams of Natural News now has a certified lab for testing many things. I left them a message with the link to this article to try to hook you up. You should message him too-it would be good to find out what caused these problems and be able to solve some questions and then you can take action to stop it. https://www.facebook.com/HealthRanger/?fref=ts
Thank you Debbie!
Thank you! Have you considered the water too? I’ve had the same problems with the curled tomato leaves and a lot of my plants just don’t grow. They come up fine but then get about 6 inches and look good but don’t grow. We water the garden from an irrigation ditch that is the waste water that runs off from the farm fields which could contain the same herbicides you’re talking about. I had finally decided it was the soil as the cats were contaminating it along with whatever was put in years previous. So, I put plants in tubs and some had the same problem Here in Montana we don’t get a lot of rain so have to use water from the irrigation ditch to water. So, now I’m thinking maybe it’s a combination of the soil and water as I don’t do much mulch but do put sheep and llama manure in my flower beds and garden. Thanks for sharing this! I was starting to think I was crazy as I’ve always had beautiful gardens in the past.
And one more thing, you should see the size of the tomatoes. The cherry tomatoes are the size of a marble and smaller and the regular tomatoes are all about the size of walnut.
Hmmm… very interesting. We are using the same well water we always do, and our other plants in other areas of our yard are fine, so I’m doubtful that’s our issue.
I had an experience this year with my mulch garden. I used a sprinkler with our well water (artesian water with high pH) and watered during a hot day (95+) temps. We usually use a soaker hose or rainwater, but tried the sprinkler this year. It totally burned the tomato, potato, and melon leaves. The rest of the garden didn’t look that great either. Another lesson learned after over 30 years of gardening.
Hi Jill, If you’re going to do raised beds, look into square foot gardening if you haven’t already. The author Mel Bartholomew has a blend that he uses for soil that drains well, but still retains moisture. It’s what I want to do next year.
Yes, I read his book long ago. Will have to read it again!
Great post Jill, thanks for the heads up.
This year was our first year having a vegetable garden. We planted the tomatoes in Spring, and in just a few months we were overloaded with tomatoes. HUNDREDS of them. We hired some gardeners to fill the veggie beds with the right mix of soil, hay, etc. We STILL have tomatoes coming! They are AMAZING!!
That’s awesome– good for you!
Thank you!!!
Funny thing,people over here in Powell River BC complaining of the same thing this year…
Does anyone have experience using chemical-free grass clippings as mulch in the garden? Good idea or not so much?
I definitely use grass clippings as mulch with great success. The only worry is weed/grass seed if you waited too long to mow (like me). I also built a pumpkin patch hill over top of a rotting stump – created the mound out of all grass clippings then packed a light layer of soil on top and planted pumpkins and marigolds. Wow they really did take over a huge area but the pumpkins were great. I can’t afford to keep buying mulch so I chop and drop everything for mulch.
Grass clippings from our yard is all I have used for years now. The clippings get dumped in a pile and left to dry out a bit first before I mulch with it. I only had a few weeds pop up here and there. Sorry about your tomatoes, Jill. Thanks for the information, and I’m interested to know what you find out with the testing. I haven’t had that particular problem, but I sure have enough other problems in the garden to figure out over the years.
Yep– as long as they are completely chemical-free, they can work.
Your university extension off ice will have a soil testing option for you. And it is affordable.
I have had very good luck with my compost and mulch(alfalfa rotted hay). I started out building my beds by sheet mulching the area. Cardboard, Agricultural molasses, compost, more molasses based fertilizer with mushroom extracts, more compost and then a heavy layer of rotted hay. Five seasons in, Now i use a cover crop and chop and drop all season. clover is great at fixing nitrogen and i find it in areas the soil needs repair, it goes away as the soil enriches.
You might consider putting down a good molasses based fertilizer( i get mine in bulk 55 gal drums) and planting in a cover crop to your damaged areas Let that brew all winter and see if it helps. I am finding minerals are huge in soil health. My climate and soil is similar to yours, we are high prairie desert with wind and heat extremes. I have been fortunate to have a very robust garden this season with minimal to almost no watering.
I like the idea of molasses based fertilizer– I will look into that. Thanks Deb!
Thanks for sharing this. It’s nice to see bloggers post not only their successes but their failures also. Look into using bunny manure. It’s the best for gardening. If you have rabbits, just put hay underneath them and use it straight. My garden thrives with it. I usually have a beautiful happy garden but last summer I did something similar. I’ve always done the deep mulch method with hay with great success. Last year I wanted something cheaper and easier than hay so I got a dump truck load of 3 year old composted wood chips. A friend of mine had used them with great success. It was $125 for a whole dump truck load. That seemed perfect! Literally a week after putting the mulch on my beautiful and flourishing garden, everything got bacterial wilt and blight. I knew it had to the mulch because this was in May and I planted everything in February (we live in Florida). Up until that point everything was growing and was doing better than ever. I cried. Seriously. It’s hard because gardening is so much work. Mine is about 2000 sq ft so it was a lot. I won’t be making that mistake again. Now I’m worried about hay! Keep us posted.
Rabbit manure can do it, too! I lost nearly my entire rhubarb crop to this very thing, and the only manure I used was from my own rabbits, well-composted, and only a sprinkling. 🙁 My poor plants didn’t stand a chance. I left 2 unfertilized to see what the difference would be, and that’s the only reason I still have rhubarb today. Having used rabbit manure before with great success, I researched, and came up with this same result, persistent herbicides in their hay.
Ah, so sorry to hear your wood chip mulch caused problems too– darn it!
There were gardeners in the Bulkley Valley/Skeena Valley (BC, Canada) that used hay and straw/manure contaminated with Grazon (picloram) – widely used to combat broadleaf weeds.
I was aware of that so could take precautions and did some testing with my straw for mulching and that I also use for my chickens. Everyone can do it at home to make sure it is not contaminated.
Grazon has a long half life therefore gardeners in our area had to dig soil about 3 feet deep and exchange with not contaminated topsoil/compost mix and start new. Big job and sometimes quite expensive.
Before adding compost/hay/straw/manure do the simple test and be sure your herbicide free
Here is the link to an article explaining the bioassay method to test for herbicides
http://northword.ca/features/environment/mean-manure-killer-compost-grazon-after-effects-in-the-bulkley-valley/
Hope this is of help!
Monika
Valuable info– thanks Monika!
The SAME exact thing happened to us two years in a row now. We too have concluded its the hay mulch we are using. ??
Very possible!
I’m so sorry this happened to you, and so grateful that you wrote about it. Thank you for this information. I know you will come up with a strong and organic solution.
Yes– we’ll get it figured out! 🙂
Thank you for sharing this. It certainly would have been easier to just blog the good events. We have noticed residual effects from straw we have got from non-organic neighbors (our organic friends won’t sell straw as it is returned to the soil). I would try a trial with some plants in the garden next year to see if the results are the same (even if you don’t intend to harvest and use). The reason I say this is that we have had a weird gardening season here as well with low results on a number of vegetable crops (and we are not the only ones to see the same thing). Not the same problems as you describe but far from typical. Hopefully this is an aberration for you and not a contamination issue. I enjoy you site and wish you the best.
Yes– I am extremely interesting to do some test batches and see what happens. Would really like to get to the bottom of it all!
You can clean up your contaminated soil by planting sunflowers. Harvest and burn before seeds mature. There are other crops, too that will clear up soil contamination. So glad to be aware of manure from wormed horses! I happen to live right in the thick of the highest number of horse farms in the nation… Thanks so much for sharing this!
Do you have access to wood chips? We do deep wood chips the same way you use hay and it works great in our area. We have access to free chips easily though. You can’t mix them in the soil and you plant below them. They turn into compost and build up the top soil over time. We add fresh chips 2 times a year to the top. Sorry about the garden!
I use woodchips too, Paul Gautschi gardening method, but I experienced much of what Jill and others have (so thank you Jill for blogging your experience). In retrospect, I need to add more chips during the year like you do, because they do compost during winter-spring so that by summer, there’s no longer at least 4″ of chips, such that the soil below got very dry still especially during our prolonged hot spell in PA.
The very bad news is the chemtrails above in our skies, containing metals like aluminum which stunts plant growth. The metals rain down and pollute. Now Paul thinks the chips filter out pollutants, so I may add much more than 4″ next year. Still, the soil takes time to build up healthiness with this method.
Another disturbing trend: the bees are missing this year, they are few compared to last year when they swarmed my flowers and milkweed. But I say, just keep going, life overcomes in the end, so I’m not giving up.
I also wonder if the woodchips were poisoned too, but this year I got a batch I know for sure were not — from trees from my neighborhood
Wood chips are somewhat difficult to come by here, although I might have to look into them.
I had the same thing happen this year! Never had it before, I grow beyond organic, and at first I thought it was drift from a neighbor spraying roundup. But since neighboring volunteer tomatoes didn’t get affected it had to be something I used in the soil. I’ve narrowed it down to the compost/manure or the coconut coir I used to fluff up the potting soil.
Definitely frustrating and sad to have accidentally poisoned my plants!
Yes, extremely frustrating!
Yikes! I am so sorry this happened. I was reading your blog and remembered a TED Talk lecture on fungus for bioremediation by a guy named Paul Started. I thought I would share… Maybe this could you back to normal soil sooner.
I will look for that!
*Paul Stamets
I have used non-organic hay in the garden that I know was sprayed with broadleaf herbicides for 10 years and never had a problem with my plants. Maybe the concentrations weren’t high enough. But, 3 years ago, a neighbor up the valley from us sprayed his fields with 2,4-D and within a week my 150 tomato plants looked just like yours do. I didn’t connect it until the next year when another neighbor sprayed his fields with 2,4-D and I lost my tomato plants again and all of my lettuce that was just starting to head, bolted. I started talking to people and doing research and apparently, certain types of 2,4-D can really drift given the correct conditions. It affects plants drastically just by drift. Maybe you should look into the possibility that a neighbor sprayed something like 2,4-D on fields or lawns. Once it affects the plants, thats it for those plants. I let mine grow but they put on little to no flowers or fruit.
This year, I planted in the same spot and didn’t remove the plant residue last fall. I waited until a week after the neighbor did his spraying and then transplanted my plants. Bingo, I had no trouble with my plants and they put on a good crop for us. So, it doesn’t seem to linger in the soil, at least for us.
I just wanted to share my experience with this. It is so frustrating to lose plants that you put a lot of effort into. I definitely understand the disappointment! Personally, I’ve never had a problem from contaminated hay or compost but I know it is possible. Every time its happened to me, it was a neighbor spraying his fields. If you’re interested, I ran across a website that explains how to do your own bioassay to figure out if your soil caused the damage:
http://whatcom.wsu.edu/ag/aminopyralid/bioassay.html
I have a small garden so I use my grass clippings for the deep mulch method. For the first time since moving to Idaho (southwestern corner) I have a garden that has been producing in all the heat we get each summer. Unfortunately weeds started taking over my grass and I had to apply broad-leaf herbicide. Lucky for me I read some where that it kills tomato plants before I applied those grass cuttings to my garden.
Just had similar experience this year. Moved far, far away, bought a farm in a climate where people actually grow crops…not just grass hay. Inquired about the “free” compost pile at landfill then got schooled by local gardeners that some farmers spray “Grazon” (had NEVER heard of it!) and the likes and to be very wary about buying topsoil/compost from local sources. Was so excited to find big round bales of straw on my place left from past owner. Built amazing lasagne style gardens with this straw and also mulched top of most beds with it. Found out it was sprayed and did my best to get the mulch off but the lasagne beds were hopeless. Wow. I lost almost everything that had been planted in those beds and that was the only variable that was different.
So sorry to hear that Steph– hopefully next year will be better for all of us!
Finally, an answer to what happened to me this year. I had a beautiful bed of over 6′ tomato plants in my 6×6 garden I had carefully filled with rich earth composted in with commercial manure sold locally only to have them start with the curling leaves and withered plants. No insect damage, no sign of over watering or blight, just green withered leaves. Never happened before, blamed it on plants being diseased from purchase but had several different varieties. Now after reading all this info I have a different perspective. Not sure I’ll try again next year but if I do, I’ll certainly research back to this blog. Thank you for posting.
So sorry to hear that Sherri! So sad. 🙁
Sunflowers might be worth looking into as a way to clean up the soil. The downside of that is figuring out how to dispose of them properly so that the pollutants aren’t going right back into the soil as they decompose.
Thanks for this informative post. I need to look into this more.
Interesting– hadn’t thought about sunflowers!
I recall from watching alot of permaculture videos that many plants and trees are able to leech out harmful chemicals & heavy metals from the soil. Just a quick search brought up two excellent sources on this from scientific studies. Some suggest you grow things that can be used for non-consumption or you burn the crop afterwards but there have been successful purifying results. Growing a cover crop to cleanse your soil is much cheaper than removing soils…just have to research what plants to grow.
Yes– I’m considering planting a cover crop of some kind!
I grew a beautiful crop of oats (a monocot) in my contaminated bed (30′ x 4′) and then burned the oats. The persistent herbicides interfere with the growth hormones of dicots but not moncots. I grew beautiful garlic and onions in that bed. If you have a climate that allows you to grow corn, corn is also a monocot.
Good luck. Don’t give up. Share what you learn.
As soon as I saw the pictures of your tomatoes, I was pretty sure it was GrazeOn. David the Good (David Goodman), of Compost Everything, has been warning people for several years about this problem. It mostly effects tomatoes and, unfortunately, can be active in your soil for 5 years or more. So sorry this happened to you. Unfortunately, farmers were never told that GrazeOn would just pass through an animals digestive system and make their manure toxic.
Yes– David’s articles were extremely helpful!
Jill, I’ve used the deep mulch method now for two seasons. A local tree company brings truckloads of wood chips to me free of charge whenever I need them. They are happy to have a place to dump the clippings so it’s a win-win. Of course there is no knowing what’s been sprayed on the trees (hopefully not any since it’s mainly trimmings from roadside power lines) but at least I know it’s not broad leaf herbicide that’s being consumed by grazing animals. The diversity of organic matter is also very beneficial to the soil and over time supports perennial vegetables, fruit and nut trees. It’s true there is a huge benefit to deep mulch gardening with the decrease in watering and weeding. There are other issues that I’m figuring out as I go along but so far
so good and I plan to continue with this method.
Mary,
I use the same method as does Steffanie who wrote on Sept 3 whose post I responded to above.
So glad wood chips are working for you!
Thank you for sending a link my way.
I am so very sorry this happened to you. I’ve written many posts and articles on the problem so far and the horror stories keep rolling in.
I used to gather great quantities of hay and straw for my gardens. No longer. This is a huge problem in straw and manure all across the US and almost impossible to avoid.
You might appreciate a post I wrote earlier this year on the herbicide problem with straw bale gardening: http://www.thesurvivalgardener.com/danger-of-straw-bale-gardening-no-one-is-mentioning/
One thing that might help: add some charcoal to your beds. It usually takes a year or two for them to come back to normal, unfortunately, but the charcoal will take out some if it.
Straw and manure are both completely unsafe now and I recommended in my composting book that gardeners now need to stay away from both except under very narrow restrictions, such as they grew it themselves or got manure from an animal that has not been fed any hay from outside sources. Really frustrating.
Thanks for stopping by, David. Your articles have been super helpful– I appreciate them very much! A very sad problem–more people need to be made aware, for sure!
Very interesting post. It could happen to any of us. Thank you for the warning. Especially worrisome because the aminopyralid can persist for years.
My lawn guy was giving me grass clippings from my yard as well as the neighbors – but I stopped doing that because I think the neighbor had their yard sprayed with a weed killer of some kind and it got into my compost. I think my garden that season was poisoned by the compost. Now I just use clippings from my own yard because I know they’re not sprayed with anything.
Yes, I would definitely avoid any clippings that could have been sprayed with anything.
Wow, I am sorry to hear about your garden! I have also been using the deep mulch method for several years, but with our own hay, which hasn’t had herbicides on it other than the fast dissipating round up used on spots. I hadn’t had this issue, but I have been very mindful of it. I’ve had many more issues with the grass growing after the hay breaks down. It literally doesn’t matter how deep I put the mulch, we will have a bunch of weeds and grass. But the soil is rich! We live in southern Mississippi. We have plenty of stuff growing everywhere. You might do better with using the grass you cut out of your yard.
Glad you’ve been mindful of only using non-sprayed hay– very wise!
So sorry! Maybe try cover cropping? Is it possible or you to use your own lawn waste instead of buying it? Have you tried layering your yard waste over newspaper?
We don’t really have yard waste, as our ‘lawn’ is pretty spotty. But if we had grass clippings, I’d use them for sure. 🙂
Good morning. I have the same problem and have not used the same products as you. My veggies have been very small and take longer to grow. I have spoken with many growers even those with roadside stands. We are all having the same problem. I’ve been fortunate to have produced more than some of the others. I do have a container garden. But have the curling leaves and small produce. Just thought I’d pass along a little extra info for you.
Hmmm… very interesting. Maybe something else is going on?
Hi Jill,
I’m sad you’ve had such trouble with your garden this year. I want to suggest you research the use of chemtrails in your area. These are easy to see in the sky when they’re being dropped from airplanes. We created a clear plastic roof over our garden to avoid their harmful chemicals. I believe it helped us with our first garden this year. Chemtrails are happening all over the world and have been for quite awhile. You can search “chemtrails” on the web. It is also called Geo-Engineering.
I love your blog and I’m 73 years old. You offer lots of wisdom for so many age groups!
but the metals get into our water supply so now we need filters to water the garden… not sure how to do that yet.
I went to a gardening workshop where this topic was brought up especially the Chlorine levels and the guy said to fill up watering buckets and let sit a couple of days…..kind of a pain and one has to be organized.
We used Milestone weed killer in the past on our spotted knapweed. It is an aminopyralid. The label is very specific with the warnings about plant sensitivity, even certain pine and fir trees are sensitive. If you spray a pasture, animals do not have to be removed and there is no meat/milk withdrawl (just quoting the labels, here), but they do warn about moving the animals to a pasture with susceptible species (clover, alfalfa, etc.) within a certain number of days and all manure must be aged for at least one year before being used on susceptible crops.
Unfortunately, unless we grow everything ourselves, we never know what has been used. I did have an issue like that one year, and it was way back when I had used the aminopyralid spray and planted some extra tomato plants outside the general garden area and that is exactly how they looked.
Yes, you never really know for sure!
Hi Jill,
I’m so sorry that this has happened to you. The first thing that comes to mind, and forgive me because I haven’t read any of the other comments yet due to lack of time…but have you kept rain records during your growing season? Do you think you have received more rain or less rain than previous years? I think you’re on to something with the use of non-organic hay mulch but missing a key component if you’re not keeping rain records.
There are soooo many articles on the internet like this one from 2013, (and the problem is much worse today), which discuss glyphosate in crops, rain, vaccines, etc. Come to your own conclusions as to the source because it’s coming at us from all directions. We could blame Monsanto, we could blame chemtrails, we could blame lots of things but before you rip up your tomatoes try correcting the problem and you might save your harvest.
Here’s a pace to start: http://www.momsacrossamerica.com/widespread_glyphosate_contamination
Glyphosate remediation:
https://transition-to-organics.org/soil-health/soil-remediation/
Wish I had time to write more. You have my email if you have any questions.
Love grows,
Georgia
Hi Georgia,
Good question– we have had slightly less rain this year– but I’ve watered sufficiently. And we’ve had other dry years where the garden still thrived, so it’s hard to say for sure.
I garden in raised beds in a suburban neighborhood. All six of my tomato plants did this last year. Couldn’t figure out why, since they had come from two different nurseries. Replanted tomatoes in the same spot, but late in the season, and they were fine. This year the tomatoes are going great, but the leaves of the potatoes in a wooden barrel curled in the same way. Few blossoms and zero potatoes. The really scary thing about this is that the only thing I had added to the tomato bed last year was manure from the big box store. And the potato barrel the year had mostly bagged garden soil, again from the big box store. When even the bagged, name brand products are contaminated, we have a very large problem that needs a lot more attention drawn to it.
Darn it… yep– I bet it was the bagged manure/soil. 🙁
We have both deep mulch and wood chips. I love both but have had much better results with wood chips. Maybe that is a possibility for you? Thank you for sharing the good and the bad.
Melanie,
I use woodchips too (Paul Gautcshi method), like Steffanie (9/3 post) and Mary (9/6post) above and responded to their posts.
I read this post with great interest, as I garden on limestone and so I have brought in many things to try to improve my soil. My most recent efforts have been with wood chips due to becoming acquainted with a man who has a tree-trimming business, and leaves, which we have picked up curbside from people who have our phone number to call when they have them bagged and ready to take away. I hate to tell you that we will no longer be doing either of these things.
I am turning 70 in a few months and Hubs is 74. So it may be that we are more susceptible than you younger gardeners. But it turns out oak leaves harbor mites, and we have been bitten by them. I had a terrible time with what I thought was chiggers in the garden, worse than I could remember since we started gardening here in 2011. And now I have a rash on my leg I cannot get to go away. I’ve been researching and I think that one of two things have happened: 1) I am being bitten by oak mites and not chiggers, and they are triggering an allergy of some kind; and/or 2) I have gotten fungus on my hands from the wood chip pile, and then scratched my chigger (or mite, whichever) bites, thus allowing the fungus to get into my skin. Hubs has had a rash on one of his legs for about six months. We’ve shown our rashes to doctors and they say, “contact dermatitis”. Though the ointments they prescribe do not help. Hubs had an additional problem in that he was shoveling wood chips from the pile and got in a cloud of “dust” which must’ve been fungal in nature. All night that night, he hacked and coughed. Fortunately, those symptoms were gone by morning, and he has since had a chest xray as the normal part of a checkup and everything was ok. But it was kind of scary. We’ll be going back to the doctor and telling them what we think might be causing our rashes now, since doctors these days won’t waste their time doing any detective work and it’s just all too easy to lump every skin problem into “contact dermatitis” and send the patient away. The only problem is, we have to wait almost a month to get in to see the doctor. Sheesh. So much can happen in a month. So I’m trying to think about what I might try in the meantime. Maybe tea tree oil, neat?
We’ve had our tree-trimmer friend stop his wood chip deliveries. And this fall, we will not be picking up leaves. We already abandoned getting a bale of hay, as they’re so big now we can’t haul them ourselves and people who have that equipment don’t want to just bring out one bale. But that was probably a blessing in disguise, owing to the fact that we really don’t know whether it’s contaminated and not sure the person we’d buy from would even tell us the truth.
Oh wow– sorry to hear about the bites– that is NOT fun at all. Everyone keeps recommending wood chips, but I’ve wondered what sort of possible contamination could like in some species there, too. Gardening sure isn’t for the faint of heart!
I am reading alot about instituting chickens for their yard work. I hope to begin this next year. http://abundantpermaculture.com/grow-your-own-food/ is my favorite website for info.
Yes– love Justin’s blog!
Hello, I have watched a video called “Back to Eden”, and thought you might be interested in it as a new way to mulch your garden. I am soon going to implement this new way of gardening. I found this video on Mercola.com. This video is a no till approach and keeps all living organisms in the soil. So you will have healthier plants.
Yes, I’ve watched that video several times. Honestly, I’ve heard people getting mixed results from it, so I’ve been a bit leery. However, I might be looking into it more, now that I can’t use hay.
We had this exact same thing happen in our garden here in Prince George, BC and after talking to a local soil expert, doing some research as well as an experiment, came to the same conclusion. It is aminopyralid poisoning. Our potatoes and tomatoes are the most seriously affected with the mutant leaves that look like fiddleheads. Any legumes just did not grow at all and neither did the cucumbers or melons. It has been very disheartening as this was the first year I had started all my own seedlings as well. We have begun turning our small city lot into a permaculture garden to tea people what you can do in a small space. You can check out our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/PermaPress/. Because our yard is small we cannot produce enough organic matter ourselves so were excited to find a source of manure from a friend who has horses. He buys hay locally but we have since found out that almost all of the people who sell hay in the area spray their crops with herbicide for thistles, clover, etc. Here we thought we were doing such a good thing for our soil and it turns out we poisoned it instead! We shared what we experienced with local growers at our local farmers’ market. Some were aware of the problem but others were not and this could impact their livelihood in a huge way. Suddenly, things that have been safe to use on your garden can no longer be considered to be safe. It is not just the hay and the straw but the manure as well.
This has seriously impacted our plans for our permacultur site, but like you, we are determined to not let it get us down. When we get chickens we will have to source organic straw and feed for them. We have inoculated the soil in our growing beds with mycelium and plan to put in a lot of sunflowers as our research has indicated both are beneficial at healing the soil.
In terms of our harvest this year, the beets and carrots did well. Peas and beans were pretty much a lost cause and all melons and cucs were a total bust. The potatoes did produce some, although not as big or prolific as usual. Tomatoes are a lot smaller and yield is way less than normal, but again, not a total bust. The strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, cherries and grapes all produced great harvests as did all the herbs.
As we gardeners say “NEXT year things will be better!”
Exactly– next year WILL be better! Sorry to hear of your poisoning as well, though. A hard lesson learned.
I live in Kelowna, BC, tomato, grape & fruit capital of Canada. I have the same problem! Stunted, curled tomatoes with poor yield, replanted beans, spinach, chard, beets 3 times then gave up. Last year I had a bumper crop after putting down well rotted horse manure and org mulch from our yard ( leaves + grass) This year only used the mulch from our yard, nothing else and it was a disaster even though we had a hot, perfect summer. The only thing I can think of is air or (city) water? They do a lot of Geoengineered spraying here (aka chemtrails) and who knows what effect that stuff will have over time….? So no hay mulch here, same issue.
Bummer, sorry to hear you’ve had a bad year too!
Hi Jill,
A few years ago, the Chittenden county, VT “compost division” of the solid waste district produced a bumper crop of pyralid tainted compost. Hundreds were affected.
A “quick” test was developed … called the “pea” test. Plant 3 – 4 pea seeds in the suspected soil. If they thrived, no pyralids. If they looked like your tomatoes … sorry Charlie!
Corn, being a grass, grew well … and was edible, or I wouldn’t be writing you.
To speed up the recovery, till the soil frequently to allow the sun to cook it. Small gardens and raised beds can be solarized. Soak them down deeply with water, cover with clear plastic and cook them for a month in the sun. If the pea test fails again, cook them another month.
For the most part, the affected soil was substantially amended in one season, using solar treatments. Second year crops may have been affected somewhat, but often produced reasonable growth. I’m pretty sure that I passed on consuming those critters.
Third year plantings did not show any, or very little, damage.
Daryle in VT
I have contamination in one of six beds. I’m going to try your method of “cooking” it out.
I had a similar problem this year…new garden…new wood mulch…some things did great, tomatoes failed. I did research and it says wood and straw mulch can do good at first but they PULL THE NITROGEN out of the soil so the plants can fail. I believe that’s what happened. My research said compost OR leaf mulch is actually the best for your garden.
Yes, I’ve heard of that happening with wood mulch– that’s one of the reasons I’ve avoided wood chips and opted for hay instead… But now not sure what I’ll use. Wood chips can work, but you need plenty of nitrogen in the soil to balance.
Oh My Gosh, when you described what happen to your garden happened to my garden I planted 50 foot row of corn and 6 plants came up and never did get bigger than 12 inches. My green beans I had 4 plants and picked 3 beans off. My husband dumped manure and old hay out of the goat/sheep barn and he feed hay which I am sure had been sprayed. Thank you for telling us about your problem.
Sorry to hear about your garden! Such a bummer. 🙁
I totally understand this, what a shame. I bought my little farm in February and have held off planting any veg this year, as I want to prepare the ground thoroughly first, I know no one has farmed there for 15 years so it is clean. I did decide to grow a meadow for hay on one section this year, again unused for years, next year I am growing hazelnut trees there but postponed that for the chance to get a lot of chemical free hay instead. I got two giant round bales of hay from it and am going to set to this Autumn in setting up my veggie and berry patch. It was a fluke, I’m trying to go all out organic and your article has really encouraged me to be vigilant. I have also got a truck load of donkey poop from a local certified organic farmer, fingers crossed no nasties in that. These are the lessons we all need to learn, I’m sure I’ll be facing plenty of my own here in Italy. Thank you for posting and I wish you the best of luck for next years harvest. Clare xx
Good for you for being vigilant! It was a tough lesson to learn, but glad I am able to share and help people avoid the same issues.
Very interested in this phenomenon. I’m in Virginia and just about every gardener in my neighborhood is complaining about their tomatoes this year. My sister who is a veteran gardener commented to me that she got her first ripe tomato in mid-July. She anticipated the usual progression of ripening tomatoes but the ripening just stopped. It took several weeks more for the tomatoes to ripen.
It would appear the tomato problem is a nation wide issue. If that’s the case, is it solar activity, chemtrails, acid rain, etc???? Many gardeners in my area who never use compost or mulch and are having the same problem.
This is the first year I won’t have enough paste tomatoes to make my usual sauces. Sigh.
Yes, I’ve heard a lot of people complaining about strange gardens this year. I don’t know what to think…
Looks like everything has been said. All I can add is *ugh*
Sorry this happened. We have been using the wood chips (free supply) and I was going to do more deep mulch with hay or straw, but now I think I’ll stick with the wood chips.
Yeah, I vote for sticking with wood chips…. We might go that direction next year, too
I keep reading everyone’s posts because I thought I was the only one with strange results. I also am interested in hearing about other woodchippers. I have the following comments to add:
1. I’ve been a woodchipper (Paul Gautschi, Back to Eden) for three years now and every year the soil gets better as the plants reveal…but one has to be patient with the process, like investing over the years before payoff. Once payoff happens (the right balance of soil chemistry with microorganisms), less work and more productivity is expected. So fertilize your plants to compensate before that magic year which I will be doing in my fourth year.
2. I didn’t plant my tomatoes deeply enough below the 4″ woodchip layer — my mistake — and my results were very disappointing with curly leaves, too much die off. I put new plants in at the beginning of August at a deep level, and they’re doing well, except yellowing at bottom…we haven’t had much rain here.
3. my potatoes are doing excellent — buried deep below the chips.
4. Chips are challenging with root crops while the soil is still building, so I’m doing a garden bed without chips next year and for several years more.
5. there is definitely a larger picture in which the pollution of our skies and water is a factor, which makes me want to stick with chips for greater protection, though our productivity may still be affected. The pollution dries out the soil and hurts plant growth.
6, yes I think one has to do their best to avoid chips which were herbicide-treated before cut down.
7. I would like to get chickens to help with the gardening tilling and fertilizing.
You know about this, right? http://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/pest-control/herbicide-damage-zmgz13fmzsto.aspx
I have been doing deep mulch since reading your glowing experiences. I was also worried about herbicide issues when my cucumbers failed to thrive. But I replanted a little later in the season and they eventually took off. I have had great luck so far, only one year in. However, I have used old hay that had been sitting outside composting in the elements for over a year. Maybe you can buy big round bales and let them sit somewhere outside for a year or two until any possible herbicides have had a chance to decompose. It’s usually cheap or even free to get from people who can’t feed their spoiled hay to their livestock. So sorry for your bad luck. It’s so disappointing to lose a garden or even just a crop after all the optimism and effort that was put into it.
I, too, know your pain and despair. We live on the western edge of Wyoming at 6000′. Our sons raise cattle, so left-over hay and manure from the cows and horses was easy to obtain. About mid way through the 2014 gardening season, after mulching my peas they just stopped. Hmm, must have been the heat. The beans were just a fair crop that year. 2015, no potatoes, no beans, no peas. They all came up beautifully, but when they started to put out roots – they became stunted, yellowed, twisted, and eventually died. The corn wasn’t bothered. Nor the pumpkin. I thought slugs, virus, disease, too much water. By the end of 2015, research was pointing to contamination. This year, began the same way. Transplants were healthy until put into the garden. Seeds germinate then look awful. After much research – I stopped using the manure tea (it seemed to be the worst culprit – maybe because it is concentrated). Planted all the radish seed I had. The ones I didn’t pick are the size of large potatoes and up to 4′ tall. Started more brassica transplants and planted them all over the garden. Interestingly, where I planted radishes or brassicas next to the peas, the peas actually produced a few peas and did not die immediately. Also, putting fermented molasses water on the potatoes seemed to help a little. We are now looking at cover crops as a way to help remediate. And all the wood stove ash will be dumped in the garden this winter.
So sorry to hear this Cindy! Hope you can get back to normal soon. 🙁
For testing your soils contact your State University the Ag Extension. You can contact your state Department of Agriculture. You may want to try living mulches. They have been a great alternative for me, as well as improving the overall soil condition. There is great information out there.
http://www.veganicpermaculture.com/agroecology.html
Happy gardening! !!
Thanks Limarie!
http://www.thesurvivalgardener.com/more-victims-of-satanic-grazon-herbicide/
I deep mulch, but I use my own herbicide free grass. I let the yard get embarrassingly long, then mow it. I let it dry, rake it, and deep mulch the garden. You can buy or make compost, but if you buy, it must be certified compost. If you use manure, use something like chicken manure because they don’t eat hay. The Grazon can persist through digestion unfortunately.
Check out the link I shared. The Survival Gardener has many posts about the terrors of the Grazon herbicide.
Thanks for the link! And smart about using your own long grass!
I had the SAME issue with my Rutgers tomatoes but the strange thing is that the Super 100 Cherry tomatoes were unaffected and produced a tremendous yield. I used planting soil that was labeled organic in our new planting bed, nevertheless, I had the curled leaves you described.
Hmmm… that is interesting– I wonder if one species was just more sensitive?
I am sooo grateful for this post! I have had “bad luck” with my tomatos for the past 3 to 4 years, and I could not for the life of me figure out what I was doing wrong! Now I see that I had done the same as you had, adding manure (from my neighbors aged cow manure pile) to our garden. I used to grow beautiful tomatos, and beamed with pride at my quarts of lovely canned tomatos lined up on my shelf, waiting to be enjoyed in the midst of winter! I guess pride came before the fall! LOL! I have tried everything I could think of to try to deal with the problem, even moving all my tomatos to big pots on my porch, BUT I was still using soil from my garden! AhHa!
My mom had a bumper crop of tomatos this year, using big pots on her porch, but the only soil she used was Miracle Gro Moisture Control soil, and I am going to do this next year! I don’t like having to buy soil when we have access to all the free manure to amend our soil, but, in light of this info, I think that we may have to, at least for our tomato plants. I have not noticed any of my other plants having the problems like the tomatos, so at least my garden will not be totally unusable next summer. Thank you so much for all the info!!! 🙂
Blessings, and Happy Fall! 🙂
Yeah, I don’t like not being able to use the manure either… Hard to swallow, but better than ruined plants, I guess.
In 2010 my husband built raised beds that outline our residential side and back yards. We bought three way mix from a local nursery. We spent several hundred dollars having two dump trucks full of gardening three-way mix delivered and spent a month shoveling. We planted starts and seeds. The veggie starts, including several types squash, beans, green beans, cukes and tomatoes. They all died. I planted seeds that never came up. Replanted with starts, they died. I had an all over failure. Then we find out our county made national news for crop failures due to Aminopyralid poisoned manuer that passed unprocessed through our huge local dairy cow population (Whatcom County, WA).
I grow organically so that meant the soil had to go. Now, imagine humping two dump trucks worth of soil back into the back of our pick up to haul the 24 yards of contaminated soil and paying by the pound to take it to the dump. And then try to find safe soil to replace it! Of course the nursery we bought it from denied using any contaminated compost insisting we must have supplemented it ourselves. Needless to say, we won’t shop there EVER AGAIN! I hate shopping at box stores, too.
We luckily have a source that swears they assay each load of compost before they use in the 3- and 4-way garden soil mixes. We used them again this year when we remade the front yards raised beds. Everything we planted flourished.
I guess we were lucky and were only out about $800 in death dirt and dead plants. Local organic gardens lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Thanks Dow. Thanks Monsanto.
Ugh– so much work! So sorry to hear of your struggle… Glad you are on the upswing, though.
Thanks for posting this. I always feel like I am the only one who fails at gardening. Like you, I will try again!
Hi there, I have the same issue with my tomatoes, that was the origin of this thread (tightly curled leaves) and I think I can trace it to a couple of bags of mulch that I bought and applied… but my question is do I have to destroy the plants or can I persevere and consume any fruit that is eventually produced? There are a lot of tomatoes already on the bushes and it seems a waste to lose them 🙁
Hi Jill, I am new to Prairie Homestead, maybe a month or so. I have just had the time to sit down and start to catch up on all the info in your tool boxes ( we have just had our first snow/blizzard here in Tea, SD, so officially done with the garden.) I can now sit and rest a while :).
I was just reading about your tomato catastrophe, so sorry. It is so hard to watch your hard work curl up and die and then not know why.
I was wondering if you have ever used worm castings (Poo). My husband and I started using it about 3 years ago. Our gardens are the best they have ever been. Its 100%pure, OMRI certified.You can’t burn your vegetation, its safe around children and animals, heck you could eat it if you wanted to-my husband tried- he’s weird 🙂 It is an excellent soil builder also.
I’m going to do something here, hope its OK.
This is our side business now. We took a full growing season to test it out for ourselves before we made up our minds to sell it as whole sale distributors.
Anyway this may be something you may want to check out. We use it with our composted leaves and grass clippings. I can not remember the last time we even entertained the idea of using any kind of harmful chemical on anything in & around our yard and gardens. We have read so much about this and it really hits home, knowing what goes into your body is just 1/2 the fight and you have to stay ever so vigilant.
Well I hope that I was somewhat helpful for you.
If you would like any information about Worm poop, I will send you a website so you can check it out for yourself.
Wishing you & yours Good Luck in the next growing season. Shawn
PS.I enjoy the rest during this time of year but I’m already thinking/planning my garden plots out for next year 😉
Thanks for this info, Shawn! Very helpful. I’ve thought about worm castings, but haven’t been sure if I could get enough quantity… Maybe I should consider them again, tho!
Aminopyralids take 3-7 years to break down. The fastest way to remediate the problem is to remove as much as possible of the contaminated organic material. Contact with soil microbes is necessary to get the aminopyralid to biodegrade. So keeping the soil moist and turning it often so the offending organic matter is always in contact with soil microbes so that it breaks down as quickly as possible. Composting won’t break down aminopyralids. It has to be soil. Also you could try to grow something like lettuce to see if your whole garden is contaminated or just a small area. Any plant affected with aminopyralid will contaminate any soil it comes into contact with. Aminopyralids pass through animals unchanged so the manure is also unusable.
Sorry this comment is so late,I just found your website. My experience with hay was eye-opening! I got a horse back in the seventies.He had frequent colic for 15 years despite all we did to try to prevent it.Then we moved to our own place and began growing all organic,including hay,and for the next 17 years he NEVER had colic again!
Once I accepted a few bales of hay from a neighbor and used it to mulched tomatoes. I had the same curled,twisted unproductive tomatoes you showed. I never realized how prevalent spraying herbicides on hay has become! I’ll take a few weeds over poison any day!
Yep, me too. And that’s crazy about your horse– glad to hear organic hay worked better for him!
Jill, you CAN absolutely use cattle manure and straw for compost. My parents did it every year between the rows of their garden on their farm where potatoes strawberries and tomatoes thrived in rural Pennsylvania. I’m assuming you buy your hay, I haven’t read much further yet, but if you buy hay for your animals just ask for Timothy hay or Kentucky Blue Grass from the local farmers. Also there is such a thing as a laboratory to send a soil sample to check with your county or state extension office as well as local universities, Penn State does soil samples but that might be awhile for you to ship soil. Both my parents and my husband sent theirs off. The key is always the acidity balance. Also Jill I am telling you MUSHROOM SOIL in a raised bed to start. My husband used this soil in a raised bed when he lived in the city and his plants were GORGEOUS. Then next year till that soil into your soil. I hope this helps!!!
Yes, we used manure and straw for years with great results… And then we hit the batch of hay that had been sprayed and that resulted in disaster, like the post explained. So as much as I love using manure, etc, I’m pretty leery now, as it’s nearly impossible to know for sure what the animals have been eating. That herbicide variety is long-lasting stuff. Where do you get mushroom soil?
Wow, this one sure generated a lot of response.
I do not know if you would even have a possibly source available near you being in a prairie. However, perhaps look into the Back to Eden style of no till garden. The method uses chipped/shredded wood(tree trimmings) as a mulch and with adding regular compost, which gets distributed down through the chips, it is wonderful(so far at least) and does great things.
Sorry to hear that you had problems, but thank you for sharing the bad too. It will certainly provide info for others to learn from.
Hace you thought trying industrial hemp? I read is fantastic for replacing hay and for mulching! Not expensive at all. Research it and let me know. I wish I had land but I am a balcony gardener :-). Blessings!
Did you ever figure out if this was herbicide related?
Agreed. These herbicides are killing crops and killed/stunted/deformed my plants.
Had always used Sweet Peet with great results. Last year I bought more of the same but noticed label changed.
When I noticed my corn plants weren’t untwusting ax they grew I asked an AG person who was stumped.
I called out local Sweet Peet company which makes it for my state & was told it all came from the racetrack, straw, manure & all. They refused to believe me.
Replanting in regular backyard dirt the corn grew perfectly.
Then I stumbled upon multiple articles, firstly in Mother Earth News & voila! I had my answer.
Sadly, Never again will I use Sweet Peet until they can/will screen for these herbicides.
Hi Jill,
So terrible. AMINOPYRALID is so bad.I was wondering if you could update us all on your affected areas almost two years since you noticed this problem. Are you able to grow tomato/potato in this same area.I guess you are testing and trying all the time so could you talk a little about this so those of use who have just noticed this problem can find some comfort in knowing what the situation will be in 24 months.
Lovely website .
Thanks from Ireland.
Farmers world wide are sold that chemicals increase yields. As farmers ourselves We need to fact check what we source. I would not buy a bag of manure if I didn’t know where it came from and what the animal ate. There are thousands of free range cattle near you. I suggest you speak with landowner about their practices, and check the barn for gallons and spray equipment. Offer to collect manure as a courtesy. If your tomatoes do well bring back a bucket. Manure dried in the sun and air is light weight and has no smell. Layer the manure in NEW compost pile with organic produce, dry material you are certain has zero ROUNDUP and water. It’s October, by July it will have steamed down into usable. Burning the plants that maybe have concentrate puts the chemicals into new molecular air particles. Leave the suspect compost alone and covered to avoid your chickens searching for bugs. All universities with Ag departments have biolabs to test. Find a professor near you to advise.
I’m sending a website that might help you.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/georgemonbiot/2011/jul/15/vegetables-disease-aminopyralid-pesticide
Here in south TX the gardeners and nurseries, gardening radio shows started warning us about Picloram (sp) and the negative effects it had. I seemed like it just never went away and contaminated all that it touched. I contaminated the manure, compost and stayed in the soil for several years. We were advised to soak some hay in a bucket of water for a day and then pour it on a place in our yards to test it preferable a place with broad leafed weeds. Bob Webster owner of Shades of Green Nursery in San Antonio had personal experience with it. If you contact him, he can give you all the advice you need. He can also tell you how to deal with contaminated gardens you have now. I googled another site you might find helpful. This stuff is nasty and I hope you get help. You have a wonderful pulpit to warn others as well.
This is a very interesting article and all the comments are very helpful. I had a similar experience with tomato plants about 5 years ago. Along with the curling leaves on the tomato plants I had very poor germination and growth of everything I planted. I had been in the habit of using grass clippings as mulch for my vegetable garden. Through the years I had never had a problem – but I had used only clippings from my own property and I had not used chemical fertilizers or weed killers on my lawn. I had been given some bags of grass clippings from my neighbor who had a grass cutting business. Some of those clippings went directly on my garden, some went into the compost bin. And that is when my problems started. I finally traced it to “weed and feed” contaminants in the grass clippings. It took about three years for my soil to recuperate. In 2018 my garden finally began to come back and this year I have had excellent germination and my veggies are happily doing very well, I have become extremely cautious about what goes into my garden.
Hi Nina, my name is Doug. Thanks for this comment! I think this is exactly what I have been dealing with the last couple years. I have had incredible success over the years growing tomatoes and mulching with grass. Only recently have I had any problem. Just this year I mulched with grass from my dad’s yard just one bag so I put that on 9 of my tomato plants. Well what do you know…those 9 plants are the only ones with the anemic/skeletonized leaf curl! I have since removed the grass, but no luck with those plants yet…all my other plants are doing just fine 27 total minus the 9 in bad shape. Trying to find out exactly what was used to “weed and feed” the grass.
The plants rarely die unless they get hit mega hard and start to die from it. New leaves will either be contorted or fresh or contorted, then fresh. Flowers will come just fine. Some of the best tomatoes I’ve had in my life came from damaged plants. I got hit with herbicide drift again this summer – Things are going well. No need to pull the plants.
Hi. We have a small farm on the Sunshine Coast of B.C. and had problem with pesticide carryover in manure. Similar problems the author reports. We bit the bullet and sent some manure to a lab in Vancouver for testing. Sure enough the results came back with high levels of Clopyralid (136 ppb). Levels as low as 1 ppb can damage some plants like tomatoes. The company that supplies locally says it’s not their problem . The farm they get it from says they don’t spray. Somebody’s lying to us and we plan to get to the bottom of this. The moral is always ask where the manure or compost you are using comes from.
I am curious, you don’t mention heat stress as a possible culprit? I have some tomatoes exhibiting the exact same curling leaves this year- about half my plants. All the plants with the curled leaves were on the gravel floor of my greenhouse in a bit of a dead-zone for air flow. All the normal looking plants were up on a shelf near the fan and open window. Mix of varieties and all used the same potting soil. I’ve chalked it up to too much heat in the greenhouse near the floor, as they were all planted out last week and only now starting to recover from the damage. Thoughts?
I am having the same problem and I have been researching many, many times around the web, reading many articles to see what is happening.
I finally believe is related to herbicide residue on the HAY that I used as mulch on my garden bed where I planted my tomatoes (and another veggies). Also I have a couple more tomatoes on pots with the same hay.
Long story short, my bunny didn’t like this batch of hay so I decided to RE-use it. It was timothy hay, very dry, and according to the company, they don’t use any pesticides/herbicides on their product.
What it is strange to me is that the other veggies (beets, carrots, green onions, spinach) don’t seem to be affected or damage, I haven’t seen any curling or cupping on their leaves.
Now the tomatoes, cherry and beefsteak, have only curling and cupping deformation, no color change on the new growth leaves and stems (top), other than that the plants look healthy and even with some flowers…
So I am still very confused… 🙁
Also should I trim those new growths and let see if they are going to heal, looks like the damage is very mild.
Maria I could have written this.. I am so aggravated that it seems like herbicide contamination. I bought compost this year and all seems well except for the tomatoes, although my plants do have blooms and fruit both on them.. but peppers,squash, zucchini, okra, lettuce and chard are all fine.. so is that stuff not good to eat either? So frustrating! I am trying to get ahold of our county extension agent for some advice. Good luck
I too had tomato leaf curl this year, mine turned out to be broad mites, you can’t see them without a microscope and they inject a toxin into the leaf stem, I’m going to have my soil tested by the county extension office just to eliminate future worry of herbicide
I had the curled leaves and found that my seeds were contaminated with a chemical an it never let the plants develop good roots.
For two years now I have thought the curling in my tomatoes and peppers was caused by too much wood ash. We have three horses, hay, and what I once thought were magnificent compost piles. Pretty sure I have also poisoned my garden. I’m going to remove the hay mulch I have spread over my entire garden. This is truly heartbreaking, thank you for this post!