Clover and nitrogen fixation

[Serial_Apologist]

I know the feeling. I couldn't make enough compost for the whole allotment so I had to use it where it was needed on a case by case basis. When I was breeding and showing guinea pigs and when I kept chickens that helped, and for a few years I was also able to get horse muck( from pooh picking and stable mucking out) if I collected it. The weed seeds didn't bother me - there were so many flying around anyway, and they just made extra material for the compost heaps. I wouldn't use it now because of the aminopyralid issue.
Do you use/have you tried green manures? It isn't necessary to dig them in; some will die overwinter and otherwise annuals can be cut down and left to rot in situ or put on the compost heap.
Other things that came my way, but not on a regular basis , more a case of saying yes to an offer when I happened to be in the right place/talking to the right people were grab bags of leaf mould (from the High School across the road which had run out of space to deal with the autumn bounty and was happy to deliver), spoiled straw(some bales that got soaked when a tarpaulin flew away, ditto delivered), and shreddings from tree prunings when a neighbour had work done in her garden, which I had to bag at the time and then transport. Some of those things went on the ground direct to let the critturs/soil life deal with and some went to augment the compost heap. The leaves that hadn't broken down were left in the builders' bags for a couple of seasons to do so.

Thanks - hadn't previously known about the above, highlighted. Here, for those here not otherwise in the know, is from the RHS website:

"Contaminated farmyard manure can cause damage to vegetable crops in gardens and allotments. This contamination is caused by applications of weedkillers to farmland used to grow hay and other forage which are then eaten by stock".

[oddoneout]

Thanks - hadn't previously known about the above, highlighted. Here, for those here not otherwise in the know, is from the RHS website:

"Contaminated farmyard manure can cause damage to vegetable crops in gardens and allotments. This contamination is caused by applications of weedkillers to farmland used to grow hay and other forage which are then eaten by stock".

After the problem was first identified (and admitted by Dow) round about 2008 I think, sale and use were suspended for a while and then resumed subject to controls, which if followed correctly should prevent the problem occurring. That very evidently isn't the case. A major difficulty is in the use of hay, which gets moved around and traded on, increasing the chance of paperwork getting lost, ignored or simply not read/observed. Horse owners buy in good faith or, more likely don't know about the issue, and so the manure gets passed on for use on allotments and the like. Other animals and pets may also be eating contaminated hay.
A couple of years ago a friend of mine who runs a small flower and veg growing business with his wife bought horse muck from a source he has used before and not had problems with, to use on some new beds he had laid out. It became apparent there was a problem, a season's crops were lost and he now has a patch of ground he effectively cannot use. The advice is to repeatedly dig in the manure into the soil over a period of probably 2 years and then to test.The work involved in doing that and the risk of it still being present means he has just grassed it down. The chemical is slow to breakdown, and doesn't do so by normal composting, it has to interact with the soil microbes. There are concerns that it could be present in material produced in green waste facilities and/or could get into bagged compost that uses such material or animal manure, given that the regulations are not, for whatever reason, working as they should.
Apparently Sarah Raven had problems in 2018 with a new bed of dahlias and involved her MP and the NFU - with less than total success sadly, it would seem.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Thanks - hadn't previously known about the above, highlighted. Here, for those here not otherwise in the know, is from the RHS website:

"Contaminated farmyard manure can cause damage to vegetable crops in gardens and allotments. This contamination is caused by applications of weedkillers to farmland used to grow hay and other forage which are then eaten by stock".

And we eat the fruits of all this ? God help us .

Hesitate to intervene and annoy the gardeners but has any one considered having a front lawn like mine with no fertiliser or weed killer but plenty of wildflowers , abundant insects and birds?

Not sure how you solve the manure problem as a veg grower unless you know a friendly organic farmer with some to spare.

To be honest in the west of England there’s so much nitrogen falling out of the sky from farm and car pollution you don’t really need any additional nitrogen at all. It’s so eutrophic it’s unbelievable.

[Pulcinella]

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To be honest in the west of England there’s so much nitrogen falling out of the sky from farm and car pollution you don’t really need any additional nitrogen at all. It’s so eutrophic it’s unbelievable.

Wasn't Brexit supposed to get rid of nasty EU influences?

[Serial_Apologist]

Wasn't Brexit supposed to get rid of nasty EU influences?

[Ein Heldenleben]

Wasn't Brexit supposed to get rid of nasty EU influences?

Eu is the Greek for pleasant ,and air pollution doesn’t respect National borders so sadly not.

[Pulcinella]

Eu is the Greek for pleasant ,and air pollution doesn’t respect National borders so sadly not.

Thinking of which, whatever happened to Acid Rain? We don't hear so much about it nowadays. Is it now just part of generic air pollution?

[Old Grumpy]

Fewer coal fired power stations discharging sulphurous gases into the atmosphere?

[Sir Velo]

Hesitate to intervene and annoy the gardeners but has any one considered having a front lawn like mine with no fertiliser or weed killer but plenty of wildflowers , abundant insects and birds?

Not sure how you solve the manure problem as a veg grower unless you know a friendly organic farmer with some to spare.

Likewise and have done for some time. Hopefully a growing number here also practise this approach. Still noticing a catastrophic decline in the number of insects and birds everywhere so no quick fix but we can all do our bit to hopefully start to reverse the situation. The thing about lawns is that, unless they're manicured to within an inch of their lives, they quickly look untidy; whereas a wildflower meadow gains in beauty the less you do to it. Re Organic manure, plenty of this around in our neck of the woods so no excuses for fruit or veg growers!

[oddoneout]

Fewer coal fired power stations discharging sulphurous gases into the atmosphere?

Measures to deal with it have been largely successful - pity that other damage has taken over...

[oddoneout]

Likewise and have done for some time. Hopefully a growing number here also practise this approach. Still noticing a catastrophic decline in the number of insects and birds everywhere so no quick fix but we can all do our bit to hopefully start to reverse the situation. The thing about lawns is that, unless they're manicured to within an inch of their lives, they quickly look untidy; whereas a wildflower meadow gains in beauty the less you do to it. Re Organic manure, plenty of this around in our neck of the woods so no excuses for fruit or veg growers!

The scale of damage from home gardeners using lawn weedkillers containing clorpyralid is pretty small within the overall scale of the problem (and probably decreasing as more people for whatever reason take a more relaxed approach to their grass areas) and more likely to be "confined to site" rather than exported. Whether there will be a ban on home use in due course I don't know - there are alternative ways to deal with weeds if it is deemed necessary, but it takes knowledge and effort.
Manure, by definition is organic(ie carbon containing) but the issue for those following "organic"(in the popular sense) principles in their growing is that unless they have a closed system they can be vulnerable to unwittingly importing the problem. If the contaminated forage and manure are not kept on the premises of origin , as they are supposed to be, then contaminated manure can end up being imported - horse manure being the most common source*. For those running businesses for which certain standards have to be met to be classed as organic, that could cause problems beyond the loss of crops as it might possibly invalidate the organic status.

The weedkiller is used on hay crop grass to prevent ragwort poisoning, a particular fear of horse owners. However that fear may be the result of faulty data, but useful to the manufacturers of aminopyralids

https://www.southwestfarmer.co.uk/news/2037078.seeking-truth-ragwort/

Many years ago, as part of a village gardens open day I visited one which had a meadow adjoining poor quality pasture that was infested with ragwort. The owners explained how they had used management to deal with the same problem on their plot (which had been in the same state when they bought the property) the main part of which was to putting up barriers against rabbits to prevent overgrazing which is favourable to the propagation and establishment of ragwort. As they said it is ironic that the overgrazing horse owners often do due to lack of adequate land leads to the very problem they fear.

[Ein Heldenleben]

The scale of damage from home gardeners using lawn weedkillers containing clorpyralid is pretty small within the overall scale of the problem (and probably decreasing as more people for whatever reason take a more relaxed approach to their grass areas) and more likely to be "confined to site" rather than exported. Whether there will be a ban on home use in due course I don't know - there are alternative ways to deal with weeds if it is deemed necessary, but it takes knowledge and effort.
Manure, by definition is organic(ie carbon containing) but the issue for those following "organic"(in the popular sense) principles in their growing is that unless they have a closed system they can be vulnerable to unwittingly importing the problem. If the contaminated forage and manure are not kept on the premises of origin , as they are supposed to be, then contaminated manure can end up being imported - horse manure being the most common source*. For those running businesses for which certain standards have to be met to be classed as organic, that could cause problems beyond the loss of crops as it might possibly invalidate the organic status.

The weedkiller is used on hay crop grass to prevent ragwort poisoning, a particular fear of horse owners. However that fear may be the result of faulty data, but useful to the manufacturers of aminopyralids

https://www.southwestfarmer.co.uk/news/2037078.seeking-truth-ragwort/

Many years ago, as part of a village gardens open day I visited one which had a meadow adjoining poor quality pasture that was infested with ragwort. The owners explained how they had used management to deal with the same problem on their plot (which had been in the same state when they bought the property) the main part of which was to putting up barriers against rabbits to prevent overgrazing which is favourable to the propagation and establishment of ragwort. As they said it is ironic that the overgrazing horse owners often do due to lack of adequate land leads to the very problem they fear.

That vet survey is an outstanding example of how not to conduct a poll. You can’t do a self response poll with a 4 per cent response rate and multiply by the total number of members to get an overall figure. That’s because those affected are more likely to respond than those unaffected.
If overgrazing causes ragwort growth why are the wildflower meadows in the urban parks where I live (which are not grazed but mown a couple of times a year ) some years absolutely full of it ? And other years not ..

[oddoneout]

That vet survey is an outstanding example of how not to conduct a poll. You can’t do a self response poll with a 4 per cent response rate and multiply by the total number of members to get an overall figure. That’s because those affected are more likely to respond than those unaffected.
If overgrazing causes ragwort growth why are the wildflower meadows in the urban parks where I live (which are not grazed but mown a couple of times a year ) some years absolutely full of it ? And other years not ..

I can't answer your question, and there will obviously be more than one factor at work in such cases, but it was the overgrazing that was the significant factor in the case I mentioned, by removing the competition for space and light. Their own meadow wasn't completely devoid of ragwort, but it was a small part of the whole array and took its place in the whole, providing food for cinnabar moth caterpillars specifically, which helped in the control - flowering and thus seed setting reduced. In terms of being obvious in a given area as it's a biennial that can affect how much it is seen, as it's only the flowering that makes its presence easy to see.

[gradus]

Last Friday's GW had Frances Tophill explaining how Runner Bean roots fix Nitrogen in the soil for other plants to use.

[gurnemanz]

Last Friday's GW had Frances Tophill explaining how Runner Bean roots fix Nitrogen in the soil for other plants to use.

Didn't see GW but remember reading this a while ago. When clearing old runner beans at end of season I always chop them off at ground level to leave roots in.