Robert, The same thing has happened in my garden, and it just makes me feel sick. It happened in about the same time frame here as it happened there.

I lost 3 paste tomato plants, and have 5 more that are trying to outgrow the damage but may not make it. Then there's about 8 more that I think are outgrowing it and will survive. At first, I tried to convince myself it was leaf curl related to the lack of moisture, heat and strong winds, but deep in my heart I knew from the first time that I noticed the damage that it likely was drift.

I haven't seen anyone particularly close to our place spraying anything, but then I'm not outside 24/7, and the drift can come from fairly far away. Lots of the ranchers here spray their fence lines to keep stuff from growing there, and utility companies spray underneath their power lines too.

When I first noticed the curling on one plant, I thought maybe it was just some of the stress-related leaf roll, but then as more and more plants started curling while others of the exact same variety looked fine...and they were sitting right next to sick plants....then I knew it likely was herbicide damage. It was pretty obvious pretty quickly which plants had no chance of surviving, but I left them in the ground until it became clear they were not going to bounce back.

I won't say it happens in my garden every year, but it happens probably 3 or 4 years out of 5. I guess we should be grateful for the hit-and-miss damage that herbicide drift causes. It would be a lot worse if it killed every single plant.

I don't know of any way to avoid it since the herbicides can drift a half-mile or more in a high enough concentration to kill whatever they hit. I have tried growing morning glories on the garden fence so they take the hit, but usually the herbicide drift hits before the morning glories are tall enough to make a difference.

I hope it doesn't happen to either of our gardens again, but I know it probably will.

Earlier this spring, I had herbicide drift from somewhere hit an entire flat of pepper seedlings. In that case, it was glyphosate drift, and most of the pepper plants survived although they were stunted for a very long time. This time, the damage in the garden looks like drift damage from something containing 2, 4-d.

Dawn

I have been thinking since I first read this, shouldn't you keep pesticide killed plants out of the compost? There are articles out that say herbicide can survive in horse manwure when the animal ate hay baled from treated fields. Since you don't know what kind it might have been, I would be concerned about composting the plant.

Amy, That's a really good point, and in terms of what to do with suspect materials that might usually go on the compost pile, I've been composting them separately for about 10 years. I don't know what anyone else does, but when I have plants that are hit by herbicide drift, I don't put them in my normal compost pile. I put them in a pile further away from the house and garden, and I never really use that compost. I have the pile in a sloping area where rain runoff had eroded the soil and made a big gully. As the compost pile decomposes, I just leave it there and it is filling in the eroded gully (slowly but surely). I also put all our chicken manure/bedding from the chicken coops in that area instead of using it in the main compost pile because the herbicide carryover damage you've read about now has reached the commercial animal feed industry.

For the most part, the herbicide carryover involves very a very specific type of herbicide (picloram, aminopyralid, clopyralid and others in that class) that is sprayed on grassy fields, pastures, park ground, golf courses, etc. to kill broadleaf weeds in grass. This class of herbicides has been contaminating garden soil, compost, animal manures, hay, straw, etc. since around the year 2000.

Once the herbicide carryover became a widespread issue, I stopped bringing in much of anything from outside our property to use in the garden. I still buy Black Kow manure every now and then, because I have used it forever with no problem and I guess I'll still keep buying it until/unless a problem develops, but otherwise, no amendments get added to my garden unless I am positive they would not be contaminated---and the only way to be sure of that is to maintain total control over what goes into your garden. It is kinda of a PITA---I turn down many offers from ranching neighbors who ask if I want their horse manure or cow manure, and I always decline it because even if they don't use those herbicides, there is going to be some point where they purchased hay or bagged feed, and there is a chance those were contaminated.

We all have to rethink how we do things now and be very careful not to bring contaminated materials into our gardens, and that includes being careful where we put plants killed by herbicide drift. I'd rather be overly cautious, than not cautious enough.

However, a person could compost these plants if they choose. All they'd have to do is test the compost with a simple bioassay test before using it, but then if they found the compost was contaminated, they'd have to let it decompose some more or use it in a grassy area or even in a corn field. Much depends on how big the compost pile is compared to how many plants were killed by the herbicide drift. Just a couple of plants added to a very large compost pile probably wouldn't contain enough of the herbicide after composting to cause a problem, but "probably" makes me uneasy, so I'd just as soon not put those plants in my main compost pile.

I'll link the MEN article that discusses how it was discovered that the herbicide carryover in one product in one state ultimately was traced back to a name-brand bagged animal feed. We had long known both in this country and in Europe that herbicide carryover, often nicknamed "killer compost", had become a problem, but this was the first time they had found that the animal feed itself was contaminated. One thing about all this that really bothers me is that we've known about it for well over a decade---almost a decade and a half---and, yet, not only does it continue to happen, but it also continues to pop up in new places---like in the animal feed.

I keep waiting to see if this issue will hit the wood mulch industry (or gardeners using wood chips from municipal compost facilities or tree-trimming companies) because one of the commonly-used brush killer/stump killer products in this country is Tordon, and it contains picloram. I hope that never happens, but suspect that at some point it might occur.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Killer Compost Article from Mother Earth News