Contaminated Mushroom Manure :(

Hi, I'm new here and I have a problem that maybe someone can advise me about. Its a long story but I'll try to keep it short. I got 11 yards of mushroom delivered as I have done every few years. This year I potted up some tomatoes and used the manure. I also transplanted a bunch of dahlias in the garden and added a good helping of manure in the holes. Additionally we transplanted a bunch of pumpkin seedlings to the manure pile, intending to use it as the pumpkin patch this season. All of these plants have problems! The tomatoes have stunted, curled leaves and have grown very slowly. The dahlias are stunted with distorted leaves and thickened stems and a few flower buds that don't open. The pumpkins have barely grown at all. A little googling around leads me to believe that all this is the result of herbicide being sprayed on hay to kill broad-leaved weeds. The hay goes to animals, passes through and persists, presumably it goes to a mushroom farm where it doesn't effect the crop, then is sent to a truck driver who knows nothing about it to sell to unwitting gardeners like myself. I have to accept that this gardening season is something of a write off for whatever I used the manure on. My question is how am I going to get rid of 11 yards of poison? Any thoughts?

 

wow, good question

take lots of photos of your problem plants. Did you buy this from a reputable landscape supply company? I'd talk to them first. ask them to send their truck to come and get it.

In my experience, having ended up with thousands of dollars of purchased "top soil" that contained fireweed (likely this "soil" contained chewed up burned stumps from a logged off acreage) - after 8 yrs I am still struggling with the darn fireweeds - anyway - there is no recourse that I know of - I don't think that commercially purchased compost or top soil (even tho lots of us grow food in it) is regulated provincially or otherwise - but I might be mistaken on that. Even then, you still have the problem.

you speculate that maybe there is a broadleaf herbicide in the manure - does grass grow well in your mushroom manure? (plant some fall rye seeds?)

does soil analysis detect all of the contents? I don't know - I am not a soil lab expert.

 

I'm not sure if its acceptable to post links in this forum but based on an online article from Texas A&M Agrilife Extension about leaf curl in tomatoes I felt like it was definitely herbicide damage. I was led from there to a website called Manure Matters run by Dow Chemical (:S) which further convinced me that this was the issue I was dealing with, specifically an active herbicide ingredient called aminopyralid . I am planning to do a bioassay test as outlined on the site. But given the the freakish look of my dahlia plants that I have grown successfully for years, I feel pretty strongly that I've got a bad batch of manure.
As to whether it was a reputable landscape supply company - no, not really. He's reputable in that I have bought good manure from him in years past. But he isn't the mushroom farmer, the cow farmer or the hay farmer. He's a little removed from the original problem. Once I'm completely sure the manure is the problem, I plan to call him and let him know his product is doing the very opposite of what its supposed to do, that is harming rather than helping my garden. Thats more to let him know that I cant ever buy manure from him again (indeed, I`m not sure I can ever buy it again if this it the ways things are going). But like you say, I don't think there's much recourse. He`s a guy with a dump truck that I paid a hundred bucks to. I`m not going to sue him. It feels like this is going to be my problem to deal with somehow. I`m just at a bit of loss as to how I will do it.