Hi Charles and Mark,
I fear that I too have become a victim of Aminopyralid contamination. I thought I would post here as a follow up to yours, and thank you Mark for all your posts on the subject, hugely helpful, and of course Charles for your continuing wonderful and generous advice on all things.
In brief, I took on a plot last year at my local allotment. Hadn’t been touched for 5 years and I’ve had a great time returning it to cultivation, based on Charles books, videos, forums, and courses! Initially I covered with bagged compost about 5cm deep and covered in fabric (Permatex) from June 2017. I removed the fabric end of March 2018 and made 20 beds of 4.8m x 1.2m. I used well rotted horse manure from a local farm. I did ask them about Aminopyralid (oh no nothing like that), and since our allotments have always used them I figured it would be fine. And then covered the horse manure with a few cm of the finer bagged compost.
All seemed fine, initial growth was excellent, weeds have been scarce. I also constructed a greenhouse in the spring and filled the bed with the same horse manure and compost.
20 June was the day I realised this might be Aminopyralid.
Potatoes (King Edward) were starting to show leaf curl after a healthy start. Dwarf French Beans Speedy were doing badly, I had initially assumed due to cold nights. Broad Beans, previously growing well, started to show distortions. Tomatoes in the greenhouse were showing some leaf curl.
I started a bioassay test on June 25th. Six 5″ pots with a 50:50 mixture of the well rotted horse manure and multipurpose compost, six pots with just the compost. Four different bean types in each (Greek Gigantes, Dwarf French Bean Speedy, Climbing French Bean Cobra, Broad Bean Aquadulce Claudia). Those in the compost only pots grew fairly well, those in the mixture were poor. I’d had 3 x 4 tonne deliveries of the horse manure over the months, and I used two samples from each batch. Pics below.
Despite this, some plants have done well. Tomatoes (Sungold, Sakura, Iris), mostly in the greenhouse, have been super productive, but had quite a bit of leaf curl. I assumed this was AP, but maybe its leaf roll (he said hopefully)?
Potatoes were doing really well, but started to get leaf curl in June. Charlotte still produced well, King Edwards not so well. Peas were very successful, but French Beans (Speedy and Cobra) planted in the same bed were terrible. Greek Gigantes Beans started badly after planting out, but after a month have come back to life and are now thriving. Jerusalem Artichokes (which should be v. susceptible?) have had mixed results, most showing leaf curl at some point, most recovering fine, a few less so. Onions have seemed Ok but not very big, beetroot good, corn good.
So I’d appreciate your view on all this. I have assumed this is AP and that I’ll need to strip all the raised beds off and start again. Which depressed me for a few days back in June, but I’m over that now!
Many thanks if you got this far!