I'm told that around here in CA, commercially-produced hay has to be of a GMO variety that incorporates some sort of herbicide in it (obviously I don't know the details). This would mean that we can't get organic manure from anyone raising livestock unless that person feeds the livestock non-commercially-produced feed/hay. Wat concerns do you have, if any, about the feed source that goes into the manure you use, from the perspective of avoiding pesticides and herbicides and growing organically?

jen g. --- Very thought-provoking question! I'm actually going to answer you in a post in a day or two, so stay tuned.

Hi Anna,

The warning about compost is unfortunately very true. Though I doubt all compost has serious problems?

A good reference is woodsend.org a testing lab in Maine. They have an article about contaminated compost. Essentially an herbicide was used on hay that was later eaten by horses and that horse manure was used to prepare compost.

It didn't quite kill the tomatoes growing in it.

There are pictures in that article. If you search that website for contaminated compost and look for the article about tomatoes you will find it.

There is another article about 'killer compost' which is also worth a read. That compost was so toxic that it kills things near it!

Now Woods End Labs offers a test as to how bad a given batch of compost is!!

My conclusion is that off farm inputs are dangerous.

John

Some of the herbicides in the aminopyralid group can be long lasting and can survive the transit thru a horses GI tract. They're great for managing a horse pasture because they are long-lasting, but the resulting manure is supposed to be kept out of the compost heap, as the warning on the containers states. Some compost sold to gardeners has been know to contain these chemicals. I'd like to think they made it there inadvertently rather than thru motives of greed.

I haven't really been following your saga of transporting manure in buckets, so maybe I missed something about improved efficiency by compartmentalizing your load for ease of loading/unloading/distributing, but couldn't you maximize your carrying capacity by simply raising the sides of your truck/cart bed with 2x4s & chicken wire walls?

Doc --- Here's the answer to your bucket question.