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?

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