[Fleecewife]

I've been whingeing for the past couple of years about the compost I have been using, a peat free, organic one.  The problem was that my tomatoes were seriously stunted from the get-go, in spite of adding really well rotted sheep manure and seaweed meal to the mix.  Farming Today on the Beeb this morning may have the answer.  They interviewed a plant grower on Yorkshire who lost all his tomato plants last year and found that the culprit was the domestic green waste which is composted and added to peat free composts.  This can contain tiny amounts of lawn weedkiller - one part per billion of weedkiller in the compost is enough to wipe out a tomato crop.
Clearly I was lucky as mine eventually grew through the problem and cropped ok, but very late.
This year I changed my brand but I'm just off to see if I can find out if they have used the same domestic composted waste.  My tomatoes look ok so far, if a little spindly, but that's caused by insufficient light.

You can listen to the programmed in BBC iplayer

[jaykay]

Oh, that's interesting. I try to grow tomatoes in grow bags and have never got them to ripen. I blamed it on the short growing season here but I wonder if it was the same problem? I will dig some stuff out of the bottom of my midden instead 

[suziequeue]

Gardening Organic magazine published some research on various different composts in their most recent magazine. I'll look it out......I think it's in the composting toilet...... Now that stuff's going to make my tomatoes grow when it finally goes on......

[Plantoid]

Dad told me about the italian POW's on the farm back in 1945.
Most had beeen there for several years and were only too happy not to have to fight on Adolphs behalf..
 
The farmers wife would not let them use their clodgy down the yard  ,so they set up trestles & a long pole over a six foot long  2 foot wide trench behind the barn , when the trench was almost full to the top they  covered the trench with top soil an planted the tomatoe plants on top .

Dad reckoned they were the best tomatoes s he'd ever eaten .
The itallians also self seeded toms up and down the hedge rows when they were out in the fields.

The crafty farmer used to sell most of the tomatoes at market

[Plantoid]

I've been whingeing for the past couple of years about the compost I have been using, a peat free, organic one.  The problem was that my tomatoes were seriously stunted from the get-go, in spite of adding really well rotted sheep manure and seaweed meal to the mix.  Farming Today on the Beeb this morning may have the answer.  They interviewed a plant grower on Yorkshire who lost all his tomato plants last year and found that the culprit was the domestic green waste which is composted and added to peat free composts.  This can contain tiny amounts of lawn weedkiller - one part per billion of weedkiller in the compost is enough to wipe out a tomato crop.
Clearly I was lucky as mine eventually grew through the problem and cropped ok, but very late.
This year I changed my brand but I'm just off to see if I can find out if they have used the same domestic composted waste.  My tomatoes look ok so far, if a little spindly, but that's caused by insufficient light.

You can listen to the programmed in BBC iplayer

 FW you may also find that most of thesocalled composts are made to the minimum they can legaly call some thing compost . They are often still filled with partialy rotted wood products which rob the soil of nitrogen for several years.
 
Look up compost making by the Berkley method , or " compost in 18 days " there are some good lists of materials to get you started making your own compost .
I've been researching compost for over six months and it is disgusting what is being sold as finished compost when they are in fact little more than partially rotted wood chips & garden waste from council recycling centres etc.

[Fleecewife]

Hi Plantoid - I know, I should make my own seed compost and I think I will have to start researching doing that.  At the moment I am struggling to get the veg garden back into production after a long convalescence, so that will take all my time, but I do have plenty of excellent garden compost and manure.  It does seem a waste of all that live goodness to sterilise it, but otherwise loads of weed seedlings come through.  And how do I sterilise it?
You are right about the pieces of wood in the multipurpose recycled stuff - oddly for me I hadn't thought of that as being part of the problem for my seedlings    What an eegit I am.  I pick out the bigger bits....

So for next year I must aim to make my own - that's a resolution 

Suziequeue - they also did a comparison of various organic composts in Kitchen Garden this month - New Horizon did fine for them, but that is the one I find a problem.  Some of the coir composts didn't germinate anything and the Dobies one (which I just bought yesterday before I had noticed the article) doesn't do too well either.
For this year I will continue to add my own ingredients to the bought stuff I have, but next year I will have to follow the Resolution 

[lachlanandmarcus]

also beware with horse manure where the grass grazed has been sprayed or the hay. There was an ingredient that was passing through the horses and staying in the manure and killing veggie seedlings when the manure was passed on to gardeners.

It was banned for a while but I have a feeling it may be going to be or is now being reintroduced.

There is a test you can do with a few seeds indoors which will tell you if the manure is affected.

A lot less is afffected now that the problem with that ingredient is known about but there could still be some esp if they start to resell it.

It is tricky - I dont spray anything here, but I do buy in a bit of hay and straw so I cant control that aspect, however Ive never had any issues and nor have the people who come for muck for their veggies but I do warn them!

[YorkshireLass]

I got some "cheap and cheerful" compost from local Aldi....it is horrible stuff and has shredded plastic in it?! Only noticed the plastic after I'd filled planters though. Not hopeful for good crops there.

[deepinthewoods]

its aminopyralid contamination, and the reason i dont use council compost.

http://www.the-gardeners-calendar.co.uk/news/story.asp?nid=1448

[Fleecewife]

So do you think that potting compost for sale might still have traces of aminopyralid which originated when used on pasture?  Scary if that's so, as it will have had to survive through the manure, then through a year on the garden then through the council composting system. The Farming Today programme I heard implied it was domestic lawn weedkillers which were causing the problem, but it is possible that aminopyralid is the culprit but they couldn't mention it if the nursery's court case is still ongoing. 
It is so difficult to avoid all dangerous chemicals.  I don't use anything at all on my ground (in spite of OH pressure when the thistles start to get him down) but we are surrounded by non-organic farms, who spray weedkiller just the other side of our hedges and we get our straw from them (it is at least 18 months after cutting before it would be used as manure on the soil).  We have had damage in the past from spray drift and been offered compensation, but the point is that our crops are then contaminated and a few quid to replace the seeds is worthless.
Remember DDT?  The whole world was contaminated with that, even the ice caps I believe, so hopefully this aminopyralid isn't in the same league.  It does seem that tomatoes and similar crops are the worst affected - and they are also my favourites 

Yorkshire lass - I shall be opening my Dobies stuff today and I'm wondering what I'll find 

[Lesley Silvester]

Suziequeue - they also did a comparison of various organic composts in Kitchen Garden this month - New Horizon did fine for them, but that is the one I find a problem.  Some of the coir composts didn't germinate anything and the Dobies one (which I just bought yesterday before I had noticed the article) doesn't do too well either.

I have used the New Horizon one for years with great success.  I grow my outdoor tomatoes in buckets filled with it.

[Fleecewife]

Suziequeue - they also did a comparison of various organic composts in Kitchen Garden this month - New Horizon did fine for them, but that is the one I find a problem.  Some of the coir composts didn't germinate anything and the Dobies one (which I just bought yesterday before I had noticed the article) doesn't do too well either.

I have used the New Horizon one for years with great success.  I grow my outdoor tomatoes in buckets filled with it.

Hmm - I used it happily for years too, then the last 2 years it was rubbish.  So maybe it's something else about how I grew my tomatoes which caused the problem of poor growth and clubbed leaves early on, but I absolutely can't think what.

[Lesley Silvester]

Suziequeue - they also did a comparison of various organic composts in Kitchen Garden this month - New Horizon did fine for them, but that is the one I find a problem.  Some of the coir composts didn't germinate anything and the Dobies one (which I just bought yesterday before I had noticed the article) doesn't do too well either.

I have used the New Horizon one for years with great success.  I grow my outdoor tomatoes in buckets filled with it.

Hmm - I used it happily for years too, then the last 2 years it was rubbish.  So maybe it's something else about how I grew my tomatoes which caused the problem of poor growth and clubbed leaves early on, but I absolutely can't think what.

My tomatoes were fine.  In fact the fruit carried on ripening well into winter outdoors.  If I'd actually sowed the seeds when I should have done, instead of late April, I would probably have had a wonderful crop.

[deepinthewoods]

fw, why dont you make a little bit of your own seed compost, you could dig a bit of loam up, and sterilise it, then mix with some vermiculite or something.
i use last years cucumber compost, i grow one plant in a 65l bag, then use it for seeds in the spring before it goes on a bed.

[Plantoid]

In making your own seed composts don't make them too nutrient rich for the plants will be all top and no bottom so to speak .
 I'm currently using my soil less growth medium in short lengths of plastic sink waste pipe tubes ( piccies elsewhere on the site )
Filling them full , compressing it slightly and poking a thick pencil in to about an inch & a half deep , filing pencil hole with fine grade horticultural  vermiculite and sowing individual seeds at  each station .
 It seems to be working  as some seeds have started to germinate.. once the seeds grow past the second leaf set i soak the tubes in water for a couple of hours then gently slid the plug of soil and plant into the prepared hole in the raised beds.

 I've also raised a heck of a lot of seeds direct into small pots of large chip vermiculite but found that they germinate and grow so quick there is no reservoir of nutrients for them to access so they go leggy and have to be very carefully slid out onto a plate then ever so carefully slipped into  the soil less growth median in a tube.
So long as you don't touch the stem of the seedling or the seed leaf you can usually use a teaspoon to carefully collect and transplant one of the leggy seedlings out of the coarse mix..

 I've taken to the fine vermiculite method for I noticed that many of the commercial plug/pots available in garden centres appear to have a small amount of vermiculite or perlite round the base of the plant contained  in the lug . It got me to thinking why and I thought thing  through a d realised that perhaps is a fairly recent new method of  getting from seed to saleable plant very quickly with the least plant disturbance and labour costs.
 The next few week will tell me if I'm correct in my reasoning for I have another 200 or so tubes and small pots to sow with all sorts of seed  .
 My growth medium is cheap to make , the fine grade horticultural vermiculite was not  ,even at a special offer of two cubic feet for a tenner.