Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Growing => Grow Your Own => Topic started by: Goosegirl on July 27, 2021, 14:50
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Before planting my dwarf French beans and sweet corn OH wanted me to add a load of partly-rotted horse manure to the soil as it hadn't been cultivated for a number of years. I planted a climbing DF bean at the end of April just adjacent to where the manure-digging ended and when it grew thought it looked a bit funny with its huge green leaves that were all separated by quite a bit of stem, and it is only now producing side shoots. Anyway, my dwarf ones took a while to get going but again the growth and the leaves didn't look right to me especially as they were cup-shaped. I've attached a pic of my sweet corn as well because I've successfully grown them in my greenhouse before, but these are thin and leggy with no side shoots where the cobs should be as opposed to the three I planted outside where I don't think there was any manure added to the soil when I was digging it over and they're much thicker with and have side shoots. If the general consensus agrees with me I will have to ring my supplier up to see if the farmer uses a herbicide with AP in such as Grazon.
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Could be possible or is it our very strange weather this year. The french beans could have lacked water depending on how much they had during the heatwave. The sweet corn looks relatively healthy apart from the absence of side shoots. Mine have side shoots but very small cobs so far. See what others think?? HH
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From looking at online pictures the distortion (cupping and wrinkling) of the bean plant leaves does appear to be quite characteristic of aminopyralid damage.
Being a member of the grass family, you would expect the sweetcorn to be relatively unaffected by such contamination - my plants only produce side shoots bearing the silks at the very last minute after the tassels appear, so it may not be too late for yours.
If it were me, I'd have to ask the manure supplier the question (and hope I got a truthful answer.)
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Mmmm, thought so. :( I will ask about the use of herbicides on the field where the horses graze.
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A few people are reporting little or few cobs on sweet corn so I don’t think that’s aminopyralid damage, plus they’ve been slow to get going, mine were nearly up to the roof in the poly tunnel before I spotted cobs developing, & thought it was because they were in there(first year of tunnel so nothing to compare with).
Have you got some of the suspect manure left so that you could try some peas in it & some in another medium to to a side by side comparison as I am doing with a bag of horse droppings I’ve been given before I accept any more?
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A lot of sweetcorn is grown on the Island and we pass field after field of it on the way to work. They have shot up over the last few weeks but we both mentioned that we cannot see any cobs forming. Our local farm shop usually has some local cobs about now but we are only able to get imported, plastic wrapped ones at the moment.