Supposedly selective weed killers for lawns and grass

This is mainly for the European section , but it does cover some of what has been discussed in nthe USA forums as well .


Weed killer in lawn clippings and local authority made compost .

According to The Times 23 feb 2013 ( A premier UK newspaper )
This is my understanding of an article about it .

A weed killer still recommended by the Royal horticultural society and banned in several states in the USA has been linked to enormous damage to garden veg and plants thought to be passed on through contaminated compost & animal manures from animals that graze treated ground .
The very long lasting and surprisingly powerful chemical used for weed killing operations called Clopyralid is the culprit , the plant killing effect can last several years even after several composting over several years
So if you selective weed kill on your lawns or grass or see it on the label of any chemicals you use don’t put the cuttings/dead plants on the compost.

For the same reason most of the municipal composted veg waste is also not to be trusted unless you prove several samples from each bag you get before you use it in your beds and even then it is a sik situation.
You might well get a dose of it from someone else’s composted grass cuttings courtesy of the local corporations bulk composting unit operations.

You might also get a dose of if from other commercially produced composting set up's.
It is said that it kills off or damages peas, tomatoes, potatoes, spinach and lettuce to name but a few of the affected plants.

Apparently it needs only to be present in microscopic amounts for it to still be active for several years clopyralid is part of the aminopyralid group of compound which was banned in the Uk around 2008

Copyralid is supposed to have been developed by DOW chemicals and can be active with as little as ten parts per billion of compost , the analogy used for its efficacy is one drop of water in an Olympic sized swimming pool.

Evidently a DOW employee became so concerned about the compound that he paid for private tests on bags of sugar, one which was labelled organic, most of the samples including the organic one tested positive for clopyralid.

At present in the UK there are two products marketed for amateur gardeners that are known to contain it.

One is called “Verdone Extra “, the other is called “Lawn Clear two “. If you use these products be very careful and read the warnings, do not put any lawn cuttings in your compost or throw them over the gardens as a mulch, the same applies to any treated dead looking weeds.

Our health and safety people here in the UK say anyone using pesticides are supposed to read the labels, so they say it is unlikely for a change in the law to be made to ban it .

Verdone Extra is made by Scotts Miracle-Gro

Lawn clear 2 is made by Vitax

This is interesting.
You said the verdone extra is made by scotts miracle grow.

I really wonder why people like to use synthetic chemicals on there plants?

Thank you for posting this information for us to read.

If you want a lot of information on the three persistent herbicides that are showing up in compost, google Mother Earth News and Killer Compost. They have had a number of articles on this. There is at least one area of the country that one of the herbicides was in Purina horse feed (it must of been sprayed on the feed plants that went into manufacturing of the product) that tainted the horse manure and created killer compost when the horse manure was used as one of the ingredients in the compost.