Overcoming Problems in the Garden

Jesse Fulbright, MSU Liberty County Extension

A lot of gardens are in now, and with a little luck, some good weather and a lot of hard work, people will be rewarded by the fruits of their labors at the end of the season.  With many of those garden plants being broad-leaf vegetables and with many of our other garden plants actively growing and blooming there are occasional problems that pop up. 

Sometimes, when we add amendments, like compost to our soils and gardens, we might see some oddball things start to happen to our plants.  Other times, we might be a little overzealous with our desire to keep broadleaf weeds out of our yards and gardens and spray herbicides far and wide.  At other times, our neighbors or various entities might get a little careless with their use of pesticides, and combined with some wind, you end up the recipient of their pesticide use.  All three of these scenarios result in garden and yard plants exhibiting signs of distress and various growth habits, like twisting, cupping and curling, that otherwise aren’t part of their normal growth patterns. 

Photo courtesy of University of Maryland Extension

With any of these scenarios, there are MSU Extension publications that detail how to overcome these preventable occurrences.  One way to stop herbicide injury from occurring in your garden is to know not only where your compost or garden amendments came from, but what was sprayed on them previous to their coming into your garden.  This is applicable when talking about adding composted manures from someone’s farm.  If the farm sprayed an herbicide on plants before animals ingested plants, it would work its way through the digestive system into the manure.  If enough time hasn’t passed to allow for herbicides to break down in that manure, it will find its way into your garden through the compost.

Photo courtesy of Clemson University

If you or your neighbor have sprayed too heavily, or too close to susceptible plants and your plants are looking poorly, the first step is to be more careful in the future.  If you are unsure what has been sprayed, or how much or when, then I would suggest a couple strategies.  First, if you suspect an herbicide residual exists in your garden, you can try a soil bioassay test.  This sounds daunting but it involves digging some of the soil that is suspected of having herbicide residue, planting it in some small pots, planting some seeds in the pots, and observing.  If you want to see a specific difference, have one of the small pots be a control with soil that you know isn’t suspected of having herbicide residue.  If you don’t see a difference in the plants between the control and other pots, then your plants and soil are ok.  Alternatively, if your plants come up a certain amount and then have a distorted appearance or die, you know that your soil is impacted and you’ll either have to wait a year to plant in that spot or bring in fresh soil.  To help expedite herbicide breakdown, try keeping the soil moist, growing a grass-type crop there, turn the soil to increase aeration and provide non-contaminated organic matter to support soil organisms. 

I know that there is much more to cover on this topic and so I would encourage you to stop by your local county Extension office for the free publications on this topic.