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Organic Gardening

Neighbor poisoned the soil

16 years ago

I am worried, (maybe)

I have a nice little strip of land that is to the side of my driveway.

It's only about 10' wide, & 45' long. 5' is mine, 5' is the neighbor's.

It was covered in blackberry bush, but I always wanted to have a vegetable garden there.

My neighbor sprayed the hell out of it about 8 months ago, with Lily Miller Brush, Blackberry , & Vine killer.

Well the blackberry is dead, and gone.

But now, I feel like the land is tainted.

How long before I can safely grow edibles in this soil?

The active ingredient is "Triclopyr (3.5.6-trichloro-2-pyridinyloxyacetic acid) Triethylamine salt* ,75% Inert ingredients 99.25%

*equivalent to .53% acid.

Good God, it evens kills Kudzu!!! (or so the label says)

I just copied this from the label. I have no idea what it means. It was purchased at Yardbirds in California.

I'm bummed because I never spray anything, and have never had too many problems with any of my plants.

Any help or advise would be great.

Thanks

Kate

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Comments (6)

gardengal48 (PNW Z8/9)
16 years ago
It sounds worse than it is :-) The active ingredients are herbicides that breakdown in the soil rather rapidly (30-90 days). Since it is pretty late in the season now to be planting edibles anyway, if you were to work on improving the soil by adding organic matter - specificially compost - and plant some sort of cover crop, you should have decent, biologically active soil ready to go for next spring's plantings. Won't work as "certified organic", but you will be able to produce perfectly edible veggies.
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Heathen1
16 years ago
I sorta don't blame the guy... at my last house, my neighbor had abandoned her yard and I was getting blackberry vines coming up through the soil. I like blackberries, but not willy nilly where ever! And NOTHING kills them! I didn't even know that there was stuff like that.
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melonhedd
16 years ago
sounds like you need a good fence - in my experience neighbors who use herbicides get hooked on quick results and keep on spraying....
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poodlepup
Original Author
16 years ago
Thanks for the feedback, Gardengal.
-And yes, Melonhedd I am in the process of building atall fence. (Fences won't help when chemicals are sprayed on the ground) -They are perfectly nice neighbors, they are just not as persnickity as I am about chemicals.

I have found that if I just leave the garden to take care of it's own problems, it generally works them out.

I have had a beautiful garden for almost 20 years, without spraying ANYTHING! If a plant does poorly and develops problems, I get rid of it. I put in plants that are happy in garden without my assistance. It works out well.

I would have pulled the blackberries out manually, but the neighbor just didn't want the hassle
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lucypwd
16 years ago
In an area that small you can easily control blackberries by digging them out. You could nicely suggest to your neighbor, that in the future you would rather dig out the problem weeds including blackberries.
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kubotabx2200
16 years ago
poodlepup I am not sure I understand you. If you volunteered to manually pull up all your neighbor's blackberries, what is the hassle for your neighbor? If you are the one doing the digging, I mean? That involves no work for our neighbor.
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