Oh mah gosh. I wasn't expecting good news. That's awesome.

Sometimes plants that get off to a rough start make a great recovery, so it pays to be patient and wait and see how they do. Sometimes they don't recover, but you'll never know until you wait and watch and see what happens. Someone I know once started seeds using a purchased organic potting mix and all those plants grew for a couple of weeks and started showing the type of damage you see with broadleaf herbicide drift or residue. They stalled and never recovered and my friend never knew if the residue drifted from somewhere else (he hadn't used any sort of herbicide at his place) and hit the plants while they were sitting out in his yard in the sun or if there was something contaminating that organic potting mix. In his case, waiting for recover was futile. They didn't die, but they just sat there for weeks and weeks and didn't grow either.

Wow, Okiedawn, the same thing happened to me this year! I bought a bag of organic potting soil to start my seeds. They came up beautifully, but then started contorting and were stunted. I have planted them in the garden, but they are not growing - not dying either. I wonder how many other people have had the same problem?

Undoubtedly the organic potting soil contained herbicide residue of some sort, probably something from the picolinic acid (aka pyridine-2-carboxylic acid) group. Herbicides from this group tend to include one or more of these active ingredients: picloram, aminopyralid, aminocyclopyrachlor or clopyralid.

These herbicides generally are sprayed on grain crops to kill broadleaf weeds. Unfortunately the herbicide residue can survive the digestive tract of animals that eat the grains and the herbicides can survive composting. This problem is referred to as herbicide carryover and a common nickname for it is killer compost. It has been a persistent (no pun intended) problem since around 2000, when it popped up in both Pennsylvania and Washington State.

Herbicide carryover damages and kills many gardens every year. Herbicide carryover even has been found in commercially-sold bagged organic composted manure products. When the state agency in that case tried to work backwards to determine how the composted manure became contaminated, they learned that the horses who supplied the manure had been fed a famous-name bagged horse feed containing ingredients apparently grown with one of those persistent herbicides. As far as I know, that was the first case where commercially bagged animal feed was contaminated with the herbicide. It is much more common for hay to be contaminated since those herbicides are sprayed on hay and other grain fields.

So, am I surprised this happened to you? Nope, it happens, and it does not get a lot of media attention. If you are sure that your potting soil was herbicide-contaminated, you should contact the manufacturer and let them know. If there is a batch number or other identifying info on the bag, you might want to let them know.

Here's more on herbicide carryover from the U. S. Composting Council:

Persistent Herbicide

M Wilson, We have the contamination in our garden beds from old hay picked up at the fairgrounds here in Duncan. My son ground it up and used it on the beds for mulch last fall. No, beans, peas, potatoes. Okra is also stunted. Some plants didn't come up at all and others showed the distortion and cupping of leaves on first set of true leaves. Plants started indoors were fine until planted out... then the cupping of leaves and stalled out growth. Millie

Okiedawn, thanks for that explanation. That is what I was thinking might have happened, but wasn't sure. I did contact the manufacturer, but other than offering to reimburse the cost of the bag (and a couple of packets of seed), they did not seem interested. I am pretty sure the organic soil is the source of the problem, since I grew these plants indoors. I still have the bag. Maybe I will send them a letter with the batch number in case they would want to research it further.

That was an interesting site from the Composting Council. Especially eye-popping: "In fact, animal digestion tends to concentrate these chemicals because
the animal processes the food but passes most of the chemical as a waste." Yikes! Also, that the effects can last up to three years. I wonder if I should dig up the plants I put in my garden.

mil_533, what a tragedy! It amazes me that these herbicides persist for so long. I wonder if there is something you can do to save your beds and I wish you luck - I hope it will not affect next year's garden!

Has anyone read the news article - [Dow Chemical Urges White House to Kill Risk Study on Chlorpyrifos Pesticide Chemicals sprayed over fruit & vegetables.

2012 study by U.C. Berkeley 87% of umbilical - cord blood samples tested from newborn babies contain detectable levels of Chlorpyrifos.

M. Wilson, Yes, the part about animals' digestive tracts concentrating the herbicides is discouraging, is it not?

Whether to dig them up or not is up to you. There are ways to remediate your soil to make it usable again in 1 or 2 years, and they generally involve growing a crop like mustard that sucks up all the herbicide. You grow it for 30 days, chop it, drop it to decompose in place, plant more, repeat, repeat, repeat. One of our forum members here had pretty good luck with that.

When Great Britain encountered herbicide carryover with one of the chemicals I listed (shortly after it was released and went into use there), guess what they did? They banned that herbicide. I do not know if the ban became a permanent ban, but I was impressed at quickly they banned it while making up their mind about what to do long-term. That's something which neverwill happen here.

Dawn

So if a bagged organic soil/compost/mulch contains herbicide residue/carryover/etc, then it's not really organic, then. False advertising.

I bought an organic seed starting mix this year, I was not impressed. More mold/fungus. I still have a whole bag left.

We can only try and hope for the best. All of the offending hay has been raked up and carefully hauled off, but the herbicide had already leached into the soil. No way to remove it all when it only takes "parts per billion".

Our growing space is very limited, so it's been interesting finding places that are not contaminated to plant things. The beds were laid out as in-ground no-till 32" x 16' areas. The beds received compost, manure, alfalfa pellets, etc. This would have been the 4th year and they were really getting nice to work with... no soil compaction at all in the grow zone. The rest of the area has been under wood mulch. The soil is much better, but no where as nice as those beds. This year we have planted wherever we could tuck plants in and still move about without walking on the beds. The railing on my backyard ramp, off the deck, has become a tomato trellis. Zucchini rings a young plum tree and onions around a one year old cherry. Some things may not do well due to shade--- we may learn the limitations and be able to use that information in the future.

I'm having this same issue this year. 5 weeks and just cotlydons and little nubs of first leaves. Im an experienced gardener but never had this happen very frustrating. I usually don't put any fertilizer till I get two true leaves. But thinking I will try a very dilute liquid fertilizer to see if they react. Can't hurt them at this point. Guess I will be buying plants this year.

I would put them in different soil, or start over in different soil. Or both, to see if the seed starting medium was to blame.