How to check compost/compost materials for persistent herbicides?

Hi,

first of all, i agree that the supreme maxime is to not use imports at all, but sometimes you have to do it in order to get started fast.
In my case i want to do a market garden with no-dig beds, and i want to build the beds with a big initial layer of compost.

The obvious choice - certified organic compost - is not available in my country (croatia),
closest source to import from is austria, which is quite a distance.

Now when i look around my place, the are free ranging cows/sheep/goats and i know for sure that the area surrounding me is not sprayed with anything.
So a long term safe source of compost is to gather the cow droppings on the meadows and mix them with hay from the same meadows and let it compost.
Local and safe, cannot get any better than this.

Said meadows "belong" to a vast amount of individuals, but there are only a few farmes who actually use them as pasture/ mow them for hay,
and they do so withouth the consent of the owners (because the owners don't care, or don't even know they own something).
So the "rights" to the hay around me are a bit tricky, and approaching the "real" owners to get "legitimate and exclusive" rights,
might enrage my neighbours who have just been using the land for decades. I really need to stay on good terms with them.

Those animal owners have vast amounts of dung they collect over the winter when the animals are confined, but
i do not know where the winter feed for those animals comes from. I assume they use up the hay that they make and then buy more.
As Paul pointed out in his podcast, the persisent herbicides pass the animals unaltered but concentrated.
Now when i go off to buy hay, how can i get sure that it is not contimanted?
If i ask the seller to show me where it comes from, for which plants should i look that indicate its safe?

Some of those animal owners even already made compost, which would be the easiest way for me to get started,
but it seems safer to collect summer droppings and mix it with bought hay,
because those people probalby don't give a s**t where the feed for their animals comes from.

Now here comes another tempting shortcut:
There are also some individuals troughout the country selling their compost, which is vemicompost mostly.

But how can i tell wheter this compost is safe for use? Vermicompost is somehow associated with kitchen scraps for me,
and in a podcast from paul i have heard how a burger bun can basically make your compost poisonous to plants if the bun is made from sprayed grains.

Taking a small quantity and trying to grow something may only verify the suitability of the current batch.
So i would either have to buy a large batch, and store it with a tarp below to prevent leaching until
a growing test confirmes it is suitable, or hope that a newer batch has the same quality.

Any Ideas?

The only weedkillers that are going to kill your plants after being composted are those sprayed on grasses to kill broad leaved weeds, so they can come in on straw, hay, any grain or grain based product. and of course manure from any animal that has eaten any of the above.
The easiest way to check is to germinate some pea/bean seeds in the compost or even in the manure before you compost it. You will know within a week if the material is contaminated.

If you have access to the fields/s where the hay is grown you are looking for any weed that is not a grass, if there are plenty of docks, thistles etc then the field has not been sprayed with a selective weedkiller. if it has black medic and vetches then you can be even more sure as they are very susceptible.

What about flowers? The hay i have seen so far all had flowers in it, are those considered broad leaves?

Also a fellow permie in the region advised me to buy hay, not straw, as hay is never sprayed.
But this is a false information i think, because hay will grow i a field that had been sprayed and will take up the herbicides.
He probably thinks hay is safe, because no one would specifically spray a hay field.

A hay field is exactly what they are spraying. They are trying to remove all broadleaf weeds by doing so. Leaving nothing but the hay\grasses that animals eat

Your friend is probably thinking about when farmer spray glyphosate before planting a gmo crop. Nobody would intentionally spray that on hay. However the other chem people spray in hayfields can definitely still destroy a garden for multiple years.

Skandi Rogers wrote:The easiest way to check is to germinate some pea/bean seeds in the compost or even in the manure before you compost it. You will know within a week if the material is contaminated.

If you have access to the fields/s where the hay is grown you are looking for any weed that is not a grass,

I agree. While not as definitive as a lab analysis, these are excellent test methods.

Also check for nearby utility corridors and see if there are broadleaf plants/trees growing on it. Even if the landowner does not use persistent herbicides, a utility company may.

Yes flowers will be broad-leaved weeds, anything that isn't grass will be killed by the herbicides. Hay is less likely to be sprayed as it's lower value than grain but if they are baling it and selling it to horsey folk it is likely to be sprayed as weed free hay commands a premium price. The poorer and more rural you are the less likely you are to encounter spray issues.
Also remember that fodder maize is sprayed with the same chemicals, they do the field over the road from us and the bit of overspray that happens (less than 2 foot) into the road verge really takes out the roses there which isn't a terrible thing as rosa rugosa is a seriously invasive pest here.

This link has a means of how to test->


http://northword.ca/words/environment/mean-manure-killer-compost-grazon-after-effects-in-the-bulkley-valley