I second Jagchaser’s observations. Glyphosate will not leave brown spots. It’s totally systemic.
I don’t doubt it’s some broad leaf herbicide, definitely looks like it from the photos, but I’m certain it’s not glyphosate (Roundup) a non selective systemic.
There are so many broad leaf herbicides, I dare not take a guess. I can say for sure it’s not glyphosate, but some broad leaf herbicide, or a tank mix.
So sad Kevin.
My heart sank when I read the opening of this thread. Can’t imagine having this happen once let alone twice. It was your first thread that prompted me to stop using 24d…
You’ve received some sound advice and hopefully you can get a positive resolution. best of luck.
Ditto for me too. My orchard is at my brother in law’s hobby farm. He rents the fields out and raises pigs. Almost every year I get the same type of damage on my fruits and grapes. One year it was so bad it killed the two grapevines nearest the field while those farthest away on the trellis were fine.
This year my pears are the worst hit (they seem the most susceptible every year).
My Honeycrisp nearest the field is really bad while another Honeycrisp one row away (farther from the field) has no damage.
In my case believe some pre-emergent was applied to the field. I sure share your pain as I am in the same sinking boat.
At first I thought frost damage but hard to believe the trees closest to the farm field (15 feet away) would be worse from frost than the next row of fruit trees I have planted.
Frost did wipe out my Stanley plums and Summercrisp pear crop recently. Reduced the Bartlett crop by about 40%. With frost damage and herbicide damage I am really not seeing a great fruit year for me.
Weeds in the yet unplanted field are turning purple and are a bit twisted hence my thoughts on the herbicide damage as it has happened before.
Sooooooooo frustrating!!! I had this happen on a smaller scale. Just a small back yard veggie garden…my neighbor sprayed roundup along our chain-link fence line to keep from having to trim down the grass and pretty much wiped out half my veggie garden! It took me a couple of weeks to realize what had happened…Then I was so far behind that it was impossible to recover!
That could be paraquat damage and if it is your trees should recover. You said the field was just starting to turn brown which gives me pause because paraquat works extremely fast, like in a matter of hours plants will be totally dead.
So very sorry for you that this has happened. Heartbreaking! Why bother to grow your own fruit if someone is going to poison it for you?
I also second others concerns that this is not good for your health to be breathing this stuff in. Are you having any respiratory symptoms? If so, please report and maybe ask for medical damages, too!
Well sadly, W.E.I.R.D. (Western. Educated. Industrialized. Rich. Democratic) culture has long been one of profiteering mad scientists…whose mentality then trickles down to the Average Joe as the mainstream norm.
When these settlers first arrived in the Americas, they clearcut and logged nearly all the ancient, old-growth forests on the continent.
I’m glad there are a tiny few resisters here…but so sad that we are so miniscule in number…
SIGGGHHHHH… 
Okay, I read this thread, and skimmed through the 2015 thread on similar spray damage from the same farmer, who turns out to also be cityman’s partial boss. You have to commit to being calm and rational, and go and talk to the guy. I’m sure he’ll be appalled that the same thing happened as last time. If the only thing that comes out of that is that he is all over whoever sprays his fields to never do it when the breeze is in your direction, that will be a big win for you. What to do about this year’s damage is a more tender issue. You could involve the state again, but they will likely be much harder on the farmer this time since the same crap happened just 2 year’s ago. Maybe that’s a good thing, or maybe it’s too aggressive given your working relationship? At the very least, you need to talk to the guy, show him the damage, maybe come to a settlement out-of-court. I suggest you also need to involve the state enough so you have evidence to prove your case, without maybe seeing him hit hard for being a repeat violator, unless you feel he deserves to be hit hard as a repeat violator.
There you go! I would bury him in problems. Ultimately one has to be responsible for their own actions. We live in a world where people think they are not, time for a reality check. If I had kids I would be suing for everything he has. Putting the health of my family at risk. Plus the guy acted like he didn’t do it last time. Approaching him was a total failure, this really could hurt your kids, this should be a criminal act. I would try and convince the authorities it was so negligent it’s criminal.
That is true, but nature usually burned it down., We stopped that with fire breaks in the forest. In recent decades in places like California you used to be able to burn dead wood, and they even stopped that, so the fires started getting bigger again. We do have a lot less old growth, but we also have more trees now, so give it time.
To me this is such a minor problem as the fix is so easy. Now loggers are replacing what they take. I feel nothing wrong with utilizing this resource, it just needs to be managed properly. These days it is.
I have a lot of friends who are diabetic and the GMO insulin they use has saved their lives. before GMO’s many reacted to the insulin as it was not human. We can now synthesize it, but nothing beats human insulin. GMO technology is one of our greatest accomplishments in medicine. Makes me proud to be human. Condemning GMO’s is like condemning hammers, because they can be used to smash heads in. It’s not the hammer, it’s the person wielding it that is the problem.
I found out the farmer my brother in law rents his fields to has not yet planted nor sprayed any pre-emergent. However, he did hire a gentleman from his church who
came and sprayed his large farm yard with 2-4-D for dandelion control. I guess this explains the few weeks I saw at the edge of the nearby field that were twisting and
purple colored.
Not sure how windy it was when the grass got sprayed or if just from being volatile product? It sure did a good job damaging my fruit trees! The worst hit is my Honeycrisp apple which just started bearing a few fruits the past two years. I hope it pulls thru but the leaves are really twisting up. I guess this year I will have to do my fruit picking at the supermarket. Makes me wonder if worth continuing the orchard. I guess time will tell how bad things turn out.
How terrible it all is.
There’s only one way to do it right… calmly and rationally from both parties… and if an agreement cannot be made you either move on with life (again) or consult with a lawyer.
You need to have someone determine the casual agent, etc. as discussed.
Get some sleep and let the pieces fall together one step at a time.
Best regards,
Dax
FWIW, I recently read an article that states old-growth forests were so much more important to the environment. They were a veritable carbon dioxide sink–using and keeping like 2,3,4+ times more CO2 than new growth forests on the same amount of land. Plus, that isn’t taking into account the diversity in old growth forests that simply can’t be matched in new growth forests. Sure, logging then replanting is better than clearcutting, but every effort should be made to maintain old growth forests and to see if we can protect the land to allow new growth forests to age.
As you may have noticed, I had to take a few days off from here and my orchard and not think about fruit because I was so disgusted and questioning if I should forget the whole thing and so on. Let me first say how incredibly grateful I am for all the comments (65 posts since I was last here…i read every 1!). Your concern, sympathy, and support are appreciated more than you know, as was all the great advice. I’d never be able to respond to all 65 so just accept my thanks to you all. Now for an update:
First, I was mistaken when I said the other spray incident was last year. It was 2 years ago. Since then the lady that owned the property died and someone else owns it. They leased it to a DIFFERENT farmer than the one who got me before. This is great news to me for a couple reasons. One, I’m not nearly as mad at this guy since he didn’t know about other time. If same people hit me twice it would be much worse imho. Second, the one that hit me last time was (sort of) my boss (he is Mayor and I am City Manager). That made it extremely awkward to go after him hard-core. New buy doesn’t work with me, so he will make it right or I’ll reign hell on him including legal action, state and federal government penalties/punishment, etc. I haven’t yet been able to reach the new guy, so I’ll let you know when I do.
As for the trees, it looks like they killed 1 Indian Blood Free Peach and one Dave WIlson Bevay Green Gauge for sure and likely a Stanley Plum and maybe 1-2 paw paws. As bad as that is, it isn’t nearly as bad as last time when I lost 19 trees and more were damaged and I only got $25 per tree for 5 year old fruit trees.
Anyway, like I said, I’m really going to try not to dwell on this or keep crying about it. I’ll let you know how it works out. Thanks.
BTW- For those who may have forgotten or didn’t know, after this happened to me last time I had a bunch of signs made that I put up along my property line. I have to say I find it especially aggravating that whoever sprayed that field HAD to see this sign (it is exactly 10 feet from where they sprayed.
That is just ridiculous to see that sign and still be so careless. The fig on the right of the sign is not bare from winter damage…it lost all those leaves from spray. The little stick to the left of the sign is the Green Gage that also lost all its leaves and looks sure to die. The stanley plum is the 2nd tree to the right behind the sign. You can sort of tell that it has lost half its leaves…but it might survive. The other trees shown here look pretty good. The other damage area was further down.
Below is the Indian Free. Yes, it was fully leafed out and looked good. Unfortunately the leaves all blew away before I took the photo when we had a super windy day).
Below is one of two paw paws that were hit hard but so far held onto leaves- though they look like crud. FYI, the paw paws were behind several other trees that didn’t get harmed, so apparently paw paws are very sensitive to roundup (or whatever full herbicide they used)
So glad to hear that it wasn’t as bad as last time. Better remind him about the rules before he gets you bad next time.
That’s it! Maybe a spinning pile driver too.
That sign needs to be 40x bigger, maybe just one GIANT BILLBOARD.
Your right, it wouldn’t hurt…but I promise its extremely visible and they had to see it. They just didn’t care.
In (very) slightly excusing the sprayers, the location that these trees that got hit hardest were is only about 5 feet from the property line and where the neighbor sprays. So it really doesn’t have to drift far at all. That being said, the state told me when it happened before that the landowner is in violation of the law if his spray gets 1 inch onto my property, and he needs to either not spray, create a self-imposed buffer zone for safety, or otherwise figure out hot to keep his spray on his property. But I’m a little more understanding about a 5 foot drift than a 500 foot drift which is what happened with the 2, 4-D spray last time!.
I would re-word the sign to say NO SPRAY
