or maybe something like, If you spray, you will pay!!
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OR in real big letters
YOU MIS-SPRAY… I SPAY !!!
Mike
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I am once again heartbroken for you, and cannot believe you only got $25.00 per tree for 5-year old established trees. How did they decide on that figure? Named pawpaws generally cost more than that as 2-year grafts.
Given the signs and a history of having faced this before I would expect significantly more than $25 per tree. I would also context the landowner and make sure he/she is warning potential leasing farmers that a buffer must be given or the farmer will face penalties for damages. The landowner certainly must be aware of why the mayor opted to not lease the land again.
Scott
https://www.tn.gov/health/article/pesticides Tenn. Dept. of Health (FAQs)
Herbicide Stewardship UT Institute of Agriculture > Herbicide Stewardship
This manual contains the 2017 University of Tennessee weed control recommendations for corn, grain sorghum, cotton, soybeans, burley and dark tobacco,.
INFORMATION PACKET COMMERCIAL APPLICATORS
Pesticide Certification, Recertification & Licensing
http://psep.utk.edu/secondlevel/info/EPP679.pdf.
http://www.utcrops.com/weeds/weed%20home.htm Weed Control Home Page
Agricultural Extension: University of Tennessee Extension
Background information on topics you’ve been discussing.
Self Help Center | Tennessee Administrative Office of the Courts Small Claims Court
https://www.avvo.com/legal-guides/ugc/how-to-file-a-general-sessions-small-claims-lawsuit-in-tennessee
www.tba.org/tba_files/TCA/2003/WylieB.pd owners sued the fertilizer company, alleging that the trees in their orchard were damaged by the negligent spraying of herbicides on nearby
last but not least…what other Tennessee residents experienced in trying to get assistance from the agriculture agencies
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WOW Gabriel!!! Thank you for one of the most helpful and informative posts I’ve ever received. That took a good bit of your time and trouble and I’m very grateful. Better still, it was quality links and information that was very helpful and which I’ll undoubtedly use again and again. Thank-you.
@Chills - Oh, you are right that $25 per tree was ridiculous, I described how we came to that number in my other thread. The short story is this : Because my job is political (not supposed to be, but is) I had to make difficult calculations about whether it was worth it to sue to the head of the local government who got the most votes when I work for that government and must interact with those voters and need their support. He and his bothers who are all partners basically wouldn’t just step up and do the right thing, so it came down to how hard I wanted to push it and how big a fight I wanted to have with them. After considering the whole situation and having one awful meeting with one of the brothers/partners, I finally just said I’d let them pay me the cost of a new tree and forget about the shipping, the 3-5 years (they weren’t all 5 years old) of fertilize, spray, pruning, mulching, etc. Make no mistake, it was the worst deal in the history of bad deals and it made me as sick to do it as it does for you to read it, but it just wasn’t worth risking my job and my support in this community (where many people are farmers and most voted for the Mayor) for a couple thousand dollars. The worst part of the whole thing is that even though I gave them thousands of dollars and let them get away with murder, they still basically acted like I was the bad guy who had extorted money from them. Even after lab tests on 97 trees showed high or lethal amounts of 2, 4-D and they were the only ones in 1/2 mile who had used it that year (the state contacted EVERY property owner in 1/2 mile) they still said it wasn’t their fault but they’d just pay it. UGH! Oh well…that was 2 years ago.
The good news is my trees from this recent (apparent) roundup spray are already coming back! Its only been about a week and yet several are sending out tiny new growth. My pawpaws that looked so awful on every leaf have already sent out new tips that look great.
One major lesson to me is that 2, 4-D seems 10000 times more damaging to fruit trees than a full blown herbicide. The roundup (if that is what it is-I can only observe that it killed grasses and everything else) seems to either kill or temporarily damage trees. 2, 4-D seems more systemic…it gets in the trees and causes distorted growth, deformed fruit, and very, very long term damage. ANd some trees don’t die for many months. It is far more hideous to fruit trees in my limited experience.
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Both 2,4-D and Roundup are systemic. Roundup works best on grasses. 2,4-D is a broadleaf herbicide with hormonal type effects. Trees are broadleaves. There are so many other herbicides that’s it’s hard to say what he sprayed. But neither of these kills rapidly. So if the weeds turned brown a day or less after spaying it was something more like paraquat. I don’t think it’s systemic. It just torches the green vegetation in a matter of hrs.
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Wow! That sucks!!!
I may have missed it in the reply’s, but did you talk with him last yr? Does he know the trouble he caused you last yr?
Does he do his own spraying? Does he hire a local CO-OP to spray for him (they likely have insurance and would not want to loose money with their business)?
I would be pipping mad and would probably be better off letting a lawyer handle it. I certainly would make it hurt financially. You were probably going to sell those fruits in a couple of yrs anyway…
I wonder how he would feel if his yard, trees, and wife’s flower bed got chemically burned up a couple of yrs in a row!
If you do a search for “my very strange pears” you can read the whole saga of what happened last time (it was actually 2 years ago). I ended up calling in the state and they did a huge investigation and ended up fining him $1,000 and making his sprayer (his nephew) take a 20 hr class in proper spray techniques. For reasons I’ve explained above, I ended up settling on the price of new trees at lowes ($25). They did do their own spraying (him and 2 brothers and their boys all work together on their commercial farming business). But here is the thing, and you may not have seen this above…it turns out that the person or persons who sprayed me this time was NOT the same people. The former landowner died and her heirs leased it to someone else to farm.
Your last question, though, is one I’ve forgotten to tell about the people who sprayed me the first time. It turns out that I’ve had all kinds of people tell me that he DOES kill his own trees and plants with spray. I just found out this week that he killed several thousand dollars of his own tobacco crops last year with spray!!! That is unreal. But again, its a different group this year.
Thanks for the clarification (I’m too busy to do much searching and reading right now and I do appreciate you filling in the gaps).
Sounds like the previous guy was incompetent in many ways. So now you have a new guy making the same mistakes. I would report him same as you did the guy last yr… and then have a talk with the heirs to let them know that eventually no-one is going to want to lease their land in they continue to have to pay damages for their mistakes. Maybe she will start telling lease holders to be careful around the neighbor’s trees!
Kevin, seeing the dicamba note above, you may want to have the state check for that when they come out. Dicamba is labeled for some soybeans and cotton this year.
Hi,
Glad the links will prove useful. Most of my experience is second-hand from a
good friend that had a small orchard (NW Ca) but since I love what comes from
fruit trees, learning about them increased my appreciation.
But after leaving the rural area (where I had a shoe repair shop) I worked in
an office which required a lot of research and an equal amount of curiosity.
Any day I can go roaming across the internet in search of facts or information
is a day well spent for me.
When someone says “There ought to be a law” I say to myself, ‘then let’s see
if there is a law on this subject and what it really says’. I am particularly sensitive
to chemical issues.
When in the rural area the USFS used to have logged areas sprayed to knock
down broadleaf plants that would keep the pines/firs from growing quickly. Well,
in spite of what was claimed (it was Parquat–Agent Orange) it sickened the goats
people raised and who knows what it did to the native animal population; dogs
that were used for hunting in the area often developed cancerous tumors on
their feet. No more gathering wild elderberry to make wine or going mushroom
hunting.
Now, I’m happy to say (and I hope a similar enlightenment will spread to other
areas of government and weed control) a Native American tribe is working with
various government agencies to return to their policy of regular safe burns. None
too soon, there have been horrendous forest fires which were due to too much
underbrush.
I worked in international shipping and regulations required authorized training
in transportation of hazardous materials. A real eye-opener!
Speaking of which, in self-defense, familiarize yourself with the various
placards that have to be displayed on vehicles carrying a certain amount, or
using them.
Here’s a link to a site which has the same information I used to use. It’s a
reference, not something you’d casually browse through but it may open mental
doors to help you figure out more about the good, the bad and the damned ugly.
(It’s a private site with Code of Federal Regulars (CFR) material).
And having grown up and later lived in rural/small county environments, I know
too well how much power some people have and how people there kowtow to
anyone with any ‘authority’.
And very glad to hear the trees are recovering; best of luck in the future.
Just as an FYI, paraquat and Agent Orange are two entirely different herbicides. Agent Orange is a broad leaf herbicide with the active ingredients 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T. The 2,4,5-T component was the problem because it was contaminated with Dioxin. 2,4,5-T was banned in the U.S. in the late 70s, as I recall.
Paraquat is a non selective burndown still used today. I use it in my orchard. Paraquat got a bad rep for a couple reasons.
At one time, fields of cannabis were sprayed with paraquat to curb supply of marijuana. Cannabis farmers harvested the poisoned fields and sold the product anyway, resulting in users being poisoned.
Paraquat is very toxic to mammals. Accidental ingestion of the product has resulted in deaths, even in children. The EPA has since made it a Restricted Use Pesticide and required manufacturers to include a stenching agent as well as an emetic (vomiting agent) to prevent accidental ingestion/absorption. Ingestion is the main risk. From an applicator’s standpoint, it’s not easily absorbed in skin, unless you have a cut. Inhalation isn’t generally an issue because it doesn’t readily volatilize due to low vapor pressure, although a respirator is part of the PPE.
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We have something similar. I registered online last year (as I have bee hives on the N side of my orchard) and the next day I got a call and an email from a spray outfit that contracts in the area clarifying the GPS coordinates I gave. We got it sorted out and they added it to their database and notified their pilots (they said). I haven’t had any issues in the 3 years since starting my orchard and I sure hope I don’t (there are crop fields S of my orchard - maybe a 50’ distance buffer including the highway - but strong winds and a prevailing S-SW gives me concern). This is certainly another layer of protection (physical and legal) so if your state has something similar, utilize it. Many states have laws discouraging herbicide drift, but they often aren’t very robust. I live in a state with more and more vineyards and with grapes being high value crop and particularly sensitive to herbicides so I expect these laws to become more robust over time.
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I’m curious about this. Maybe as a pre harvest burndown, but nothing else. Dicamba is death to broadleaves.
Dicamba is labeled for certain gmo soybeans and cotton.
I somehow missed this topic until now. I’ve nothing useful to add but I’m very sorry you’ve gone through this a second time.
It does make me appreciate my neighborhood which has lots of undeveloped land but the only farmer in the vicinity is me. I don’t use herbicide to produce trees in my nursery but spend a fortune on mulching them and weed whacking to the nub where my trees are growing about 4 times during the season.
It’s a tiny 3 acre farm, so this is a viable tactic.
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Holy smokes, that’s awesome! I know some here won’t think so, but it is. I do get the point about weeds becoming resistant, our kochia here in NE is already resistant to dicamba. I also get the point about greater potential for drift, but using a formula like clarity can reduce the volatility considerably.
That reminds me of dicamba damage. If sprayed in the original form (banvel) it can essentially evaporate and move a mile or so later in the day or night.
So…in case you haven’t heard, a farmer in Arkansas had almost 1/2 of his crop damaged or destroyed by spray drift (Dicamba in this case, which is notoriously bad for that just as @Jagchaser noted above)… Long story short, he ended up in an argument with the man who sprayed him and during the argument he was murdered!!!
Having been through this myself, I can absolutely understand how people could get so angry over drift that someone ends up shot and killed. I’ve seen this story in many media outlets, including NPR which is where I first heard the story. In fact, NPR did a wonderful segment on Spray Drift (the drift, not the murder, was the focus of the segment). I tried to find a link to the segment on the NPR website but didn’t find it. I did, however, find a similar one done last year. Obviously it doesn’t mention the murder since it hadn’t happened, but lots of similar information is in this article. The segment I enjoyed so much had a lot to do with how pig weed (hog weed, etc) has developed resistance to round-up and how many people have started using dicamba OFF LABEL to deal with it. I think its an interesting article, though in typical NPR fashion it’s pretty biased in ways you’d expect NPR to be (anti Monsanto, anti spray in general (to a degree), left leaning, etc. But you all are mature enough to decide for yourselves about the biases and so on, but there is some interesting info here no matter which side of the various issues you are on.
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While it’s terrible that someone died, maybe the attention will encourage sprayers to be more careful.
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