Trent's 2014 Grow Log - COLD COLD COLD

TrentL · May 28, 2014

OK today's lesson on 2,4-D herbicide. In broadleaf plants it causes "uncontrolled and unsustainable growth".

My overwinters literally had HUNDREDS of flowers starting from all the massive growth that was appearing. The only thing I could do to keep them from outgrowing their root mass and dying, was to prune the living hell out of them (again). I'll have to keep doing this until the toxin runs it's course and they go back to normal growth.

On the NEW peppers that were afflicted. The older leaves had picked up the toxin, all that I could safely remove and still allow for photosynthesis were pruned.

As you can see, the uncontrolled growth from 2,4-D herbicide was already working it's evil magic on them...

Keep in mind that was UNDER the shade leaves so it wasn't light-initiated node development. This is wholly unnatural.

Another example, not so badly afflicted;

I know this isn't a nute issue from the soil, or a virus, because it not only affected tomato plants and pepper plants in the dirt, but also my overwinters in pots, and my not-planted spares, which have been physically isolated from the garden. (Different potting soils, etc)

It even hit the peppers in the dirt in the rock garden 30 yards away from the garden.

Uncontrolled growth - you can see how the plant is wilting from trying to sustain all of this, even though it was watered heavily yesterday;

(this is a 2012 Scotch bonnet overwintered twice)
The good news (if there is any) is that *IF* the pepper plants survive they'll branch like crazy and produce like mad mo-fo's.

So .. IF they survive, I should have a hell of a bumper crop this year.

Bonus info:

2,4-D was an active ingredient in Agent Orange.

Doesn't that just give you all the "warm and fuzzies"???

Can't stand all this chemical shit we humans pump in to the dirt. You KNOW this shit has to get in to our drinking water, and the lake out behind my house.

cypresshill1973 · May 28, 2014

Years ago I happened something similar, but was I who apply herbicide without caring wind direction.
I fond some plants only. There was no way to recover completely, they always had shortcomings. Herbicide damage plant roots and never develop normally. Always yellowed and withered leaves.
I wish you luck and I the plants recover.

lucilanga · May 28, 2014

Devv said:
I use a Roundup knock off. It has the same chemical formula. I use it to keep the Bermuda grass out of the garden and spray a 2' perimeter. I really don't spray, it's a little more than a dribble. Absolutely no mist in my settings and use the wind correctly.

Roundup is glyphosate, while 2,4D is 2,4dychlorophenoxyacetic acid, really bad ass, I wasn't aware that is still used.
Most probably neighbour's weed developed roundup resistance

TrentL · May 28, 2014

lucilanga said:
Roundup is glyphosate, while 2,4D is 2,4dychlorophenoxyacetic acid, really bad ass, I wasn't aware that is still used.
Most probably neighbour's weed developed roundup resistance

Was a 7 year old article on THP here that led me to the diagnosis, along with additional research to confirm. The vein pattern is striking and the 'uncontrolled growth" is 10000% verified.

(This is actually the same problem that caused me to FIND THP last year when I started looking up what the hell was wrong with my plants - lurked for a year before joining)

Also probably explains why 6 of my weaker overwinters died a couple weeks after bringing them outside.

The damage happened a week or two ago. We have had two years of drought here which did a number on everyones yards; this spring, there were more yellow dandelions out here than grass in everyone's yards.

The problem is I live downwind (prevalent winds blow east) from about 20 houses in a newer subdivision. And a couple of those people insist on having immaculate yards, even though they live on a dead-end road in the middle of f-n nowhere, with zero traffic or "shits to give" by passers-by.

it's infuriating.

I got hit with the same thing last year after farmers crop-dusted - but not QUITE as bad. A week after the yellow plane quit flying over my house I noticed just a few twisted leaves, then LOTS of branching out and heavy growth on everything. Last year it actually did my plants a FAVOR by accelerating growth.

This year though, they were hit far worse.

Devv · May 28, 2014

lucilanga said:
Roundup is glyphosate, while 2,4D is 2,4dychlorophenoxyacetic acid, really bad ass, I wasn't aware that is still used.
Most probably neighbour's weed developed roundup resistance

If I'm not mistaken 2,4D requires a license around here. Yes nasty stuff for range clearing, not in yards. The Roundup, although a herbicide if used properly just goes away with UV. Even so I use it very sparingly. And speaking of herbicides; I dug a tank a few years ago and when I hit clay I hauled some into the garden. Planted Tom's for a fall crop, which we can do in south Texas. Every plant was stunted, yellow and not a single Tomato. I should have used my brain. The field north of me was farmed back in the day, they grew peanuts and watermelons. Back when they used real chems, and that hole I dug was in the low spot, so I'm sure it collected the runoff. Also as a side note, old farmers are far and few around here. Dying in their mid 50's and early 60's. They were young farmers when the "real stuff" that "worked" was used.

Sorry about the plants Trent. Perhaps super watering them may help, if they can stand it.

TrentL · May 28, 2014

Regarding licensing for 2,4-D... nope.

You can get 2,4-D at Home Depot.

http://www.homedepot.com/p/Ortho-32-oz-Concentrate-Weed-B-Gon-MAX-Plus-Crabgrass-Control-9906010/203686902

MSDS sheet here lists 2,4-D as an active ingredient (6.42% by weight)

http://www.homedepot.com/catalog/pdfImages/a7/a75093ca-1e66-4c04-a209-977c50f85bfe.pdf

HillBilly Jeff · May 28, 2014

I believe they are changing the MSDS sheets...even has a new acronym to go with it....not sure when that takes effect.

TrentL · May 28, 2014

Yeah they're switching to an international standards thing. All the hazmat logos / shipping labels are changing too. Used to ship ammunition ORM-D .. now it's something else. can't recall off the top of my head.

Jeff H · May 28, 2014

What? No more ORM-D???

How will I ever know that my AIM Surplus package arrived without the sticker. :confused:

Sorry to hear about your 2.4-D issues. Hope they all pull through okay.

TrentL · May 28, 2014

Devv said:
Sorry about the plants Trent. Perhaps super watering them may help, if they can stand it.

I did that the last few days once the wilting started bad - soil was still moist, but they were wilting anyway, so I suspected something else. Root mass looked OK on the ones that were doing it - did a little exploring on that to see if there was something amiss. Roots are fine.

When I saw the gnarly leaves today I was able to confirm what it was.

The tomatoes were the early warning indicators. They spotted up last week inexplicably - wasn't blight, or fungus, or anything. When I dug up pictures of 2,4-D damage tonight I saw the EXACT same pattern my tomatoes showed. At least I know what to look for next year; although it won't do me much good since the damage is already done by then.

It seems that it takes about a week for peppers to start showing any issues, 2 weeks maybe before it's really clear.

That 2,4-D works odd dark voodoo on those pepper plants. It causes them to EXPLODE with new growth, to the point they can't sustain it and die.

There might be something there beneficial - for spawning massive poddage... as some of these overwinters went from zero to 200+ flower stems in a week flat! I had just transplanted a few of them and KNOW what the root system looks like - no way in hell they could sustain that so I lopped off about 80% of the new growth.

maximumcapsicum · May 28, 2014

Yikes! I hope your plants come through it bud. At least when they bounce back they should be stronger, right?

TrentL · May 28, 2014

maximumcapsicum said:
Yikes! I hope your plants come through it bud. At least when they bounce back they should be stronger, right?

Yeah, the amount of branching and foilage spawning out of nodes is crazy. In some cases the branches and leaves were forming so fast they literally FUSED themselves together.

IF they survive (and that's a very big IF right now) they will have tons of nodes and branches.

Also - for some reason the annuums seem to be shrugging it off, and the goats weed doesn't seem to mind it either. The Chinense were the worst affected.

For now I'm not too concerned about it, all it did on the ones in the ground (so far) was cause me to prune the big leaves and top them a week earlier than I was planning.

And the overwinters? Good grief. You'd think I shot them out of a cannon they're growing so fast.

On the flip side this gives me a chance to "shape" the potted plants a little and clean up some of the lankiness they developed over the winter.

TrentL · May 29, 2014

Update; my foggy memory just clicked. I don't think this was a dickhead neighbor (this time).

This last weekend my wife and I were driving to town and a nearby farmer (under a mile from my house, and up-wind from me) was spraying his field.

I remember turning off the A/C in the car at the time, driving through the cloud, and she commented about the motorcyclist in front of us driving through the vapor cloud (which incidentally was blowing westward towards our house).

I told her "I hold my breath on my motorcycle when I have to drive through shit like that."

It was a corn field getting sprayed. Anyone want to take odds on those tanks holding 2,4-D?

Anyway I think it was a farmer, not a neighbor. We're surrounded by corn fields here. Like I said, last year it was after the crop dusters came through, this year the farmer was running a big sprayer machine.

maximumcapsicum · May 29, 2014

That is the pits. How are the plants holding up now?

TrentL · May 29, 2014

Raining outside today, will check in a bit.

I wrote IL dept of agriculture last night complaining about late spring herbicide use. Doubt it goes anywhere but who knows. They can't address issues if they don't know about them.

Hello;

I live in Delavan IL. A few days after a local farmer on Springfield road sprayed his corn field, my chili pepper crop (200+ plants) showed severe signs of 2,4-D herbicide damage. Last year this damage occurred shortly after that farmer had his field sprayed via cropduster, about this same time of year. This year damage started showing up shortly after the wheeled sprayer went through the field. Was a VERY windy day – with my house downrange of it. (I specifically remember this; as I drove through the cloud - my wife commenting on the motorcycle rider in front of us also riding through the cloud of crap)

Is there any way to find out WHEN that crap is going to be sprayed, or under what wind conditions it can be used??? It’s irritating (to say the least), to raise a crop of rare peppers from seed starting in February, only to have them wiped the hell out by the farmer up the road in late May!! I cultivate (or TRY to) about 60 rare varieties of peppers sourced from all over the world.

Thanks for any help or guidance you can give.

TrentL · May 29, 2014

This is AFTER I pruned off all the gnarly growth yesterday.

Closeup of one of the overwinters; this is NOT normal lol.

7 pot long that I pruned the shade leaves off yesterday. Again, NOT a natural amount of growth...

This one is still potted; must have got a big whiff of the stuff. Quite a few on the driveway are like this. Seemed to hit the Bhuts and 7 pots more than some of the others.

This Butch T got a big whiff too. I trimmed at least 30 shoots off of this thing YESTERDAY. Today they are all growing back.

An example of how much I pruned off that Butch T. There must have been a dozen shoots off of one node, in a big "clump" of flower buds and malformed leaves.

ONE of the shoots I pruned off of it. This plant has a very weak root system (examined it myself up close when I hosed it off and transplanted this weekend). There's no way in hell it could have supported all of that growth or poddage. (The good news is it stopped wilting severely, after I pruned it all back)

This True Cumari had *2* leaves last night after I topped & pruned it.

Likewise, all of this growth on this Datil is new today. It was a bare stem last night excepting the four topmost leaves.

The one thing I fear here, is that 2,4-D is a synthetic Auxin. What it does is flood the plant with "GROW FOILAGE" messages. These messages generally travel from the very top of the plant down. If you "top" a plant you disrupt the flow and those messages get delivered to nodes below, telling THEM to "grow grow grow". (This is a grossly simplified version of the mechanism, BTW).

The problem is while these Auxins are being transmitted to form new growth, it's at the complete expense of root development. Which is why 2,4-D survivors are generally "stunted little shrubs that drop all of their flowers and pods."

The second problem is when you prune or top a plant, it shifts where these messages are being delivered. When you "top" a plant it makes the plant form new shoots, each trying to reach for the sun and be the new "top". While it's doing this the signals aren't reaching the roots, to signal the roots to grow or fork. (one reason why some people choose to not "top" a pepper plant, it stalls their root development for a few weeks).

These two problems combine - since I've pruned back the new growth and topped the plants, I've further disrupted root formation. It'll probably take 3-4 weeks (at least) for the roots to start growing again. Meanwhile I'll have to keep pruning and carefully monitoring water to make sure the root system that DOES exist can feed all of the foilage. The reason some of those new plants got super wilty was because they didn't have *much* of a root system to begin with, and they have tons of new growth to support. (I should have noticed the warning signs Sunday when I had to start watering them *twice* a day....)

I'm going to experiment a little here because the 2,4-D damage is so severe on some of these plants.

Since the plants were hit with a synthetic foilage grow hormone... I'm going to hit back with a synthetic ROOT development hormone (the same exact kind you use to make clones of cuttings).

I've got tons of spares so I'm not worried about losing a few. But - my theory is, if I balance out the hormones, it will slow the foilage development and spawn root development. The big variable here is if the soil can keep up with all of the development on each end of the plant... I may find I need to give them artificial nutes to balance out the massive growth spurt happening on both ends.

Well, that's the theory anyway.

I'd rather let these plants develop naturally BUT... that choice was taken away from me. So now I'm going to do what I can using what limited understanding of biology I have....

More about Auxins here; it's a heavy subject to digest. Spent a few hours last night learning about how these work. (2,4-D is a synthetic auxin).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auxin
LOL the problem with an herbicide that causes "uncontroled growth that kills the plant", is downwind, the plants that don't get QUITE enough to kill them grow enormous.

This dandelion was 2 foot high and 2 foot across. Never seen one so big before. (My foot was for some sense of scale, I'm a size 11.)

Bah. Also just discovered that this crap killed off some of my daughter's flowers.

HillBilly Jeff · May 29, 2014

Is that a dandelion? Looks like what we always called wild cabbage.

Devv · May 29, 2014

I give you credit for trying, of course that's all one can do. I feel you're headed in the right direction by trimming and taking the load off the root system. The root hormones certainly can't hurt.

I would ask the farmer what he sprayed if you can. I was under the impression 2,4-D would harm corn as well. It could have been something else, so knowing for sure would be a big help.

Good luck Trent!

chile_freak · May 29, 2014

Best of luck Trent hope all goes well for the plants!

TrentL · May 29, 2014

Operation Pot-Up round #4 is done.

Took 30 of my healthiest spares and put them in 5 gallon cloth bags.

Devv said:
I give you credit for trying, of course that's all one can do. I feel you're headed in the right direction by trimming and taking the load off the root system. The root hormones certainly can't hurt.

I would ask the farmer what he sprayed if you can. I was under the impression 2,4-D would harm corn as well. It could have been something else, so knowing for sure would be a big help.

Good luck Trent!

It's an agriculture conglomerate that owns that land, not sure which one, but they probably aren't local. The local farmer died last year and that tract of 114 acres was bought, never did look up who bought it.

I figured the root stimulant certainly wouldn't hurt, they were freshly transplanted and the roots looked like SHIT when I washed the old potting soil off and de-tangled the knots out of them. Some of the roots on those overwinters were 3' long when I finally got the root bound mess sorted out with hands and hose. But they were brown, and nasty looking. Not white and vibrant.

At least there is some good news out of all of this - I've got Jalapeno pods forming on the early Jalapenos and the Black Jalapenos. Those black ones are a little on the bitter side, have to catch them before they turn red, or else they're all but inedible. But DAMN those are hot Jalapenos. They were self-pollenated in the basement this winter, and running true as can be. Parent plant didn't make it but the 5 sprouts I grew in to plants are loving the dirt. (I lost about a dozen of those early on due to the jiffy starting soil fiasco.. didn't know I had to transplant those out of that crap *immediately*. )
Also .. not sure it's corn. Might be beans there this year. Last year was beans but as much as they rely on artificial fertilizer they may not rotate crops out.

I swear modern farming has become "hydroponics in soil" .. the soil doesn't contribute much but holding the plants any more.. all artificially fed with anhydrous.