I've had a lot of trouble in my gardening with stunted plants, deformed leaves and shoots, even monstrosities with part of the plants showing completely different leaf growth from what the rest of it looks like. I assumed it was some kind of mineral deficiency. It got worse and worse, no matter how much I fed the plants trace element supplements made from algae, etc.
Well, now I'm sure I know what it is. I was using bagged cow manure as an added element in my feeding, along with compost and rock powders. And I was mulching with hay harvested from the rampant growth I get along my property lines where the neighbors' runoff overfertilizes the ground.
After a lot of reading and online research, I found out that there are new types of herbicides used in cattle pastures called pyralites. They are supposed to keep "working" for years to suppress leafy weeds and favor grasses. Problem is, the cattle eat the contaminated growth and their manure gets contaminated. Then gardeners buy the manure at the garden center and poison the things they fertilize with it.
This was such a problem in Britain that it was estimated that home gardeners suffered 70% losses in the vegetable crops they grew in their gardens in one particularly bad year. And of course nobody had any idea what was going on. Now the problem has been widely publicized in the UK and Canada, but not in the US.
Don't use bagged manure on vegetable crops! Use only manure from trusted sources, people who feed their animals with herbicide-free hay only. Or just make compost and you won't need manure. It's OK to use the bagged cow manure on lawns, but not in your garden or on your ornamentals.
And be careful where you get your mulch. It's OK to compost free mulch or harvested weeds where neighbors have sprayed herbicides, because the herbicides available to homeowners break down with composting. But of course there is also the issue of insecticide contamination with free mulch, so I only use it on the property in areas where I'm not likely to grow anything edible. It's hard to turn down something that's free when you're on a very tight budget, but I think I'll pass on the carcinogens, thank you very much.
Since I stopped using hay harvested near my neighbor's property where she was spraying glyphosate...and I stopped using bagged manure in the garden...the stunting and deformities have been eliminated. I tried using some hay from another part of my property, but I think that may be contaminated too. All my Liberty potato plants in that planting bed are stunted and chlorotic. I now think that both of my neighbors, on the north and west sides, use herbicides. And since they've both added a lot of extra fill on their land, their contaminated runoff all winds up on my property.
One thing about gardening...when you learn a lesson, it's often learned the hard way.
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