Weed & Feed?

Well I walk outside to water my new plants this morning and my wife has had the lawn guy weed & feed the entire yard. Well apparently he weed & feeded my hops garden a little bit. Does anyone know if this will hurt the plants?

It depends on if he used a pre-emergent or a broad leaf poison. The pre-emergent won't hurt since it only affects seeds but the broad leaf will damage your hops.

HOLY F()CK! That would definitely not be good.

And I hate to say it, but in baton rouge, the last date to use a pre-emergent was probably a month ago.

Weed & feed gives a plant killer too weak to kill grass. Lets hope hops are as hardy as grass.

cheezydemon said:

HOLY F()CK! That would definitely not be good.

And I hate to say it, but in baton rouge, the last date to use a pre-emergent was probably a month ago.

Weed & feed gives a plant killer too weak to kill grass. Lets hope hops are as hardy as grass.

Click to expand...

Most weed and feeds include a broad leaf herbicide. These herbicides target most broad leaf plants but do not affect the grass. If your hops were feed I would say you have a good chance of loosing them. If they start to die I would call and try to get compensation from the lawn guy, there is no way he should put that stuff on any thing except lawn areas. And he should be very careful around the edges.

Craig

And it should have been obvious!(twine, poles, whatever)

I hate that for you man! I hope they live, but holy hell.

If just a little got on the plants there is a good chance that it may only burn the leaves a bit. Most of the dry products that are applied to grass are not nearly as toxic as a product like Roundup where it just needs to contact the leave to soak in and kill the plant. Hops are tough and it would take a lot to kill the plant.

I get nervous when the helicopters come. The area west of my property was logged & replanted. Every so often, they fly in and spray to keep the blackberries & such under control. They do try to be selective in their spraying, but I figure anything that kills blackberries would probably kill hops.

Herbicide + hops is BAD ! Who wants to drink Poisoned beer ?

david_42 said:

I get nervous when the helicopters come. The area west of my property was logged & replanted. Every so often, they fly in and spray to keep the blackberries & such under control. They do try to be selective in their spraying, but I figure anything that kills blackberries would probably kill hops.

Click to expand...

They should relocate some bears from Montana to take care of those blackberries.

It most likely is a broadleaf herbicide in which case, if it got hit, the tips of the shoots will be extra twisty and the leaves will curl around on their stem, and may actually turn upside down. I'm not sure how sensitive hops are, but plants do vary greatly in their susceptibility

If it did get hit, it may grow out of it. We got some drift on our vegetable garden last year from a commerical lawn spray two doors down. We had some pretty twisted plants for a while but everything recovered. It was a freak occurrence. It was dead calm which is ideal for spraying. However it was sunny and hot and one problem with the auxin-type herbicides is they are more volitile than most. So while we didn't get actual spray drift. The sun volatilized some of the herbicide and it drifted up to our yard and then into cool the morning shade in our yard, right onto our garden.

Well hell I guess we'll have to see. I talked to the lawn guy and he swears it won't hurt the plant but really I guess we'll see. It was the solid type that's dispensed and it didn't get hit directly as I have the garden built up with a barrier around it. He says he sprays it all over regular flowers without any side effects so I'm sure a hop can take it.

Sounds like the pesticide may have been an insecticide, not an herbicide, unless, maybe the herbicide was specifically a crab grass killer - that would probably leave the flowers and your hops alone.

Sometimes I wonder about pesticide applicators. I have no problem with most pesticides (fungicides, insecticides, herbicides, acaricides, etc - PSA - please reserve the use of pesticide when you are talking generally about all of them - don't say pesticide, when you only are refering to one specific class, it can lead to confusion). Many of the problems that do arise are due to applicator error. I had to go to my every 5 yr pesticide safety review last week and it is amazing what some people do.

We do all the yard maintenance except we have someone come out i think ever 6 months for the lawn (feed n all the other things you get done to it). hopefully he is right and it wont harm them.

rinse and water the hell outta it.