What do you do about neighbours and pesticides?

[bughunter99]

Originally Posted by LindyAdele

All of you have given me great suggestions. Thank you. I think this is an unwinable war for now. Calling "The Weed Man" just gets me a call center in India, and they dispatch university aged guys that are different every time. You can see how calling them is not going to get me very far. They are not a local 'guy' so much as a large province wide chain.

My neighbour accross the street (the illegal spraying tomato hater!) told me that they are planning on putting their house up for sale next spring. That, at least is good news! I think? I will work on charming and educating my neighbour beside me...

They have a local guy, you see him spraying. Approach him and ask for the name and number of his boss to talk about a special project.

[bughunter99]

Originally Posted by LindyAdele

I really am not a litigious person. People will say 'it's just a plant!'. I don't know anyone who's ever sued anyone in my life. The Weed Man is a big business here. Everyone uses them, very little competition, but the guys that come out are just young and don't know anything at all. I have read that pesticide can drift several kilometers. The poor guy with the sprayer doesn't have a clue what he's doing to my plants. I don't think any media would care. Very few people here grow backyard veggies - I'm a freak. we don't have a farming community, or a very green community sadly. I think floating row covers it is, until weed season is mostly past!

If someone damaged your car, would you ask for compensation? This is no different. Often lawyers do not need to be involved. Simply telling the people up front that you WILL seek compensation for all losses makes them forewarned and likely to take precautions.

[bitterwort]

Pardon me if this is hijacking your thread, but I wonder if any of you could tell me how long it takes for symptoms to occur once someone sprays. A neighbor of 30 years who is known for planting invasive species, not removing them, got the bright idea to buy some herbicide and spray her patio 10 or 15 feet from the flats of tomato transplants I had out hardening off for my transplant sale. My husband smelled it and got her to stop, but I can't very well sell them if they're likely to be compromised. She says it was 2,4-d and some other things (I believe one of the Weed-b-gone formulations). How soon before the new growth shows symptoms?

[LindyAdele]

Originally Posted by bitterwort

Pardon me if this is hijacking your thread, but I wonder if any of you could tell me how long it takes for symptoms to occur once someone sprays. A neighbor of 30 years who is known for planting invasive species, not removing them, got the bright idea to buy some herbicide and spray her patio 10 or 15 feet from the flats of tomato transplants I had out hardening off for my transplant sale. My husband smelled it and got her to stop, but I can't very well sell them if they're likely to be compromised. She says it was 2,4-d and some other things (I believe one of the Weed-b-gone formulations). How soon before the new growth shows symptoms?

I see symptoms within 24 hours of the current growth, and over the remaining 2-4 weeks I see twisted, shriveled distorted new growth. I have lost plants, but once established and in the ground my plants *have* overcome it, they were just a little shorter and less productive than their further-from-the-fence counterparts.

[Geezer]

About ten years ago I had a problen with a previous neighbor. I had planted wildflowers in the ditch by the road in front of my house. One day her kids came over and picked every one ( except for the ones they trampled. I was firm, but polite and told them they were not allowed to do that. Within 5 minutes both parents were on my porch screaming in my face. Their belief was that since it was on the county right-of-way, I had no right to tell their children to leave (Wrong- County has a right-of-way, but I still own the property), and furthermore, since they are wildflowers, they belong to GOD, not ME (????), They were told to leave, and not come back.
The next day I came home to a brown bank in front of my house. Another neighbor witnessed the male parent spraying Roundup along my entire bank. When I confronted him, he denied it but thought it was funny as hell.

I guess the only thing funnier was when he and his riding mower found that Slinky in his tall grass.....

Evil Ed aka Geezer

[heirloomtomaguy]

Originally Posted by Geezer

About ten years ago I had a problen with a previous neighbor. I had planted wildflowers in the ditch by the road in front of my house. One day her kids came over and picked every one ( except for the ones they trampled. I was firm, but polite and told them they were not allowed to do that. Within 5 minutes both parents were on my porch screaming in my face. Their belief was that since it was on the county right-of-way, I had no right to tell their children to leave (Wrong- County has a right-of-way, but I still own the property), and furthermore, since they are wildflowers, they belong to GOD, not ME (????), They were told to leave, and not come back.
The next day I came home to a brown bank in front of my house. Another neighbor witnessed the male parent spraying Roundup along my entire bank. When I confronted him, he denied it but thought it was funny as hell.

I guess the only thing funnier was when he and his riding mower found that Slinky in his tall grass.....

Evil Ed aka Geezer

What a jerk neighbor. Its sad to say but that is why good fences make good neighbors.

[bughunter99]

Originally Posted by Geezer

About ten years ago I had a problen with a previous neighbor. I had planted wildflowers in the ditch by the road in front of my house. One day her kids came over and picked every one ( except for the ones they trampled. I was firm, but polite and told them they were not allowed to do that. Within 5 minutes both parents were on my porch screaming in my face. Their belief was that since it was on the county right-of-way, I had no right to tell their children to leave (Wrong- County has a right-of-way, but I still own the property), and furthermore, since they are wildflowers, they belong to GOD, not ME (????), They were told to leave, and not come back.
The next day I came home to a brown bank in front of my house. Another neighbor witnessed the male parent spraying Roundup along my entire bank. When I confronted him, he denied it but thought it was funny as hell.

I guess the only thing funnier was when he and his riding mower found that Slinky in his tall grass.....

Evil Ed aka Geezer

HA HA HA! I had a woman behind me that used to creep out after dark and nab my tomatoes and cukes, she clearly knew she was stealing so for her rather than diplomacy I added an ice cold water bath delivered via the scarecrow motion detection sprinkler (more like blaster). Her shrieks that night still make me giggle!
The next time I saw her I gleefully told her that I am so glad that my new security system seems to have stopped the "★★★★★★★ tomato thieves". I then added that I was thinking about calling the cops as my next step about both the thefts and the nightly pot smoke I was smelling (coming from her teenager's balcony)
That thing works great, ended thieving of both the neighbor and the deer!

[bitterwort]

Thanks for the info on onset of symptoms, LindyAdele. I haven't seen anything I can identify as damage yet, but the plants are young and not growing like gangbusters yet. I definitely am watching this thread with even more interest now.

[Gardeneer]

Originally Posted by bitterwort

Thanks for the info on onset of symptoms, LindyAdele. I haven't seen anything I can identify as damage yet, but the plants are young and not growing like gangbusters yet. I definitely am watching this thread with even more interest now.

Wait a minute !
You have already planted out in zone 4, MN ?
Interesting. An good luck !

[bitterwort]

No, no plants in the ground yet, Gardeneer. I sell transplants of many of the interesting varieties I read about on this forum in the spring each year, and I had flats of transplants out enjoying our weather and starting to harden off. In a couple weeks I will have plants out in their large permanent pots, though, based on weather forecasts.

[crmauch]

KarenO is right (at least in the technical sense -- [what I mean by that is what is in the law is not always as clear in the real world, I have to live with my neighbors kind of sense]). I used to have a private applicators license (the applicators who work for lawn companies are supposed to have a commercial applicators license [I should say this is true in PA, your mileage in other states may differ]. Spray drift across property bounderies was a strict no-no (I think the EPA or state DEP can fine(?), but they probably only get involved in egregious cases - like where a whole vineyard was killed by 2,4-D spray drift). I would folllow the advice of others here and complain to the lawn care companies. They might warn their technicians to be more careful.

However 2,4-D has an interesting property -- under certain atmospheric conditions, it can re-absorb into the air, and then drift to new locations. Because the concentration in those cases would be less, the damage would be less, and more diffuse.

Here's a story sort of the from the opposite side. My father (who also had his spray license) and we used to have an acre of grapes together (my parents had a total of 4 acres). He had a bucket he used to mix spray, and wanting to make sure it was never used for any other purpose he wrote on it "Danger, spray, poison" After he sprayed, he rinsed it and set it to drain over a grape trellis post. One of our neighbors, seeing this bucket (and I'm pretty sure they had to have come on our property (or used binoculars) to read this (upside down) label on the bucket, came over to us and threatened to sue us if their cat (which was at least a semi-outdoor cat) was ever harmed by our spraying. Now we didn't want to harm kitty, and we also used the least toxic (at least by direct affect) sprays possible for our own protection, but I can say that even all these years later it still galls me that he was threatening us, over his cat [which I do understand have no sense of property boundries], being on our property, getting harmed where we were doing a legal, careful activity. The story had a good outcome of sorts -- whenever we sprayed (and we did this with another neighbor), we would call them and leave a message that we were going to spray.

Sorry for the excessively long post.

Originally Posted by KarenO

It is the responsibility of the lawn maintenance company to ensure their product does not get anywhere on your property. There is no reason for it at all. I would bypass the neighbors and complain directly, in writing to the owner of the company (s)in queston. Mention : allergy, media, better business bureau and lawsuit... they don't care about your tomatoes, but they may well care about that...
meantime, shield your plants with row cover until you get a response. go to their twitter site, FB page, website...

KarenO