Spraying pesticides on your land illegal without licence after march 2015?

[4390evans]

Was wondering if anyone heard about the PA1 & PA6 courses people have to complete before March 2015 if you spray pesticides on your land. As from march 2015 it would be illegal to do so without this licence. I wonder though is this just for allotments,farms and small holdings or is it for domestic use also.

Don't quote me on this, I was told this by my teacher at the RHS course.

Jen x

[Thelma Sanders]

So called Grandfather Rights are being removed...........

Grandfather Rights Guidance
This information has been prepared to help those who may wish to take the City & Guilds NPTC qualification known as “The Safe Use of Pesticides Replacing Grandfather Rights” and takes the form of ten questions. Question 1 – a few points to answer a) Were you born before 31st December 1964? b) Do you currently apply pesticides (e.g. weed killers or slug pellets) on land that you either own or rent? c) Do you purchase those pesticides from an agro-chemical supplier? d) Do you not hold a City &Guilds NPTC pesticide qualification such as PA1, PA2 or PA6? If you can answer “yes” to these four questions, whilst you are currently probably operating within the law, as from 26th November 2015 and under European legislation, you will no longer be able to do so
http://www.nptc.org.uk/assets/docume...5cc32b25a2.pdf

It only applies to professional products, not those for home/allotment gardeners

[arpoet]

So called Grandfather Rights are being removed...........

Grandfather Rights Guidance
This information has been prepared to help those who may wish to take the City & Guilds NPTC qualification known as “The Safe Use of Pesticides Replacing Grandfather Rights” and takes the form of ten questions. Question 1 – a few points to answer a) Were you born before 31st December 1964? b) Do you currently apply pesticides (e.g. weed killers or slug pellets) on land that you either own or rent? c) Do you purchase those pesticides from an agro-chemical supplier? d) Do you not hold a City &Guilds NPTC pesticide qualification such as PA1, PA2 or PA6? If you can answer “yes” to these four questions, whilst you are currently probably operating within the law, as from 26th November 2015 and under European legislation, you will no longer be able to do so
Grow Your Own Magazine - GYO Growing & How To Grow Vegetables tomatoes & fruit from your garden - Tips on Growing

It only applies to professional products, not those for home/allotment gardeners

The link dont work.

[Thelma Sanders]

The link dont work.

Try copying the link into Google

http://www.nptc.org.uk/assets/.../1a...cfad5cc32b25a2

It works that way for me

[arpoet]

Nope, i just get a 404 error message.

[Thelma Sanders]

funny it works for me, isn't it.......

try this one
https://www.nptc.org.uk/qualificatio...il.aspx?id=474

then you click grandfather rights, for the pdf.

If that don't work - you'll have to find it yourself, if you really want to read it...

[alldigging]

Pesticides only not herbicides?

[bearded bloke]

FYI

I have repaired the broken link in Thelma's first post

[bearded bloke]

Thelma, the links work for you as the original search is in your recent history, for some strange reason the hyperlink has been truncated, where it says /assets/.../ it should read /assets/document/

[BertieFox]

One of the absurdities is that while neonicitinoids have been banned (for a year or two) across the EU, they are still freely available in many garden chemicals for amateur gardeners. The trouble is most people won't even know this when they buy what they assume is a 'safe' product. These chemicals build up in the soil and in plants and can harm not just bees and other insects but even birds and small mammals.

Any bans which encourage us to ditch synthetic chemicals are a good thing. Since we moved here eleven years ago, I have used no chemicals other than glyphosate, when I gave way to temptation one year faced with weed infestation around the edges of the polytunnel. Yet our garden is largely pest free and no worse than when we used chemicals.

With most gardens and gardeners, it is fairly pointless in being totally organic when your neighbours are spraying all kinds of poisons around just across the garden fence. Only when the vast majority of us are using organic techniques will the population of natural predators grow to a sufficient size to start keeping things in natural balance.

We are enormously lucky here as we have several acres anyway and our neighbours on three sides are forest, an environmentally managed landscape belonging to the state, and natural meadow. But on the other side, we have the usual intensively managed farm land.

We can really see the difference in all our crops which are adjacent to the chemically treated side, even though we have a fairly thick hedgerow between us and the field.

[4390evans]

Yeah, I was thinking along the same lines. I would imagine pesticides being used more in domestic gardens that anywhere else. I used round up last year and tbh I don't see the hype. My weeds were still there after 6 weeks.

[Kristen]

I used round up last year and tbh I don't see the hype. My weeds were still there after 6 weeks.

I'm sure you know this, but on the off chance:

Roundup / Glyphosate needs a period of dry after application (6 hours springs to mind, but might be longer)

Plants need to be actively growing - so efficacy in Winter is low or non existent, and can also be poor in Autumn

Need good coverage on the leaf. It is sold to be used with a dribble-bar from a watering can but I am sceptical that that gives anything like the uptake that is achieved with spraying (although with spraying care is needed to prevent drift onto plants that are to be kept )

Other than that there may well be differences between branded Monstanto Roundup and other generic Glyphosate based products. Personally when I use it I do choose the Monsanto brand because the adjuvants in their latest concoctions are non-hazardous, and the adjuvants in older formulation and, I believe, all current generics?? were the part that was the most poisonous to the environment.

[4390evans]

I'm sure you know this, but on the off chance:

Roundup / Glyphosate needs a period of dry after application (6 hours springs to mind, but might be longer)

Yeah I used it while they were in full flow with flower etc but nothing, it was when we had about 5 days of sun I might of used it wrong I dunno but all that happened was it went a little yellow but they still remained. I wont be using it any longer as I will be digging most of the garden up next year to use for crops as atm I just use the beds on the patio and the borders so hopefully will be more on top of the weeding etc

[plotman]

Well if it doesnt apply to home/allotment gardeners then as far as we are concerned, It happily doesnt apply

[plotman]

The roundup we buy from like of B AN Q etc is, I agree not at all effective. The commercial round up is amazing, Clears ground totally and has no adverse effect on land after very short time