Pam Moore wrote:
On Sat, 30 Jul 2005 17:20:48 +0100, Jaques d'Alltrades
wrote:

The message
from "Mike Lyle" contains
these
words:

/homebrewed garden sprays/

I think you'll find that you are not permitted to use it in your
garden for that purpose.

Blimey! I'd love to read the relevant regs (or maybe I
wouldn't!):
have you got a link handy?

No - it was widely aired on GQT three or four years ago, and AFAIK
hasn't either been dumped or used.

I think what they said was that they could not recommend it for use
but what you did in your own garden was entirely up to you! (and
that
applies to a lot of things!)

I went to DEFRA, but annoyingly the Ggl text version wasn't working
at all, and the pdf got stuck (how do people get away with using only
pdf for these things anyway?). I really find it hard to believe
they'd actually forbid the home use of a decoction of rhubarb leaves.
Yes, of course oxalic acid is a thug in all sorts of ways; but an
American site told me you'd need to extract 10-12 lb of leaves to get
the lethal dose for a human -- the same as for spinach, and nobody's
banned that yet. ("I say it's spinach, and I say the hell with it!")

"Doris Edith Vowles, I have reason to believe that on the twelfth
inst you did knowingly pour a hazardous substance, namely the water
in the bottom of your spinach pan, out your kitchen window. You do
not have to say anything, but..."

Another thing I found was that, as I think Rusty hinted, the
rhubarb-leaf stuff breaks down in the environment in twenty-four
hours. (I once tried boiling up some tobacco for garden purposes, but
the smell was so unbearable that I chucked it out.)

--
Mike.