Well I’m gutted. At least, my tunnel house is. Everything’s gone from in there, not a plant remains and what led to this, you might ask, cryptically?
Lead, that’s what.
We had our soils tested throughout the property, in order to qualify for ‘organic’ status and we passed with flying colours with remarkably healthy soils and very high levels of organic matter throughout, except in the tunnel house where the soil contains lead. More lead than is good for you.
I know how it got there too. Back in the day, a house stood on the sight where we now grow tomatoes under plastic. The house housed a family and some of those were teasers. Boys they were. Stone throwers. They tormented the old chap living across the road by raining stones down upon his roof, for laughs. He said, ‘Do that again and I’ll torch your house”. They did. He did. The remains lay on the ground for years until we bought the property and began reshaping it into the organic paradise it now is but we didn’t clean up as well as we thought we had. Lead remained. Lead from the paint on the old house that succumbed to the match of the pushed-too-far neighbour. Now we have to clean it up but fortunately, it’s not hard to do and the method is a graceful one.
We’ll plant sunflowers. Sunflowers have the unique ability to take up lead from the ground and fix it in their leaves, stems and flower heads. They can then be uprooted and taken, with the lead safely tied into their cells, and disposed of and that’s what we’ll do. Already, the tunnel house is bare. No tomatoes from there this year, it’ll be wall to wall sunflowers. We’re preparing the leaden soil now, cultivating and watering and soon we’ll be sowing sunflower seeds. It’s a chore really, but one that will look amazing, massive star-like heads, bowed down by the weight of the lead and the curve of the tunnel house ceiling. I’ll be taking pictures. We could picnic in there amongst the heavy heads. If you’ve had an old building on your property, burned down or collapsed you might like to consider the sunflower solution.
It might be irksome to do, but it’s a cheerful answer to a difficult problem and those sorts of answers are the best kind!
5 comments:
Fitting! Any idea on how many seasons you'll need to practice this patient remediation, will once suffice, or thrice?
A 20x7m tunnel on land we're about to lease has shown 1080mg/kg dry wt chromium, biogrow limit being 150mg/kg. Expletives! Ideas? Rest of sight is hunky-dory!
I'm thinking one Nick but it'll take a follow-up test to be sure. Sunflowers are mighty voracious feeders. I figure mulching them down amongst the native trees will be enough to keep the lead from entering into the food cycle (it's very rare that we eat our rimu).
If my memeory serves me correctly, the solution to the likes of chromium in the soil is datura stromonium.
Take care though, not to be tempted by her charms!
She's a syren.
Thanks Robert. How's this..
"In New Zealand datura has been responsible for a number of admissions to intensive care, and has indirectly caused at least two deaths from drowning."
Swooned?
Spinach seems to have some experience in this area, we shall try and see!
That's a bit of a worry Robert, I am now very nervous about growing the vege's I was planing.
The ground here could be full of all sorts of stuff.
You might need to build some 'raised beds' Shunda and fill them with good soil/compost.
Perhaps your ground is fine - a soil test will clear up any doubt.
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