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!
