It's a heavy lump of a thing and too much for two men to lift, so I employed a steel-wheeled lawnmower as a trolley and shifted it myself. Fortunately, the new site for the chicken run is downhill from the old site, so the job wasn't as impressive as I'd have you believe. Now, it's time to dig in the posts. Our new hens and rooster seem a little perturbed by my industry.
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I had a digger in to level my new section today, the driver was pretty determined to bury a large pile of rubbish, but I wouldn't let em!!
I took to the dump instead and it cost me 120 bucks!!
Still, we can't go around burying our crap all over the show, though he did bury a rather large pile of coal ash which I wasn't all that happy about.
It made me wonder just how much of the towns topsoil is actually coal ash, 150 years of burning West Coast coal means a tremendous amount of ash, and people certainly don't like taking it to the land fill.
Who knows how many toxic vege gardens there are out there.
That's a very good question, Shunda and one I ask myself often. Why not have your vegetable garden at least, tested? Hill Labs do it, though it's kinda expensive. Good to know though.
After today, seeing little patches of coal ash in various places over approx 350m2, I am starting to have doubts as to how safe the soil really is. I am right now researching how toxic the stuff is, so far I am not feeling very positive.
The I still see people spreading it on lawns or even in the compost heap, you gotta wonder whether there is a hidden 'cost' of coal use as yet unidentified in human health statistics, it has some nasty stuff in it.
Yep. It's the ash that's got the nasty stuff in it. Trouble is, you can't see where it was put after a few years, although the woman at the bottom of our street has ruined a patch of soil that way. I've tied planting in it several times (I've planted her street frontage in native shrubs) and each time they expire. Imagine that stuff leaching down into the aquifers or into the nearest stream. Lubbly.
Robert, how can the soil be 'cleansed' of the heavy metals etc that are present in this ash? is it even possible? do metals/contaminants find their way into vegetable crops at all?
I want to repair the damage if I am able.
It's tricky, Shunda. Some plants clense certain metals from the soil. Sunflowers are used for this purpose, as is datura stramonioum and a number of other bio-remediators. They have to be harvested and removed of course. I've seen reports but haven't memorised any particular remedies. There's a guy in Nelson working on the issue - you might find him on the net. Firstly though, you'll need to know whats in the fly-ash or whatever it is you have in the soil. It'll be variable.I'll ask my people at the Council on Wed and see if they know anything. Some of the scientists there are bound to know about it.
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