permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <venaurafarm@bellsouth.net>]

On 11/2/2011 5:14 PM, Katy Fox wrote:
> Dear all,
>
>
> I hope you are well. I am writing because I have a recurrent question
> at this moment, kind of related to some of the permaculture designs
> I've been doing. We've been looking at community garden sites, and
> there are some industrial wastelands that are kind of on offer. So I
> wondered whether you have any experience with working with these
> kinds of polluted lands and how you'd go about dealing with them. Can
> you depollute them if they have heavy metals? are there any people
> dealing with that specifically that you know? (I know some people
> from Findhorn who are working to clean waters through biomimicry
> processes - Biomatrix - but none who work with soil regeneration in
> heavily polluted sites). where do you recommend I start my research
> in this area? Metta katy

If the soil on these urban sites contain more than acceptable levels of
persistent pesticides (any category esp. herbicide) or heavy metals I 
would imagine outside help might be required in dealing with them.
Cleanup funding through grants or fundraisers to pay some professional 
hazmat/remediation company or pro bono work by one of those. I am sure 
many urban gardens have had to deal with this problem. You absolutely do 
not want plant uptake or hyperaccumulation of toxic substances; not to 
take any chances with this.

I have some old archives, not state of the art on hyperaccumulation and 
bioremediation - maybe some of this will be helpful:

Bioremediation
http://www.ibiblio.org/ecolandtech/orgfarm/bioremediation/
a partial list of files in this archive:
http://www.ibiblio.org/ecolandtech/orgfarm/bioremed
Hyperaccumulation
http://www.ibiblio.org/ecolandtech/orgfarm/hyperaccumulation/


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Another solution, if on site soil can not be used and you can build 
containers for raised bed gardens. Get donations of multiple truckloads 
of quarry rock dusts, add compost, manure, mineral amendments (donation 
too maybe: rock phosphate, greensand, azomite, aragonite, hi cal lime, 
seaweed, blood meal, dried chicken manure - i.e. all the Fertrell 
products). Quarry rock dust is EPA regulated as to environmental quality 
and is essentially siltation pond fines. It is nearly always given away 
to those who will haul it. You can hire a trucker to pick it up and the 
quarry will load their trucks for free; negotiate on price per load 
hauling fee. Best to buy tandem loads though triaxle loads are more cost 
effective, or dump trailer (36+/- cu. yds) if you have flat stable 
ground for them to offload on. This rock powder will probably be much 
better soil than what you have on site though you could have black gold 
if you are lucky. If building raised beds on top of polluted soil then 
be sure to put an impermeable barrier between your brought in rock dust 
or topsoil from off site and existing ground.

I have some farm-based experience with all of this so if I can help 
further I will be glad to.

LL
lfljvenaura@gmail.com