Contaminated Soil ?????

I am just about to move to a new house and have laid out so many plans for an organic vegetable patch but I am now starting to have doubts if i can do it or not. You see at the new house at the bottom of the garden among the birds and the bees :0) there is an old forge and it got me thinking about all the metals they would of used and would of gone into the ground. Would these metals make the soil contaminated thus stopping me from having my wonderful vegetable patch for fear of poisoning my children. Are there kits available to test the soil to see what metals are in it?
Any advice is much appreciated.
Thank you in advance.

 

I'm sure there are - but on googling I haven't found any - just the usual ones to test alkilinity, etc.
Let's hope someone else can help!

 

Hi, have alook at this thread, much the same concerns as yours:

http://www.gardenerscorner.co.uk/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=15;t=000139#000005

I asked Gardening Which? and their advice was that if contamination existed in the soil in any appreciable amounts the plants would die! They suggested doing a 'cress test'- plant some cress seeds in new compost, and also in the suspect soil. If it grows in the compost but not your soil you might have problems. They say there is no easy or cheap way of testing soil other than this, but if your cress grows and looks healthy you should be ok.

 

Thanks for the link Liz, some really interesting reading. I will give the cress test a go when we move in. I have a funny feeling though that being as close as we will be to an old forge there is going to be quite alot of metal in the soil. Thinking about it now there is not much vegetation around there. Fingers crossed anyway for my veggie patch :0)

 

I work in the construction industry and ground remediation is regularly an issue with brown-field sites. If there has been industrial use of the ground and contaminants are present in the ground I wouldn't recommend consuming the produce unless you know what the contaminants are. You may need to seek expert advice on this. The Environment Agency may be able to advise you. In theory, the ground should have been remediated prior to it being redeveloped and your solicitor may be able to identify this. I note that you say your house is new so I would expect the ground to have been cleaned up prior to construction as a requirement of the planning conditions for the site. If this is the case, your soil should be 'clean' and would have been stripped of contaminants and replaced with 'clean' fill and top soil.

 

you can get herbage tests done for mineral content and metals for agricultural purposes it does cost ask at a local agricutural supplier or feed mercahant if you live in the country down here a company called Mole valley farmers do it you send a fresh sample of grass with ice pack and they send it to a lab to test it

[ 05. May 2006, 08:15 AM: Message edited by: cornish66 ]

 

What sort of forge are we talking about here? If it was an old blacksmith's forge then your contaminants will mainly be iron and coke slag. Not really a problem.

If it was a metal founders then that could be more problematic as there could be lead and other nasties around. The free test mentioned by cornish66 sounds a great idea!

Mum's old garden in Cornwall was part of a forge waste ground and the iron content was really high - several horseshoes turned up!

 

Thanks for the advice. I think it was an old ironmongery forge. If coke slag and iron aren't real contaminants then i should be ok. Since moving in i have found out there was a vegetable patch there anyway so hopefully if i take the top layer off i should get some good soil.

 

Slag used to be spread on fields as a fertiliser by farmers. Now they are more nitrogen based fertilisers around. As mentioned above you will be fine and as it has not been previously gardened I would expect you to have a very good crop. Potatoes make a good first crop amongst others. good luck.

 

I work for a local authority and one of the things my colleagues do is concerning contaminated land. I think its a fairly safe bet to say that when plans were afoot to build your house the prior use of the land would have been looked at. If there was any concern then remediation would have been carried out. They have to take into account the possibility of people growing vegetables on the land and therefor ingesting anything in the soil. hope this helps.