Soil check

[manjety.livejournal.com]

Hi everybody!

Do you know how can I check the soil on my backyard for chemicals and whatever bad could there be?
Are the self check kits trustful? What would you recommend?

Comments

[larksdream]

For $13 plus the cost of shipping a small package to them, UMass will test your soil sample. (It almost certainly has lead in it; the question is how much.) $9 if you don't care about organic matter content (which you would if you wanted to grow things). I wouldn't bother with the home test kit.

[manjety.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I like the idea of giving knowledgable people do the test.

[jadelennox]

the UMass report was incredibly useful. You dig up soil samples, you send them to them in Amherst, and they tell you all kinds of detailed levels like "you can grow fruit here but not greens" (because different plants store lead differently). They also tell you how to enrich your soil. As a result of that test, I grow a lot of my edible food in raised beds. Urban soils tend to be full of lead, and Somerville in particular use to have a lot of tanneries which dumped mercury into the soil, so it is good to be careful -- especially if the food is eaten by anyone pregnant or nursing, or by small children.