little eco footprints

9 steps for lead-safe urban gardening

Urban chook keepers may be feeling a little wary after learning that a recent University of Newcastle study found high levels of lead in home-grown backyard eggs.

I stopped eating eggs from my urban chooks a few years ago when I discovered lead contamination in our backyard.

Lead exposure is particularly risky for young children and pregnant women, so I was furious when I realised that I had been unknowingly gardening in lead-contaminated soil during my daughter's pregnancy and that she had been playing in a lead-contaminated garden.

Why hadn't anyone told me of the risk? Education material regarding the risk of lead exposure when renovating old houses is everywhere - yet I'd never heard of the risk of lead in urban soil.

I've since learnt that soil in older densely populated urban areas is likely to be contaminated with lead and other heavy metals from a range of sources including lead-based paint dust and lead petrol fumes.

Thankfully, it is possible to garden safely and grow your own food in lead-contaminated urban areas.

Nine steps for lead-safe urban gardening:

1. Grow food plants in raised beds lined with landscape fabric and filled with uncontaminated soil. Container gardening is another option.

2. Cover all areas of bare soil with grass, gravel, or thick mulch. We covered our daughter's play area in weed mat and then a thick layer of gravel.

3. Ensure chooks don't have access to contaminated bare soil, for example by laying pavers in their pen or housing in a chicken tractor over raised garden beds containing uncontaminated soil. Ensure they always have access to uncontaminated soil for dust bathing, even if it's just a large pot of soil in the corner of their pen. Restrict free ranging to areas where they can't access contaminated soil.

4. Locate food gardens away from painted buildings that were constructed during and prior to the 1970s, as they are likely painted in lead-based paint.

5. In areas where you can't easily create a barrier between old and new uncontaminated soil, favour fruits rather than root vegetables or leafy greens as research has found little accumulation of lead in fruits in comparison to leaves, roots and stems. 

6. Maintain soil pH around 6.5 by adding lime if needed. Lead is relatively unavailable at or above this level.

7. Add loads of organic matter to your soil. Organic compounds bind lead and make it less available to the plant. I'm assuming this is why our blood lead levels came back normal - despite eating veges and eggs from our backyard prior to learning of the contamination.

8. Clean produce thoroughly.

9. Consider wearing gloves and wash hands immediately after gardening and before eating.

If you are interested in testing your own garden soil, economical lead-testing kits are available from The Lead Group. 

[Originally published in my column LESS IS MORE in the The Newcastle Herald Weekender Magazine 16th March 2013]

Our natural outdoor play space

Remember that natural playground we started planning late last year? Inspired by the recent four part series on Ideas for adding natural elements to your outdoor play space over at Let the Children Play, I thought i'd share how our play space is progressing.

One of the most popular parts of the new play space has been the sand play wine barrel. We cut an old wine barrel into 1/3 and 2/3, using the 1/3 for the sand pit and the other 2/3 as a container for loose parts. We added some shells for texture and a few pretty stones as treasure.

The sand pit really only fits one, but when there's more, they simply sit around the outside and lean in.

Our salvaged timber table and chairs are regularly used for tea parties, craft activities, and imaginative play.

{Little Eco and Lillian}

I sometimes bring out an old umbrella. It's actually the very same umbrella I used to sit under when I wasn't much older than Little Eco.

We've used gravel in the play space. Due to the lead contamination in our soil, we have to ensure that soil isn't exposed in any areas where children play (or chooks browse, or vegetables grow and so on). Given this play space is partly shaded and has high traffic, maintaining grass would have been hard. So we decided to use gravel instead.

Thankfully, we were able to source local gravel (Maitland Red) rather than buy something that was trucked half way across the country. That said, river gravel is not exactly a sustainable resource, with it's extraction potentially causing riverbed and bank erosion, loss of fish habitat, vegetation loss, and decreased water quality. Thankfully we have a policy in NSW that ensures (hopefully) that gravel extraction is only undertaken on a sustainable use basis.

We've planted a few plants within the gravel and added a few bits and pieces that inevitably end up being used in imaginative play, like banksia cones....

..a kangaroo skull....

...a very pre-loved Tonka truck and a few op-shop sourced ornaments.

And then we have the not-so-natural element of the play space - the trampoline. At least it's Australian made.

Speaking of play spaces, the theme over at Childhood 101 for July is 'House or Home.' I'll be sharing a few of our new indoor play spaces. If you have a wonderful family or kids space at your house (inside or out) that you would like to share, send photos and details to burnettmc [at] gmail [dot] com.

And don't forget to enter the Biome Giveaway if you haven't already. Entries close at midnight on Monday (4th July).

How am I going to resist this green beauty?

I visited the garden this morning to check the chooks still have plenty of food and water and that the worms are not starving. Since discovering the lead contamination in our backyard, the vegetable garden and chickens have literally been left to take care of themselves….and they have. Maybe even better than if I was fussing over them??!?

The chooks have been left to run rampant all day - every day. They initially couldn’t believe their luck and devoured all my kale seedlings in the first day. They then gobbled up half my cabbage and lettuce seedlings ….and have since let the rest be.

I have sadly been buying all our vegetables and can now really appreciate how much money we were saving by growing our own. So this morning, I was very tempted by some gorgeous broccoli ready to harvest.  Vegetables absorb lead from soil, with some absorbing more than others. Generally leafy and root vegetables absorb more than those where we consume the fruit. So Broccoli being a flower should contain very little lead…..Hmmm??? To eat or not to eat???

I haven’t provided an update on our lead since we had the further sampling done – because the results were not good and I have been in denial mode. I’m continuing to gather information on how best to make our backyard safe and hope that in the weeks to come we will have the energy to tackle the problem.

Backyard lead article in today's paper

 A quick note to say the article was in todays paper (thanks for letting me know Kez).

Further testing of backyard soil (and I hope the media are kind to me)

Last weekend I did further sampling of our backyard soil to determine how widespread the lead contamination is in our backyard. I bought an economical do-it-yourself lead testing kit from the Global Lead Advice and Support Service that allowed me to take eight further soil samples. They also sell kits of two tests for only $100 for those of you who may be interested in testing your own garden soil. We should get the results back in a week or so.

As I have mentioned previously, I’m keen to raise awareness regarding the risk of lead contamination in backyards. It concerns me that there are likely children that are unknowingly playing in lead contaminated backyards (not just in Newcastle). I am just so relieved that we are now aware of the lead in our backyard and can take measures to ensure our safety.

 As part of raising awareness I contacted the local paper. The paper was interested and a quick phone conversation and photo shoot later an article will be appearing in tomorrow’s paper. I tried to convey a positive message about wanting to raise awareness of the potential risk and that it is relatively easy to deal with lead contamination once you know it is present. I don’t want to scare people away from growing their own vegetables and I don’t want to come across as an alarmist. But in reality, I have no power over what appears in the article. I’m having visions of some alarmist heading above a picture of Little Eco and me in our garden. The photographers instructions for me to look “pensive” and comments from the journalist along the lines of “I have no control over the heading that appears above my article and your photograph”; “trust me”, and “I tell people to try and look at the bigger picture – you are doing a good thing” just add to my concern. Oh well. Fingers crossed!

[Edited to add note: Well...story wasn’t in today’s paper. Not news worthy? Maybe next week? ]