In my backyard – Week 6

The magnolia has been in my backyard since before I can remember.
We grew up together over the years.
It was an early bloomer, showing some the first signs of spring each year with it’s fuzzy little buds.
It’s twisted branches were brittle and seemed to form little hands.

The magnolia started to die off slowly.
Some branches broke off in a late spring ice storm a few years back.
Maybe the open wound made it susceptible to fungus or disease.
First some branches on one side dried up, then two thirds of the tree canopy.

We called an arborist to do a house call and give a diagnosis to see if the magnolia could be saved.
It was unlikely to make it after cutting back the parts that were already dying off.
Plus the tree’s advanced age made a successful recovery even less likely.
It was a difficult decision, made over a number of family meetings, but ultimately we realized the magnolia needed to be cut down.

I arranged to be there when the crew came to take down the tree.
It was really like loosing an old friend.
The crew was very skilled and respectful, but it was still a violent process and a very sad day.
I asked to keep a couple of slices of the trunk; one for my brother and one for me.

Ever an optimist, I tried to look at the bright side of loosing the tree.
I had always wanted to plant garden but was limited by the shade of the giant magnolia, which created an embracing umbrella of privacy but also excessive dampness and a haven for mosquitos.
Our neighbor from the church behind the house confessed that she never liked the tree and was happy it was gone – she said it gave her allergies in the spring.

Without the magnolia, I needed to reacquaint myself with the backyard.
Even with the tree cut and the stump ground down, I could still feel its aura occupying the giant canopy. That Thanksgiving we gathered all of the extended family from around the country and took a family photo where the tree once stood.

Anticipating an intense feeling of loss without the magnolia the following spring I planted 150 tulips. Digging holes for the bulbs I came across hundreds of smaller bulbs clustered around a larger one in soil that had otherwise been undisturbed for years.
I wasn’t quite sure what they were so I left them alone.
Some lily of the valley leaves came loose too so I could observe how they grow underground, sending shoots below the soil to launch the next generation.

A friend suggested testing the soil before starting on the other gardening experiments I had in mind for the spring.
I collected samples in plastic bags and sent them to the Brooklyn College Soil lab.
When the results came back, I was completely shocked!
The level of lead was 783 parts per million, almost two times the levels the EPA deems to be safe.
There were also high levels of heavy metals including arsenic.
As I planned for the backyard vegetable garden I had always dreamed of, I was suddenly confronted by the harsh reality that the soil is toxic.

In the spring, the tulips bloomed beautifully along with some daffodils that were already there as well as the Star of Bethlehem (the clustering bulbs that I couldn’t identify in the fall.)
(It turns out they are an invasive species that are often spread through other bulbs like tulips or daffodils). Right around this time there were a number of environmental initiatives in Greenpoint, the result of winning the lawsuit against Exxon for a giant underground oil spill that has been slowly leaking into the aquifer under the community for decades.

So what to do now?
It was already late May, time to get things in the ground especially with the short growing season in the North East.
My boyfriend built three large planter boxes to place above the existing soil in the yard.
It would take a lot of dirt to fill these boxes before I could even start to grow anything, and how do I know that any other dirt I bring in isn’t toxic as well?

Luckily, a woman at one of the environmental workshops, did a course in permaculture and told me about lasagna gardening.
She gave me a list of local places to source materials, including horse poop, dirt, compost, cardboard, etc.. and quite exact instructions for how to combine the ingredients to start to build up clean, healthy soil in my boxes.
So armed with a box of garbage bags, gloves, and a shovel, I set out to the horse stables near Prospect Park.
It turns out horse poop is mostly straw, since this is what they eat and then it’s mixed with more straw, so it really doesn’t smell all that bad.

I covered the wire bottom of my elevated boxes with a cotton fabric to help keep the new clean soil contained.
I laid down cardboard and then started layering the horse poop and was on my way to filling the boxes and creating healthy soil.
Then there was the garden soil from Home Depot – what’s to say that this purchased soil is any better than what’s in my backyard to begin with?
It’s not tested or certified or regulated in any way.
Then finally there was the trip to Build It Green for buckets of worm castings – or “black gold” as it’s also known.
After sourcing all of the materials and mixing together the right proportions it took quite a while but I was finally ready to plant.

I planted two types of tomatoes, cucumber, pepper, butternut squash, and a number of herbs: thyme, oregano, and basil.
I really had no idea how to plant and grow things so each step involved researching online, learning about companion planting, the importance of thinning seedlings, etc…

Throughout this learning process there was still the question of what to do about the toxic soil in the rest of the backyard…
I researched about hyper-accumulators that concentrate and absorb the existing lead from the soil and planted sunflowers along with my brother and his friend for this purpose.
I felt like Jack and the beanstalk checking on them as they continued to grow.
The sunflowers grew to be taller than all of us.

Further research revealed that in order to use sunflowers for remediation, every last part of the sunflower, stalk and roots need to be removed from the ground and technically should be disposed of as toxic waste.
In fact, letting these sunflowers dry and discompose in place could actually be even more dangerous since it pulls up lead that may be sitting dormant below closer to the surface where it is more accessible.

So what exactly are the risks of lead exposure? Is it dangerous to touch, breath, eat?

It seems lead is most dangerous to young kids who are always touching everything and then putting their hands into their mouths, especially since their brains are still developing.
I came across an article from the 80’s in the local paper about elevated levels of lead found in community gardens in Greenpoint. I am the kid in the photo.

I learned there are precautions we can take when handling lead, washing hands after being outside (especially before eating), and taking off shoes in the house to keep from spreading the lead inside onto floors, rugs, etc…

One of the community workshops helped to put the lead contamination issues in perspective for me.
Lead is a naturally occurring element.
It becomes dangerous only after humans extract and consolidate it, adding it into common materials such as houseplant (until to was banned in 1978) or even water pipes (until the Safe Drinking Water Act Amendments of 1986).

At the end of the summer, I dug up all of the soil around the roots of the sunflowers.
Still not quite sure how to properly dispose of toxic waste, I throw it in the regular trash rationalizing to myself that it can’t be that much worse than everything else that ends up in the landfill.

And how did the soil in my backyard get to be so contaminated anyway?
Greenpoint has some of the highest levels of lead in the whole city.
As a mixed used neighborhood, Greenpoint always had homes right next to factories.
It;s also considered to be one of the birthplaces of the industrial revolution.
Without environmental regulations, waste and toxins were dumped directly into the ground and waterways and spewed into the air.
We are now faced with the legacy of these decades of pollution and degradation of the natural environment.

Next phase (I may need to hold off on this section for now, leaving it as another episode of the project for next time?):

2017
The second year in the garden.

Some of last year’s tomatoes fell outside of the boxes and started growing new tomato seedlings. What to do with them? Kill them, move them, leave them? (Articles)

Compost explosion. Cantaloupes start growing in the center of the garden. I can’t find any articles about lead and cantaloupes.