Ya’ll might wanna grow some hyperaccumulators (such as sunflowers, oyster mushrooms, mustard greens, vetiver, etc) around your house and/or in your garden for a few years before you plant leafy vegetables so you don’t end up consuming heavy metals.
If you’re uncertain, most state universities have soil testing labs that offer cheap, easily understood soil tests that can tell you for sure whether you’ve got lead, arsenic, etc. in your soils.
searching for “university extension soil test [your state]” will probably turn up helpful info!
This is a good thing to note, (also sunflowers are very pretty and easy to grow when you’re first learnign how to garden) but also searching “(nearest university) Extension” and “(your county) Extension” is GREAT because there’s ALL KINDS of cool services out there if you want to get into growing your own food or helping the local enviornment or installing solar panels on your house or buying livestock or- There’s a lot, it’s AWESOME, it’s usually stunningly low-cost and it’s veyr, very solarpunk so I encourage all of you to take a gander at the programs offered.
The Cooperative Extension System is run in each state by the state’s land grant university/ies (which might not be the ones you think, in NY it’s Cornell rather than any of the SUNYs): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_State_Research,_Education,_and_Extension_Service#Cooperative_Extension_System It’s also where all 4H programs are based!
Some also offer classes! They’re taxpayer funded, so that means the wealthy ones can offer tons of resources. If you can’t find much going on in your state, nearby states may also have excellent info that can apply to your area. Some of the famous heavyweights are Cornell / New York and UC Davis / California, tons of research, plant breeding programs, and all around useful info coming outta those places.
As a botanist I’m contractually obligated to add this any time I see posts about phytoremediation–if you do this you CANNOT let the sunflowers/msuhrooms/etc decompose back into your garden. You cannot add them to your compost pile. That just puts the heavy metals right back into your soil!!!! You need to bag them up and dispose of them elsewhere–traditional landfill waste is probably going to be easiest for most people.
These plants ACCUMULATE metals. They do NOT break them down. You’re pulling them up from the ground and storing them in the plant tissue, so, don’t consume or compost that tissue afterwards.
