Yardwork: Gardening is heavy metal

Outside/In

NHPR

Society & Culture, Documentary, Natural Sciences, Nature, Science

4.7 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 18 August 2022

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Welcome to Yardwork, a summer yard and garden miniseries from Outside/In. We’re sharing three stories about our relationships with the land around us: the front yard, the backyard, and down the block. This is part two. Sometimes, when Maureen McMurray is digging in her backyard garden, she encounters something she didn’t expect: a lump of coal. She’s planted vegetables in the same soil for a few years now. But as she prepared for an upcoming growing season, she wondered: is her homegrown produce poisoning her family? The answer is nicer than you might think. Featuring Maureen McMurray, Nate Bernitz, and Ganga Hettiarachchi. SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In. Subscribe to our (free) newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram + Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook LINKS Find your state’s cooperative extension and soil testing service in this directory. Cornell Small Farms Program offers a guide to soil contamination, including ranges of safe levels, with the caveat that toxicity depends on factors like soil texture, pH, and organic matter. The EPA’s primer to lead in soil. More information on managing the health risks of lead in New Hampshire soils from the UNH Cooperative Extension. This open source paper goes even deeper on issues of urban gardening, soil contamination, and public awareness. CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by Justine Paradis Edited by Taylor Quimby Additional editing help from Nate Hegyi, Felix Poon, Rebecca Lavoie and Jessica Hunt. Executive producer: Rebecca Lavoie Title art and photo: Justine Paradis Special thanks to Tom Lemien, Anna Paltseva, and Jim Garvin. Music by Walt Adams, Nul Tiel Records, Alexandra Woodward, Martin Gauffin, Blue Dot Sessions, and Arthur Benson. Outside/In theme by Breakmaster Cylinder Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	today's tale starts in the garden. Hey, you're dressing the part with your
0:08.6	overalls. A garden and Concord, New Hampshire, that Justine visited a little
0:13.2	while ago to talk with Maureen McMurray. So this is my garden. Tomatoes do really
0:19.6	well, snap peas. You'll see there's some strawberries. I have a little section
0:24.0	that's just all herbs and they thrive. Full disclosure, Maureen used to work on our
0:29.4	show, but these days she's a listener. And for the past few years Maureen's been
0:34.1	living in a cute neighborhood near a park with her family. She and her husband
0:38.0	have a seven-year-old and when they moved in, she dug up the bushes in an old flower
0:42.2	bed to grow vegetables. And it grown things from seed back here, so the plants are
0:48.0	alive. And the reason Maureen is clarifying here that the plants are in fact alive
0:51.6	is because often she'll be digging in her vegetable garden and suddenly her
0:56.1	shovel will hit something. A distinctive, porous, rock-like lump. I mean you can
1:01.9	see it right here. Yeah, from here you can see it. There are just chunks. That's a
1:08.0	lot of coal. And her question is, I'm growing stuff that's in the same soil as all
1:16.8	of this coal in my poisoning myself and my family.
1:29.8	This is outside in. I'm Nate Hegey. And I'm Justine Paradise. And this is Yard
1:35.2	Work, our Summer Yard and Garden mini-series. We've got three stories on our
1:40.1	relationships with the land around us. This is part two, the backyard vegetable patch.
1:45.6	For the past few years Maureen's been growing vegetables in a backyard in New Hampshire's
1:49.6	capital city. In the same soil where she's also been finding lumps of coal. So does this mean
1:56.9	that the soil is contaminated? Today, Justine reports on how to know if it's safe to grow
2:02.7	vegetables in the soil in your backyard.
	...

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