Is your garden's soil laced with herbicide?

Years ago, I helped run a community permaculture garden in Bendigo, Central Victoria.

We established a market garden on a disused football ground, which had very poor soil for growing vegetables. Being resourceful permaculturalists, we contacted the local council and a number of local mowing contractors seeking donations of ‘green waste’.

We soon had truckloads of autumn leaves and piles of grass clippings – perfect ingredients for our composting program. We made hundreds of cubic metres of compost that built the garden. We never stopped to think of the source of the material we were bringing in and what might have been sprayed on the lawns and streets where the leaves and clippings came from.

When I heard recently that hundreds of home gardeners in Melbourne and Central Victoria had discovered that active traces of broadleaf herbicides were deforming and killing their home-grown crops, and the source of the issue was traced back to commercial compost made from green waste, I got to wondering if the nutrient issues we were experiencing in some of our crops back then may have been caused by the same thing.

The presence of selective broadleaf herbicides in garden soil being sold through garden centres highlights an issue that concerns all gardeners who want to grow organic food in chemical free gardens.

Do you know what materials are being used to create the garden soil you buy to fill your new raised garden or top up your vegie beds? The fact is, at the moment there is little control of the inputs for garden soil production and regulation is still catching up, so it’s a bit ‘buyer beware’ out there.

If you can, it’s best to create your own soil by composting and growing green manures at home – that way you know where all the ingredients come from.