Scientific Gardening

[madd0ct0r]

ok. I have just found out my garden is contaminated with dioxins.

So, no eating the fruit from the three fruit trees. The rest of the garden is a builder's wasteland, 20cm of sand and rubble on top of thick grey (evil) clay. I'd been planning on installing raised vegetable beds around the perimeter and tililing the center, possibly with some pots on.

But it seems not to be.

Remembering the conversation this month about hydroponics, aquaponics and the aquapoceia various board members have set up, I was wondering if anyone had some good ideas for this situation.

I'm in central vietnam (so tropical), the garden is 5/4m and walled to 3m high on all four sides (back wall gets morning sun over the house.)

So far I'd just written off the beds as decorative only and have a shelf/rack of herbs in clean sand across the back wall

[LaCroix]

Raised beds:

1 - Make a sturdy table, put some walls around it and fill it with dirt of your liking (Garden store or an uncontaminated source in the wild) Maybe make it out of concrete- so it will last longer (Dirt and tropical climate are usually not good for wooden construction). Have an accessible open space below so you can cut all roots that make it out and try to get into the dioxin-soil below.

2 - Proceed with gardening. You can even make it a series of shelves to increase arable area.

[Broomstick]

^ Basically what he said - some form of container gardening.

Here are some links to get you started:

http://ag.arizona.edu/pubs/garden/mg/ve ... ainer.html
http://gardening.about.com/od/vegetable ... Veggie.htm
http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/exte ... ainer.htmL

this one lists container sizes for various vegetables. Unfortunately, many sizes are in "gallons", which are roughly the size of 4 liters for quick and dirty conversion.

You might want to check out square foot gardening. It is mostly geared to raised beds with soil in the location, but you can easily adapt it to container gardening. Your space will be constrained not by the area of your garden but by the need to use uncontaminated soil. If you start small and build gradually you can wind up with a very nice, extensive garden without driving yourself crazy.

[Molyneux]

Is there any way to remove the dioxin contamination? I mean, is this coming up from the water table, or is it from the ground itself?

[madd0ct0r]

Its from being near where the American Airbase was.

They used to dump excess chemicals (Napalm, Agent Orange ect) into a swamp a few hundred meters from where the house is. The actual chemical stores on the airbase were leaky too. In answer to your question it's probably the groundwater, but it's serious enough for the government to issue warnings to locals about growing food, or eating locally grown food.

This is one of the few areas left in Vietnam where the chemical concentration is still high enough to be a real problem.

It's worrying for my wife, who spent 18 years growing up in the house, shopping at the local market and eating home grown fruit. It might make having children intresting.

[Broomstick]

Or it might not - it all depends on how much she's absorbed over the years, and the only definitive way to know that is to test her for it.

Chemical contamination is one of those instances where it might be better for a child to bottle feed rather than breast feed, as some things can be passed through mother's milk.

I'm not sure if testing would help her or not - I mean, if she's tested and it turns out she has low levels of contamination that's reassuring, of course, but if she gets the opposite results, well, that opens up new levels of worry. We have people in the US who have had severe chemical exposure and gone on to have normal kids, and others who have had less happy outcomes.

Poisoned groundwater is one of my worries, as we have a well for our water and we're close to some extremely heavy industry - the sort of places that manufacture the sort of toxins that wound up in your soil. Our water gets tested regularly and so far so good, but if the well goes bad... well, we'll have to move. I just hope we'd find out BEFORE it causes us health problems.

[Molyneux]

Or it might not - it all depends on how much she's absorbed over the years, and the only definitive way to know that is to test her for it.

Chemical contamination is one of those instances where it might be better for a child to bottle feed rather than breast feed, as some things can be passed through mother's milk.

I'm not sure if testing would help her or not - I mean, if she's tested and it turns out she has low levels of contamination that's reassuring, of course, but if she gets the opposite results, well, that opens up new levels of worry. We have people in the US who have had severe chemical exposure and gone on to have normal kids, and others who have had less happy outcomes.

Poisoned groundwater is one of my worries, as we have a well for our water and we're close to some extremely heavy industry - the sort of places that manufacture the sort of toxins that wound up in your soil. Our water gets tested regularly and so far so good, but if the well goes bad... well, we'll have to move. I just hope we'd find out BEFORE it causes us health problems.

Wouldn't that open up the heavy industry companies to rather a large class-action lawsuit?
Hell, I can't think that the media exposure would be anything less than warm towards the "plucky underdog homeowner" side.

[Broomstick]

Of course.

But does money alone every make up for lives blasted by chemical exposure - cancer, birth defects, neurological disorders...

There have been such lawsuits in the US. Some of them were successful. I'd still prefer to have healthy water than a mutli-million dollar award in 10 years.

[Molyneux]

Of course.

But does money alone every make up for lives blasted by chemical exposure - cancer, birth defects, neurological disorders...

There have been such lawsuits in the US. Some of them were successful. I'd still prefer to have healthy water than a mutli-million dollar award in 10 years.

A very good point.

[madd0ct0r]

A number of Vietnamese have tried suing American companies before. Zilch.

(the USA soldiers got a payout though)

[Broomstick]

And it took them how long to get it?

Plenty of exposed people died before that case was settled. Their families got nothing other than burying someone early.

[madd0ct0r]

True, anyway, I'm quite taken with the idea of hanging baskets with cherry tomatoes hanging down.

thanks all.