Fennel and oregano struggle to survive the backyard renovations. The pool's consistency has been more like gumbo lately.
It’s all my fault.
I wanted to get rid of the aggressive weeds. They kept growing up between the cracked and sunken bricks in my backyard. These bricks were around the swimming pool, and being on a rumbling city bus route had beaten them up good. I wanted to re-pave the whole thing using the same bricks but with a better foundation. And the installation is going great so far…
But I forgot about my plants. And now they all have a fine brick dust layer on their leaves and the soil.
So much for organic.
Now I’m wondering how dangerous it is to eat things in my garden that are covered in brick dust. Will taking up a layer of the soil and washing the leaves do the trick? Or will one bite of this stuff have us clutching the porcelain God? And now I’m starting to panic. What the hell else lands on my edible plants that I don’t see? City chemicals and sediment that sneak into my little backyard. Roofwater runoff. Rat contamination. Should I have the soil tested? Ugh! Why is being natural so hard?!?
Ah the plight of the urban gardener. The struggle to balance human infrastructure with natural anything is damn near futility, and yet we keep trying. Sometimes I dream of big rural acres where I can plant to my green thumb’s content, alas, I love city living too much.
So I’m back to fantasizing about my own backyard version of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. My own little urban oasis where creole tomatoes and strawberries hang off the balcony, peppers and okra sprout from old buckets, tufts of lemongrass and tarragon sneak around the base of my palm trees, bay leaf and rosemary frame the doorway, raspberry vines climb the columns, and oregano, parsley, and thyme spill over window boxes.
Oh wake up bitch. You have brick dust. And a dirty pool. And suffocating vegetable seedlings.
Maybe next season.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I wouldn’t worry about it. Just give them a good rinse. We used to live by the highway and railway in Birmingham; our tomatoes and stuff would get a lot of particulates on them. I just washed it off.
Roofwater runoff should be fine- AFAIK you can drink roofwater (you want to filter it first) as long as your roof doesn’t contain a whole lot of zinc flashing. Rat poop is just manure. ;)
If you are worried about groundwater and contaminated sediment, you might want to look into container gardening. Or building a square foot garden planter.
Isn’t a brick just baked dirt anyway? Or are those concrete pavers?
@Ben J: We’ll likely be fine. But somehow I do not think of rat poop as healthy in any way. I already do container gardening, but I don’t have space for a square foot garden unfortunately.
@rcs: Bricks USED to be just baked dirt. Who knows what other creepy reinforcing agents they put in them now. I might have the twinkies of bricks!
Bricks USED to be just baked dirt.
Hopefully yours aren’t. I went to the St. Joe Brick facility and the guy showing me around said they got different colors by varying the amount of time the bricks spent in the kiln. But I guess you don’t want to find out that’s not the case by using your family as guinea pigs!