Would you eat it?

Octarine wrote:My best friend in HS had a vegetable plot till the mom tested the soil. I turns out that this area was a staging ground for the construction of the el tracks in Evanston back at the turn of the century and the ground was loaded with lead and other nasties. They had a company come and take out many cubic yards of earth (8' down IIRC) and put in new topsoil. It cost a pretty penny back in 1986.

Yes, I'm pretty sure that's where my plot is right now; I remember one of the 'oldtimers' telling me they had to fix the soil at around that time. I am with eatchicago, though - soil testing isn't that hard, though I keep forgetting to do it, myself (I'm gardening on a rented plot whose original soil was tested, so I'm not worried about contaminants) - basically, you just mail off some of your dirt to one of the companies - this one I found on the Extension office soil testing page offers an easy .pdf to walk you through the process.(I can't recommend one over another, just this one happened to have a more navigable web page and offers testing for contaminants)