Free Workshop: Understanding and Addressing Soil Contamination

From backyard growing to community and boulevard gardening, ensuring your soil is healthy is the first step to any urban agriculture project

Soils can build up heavy metals and other pollutants over time from a range of sources — including industry, transportation, construction materials, and unsustainable land use practices. The first step to any urban agriculture project is getting to know the ground beneath your feet by assessing soil health, identifying potential contaminants, and taking steps to improve soil quality.The Compost Education Centre’s Healing City Soils program offers free soil testing for urban food growers to analyze heavy metal concentrations and their bioavailability in the region’s soils, and create a virtual soil map of the Capital Regional District to highlight areas where heavy metal contamination may need to be addressed before growing food.