- This event has passed.
Help Us Fix Our ‘Pizza’ Garden at the Pickens Library
October 11 @ 10:00 am – 12:00 pm
UPDATE – SUNDAY 8:30AM: We’re going to go for it! It’s a bit grey and gloomy, but it looks like the rain is going to hold off. Come play in the dirt with us!
UPDATE – SATURDAY 10:30PM: We’ve been watching the weather, and it looks like it’s going to cooperate. Check back Sunday morning for a final decision. Hope to see you in the morning!
Join us on Sunday to:
* Plant pea seeds strategically in the Pizza garden to help us identify if we have an issue with the soil
* Participate in the test by taking home some pea seeds (pots and soil also provided by KPB) to grow some plants to use as controls.
* Help install a networked olla self-watering system
* Have fun
* Play in the dirt
* Meet new friends
The History:
In 2024, we started developing a ‘Pizza’ themed garden at the Pickens County Library. We brought in lots of soil and compost, and we tended to the garden as we would our other Edible Pickens gardens, but very few plants thrived.
Most of the plants we planted died rather quickly, which lead us to look more closely at the other areas with soil. Nothing was growing anywhere. One of our theories is that there were many years of spraying to prevent weeds and other unwanted plants, and even though we brought in good materials, maybe toxins leached up.
It’s not possible to send a soil sample away for a toxicity test to ‘test for everything.’ So we’re going to use plants to help us figure out what the issue might be.
We received a grant from Keep America Beautiful to help with this project.
First, we added some hardscaping this past summer – local creek rocks around the edge as a ‘crust’ and stone paver paths as the ‘slices.’ Thanks to Brad at Southscape for helping with these materials!
Now that the summer has cooled, we are going to plant peas strategically throughout the garden to begin the process of determining if we have a serious problem.
Water is an issue in this garden, so we putchased an olla watering system that we will install at this event to make sure our pea seeds are hydrated.
Then, once we have more information, we’ll know how to best move forward to remediate the soil.
To learn more about using bioassay to test for toxins, here’s a good resource: https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/conducting-a-bioassay-for-herbicide-residues