Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Extra Extra, Read All About It....Here


Well to my surprise the Times article came out on line this evening. It'll be out in print tomorrow.

Just a few points before you rush to read it.

  • I rent an apartment, not a house in Brooklyn.
  • My vegetable patch is barely bountiful, produces vegetable snacks -with exception of the green beans and herbs.
  • My soil lead in the side yard is at least 50 times N.Y.S. background levels according to the numbers I received from The Environmental Sciences Analytical Center or 90 times the U.S. agricultural soil levels average according to the University of Minnesota Extension.
  • My vegetables are all in wooden planter boxes or plastic nursery pots. The soil in them is a mix of bagged potting soil and bagged compost, not "nursery dirt."
That covers my corrections. I spoke to Dr. Cheng at Brooklyn College today and he has agreed to put together a short bit about dealing with heavy metal contamination in NYC soils. He told me he is getting plenty of new samples since listing his service on nycgarden. I will also post soon about the simple things you can do to help if your soil has high levels of lead. Start with this one thing -keep your kids from eating the dirt!

Now read it and weep lead!

Then compare to nycgarden post My Farm (where all this started) and Mutterings on the Mutter. Its a shame thy blog did not get a mention. But the Times photographer, Patrick, did a good job despite the toxically bright sun that day.

I'd like to post about how the garden is doing before I split for Weir Farm. So moving on.

**UPDATE**

The online addition corrected the "9 times" to read " 90 times" based on the facts presented later in the story. Alas, the Late Edition print can not say the same.


7 comments:

  1. They didn't mention: YOUR. BLOG???????????

    Dudes! How did you find him in the first place? I'm guessing, I'm guessing.

    They've already started with the corrections, though :-)

    But that's great. Except for the blog thing, which they may CORRECT! Sorry, shouting here.

    Congrats, Mr Meuschke :-)

    "Nursery dirt"....funny caption to very nice vegetable garden pic.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm wiggin and waggin on response to the article. I'm glad you noticed what jumped out at me -NURSERY DIRT!

    What I am sure I called bagged compost/topsoil/potting mix but may have also said Farfard product and/or seafood compost I bought at Gowanus and J&L! So that converts to NURSERY DIRT in Times land!

    Thank you though, for the support in the BLOG.
    Really, too bad they didn't mention it.
    And what's up with the lame links on times online. Brooklyn College links to useless info instead of the Analytics Center, plastic bags to uh, plastic bags stuff- which helps NO ONE, so why add the link????

    Thank you, Marie

    ReplyDelete
  3. Look for some hits to the blog via Twitter. Just tweeted on the article, but linked to this post instead.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanx Xris.

    You are ahead of me by leaps and bounds. I've yet to tweet. But I saw a hilarious and dark graphic on a news program the other day that showed a black bird with glowing eye flying, then land. Out of its body came, I don't know, circular sonar waves or something, It was kind of creepy and shows how "old tv" news thinks of twittering.

    ReplyDelete
  5. PS.

    I noticed the PRINT edition actually had the link printed to the Brooklyn College ESAC. So at least that, but funny that its not in the on line edition.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I saw the article and the pics do look good considering the rather "glaring' sun conditions. I also wanted to thank you for the coreopsis and yarrow you gave me that day. They seem to have perked right up after a day of looking a bit blah. If you want to stop by and check out how they are doing sometime, we'd love to have you. Just come on down a few blocks!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Congrat - i really wouldn't have thought any less of you if you did use "nursery dirt"!

    Hope it will inspire people to get their soil tested.

    ReplyDelete

If I do not respond to your comment right away, it is only because I am busy pulling out buckthorn, creeping charlie, and garlic mustard...