Hi so some of you know im in iowa. Cedar falls to be exsact. We had a 500 year flood.we are used to this river .but this flood was insane. my farm is 2 1/2 miles from the river and we even had 4 feet in our gardens and 2 feet in the barns. we were lucky allot of our neibors have no home now. farmers are qiuting,,The fields are verry flooded. theres houses ,buildings ,bridges here coverd in corn stalks and beans grain ,,all from upstreem farms,, even seen cows and pigs going down river. annyway theres lots of storrys. i did this blog about it,its just wat was arround me ,,(scrool down and hit previus page as its a big one http://scgrahamfoto.com/blog1/ we pulled all the drywall and furniture out of the barn,so thats no big deal. Thew garlic and herb farm is another storry. most of my garlic beds are yellow now from 4 feet of watter watter being on them and they are dead. the garlic crop is a totle loss.Took my 5 years to build up my beds and crop,,gone in 2 weeks of watter. the smell of pesticeds,desil,gas and all that the floods bring made me deside to replace all the dirt and replant,start over. gotta love this river with all its might,what a butifull spirit lovin ya Frog
so should i have my wells and dirt and plants tested.?? FEMA handed out kits to farmers but we missed that as we were stranded on our little island. OR should i just take all the dirt and plants out and start over??
Definitely have your well tested. As to your fields, it's going to be a matter of letting them dry out. If your soil was friable and not overtilled, it should come back. What plants that will survive will be probably a lost cause, but don't hurry and rush out to till and replant too soon or you can do more harm than good. How would you plan on replacing all the dirt? Are we talking container or raised beds?
www.fungi.com this should work then on the left click search and type in bioremediation dont no how much it will tell you but paul stamets is on the cutting edge of this science! but definatly test your well!
In this series of experiments, our group made two other significant discoveries. One involved a mushroom from the old growth forest that produced an army of crystalline entities advancing in front of the growing mycelium, disintegrating when they encountered E. coli, sending a chemical signal back to the mother mycelium that, in turn, generated what appears to be a customized macro-crystal which attracted the motile bacteria by the thousands, summarily stunning them. The advancing mycelium then consumed the E. coli, effectively eliminating them from the environment. The other discovery, which I am not fully privy to, involves the use of one of my strains in the destruction of biological and chemical warfare agents. The research is currently classified by the Defense department as one mushroom species has been found to break down VX, the potent nerve gas agent Saddam Hussein was accused of loading into warheads of missiles during the Gulf War. This discovery is significant, as VX is very difficult to destroy. Our fungus did so in a surprising manner. from paul stametes
Thanks yup i got my watter test kit yesterday. These are inground beds and some raised beds. i would remove the top soil with the skid loader and replace it with new top soil. the herb and flower gardens are coming back strong now. The garlic is lookin alittle better now, the romanian garlic .its totally rotten from haveing 4 feet of watter on them longer than the other beds witch are on higher ground. The vegetable beds are coming back allso,,,,just not shure if i wanna eat anny of it. ill look into the fungi thing ..thanks for the tips Frog
I say just let them dry out and don't bring in the backhoe or skiploader just yet. Time and air is what they need. Replacing topsoil is hardly ever the answer to anything. Mother Nature has a system for renewal. She doesn't always work well with our time tables, but her methods usually prove the most beneficial. In the fall after harvest use that skiploader to bring in some manure or compost for the beds for next year. Don't till it just top dress and wait to till until spring. I wouldn't be afraid to eat it. Unless you live downstream from big pharma, a mine or a defense supplier. Think about it we use manure on our gardens, we buy it by the bag. Sewage plants use plants to clean the water we find in our taps. If your well tests ok, why not eat the fruits of your labors? Heavy metal's would be a concern of mine if a mill, factory or mine was close by, but you never mentioned one.
Yup lots of stuff upstream from us,,,even a stash of agent orange that the county had. they lost 3 barrels in the flood. not to mention allot of gas and desil from junk yards and farms. the manure isnt no big deal as we get hog farm run off constintly. Our river here the CEDAR RIVER has the largest concentration of fecal bacteria than anny other river in the world,becouse of all the farms neer the river. yup yup i think im going to harvest as normal. i replenish evry year with compost so ill do that agian and start over
So sorry to hear you lost the farm. I'd use the old soil for ornamentals for several years and retest it (hey, you could get a new sideline income off cut flowers). Staments' company came in and plugged the Hayman burn area, and that area just might get trees again (a common drought effect is that land that has had drought for several years will become meadow land after a fire, as there is not enough moisture for trees to get started). I'd definitely consider his options.
