Soil Contaminant Series: Planning Your Garden Site

Continuing Education Hours: Claim 1.5 hours if you watch the video, do the reading, and complete the quiz.

This Plants Plus is part of a Soil Contaminant Series. It provides an introduction to soil contaminants in Wisconsin as they pertain to gardening. This module focuses on general soil contaminant information and how to plan for a new garden site.

You’ll learn to:

Identify common soil contaminants of concern in Wisconsin.
Identify the factors to consider when siting a garden in an urban/rural setting.
Identify strategies for gardening and resources for safely gardening on contaminated soils.

WATCH

Video segment presented by Geoff Siemering, Outreach Specialist, UW-Madison Department of Soil Science
Video segment is ~15 minutes long.

READ

After watching the video, review the general concepts of gardening on potentially contaminated soils and learn more about the potential contamination issues associated with gardening on old orchards.

Reusing Potentially Contaminated Landscapes: Growing Gardens in Urban Soils, Environmental Protection Agency
Lead and Arsenic in Soil at Old Fruit Orchards: Frequently Asked Questions, Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection

PRACTICE

Now it’s time to practice these concepts! Below are two practice activities focusing on soil contaminants and planning your garden site. When you’ve finished the first activity, you will complete a short module completion quiz. You only need to turn in the quiz to show you completed the module.

Practice the Concepts

Instructions: There are six slides with an activity on each. Answer each activity and click the blue Check if applicable. To advance to the next slide, click the tiny black arrow on the bottom middle of the box. To make this fullscreen, click the two pointing arrows on the bottom right corner of the box.

Quiz: Tell Us What You Learned

Take the quiz

Report your continuing education hours in the Online Reporting System.