The Green Fork is the official blog of the Eat Well Guide. Click here to Find Good Food.

Shane Crary-Ross spent her childhood summers at farm camp, where her favorite activities were cow milking and bread baking. These days, she studies economics and social work at New York University, and spends her free time gardening, bicycling and reading science fiction.

When I first looked at my current apartment, what I loved about it most was the yard, a tangled mess of weeds covering an area larger than the entire (two-bedroom) apartment.  I moved in at the end of the summer and spent my winter dreaming of the bounty I was sure my garden would produce throughout the year. Fresh greens for spring salads. Tomatoes and peppers for summer salsas. Jars and jars worth of cucumbers for pickling and gifting to friends and family. The last of the carrots, harvested as the coldness of fall began to set in. Amidst all my daydreaming, my friend Adam, an urban permaculturalist who now lives in Denver, advised me to get my soil tested for lead.  “You have an old house,” he said, “It was probably painted with lead paint at some point.”

Spring came, and I dutifully ordered a soil test kit from the Cornell Nutrient Analysis Laboratory, but — much like a dentist’s reminder card — it lay neglected on my dresser through March, April, and May.  Finally, after reading a New York Times article about lead in urban soils, I swallowed my nerves and sent my sample off.

The news wasn’t good – my soil had 800 parts per million (ppm) lead, approximately two times (or more!) the maximum safe level for garden soil, depending on whom you talk to – some experts put it at 200, others at 500.  I didn’t know what to do – I checked out Kitchen Gardeners International for advice, and I found someone in a similar predicament, but no good answers.  I let my garden languish for a little while, and searched the internet for a solution.

All my internet prowling also showed me that I’m not alone – even the Obamas’ garden tested positive for lead, creating a panic that was later calmed when it was clarified that their lead levels were far below the safe maximum.

I found out that the news wasn’t all bad though: while lead contamination of garden soil certainly isn’t a good thing, most lead poisoning comes from direct ingestion of soil, and that – in general – plants do not readily accumulate lead.  Fruits and fruiting vegetables, specifically, are unlikely to take up any lead at all – in a 2003 survey[PDF] of contaminated garden soil in Chicago, Molly Finster, Kimberly Gray, and Helen Binns tested 52 pieces of fruit grown in soils with lead levels of up to 2100 ppm, and found lead  in only one of them[PDF], and at a low level at that.  That was enough to convince me that my cukes, tomatoes, and peppers were okay, at least for this year – though my roommate still has her doubts.  The carrots, radishes, broccoli, and lettuces on the other hand? Not so much.  Though it’s not likely that they’ll have accumulated much lead, it’s very likely that they will have accumulated at least some by the time they’re harvested. So I’ve replaced those sections of my garden with flowers, and have tried to transplant some of the hardier looking sprouts to containers on my balcony.  I’m still hoping they’ll make it!

Many experts say that urban gardeners should assume that they have lead in their soil, especially if they’re gardening near a structure that was built before 1978, when lead paint was widely used.  If that’s your situation, don’t be like me – get your soil tested before you plant.  I used Cornell, but Brooklyn College also offers a soil testing service, as do many university laboratories around the country, and you can order home-testing kits on the internet or buy them at stores like Home Depot, though I’d be wary of their accuracy.

Here is a great explanation of what soil test results look like.  If you do find lead, it’s not the end of the world.  I plan to do the rest of my edible gardening in containers, and grow only flowers in the yard, but if I were planning to stay in my house for longer than a couple more years, I would sow seeds of plants that would phytoremediate the soil, or take the lead out of it.  I might also work on altering its pH level, because high soil pH immobilizes lead, making it even less likely to be absorbed by plants.

The bottom line is that a little soil contamination shouldn’t stop you from gardening.  Don’t eat the dirt, of course, but don’t panic.  After all, as Edie Stone, the executive director of Green Thumb, said in the New York Times article that finally convinced me to send my soil sample in, “You can’t assume that what you buy at the grocery store is any safer.”  Now, I’ve got a little container paradise on my balcony, and the flowers in the yard make me smile whenever I come and go.  I harvested a couple of the cucumbers the other day, and – after washing them with a 1% vinegar solution like the Cornell Horticulture program suggested – my boyfriend and I enjoyed a delicious salad.