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Growing above a soakaway?
lb191
Posts: 80
in Fruit & veg
Hi,
Does anyone have any experience or knowledge about the implications of growing above a raw sewage soak away?
I'm under the impression the soakaway is very close to where I want to put some raised beds. How might I pin point it's location?
The general consensus seems to be that the vegetables uptake lots of nasties that would then be eaten but I can't find anything scientific. I find it hard to believe.
Would it be different for a fruit tree?
Its going to be a big headache to relocate the beds so any educated input about distances from the source or actual risk would be great.
Thanks
0
Posts
What risk? If it's raw sewage, which I doubt, plants will only grow all the better for it! I grew up with an old outside loo up the garden and the 'spoil' was thrown onto a nearby border where the dwarf conifers grew beautifully! It's surely gone through some treatment prior to being allowed to soak away and I wouldn't have thought there'd be any risk. Must be deep down, too. Perhaps the only people to correctly advise might be those who install and service these things. City council?
H-C
Outflow from a septic tank?
Where was consensus formed. A septic tank soakaway is several feet down. What kind of 'nasties' do you think a vegetable might take up? They won't absorb bacteria or intestinal worms and you wash root veg so anything that might conceivably be on the surface is gone.
We've got too sterile and frightened of our own shadows and s**t
In the sticks near Peterborough
Perfectly put! I think the answer is to go ahead and put your beds anywhere you want, they'll be fine.
H-C
I believe that workers at sewage treatment works have been known to nurture the tomato plants that appear around the place ....... and presumably they then eat the fruits ........... no point in nurturing them otherwise
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
It's actually illegal to discharge raw sewage into a soakaway.
My neighbour's veg patch is in raised beds over the top of the soakaway from our (shared) septic tank. It's a modern one - they call them water treatment tanks now - and the soakaway is clean enough to be allowed to discharge directly into a stream. They have raised beds because the ground around the soakaways can be wetter than the surrounding area when we get very heavy rain for prolonged periods, but on the whole you wouldn't notice any difference to the 'natural' ground.
So, if your septic tank really is discharging raw sewage into soakaways, you (if you own it) or the owners of it need to get it cleaned and fixed PDQ before the Environment Agency turn up and fine the owner for contaminating the ground water.
More likely it's not discharging raw sewage and there's absolutely no reason not to put any plants, including veg there, apart from being aware of the potential for water-logging unless the soil is very sandy. Raised beds and dry paths would be a good plan.
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
We have a soakaway septic tank, it's fairly new (2008) and I have grown veg on the edge of it's drain field for the last two years, we're still here. The tank itself is around 3m down and the drains have to be lower than the tank, so although the land slopes away from that point everything is going to be well under veg root depth, trees will probably love the increased nutrients, and the large mirabelle that sits on the other side of the field certainly does well.
That link is interesting but wow so many restrictions, there's nothing on top of most of our drain field but the entire area is large (15m each way), and unless you saw it installed, trying to avoid the pipes in the way it mentions is going to be practically impossible
Last edited: 05 April 2017 13:34:50
Thanks for the replies.
Yes it's a septic tank soak away. I had assumed it was raw sewage after reading about it needing to be so deep for the required purification to occur before human contact.
The few related topics that came up on google all suggested that it was a danger to eat such crops grown near to soak aways. Maybe there are different types.
I'll check out the link and appreciate the reassurances! Thanks again.
Ok well I think we'll be ok after reading the link. The soil isn't sandy, more clay if anything. Plus raised beds should help.
We do plan to build a greenhouse on the same area but there were other structures in the same place so I think I'll risk it.