g'day andy, as it is a storm water drain, which takes run of from streets and footpaths as well as other homes, i wouldn't be too concerned especially if you grow mostly above ground crops like the fruits and brassica's etc.,. then with root crops ensure they are properly washed for eating if they get cooked then i'd be thinking that would negate any other things as most what you talking abut would be adhere to the outside of the food. whatever may be in the storm water comes from the air mostly so is here when it rains down on your garden. len Here is a link that might be useful: lens garden page

I work with a lot of general contractors who develop both single rural residential lots as well as multi-unit subdivision lots. They all do it the same way. They located the spot where the foundation of the house will go and mark it. They begin grading the lot. The priority is two-fold; to make sure the foundation is not sitting on topsoil, like another poster stated and two, to grade it so water will drain away from the foundation, as best as possible. All topsoil removed will be saved in a dumptruck and sold for profit. When all grading is finished, if any excess topsoil can be removed without significantly changing the lay of the lot, it will be scraped off and taken as well, and sold for residual profit. This does often leave the homeowner with poor subsoil in which to grow fruits and veggies. When he said soil is trucked in, that is if the existing soil on the lot is not sound enough to lay a home foundation on. To answer your other question, if your neighborhood was built in 1910, it is very doubtful all the topsoil was scraped away. Even if it was, that was 100 years ago and organic matter has been accumulating on it ever since. But like already mentioned, that guy was making a general statement. He assumed you had not amended your soil and he assumed you didn't know what you were doing, which was wrong of him. The previous posters already told you what you needed to know I just thought I'd help explain what the farmer was telling you.

Hmmm. No one ever talks about the microbes. Microbes make top soil unique - definitely not the same as sub soil. Microbes act as the interface between the organic material in soil and the plants. Plants will suffer in sterile soils, not matter how rich the soil is, without microbes - unless of course, the soil is treated with synthetic fertilizers and/or hormones. Plants in soil without microbes (and no fertilizers) will essentially starve. Dirt is not an appropriate synonym for top soil. The two are quite different things. Top soil is almost impossible to store, as the microbes require oxygen. The oxygen only penetrates a few inches in the best of soils, to about 8 inches max. Heavy soils can have top soils that are only fractions of an inch deep, or even none at all. Deprive the microbes of oxygen, and the microbes die in hours. Plastic-bagged, manufactured top soil, will not have appropriate conditions for microbes to survive if they were ever present. Even true top soil, if harvested through grading and stored in piles, will only be true, healthy top soil on the top few inches of the mound. Within hours all of the microbes below the top layer of the mound will have died. True top soil is a living thing. Top soil needs to be harvested and properly placed in a very short period of time. Take a yard of dirt (or at least a good pile) from below the top soil, mix it with fertilizer-free compost, mound it up in a remote area of your yard and watch what happens - nothing. Nothing will grow on that pile, even though it is dirt amended with compost, because it essentially sterile. After one to two years, the microbes will begin to permeate the top layer of the pile and plants will start to show up. With true top soil, the mound would explode with plants after the first rain. Manufactured mixes "cheat" by stuffing the created mix with fertilizers. This works, but is lousy for the environment in many ways, and "hooks" your plants on synthetic fertilizers like drugs. When you hear such names as Monsanto, Miracle Gro, etc. think "pusher". Microbes do not like synthetic fertilizers, so once using fertilizers, you are stuck using them unless you do a lot of work to fix the situation, or wait until the soil regains a proper ecological balance. Plants will grow well in many types of media, even water, if given proper aeration and proper nutrition, i.e. fertilizer. But this is needlessly expensive and again, potentially problematic for our environment. True top soil is magic. It's ecology is wonderfully complex and is only barely beginning to be understood. No manufactured mix will do what true top soil can do for your garden. Growing plants really needs to be thought of first as growing your soil. True top soil, air, and water are vital to most life forms on Earth. We would all starve without true top soil, unless we were able to subsist on fungi. Labeling requirements for growing mixes are virtually non-existent. Those ingredients that might be listed will be very vague. Notice that no synthetic fertilizers are listed, even if they are there in quantity. Anyone can sell any dirt as topsoil, and people often do as a means to avoid disposal fees for dirt. Get top soil from people removing their raised beds, those who have graded the top few inches of an area, people taking out lawns, etc. or from your own backyard. If there are unused areas of your yard that support a dense mat of weeds, at least during wetter, warmer months, then that is true top soil. Yes there will be weeds, but a good mulch will take care of most of that problem. My advice to any gardener is to start with good top soil, nurture that soil by continually adding organic material, worm castings and compost tea, and use a good mulch. These items are 80-90% of the battle for the vast majority of plants.

Fruitnut, to clarify, I can add the aged chicken manure liberally when I plant new BBs in that location, and that will provide everything needed? If I want more growth, I can then fool around with supplements like urea or appropriate chemical fertilizers. Can I add aged chicken manure as a top dressing fertilizer anytime to established plants? I actualy planted a test SHB there with a shovel full of the chicken manure and another shovel of peatmoss. It really exploded and was looking great. So great it got stolen. The other 4 REs I planted there with only peatmoss and regular weak AmoniaNitrate feedings. I guess I can add some manure on top of them?