Victor Caballero
This blog is written by Victor Caballero. I write about a wide variety of topics ranging from music to community events to energy.

Feb 5 2025

Remediate Your Soil Post Fires – Improve Property Soil After Urban Wildfires

Posted by victorcaba in Uncategorized
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Remediate Your Soil Post Fires

First off, all of us at Fruitstitute hope that you and yours have been able to stay safe during this devastating time. There are no words to describe the loss we are experiencing both as a collective and as individuals.

As we take steps to rebuild our communities, we want to offer a tangible solution to help get your soil and trees back on track.

Treating your soil with compost tea is what we recommend as a first step towards soil remediation.

Why compost tea? The mycorrhizae in compost and compost tea squesters heavy metals (source). Mycorrhizae also decomposes PAHs and VOCs about 50-70% (source). Compost tea as a whole is a powerful natural tool used in biological growing methods to establish and boost populations of beneficial microbes in the soil and plants. By restoring the beneficial bacteria, fungi and protozoa to your soil, you can rebuild the food web.

In time, our plants and trees will tell us when they are unhappy. Compost tea can help boost their immune systems and get back to a healthier state.

If you are interested in treating your entire landscape with compost tea, we can provide that service for you. This service is under the new arm of our company called Compost Tena. We price out the service based on the square footage of your landscape. Interested in learning more?

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If you are looking for more ways to remediate your soil, we suggest replacing the mulch on your property. Chip Drop is a company that drops mulch for free. Looking for a particular type of mulch? Soil and Sod sells different types of woody mulch.

Not only does mulch and compost (tea) help remediate the soil from the heavy metals and toxic ash, they also help reduce erosion, which is a side effect of fires like this.

If you have questions about consuming produce from your garden, this is an informative article and study about the matter.

The fires we experienced are urban fires, meaning manmade materials with dangerous and often carcinogenic substances like asbestos, heavy metals, plastic, and household products full of PFAS and VOCs (volatile organic compounds) have burned (source). So, the ash, soot and dust that settles into our gardens and orchards from the fires likely have a combination of these toxic substances. This goes without saying that handling any ash on your property should be done with great caution and with the appropriate PPE (source). Soilwise.earth on Instagram has an informative post on how they deal with ash safely.

Just like what @soilwise.earth recommended in their post, we also highly recommend testing your soil for heavy metals, and if possible, PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) and VOCs. Wallace Labs offers testing for heavy metals. Waypoint Analytical in Anaheim offers testing for PAHs and VOCs. This step of testing your soil will give you valuable information about what you’re dealing with.

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Remediate Your Soil Post Fires – Improve Property Soil After Urban Wildfires

Remediate Your Soil Post Fires

Treating your soil with compost tea is what we recommend as a first step towards soil remediation.

In time, our plants and trees will tell us when they are unhappy. Compost tea can help boost their immune systems and get back to a healthier state.

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