Inherited a ..., well, pile

I inherited a garden with our new house, including a compost heap, or so I thought!

After I removed the top 3 feet of tree branches and twigs, I hit black dirt, but then found all kinds of garbage in it: shears with halfrotten handles, plastic bottles, a fridge compressor, half a brick house, metal sheets, half rotten water pipes, roof shingles, metal mesh and some slimy looking white fabric.

The dirt looks okay to my amateur eye. It's grainy not sludgy, but I am wondering if I should even be using this as my compost heap. It's criss-crossed with weed roots, so they don't seem to mind.

Does anybody have experience with this type of situation?

It's possible that prior owners used that spot as their own personal dump rather than paying dump fees.
It's also possible that you live in an area that allows "raw" construction debris to be used as fill when they develop housing tracks. My brother lives in Florida. He says the usual yard fill in his area is whatever construction debris is available from building demolition sites. The local zoning does not require any cleanup of that debris, so people dig down below their 6" of topsoil and find large chucks of concrete, rebar, twisted metal etc. In California it is illegal to use raw construction debris for fill. When a building comes down, they are required to grind up the concrete and recycle the metal, glass etc (or at least group the materials when taken to the dump.)

Guido, I'd be careful with it. You know what they dumped there, but who knows what they might have poured there? I'd put some in pots, plant stuff and see how it grows. It might be great; it might be poison. I wouldn't put it in my gardens until I knew for sure.

I certainly wouldn't plant anything edible there! Personally, I'd have a soil test done.

So, I'm not paranoid! ;-)

I think I'll go with a soil test and, if at all, only use the dirt on flowerbeds. In the meantime, I'll start a second compost heap next to it.


Thanks for your advice!

You might want to make your second compost heap some distance away until you get a soil test. You wouldn't want anything to leach over.