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Cities throughout Croatia are turning to urban gardening thereby providing low-cost agri- products, social interactions and healthier lifestyles. The City of Zagreb started the Urban Gardens project in 2013, and today it has a total of 13 urban gardens, all included in urban soils quality monitoring programme aiming to prevent harmful effect of potentially toxic elements in the soils of urban gardens. Therefore, as part of the latter project, the quality of soil (pH, EC, P2O5, K2O, Corg, Cd, Cr, Cu, Hg, Ni, Pb, Zn, PAHs and PCBs), irrigation water (pH, EC, NH4-N, NO3-N, NO2-N, PO4-P, Cl-) ; vegetable crops (dry matter, Ca, Fe, K, Mg, Na, P and S) is being tested. The monitoring sites were spatially referenced using GPS and the results were stored in different GIS layers. The results were examined applying uni- and multivariate statistical analyses. Large differences of soil quality and fertility indicators were found between, but also within each urban garden. Such variations of soil quality are result of combination of inherent soil state and recent agricultural practices. Despite the wide concentration range of some soil TE and PAH concentrations, they do not exceed maximal permissible concentrations as defined by the Croatian government regulation. Furthermore, results of water quality analysis showed that there is no limitation to use groundwater for irrigation. Also, macro- and micronutrient concentrations determined in vegetables are within the recommended ranges for healthy plants. |
