We've lived in our current house for almost four years now. It was thoroughly landscaped when we moved in, so I gave it a year to see what would come up where before I started moving some things, removing others (ornamental grasses aren't, in my opinion), and generally making it mine. I noticed that surface appearances aside, the soil was pretty poor, but figured that if I left it chemical free and let the leaves and such decompose it would recover.
It hasn't. It's simply dead. I went to expand a front bed to add an annual border, which entailed digging up a foot wide patch of grass roots and all, leaving a trench about eight inches deep. I should have gotten worms and wriggling things with every forkful loosened and pulled out. It had rained the day before; I should have been able to smell it. It should have been dark brown.
It was grey and compact. It had no odor at all, and nothing wriggled out of it, not even the occasional sow bug or centipede. I don't know what chemicals our predecessors used, but they must have been something else again. I don't know whether to dig deeper, work in compost and add worms or seal it off and work upwards at this point. Probably a bit of both; work down in the front, where all I'm planting are ornamentals, and up in the back in raised beds where I want vegetables to grow. If there's persistent chemical contamination, I don't want it in my food, and I don't know how to test it. My herbs I'm not worried about; they're in giant pots on the deck anyway. But I have never dealt with anything like this. Usually when I put my hands in the ground, it tells me what it wants. This isn't soil; it's just dirt. It's silent. It's dead. And it's profoundly unnerving.
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