You could sample the outer leaves of a number of cabbages without
destroying the crop.
Broad beans - a few pods from each plant, similarly for things like
raspberries you can sub sample the bush population without
serisously affecting the yield.
Sampling strategies would be just the same as for the soil, a
herringbone pattern across the site so that you are not loading your
stats with outliers from hotspots.
I wonder if the allotments owners are keen to harvest anything if
you're telling them they may be poisoning their kids?
I'm surprised broad beans are still growing, they're usually an early
spring and summer harvest; I'd be sowing next years' now.
Crop rotation is an important factor - many people will move a potato
crop around to reduce blight; then follow with a legume (beans and
peas) then root crops that don't like fresh manure. Your sampling will
be a snap shot of a 4-5 year cycle so uptake from roots in one area will
not be relevant the next because the crop is a tuber or a leafy thing.
Intersting to learn what you intend doing with the data. How do you
assess the concentraton of say cadmium in a raspberry?
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