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how hard is it to grow garden plants on a previous year field?

A friend has a field that they are not renting out to farmers this year and has offered me a corner of it to plant a garden. It was a canola field last year and was sprayed with pesticides and herbacides. I was thinking of just putting in some organic compost to the make the dirt work nicely for me. Would there be too much pesticide and stuff in the dirt still to grow my garden there?

Public Comments

1. You can plant there. You just won't be able to call anything you grow there organic. Usually it takes a few years for the pesticide/herbicide residues to reduce enough to be certifiably organic. But if you're being offer free use of the land for your own use, go for it!
2. You should be fine as most pesticides and herbicides degrade rapidly and will not last a season.