Introducing me and New house permaculture learning adventures

Hello all.  New to Permies.  Looking forward to meeting everyone.
I'm 100% new to permaculture but it seems the way to go and having a garden that works with it's self rather than individual plants just makes sense!  So I'm learning.

I have a new house in Southern Colorado.  Just .21 acres, but since the house is small it feels like lots of land.  
Plenty for a permaculture garden and then some.

Planning on planting a few flowers and such in the ground this summer and food in pots.  The reason for no food in the ground?  While digging up one of the beds a few weekends ago I found an old kitchen trash bag buried.  Gross.  So now I'm concerned about if the soil is poisoned with plastic and who knows what.

Does anyone have experience with healing the land after pulling things like this out?  
Know I need to dig up anywhere I want a food garden to check for things like this.  And eventually the whole yard. But what should I plant to help the land out?  Only tumble weeds are growing in most of the yard and grass doesn't really grow here.  I really really want a food garden eventually. Is it possible to plant perennials and just not eat the food this year?  Will it poison the plants in the long term? I mean how long would I need to wait before the land would be okay?  My mind doesn't even know where to start to find any of this out.  Any help is greatly appreciated.  I keep picking up trash all over the yard so it's probably a sure thing it isn't isolated to that one spot.

The plan is to spend the summer getting the land ready for a good thick mulch raised bed style concept I read about and it will spend the fall and winter decomposing.  Then next spring and summer I'll be able to plant directly in the ground.  I found a book all about permaculture gardening and am planning on implementing lots of the things in it on my land.  I'm pretty excited.

I am also hoping there's an active community here in Colorado.  

Hi Katheryn!
There's a plant called vetiver which can help you clean up the soil and water from many pollutants including e.coli and heavy metals. it is drought resistant and it can survive in many types of soil. You could use colonizing species like dandelion to clean up the top soil and enjoy the flowers. I'm not sure if its root bulb would survive winter but you could take a few cuttings at the start of winter to replant them in the spring

Thank you!  I really appreciate the help.
I'll check it out.  It looks like a pretty grass. I do have tons of dandelions growing I've been enjoying watching the bees harvest.  I'll be sure to help those spread too.

Welcome to the forum!

I would begin by building soil health.

Get a load of wood chips to begin with.

You might cover that spot with the wood chips while it heals.

Start a compost pile in an out-of-the-way corner.

Here are a few threads to help get you and others started on soil health:

https://permies.com/t/55632/healthy-soil-Explained

https://permies.com/t/223741/Helen-Atthowe-soil-health

https://permies.com/w/organic-plant-residue

Just spent the last few hours going through all those links and videos.  
This now begs the question can I stick to the original plan of starting no till?

This would obviously be easier for me.  Just do layers of sticks and leaves in the fall.  
I'm just concerned about plastics and junk buried under where I might be growing food.

Thoughts?

And is there a way to search for these topics here?  Or a tour section so I can learn my way around?

How did your growing season go this year? Saw the post was from about 7 months ago... I live in Crestone, CO which is in the San Luis Valley... we had a fair amount of rain for the area this year. What part of Colorado are you in?

A lot of people do "one-till", like when they first begin turning the space into a growing space they dig through things once and till in compost once, that way they find anything yucky, like that plastic bag you found, and can get it outta there for safety and so they know if there is an area that needs healing that may need to wait before growing crops.  And then they never till after that initial till.