I’ve been doing a lot of gardening recently, probably more than at any other time of my life except when my spouse and I bought our first house nearly twenty years ago and thought we’d become avid gardeners like both of our mothers. Between the heavy clay soil, ubiquitous thistles, poison ivy, and—once a friend of ours trained her lawnmowing goats in our yard and brought her horses by a few times—mile-a-minute vine, it was far more laborious and less fruitful than we’d hoped. Later, when we’d scaled back our ambition and built a few raised boxes filled with bags of soil purchased from Home Depot, the seeds of a perennial sunflower we’d planted took over and made itself into an impenetrable (if pretty) autumn jungle; aside from a small effort at tomatoes every year we gave up. I probably could have handled the labor but the heat and humidity of upstate New York did me in.
I was delighted to see that you recommended Charlotte Gill's book, Eating Dirt, in your post last week. And to learn that Sarah Boon recommended to you. This book seems to inspire that kind of behavior.
Several years ago, my friend Rick Simonson—he is the head buyer and readings coordinator for Elliott Bay Books in Seattle, so he knows where the best books are buried—walked up to me while I was browsing and said, "Here's a book you're really going to like." He handed me a copy of Eating Dirt, and I have been positively evangelical about it ever sense, pressing it into the hands of unsuspecting friends and dinner guests like some street-corner fanatic. It's such a smart, funny, clear-eyed and emotionally intelligent story about our well-meaning but disastrous attempts to improve what Mother Nature got right in the first place. Everyone should read it.
Fascinating essay, as always! I never really thought about where soil comes from. Looking around, slowing down, pausing and thinking about things like this just makes me appreciate the wonder of it. Thank you, have a great weekend.
This essay has been living in my head since I first read it moments after it arrived in my inbox. I am the daughter of a farmer who has used very "conventional" methods for 50 years. I worry about that soil. And I worry about water so much, especially in this alarmingly dry year in the PNW. While I have avoided peat for the reasons you mention, I am embarrassed to admit that I have never truly thought about the idea of topsoil in bags obviously being stripped from elsewhere. I think I tended to think of it like compost, which is renewable. I am very grateful for our local compost program.
Glad you have a few options -- that cow bedding sounds great. Coconut coir which can be purchased in compressed bricks that expand greatly with water is a great peat substitute. But the biggest issue is system-wide: reliance by hort-and agriculture on artificial chemical use which kills the micro-organisms in the soil, and the widespread practice of removing organic material from pretty much everywhere as waste and discarding it, when it needs to be returned to the soil to support soil life. This is why previous generations could grow such lush gardens and we can't. It does take persistence and time to repair the damage. I am struggling with clay soil in NC, in a yard that never knew anything but chemically supported maintenance. I can never make enough compost. I grow comfrey and clover; I purchase expensive, organic potting soil and grow some things in big containers with additional (purchased) steer manure and alfalfa -- and it just take time to heal the damage.
On a similar note, I wondered just yesterday what the ranchers in your area may be doing to maintain or improve their pastures. Many grasslands in the southwest suffer from being dominated by annual grasses that are easily overgrazed by cattle, while rangeland with a mix of perennial grasses that are also under active grazing management are doing better at keeping roots in the ground and putting moisture there for more consistent vitality.
I love this one, Nia. I suppose there's something to be said for our idea that we can live in one place and have the expectations of it the same as from another. The world just doesn't work that way, does it?
But here's a poem your essay reminded me of. I love it.
I was delighted to see that you recommended Charlotte Gill's book, Eating Dirt, in your post last week. And to learn that Sarah Boon recommended to you. This book seems to inspire that kind of behavior.
Several years ago, my friend Rick Simonson—he is the head buyer and readings coordinator for Elliott Bay Books in Seattle, so he knows where the best books are buried—walked up to me while I was browsing and said, "Here's a book you're really going to like." He handed me a copy of Eating Dirt, and I have been positively evangelical about it ever sense, pressing it into the hands of unsuspecting friends and dinner guests like some street-corner fanatic. It's such a smart, funny, clear-eyed and emotionally intelligent story about our well-meaning but disastrous attempts to improve what Mother Nature got right in the first place. Everyone should read it.
Fascinating essay, as always! I never really thought about where soil comes from. Looking around, slowing down, pausing and thinking about things like this just makes me appreciate the wonder of it. Thank you, have a great weekend.
This essay has been living in my head since I first read it moments after it arrived in my inbox. I am the daughter of a farmer who has used very "conventional" methods for 50 years. I worry about that soil. And I worry about water so much, especially in this alarmingly dry year in the PNW. While I have avoided peat for the reasons you mention, I am embarrassed to admit that I have never truly thought about the idea of topsoil in bags obviously being stripped from elsewhere. I think I tended to think of it like compost, which is renewable. I am very grateful for our local compost program.
Glad you have a few options -- that cow bedding sounds great. Coconut coir which can be purchased in compressed bricks that expand greatly with water is a great peat substitute. But the biggest issue is system-wide: reliance by hort-and agriculture on artificial chemical use which kills the micro-organisms in the soil, and the widespread practice of removing organic material from pretty much everywhere as waste and discarding it, when it needs to be returned to the soil to support soil life. This is why previous generations could grow such lush gardens and we can't. It does take persistence and time to repair the damage. I am struggling with clay soil in NC, in a yard that never knew anything but chemically supported maintenance. I can never make enough compost. I grow comfrey and clover; I purchase expensive, organic potting soil and grow some things in big containers with additional (purchased) steer manure and alfalfa -- and it just take time to heal the damage.
On a similar note, I wondered just yesterday what the ranchers in your area may be doing to maintain or improve their pastures. Many grasslands in the southwest suffer from being dominated by annual grasses that are easily overgrazed by cattle, while rangeland with a mix of perennial grasses that are also under active grazing management are doing better at keeping roots in the ground and putting moisture there for more consistent vitality.
I love this one, Nia. I suppose there's something to be said for our idea that we can live in one place and have the expectations of it the same as from another. The world just doesn't work that way, does it?
But here's a poem your essay reminded me of. I love it.
soil
by Irene Mathieu
the way you say soil
sounds like soul, as in
after we walked through the woods
my feet were covered in soul
when it rains
the soul turns to mud
the soul is made of decomposed
plant and animal matter;
edaphology is the study of the soul’s
influence on living things
while pedology is the study of how
soul is formed, its particular granularity.
you are rooted in a certain red patch
of soul that bled you and your
hundred cousins to life, a slow
warm river you call home.
maybe there is soul under everything,
even when we strike rock first.
the way you say soil you make
a poem out of every speck of dirt.