Gardening is good. Almost always, especially if it begins in a backyard and ends on a family table.
But then, I am curmudgeonly (ever since I was a kid--age ain't got much to do with it), and can find fault with most anything. And so it is that I cringe when I surf the gardening and urban homesteading sites that proliferate like dandelions, because so many of them rely on quick fixes that undercut the soul of a gardener and the soil of the earth. The blogs I'm drawn to resist chemical assaults and may even proclaim organicity, but it is possible to disobey and disgust Mother Nature without raping her.
High on the list of such actions is the Raised Bed Full of Trucked in "Soil" Syndrome. I've gardened in volcanic cinder rendered near-lifeless by city-scaping, in Virginia clay stripped of topsoil and driven over for good measure, and in glacial sand that can't hold nutrients or water any more than Monsanto can get a grip on the importance of diversity in evolution. As my last post admits, I am not pure, and there have been occasional bags of compost and other inputs into my gardens (that Honolulu cinder got on the road to soil when I'd go steal bags of clippings from rich people who had yards and then compost them, but I like to think that's more of a Robin Hood action than buying bagged steer-shit).
But here in Olympia, which many would consider an epicenter of groovy organicism, there is this fascination with raised beds full of fake soil. Slap up a frame (I see photos sometimes of chemical treated wood used for this, ick), and fill it with alleged compost. Even if the material is not full of nitrogen-leaching wood products or feedlot chemicalized cowshit, it ain't soil. It may be the best compost ever, fluffy and black, rich as a Romney, but it has nothing to do with the soil in your yard.
In bags or trucks, it is a big fake input, not borne of the stuff in your yard. And often as not, people put some kind of barrier between their yard and the new stuff, attempting segregation as if the microbia of their own yard are somehow dangerous and inferior. Although mixing and incorporation into soil development is inevitable in the long run, your earthworms and fungi must think the new stuff tastes weird.
The box o' compost may produce a great crop or two, but it is also a destabilizing force. It may be so rich in nitrogen that it feeds foliage at the expense of strength and structure. It may turn your raised bed into a symphylans corral. It may come laden with weed-seed, or it may just play host to the thistle and dandelion that ride the wind to your domain.
Much slower to augment slowly from your own leaf-fallen, grass-clipped, storm-dropped organics. Much slower to plant and plow under legumes or cultivate shrooms. Much slower to exercise the patience Solomon (no link, you either know whereof I speak or you don't) advises and keep the additives to a minimum lest pests be fruitful and multiply. Much slower to grow soil before you grow your ideal grocery list.
But in the end, this slow, influx-starved process proves more resilient, more healthy, more durable. Soil is not the stuff you add, it is the multi-layered organism that grows over the land. It is earth's skin; like your skin, it is healthiest when you do what is good for the body, not when you add chemicals (organically derived or not). The best topsoil is on intimate terms with the subsoil, formed from its minerals and the poop of a thousand worms, a million hyphae, a trillion bacteria, all flowing up and down and all around. Taking off in the worm-grit of a robin's craw and returning in the chickadee's droppings, but not arriving by the ton in a truck.
Soil well grown, plus an acceptance of what works in your yard and what does not, is the solution to the long-term gardener. In Honolulu, a decade of growing cane and ti and banana produced the leaf-mulch that changed cinder with a few skinny cockroaches into black loam full of worms. In Virginia, a couple years of woodpile followed by grass and leaf compost (and yes, hours of back-breaking cultivation) turned compacted clay into reasonable topsoil. In Olympia, cook-out ashes (from alder cut in my yard) and various other home-grown biomass--and of course, the miracle of wild strawberries--seems to be working. Based on past performance, the fact that this yard's soil is much-improved must mean I am about to move, to take on some new deadscape...oh well. The joy is in growing.
But then, I am curmudgeonly (ever since I was a kid--age ain't got much to do with it), and can find fault with most anything. And so it is that I cringe when I surf the gardening and urban homesteading sites that proliferate like dandelions, because so many of them rely on quick fixes that undercut the soul of a gardener and the soil of the earth. The blogs I'm drawn to resist chemical assaults and may even proclaim organicity, but it is possible to disobey and disgust Mother Nature without raping her.
High on the list of such actions is the Raised Bed Full of Trucked in "Soil" Syndrome. I've gardened in volcanic cinder rendered near-lifeless by city-scaping, in Virginia clay stripped of topsoil and driven over for good measure, and in glacial sand that can't hold nutrients or water any more than Monsanto can get a grip on the importance of diversity in evolution. As my last post admits, I am not pure, and there have been occasional bags of compost and other inputs into my gardens (that Honolulu cinder got on the road to soil when I'd go steal bags of clippings from rich people who had yards and then compost them, but I like to think that's more of a Robin Hood action than buying bagged steer-shit).
But here in Olympia, which many would consider an epicenter of groovy organicism, there is this fascination with raised beds full of fake soil. Slap up a frame (I see photos sometimes of chemical treated wood used for this, ick), and fill it with alleged compost. Even if the material is not full of nitrogen-leaching wood products or feedlot chemicalized cowshit, it ain't soil. It may be the best compost ever, fluffy and black, rich as a Romney, but it has nothing to do with the soil in your yard.
In bags or trucks, it is a big fake input, not borne of the stuff in your yard. And often as not, people put some kind of barrier between their yard and the new stuff, attempting segregation as if the microbia of their own yard are somehow dangerous and inferior. Although mixing and incorporation into soil development is inevitable in the long run, your earthworms and fungi must think the new stuff tastes weird.
The box o' compost may produce a great crop or two, but it is also a destabilizing force. It may be so rich in nitrogen that it feeds foliage at the expense of strength and structure. It may turn your raised bed into a symphylans corral. It may come laden with weed-seed, or it may just play host to the thistle and dandelion that ride the wind to your domain.
Much slower to augment slowly from your own leaf-fallen, grass-clipped, storm-dropped organics. Much slower to plant and plow under legumes or cultivate shrooms. Much slower to exercise the patience Solomon (no link, you either know whereof I speak or you don't) advises and keep the additives to a minimum lest pests be fruitful and multiply. Much slower to grow soil before you grow your ideal grocery list.
But in the end, this slow, influx-starved process proves more resilient, more healthy, more durable. Soil is not the stuff you add, it is the multi-layered organism that grows over the land. It is earth's skin; like your skin, it is healthiest when you do what is good for the body, not when you add chemicals (organically derived or not). The best topsoil is on intimate terms with the subsoil, formed from its minerals and the poop of a thousand worms, a million hyphae, a trillion bacteria, all flowing up and down and all around. Taking off in the worm-grit of a robin's craw and returning in the chickadee's droppings, but not arriving by the ton in a truck.
Soil well grown, plus an acceptance of what works in your yard and what does not, is the solution to the long-term gardener. In Honolulu, a decade of growing cane and ti and banana produced the leaf-mulch that changed cinder with a few skinny cockroaches into black loam full of worms. In Virginia, a couple years of woodpile followed by grass and leaf compost (and yes, hours of back-breaking cultivation) turned compacted clay into reasonable topsoil. In Olympia, cook-out ashes (from alder cut in my yard) and various other home-grown biomass--and of course, the miracle of wild strawberries--seems to be working. Based on past performance, the fact that this yard's soil is much-improved must mean I am about to move, to take on some new deadscape...oh well. The joy is in growing.
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