Transforming How I Think About Soil

Transforming How I Think About Soil

Kristin Nicols, chief scientist at the Rodale Institute asked, in a podcast I listen to, what came first, soil or plants: “You couldn’t have plants without soil, or soil without plants – the missing link was fungus.” It was part of an analysis from Rodale that concluded, among many other things, that farm subsidy programs should not be based on yield, they should be based on soil health.

I have not written in my blog for about a year, something I wonder about. It could be I have been just too busy with the Earth’s Table gardens, but my current theory is that I have been too overwhelmed by the crazy political situation in America and the looming climate crisis to write about regenerative stuff. It feels irrelevant and too late. I know this is not rational. Many people are doing all they can to save democracy and address the climate crisis. I am slowly recovering a bit, and thought I’d try to address a major change in my thinking about soil.

The most important thing I have learned about soil this year (from podcasts and books such as A Soil Owners Manual, is that fertility comes from the organisms and plants living in the soil, not from added fertilizers or whatever humans try do to regenerate soil. Humans can help, but it is the healthy biome of the soil that will save agriculture. For me it is a sea-change in my thinking. I, like many gardeners over the centuries, viewed soil as a medium in which plants grow, that is gradually exhausted by our gardens and agriculture and must be supplemented and renewed through careful human effort. I would till, add compost, fertilizer, weed, and add manure or whatever I was reading about lately to renew fertility. I viewed soil as a sort of neutral substance that held the stuff needed to produce plants, like perlite or something. David Montgomery refers to this as thinking of soil as dirt, just the medium for other additives. I have come to learn, as many others are lately, that this view of soil is all turned around. What regenerates soil that has been exhausted by human agriculture is the biome of the soil: the animals, fungus and plants that live in it, and they are interdependent upon each other. 

Everything that I have learned in the last few years about forests and agriculture, trees and other plants shows how they are dependent upon the fungus and microbes living in the soil for their nutrients, communication between plants and, basically, their ability to live. The fungus and microbes, however, are equally dependent upon the plants to provide sugars obtained through photosynthesis and the organic material left in the soil by dead and rotting plants. It’s a system that humans can help function better, but that is actually independent from our efforts. Most actions by humans over the centuries to manage forests and fields have actually done more damage than good to the soil biome and have resulted in what we have now, exhausted, depleted soils, massive erosion, dead zones in the oceans and the degradation of much of our agriculture land and forests.

I won’t try to explain all the science involved in this system since others are doing it much better than I could and there are now many books and podcast you can listen to that will help you understand this if you are interested. There’s a mini-revolution in thinking about soil going on and there is a bunch of material out there for you to read. My point today is simply to raise the issue and think out loud a bit about how this is affecting the way I manage my gardens now. It is also, I believe, an important issue to understand as we seek to regenerate our land, improve local food sources and address climate change.

In A Soil Owners Manual, the author talks about how we must feed our livestock. Not that we all have cows and pigs living on our land, but that gardeners and farmers all have livestock living in the soil. Our livestock are the fungus, insects, animals and microbes living in our soil. Basic care for soil and the rejuvenation of our soils means feeding and caring for these organisms. Tilling, fertilizers and pesticides, long the mainstay of growing food, actually damage the soil biome and should be used sparingly if at all. Instead, we should leave the soil alone as much as possible, (no-till) and add things to the surface of the soil that will aid the biome. It is beneficial to add organic matter such as compost, leaves, manure and such. It is beneficial to keep roots in the ground, plants are needed to feed the soil organs, and it is beneficial to keep the soil covered with organic material if possible to hold moisture in the soil and keep CO2 in the soil. 

So, from what little I have learned so far, I have quit tilling my garden beds and have been making compost like crazy. I am trying to learn about cover crops and keeping some roots in the ground in the off season. I put up a sign at the end of my driveway in the fall, “Leaves needed for mulch, Thanks” and received about 100 bags of leaves from my neighbors this year, which I grind up and dump in the compost or on my beds to keep them covered. I apply mulch (leaves, old hay and grass clippings) to control weeds and pull lots of weeds. Weed control is definitely a problem if you don’t till, so I am still figuring that out. Some people till ever 3 to 5 years to control perennial weeds and I have that under consideration ( it’s been 3 years since I tilled the beds). I have pretty much cut out the use of pesticides to prevent wiping out soil organisms by accident. Very occasionally I have used Pyrethrin or Sluggo for Bean Beetles and slugs respectively, but I try to limit that. All the mulching definitely increases the number of slugs, but I have read that as long as I don’t use Sluggo Plus, I won’t kill earthworms. Generally, I am still reading and learning and figuring this out, but the sea-change has come and I am rethinking everything I know about soil health.

This feels like a huge transformation in thinking for me, and I am surprised as I talk to people who are not gardeners or farmers, to learn that this revelation hasn’t quite reached the majority of non-garden people yet. So I share it with you. 

There are lots of ramification of this as one starts looking around. There are folks raising cattle by moving them around from field to field, rejuvenating the soil of their grain fields by the cattle chewing down he grass, cutting up the soil with their hoofs and depositing manure before being moved quickly to another field to do the same. Grass fed beef and milk seems to be a part of this new thinking about soil that may revolutionize the beef and dairy industry to be climate sustaining. Forests can be managed differently if we begin to understand what is happening under the surface. Tractors, huge harvesters and such and our dependence upon petroleum in our agricultural system may change dramatically, with all kind of good results for the climate. This new thinking about soil could be the most important thing to happen to the human agricultural thinking since humans started planting wheat in Asian Minor.

There’s my hopeful thought for the new year. I encourage even non-gardeners to look into this a little, just so you have something positive to add to your thoughts as you lie awake at night wondering what your children’s and grandchildren’s world will look like. It’s helping me a bit.

Resources on Soil Health

Podcasts I like:

Regenerative Agriculture Podcast by John Kempf

Sustainable World Radio with Jill Cloutier

The Permaculture Podcast with Scott Mann

Regenerative Permaculture, Clint Locklear

Bioneers, Ecological Food &Farming

For the Wild, Ayana Young

Books I like:

A Soil Owner’s Manual, Jon Stika

Dirt, The Erosion of Civilizations, Daniel Montgomery

Growing a Revolution, Daniel Montgomery

The Hidden Half of Nature, Daniel Montgomery

Rainwater Harvesting, Brad Lancaster

Introduction to Permaculture, Bill Mollison

Cows Save the Planet, Judith D. Schwartz

Teaming with Microbes, Jeff Lowenfels

Teaming with Fungi, Jeff Lowenfels