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Time, Soil, and Composting
Dirt. It's under us. It's the overlooked medium we walk on; we dust it off our clothes; we don't want it getting on us, and yet it's designed to grow luscious, nutritious, beautiful food for us to enjoy and be sustained by. In my experience, the work and effort organic farmers and gardeners put into building healthy soil, compared to what it gives back, is easily seven- to seventy-sevenfold. The return on investment is much more than we invest when it comes to soil health.
Being in Central Texas is like rolling the dice when it comes to soil. It's heterogeneous, and it can change within a hundred yards — or a hundred feet. You can find all rock in one area, then a dark soil deposit in the next. Beautifully enough, I have always found myself on rock. As much of a challenge as that's been, it's also been a blessing — it forced me to find a better way to build soil without spending thousands of dollars on topsoil and compost. It's easy enough to go buy compost and topsoil from a local company, but it adds up over time, and who knows when a heavy rain event will wash away your thousand dollars' worth of purchased soil. There's a better way.
Grow, die. Grow, die. Generations of plants, microbes, animals, and fungi grow and die, and over a short or long time — depending on your location — soil develops. Keep that in mind as you try to build soil on your property or in your garden bed. This doesn't mean you can just throw a pile of dead things together and call it done; while that can be a lazy, passive way to build soil organic matter, it can also cause problems. For time's sake, we won't dive into the deep science of composting here, as fun as that would be. Instead, here are a few options to help you start building your soil. Remember: slow and steady wins the race. Let the microbes and plants use their own time and energy to do the work.
Start soil-building routines today
I like to compare building your own compost pile, mulching, and interplanting to investing in penny stocks that will become the Dow Jones in three to five years. A simple example of this growth is our Restoring The Quarry site. If you've seen our past videos, you know we began by dumping nearly a hundred truckloads of woodchips on our one-acre site, because most of the soil had been excavated years earlier to build roads. We expected it to take much longer to break down and start building a better soil environment than it actually has. So don't delay starting soil-building routines.
Here's a list of simple soil-building methods, with notes on how involved each one is:
- Vermicomposting / live worm composting (initially involved) — Get the worm environment right, and this can become a very passive method.
- 18-day compost (involved but manageable) — More involved, but with a quick turnaround and smaller batches, this method is manageable for one person.
- Hugelkultur (initially involved) — Requires more on-site or purchased material depending on what you have available, but it's quick and gets you a garden bed fast.
- Chop and drop (somewhat passive, physically involved) — A method we've used for years. Simply put: after you've grown a crop, or when you have "weeds" growing in an area, you chop them and leave them as mulch on top of the bed, or move them where you need them. It's similar to green manure/cover cropping below, but less involved up front.
- Green manure/cover cropping (highly involved) — Grow a crop, or interplant crops, that will build soil in your region, then terminate them and let that growth build your soil.
This list isn't exhaustive. You can use one method or several, depending on how involved you can be. Starting even one, as mentioned earlier, will compound your soil development, your plant health, and your own well-being. We'll cover each of these in more detail in future videos and blog posts, so stay tuned.
Build soil, save time
Building soil through composting, mulching, and good growing practices improves soil health over time, thus improving flower success, vegetable and fruit harvests, vegetative growth, and how you spend your time. Letting soil health issues go unaddressed can get costly. By starting on-site composting and soil-building routines now, you'll see real gains in both your harvest and your free time to spend on other activities and with your community.