Permaculture [ pur-muh-kuhl-cher ] verb
A systems design science whereby regenerative actions are taken to build human habitat within a natural context rather than opposed to it.
Peregrination [ per-i-gruh–ney-shuhn ] noun
- travel from one place to another, especially on foot.
- a course of travel; journey.
In P.A. Yeomans book Water for Every Farm he talks about the scale of permanence. The scale puts into order, from hardest to change to easiest to change, parts of our landscapes. There are things that can’t be changed or easily influenced and are very much permanent, like mountains. Climate takes massive influence to be changed and we are subjected to it’s forces. As individuals, when we watch as the hail takes out our newly planted gardens, we feel the helplessness of the permanence of climate in all its forms, even as it is shifting. There is nothing we can do to make it sunny and 65 every day of the year. Our social structures have a modicum of permanence as well. We have built up bureaucracy to the point of stalemate in many of the organizations that were meant to serve our society for the better. Changing these institutions is nearly impossible at this point without knocking the thing down and beginning again with a newly imagined system.
What does any of this have to do with soil?
On the scale of permanence soil is the most malleable. It is the easiest thing to destroy, and lucky enough for us, it is the easiest thing to repair.
With the debut of the film Kiss the Ground the spotlight on soil came to the forefront. It’s stance on Netflix helped it to get, somewhat, into the mainstream consciousness. Within just a few days the film was trending in the top 20 on the platform. Farmers, ranchers, market gardeners and backyard gardeners were all talking about this film, and still within many of the groups I am part of on social platforms the mainstream narrative has continued to consist of death and control as it relates to plants, insects and…..soil. For the past 100 or so years we have tried everything in our human technological toolbox to obliterate anything that doesn’t fit into our narrative of acceptable. We classify plants as noxious weeds, insects as pests, and soil as mere dirt. We pull, chop, squish, spray, and till. We want things to be clean and organized. We take classes on how to get our plants to grow under the conditions we are subjecting them to because we don’t understand the consequences of our actions. As a collective we are making it harder on ourselves to reach our food and flower growing goals. Our reductionist culture has taken the wild out of our gardens, the polyculture out of farming, and the complex biology out of the soil ecosystem.
The good news is we can fix it. Soil, on the scale of permanence, is after all malleable. It is easily influenced toward destruction, and just as easily influenced toward repair and resiliency. Soil is kind of magical, a world within a world. One can liken it to the book and film Horton Hears a Who. We are all walking around oblivious to the microcosm happening beneath our feet. All the tiny beings are there going about their business, the Mayor (fungi, holding it all together), his family (bacteria, there are so many of them), the Counsel (protozoa), predatory as they are. When the conditions change on their tiny spec of dust it creates chaos; there is potential for the complete destruction of the entire Whoville society. This can be likened to what happens when we use a rototiller or plow on our soils. We destroy all of Whoville, and Horton is nowhere around to save them. We can become the elephant that saves the day, first we need to Hear a Who, then we need to believe what we hear is true.
The major players in the life of the soil are microscopic creatures that perform very important ecosystem functions. This web of life below ground is very much like the above ground web where predators consume prey. The life in the soil eats, reproduces, releases waste, and dies. They work in symbiosis with plants as the plants spoon feed the biology in exchange for nutrients. We can nurture these players to provide the ecosystem function they are built for with simple steps.
- Minimize soil disturbance. This doesn’t mean never create soil disturbance, sometimes in nature animals move through a landscape pawing, or rooting, or pulling up plants. We have opportunities to recreate this in our home landscapes. This does mean no tilling—ever. Tilling destroys soil structure and wakes up the seed bed. It is the easiest way to end up with a yard full of uncontrollable weeds (plants that we haven’t learned to value).
- Never ever spray chemicals or put out additives. Most of the chemicals marketed are in the category of biocides. -bio: biology -cide: something that kills. When we add these to our soils, either directly or indirectly (insect controls where the insects carry the chemical into the soils) we also kill the biology needed for the health of our ecosystems. All other additions are salts, whether they are meant to be fertilizers or balancers. Salts rob plants and biology of needed water while they are present in the soil horizons. Fortunately for our soils these salts tend to wash away easily, unfortunately for our waterways and those downstream the salts end up accumulating and creating nutrient excesses and algal blooms. Algal blooms suck up all the oxygen turning fresh water into anaerobic pools where the aquatic life dies perpetuating the excess nutrients cycle. Another unintended consequence of adding these salts (whether they are mineral additives or fertilizers) is that we make our plants lazy. They no longer reach for the nutrients they need nor do they produce the exudates that attract the biology to their root systems. This biology is the plants microbiome, just as we have a microbiome that helps break our food down into soluble nutrients. Without the microbiome the plants have diseases…in short they are starving to death.
- No bare soil. Ever. Nature abhors a vacuum. The natural order after a disturbance (flood, fire, weather event, or human caused disturbance) is to get something growing on the area that was disturbed as quickly as possible. This creates the beginnings of succession. The first successional species are annuals. These are generally what we reference as weedy species (most of these repair species are on noxious weeds lists). These early successional species tend to have high medicinal value for people and are often overlooked as beneficial. When thinking about plants of this nature within the perspective of acting as healers for humans and animals it makes sense to see them as healers of the soil as well. Eventually, with enough rainfall, succession moves all the way to old growth forest. Once a very large disturbance happens in an old growth forest (usually fire) the process starts again. On a geological scale this is a very long process, but as we learn more about how soils work and how to influence the biology present in that soil we can begin to advance succession on a more human time scale. The best soil covers are plants due to their symbiotic relationship with soil biology. There are some instances where it is not possible to immediately have plants growing (sometimes in beginning the repair process there is not plant life) and mulch is needed to maintain soil moisture and offer some of the soil life a food resource while waiting for a plant to grow.
- Avoid all things that cause compaction. In our gardens well kept paths tend to have few plants growing in them, especially if we use those paths regularly. The reason for this is that just by the act of walking our paths we create soil compaction. Areas where the soil has compacted (most of the built environment) become anaerobic as air can’t pass through the compaction barrier. Water runs off rather than soaking in and in places that are sloped this can cause mud slides and erosion. Permanent pathways in garden spaces mean that you will stay off your growing areas reducing the opportunity for creating a compaction layer. The number one cause of soil compaction is rain. When it rains on bare soil millions of tiny drops put pressure on the soil. This is yet another reason to be sure your soil is always covered. Resolving compaction (we all have a compaction layer, even if we’ve been careful) is key to having healthy soil.
- Diversity is key. Monoculture in nature is chaos. It invites pest pressure and disease. It is the reason we have come to rely on whatever the chemical companies can put on the shelf to spray our problems away. Plant microbiomes work best in cooperative sociobiomes. Plant groupings from 4 or more families are key. 8, 12, or 16 is better. This tends to undermine our aesthetic sensibilities. Somewhere along the line humans started to believe that manicured spaces were safer than wild spaces which has led to a belief that manicured spaces look better. The caveat to this is that we have plants that aren’t as healthy and if they are food plants they do not carry the nutritive value that plants grown in highly diverse conditions have. When planning food gardens consider the Milpa method of growing. It is a little chaotic but lends the diversity of plant life that the plants and biology require to stay healthy.
If we put our emphasis on growing our soils rather than growing our plants we will truly begin a paradigm shift.
I have changed my stance from gardener to soil biology farmer. My microscope beckons.