Body & Soil

I walk the edge of the field we call the North 40 to an acre-sized bald spot covered in running cracks and dusted with salt. This field has been conventionally farmed for at least a half-century. It bears all the marks of a field overworked and propped up by more and more fertilizer. The sun is beating warm on my back, and my shadow lies dark on the cracked earth. I burst into tears as I see my own shadow divided by the cracks in the earth. “These cracks are in my own body,” I say.

The stark reality is that the health of our bodies and communities is intricately tied to the health of our soil. Food grown in depleted and propped-up soils is nutritionally bankrupt. When we eat nutritionally bankrupt foods, our bodies do not have what they need to function properly, and this manifests in a variety of ways. It can look like mental issues, learning and behavior challenges, auto-immune disease, fatigue, and poor respiratory health. The reality is our bodies are very well-made and most of the time, given the things they need, our bodies can heal and repair. 

I used to work as a nutrition coach for families of children with learning and behavior challenges. While we would often see great results with diet shifts and elimination diets, I discovered that simply shifting a dietary protocol without raising the quality of food did not ultimately serve these families. We need nutrition density, and that kind of nutrition can only come from healthy soil. 

Any work improving soil health, whether restoring a depleted 40-acre field or stewarding a tiny raised-bed plot so your kid can grow some vegetables, is a generative act. I desire to situate the conversation in a way where we can see that the work we do in improving garden soil health is not so that we can be better gardeners; It is about learning how to be better humans. Building good soil is about cultivating and stewarding life, not just any life. It is about caring for little life. Unseen life. Weird, unusual and confusing life. 

Microbial life.

Soil is wildly alive. The livelier the party, the better the soil. The ultimate goal of soil health is to create an environment where lots of life and diversity are possible. In a moment, I’ll share some of my favorite party tricks for jump-starting a vibrant microbial soil community, but first, I want to liberate you from the bondage of needing to “get this right.” The gardening nooks of the internet would have you believe that microbes are scary, unknowable, and downright dangerous, and I am here to tell you that is not the case. Sure, they can seem like a raucous cast of characters, but there’s not one of them that will do you harm by itself. Even the anaerobic ones that get such a bad rap can do a lot of good in the proper context. The scary outbreaks of this-and-that, which crop up in headlines from time to time for the most part, only afflict industrial-scale operations. We, the little guys, growing for ourselves and our own community, don’t seem to run into the same problems as large-scale industrial agriculture.

So, without further ado, I invite you to don your best grubby pair of overalls, glove up, and let loose - more is better than perfect, and it’s honestly pretty hard to get this wrong.   Here are some tips to get things moving underground:

Keep your soil covered.

Just like we need the shelter of our homes to thrive, soil also needs to be kept covered. Otherwise, the beautiful microbial community you are working so hard to build can be damaged by wind, sun and rain. An excellent way to keep your soil sheltered is by using mulch. When planning a garden, it is key to think about the best mulch available to you. Some different mulch options include straw, seedless hay, leaf mold or wood chips. A friend who lives near a mushroom grow house even uses spent mushroom substrate. We can get wood chip drops from our local power company. I don’t like to use them right away, so first, I will heavily mulch the garden paths with fresh wood chips and throw plant material on our paths all season and then at the end of our season, I will cover our empty beds with this broken-down material and let it break down even further through the winter. Many people love using straw as mulch; however, we are not able to find any locally that has not been sprayed. This is why we mainly use our broken-down wood chips for our mulch.

Chop and drop

Chop and drop is a great soil-building technique because it stacks so many functions. It is weeding, mulching, and feeding microbial life. The goal is to weed before things go to seed and lay the green material back down on the ground to become mulch. This means that instead of the carbon, nitrogen and micronutrients in that weed leaving the garden, it returns to the soil via our microbial friends. I typically have three different ways I will use my chop-and-drop material.

 1) I will often put the plant material back on the bed I am working on. However, If it is early in the season and my plants are small, or if I am in an area with heavy weed pressure…

2) I will throw my plant material straight on my wood-chip-mulched garden path where it can break down, and I will use it later in the season. 

3) If I am pulling a lot of plant material and it is too much to use on the beds, too seedy or a trip hazard for the path, I will pile this material up to use in the compost. 

Cover Crops

Planting cover crops has so many benefits for soil health. Cover crops can pull nitrogen from the air and put it into the soil; they can draw pollinators,  suppress weeds, add biomass and keep your soil covered. How well they do at any of these tasks depends on your chosen cover crop and how you employ them. Cover crops can feel tricky and confusing, but they are also great teachers, so it’s best just to get started and learn as you go. My best advice is to order a few and try them out. The first cover crop I ever used was buckwheat. 

Buckwheat is a fantastic fast-growing summer cover crop that can be planted in any spot where you have finished with cool-season crops and are not quite ready to plant warm-season crops. It conditions the soil and draws loads of pollinators. The downside is it is not super drought tolerant. Also, if your soils are in really bad shape, it can be hard to get a good stand. 

Peas and oats are another excellent cover crop. Peas are great at fixing nitrogen in the soil, while oats gather it up. I can get peas and oats into the ground in early spring and as I am ready to plant out my beds, I simply pull the peas and oats, let them decay, and plant into the green debris. Peas and oats are also excellent as fall cover crops. If it gets cold enough where you are, they will die off in the cold of winter leaving you a rich bed to plant into come early spring. 

Winter Rye and Hairy Vetch are what I turn to if I am planting late in the fall. They are incredibly hardy, withstanding the cold of our winters and putting on fast growth in the early spring. With a good stand, they can compete with some of the worst weeds. Rye must be terminated to plant your next crop; I have found cutting the rye below soil level does the job pretty well.

Tillage radish

I love planting tillage radish and letting it aerate and “till” the soil, all without upturning the soil at all. Tillage radish is also yummy to eat.

Red clover, Crimson clover, Phacelia 

These are beautiful covers that also attract beneficial insects to the garden.

Worm Castings 

Worm castings are my favorite source of additional fertility during the growing season. I love working with worms, and I find that between the chickens and the worm bin, I use most of my winter food waste in ways that benefit the garden. Keeping a worm bin needs a whole article itself. I highly recommend it, though I failed at it a few times before I was able to take full advantage of the glory that is worm castings. I am here to say it is worth the effort. However, if keeping a worm bin (or two) feels like too much, there are some great sources of quality worm castings out there. I often make a “tea” out of my casting and either water the soil directly or strain and use the tea as a foliar application. 

Compost

I saved compost for last because it is often the most challenging aspect people consider when approaching soil health. I love compost. We do hot composting here on our farm, but it is a lot of hard work and can be fiddly. 

I have found that the best way to do composting is to have an area where you collect garden trimmings and food waste. I usually keep layering these for a couple of months. Also, start collecting dried leaves, dried plant material etc. Collect way more than you think you will need. Then, you will want to find a good source of nitrogen. That could be manure from a friend’s farm or bedding from your chicken coop. Then, schedule a time to build your pile. If you can, make this a family affair or a community event. To build your pile by the book, you will want to create layers with a carbon-nitrogen ratio somewhere between 25:1 and 40:1. There are some fantastic online charts to help you figure this out; you do not have to get this perfect, as it is very forgiving. The charts are just a helpful tool to ensure your compost can get warm enough to break down. For example, we will have a layer of brown plant material mixed in with kitchen scraps. Our next layer will be a layer of green material, followed by a thin layer of chicken coop bedding and a layer of dried leaves. Repeat similar layering as needed to achieve a height of about 4 feet. Then, let the compost heat up. The higher the nitrogen the faster it will “cook,” but be careful - you want a slow burn, not raging fire. You will want to check the temperature of the compost with either a long (24-inch) thermometer or just a conductive metal rod stuck into your pile. When you pull out the rod, it should be almost too hot to hold for a few seconds.

The best way to learn compost is to do it a couple of times and tweak it as needed. 

I hope that as we go about our daily practical work of soil building and cultivation, we will see it as a sacred act of care for our own bodies, our families and our communities; That we can recognize how the well-being of the smallest parts impacts the whole pattern, things seen and unseen, known and unknown.