Making Soil

Nell and Natasha help prepare soil for the winter garden

I grew up on a farm in Nebraska where my great grandfather had busted sod. I planted my first flower patch at age seven in soil that had been used for only three human generations, and it was still rich with things needed to make my zinnias zing.

Fast forward a few decades and I’m in Santa Barbara, planting in soil I’ve engineered myself. I can’t do the same magnificent job nature did over eons, but I try.

I compost all my garden trimmings. A woman at the company charged with the job of picking up “green barrels” in the neighborhood calls me now and then and asks why I have nothing in my green barrel again.

“I compost,” I proudly say.

But this does not make her happy.  The refuse company cares because recyclable waste is supposed to balance the material that goes to landfill. I don’t fit the model. Some days I fear they’ll confiscate my organic debris.

So far I have been allowed to keep all the leaves, pruned branches and weeds my garden offers and return it to the soil once the material is well decomposed.  After 22 years of adding compost, this soil now has a plenty of humus.

I used to think adding organic material was enough, and for some plants it is, but it turns out that in my veggie garden, the soil needs other things as well, and I have experimented with various kinds of organic fertilizers. I get advice from gardening neighbors and friends, and I read a lot about this.
 
I’m still not sure of the perfect solution. Most organic gardeners swear by this or that fertilizer. Unfortunately they don’t all swear by the same thing, so even after decades of gardening, I’m still experimenting.

This November, as I prepare soil for winter vegetables I’m trying a bag of fertilizer with bat guano and earthworm castings plus a long list of environmentally friendly goodies, supposedly everything the soil needs.

I am still confused about whether I should till or not. In Nebraska the first step in planting veggies was to turn the soil. My dad did this with the same plow he used for the cornfields. We then chopped up the big clods with shovels and rakes. The soil didn’t seem to mind that it was repeatedly stirred up this way, but now experts say tilling is not such a good thing.

Nature doesn’t build soil by turning it. She lets soil settle into its place and all the microorganisms that live in the soil and make it work are left relatively undisturbed. I try to disturb my veggie garden soil as little as possible, but if I am to incorporate this bag of magnificently trendy organic fertilizer, I must do some digging.

And I have two terriers helping.