A beautiful essay by Frank Morton of Wild Garden Seeds

General Discussions
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I came across a recent essay by Frank Morton at the weekend, and it really resonated with me and thought I would share. I’ve been thinking a lot, for some time now, about the link between how we care for our soil, and the quality and ultimate nutrient density of our seed crops. We know genetics have a huge part to play in this, which is why we’re all here and part of this community, but I also think those microbial relationships are incredibly important, and I really love the work of Dr James White on rhizophagy, and his discussion in the course material on how microbial connections are vectored on seed coats to the next generation.

Many of these connections have been lost through loss of genetics & our plant breeding practice, but also in the way we manage soil, where plants haven’t been given the chance to form these relationships and then pass them on to the next generation in the first place. I love Frank’s approach to changing the management practice of the soil he is a steward of: after 40 years of cultivating, he has taken on board new learning and research and combined them with his well honed observation skills to try a new way of working the land. It is very similar to the approach we take at the market garden I work at, not an either/or way of working (cultivating or strict/high input no till), but a system that incorporates cover crops and minimum tillage methods to maximise photosynthesis and maintain the aggregation, macro and micro fauna, and fungal networks in the soil. Through growing our seed plants in microbially rich and diverse soil, we can help to promote those symbiotic relationships between plant and soil biota, and hope those connections are passed on to the next generation - for resilient, nutrient dense & locally adapted crops.

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This is, as you say, so beautiful. Thank you for sharing it.

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A good read. Thanks for posting the link.

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While I do use deep mulching techniques and also make my own compost and leaf mold, I must say that from my experience and research these things should not be needed, and in fact should not be encouraged. Every organic farm I have visited used tremendous amounts of compost. Some made their own, but most buy it in. For me one of the reasons landraces make so much sense is because they don’t need to be babied or require any special conditions (like lots of $$) to thrive. To me any solution has to be feasible for those in extreme climates like Africa and the Middle East. It seems like he is starting to wonder about the viability of many of the organic/no-till practices, and he should. Let’s hope that the adaptability of landraces becomes more well-known and utilized in the near future instead of so much focus being on improving the soil.

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It’s a wonderful article. Thank you for sharing it.

What really resonated with me was his discussion of how small-scale farming and large-scale farming just aren’t comparable. I’ve been pondering that for the last few weeks, ever since we had a discussion about that in another thread here. It looks like he has come to the same conclusion. You really do have to consider scale when you consider how to grow crops. What’s perfect for one may be a poor fit for the other.

I also really appreciate his point that we don’t have to be extremists about any one system of growing. He mentioned having double dug at first, and then moving towards minimum tillage in the third year. I really relate to that. I feel that double-digging is essential for my soil at the start, because I have so many huge rocks in it that need to come out. There are also very deep weed roots that I can pull out at the same time, thereby not having nearly as many perennial weeds long-term. Once I have a bed double-dug, though, I don’t want to do it every year. That sounds like way too much work to be sustainable, and there would be no reason to keep doing it. I only need to do it once, to prep it for becoming something fresh and new, and then I can focus on turning it into a miniature ecosystem that thrives with minimal disturbance.

I’d prefer to leave the beds alone once they’re completed, because I intend to install soaker hoses with deep mulch on top, in order to conserve precious water and keep it in the soil. I’d also like to add wine cap mushrooms to serve as edible fungi. And I’d like to encourage as many of my plants as possible to turn into perennials. All of those are most compatible with leaving the soil alone.

So yeah, double digging at the start is essential in order to get those rocks out so that roots can actually grow somewhere. Besides, I can (and plan to) repurpose those rocks as paths through my xeriscaped edible ornamental front yard. So they need to come out of my soil for that purpose, as well. :wink:

I’m starting to think sometimes things that are valuable in a new system have no place in a mature system, and vice versa.

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To elaborate on this a little, I appreciate his sense of place, time, and scale. This is something landrace gardening does well, to my mind: it is a system that appreciates how unique each location is, and can make room for the particular abundance and limiting factors brought about by each unique combination of location and gardener.

My mixed animal systems, with their high fertility, and your urine collection-- both are high fertility-input systems, where Joseph’s is much lower (though he retains every scrap of biomass, so he’s not losing fertility over time) and some folks are much lower still. Meanwhile I’m a boom-and-bust energy gardener, I’m happy to till in spring but I’m not going to weed much. You’re happy to double-dig once (I’m not!) but not in subsequent years. @WilliamGrowsTomatoes is happy to put down sand (!) to try getting better direct-seed germination, which maybe prevents him having to grow transplants. Rows, blocks, irrigation, dry-farming, mulching: we all have these unique conditions, and anyone who suggests that there’s one specific method of cultivation that should work across all climates and soils and scales and growers is, in my opinion, discrediting themselves.

That’s where I love how flexible landracing is. I can’t find it now, but there was a discussion on ways to start and keep productivity: adding a couple new plants on the end of a row, vs planting everything with the widest range of seed possible. I love that landracing makes room for this diversity, and I love how respectful his tillage story is of observation and diversity.

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The sand doesn’t affect germination too much. The courser sand I’ve been buying for a few years now after the farmer I used to get it from retired may even decrease germination- though selection may fix that as may mixing in a little topsoil. I think the biggest benefit is that I have shallow topsoil and it increases the water holding capacity with the pore space between the grains. Especially when applied as a separate layer on top of the topsoil. It also decreases clumping. Though if it eventually gets mixed in it still helps.

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That’s so well put! I love that it’s about paying attention to the needs (and wants) of each individual site and person, rather than trying to force a one-size-fits-all approach. That makes so much more sense. So much good can be accomplished that way.

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Oh, thank you for clarifying! I for some reason thought it was related to heat/drainage/germination for your direct-seeded tomatoes.

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Ooh it does hold heat. It might have been an confounding variable in some potential first early MMS siblings and wild child in 2019.

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I agree with that 100%, I also think farming in general isn’t comparable with gardening. My gardens put together are a bit over 10,000 sq ft. barely a quarter of an acre. I don’t till at all unless you count using a hoe to scratch out rows to plant seeds. Actually, I sometimes don’t even do that, with big seeds like corn or beans. Sometimes I just use a stick, or my finger poke a hole and drop the seed in. Sometimes the stumps of last year’s corn stalks or tomato vines are still there when I do it.

Often times too I will use a rake to clean off a planting bed. I just rake it into the paths and walk on it. later when purslane, dandelions, plantain, thistles, dock, violets and especially grass growing in the paths starts to get on my nerves, I shave it all off with a very sharp hoe and use a snow shovel or sometimes a dustpan to scoop it up and throw between the rows in the planting beds. That is if you want to call them rows, which they sometimes only vaguely resemble.

Years ago, when I first ditched the rototiller, it wasn’t because I wanted to convert to no-till so much as it was that I hated the rototiller. Nasty, greasy, roaring, stinking, heavy piece of crap that always needed fixed in one way or another. Not to mention all the growing space wasted inside my fences, dedicated instead to having room to maneuver that stupid thing.

I was afraid that using only a hoe, shovel, rake and hand trowel that it would be too much work but decided that if I couldn’t grow a garden without that damn machine that I just wouldn’t grow a garden. Turned out it is much easier, on my garden scale to do without the machine. And much more enjoyable too.

I guess I’m not really 100% no till. I plant lots of radishes, turnips and the like and let them rot in the ground. For first few years when I planted daikon radish the roots stuck way up out the ground. I guess they got stuck at the hard pan layer that must have formed below where the tiller used to reach. Turnips did that too. It only took a few years until that stopped happening.

I was also worried that my now permanent paths would just become so hard packed that it might be a problem but that hasn’t happened either. I keep them pretty bare and packed on purpose most of the time because it helps alert me if any moles are tunneling around. Moles can move in the beds with leaving no sign on the surface but if they try to cross a path it’s obvious. One more tool I didn’t mention is a pitchfork with the tines straightened, I jab it in the ground until it comes up bloody.

The paths have become depressions too and I use them as irrigation ditches. The water soaks down quickly and has nowhere to go except to seep under the beds. I gardened for decades rarely watering anything except a new transplant but now I have to do it at least two or three times a year.

This necessity of irrigation is new to me and I’m still figuring out the best and easiest way to do it. I have limited supply of rain collection and my pond if you want to call it that dries up in the summer now days. City water is full of chlorine and comes out as much as fifty degrees colder that the air, I’m not sure how that effects things. I’m thinking of getting tanks and filling them with the pond water while it’s still full in the spring.

Landrace gardening is a great practice but is not a substitute for healthy soil, it and the landrace seeds go hand in hand. In fact, I believe that living thriving soil is the most important landrace of all. Nothing that isn’t artificially compensated with lots of dollars, labor, machines and chemicals will grow without it and that I believe, is just all there is to it.

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Wow, killing moles with a pitchfork! That’s really quite brilliant. I never would have thought of that. It’s especially nice that you presumably don’t have to deal with a carcass. You can just leave it in the soil to rot away into food for your plants. “If you eat my plants, my plants will eat you,” sort of thing. Then they are part of the circle of life you’re building.

As for irrigation, I’m gathering rainwater off my roof to go into IBC totes, which can hold 250 gallons each. I have four. They’re all full. I doubt they’ll be enough for my five months of heat, but I’ll try. If you want something smaller because you only need a little bit of water every so often, one 50-gallon rain barrel would probably be sufficient.

Another idea might be to store water in milk jugs, which you keep in a hoop house over the winter to serve as a passive heating system to help you grow more stuff. (I think I got that idea from Lauren in a post the other week.) Once you no longer need them for temperature mediation, you could use the water in them for occasional irrigation, and then recycle the jugs. (They won’t last longer than about six months outside without starting to crumble, so you can’t use them indefinitely. Still, as something that would otherwise get recycled or trashed, it makes sense to reuse them first.)

Oh, I REALLY like that perspective!

I keep thinking, while I am removing rocks, adding organic material, storing captured rainwater, collecting mulch, removing invasive weed roots, etc. that I am “healing my land.”

I see my land itself as part of my stewardship to take care of. The soil itself is part of what I’m here to care for. It’s similar to how I feel about taking care of my house. It is my home. Humans I love live in it. My soil is my garden’s home. Nonhumans I love live in it. Part of caring for somebody is making sure they have a healthy and suitable home. It doesn’t need to be decadent. It needs to be wholesome and sustainable.

I’m not seeking to turn my soil into something it isn’t. I am not seeking an impossible-to-maintain standard. I am seeking to turn my soil into the healthiest version of its own quirky self that it can sustain, regaining all its beauty and potential that was there long ago, and can be there again.

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