In a recent thread, someone mentioned they consider their soil to be a landrace in its own right. I think that’s a very interesting perspective.
For someone blessed with very good soil (or at least reasonably okay soil) from the start, maintenance is probably all that is necessary – just making sure they don’t extract more than goes back in.
For someone who starts with very infertile soil that has been damaged by years of extraction with no corresponding inputs (for instance, a former lawn that was mowed and had the clippings thrown away for many decades), improvement may be a necessary first step in order to get to the stage where maintenance is all that is needed.
Mine is, as far as I can tell, pure sand for a foot. Then half sand and half rocks for a foot. Then almost pure rocks thereafter. Light colored, gritty texture, no nutrients, no water holding capacity. Bindweed loves it. A few other weeds like it, too. Not much else does.
I’ve been digging up my garden beds in order to remove the rocks to about two or three feet deep, in order to give my plants more space for their roots. I also keep finding trash buried in there – bits of plastic, bits of foam, cigarettes, pieces of metal, big chunks of broken glass, etc. I want both the rocks and trash out. I want my plants to have space for their roots. While I’m at it, I also pull out any deep weed roots I find. Like all the bindweed.
About 7/8ths of the volume of each hole is rocks. (Yes, LOTS of rocks!) If I just put the sand back, it would be two feet lower. Instead, I refill the hole with kitchen scraps, chunks of wood, leaves, diaper fluff, urine – whatever will add volume, fertility, and long-term water holding capacity. I put the remaining sand from that hole back on top.
Within about three months, the top is black and feels rich and loamy. In six months, if I happen to dig (which I’ve done a few times just to check and make sure it had worked), everything is dark, rich, crumbly, full of earthworms, and there’s no sign of anything I buried. It’s no longer dirt – it’s soil.
That’s a maintenance stage! I don’t need to do that again. I have repaired the damage that was done to it, and now I can simply make sure I always put back in as much as I take out.
I plan to do this by covering everything in deep mulch, putting in tasty annuals and perennials from as many different plant families as possible, adding in tasty edible fungi that form beneficial relationships with plants, and covering everything in autumn leaves and chop-and-dropped dead annuals at the end of each fall.
I like the idea that my soil is a landrace in its own right, and one that interacts with and affects the health of all my others. If I receive it damaged, I should heal it first. Then I can simply maintain it, and everything that lives on my land will benefit from it.
