Carol Klein: Feed the soil – it’s worth it!
It’s a huge job, but worth it because we ask more of the earth than Mother Nature herself
‘Recycling has worked for millions of years in nature, and it’s been adopted by us in our gardens for thousands of years’
Amajor job during late autumn, winter and early spring is feeding our soil. We seldom feed our plants, but we always feed our soil! We feed it with our own compost made from garden waste, with rotted dung and with the leaf mould that the garden’s trees create.
We garden organically. Growing organically is a system – it cannot be partial. It has to be all or nothing. It’s a way of creating and maintaining a sustainable scheme that follows and emulates nature. Because we’re asking more of the earth than Mother Nature would, we help it to work by adding more of the same constituents it produces itself.
Organic gardeners know that the soil sustains life, and the natural process by which nature recycles materials to feed the soil, to produce the plant growth to provide the material for recycling, is an ongoing process. It’s worked for millions of years in nature, and it’s been adopted by us in our gardens for thousands of years. Organic gardeners feed the soil, encouraging soil-borne organisms to break down material, allowing plants to take what they need and leave the rest.
At the moment, soon after leaves have been cleared – a mammoth operation – we spread a thick layer of mulch over the surface of the soil. On the shady side of the garden where small beds are contained within interlocking paths, we usually use leaf mould. It’s not too rich and suits the plants living there.
People ask why we don’t just leave well alone. After all, the leaves would break down eventually in situ and though that’s true, because this is a garden and intensively planted with lots of small ‘treasures’, they might be overcome and vanish for ever under a thick leaf layer.
It’s a shame in a way because the whole place looks much more beautiful covered in a thick layer of orange beech leaves than exposed dark soil. But we do it, and it works!
The only problem is because the trees we planted get bigger each year, so too do their roots. In some places they’re exposed and they’re obviously using up lots of the goodness in the soil.
Once, I was lucky enough to visit Heronswood Nursery, across the Puget Sound from Seattle. The stature and health of the woodland plants was astonishing and owner Dan Hinkley told me that the previous year everything had had a mulch of beefy compost with a high content of animal manure. Although it was well-rotted when applied, it was still astonishing to find its being used in a woodland setting. Perhaps this winter we’ll be brave enough to do the same.
Geoff Hamilton wrote his book Organic Gardening 30 years ago, presenting the gardening public with ideas about gardening in a different way to that of the then gardening zeitgeist. The irony was that, far from this being a new, perhaps revolutionary, idea, we human beings have grown our gardens and cultivated our vegetables organically since we started to produce our own food.
For many of us, though, it was Geoff’s espousal of the organic gardening cause that changed both our outlook and practices.
Gardening organically means being aware of the cycle that exists and that governs how things work. It’s not a horticultural tightrope but a system that emulates nature. We can make compost and leaf mould, use rainwater and natural liquid feed and encourage beneficial insects into the garden to help deal with pests.
Such methods promote strong and healthy growth and enable us to grow intensively without upsetting the natural balance. On with the mulch!