Soil is not dirt
Like a best friend, it requires music, sugar and your considered attention (among other things)
If you still sometimes casually refer to soil as dirt, you won’t ever again after picking up and reading this very instructive book.
Published last fall, Canadian Phil Nauta’s Building Soils Naturally: Innovative Methods for Organic Gardeners (Austin, Texas; Acres U.S.A., 2012) is dense with information but yet has an easy reading style. The author indicates early on that his intention is not to propose new theories in this book, but to present the best and most effective practices he has learned for making our soils healthy.
I believe there will be three types of readers who will approach this book. First, the soil scientist — the type that enjoys examining soil tests, and likes to manage his or her garden much like a temperature-controlled wine cellar. This type of reader will quite possibly become evangelical (in a good way) about permaculture and biodynamic farming. As such, they will appreciate this book in the same way they have embraced everything published by the Rodale Press, as well as Jeff Lowenfels and Jeff Lewis’s earnest effort, Teaming with Microbes (Portland, Ore.; Timber Press, 2006) and classics like the ideological work by Fukuoka called The One-Straw Revolution (New York; New York Review Book, 1978), as well as many others.
Second, the organic gardener who is already dedicated to things such as composting and using water judiciously and wants to find out more about other sustainable and sound practices. As such, they will be enthralled by the chapter on controlling weeds with targeted nutrient applications and another on using cover crops as fertilizer. This type of gardener will really benefit from Nauta’s book and will use it as an important and enlightening resource.
And third, the absolute novice and quite possibly lazy gardener, who will be intimidated by the amount of information here and perhaps only take in the sections on water management and compost.
What I like about Nauta’s approach is that he talks in a relaxed but knowledgeable way about the many aspects of the living ecosystem that is our garden soil, not simply the inert particles. He talks about the top 12 centimetres of soil being full of microbes (and other subterranean animals) whose job it is to ensure that oxygen can be available for plant roots, which all of them need in order to thrive. He explains that plants require more than simply nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium to survive; indeed, they need access to the almost 80 nutrients that exist in soils.
Nauta explains that it is important to know our soil’s texture because it will reflect its fertility: sandy soils being the least naturally fertile and clay soils being the most, primarily due to their ability to magnetically attract soil minerals and organic matter. The proportions of these particles or ingredients will determine your soil’s overall texture, and its so-called structure is what takes place when the soil inhabitants work their magic on this community of particles.
In advance of explaining how to improve our soil, Nauta is a great believer in soil testing, and recommends that we all test our soil for its nutrient content at least once. I must admit that this was my least compelling chapter, since I have an aversion to science, but I know it is something that I should embrace.
The meat of the book outlines what steps to take to make our soil healthy: recycling water and applying it to the entire soil area rather than just targeting individual plants, incorporating organic matter for its nutrient and water-holding capacity as well as improving soil structure, using microbial inoculants, supplementing with mineral-based nutrients as well as bio stimulants and micronutrients.
There are a few concepts in the book that will be met with skepticism, and Nauta does know this. For example, the application of molasses and other sugars as food for microbes, the ideas of paramagnetism and radionics, as well as the use of a Brix test to measure the nutrition present in plants and, not least, the acknowledgment that vegetables respond positively to classical music as they grow.
It is a worthwhile book for the organic gardener who wants to go beyond the compost heap and delve into some more complex and sometimes unusual ways to ensure their crops remain healthy and fruitful.
You can find Phil Nauta also through his website, SmilingGardener.com, where he teaches the principles of organic gardening online to gardeners around the world.