Dirt Isn't Soil

I spent the weekend at my parents’ home helping them with some weeding, planting, and so on. Their vegetable garden has moved and gotten smaller as they’ve grown older. This year’s location is different from last year’s, but only slightly; it always occupies a small section of the farm field adjacent to their house.

The changing location is good and bad; it ensures the garden is properly watered, but it also means the spot is subject to the vagaries of commercial farming.

I brought my parents one of my three remaining rhubarb plants. It was a homecoming of sorts, since my original rhubarb roots came from their own garden. As I dug the holes in the lot that was a rye field just a few weeks ago, I realized that, despite my father’s years of experience as a farmer, they knew little about soil composition.

Soil or dirt?

Being conventional farmland, or just a tiny corner of it, the new garden is, for lack of a better term, dirt. A handful of the garden’s dirt will sift gently through your fingers, or remain as several clumps, depending on its moisture. This is not the ideal condition for a bountiful garden.

And I’ll tell you why. Your emerging seedlings or your small, garden center-purchased transplants need ready access to nutrients and water. Organic matter in the root zone helps to form the mini nooks and crannies that hold water, air, and nutrients nearby, where growing roots and root hairs can access it.

Preparing a “fluffy” soil

This organic matter also helps keep the dirt from being hard as a rock. Imagine being a tiny root trying to make your way through a blockade of dirt. The tiny spaces created by compost and other materials I term “fluffy” allow the roots to effortlessly grow their way through the soil in search of food and water.

Whether you are tilling a corner of a nearby rye field or claiming a bit of an abandoned lot for your new garden this year, remember that a healthy and bountiful garden starts below ground. Help your roots get off on the right foot by preparing a soil in which they can move easily and find the water and nutrients they need.