Damaged Dirt

Ahhh, here we are...finally. Off the soapbox, fingers sifting the stuff we are made of: plain old-fashioned dirt.

But alas, we find that this dirt has been damaged. Damaged? Did a Belgian stomp on it? A John Deere squish it?

No, just simply neglected. How do you neglect dirt?

The best example in my memory of damaged dirt—besides the herbicide spill I mentioned in the last article—is a large field across the road from where I lived near Huacareta, Bolivia. This particular piece of ground was incapable of making corn grow any higher than a man’s head. On the other side of the road, my corn patch shot up to 10-12’, with the first ears so high off the ground that I occasionally had to reach up as high as I could to harvest them. Some of my neighbors commended me for my excellent farming abilities, but I realized it was a matter of mere healthy dirt.

The land I had planted had not been tilled for over ten years. Cattle had grazed there irregularly, but basically it had been “resting”, rebuilding. I then hired someone to plow and disc it, and planted my crops; by hand, like most folks do down there.

Across the road was a different story. For about 80 years, that field had been planted in corn without giving any reprise to the soil. Corn, corn, corn, and more corn, and more corn yet. No rotation, no compost added, no cover crops plowed in, probably not even any chemical fertilizers added. Commercially produced fertilizer is one of those luxuries that folks down that way rarely can afford.

The only thing put into that patch of ground was the dung from the cattle that would pick through the stalks after harvest. And, I imagine that some years even these stalks were raked into rows and burned. After all, if you have ever tried to hoe a corn patch with last years stalks laying around, you know it is a task. It is “easier” to burn them out of the way...even if that means destroying the organic matter so desperately needed for the next year’s crop.

So, now let’s figure out how to heal this patch of damaged dirt. According to normal procedure, you take some soil samples, figure out if the ph is off-balance and how much NPK it lacks.

Once these figures come back to you, you order the appropriate lime and fertilizer mix, and spread in on the hurting patch of soil. You have then “healed” the damaged dirt, right?

Wrong.

While this approach is a help, it would be like a carpenter who takes his air-nailer to the repair shop with a complaint that it leaks so much air that his compressor cannot keep up. So the repairman says, “No problem. We can easy fix that. Over there along that wall you will see our air-compressors. You simply need a bigger air-compressor.”

A bigger air-compressor will keep a leaky nailer going. And more commercial fertilizers will keep a patch of damaged dirt producing crops. But is that a sustainable way to live?

The commercial fertilizer industry only started about 150 years ago. It is a modern convenience, something folks on planet earth lived without for many millenniums.

I am not saying that commercial fertilizers are evil, or wrong in their place. But applying a dose of Triple-12 does not necessarily heal a piece of damaged land. What I am saying is that there are other alternatives, which in the long run, may well be more beneficial.

This brings us back to the words “in the long run”. Which brings us back into the question of whether we are here only for our immediate benefit, or for the benefit of future generations as well. Are we care-takers, or don’t-care-takers?

In the next article, we will peep into soil biology. Get your microscopes ready!