As a child, I loved making mud pies and mud pots in the backyard. These concoctions were the precursors to my love of baking real pies and making stoneware pottery, I suppose. No doubt, the time spent in the mud provided me with health benefits from the beneficial soil bacteria. Thanks, Mom, for letting me dig up your yard! Afterward, as a teen I learned about native food gathering via Euell Gibbons’ Grape Nuts Cereal commercials and his books. It was a revolutionary thought to me that food grew in the wild!
Fast forward to a 4th-grade educator when my students and I loved to sing songs by the Banana Slug Band, such as Dirt Made My Lunch and other environmental ditties. Maybe it was a revolutionary concept to them as the class became skilled at knowing about soil and its process in growing our food. The California Natural History Guide book entitled Earth, Soil and Land in California by David Carle paints an interesting picture of the processes of decomposing logs and leaves and their role in returning nutrients to the land to enrich soil that provides a healthy ecosystem or a garden, too.
The soil upon which we walk is not just dirt but living soil. This earth system is comprised of not merely rocks and minerals, but mixed into the inorganic dirt are organic flora and fauna like worms, bacteria, fungi, and other organisms. Ask anyone who survived the terrible Dust Bowl in the 1930s when the awful drought, along with poor farming practices, caused the topsoil of the Great Plains region to dry up and blow away.
Besides the microscopic organisms in the soil, another link to the health of the soil is water quality. Healthy soil is happy when clean water filters through it since good soil can help filter out particulate matter or pollutants. Moles and gophers that burrow into the soil and animals that fly, scratch, or disturb the soil with hooves, such as deer, play a part in the aeration of the soil, as well as aid the process of nutrient cycling with their scat.
Smaller critters such as earthworms and sow bugs are hard at work in the soil, making it possible for plants to grow successfully.
The science of soil study in the natural environment is known as pedology, and this scientific discipline ventures into the topics of the evolution of ecosystems and the inventory of the twelve main soil orders. The twelve main soil orders, according to a USDA chart, include soils found in semiarid areas, such as alfisols, which make up about 10% of Earth’s ice-free land surface, and other types such as andisols, aridisols, entisols, gelisols, histosols, inceptisols, mollisols, oxisols, spodosols, ultisols that are found in humid areas, and vertisols that hold clay components.
As any gardener knows, soil matters. The distinct characteristics contained within soils have a definite impact on a plant’s growth, whether it’s in your garden or the forest. Along with air and water, our soil thrives on good care and responds to what we put in it or on it. Become a compost king or queen and let your coffee grounds, orange peels, and plant trimmings work hard for your amazing and intricate soil.
