Yesterday was First (soil) Amendment Day (of the season). I claimed my right (and accepted my responsibility) to enrich the soil in my gardens. I like doing that work because it’s physical, good old-fashioned labor that invigorates. I also like it because it’s the right (and necessary) thing to do, returning nutrients to the soil that last year’s garden took from it.
If I lived in the country, I would make compost to put back into the soil. Being an apartment dwelling, city inhabiting gardener, I have to forage in this urban wilderness for what I need. I’m sold on chopped, composted leaves. They are plentiful here in these communities that collect them in the fall, raked and bagged for recycling, and even vacuumed up from parks and other public places. The problem is, the one community that makes composted leaves available earliest, possibly year round (I’ve never needed leaf mulch in December so haven’t checked) is about a 25 minute drive if traffic isn’t too awful which it often is.
Crumbly, composted goodness
The pile is in a recycling center alongside big bins for glass, newspaper, aluminum and more. The crumbled leaf mold mountain range is huge: the summit is higher than me and the ridge runs far enough for three, maybe four cars or trucks to load at the same time. My gardens, Smith, Jones, and The Lorelei, are all small operations so I only bring bags: a few new kitchen garbage bags and some brown paper ones from the grocery. I enjoy the work because it’s exercise that has a greater purpose than mere physical fitness. I’m working for a cause. I also like it because that cause is replenishing the earth. It feels like an ancient and honorable activity. It is.
Once again, I’ve pressed the van into service. Today, presto, change-0, it becomes, The Garden Mobile, full of bags of crumbled, partially deteriorated leaves and their fermenty fragrance, plus a shovel, a garden fork, and my bag of garden tools and seeds.
Pressed into service
Now it’s back to Smith where I worked the day before pulling weeds and spreading another of my favorite soil amendments: lovely, sweet manure. A fellow gardener and well-known soil amender procured a pile, of which I bought a share, fifteen dollars for some of the best stuff known to the gardening tribe. Normally, you don’t add manure to soil just before planting: fresh manure has too much nitrogen that hasn’t broken down yet and it would hurt the plants, likely kill them. This stuff, however, is six or seven years old. The pile looks like dirt and has only the faint whiff of the barnyard. In fact, the pile of leaf mold smelled more barnyardish than this. Today, I will only add the leaves to a portion of the bed that’s still drains slowly and stays filled with water way too long. When I first saw the garden plot that was to become Smith, it had puddles of standing water: not a good sign unless you plan to grow rice.
Spread it 'round
These last two seasons, I have added lots of leaf mold. This year as I am pulling weeds, working the soil, generally preparing the ground to receive plants, I’m thinking my soil amendments over the last few years have turned this paddy into a proper plot. And really, that’s what replenishing is all about: improving what you’ve been given, and what you’ve made use of. What could be more important than exerting your First (of the season) (soil) Amendment Rights?
