I like to observe national soil conservation week (April 20-26 this year) by planting the sweet peas. It seems an appropriate time to reconnect with the earth, feel the tilth and moisture of the soil and plant seeds that promise fragrance and beauty.
While doing a garden reconnaissance before seed purchase last week, my shoes dragged a bunch of mud into the house.
That’s when a soil conservation epiphany occurred: the difference between soil and dirt is a matter of threshold. Specifically, the threshold of the kitchen door.
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Clods in the field are soil, clods on the kitchen floor are dirt. Manure applied in a field becomes soil, but manure spattered on a pant leg is dirt. Stuck on a seed opener, soil; stuck in your ear, dirt.
What a difference a threshold makes.
Think of all the time and energy and water and cleaning products required to get dirt out of the house.
Then think of all the minimum tillage and windbreaks and organic matter and water conservation required to keep soil in the field.
If we could just get all the inside dirt outside, and keep it there, we could save ourselves a lot of trouble and conserve soil in the process.
Well, it’s not that simple, as we all know, but prairie dwellers are far more savvy to soil conservation than they used to be.
Saskatchewan Agriculture tells us that fully 50 percent of the province’s cultivated land was direct-seeded last year, thereby minimizing soil loss and conserving precious organic matter. Minimum and zero-tillage percentages are also up in Alberta and Manitoba.
Here’s some perspective on how bad it used to be, says the book Soil at Risk: “Between 1961 and 1976, Canada lost more than 3.5 million acres of farmland (through soil erosion) – the equivalent of the size of Prince Edward Island.”
Times were, some people cultivated several times a year just to keep the summerfallow black and impress passers-by. We had a few of those types as neighbours back home in southern Alberta.
Given the resulting wind erosion, it’s possible some of their soil now rests in my Saskatchewan garden. And they’re not getting it back.
Like many prairie dwellers, I think of wind as the major perpetrator of soil erosion, but water is also a culprit. Because of improved farming practices, the fields rarely bleed and breathe black when the wind blows and the water runs.
That’s a very good thing.
