S.O.I.L.
The soil on our land is not particularly fertile. The place is too close to the mountain right above the village, so the soil is, as one neighbour called it, mountainous. It’s rocky and scarce in nutrients because, as that neighbour’s wife said once, the rain washes all the nutrients from our lands down to the centre of the village. They get all the good stuff. Life’s unfair.
In this place, s-o-i-l stands for supremely obnoxious instance of land.
Irina: It actually makes sense – the lower part of the village is flat, so whatever the rain carries from higher up ends up there. But we get all the vistas and all the sky.
Cat: We have the best view! I should paint it some day.
Cris: There are plenty of fertilisers out there. There’s a solution for every problem.
Irina: With prices where they are and with idiotic legislation against fertilisers they might soon end up being a luxury. How about manure? That would be easy to get and cheap, I guess.
Cris: Nope.
Irina: But you still haven’t got all your sense of smell back after Covid. What if you never get that part that can register manure back? Just think about it.
Cris: Nope.
Cris, for all the summers he has spent among farm animals in his childhood, cannot stand the smell of manure even if he cannot (maybe) actually smell it.
Irina: All right, fine, but we need to start tending the compost heap more regularly so we do get some compost out of it.
Cris: No problem.
Irina: Because I still remember how I tried to grow okra three years ago and how the plants grew so beautifully and how they bloomed and started making tiny little okras and how they all died because of the depleted soil.
Cris: No problem.
Irina: And I’m not having all these peppers I’ve planned for this year wilt and die as well, not after I had to grow seedlings twice because of the stupid soil. Even after I added turf and fertiliser. And I bought a soil everything meter. And it said it’s not as alkaline as we thought after the vinegar test.
Cat: Mum, Dad said “No problem”.
The vinegar test was performed on the advice of Irina’s friend Ken from Texas, who has a degree in agricultural science and decades of experience in chemicals and fertilisers.
It’s basically a litmus test and we had fun mixing some soil with water and adding vinegar to see it fizzle. Which meant the soil was alkaline. Which is not good for most plants.
Which was where NPK, one of the greatest scientific discoveries of modern time, came in handy. Following the strategic scattering of five kilos of NPK fertiliser across the new veggie beds, the soil everything meter said the soil’s pH was 7.
Cris: If it weren’t for all the rocks and the weeds we could turn it into a perfect garden in a year.
Irina: They breed. Somehow they breed. There can’t be this many rocks in this plot alone.
Cat: Come on, they don’t breed. They can’t have sex. Maybe they just break down so large rocks turn into many smaller ones.
Irina: That we have to collect every time we want to do something with the soil. We should start using them for decoration, like the ones we marked the path with.
This could be tricky because we put all the big ones on the path but there’s a way around everything. Clearly, the path is a work in progress itself. (Note: He’s asking for a belly rub, not being in pain)
Cat: Great idea!
Cris: Okay, let’s just put them in certain places along the beds and then we’ll collect them in one place.
Irina: And when he says “we”…
Cat: Yeah, yeah. I know. But you know I don’t have a lot of time, I have a lot of homework and drawing, and things.
Besides scare nutrients and rocks, the structure of the soil is also a challenge, because the best challenges come in threes.
It’s heavy clay soil, which means it needs a lot – a LOT – of care to keep it reasonably aerated and workable for the plants. By July, unless the year happens to be unnaturally rainy, it turns to something resembling concrete in everything but name and ingredients.
Irina: Remember how last summer I tried to dig out the tulip bulbs to redistribute them? I had muscle cramps for days.
Cris: I told you it was too dry for that but you insisted.
Irina: It had to be done and there was no other time for it.
Cris: This year you could start earlier. Or I could dig them out with the shovel. Just not in July or August.
Irina: I’m definitely starting earlier this year. Or watering the ground before I start. I don’t need help, this is stress relief.
The weather has been (mostly) on our side in spring 2023, so tilling was almost a breeze. In fact, they were so much of a breeze that we got cocky. We decided to grow tomatoes. Expect progress reports on that courageous endeavour.
