Woods Dirt

My mother was an avid gardener. She insisted my little sister and I help with pulling weeds and feeding the veg patch.

As a surly teenager, I complained a lot, totally missing the point. Gardening would not take hold with me until after the birth of my second daughter. When I asked my mother’s advice on a fruitful garden, she replied, “Woods dirt makes the best soil.” I didn’t really know what she meant, but if she said it, then it was so.

In my early 30s, ill-informed I jumped in with both feet. Taking heed of mom’s sage words, I dutifully harvested a couple of bucket-fulls of dirt from around the stand of trees at the end of the yard. All season, I fussed away at herb growing, but with moderate success at best. This was harder than I expected, and I didn’t have the budget or the inclination to buy all the “stuff” successful gardeners employ for their amazing yields. But besides my lack of funds, the seemingly absolute necessity of extra “stuff” somehow didn’t make sense to me. My naive, inexperienced young self, thought, “It’s dirt. Things should just grow,” and all the fancy products in bright, plastic containers seemed a bunch of marketing hogwash and I wasn’t falling for it. Yet in my ignorant arrogance, I wasn’t completely wrong.

My lack of success persisted until a few years ago when I found a gardening philosophy that resounded with my very soul. I was already attempting to grow using what I now know are permaculture principles, but I didn’t yet have the know-how. After a self-prescribed 3-year immersion of experimentation and study of Permaculture principles, I can now proudly announce… drum roll, please… I am getting there!

Mother Nature. Make her your CEO. Do as she would. How you ask? Well, one way is to choose plants that support each other and work well in your environment, and leave off the chemicals. You’ll save yourself tons of work, time, and money. While you’re at it, you’ll also save worms, slugs, pillbugs, and earwigs, and a host of other individuals smaller than the eye can see. Why should you care about them? Because they are your dirt makers. They will work so hard, you should be giving them bonuses and 401Ks!

I now understand why mom said woods dirt is the best; it’s because the dirt there was built by the inhabitants of the woods. With their bodies, the deceased animals and plants give back to the earth with their leaves and limbs the very nutrients they consumed to stay alive. It’s just another healthy, natural cycle of nature that we can enjoy if we’d only step back and get out of the way.

This by no means defines the Permaculture philosophy, but it’s a part of it and an equation that makes so much sense to me. Less work and dollars for you, less negative impact on the environment, and all the goodie that hands in clean dirt and open-air living bring.

I’ve got high hopes for the upcoming year. Join me on my learning journey. I’ll be detailing my hits and misses as I continue with my full-on sustainable gardening experiment in 2022.

Let’s do this!