Dirt. Countries fight wars over it. Washing machines and mothers struggle to get rid of it. Dogs and bulldozers dig holes in it. Without dirt, we’d all starve, houses, trees and people would sink into the Earth’s molten core and burn to cinders. There are probably more negative words for “dirt” than for any other word—filth, muck, slime, sludge, debris, rubbish, corruption, grunge, grime, scum and crud—not to mention that dirt is another name for slander, gossip, vulgarity, indecency, slovenliness and poo.
Everywhere we look, there’s dirt. It’s on our tires, under our fingernails, it’s in the air and under the grass. When it rains, dirt in the shape of shoes appears on kitchen floors. The term “dirt cheap” implies that dirt is so readily abundant that it is practically free. But it’s not. Some bags of dirt cost more than hamburger. I found that out when I decided to replace my own dirt.
For the past few years, we have tried to raise a garden. And every year, our pathetic tomatoes withered and turned gray, developing spots and dark cracks, cursed and tormented with a kind of vegetable leprosy. Our peppers turned brown and contorted into the shape of partly-deflated footballs before succumbing to mold. Our beets started to grow, then heaved themselves half out of the ground and rotted as if in a desperate and futile attempt to escape our poisonous soil. Neighbors asking hopefully about our garden receive only a look of stern warning. Like an uncle, recently sent to prison, we don’t talk about the garden. There is no getting around it. Our dirt is no good.
If you think that dirt is dirt, think again. It turns out selecting the right dirt is as exacting as selecting the right wine. Soil contains a delicate balance of water, minerals, plant and animal materials as well as phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium and nitrogen. Soil in Hawaii, for example, contains volcanic materials which is good for growing sugar cane and macadamia nut. Soil in the northeastern US is full of glacial minerals good for trees, but not great for gardens. Midwestern soil is famously rich from decomposition of the deep roots of prairie grasses and ideal for vegetables. But that was ancient history. Now we have to fortify soil with stuff like mushroom compost to the tune of about five bucks for two and a half pounds of the stuff. Or we could add a product that runs $6 for four pounds, called “Chick-N-Poo” which is, well, chicken poo. My grandma let her chickens run free to eat bugs, stray kernels of corn and kitchen scraps and let Nature take its course. I think she would have been thrilled to discover that her chicken poo was so valuable.
I figure the garden will need some 15 bags of topsoil at $10 for a 35-pound bag and that much composted steer manure at $3 for a 32-pound bag. This is not going to dirt cheap but I have great hopes our gourmet dirt will produce a nurturing environment for handsome and well-behaved vegetables. Or, I could save the money and buy vegetables at the store.