Gardeners are very fussy about their dirt. For it looms large in their legend.
Silly? Not at all.
I’ve been raised-bed gardening for more than 30 years. It’s a great option ‘round these parts, given the relatively poor soil composition. And after all those years, I have thousands of pounds of the stuff in nine raised beds (and also in assorted pots and buckets).
It is some of the richest soil imaginable. Almost black in color. Loaded in organic matter and, thus, nutrients. Nice and loose to promote great drainage. Oh, and teeming with worms.
That dirt has consistently grown some great vegetables over the years – large, tasty and voluminous. That’s thanks to, first, religiously practicing crop rotation to naturally replenish those soils and, second, a regular amending regimen (think homemade compost, think dehydrated mushroom manure) that keeps that soil up to growing snuff.
And, yes, more than a few times a year, in go several containers of eager worms to perform their aeration and castings magic.
But trees grow and times change. It has become more and more difficult to garden as dedicated sunlight wanes with each passing summer. Yields have been falling recently. So, too, has the size of the vegetables grown. Blame the encroaching shade.
So, some of that dirt is finding a new home, but in the same old bed frames, relocated to a West Virginia mountaintop.
The laborious process of transferring hundreds of pounds of that great soil began last weekend. Front-yard beds that most recently grew lettuce, onions and garlic have been dismantled and their soils trucked to Jones Mountain and tractored to their new home. A few of the too-shaded and larger backyard beds, long home to green beans, cucumbers and peppers, are next to go.
They’ll all be positioned on one of the mountain’s few flat spots and, at least as long as there’s a danger of spring frost, under the cover of a new and large portable greenhouse.
Once it warms up sufficiently, tall fencing to ward off ravenous deer will replace the full cover. And a plethora of vegetables will bear witness to the construction of much larger, in-ground terraced gardens.
The Last Great Act of Transference will be folding in all that heritage soil into the new garden beds after this growing season. And come the spring of 2019, a new garden era will begin, under plenty of sun, a pristine blue mountain sky and the smiling visage of a very happy gentleman farmer.
Colin McNickle is a senior fellow and media specialist at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
