Jan. 22, 2015
By Peter Schutt

NOW AVAILABLE! Winchester Farm has organically raised, pastured pork for sale. We have hogs now ready to process – find some friends to share a pig! Approx 150 lbs of packaged pork per hog, $4 a lb. cut and packaged. We’ll handle the processing and making sausage for you!

At Winchester Farm we know that healthy soil is the foundation for growing healthy food. We think of soil in the context of humus. That is the richest, living soil on earth, and for the most part, it occurs naturally only in areas where humans haven’t added or subtracted to the natural way of things. In biblical Greek, the second creation story in Genesis describes God creating Adam from Adamah, which is translated to English as humus. Soil that is alive with all sorts of bacteria, minerals, microbes, etc.
An example of humus in these parts would be the soil beneath an old growth stand of hardwoods – decades of leaves, twigs, nuts, etc. that have slowly rotted with the help of earthworms, insects and billions of bacteria.
So it is for urban gardeners, we are best advised to follow nature’s lead and return our home gardens to some semblance of a natural, living soil. As Wendell Berry says, “ . . . we have no right to look at the land and ask what we can expect to get out of it, but rather we are required to look at the land and ask what it needs from us.”
Most soils in any city are not in any sort of natural state, because modern subdivisions have been built in a fashion that first removes most native trees and plants, then scrapes topsoil to make building sites. Nature has been defeated in its effort to build humus, and thus most earthworms, insects and bacteria therein, have been lost.
Now, the home gardener has his or her work to do.
Here, let me say this: rebuilding spent soil is a job that takes patience. And observation. What I have learned over 40 years of gardening is that the health of the plants you grow, and the presence or absence of weeds, worms and insects, will tell you as much or more than can be found in books. The handful of true soil scientists out there all agree that there is much more unknown about soil chemistry and biology, than is known.
The biggest unknown is the role of bacteria and other microorganisms that we can’t see. Most of these experts agree that there are more bacteria in one spoonful of humus than there are cells in the human body. That’s why I recommend paying more attention to what’s happening in your garden than reading books. These unseen building blocks of healthy soil can be airborne and/or arrive at our plot with the amendments listed below and can somewhat magically establish in your beds once the soil becomes healthy in terms of minerals and organic matter.
Here are some basics to get the process started:
1. Apply calcium (aka “lime”) in copious amounts to your beds. (Lime is the generic term for some form of calcium – not all “lime” is the correct form of calcium for your plants. The best is calcium carbonate, CACO3). This form of lime, unlike hydrated lime, can be applied and planted in at the same time. At Winchester Farm we were reluctant to throw out the conventional wisdom regarding soil pH, when we were told to just pour the calcium to our pastures, vegetables and cropland. Wouldn’t too much lime raise the pH of our soil too much? No. Because calcium has a pH of 7, you cannot put “too much” calcium in your soil. Conversely, without enough calcium, the plants you want to grow will not be able to take up essential nutrients in your soil, especially nitrogen. Calcium is the essential catalyst! Pelletized lime comes in 40 lb. bags and is inexpensive at Lowe’s, etc. Make sure you buy calcium carbonate, not dolomitic lime. The latter contains too much magnesium, which is not healthy for vegetables or humans in large amounts. I recommend 20 pounds lime for every 100 square feet to start. It generally takes two years for even pelletized lime to dissolve and become available to plants. I repeat this application every other year.
2. The next most important nutrient is nitrogen. The air we breathe is mostly nitrogen, but plants must take their nitrogen from the soil, so we need to get it into the soil. The best way to do this is to apply composted manure that has been rotting at least 2 years. Chicken manure is the “hottest”, if you can find it, so use sparingly. Also, be aware that if chicken manure comes from a commercial (e.g., Tyson-sized) operation, it is likely to have antibiotics and traces of arsenic in it. Commercially raised chickens get antiobiotics and medicine laced with arsenic almost every day of their lives. Cow manure is next best, then comes horse manure. The latter contains only a fraction of the nitrogen that cow manure contains. You can also compost leaves, but make sure there is some soil and water in the pile to move the process along. (As a side note, do not use hardwood sawdust or commercial bark mulch on vegetables– hardwood saps nitrogen from topsoil as it rots.) Work in your grass clippings, if your lawn is not sprayed with herbicide. Clippings also are an easy way to mulch plants after they are tall enough. Wheat straw is another great amendment for vegetables, as it rots quickly and adds organic matter to the soil.
3. Don’t let your soil remain bare during winter. For vegetables, either plant a cover crop such as mustard greens, crimson clover or rye grass, or cover your bed with wheat straw or shredded leaves. If you use a cover crop, till or spade in the plants early in the spring – this is called “green manure” and will keep nutrients from leaching away with the winter rains as well as adding organic matter to your soil in the spring.

Making the healthiest soil is hard work, but it is good work. That is to say, it is good work compared with hopping in the car to go buy various chemical fertilizers, etc., in order to make your plants grow. Chemical fertilizers only temporarily mask symptoms of unhealthy soil and, in fact, do more harm than good.
Happy gardening!