Soil regions (USDA) – the far north is full of poor soils
I’m sharing this fantastic map to help people understand why global climate change isn’t going to suddenly open up great new lands near the arctic for farming. For some reason, this is a fairly common concept I’ve run across online, especially among optimistic individuals.
This is a simplified map of the USDA soil classification system. If you look to the northerly regions, you’ll note a lot of grey and turquoise. The gray is literally labeled as “rocky land”, and is totally unusable for farming. It is not arable. The light turquoise blue is “Gelisols”, these are permafrost soils, very thin, only one horizon layer. This is also way too thin to farm, and difficult to even build on – especially as the permafrost underneath the thin soil melts and refreezes. Gelisols are also very low in fertility.
The best farming lands is the light green stuff, the Mollisols. It is rich and deep and fertile and I might be slightly jealous of people who get to farm it (and yes I think it’s pretty wasteful to use most of it to grow animal feed and biofuels).
Some of the peaty lands, those little bits of dark red or Histosols, could potentially be used for animal husbandry but they’re better off left as peat lands. They are their own unique ecosystem(s), and humans have been rabidly destroying them for hundreds if not thousands of years. They take an extremely long time to form.
So no, Siberia is not going to suddenly warm up and create brand new delicious vistas for farming. The best soils on the planet will not be migrating. We’re better off trying to take care of the soils that we have now. Some methods to take care of them include no till and biodiverse cover cropping (a good PDF for those interested in learning more).
Lots of farmers and gardeners till their lands. It is a very traditional way of doing things, but it actually slowly destroys the soil (it is okay to till your soil once to establish a bed, but repeated tilling will absolutely destroy your soil organic matter – the life of the soil – and also the soil texture). The USDA is basically pleading with people to stop tilling their soil. With an ever growing human population to feed, and the fact that we’re currently losing tons of topsoil every year due to soil mistreatment, it is imperative to help reach out to people who work with the land. Cover your soil! With mulch, with crops, with organic material. It’s the best way to preserve it, and even better, to rebuild it.
Step 1 – go to a bougie neighborhood where people actually rake up their leaves, and leave them on the curb, nicely wrapped like a present.
Tip – Take a moment to examine the contents of the bag, sometimes they contain lots of sticks or poison ivy. Black Walnut leaves can be hella problematic. Identify before gleefully scooping them up.
Step 2 – Secure leaves in whatever vehicle you have access to. We have crammed leaves in all manner of vehicles. If you live in urban or suburban neighborhoods with nearby neighbors, you might just be able to walk, or use a wagon or wheelbarrow to gather them.
Tip – No one likes to drive behind a vehicle that is dumping leaves everywhere and also you’ll lose your precious materials, so securing is an important step! We learned this the hard way.
Step 3 – Make it rain! Dump those leaves! This is part of our graywater system, that also receives a ton of runoff from the roof. They will also help to insulate our hardy banana tree, dahlias, lantana, snapdragons, hydrangea, and whatever the else we put in there.
This is our crazy billboard lined cold / vermicomposting area – before the leaves. On the left are some livestaking projects in black grow bags, the white mesh thing was dumpster dived, but it works as a soil filter when we’re pulling stuff out of here to add to the beds. The bulkier material is left in here to further break down. Please note the tiny baby pumpkins (squash) that I grabbed from work, they eventually started to rot so in they go! The cardboard box at the back is where the backdoor is. It’s extremely easy to just toss in kitchen waste.
After the leaves! So much better! We will keep hunting for more. We feed this pile with biological matter year round. It’s kind of huge so it takes a lot of matter to fill it, but we have so much soil to amend. This is on the north side of the house, it is always shady and a bit moist. The billboard does have a few holes in it for drainage, sometimes we have intense downpours and we don’t want the worms to drown.
V estimates that this is actually ¼ the size of a full billboard, and cost approximately $10 to line. He found a guy on Craigslist who takes down billboards back when we lived in Atlanta, and got them for crazy cheap. The most expensive things in this photo are the tools and the black grow bags.
V knows that blue is my favorite color, so he thought it would make me really happy to see the blue of the billboard.
Ok I’ve really wanted to do a photo series this year called ‘Naughty Plants’, which is really all the ‘weeds’ we have here, which normally people might want or find desirable. Plants at garden centers are hilarious. This Zinnia and Petunia showed up under the veggie tables in October. I never weed out the cute little ones like these.
This is an edge where the pavement ends and the plants just decided this was as good a place to live as anywhere else. They’ve been fed with organic fish fertilizer, dripping from the veggies above.
Sometimes the weeds are weird hybrid freaks. Sometimes not.
Kihaku-Gato's Garden Blog (tumblr import) 