I Miss My Soil

July 16th, 2019

   One thing Cristina Papson said she wished she had done before moving from Cumberland County to Florida was take a little of her garden soil with her.

My jar of Hampden Twp. soil.

   It would’ve been a memento… a tangible keepsake to remind her of the many pleasant hours spent beautifying her Hampden Twp. yard.

   Before my wife, Sue, and I moved to Pittsburgh in December, I took Cristina’s wish to heart.

   I scooped up a couple of handfuls of soil from my raised-bed vegetable gardens and put it in a small jelly canning jar, which now sits like a trophy on my office shelf.

   I spent more than 30 years building that stuff from typical lifeless “builder’s soil” into a root Heaven that’s black, rich, and crumbly.

   Practically everything grew well in it.

   It got to the point where I didn’t even need a shovel or trowel to plant. I could just pull open a hole with my hands and insert the eager plants, which if they were human, would probably be panting with excitement at this royal treatment.

   My new Pittsburgh soil is a world apart from the Hampden Twp. soil.

   I’m starting all over again with soil that’s clayish, poorly drained, rocky, and loaded with weed seeds from at least eight years of prior neglect.

   Since I don’t even have a compost bin yet – the source that fueled the bulk of my Hampden “black gold” – I’m faced either with buying amendments or making do with what I have.

   Unfortunately, time and money have backed me into Door No. 2, although I did lay eight cubic yards of composted leaves in June that I got from the Borough of Churchill.

   Improving my new soil is going to be an ongoing effort.

   Over the years, I’ve learned that good soil is so important to plant performance.

   I’d rate it as one of the two most important factors of gardening success – the other being selecting good plants and getting them in the right spot.

   With good health and enough time, I hope to give my Pittsburgh plants better living quarters than what I’m giving them right now.

   In the meantime, I really miss that Hampden Twp. soil.