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Leaves of Gold
Leaves are the secret to a successful garden. They not only make soil water-retentive, they add back to it the micronutrients which were leached from the topsoil by rain and unnecessary watering.

Disaster-proofing Your Garden
To develop a garden which will withstand natural disasters, choose plants which thrive in the local environment, improve the soil, and practice companion planting.

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Disaster-proofing Your Soil

by Traute Klein, biogardener

To withstand floods as well as droughts, soil needs to be water-retentive. The most important ingredient of my soil is leaves, and in my community, it is the easiest to obtain free of charge.

Improve the Soil

Often people ask me about my secret of gardening. I have many, but if I have to narrow my choice down to one, I would say, "Improve the soil." Soil improvement holds the answer to all problems, present or future. It certainly holds the answer to the problems of droughts and floods. I prepare my soil in such a way that it can survive periods of flooding as well as periods of drought year after year. Droughts and floods are common occurrences in the prairies, and they are becoming more frequent as well as more severe, so preparing for them is well worth our while.

How-to of Soil Improvement

What do I mean by soil improvement? Well, certainly not to spread synthetic fertilizer on it. What I really mean is this: Add as much bulk to the soil as possible. Isn't that what we are told to do to our diet? Add bulk to prevent digestive problems, obesity, cancer, you name it. Well, in this case, what is good for us, is also good for the soil.

If we are to keep soil at its present fertility, we have to return to it whatever the plants take out of it. It is therefore mandatory to return all garden wastes to the soil plus the amount which we eat. With our modern waste disposal systems, including flush toilets, that method is no longer within our reach, so we have to devise methods which compensate for the loss.

I am not satisfied to keep the soil at its present level of fertility. To raise the level of fertility, we have to add more nutrients than the plants take out. For city dwellers that is easy. My neighbors send thousands of bags of grass clippings, dried leaves, and garden wastes to the landfill unless someone recycles them into the soil. That someone might as well be me.

Make the Soil Water-retentive

The most important of these ingredient is the dried leaves. They contain the trace minerals which have been leached from the topsoil by unnecessary watering. The tree roots reach down into the subsoil to bring them up again. By adding them to the soil, we return to it what cannot be added by any other method. This is my favorite theme to preach on, so expect to hear me mention it again and again.

Leaves give the soil more bulk than any other compostable matter. It is this bulk which makes the soil water-retentive. This characteristic gives the soil the ability to survive floods as well as droughts. During a flood, the water soaks in and is held through a drought.

All Types of Soil

Whether we have sand or clay soil, it needs to gain bulk in order to hold the water from the flood to the drought. Sandy soil without bulk will dry out immediately after a rain. Clay soil does not even absorb the water during flash flooding. It just lets it run off, and within days of a flood, clay soil can be bone dry. The higher the leaf content of the soil, the more water it will hold, the better it will withstand a flood, the longer it will survive a drought.

Mulching

As soon as I plant or seed, I cover the ground with mulch, using leaves in the autumn and grass clippings in the summer. You will rarely see exposed soil in my garden. The mulch turns into soil without any further help from me, and while it is decomposing, it keeps the moisture in the soil from evaporating even in the hottest of summers.

Every summer, I plant many trees out in the country where I have no water except what I carry there in gallon bottles. Every tree ball I plant is surrounded by a generous amount of leaf mold (last autumn's dry leaves) which fills the hole which I have dug. As soon as I have planted the tree, I give it one thorough soaking. I then cover the entire root system with one full garbage bag of grass clippings and forget about it. No more watering necessary. The leaf mold holds plenty of water, and the grass clippings prevent it from evaporating.

Ground Cover

I barely need to mention that the soil should never be without a ground cover. Mother Nature abhors bare soil. Wherever possible, she drops weed seeds immediately. Most of my hobby farm is covered in hay, not for the sake of producing a crop but to keep the ground covered while it is waiting to be replanted in trees or shrubs. Bare soil would be too vulnerable to water erosion in a flood and to wind erosion in a drought. That was the big problem in the Dirty Thirties. The ploughed land got blown away by the wind.

My Gardening Secret

My gardening secret? Make the soil water-retentive to allow it to survive floods as well as droughts. This is also the soil quality which allows it to withstand pests and diseases, but we will talk about that some other time.

© Traute Klein, biogardener