Not another "you must reconnect with the earth " post!
Another mild rant to provoke discussion
It seems to me that the “reconnect with the earth” message is floating around on social media a lot these days. But that's a silly thing to write, isn't it? Social media purports to shows us what we want to see, so it's probably that the algorithm is sending me this message, and other users aren't necessarily seeing it unless they have similar online behavior. Of course, in reality one of the algorithm’s prime directives is to show us that which induces us to buy stuff. So there's irony here: Reconnection with nature should lead to appreciation for what can't be purchased, and therefore less buying, but that's antithetical to the system and unacceptable in today's world.
This contradiction is easily resolved. We can connect with the earth and still need to buy lots of stuff. Camping gear, hiking boots, airline tickets to faraway mountain ranges, for example. For those who opt to stay home and reconnect with the natural world through gardening, there's a plethora of purchases you might be urged to make ranging from the very useful (hori hori) to the ridiculously unnecessary (leaf blower!)
I've noticed a gardening trend that requires many purchases and constitutes literal separation from the earth that I can't blame entirely on the algorithm or social media: container gardening. Before anyone becomes defensive, please note I'm not going after apartment dwellers or renters without land access for whom container growing is the best choice. I have in my sights homeowners who have the space and ability to grow in-ground, but choose not to do so.
These folks suddenly seem to be everywhere. Disconnecting from the soil is their preferred method of gardening, ostensibly for convenience, to avoid contamination, and to increase control. One might argue that these are the same reasons humans have been disconnecting from the natural world since we first gathered around a fire and adopted technology for comfort and domination.
Distrust of soil is fundamental to this gardening method. I'm well aware that there are real issues with soil—many gardeners sit on heavily chemicalized and compacted lawns or cropland, or spots where topsoil was removed altogether prior to home building. But the containerists seem suspicious of soil in general. Their narrative goes something like this:
My soil is terrible. It's too clayey, sandy, wet (fill in the blank.) It's probably contaminated with chemicals and definitely with weed seeds. My solution is pots, grow bags or raised beds under which a barrier is installed to separate it from the dirt. Each year I buy fresh soil to fill my containers.
I garden on a clay soil that would be dismissed out of hand by such folk. It is an unpleasant dull yellow and appears better suited for pottery than growing. It is mysteriously able to support the growth of a vast array of plants including towering native maples, cherries, and sycamores, however, and by simply upping the OM content a few percentage points it is transformed into a superlative vegetable garden soil.
The container crowd has a pre-conceived notion of what good soil is, and the soft dark brown fluff in the bags has high appeal. Store-bought soils and amendments are trusted to be safe, pure, and nutrient rich, while native soil is assumed to be contaminated and of poor quality. Bagged or bulk “soil” and amendments of uncertain contents and origin and spurious nutrient value are embraced as the solution to soils such as mine. It is a rarely discussed fact that whatever value such products contain has been appropriated elsewhere, and packaged and transported to the local garden center at considerable expediture of resources.
Is this method really more convenient than in-ground growing? The controlled environment of containers separated from the earth, filled with purchased soil, reduces time spent weeding, but vastly increases the need for irrigation. I rarely water my garden once plants are established, and in my naive days assumed this was standard garden practice. Not so! Many gardeners must water every day (and sometimes twice!) I've even read descriptions of hanging sheets strategically to keep potted plants cool during during the hottest part of the day. These gardeners aren't in the desert, but in the humid eastern U.S. where such practices should not be necessary. But anything to avoid having to actually put your hands in the earth!
Are these gardeners merely caught up in the latest fad, or are they the predictable outcome of the process of separation from nature that, according to Charles Eisenstein is older than human speech? Growing plants separated from the earth is an expensive hobby that produces food, but little more. Anything grown in this manner is cut off from the invisible networks of life through which plants communicate, share, and thrive. There is much research exploring the existence of these networks, for those uncomfortable with the mere metaphysical notion of interconnected life, and wanting scientific explanations.
None of this is to say that container gardening doesn't work; It’s rather an assertion that gardeners should see their work as something more than veggie production. If you have access to land, you have the opportunity to connect to the network of life, and to revitalize the small patch over which you have control. The only things in the way are a few layers of plastic and landscape fabric.
This was a big gripe of mine when I was really into listening and reading about permaculture. Many of them were super interested in adding things to the land because it was supposedly degraded from years of farming or because that part of the country didn’t have those nutrients. It baffled me that they couldn’t connect the mining needed to get the rock phosphate they needed to add to the land. Or the green sand.
I container gardened while renting and loved it but yeah, watering got annoying unless it was rainy season in south Florida. I still like some accent containers, more for tender tropicals, but generally it’s all in the ground.
The garden industry has many problems and this is a good one to bring to light!