What is "healthy" soil? Disturbance

There are many claims out there that undisturbed soil is more healthy than disturbed soil, all else being equal, due to a greater amount and diversity of soil life in undisturbed soil.

I didn't turn over my beds this year, and I certainly got more soil life; tons of cutworms, which ate every plant in sight. It turns out that they prefer undisturbed soil, just like earthworms do.

This made me wonder about the term "healthy." How do we define it? Certainly not by the presence of any particular organism or collection of organisms. An undisturbed patch of Sonoran desert, an undisturbed Spruce forest in Manitoba, and an undisturbed tall grass prairie in eastern Kansas will all be wildly different biologically from one another.

How should we define a healthy soil? Could it be that tilled soil is merely different, not inferior? (I'm assuming here that it is not blowing away or washing downhill.)

I see healthy soil disturbance as something that would happen in nature. Birds scratching, pigs rooting to an extent, overturned trees.

I get a lot of mole activity in my yard.  It's slightly annoying, but I imagine they are doing a lot of smallscale tilling that is far less damaging than it would be if I tilled myself.  Rather than try to deter them, I just make sure to scoop their hills off of any plants as soon as I see them and toss the dirt in the compost.  My own bit of disturbance to deal with their disturbance.

Let me paint a picture.

It's winter and it's -30F. The wind is bitter and the air is desolate and dry.
But man has built a house of glass. Pumped water up from 200ft and burnt barrels of fossil fuel to heat the greenhouse up to grow banana and oranges at 90F inside. With lots of added compost, earthworms, and abundant soil life.

Man, this time a different one at another location, sees a lush land, but he doesn't like it. It doesn't fit the ancestral land of the semi-arid crescent valley. Ditches must be built to drain the landscape. Trees cut down. Even the weeds that grow back must be poison and destroyed, The land must be bare and barren until it truly emulates the land around the Trigis and Nile River. And weeds/trees or insects that try to bring land back to its natural state must be killed and tilled under. Now after a few generations, the descendants ponders why is the land so barren, why are we still eating desert/famine/wartime grass seeds aka wheat, when chestnuts, pawpaw and passionfruit could be eaten.

Now, as to what healthy cultivated soil is, I dont know. At most I can observe a field and give a few pointers as to what would make it better. I might tell a wheat farmer to do a covercrop, but I probably wouldn't tell him to get a new loan and plant square miles of multi-layer food forest systems.

Healthy soil is soil that is performing all of the functions it was designed to perform... just as a healthy person can perform all of the functions she/he was designed to perform.  Healthy soil infiltrates and stores water, cycles carbon and nitrogen and provides habitat for everything that is supposed to live in the soil so plants can capture solar energy to feed soil organisms and soil organisms in turn, can feed the plants.  Tillage is very disruptive to the structure and biology of the soil and renders it less capable of functioning.  

One of the more interesting ideas that Mark Sheppard introduced to my thinking was along these lines. He was talking about why he still tills ever in his well established food forest system and he mentioned that he still wants to grow some annual vegetable crops, and if you look to mimic nature you will find that annuals tend to be early succession species. They seem to thrive on the biology that results from soil disturbance, generally. He also said that his experiments on his farm had led him to believe that he got the most production out of his land by doing a cycle of year 1: annual vegetable crop, year 2: annual grain crop, year 3-7: pasture, then repeat.

Depending on the environment, soil disturbances that happen in nature might be an unusually high concentration of herbivores in one place one year, a land slide, a wind storm that topples a number of trees, an earthquake, the establishment of a burrowing rodent population, or a thumbsy ape with more knowledge than sense ;)

I resemble one of those ;). In my mind, 'healthy' soil is soil that does not need to be micro-managed, that can raise healthy plants with a minimum of inputs -- good microbiological activity, good water retention, etc. But there is no guarantee those healthy plants are what I want, which is where disturbance comes in. Plants bred for eating just can't out compete wild plants most of the time. They're at a disadvantage, which is why pesticides and herbicides were created. So if weeds pop up in my bed, I'll yoink them. if bugs appear, I'll fiddle with conditions as much as I can to reduce them. I don't want my bed to be wild, I want it to be full of plants that are useful to me (not that there isn't overlap there), but in my mind, even if all undisturbed soil is healthy soil, not all healthy soil has to be undisturbed.

Healthy Soil has several definitions available. There is the soil science definition which covers mineral and nutrient content. There is the biological definition that covers the micro organisms living in the dirt (mineral base). Then there is the Farmers definition of dirt plus artificial nutrients minus any biological elements due to working the soil so many times that the biology dies from radiation (uvs a,b and c). So, I feel that a definition of healthy soil will always be lacking, because the correct one will depend on the use intended for that piece of earth.

I would prefer to describe soil over defining, a good description always leads to a proper definition that is as complete as the ddescription allows.

Redhawk

Excellent discussion.

All living things try to seize opportunities for growth and to modify their environment to their advantage.  I am a living thing and part of nature, and naturally I do the same.

And yes, it is aesthetically pleasing for humans (including this one) to perceive nature as whole and harmonious. But there is as much cold war as cooperation; and many cooperative alliances are naturally formed as an alternative when outright dominance is not possible.

So what is healthy soil? To me, the difference is a philosophy of disturbing only what I need and leaving the rest of the land as undisturbed as is practicable. I need some, and I will resolutely disturb it to my advantage; but I don't need to dominate it all and convert it into yachts and BMWs.

- Musings from a thumbsy ape named Douglas, with an alpenstock in hand

In any harmonious balanced large ecosystem, there will be places with disturbance and places without disturbance.  Animals, including us, exist.  Trees fall over.  Pigs dig up roots.  So do we.  Deer browse. Birds scratch.  Coyotes dig also.   We could move to a more harmonious relationship with the ecology, but we are going to have to educate a lot of people first.  Many people literally jump back when you tell them that you eat weeds.  We arent' going to educate people or heal the earth like a light switch.  As they learn about the ecology, they will live in a more balanced harmony with the ecosystem, and they will direct their land that way as well.   It's going to be a little at a time.  Eventually, I think that there will be amazingly less of large scale tilling.  Those broadfork things that pry open the soil will still be used, IMHO.  Gilbert, I think that eventually your vegetables will be in a more balanced ecosystem where the cutworms won't take over.  Something will keep them in check. Gradually moving your beds over with diversity should help.  Having a balance of perennials and annuals, a mix of intentionally planted and wild growing plants, and a mix of animals and plants can help too.
John S
PDX OR

Bravo kola John, our biggest problem is peoples minds and their penchant for using money instead of muscle to feed themselves.

Disturbance in nature tends to be easier on the soil than the current tillling practices, the no till protocol is based in and designed for large corporate type farms, trying to apply the whole pr otocol to a small operation might not be the best choice. That is why there is so much emphasiss on observe first then lay out a plan then start with water control earth works and so forth.

Redhawk