Learning Circle #4 reflections



In our conversations with Coco Collective ahead of this session, loads of interesting questions were emerging, like: How do we care for and manage our soils so that we can grow vegetables from the Caribbean in Bellingham? How does plastic (in the form of rubbish, weed suppressing fabric and horticultural plastics) affect soil health and soil chemistry? How do we improve our composting processes? How can we safely use pee and maybe humanure from our compost toilet on our sites? (though as an Ital garden, there were also questions about if this would be in alignment with their principles). We tried to design a set of methods that would go about answering some of these questions… and intended for our first workshop to be a way of gathering some baseline measures of soil health from Coco Collective’s Catford site, and to get to know the gardeners there. As there was no electricity on site, we agreed to run two shorter workshops; one in the garden and one indoors  where we could use the microscope and carry out further testing (we are still in the process of finding a time for part two)


Travelling towards the garden on a rainy Sunday afternoon in March, we weren’t sure if anyone would come, as we’d sent the invite out quite last minute, and workshops can be so unpredictable. The Soil Clinic collective has also lost some energy over the last 6 months, as a couple of our members needed to step back to be able to focus on other work and life stuff. This session was organised and facilitated by Naomi and Hari, in collaboration with Valerie from Coco Collective. When we arrived at the garden, Chauntelle greeted us and gave us a tour around. She showed us the samples she’d collected earlier in the week, all labelled and bagged up, but still wet (it had been raining a lot!) - and shared that she had enjoyed gathering and organising the samples. We sat together chatting about how we each came to working with the soil, and all the different entry points for getting excited about growing. Gradually more and more people started to join us round the table, sharing their relationships with the garden, their interests and adding more questions to the pile like: 

  • What kind of low cost accessible methods can we use to test our soils ongoingly? 
  • How do you understand decolonisation and how do we decolonise the soil? 
  • What do you think is the future of soil? 
  • Is your focus on UK soils only? 
  • How can we improve our composting game?
  • How can we replenish our soils between growing seasons?


Members of the garden shared the importance of collectivity and emotional support. Their motto, shared by Valerie’s mum is: “Work in a collective to achieve your objective” (? - I took terrible notes on the day, so am writing these reflections from memory the next day…). Folks had come with lots of curiosity, and a desire to connect with others, feel different, learn about soil in a more intentional way, and deepen their knowledge. I really felt the appetite and excitement about being in a learning space, and having lots of time to go deep, and share learning with one another, as well as joy in getting to do practical stuff like digging holes and counting worms. Some of the feedback we got at the end asked for more time to engage with the books and diagrams that we’d brought. On reflection, a more formal reading circle like we’d done at Hackney Herbal and Abbey Gardens, would have gone down well in this context, but would have needed more time.


“It has been a pleasure, giving us an opportunity to answer all questions during the Q&A openly. I liked the books on the table to learn from / read.” (Participant feedback)


We ended up adapting our session plan to allow more time for conversation and knowledge sharing in the beginning. We then offered a few different options for testing the soil and attempted to decide together which to prioritise. Even though I’d spent loads of time prepping our chemistry set to test for NPK (Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium) and pH, there seemed to be much more appetite for low-tech testing methods, using everyday kitchen and garden tools like apple corers, trowls, shovels, jars, tape measures, garlic crushers, kitchen knives etc. I felt relieved by this, as I am still unsure about how well the chemistry tests we have, work as a group activity in a garden setting. As the pre-collected soil samples weren’t totally dry yet, we were also limited in what ‘fancy’ tests we could do. We decided to test compaction, texture, water retention and do a worm count. There was also interest in focussing on their composting system, so we offered a compost Q&A at the end.





Something I noticed is that our methods are messy! it’s hard to be super “scientific” (whatever that means) and precise when doing things in a big group… however, there is another quality that emerges, which feels equally, if not more valuable; where we start figuring stuff out and directing things collectively; “let’s go over here, and try this”, “dig here”, “what if we do that…” For example, deciding to rename the worm count the “wiggle test”, and then including other creatures in the count like woodlice and centipedes, also combining it with a collection of soil plastics, which we arranged on our results table >>>> It was powerful to see the range and volume of plastics gathered from a small area, and to speculate about how the worms and woodlice, and smaller members of the soil food web might be cohabiting alongside so much plastic. 

The issue of plastics in soil is relatively under-researched, compared to plastic pollution in marine environments, even though there is a much higher incidence of microplastics on land than in the sea. According to the research we looked at (Lin et al. 2020), microplastics can affect the biodiversity, health and functioning of soil fauna, for example impacting the ways that earthworms make their burrows, affecting their fitness, also impeding the movement and population of oribatid mites and other microarthropods. When ingested, microplastics produce toxic effects in worms, snails, nematodes etc. although interestingly (according to this study) they have less impact on bacterial and fungal feeding nematodes.

Chlorinated plastics can leach chemicals into groundwater, which affects all creatures ingesting this water. This can affect their hormonal systems, cause inflammation, trigger changes in gene expression! (when entering cells), and cause biochemical reactions… Would chlorine leaching also kill bacteria and fungi?

Interestingly, Lin et al found that microplastics have little effect on bacterial and fungal communities, increasing certain enzymes used for carbon and nutrient cycling, (particularly nitrogen and phosphorus). This results in nutrients becoming more available in the soil - which may be positive for certain plants, but could also throw an ecosystem off balance.

Their research suggests that the abundance and structure of soil biota may serve as useful bioindicators to monitor microplastic pollution in soils. So combining the wiggle test with observations of soil plastics, could be a really great DIY method, that we figured out intuitively by just being and connecting with the land!* This could be something we explore further through microscope analysis, particularly looking closely at samples gathered close to areas of high plastic pollution.

As Lead is frequently used in producing PVC (Darwish 2013: 282), testing for lead concentrations near areas of plastic pollution could be another way to monitor the impact of plastic on soil chemistry.

Despite our messy methods (or maybe because of them?) during each pilot workshop our data gathering system slightly evolved. From post-its scattered on a table top, to hand drawn “battleship-type” maps, scattered and then more linear grids on various scraps of paper, we have finally arrived at a roll of brown paper, where we list the sample areas down the left hand side, and the different tests along the top. Using a roll of paper means that we are not limited by the size of the scrap, and can keep adding new tests and experiments as we go. Without this shared location where we can write up results, data tends to float off into the ether…. Despite this semblance of order, there is still a feeling that we are not really scratching the surface, as more and more questions and complexities surface, and slip away. There is also a practical issue when doing this work in a garden / landscape, of where to put the spreadsheet? As people tend to disperse across the garden to carry out various tests, what is the mechanism for recording the findings in the field and bringing them back to the results table? Some things get forgotten/ misremembered, some things get carried in people’s heads, phones, scribbled on the backs of hands etc.…. The data feels kind of wild and alive, which I like, but we all also want to have something to show and make sense of at the end. Reflecting on this, I have wondered about developing a workbook or results sheet for people to carry with them to record stuff on? Or, to think about more creative ways to capture and collate learning, like a zine. The Soil Mentor app has worked out a good solution for this (for those with smartphones), toolkits like Bioindicators Field Guide also offer more low-tech examples for gathering field data. 

Documentation is so hard to do whilst facilitating a workshop, especially for those of us who are neurodiverse/ Mad/ disabled / sick - there is already a lot going on! We intended to take pictures, record voices etc. but we didn’t, so some stuff got lost… But maybe that’s ok? maybe it’s part of our methodology? Maybe we are getting at something else instead?... Rather than extracting data to take home, own and extrapolate, our practice prioritises the social / qualitative dimension of performing an experiment; putting your hands in the soil, meeting a worm, examining their markings, and being in conversation with each other… There is always so much that escapes us and wiggles away. Maybe this is an important part of ‘knowing’ and decolonising the soil?


What did you enjoy most about the space?


“The hands on element of the testing

and getting our hands dirty”



“I learnt lots of things I didn’t expect to 

learn and don’t always get the chance 

to look at these things so closely. Thanks!”



“Really lovely and welcoming group and 

space felt so nice to be outside” 



“I enjoyed the practical tests and learning

about the complexity of soil”



Appreciating, and getting a feel for the complexity of soil, and all that we don’t know is something that participants have given us feedback on in past Learning Circles, and reflects an important part of our pedagogy:

“It looks more concrete. A lot of work, getting to grasp the fact that it is complex work. Enjoyed the discussion at the beginning, very important points about wellbeing, grief and engaging with wider community”


(Abbey Gardens participant feedback)


This was something I discussed with Alice at an early organising meeting, thinking together about how to interrupt the desire (in ourselves / from others) for singular experts with all the answers, and instead facilitate spaces of collective enquiry and questioning. These can be spaces where a different kind of expertise can emerge, and be held in common. Communalising our knowledge, acknowledging what we don’t know and marvelling at complexity, is therefore a key intention which drives our learning and organising. It has been reassuring to hear that this is starting to be felt by our collaborators and workshop participants. 

In the first part of the workshop, I offered up some of the knowledge I have gathered over the years, about soil ecology through training with Elaine Ingham, Dave Beecher, Rob Littlepage, and Growing Communities, sharing diagrams of the soil food web, and ecological succession. Emi-Belle asked an important question about how to care for cultivated soil in the long term if, what it wants to do is grow into a forest? This is making me think now about the “will” of soil. I have often wondered about how we can enter into consent based relationships with soil; how do we communicate? And get to know what soil wants, needs and desires? How do we then respond? Naomi pointed out that the succession model I had presented, is based on temperate climates, and I have since been reflecting on how much this particular model (positioning northern hemisphere climates as the norm for attributing health and value to different soils) informs the regenerative soil sciences that I have been learning from.  The story goes that: 

Soil ecosystems are on a linear trajectory from rocky terrain to old growth forest. As lichens and mosses begin to form on the rocks, digesting minerals, living, dying and decomposing, a small thin dusting of soil is produced which becomes home to bacteria and annual wild plants (sometimes called “weeds”) like chickweed, which extract nitrogen in the form of nitrates (NO3), released by the bacterial populations around their roots. The bacteria create alkaline slimes which bind microaggregates and hold soluble nutrients for plant roots to absorb, in exchange the plant offers simple sugars (exudates) which are a product of photosynthesis. This relationship results in a more alkaline / neutral soil which also suits the pioneering species better. Over time, as the annual plants die and decompose on the soil surface, fungi enter the scene, attracted to the fungal foods released by the annual weeds, and higher carbon concentrations in the stalks and dead plant matter. As fungi produce slimes and glues that are more acidic by nature, the pH of the soil gradually shifts to become slightly more neutral or slightly acidic, which creates the right conditions for perennial grasses, herbs, and shrubs. This shift in succession is marked by a shift in the ratio of bacteria to fungi, and the impact this has on soil pH, and also nitrogen. When more fungi are present in the soil, as well as larger organisms like nematodes and amoebae - Nitrogen is released in ammonium form - which suits larger and larger plant species - until we have small bushes and trees starting to take root and thrive. Small trees give way to larger trees, increasing the carbon content in the soil, and attracting more and more fungi, and less and less bacteria. This process eventually results in the growth of deciduous forests, which eventually give way to coniferous and old growth forests. When we cultivate the soil in various ways, we are interrupting this process, and trying to replicate a mid-succession ecosystem like a meadow, where the bacteria: fungi ratio is around 1:1 or slightly more bacterially dominated, for growing non-mycrhizzal crops like brassicas. 



...This model can be helpful for assessing soil health in temperate climates like the UK, but it needs to be situated in its context, not be presented as a universal framework, and thought about critically through a decolonial lens. I also have some more learning to do about what ‘succession’ looks like in tropical climates, and / or in climates and ecosystems that are rapidly changing as a result of climate colonialism, and industrialisation... if ‘succession’ is even a helpful term? Given the many complexities, cosmologies, variables, and unknowns when it comes to soil - models like this can feel reductive, deterministic and not always appropriate in the contexts in which we work. We are also finding that the results we are seeing on the ground, do not always fit the model described above. For example: the more fungally dominated soils in Calthorpe’s sunken garden, were more alkaline than the grassy soils, and the woody compost pile at Abbey gardens where we would expect to see more fungi dining out on the carbon foods in the brown material, was in fact bacterially dominated. As is often the case in gardening and growing, the “science” doesn’t always reflect our experience.

Applying European / North American/ colonial logics of soil health to other contexts has been used, and still is being used to displace indigenous people, extract resources, steal land and commit genocide. We see this happening in Palestine and southern Lebanon right now, in calls to ‘make the desert bloom’. Anthropologist Kristina Lyons writes and speaks about how soil science informs imperial and capitalist violence in the Amazon, on the Green Dreamer Podcast. She says:


“In the particular context of the Colombian Amazon, I looked genealogically at when the state begins to explore and do an inventory of its Amazon basin.

We can think historically about when they begin to engage in soils studies, when they look at taxation based on land... In the 1970s, the Colombian government, with support from Holland, engages in its first inventory studies of the Amazon. They begin mapping, soil sampling and doing an inventory of the biodiversity, and understanding the communities that are inhabiting these territories.

The soil scientists that I was able to meet and interview were telling me about how they were shocked by the fact that they were, from an aerial view, looking at this exuberant Amazonian forest—only to find that these 5-10cm hojarasca layers weren't even “soil” to them, according to their scientific definitions. And it was a great disappointment, because it did not, for them, signal a potential for future economic development in terms of industrialized agriculture, extensive cattle ranching, or other forms of industrial production.

This is similar to what's happened in other parts of the world that have pieces of the Amazonian Basin, such as the Brazilian Amazon and Peruvian Amazon.

The first writings about the soils of the Amazon by these scientists were really stigmatizing. They were explaining that the soils were thin, poor, acidic, and senile.

And they weren't really sure what to do with them—which of course, negates the ancestral practices and knowledge in the civilizations of the Amazon that were successfully living, growing, being part of the selva.

Why this stigmatization of the soils happened was because the soils that they were looking for were based on scientific definitions that came from the USDA…

soil classification systems from temperate climates, not tropical ones, that were creating categories based on the productivity of soils... But the productivity was according to a certain standard of what is "productive", what kinds of commercial crops can be grown.”

I would also like to do more digging around the history of Albert Howard, a British botanist in colonial India, who is credited with founding the organic farming movement, and providing the definition of compost that Dr Elaine Ingham uses in her online trainings. 

A summary of what we learnt so far about Coco Collective’s Soil during part 1 of this pilot can be found here


References


Lin et al. 2020 ‘Microplastics negatively affect soil fauna but stimulate microbial activity’,  Proceedings of the Royal Society B

Soil Mentor

Bioindicators Field Guide by Chris Maughan and Dominic Amos

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2020.1268

Earth Repair by Leyla Darwish 

Kristina Lyons - Soil as cultural, relational, historical, Green Dreamer




*inspired by this, and a question that came up at our previous learning circle about “where is the wiggle room” with regards to pollutant concentrations in water, air and soil… I have a proposal for a possible name for a future iteration of the soil clinic. Can you guess? The Wiggle Room…


by Hari