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What Is Dirt Anyway?
What is dirt, anyway?
It’s a mixture of things. Organic matter, silt, sand and clay. How much of each one is what causes each type of soil to look and feel the way it does.
What makes soil valuable is that it holds the nutrients that plants need to grow. Many of them are positively charged nutrients, those are called cations (pronounced cat-eye-ons).
Charged attractions are why a dry cleaning bag sticks to us. Our charge and the bag’s charge are complimentary. In soil, the nutrients loaded with positive charge seek a bond with the negative charges on any available surface area on the soil particles.
If the soil includes a lot of organic matter –which has a large surface area– then the dirt can hold more nutrients than if it’s mostly sand, which holds no charge, or clay, which has tiny particles and not much surface area. Put another way, we can stick more coins to a big balloon than a small one.
The surface area, combined with how strongly charged the soil is, will dictate how productive the soil is. That’s measured by what’s called a Cation Exchange Capacity, or CEC. The higher the CEC, the bigger and more efficient the nutrient supply is for a growing plant.
Much like the dry cleaning bag won’t stay clung to us forever, the calculation for a soil’s CEC includes the fact that the electrostatic bonds require energy, which will dissipate over time. In addition, a small layer of water prevents a perfect bind.
Despite these complicating factors farmers and agrologists work very hard in their efforts to try to balance the nutrients to the soil. If the nutrients can’t bind as well as possible, they get washed away and represent a wasted expense and lost time while also potentially contributing to waterway pollution. This is a lose-lose scenario for the farmer and the environment and great pains are taken to avoid it.
These factors help explain why some farmers can fertilize a lot at once, whereas others need to do more passes with lower amounts of nutrients. The farmer who’s doing multiple passes has soil that is sucking the cations through a smaller straw than the farmer with a high CEC.
It’s worth noting that there are also some nutrients that are negatively charged. Those are called anions (an-ions). Like the positive particles that lose their charge, those unbound nutrients are also easily washed away.
It’s also worth mentioning that there are a few places in the world where the soil is positively charged rather than negatively charged. That flips and reverses all of the same challenges. Rather than holding positive cations, those soils hold the negatively charged anions, like phosphate or sulfate.
The charges are in the top right corner of each element.
Of course, once the nutrients are in the soil, the plant needs to have a way to use them. To absorb cations, the plants produce positively charged hydrogen atoms that they can then exchange in order to take in the positively charged nutrients.
Hydrogen sits at the start of the Periodic Table of Elements with a charge of +1. This means a plant can trade hydrogen straight across for something like potassium, which has the same +1 charge. But if the plant wants something like iron, that’s a lot harder.
Iron has a +3 charge, so it represents a three-for-one exchange for the +1 hydrogen atoms. In addition, since the iron has that +3 charge the soil particle is actually held in place more tightly. It’s like us trying to pull a bigger magnet off a fridge, meaning it’s harder for the plant to loosen the nutrient so it can absorb it. These are the complex and often competing realities that make crop and food management extremely complex and difficult. Farming is very much a profession.
Obviously, targeting the individual chemicals using manure is essentially impossible. While modern fertilizer is often attacked, it not only creates 50% of the calories produced on Earth, but it does have the advantage of more targeted placement. Regardless of which form is wisest in which situations, the various forms of fertilizer are what have allowed farmers to turn weaker soils into productive sources of food for a growing population.
While fertilizer is often characterized by only its unavoidable and unintended consequences, it has been used since it was discovered for the very simple reason that it is society demands it –without it the 1970’s predictions of mass famines in the 1980’s and 90’s likely would have happened.
Using fertilizers definitely has –like all actions– negative as well as positive consequences. There are no perfect answers in something as complex as nature, so the job of the farmer is to balance our need for food with the consequences caused through growing it. Fertilizer is an expense, so the public can rest assured that no farmer has any interest in using any more of it than they need to. But to pretend we don’t need these valuable tools is to ignore all the lessons of nature.
Things grow because they get the right nutrients at the right time, and the professional farmers and the scientists who advise them are the ones that are maintaining that delicate balance. And that is yet another good reason for all of us to be grateful for the people that allow each of us to eat every single day of our lives.
CORB LUND
Corb Lund is a national treasure. A singer/songwriter from southern Alberta, he has released nine albums, three of which are certified gold. Lund tours regularly in Canada, the United States and Australia, and has received several awards in Canada and abroad.
A Night At The Ranch is an annual rodeo event hosted at The Daines Ranch near Penhold. So far $35,000.00 has been raised for charities.
Proceeds from the May 8th and 9th events will go to The Smiles Thru Lindsey Foundation.
From A Night At The Ranch website:
We are so excited to announce that we will be having none other than Corb Lund perform LIVE for you at the Daines Ranch as part of his 2020 Canadian Tour! The performance will follow the Extreme Bronc Challenge at 4:30 PM on May 9th!
Tickets will be available February 14th, 2020 at 10:00 AM local time. You can get your tickets at www.nightattheranch.com or at the Innisfail Auction Market !
Proceeds will be donated to the Smiles Thru Lindsey Foundation
NIGHT AT THE RANCH
The Night at the Ranch Foundation has raised over $35,000 for local charities and hosts an annual event in May at the Daines Ranch in Innisfail, Alberta
XTREME BRONC MATCH
Rank horses and tough cowboys are the meat and potatoes of this event! C5 Rodeo brings their award winning roughstock so these cowboys can battle it out in the arena dirt for the cash prize!
CHARITY POKER TOURNAMENT
Now that harvest is over, maybe you’re considering a getaway.
By Gerry Feehan, award-winning travel writer and photographer. Here is his latest story, Padre Island, Texas.
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“…I peaked through a stack of chili-flavoured pork rinds, past a battered flag of the Lone-Star State hanging in the dirty window, and into the parking lot. Smiley was staring storeward… waiting….”
Padre Island Texas is a long spit of sand dunes guarding mainland Texas from the destructive tornadoes and winter storms that pound in from the Gulf of Mexico. Between this narrow barrier island and the mainland lies Laguna Madre, a shallow hyper-saline sea renowned for sensitive sea grass and world-class fishing.
The end of the road on South Padre Island.
On some Padre Island beaches, camping is free. South of Corpus Christi, at Padre Island National Seashore, free boon-docking extends for over 100 kilometres. But the sandy entrance is also the only exit. So, after you bite off as much of the hard-packed seashore road as you can chew and you’ve had your fill of remote surf and turf, a tight U-turn and a long return drive up the beach is required to get back to civilization.
It was shoulder season, so we and our RV had the whole shoreline to ourselves.
Now that’s remote camping!
The other campers were all outfitted for fishing. “When in Rome,” thought I and asked the park ranger if he knew of any local fishing guides.
The weather was atrocious: 3°C with a 70-kilometer north wind. Only a Canuckle-head would beach in such conditions; five meters from the raging ocean and sideways to a Gulf gale. The van was a rockin’ all night.
In the morning the weather cleared, the sun shone and the wind ebbed, portending a fine day on the Laguna Madre. We drove back across the causeway to the mainland, toward Arroyo City and a lovely campground along a canal fronting the ocean. We chose a site protected by live oak trees in case (heaven forbid) the weatherman’s prognostication was inaccurate and the wind began to howl anew. As per our typical MO, we arrived at dusk, sans reservation.
The other campers were all outfitted for fishing. “When in Rome,” thought I and asked the park ranger if he knew of any local fishing guides.
“No, I sure don’t,” he said. “Y’all could check with the live-bait store back in town. Look for the big sign – a redfish – out front. They may have a’ idea.” I asked Florence if she’d mind hanging solo for a day while I went angling. “No, go ahead. I’ll spend the day relaxing, reading and knitting.” I wandered down the road. When I saw red, I stepped in. The shop smelt. After baiting the proprietor with fishing small-talk, I asked, “Do you think you could find a guide to take me out tomorrow?”
“Well, I know of a fella lives right by,” he said, chewing uncertainly on a pork rind, “but it’s kind of late and I doubt he’d be available on short notice. I could call if you like.” He picked up the phone.
Captain Smiley
Five minutes later ‘Captain Smiley’ was walking in the door. He shook my hand and arrangements were made to tackle an early morning. The sun had not yet risen when the Captain putt-putted up to our riverfront campsite and welcomed me aboard. Minutes later, dawn greeted us as we cast our first lines into the shallow, glassy waters of Laguna Madre. A fat red drum hit on my second cast; a fighting day was upon us.
I had a great time with Smiley. Affirming his moniker, he laughed and joked all day long in his charismatic Tex-Mex accent.
The night before I had warned the Captain that I was short on greenbacks and would need to pay by cheque. He hesitantly agreed. When we arrived back at dock he expertly prepped my red-fish “on the half-shell” for grilling. Driving me back to our campsite he diverted his battered pick-up truck toward the bait shop. Pulling up he informed me that there was an ATM inside. Evidently he preferred cash to a cheque written on the reputable but foreign Royal Bank of Canada. I smiled, opened the door and headed into the store.
I had no bank card, just a US Visa. Uncertain if I could withdraw cash or whether my PIN# would work, I shoved the card in, chose English over Spanish as my language of preference and, after agreeing to an unreasonable fee for using the bank machine (“in addition to whatever other charges your financial institution may impose”). I prayed silently as I entered my personal security particulars. The machine sat quietly for a time, made some distant interior rumblings and eventually announced: “Request Declined.”
Roseate spoonbill
I peaked through a stack of chili-flavoured pork rinds, past a battered flag of the Lone-Star State hanging in the dirty window, and into the parking lot. Smiley was staring storeward… waiting.
I checked to see if there was a back exit. The wary owner eyed me suspiciously. The rear door led through a heap of fish offal into an alligator-infested swamp. Preferring embarrassment to an awful death, I thought I’d again ask the Captain if he would accept my cheque. I took a last baleful glance at the ATM and noticed a message: “maximum withdrawal $120.” I had requested too much dinero. I started the process anew, punched in my PIN, agreed to pay the usurious fees and crossed my fingers. The machine slowly spat six tattered twenties at me. A full day of guided fishing is not cheap. I repeated the process a few times. Eventually the tired machine coughed up enough cash to retire my piscatorial indebtedness.
I handed the dough to Smiley. He smiled and asked, “Do you want to fish tomorrow?” I couldn’t envisage enduring another ATM debacle and, in any event, it was time for us to move on from this arroyo.
“No thanks,” I said, “we need to hit the road tomorrow.”
“Aw, that’s too bad,” said Smiley. “Tomorrow’s my day off and what I do on my day off is… go fishing. I’ll take you out on my dime.”
A great blue heron eyes the fishing.
I saw my calendar clearing.
I called Florence to ask leave. She concurred, delighted. (Apparently, one day away from her beloved was insufficient to create any overwhelming desire to be reunited in the confines of our small RV.)
I had another great “caught my limit” day of fishing. As I fried up a delicious speckled sea trout that night, Florence asked, “Are you going fishing again tomorrow?”
“Naw,” I said. “Smiley’s got a customer lined up for the morning.”
“Gee, that’s too bad,” she said, “this fish is incredible.” She was eyeing her knitting.
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Gerry Feehan
Hope you enjoyed your trip to Padre Island Texas. Gerry Feehan is an award-winning travel writer and photographer. He and his wife Florence live in Red Deer, AB and Kimberley, BC. You can read more of his stories here.
Read Gerry’s excellent tale – The Long Road to Texas. Click below.
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