March just flew by, Reader.
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How was it for you? Were you busy outdoors, hands in the soil, preparing for new beginnings?
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For me, March taught me a few things about both my soil and my soul. I want to share them with you this Holy Week.

What the soil taught me

This month, under the guidance of my garden Yoda (aka John Jeavons, author of Grow More Vegetables) I did something I never thought I’d do. I double-dug a bed.
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For years we taught lasagna gardening, building soil from the ground up rather than disturbing what’s beneath. And I still believe in it. But every no-till book I’ve ever read begins with some form of soil preparation. They may not rototill. But they do more than just layer compost and hope.
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So Dave, I, and three of our boys dug down two feet into one of our oldest lasagna beds. What we found amazed us. The soil was dark, rich, and almost effortless to work.
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Four years of layering had done exactly what it promised. And at the very bottom, 24 inches down, we found a large tree root running right through the bed.
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We would never have known it was there.
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John teaches that double digging is as much a diagnostic exercise as a growing technique. He hand waters rather than using drip irrigation because he wants to inspect each plant up close. He digs because he wants to know what is happening in that specific piece of earth. There is a lesson in that for all of us.

What the soil taught me about my soul

1. Nature is interconnected.
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   This winter we had an infestation of Asian lady bugs in the house. I vacuumed them up and released them where I was growing spring flowers and peppers in my basement, right where the aphids were gathering.
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   A pest in one place became a gift in another.
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   It made me pause about the deer and the groundhog who have eaten hundreds of dollars of crops this spring. I am frustrated with them. But perhaps, like the ladybugs, they still have a role to play that I cannot yet see.
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   And if I can think this way about a groundhog, what more about people?
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   No one is worth less than another. We are called to love everyone.
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2. Nature is diverse.
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   At one point there were 408 varieties of tomatoes available to home gardeners. By 2003 there were 79 commercial varieties. Something is lost when we narrow the world to only what is efficient. I grow heirlooms because diversity is worth protecting — in the garden and everywhere else.

3. When you work with natural law rather than against it, you work less and things grow better.
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This March, my family pushed ourselves hard: physically, emotionally, in the garden and in life. They say idleness is the workshop of the devil. But I think sometimes busyness can be too. Maybe we are working hard but not wisely. Maybe we were never meant to carry it all alone.
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​Cast your burdens on Him.
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This final stretch before Easter, I think about your garden, Reader. I pray it gives you happiness and peace, and that whatever you plant this spring grows beyond what you expect.

If you want to go deeper on what's living in your soil, our friend Dr. Zack Jones, a scientist who is helping us with our compost research and I wrote something worth reading.

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Grow abundantly,
Nicky (& Dave who is building fences to keep out the deer)