Dirty

This post is going to be dirty. Memorial Day is coming up and many of us will be digging in the dirt, planting all the seeds and pots we’ve optimistically hauled home from garden centers. So it’s the perfect time to pose the question: What is the difference between soil and dirt?

I did some digging and unearthed these definitions:

Soil is alive, dirt is dead.

Dirt is different from soil. It is a dry and dull sibling of soil which can’t host life in any form without external help. It is rocky, silty and barren of any nutrients that healthy plants need to grow. If you add water to a handful of boring old dirt, it will not compact well, if at all.

You get the idea. Soil is busy stuff. It’s made up of “organized ecosystems of microscopic organisms and insects that exchange nutrients and minerals through food webs and decomposition.” Dirt, on the other hand, just lies around.

We have never had our soil (or whatever is covering the top of our acre and a third ) tested. My husband and I decided that nature took care of our land long before we arrived, and we would only add native species to the mix. For the most part this strategy has been a success. However, it might also account for the fact that we can’t grow even a tomato or potato in the tiny garden behind our deck.

I do want to give dirt equal time here, so I’ll end with this terrific dirt story passed on by a friend. Years ago, when most homes were heated with coal furnaces, walls got dirty from soot. Kutol Products in Cincinnati made a fortune by developing a putty-like wallpaper cleaner to get rid of the dirt. However, by the 1950s, coal furnaces were being replaced and the company was on the verge of bankruptcy. A sister-in-law of one of the company executives was a nursery school teacher. She tested the non-toxic wallpaper cleaner as a modeling “clay” for children and suggested a name for it.

And that’s the dirt on Play-Doh.

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