Soil Quotes

“The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life.”
― Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture

“To-day I think
Only with scents, - scents dead leaves yield,
And bracken, and wild carrot's seed,
And the square mustard field;

Odours that rise
When the spade wounds the root of tree,
Rose, currant, raspberry, or goutweed,
Rhubarb or celery;

The smoke's smell, too,
Flowing from where a bonfire burns
The dead, the waste, the dangerous,
And all to sweetness turns.

It is enough
To smell, to crumble the dark earth,
While the robin sings over again
Sad songs of Autumn mirth."

- A poem called DIGGING.”
― Edward Thomas, Collected Poems: Edward Thomas

“Your soil and plants are friends that benefit from constant care and attention to the details I explain.”
― Charles Dowding, Charles Dowding's Skills for Growing

“You have to stand guard over the development and maintenance of Islamic democracy, Islamic social justice and the equality of manhood in your own native soil.”
― Muhammad Ali Jinnah

“Gardening is easier than it is often made out to be.”
― Charles Dowding, Charles Dowding's Skills for Growing

“A tree’s most important means of staying connected to other trees is a “wood wide web” of soil fungi that connects vegetation in an intimate network that allows the sharing of an enormous amount of information and goods.”
― Tim Flannery, The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate: Discoveries from a Secret World

“Although the surface of our planet is two-thirds water, we call it the Earth. We say we are earthlings, not waterlings. Our blood is closer to seawater than our bones to soil, but that's no matter. The sea is the cradle we all rocked out of, but it's to dust that we go. From the time that water invented us, we began to seek out dirt. The further we separate ourselves from the dirt, the further we separate ourselves from ourselves. Alienation is a disease of the unsoiled.”
― Tom Robbins, Another Roadside Attraction

“Like the soil, mind is fertilized while it lies fallow, until a new burst of bloom ensues.”
― John Dewey, Art as Experience

“THE ORGANIC FOODS MYTH

A few decades ago, a woman tried to sue a butter company that had printed the word 'LITE' on its product's packaging. She claimed to have gained so much weight from eating the butter, even though it was labeled as being 'LITE'. In court, the lawyer representing the butter company simply held up the container of butter and said to the judge, "My client did not lie. The container is indeed 'light in weight'. The woman lost the case.

In a marketing class in college, we were assigned this case study to show us that 'puffery' is legal. This means that you can deceptively use words with double meanings to sell a product, even though they could mislead customers into thinking your words mean something different. I am using this example to touch upon the myth of organic foods. If I was a lawyer representing a company that had labeled its oranges as being organic, and a man was suing my client because he found out that the oranges were being sprayed with toxins, my defense opening statement would be very simple: "If it's not plastic or metallic, it's organic."

Most products labeled as being organic are not really organic. This is the truth. You pay premium prices for products you think are grown without chemicals, but most products are. If an apple is labeled as being organic, it could mean two things. Either the apple tree itself is free from chemicals, or just the soil. One or the other, but rarely both. The truth is, the word 'organic' can mean many things, and taking a farmer to court would be difficult if you found out his fruits were indeed sprayed with pesticides. After all, all organisms on earth are scientifically labeled as being organic, unless they are made of plastic or metal. The word 'organic' comes from the word 'organism', meaning something that is, or once was, living and breathing air, water and sunlight.

So, the next time you stroll through your local supermarket and see brown pears that are labeled as being organic, know that they could have been third-rate fare sourced from the last day of a weekend market, and have been re-labeled to be sold to a gullible crowd for a premium price. I have a friend who thinks that organic foods have to look beat up and deformed because the use of chemicals is what makes them look perfect and flawless. This is not true. Chemical-free foods can look perfect if grown in your backyard. If you go to jungles or forests untouched by man, you will see fruit and vegetables that look like they sprouted from trees from Heaven. So be cautious the next time you buy anything labeled as 'organic'. Unless you personally know the farmer or the company selling the products, don't trust what you read. You, me, and everything on land and sea are organic.


Suzy Kassem,
Truth Is Crying”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“Do not rush to judge someone unless his/her fruits reveal the truth. However, don't forget; mostly, it's not the fault of the tree to produce bitter fruits. Sometimes, the soil determines that; blame the source! Deal with the soil! Don't deal with the tree! Other trees are there that the same soil can influence! Don't deal with your enemy, deal with the satan that sponsors them!”
― Israelmore Ayivor, The Great Hand Book of Quotes

“We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect”
― Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There

“Man takes root at his feet, and at best he is no more than a potted plant in his house or carriage till he has established communication with the soil by the loving and magnetic touch of his soles to it.”
― John Burroughs

“There's something satisfying about getting your hands in the soil.”
― E.A. Bucchianeri, Vocation of a Gadfly

“Studying wine taught me that there was a very big difference between soil and dirt: dirt is to soul what zombies are to humans. Soil is full of life, while dirt is devoid of it.”
― Olivier Magny, Into Wine: An Invitation to Pleasure

“Our most important job as vegetable gardeners is to feed and sustain soil life, often called the soil food web, beginning with the microbes. If we do this, our plants will thrive, we’ll grow nutritious, healthy food, and our soil conditions will get better each year. This is what is meant by the adage ”Feed the soil not the plants.”
― Jane Shellenberger, Organic Gardener's Companion: Growing Vegetables in the West

“The only truly dependable production technologies are those that are sustainable over the long term. By that very definition, they must avoid erosion, pollution, environmental degradation, and resource waste. Any rational food-production system will emphasize the well-being of the soil-air-water biosphere, the creatures which inhabit it, and the human beings who depend upon it.”
― Eliot Coleman, The New Organic Grower: A Master's Manual of Tools and Techniques for the Home and Market Gardener

“The great concerns of our time – climate change, natural resources, food production, water control and conservation, and human health – all boil down to the condition of the soil.”
― Isabella Tree, Wilding

“What is working stain, does not soil.”
― Edmundo de Amicis

“Hope is a fertile soil where flowers blossoms.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita, The Alphabets of Success: Passion Driven Life

“While it is relatively easy to recognize the perennial grasses and seed-eating sparrows as characteristic of meadows, the ecosystems exist in their fullest sense underground. What we see aboveground is only the outer margin of an ecosystem that explodes in intricacy and life below.”
― Amy Seidl, Early Spring: An Ecologist and Her Children Wake to a Warming World

“Papa always says, you can fix soil, and you can build houses, but there's no point if the land don't have water.”
― Hope Larson, Salt Magic

“There are seeds of greatness within you. You will either see them as worth planting, or you will not. You may attempt to trade them for other seeds that will never adapt to the soil of your soul, or you will realize that no seed created can match the ones already within you. Wisdom would tell you to accept the seeds, not your view of them. Prudence would tell you to embrace the soil, not your sense of its suitability. And determination would tell you to rigorously cultivate that which is already within you with great vigor, for to alter seed or soil is to destroy both and render the garden barren.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Trillions of microorganisms, even in my own smallish backyard, like a great dark sea swarming with tiny creatures—it almost makes me feel a little seasick standing here, knowing how much business is being conducted right under my feet.”
― Kristin Ohlson, The Soil Will Save Us: How Scientists, Farmers, and Foodies Are Healing the Soil to Save the Planet

“One of the worst things that you can do is to pretend that what you’re actually sowing are seeds, that you’re actually sowing them in soil, and that you’ve actually left your living room to do either.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“I asked the fish, where do you feel you belong, he said to the sea; I asked the bird, where do you feel you belong, he said to the sky; And I asked human, where do you feel you belong, he said to the land!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“The fact is that the Earth is not man’s property and we are not its owners.”
― Shivanshu K. Srivastava

“New Mexico is home to the first atomic bomb exploded on USA soil.”
― Steven Magee

“From the soil of mistakes, we harvest lessons of wellbeing, watering our roots with the wisdom of experience.”
― Dr Prem Jagyasi

“Like the farmer who sustains himself and his family’s well being by growing the highest quality produce, fertile soil of my inner being is my utmost priority”
― Rhys Blanco, Affirmations for Glowing skin

“Mind is the tether between facts and science,
Mind is the line of life between words and poetry.
People are the tether between mind and meaning,
Soil is the tether between human and humility.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Yaralardan Yangın Doğar: Explorers of Night are Emperors of Dawn