YardSmart

Dust Bowl Legacy Helps Today's Backyard Gardeners

They were called black blizzards.

"Noon was like night," one railroad conductor said after encountering one of them. "There was no sun and, at times, it was impossible to see a yard."

In 1933 the Texas Panhandle saw 70 dust storms. And they said it couldn't get any worse. But in just the first nine months of 1937, 134 windstorms turned the heartland into a dustbowl.

This fertile land that once lay protected under accumulations of grass built up over the ages was laid bare by farming in a few short years. The initial sod layer was so dense that it was cut into blocks and used to build homes for the first settlers. In those days, farmers stripped the sod and tilled virgin soil behind an ox or mule. It was back-breaking and slow. Large tracts of land remained unchanged until the turn of the century.

The advent of the mechanized farm tractor was a boon to these farmers who could till in just one day five times more land than with a mule, and maybe more. This allowed them to strip the last of the sod and put ever more acreage under the plow.

Then a prolonged drought and consecutive years of crop failure left soils in parts of Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma and Colorado with virtually no cover. The loosely tilled earth dried out and was easily carried aloft by prairie winds. There is no way to estimate how much land was literally blown away in those devastating years, but Hugh Hammond Bennett of the USDA believed this soil erosion to be a "national menace".

His efforts led to the creation of the USDA Soil Conservation Service in 1935, dedicated to helping farmers learn new ways of cultivation that protected the soil and preserved fertility. Back then so many American farmers were minimally educated and had nowhere to find reliable guidance. The agency was long overdue. In recent years Bennett's service has been renamed the National Resource Conservation Service because it has grown to respond to contemporary environmental issues as well.

This is one of America's least known organizations and yet it has so much to offer American homeowners. Over many decades the service has produced booklets and handouts on a wide range of subjects. The Internet has allowed them to post these for free downloading by anyone who needs them.

The web site is at www.nrcs.usda.gov. You can access their giant "publications" section to find state or regionally specific materials on virtually all aspects of farming. Go directly to "homeowners" on the right side of the home page and click to access the consumer informational documents you can download for free. In "Your Own Backyard" are detailed PDFs on a wide variety of projects and regular maintenance practices. The approach is strongly in favor of ideas and practices that not only enhance the value of your home, but are environmentally sound as well.

You can print out detailed, illustrated instruction sheets on creating water gardens with "Backyard Pond and Backyard Wetland." In keeping with their original purpose, to control erosion and protect soil quality, check out the sheets on "Terracing A Hillside, Composting, Mulching and Nutrient Management."

Or, at the bottom of that page, click on "See more tips..." to reach a much larger database of useful articles. This locates a virtual library of how-to instruction sheets are all prepared by experts in plant and soil science.

Thankfully, the chance of another dustbowl has been thwarted by education. But all over America backyard gardeners and rural homeowners are facing many of the same challenges. What was created for those dustbowl farmers has yielded a trove of free guidance both online and through agents in towns all across the states. Take advantage, because it's all created by your tax dollars at work.

back to top