Succession Gardening

1. Bare rock and minimal soil: This is the domain of the photosynthetic lichens and bacterially dominant soils. Lichens are bizarre. They are made up of a fungi that "eats" rocks and an algae that photosynthesizes to make sugars who partnered together into the bizarre organism we know as lichen. Rocks and sand do not hold much nutrition or water. Lichens and bacteria in the soil are our first nutrient cyclers. They mobilize nitrogen and start ever so slowly to create stickiness and glues and slimes that start creating the first hint of soil. In deserts these systems made up of lichens, mosses and cyanobacteria can be well established soil covers called "biocrusts" that stabilize and cover bare soil as well as helping capture rainfall, prevent erosion, and store moisture in the top few centimeters of the ground.

3. Early succession grasses and veggies: The fungal to bacterial ratio (one metric for succession) is now 2:1. Still bacterially dominant, but now the soil has beneficial fungi in enough numbers to start building more "soil aggregates" giving the soil a crumbly yet blocky, porous structure that allows it to hold water AND air AND nutrients for optimal root growth. It act like a sponge. This is the stage where weeds become less. The more fungally dominant the soil becomes, the less the weeds. You will notice the weeds getting smaller, less robust, more prone to insect or disease pressure as they hand the baton to the next players on this stage of succession. This is the time of early succession grasses with deeper roots and most of our vegetables crops like tomatoes, potatoes, and cole crops (kale, broccoli, bok choi, arugula). They attract and feed more life both above and below ground. Caterpillars, birds, squirrels, deer, foxes and bees... all of them work to cycle more nutrients: eating and leaving droppings, pollinating more flowers for more more seeds and more fruit. The soil is beginning to smell fragrant and get darker. The topsoil is deeper.

5. Shrubs, vines and deciduous trees: Fungally dominant soils create deep structure and stability for woody plants like vines, shrubs, and early deciduous trees (think of trees that loose their leaves and thrive best in young forests and on forest edges). Fruit trees mostly fall in this catergory. So do berry bushes and brambles. So many excellent edibles like elderberry, hazelnuts, grapes, blackberry, pawpaws, spicebush, and rose. Later as the soil develops this will transition to more deciduous canopy trees. The soil is deep, rich, stable, spongy, full of water and air at the same time. Each time a tree falls in the woods, there is a fire, or some other disturbance like construction or tree-cutting, the soil jumps backwards just a little on the succession timeline. Weeds or grasses might come in for a time to fill the gap before the soil regains its fungal dominance.