Comment by sologoub

Comment by sologoub a day ago

10 replies

If you try to make a planting bed in any settlement that’s more than say 100 years old on a site that was continuously lived on, you are guaranteed to come across at least some shards of glass, pots, plates, etc. Even if the spot was never explicitly a trash mound. Things break, people usually try to pick them up and put in trash, but (especially in grass) miss pieces. When kids break stuff you often don’t want them picking up sharp objects. Things get stepped on and pressed into soil. Many many reasons to find pottery shards where they seemingly don’t belong.

pfdietz a day ago

I was also going to say, earthworms will slowly bury objects (Darwin wrote on this), but that region didn't have earthworms at the time.

  • bastawhiz a day ago

    TIL that earthworms in the American northeast are largely invasive species. That's very surprising to me

    • 7thaccount a day ago

      Are they problematic though? There were earthworms there before the ice age I think.

      • maxerickson 20 hours ago

        There's invasive species that are hugely problematic, converting whole forests from fungal decomposition of leaves to bacterial (changing the soil conditions quite a lot).

      • andy99 a day ago

        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasive_earthworms_of_North...

        Also learning about this today. Apparently they're bad for ecosystems that had evolved with slowly decaying organic matter (because they eat it all quickly). In particular forests.

        At least in my education they have always been framed as a vital component of the ecosystem and a sign of healthy soil. It's interesting to learn that's not true.