Horticulture Minute: Soil is Made of...

Yes.
Even that.

Hi, readers, a friendly reminder: when you are working in your gardens, remember to thoroughly wash your hands and under your nails when you finish.

You see, your soil is made up of a lot of things. You have sand, silt, and clay, in addition to your organic materials, like that tree that fell down thirty years ago and was taken to Nature's Chop Shop: all sorts of critters and bugs have been gnawing away at the xylem and phloem, chewing up the cambium, turning the tree's parts into little bits and pieces. How? Digestion, both internal and external! Worms boring through the materials leave behind their castings (it's a fancy word for poop). Bugs leave behind their fecal matter. Animals leave behind their dung, spoor, droppings...

Your soil is made of #2s. ✅

Now, on top of that, we have mountains that have slowly eroded into molehills over a period of time so great that we as humans cannot truly fathom the immensity. This happens through physical actions: things that have eroded before (or were already small enough before: see your organics like fecal matter once it's dessicated, bones when they crumble, etc) being picked up by the wind and being flung bodily against the firm stone of the mountain. The mountain is being sandblasted by nature, and more sand is made.
Sand's grains are large in comparison to things like silt and clay, but sand too will erode over time from friction and pressure, water, heat, cold. They get smaller.

Your soil is made of mountains and molehills. ✅

Let's peek back over to the organics camp. Nature, red in tooth and claw, has her bloody ways up and down the animal kingdom ladder. We already established the connection between defecation and soil, but what about animal falls? Something fell a moose in that forest once, feasted upon its victory. There is no refrigerator to store leftovers outside of the dead of a subfreezing winter, and even that doesn't fully stop intrepid gnawers from chewing off little bites of moose to fill grumbly little bellies. Even when the carcass has begun to rot away, more creatures come to feast, breaking their fasts on what has fallen. Ultimately, little is left but bits of fur, bones, perhaps morsels no creature dainty enough can reach. This decomposes.
Repeat this story everywhere a creature lives, replacing moose with a regionally appropriate creature, and you see nature's cycle in progress.

Your soil is made of bodies hitting the biome floor. ✅

Another peek under the hood, this time, around volcanoes. They push out molten rock and belch ash which eventually settles down, cools off, and is subject to the erosion processes mentioned earlier. We get breakdown from this that eventually makes its way into soil, but we also get vermiculite and perlite at a point in this process -- two soilless additives for gardening.

Your soil is made up of volcanoes. ✅

Considering all of these things, it's highly appropriate for gardeners to wash their hands after they're done digging in the soil. You're digging through layers of history, of worm castings, bug droppings, dead rodents and roaches, broken down animal bones, ground down mountains, washed up whale falls, and a whole host of other effluvia lost (and found again in your salad) in time.

Get some soap, a gentle bristle brush, and some water, and wash your hands, darn it!