The Search for Fruitful Soil in the Seattle Basin
A pioneer orchardist shares a nineteen-year struggle to master the stubborn, clay-heavy soils of the Duwamish Valley and the Puget Sound region.
The story, cleaned up
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My experience in fruit culture in Washington Territory has extended over a period of about nineteen years. Commencing with nursery and orchard on a piece of wet land, springy and low, with rich soil ten inches deep, underlaid with a heavy tenacious subsoil of clay, the result was, of course, a vigorous growth while the trees were young; but soon checked by blight that killed both limbs and branches, proving that fruit trees were not adapted to wet land. Our upland gravelly prairies are not much better, most orchards proving a failure; while our high sandy prairies are much worse. A clay soil, or one more or less mixed with clay, is essential to success in fruit culture in this climate. Our river bottoms, composed mainly of this brown clay sediment, are admirably adapted to fruit. There are orchards in the Duwamish Bottoms, 18 years old, healthy and productive, though long since seeded down to grass.
“A clay soil, or one more or less mixed with clay, is essential to success in fruit culture in this climate.”
Early Seattle settlers spent decades trying to 'improve' the landscape to suit specific crops, often ignoring the ecological reality of the region's wetlands. Today, the Duwamish Valley faces a different environmental struggle, as residents advocate for the remediation of those same industrial river bottoms that were historically manipulated for agricultural expansion.
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