I dug my vegetable patch over every spring to loosen the soil: the summer everything wilted despite daily watering, I finally saw what the spade had cut through
Every spring, a gardener faithfully turned over the vegetable bed to loosen soil—until one summer, despite daily watering, everything wilted. The culprit wasn’t drought or disease. It was buried six inches down, severed by the spade each year. Mycorrhizal fungi and earthworm networks, invisible but essential, had been destroyed before the plants needed them most.