Learn / The Roots

J. Russell Smith belongs to the landscape design and long-term farming lineage that Cure Soil keeps in conversation with current observations. Tree Crops (1929), the root of perennial agriculture. That is what we know them for here; this is not a claim that every part of their work is settled science. If you are new to their work, start with the question they were trying to answer, not a product you might buy.

What they figured out, or helped growers ask, was this: Tree crops as permanent agriculture (nuts and fodder trees on land that shouldn't be plowed). Read that as a way to look at a site rather than a guarantee about every garden. A useful idea helps you notice something you can check. If you only repeat the name and skip the observation, the soil itself has no chance to answer back.

Take this into your own garden by beginning with a real observation: what the roots look like, how water moves, what the soil smells like, or what a comparable lab reading actually measures. Follow it with Tree Crops: A Permanent Agriculture if you want to hear the idea closer to its source. Then ask which part fits your ground and which part needs more evidence. It is fine to keep the question open.

At Cure Soil, this lineage shows up in the linked lessons and protocols below. The point is not to copy a historical recipe without context. We put the idea beside the site, the crop, the water, and the living soil. If an input is called for, a real report and the matching protocol should tell you why; if it is not, adding one just because an OG used it can make the balance worse.

The honest note is that a respected grower can teach a powerful way of seeing without proving every claim everywhere. Look for repeatable results, keep methods consistent, and say when you do not have enough evidence. That is how we honor the work without turning it into a certainty it never earned.