About the Journal

Night Soil is a quarterly gardening journal concerned with the slow, unglamorous work that keeps a garden honest: compost turned and forgotten, seed saved and labelled, tools sharpened at the end of the day.

We are not a shop and not a directory. Each issue collects essays from four sections — Plots, Plants, Tools, and Seasons — written by people who garden with their hands and report what actually happened.

Our name is borrowed from the old term for the richest, most private compost of all: the night soil that gardeners once bartered for and spread on their beds. We like the reminder that the best growing starts with things most people walk past.

— The Editors