Millions of years ago, there they were. Floating around, taking in the sights as much as a single-celled organism can, turning carbon dioxide into oxygen, supporting the food chain—diatoms did all the things that they still do now. And then, they died.
When they died, they drifted down to the bottoms of lakes and rivers and the ocean. Their silica-packed cell walls remained and piled up, over time becoming chalky deposits called diatomaceous earth.
They’re still out there, of course, the diatoms, doing all those helpful things for us. But today it is the shells of their former selves that I praise and thank. Diatomaceous earth has saved my sanity more than once. It is known to fight pests by drying up their exoskeletons. It also can be used to filter important liquids, such as drinking water, wine, and beer. Diatoms were there for the pinworm incident. They were there for the beer that I needed to drink after the pinworm incident. And now, they are here for my strawberries.
Oh, my strawberries. They are part of my lazy gardening effort to create a Sunset-worthy edible backyard while putting in very little money or effort. Strawberries! They are ripe and red and delicious, unless you happen to have a berry phobia, like my son’s best friend does. Fine: more strawberries for me.
This spring, when I went out to get the first strawberry from my cute little plants, I found that I was not the first in line. The roly polies had gotten there first, each of their little segmented legs giving that berry a full-body hug. It was as if the strawberry had been dipped in chocolate. Except it wasn’t chocolate, it was little gray exoskeltons.
I usually like roly polies. They are charming when you pick them up and they curl into a little ball and small children squeal with delight at how their tiny legs tickle on their palms. And it is fun to say roly poly. But then you see a horde of pillbugs gathering underneath a berry that is about to ripen, like a mosh pit in waiting, it is not charming. This is when you look them up and learn that their name is Armadillidium vulgare, a crustacean known as the common pill woodlouse, and you will never call them by a charming name again.
Enter the diatoms. With deep apologies to the roly poly horde in the strawberry planter, I sprinkled the white powder around my strawberries. Suddenly, the crowds moved on to another show. I knew that there was more out there in the garden for the remaining roly polies—they can eat rotting things, like dead leaves and fallen oranges and maybe even that Easter egg that we still can’t find from two years ago. And then there was a ripe strawberry, waiting just for me.
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Images of Arachnoidiscus atlanticus by the California Academy of Sciences via Flickr/Creative Commons license
Oooo. My wife & I are always looking for ways to be careless gardeners (yes, careless). Did you know you can grow strawberries in hanging planters?!? They don’t need very big pots and the berries hang down the sides. If you have drip watering, just run a line up to the pot and forget about it … until harvest time.
I had heard about the hanging plants but haven’t seen it in practice. So pill bugs can’t climb? I will investigate!
They’re useful for special effects in film too – they make a wonderful exploding dust without having to create clouds of noxious wot-not everywhere. There’s a terrific example of this at the start of the third Die Hard movie (the one with the Jeremy Irons and his awful German accent). All the dust from that explosion – diatomic earth. We use it in the hen houses as a non-toxic way to control mites. The birds love to bathe in the stuff too.
Oh, very cool! Thank you!
Diatom
At just first light in surge and drift,
Within the darkling seas,
In sheaves they swirl — as winter mist
Evaporates in trees.
I show you here one diatom.
God’s smallest lamp of glass and oil,
Suspended in our ancient seas,
Then frozen far beneath our soil.
Beneath our star these diatomes,
Misprisoned cells of oil in glass,
In drifts descended into sand,
And melted stone while eons pass.
Within such stone they liquify,
And flow in streams through granite glades
To slumber in their vaults of pearl,
And dreaming dream the dreams of shades.
Awakened soul and substance now
What dwelt in seas then leaps to fly.
We see their shadows, cold as mist,
When contrails sketch our frozen sky.
I show you here a diatom,
God’s smallest lamp of glass and oil,
That keeps us in mid-heaven safe
And warm above our winter’s soil.
In life’s first dawn they scintillate
And merge in death to darkened stone.
In sheaves they fade into the mist…
Unplanned? Unsought? Unmourned?
I show you here one diatom.
— Van der Leun