What Farmers And Gardeners Should Know About Soil Testing – Part 2 CEC, OM, Base Saturation and Nutrients

Shows why testing helps you build quality soils

  ABOUT EPISODE 7 Laboratory based testing helps you build quality soils for your farm and garden.  This is because tests provide information about what your soils need, rather than simply highlighting what your fertilizer distributor has on sale. But the numbers on a lab report are only valuable if you know how to interpret … Read more

What Farmers and Gardeners Need to Know About Soil Testing (Part I-At Home Assessments and Soil pH)

Shows a farmer testing his soil.

Farmers and gardeners can improve production with regular at home and laboratory based soil testing.   Learn facts about soil color, texture, and aroma, and living creatures in and on your soil that can guide you to better production.   Learn how to choose a soil testing lab, why pH is one of the most common variables … Read more

Keeping Soils Healthy Through the Winter

Podcast Transcript Are You Tending Your Soil Microbes as Winter Approaches? As the days are getting shorter and the weather’s getting colder, it’s tempting to put your farm or garden soil on the back burner, so to speak, and start thinking about: how to store all the produce you just harvested who to invite over … Read more

Farm Shopping: Embracing the Regenerative Vision

Farm Shopping: Embracing the Regenerative Vision

Stepping into Regenerative Agriculture So, you think you are ready to get on the regenerative agriculture bandwagon?   You are not alone. Farmers,  food think tanks, , environmental groups, indigenous communities,  and even the New York Times are taking interest in regenerative agriculture.  Regenerative production models are recognized as a way to restore the environment, combat … Read more

Can Global Warming Reduce Nutrition?

  According to a recent report in Science Advances (summarized in the Vox) increased atmospheric CO2, a key feature in global warming, can result in reduced crop nutrition.  They demonstrated this effect using rice, a staple crop that feeds much of the world.  This would seem threatening, since poor crop nutrition impacts food webs all the way from … Read more

Why Is Living Soil a Disruptive Innovation?

We know soil is alive.  Why do we treat it like dirt? The first lesson in the first soils class I ever took covered what soil is made of.  We learned soil contains minerals, air, water, organic matter, and “critters”.  Yes.  That’s right.  Critters.  All those little squirmy, wiggly things that live underground.  Bacteria.  Fungi.  … Read more