Here’s an oldie but goodie video introducing the simple steps for no-till gardening. Early spring is a good time to begin preparing your no-till gardening beds. View this page on the HGIC website for more information. See more no-till posts…
Soils, plants, and animals are highly interdependent. Soils support and feed microbes and plants which feed animals. Dead plants and soil critters replenish the soils’ organic matter and nutrient supply, completing the cycle. We know that healthy soils produce healthy…
Mid-September is a transition time for vegetable gardeners. You may be doing some garden clean-up, recording the successes and failures you were too busy to think about when they happened, and deciding how to manage the soil this fall and…
In a mid-March post, I wrote about the advantages of using heavy-duty weed barrier fabric to smother weeds and create a no-till plant bed. In mid-June, I found myself with two beds that were starting to get weedy. The winter…
As a first-year college student studying horticulture (and later agronomy) I had no idea what I was in for when I signed up for that first Introduction to Soil Science course. Growing up, gardening and working on my family’s dairy…
This post is modified from an article originally published in The Delmarva Farmer (2/13/2018) Most people would probably be surprised to know that bacterial cells outnumber human cells in our bodies by 10-to-1 and that just one teaspoon of healthy…
As a non-soil scientist who loves to explore and learn about soil, I was quite shocked to read last year that humus, as it’s commonly understood, does not exist in nature. What, no humus? How can that be? What is…
